History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 6Gibbon, Edward
History
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 6
Gibbon, Edward
Byzantine Empire -- History -- To 527; Rome -- History -- Empire, 30 B.C.-476 A.D.
27 (return) [ Por-ce que cil pardon, fut issi gran, si s’en
esmeurent mult li cuers des genz, et mult s’en croisierent, porce
que li pardons ere si gran. Villehardouin, No. 1. Our
philosophers may refine on the causes of the crusades, but such
were the genuine feelings of a French knight.]
28 (return) [ This number of fiefs (of which 1800 owed liege
homage) was enrolled in the church of St. Stephen at Troyes, and
attested A.D. 1213, by the marshal and butler of Champagne,
(Ducange, Observ. p. 254.)]
29 (return) [ Campania.... militiæ privilegio singularius
excellit.... in tyrociniis.... prolusione armorum, &c., Duncage,
p. 249, from the old Chronicle of Jerusalem, A.D. 1177—1199.]
30 (return) [ The name of Villehardouin was taken from a village
and castle in the diocese of Troyes, near the River Aube, between
Bar and Arcis. The family was ancient and noble; the elder branch
of our historian existed after the year 1400, the younger, which
acquired the principality of Achaia, merged in the house of
Savoy, (Ducange, p. 235—245.)]
31 (return) [ This office was held by his father and his
descendants; but Ducange has not hunted it with his usual
sagacity. I find that, in the year 1356, it was in the family of
Conflans; but these provincial have been long since eclipsed by
the national marshals of France.]
32 (return) [ This language, of which I shall produce some
specimens, is explained by Vigenere and Ducange, in a version and
glossary. The president Des Brosses (Méchanisme des Langues, tom.
ii. p. 83) gives it as the example of a language which has ceased
to be French, and is understood only by grammarians.]
33 (return) [ His age, and his own expression, moi qui ceste uvre
_dicta_, (No. 62, &c.,) may justify the suspicion (more probable
than Mr. Wood’s on Homer) that he could neither read nor write.
Yet Champagne may boast of the two first historians, the noble
authors of French prose, Villehardouin and Joinville.]
34 (return) [ The crusade and reigns of the counts of Flanders,
Baldwin and his brother Henry, are the subject of a particular
history by the Jesuit Doutremens, (Constantinopolis Belgica;
Turnaci, 1638, in 4to.,) which I have only seen with the eyes of
Ducange.]
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