Written at the Cistercian abbey of Pairis in Alsace from the account of its abbot Martin, who preached the crusade at Basel in 1200 (Gunther gives the sermon) and led a contingent from the Upper Rhine. For 1200 it records the Alsatian and Rhineland response to Innocent III's call, the departure of Martin's party for Venice in 1201 and the thinness of German participation. The rest describes the diversion to Zara and Constantinople and the relics Martin carried home. Gunther is a eulogist of his abbot and a theologian of the relic theft; his details on the Empire and Byzantium are second-hand.
About this source
- Title
- Hystoria Constantinopolitana
- Author
- Gunther of Pairis
- Author's dates
- about 1150 to about 1220
- Written
- about 1205 to 1210
- Language
- Latin, prose and verse
- Covers
- 1200 to 1205
- Kind
- History
The Internet Archive copy of Riant's Exuviae was confirmed as the 1877 volume but its table of contents could not be checked page by page. The Patrologia text was not located online in this check; Orth's edition and Andrea's English are in copyright.
Where to read it
Editions
- P. Riant (ed.), Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitanae, vol. 1 (Geneva, 1877), which prints Gunther's Hystoria
- J. P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina 212, Guntheri Opera (not freely online)
- P. Orth (ed.), Gunther von Pairis, Hystoria Constantinopolitana (Hildesheim, 1994), the critical edition (not freely online)
Translations
- A. J. Andrea, The Capture of Constantinople: The Hystoria Constantinopolitana of Gunther of Pairis (Philadelphia, 1997), English (not freely online)