Monk and chronicler of Troisfontaines, a Cistercian monastery at Chalons-en-Champagne.
Alberic’s universal chronicle provides an invaluable glimpse of how crusading and related activities were viewed from a minor French cloister. Written primarily between 1227 and 1240, it devotes substantial passages to the Fourth (1202-1204) and Fifth Crusades (1217-1221), the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229), and the so-called First Children’s Crusade (1251). In general, his chronicle shows an evenhanded enthusiasm for crusading, whether against Muslims, schismatic Christians, or heretics. Undoubtedly informed by oral sources, Alberic’s understanding of the period’s crusading activity was also shaped by his exceptional use of available documents, including letters of Pope Innocent III and Baldwin I, first Latin emperor of Constantinople, as well as Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay’s Hystoria Albigensis. Alberic’s detailed and occasionally confused presentation of events preceding and during the Fourth Crusade is of particular interest, given the tendency of modern scholars to single out the Latin capture of Constantinople (1204) as an especially egregious violation of the crusading ideal, sentiments that were foreign to his contemporary perspective. Alberic probably died around 1251 or 1252.
-Brett Edward Whalen
Bibliography
Alberic of Troisfontaines, “Chronica,” ed. P. Scheffer-Boichorst, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores 23 (Hannover: Hahn, 1874), 631-950.
Andrea, Alfred J., Contemporary Sources for the Fourth Crusade (Leiden: Brill, 2000).
Chazan, Mireille. L’Empire et l’histoire universelle de Sigbert de Gembloux a Jean de Saint-Victor (Xlle-XIVe siecle) (Paris: Champion, 1999).
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