In comparison with the intellectual life of Sicily or of Spain, that of Outremer is disappointing. It might have been expected that, as at Palermo, the contact between Franks and Orientals might have stimulated intellectual activity; but in fact the society of Outremer, which consisted almost entirely of soldiers and merchants, was not fitted to create or maintain a high intellectual standard. Amongst the princes and the nobility there were many men of culture. For example, we are told that King Baldwin III and King Amalric I were both devoted to letters. Reynald of Sidon was notorious for his interest in Islamic learning, while Humphrey IV of Toron had a perfect knowledge of the Arabic language. And Outremer produced one of the greatest of medieval historians in William of Tyre. But we know very little about education in Outremer. As in the West there were undoubtedly schools attached to the chief cathedrals; but it is significant that William of Tyre went as a boy to France to be educated; and, apart from him, all the ecclesiastics who played a prominent part in the history of Outremer were men born and brought up in the West. Many of these prelates, such as the Patriarch Aimery of Antioch, were interested in literature, or like James of Vitry, bishop of Acre in the thirteenth century, in the scientific life going on around him; and the various schemes for the later Crusades encouraged an active interest in oriental geography. But on the whole Frankish culture in Outremer remained an occidental importation, with very little contact with native culture, except in the arts. Medicine was left entirely in native hands. The princes seem always to have employed Syrian Christian doctors. When Amalric I rejected his Syrian doctors’ advice and consulted a Frank, he died of it; and the examples that Usama gives of Frankish doctoring show it to have been remarkably crude. The Franks seem to have made no attempt, as in southern Italy, to learn from native medicine; though a certain Stephen of Antioch seems to have translated a medical treatise from the Arabic in 1227. There is no record of any effort by the Franks, apart from a few nobles, to study local philosophy or scientific knowledge.
The literary products of Frankish Outremer fall under three headings. First, there are the chronicles and histories. These, with the great exception of William of Tyre’s history, and the work of some of his continuators, such as Ernoul, were written by men born in the West and are in the tradition of Western chronicle-writing. Secondly, there is a large crop of legal works. The colonists and their descendants were deeply interested in legal and constitutional matters, and were anxious to have their opinions and findings written down, to an extent unparalleled in the West. But the law that they reproduce is purely Western, though it showed some necessary adjustments. Finally, there was popular and romantic poetry. The colonists in Outremer loved the romantic epics of the time. Several troubadours and minnesingers, such as Rudel or Albert of Johansdorf, went on the Crusades. Raymond, Prince of Antioch, was the son of the eminent troubadour poet, William IX of Aquitaine. The stirring events of the Crusades were admirably suited to enrich the themes of which the poets sang. Godfrey of Lorraine soon became a legendary hero, whose adventures were incorporated into the cycle of the Chevalier au Cygne; poems about his youth and ancestry were already in circulation in the East when William of Tyre wrote his history. But these poems were composed in the West. Similarly, the two versified accounts of the First Crusade, theChanson d’Antioche and theChanson de Jerusalem, were both almost certainly composed in the West, on information brought back by returning Crusaders. The one epic which originated in Outremer is the Chanson des Chetifs, a curious story of Crusaders made captive by ‘Corboran’ (Kerbogha) in which the stories of the First Crusade and the Crusades of 1101 have become inextricably mixed. This poem was composed by an author whose name is unknown, at the express desire of Prince Raymond of Antioch. It was still unfinished when Raymond died in 1149. The muddled inaccurate historical basis of the story suggests that the author was a newcomer to the East. The Franks found a romantic fascination in the fate of Christian captives in Moslem hands. The theme of the Chetifs was one which therefore enjoyed great popularity in Outremer as well as in Europe.
Outremer produced other poetical works; but none of the known authors was born in the East. Philip of Novara, statesman, chronicler and jurist, who was Italian by birth but wrote in French, inserted verse of his own lively if not very poetical composition into his chronicle. Philip of Nanteuil, when captive at Cairo, wrote nostalgic poems about his French homeland. But, though Philip of Novara can be regarded as one of the founders of the provincial Frankish culture of Cyprus, the literature of Outremer is simply a branch of the literature of France. There was no indigenous literature amongst the Franks’ native subjects in Syria, though in Cyprus and in Greece itself there grew up under Frankish domination a semi-popular Greek literature strongly affected by Frankish influences.
The intellectual life of Outremer was, in fact, that of a Frankish colony. The Courts of the Kings and Princes had a certain cosmopolitan glamour; but the number of resident scholars in Outremer was small; and wars and financial difficulties prevented the institution of real centres of study where native and neighbouring learning could have been absorbed. It was the absence of these centres that made the cultural contribution of the Crusades to western Europe so disappointingly small.
