The Crusade of Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury

One of the five manuscripts of the so-called Itinerarium Peregrinorum 1: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale MS lat 6044 fols 299-300: from Gallica.bnf.fr

At the SSCLE conference the week after next I’ll be speaking about an old friend, the Itinerarium peregrinorum, which some readers will remember I translated many years ago (published as Chronicle of the Third Crusade). The anonymous author of the so-called ‘Itinerarium peregrinorum 1′ showed a particular interest in Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury’s deeds at the siege of Acre between his arrival at Acre 12 October 1190 and his death on 19 November. The obvious suggestion is that the anonymous author was one of the archbishop’s entourage. But who was in his entourage? Has anyone made a study of the archbishop’s crusading expedition of 1189-90?

So far the best candidate is the archbishop’s chaplain, who wrote to the convent of Canterbury in October 1190 with news of the siege: his description of the siege is very like that in IP 1.