Eracles (Old French Continuation)

Also known as Estoire d'Eracles, L'Estoire de Eracles Empereur, Continuation of William of Tyre

13th-century Old French translation and continuation of William of Tyre — the principal narrative source for the kingdom from 1184 to its end.

Soon after William of Tyre's death his Latin Historia was translated into Old French in Paris (probably in the 1220s) and given the title Estoire d'Eracles after the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, with whom the prologue begins. From the mid-13th century onwards a series of continuations were appended to this French translation, taking the story forward year by year — first in Acre, then in Cyprus — down to the fall of Acre in 1291 and beyond.

Different continuators worked from different vantage points: an Acre continuation closely associated with the Ibelins, a Lyon manuscript with strong Templar sympathies, and a Cypriot continuation that survives in versions called the Chronique d'Ernoul and the Continuation de Rothelin. Where William of Tyre is the central source for the 12th-century kingdom, the Eracles family is the central source for the 13th, and any modern history of the later kingdom is built on it.

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