APPENDIX 523 Salcnio, 1878). and Gibbon's high estimate seems to be justified. Gibbon is also riglit in lejocting tlie guests of Cleiiient the Benedictine that the historian is to be identified with Hugo Foucault, Abbot of St. Denis (from 1180-1197). In the first phico Foucault would never be Latinised as Falcandus. In the second place, the oiil}- plausible evidence for the identification does not bear examina- tion. It is a letter of Peter of Blois to an abbot H. of St. Denys (Opera, ed. Giles, op. IK), i. p. 178), in which Peter asks his correspondent to send him a tractutas quern dc statu avt potius de casu vcatro in Sicilia di'^c7'i2Jt:istis. Hut this description does not apply to the Historia Sicula of Falcandus ; and it has been shown by Schroter that the correspondent of Peter is probably not Hugo Foucault, but his successor in the abbacy, Hugo of Mediolanum. Schroter has fully refuted this particular identification, and has also refuted the view (held by Amari, Freeman, and others) that Falcandus was a Norman or Frank. On the contrary Falcandus was probably born in Sicily, which he knew well, especi- ally Palermo, and when he wrote his history, he was living not north of the Alps (for he speaks of the Franks, kc, as tru amlpini , tnnismontani) but in southern Italy. He wrote his Historia Sicula, which reaches from 1154 to llO'J, later than llO'J, probably (in part at least) after 1181, for he speaks (p. ^/i2, ed. Muratori) of Alexander III. as qui tunc lionuinae pracsidciat ecclcniae, and Alexander died in 1181 (F. Schroter, Uber die Heimath des Hugo Falcandus, 1880). The letter to Peter of Palermo which is prefixed to the History as a sort of dedication seems to have been a perfectly independent composition, written ^immediately after the death of William the Good in November, 1189, and before the election of Tancred two months later. [Opera cit. of Schroter and Hillger ; Freeman, Historical Essays, 3rd ser. ; and cp. Hokach, oj). cit. above, p. 2lil, note 145 ; Del Re, preface to his edition (cp. above, p. 219, note 145).] Compared with Falcandus, Romuald, Archbishop of Salerno, is by no means so ingenuous. Although he does not directly falsify facts, his deliberate omis- sions have the elfect of falsifying history ; and these omissions were due to the desire of placing the Sicilian court in a favourable light. He is in fact a court historian, and his Annals clearly betra}' it. The tendency is shown in his cautious reserve touching the deeds and policy of the cruel and ambitious Chancellor Majo. Romuald was related to the royal family and was often en- trusted with confidential and important missions. He was a strong supporter of the papacy, but it has been remarked that he entertained "national" ideas- Italy for the Italians, not for the trans-Alinnes. He was a learned man and skilled in medicine. [Cp. above, p. 207, n. Ill ; p. 208, n. 110.] The name of the author of the Gesta Fkancorum was unknown even to those contemporary writers who made use of the work. Whatever his name was, he seems to have been a native of Southern Italy ; he accompanied the Norman crusaders who were led by Boernund, across the lUyric peninsula, and shared their fortunes till the end of 1098, when he separated from them at Antioch and attached himself to the Provencals, with whom he went on to .Jerusalem. He was not an ecclesiastic like most authors of the age, but a knight. He wiote his history from time to time, during the crusade, according as he had leisure. It falls into eight divisions, each concluded by Aiaea; and these divisions seem to mark the various stages of the c(jmposition ; they do not correspond to an}' artistic or logical distribution of the work. Having finished his Ijook at Jerusalem, the author deposited it there^perhaps in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre— where it could be, and was, consulted or copied by pilgrims of an inquiring turn of mind. The author was a pious and entliusiastic crusader, genuinely interested in the religious object of the enterprise ; he entirely sinks his own individuality, and identifies himself with the whole company- of his fellows. Up to the autumn of 1098 he is devoted to his own leader Boernund ; but after c. '/.) it has been noticed that the laudatory epithets which have hitherto attended Boemund's name disappear, and, although no criticism is passed, the author thus, almost unintentionalh', shows his dissatisfaction with the selfish
