ABSTRACT
In his prologue to the Historia Orientalis, crusade preacher and Bishop of Acre Jacques de Vitry referred to the weeping Israelites by the rivers of Babylon as an analogy for his boredom and frustration when the crusader army was held up after the capture of Damietta on the Fifth Crusade. Noting that ‘idleness teaches evil’, Jacques used the divine scriptures that he found in the city to keep his mind from vain and useless thoughts. As he desired to learn new things, he wrote how he found several books in the cabinets of the Latins, the Greeks and the Arabs containing the histories of the kings of the East. While seemingly admiring the efforts of the authors who preceded him, Jacques appeared critical of their ‘pompous praising of men’. He regarded the writing of history, at least when it came to the deeds of men, as a humble and virtuous task, and therefore frowned upon too much praise or inflated language.1 He noted that there was a lack of contemporary accounts on the recent crusading events. He blamed ‘the negligent sloth of the men of his time’ and lamented that ‘in the days that we live only a few men can be found, and none among our men, to apply themselves to write the admirable actions, the battles, and the glorious triumphs of the Eternal King’.2
