A house history of the counts of Guines and lords of Ardres, written while Count Baldwin II and his son Arnold were alive and finishing in 1203. It shows a small frontier lordship between Boulogne, Flanders and the sea exactly as it stood in 1200: the castles, the family marriages, the quarrels with Boulogne and with the count of Flanders, the war of 1197 to 1200 between Philip and Baldwin IX that ran through this country, and the building and furnishing of a lord's hall. The best description anywhere of how a minor count lived and ruled.
About this source
- Title
- Historia comitum Ghisnensium
- Author
- Lambert of Ardres
- Author's dates
- active 1194 to 1203; priest of Ardres
- Written
- about 1196 to 1203, unfinished
- Language
- Latin
- Covers
- about 928 to 1203
- Kind
- History
Guines was a county of the kingdom of France held of Flanders; the realm keys available here file it under Flanders and the crown.
Where to read it
Editions
- J. Heller (ed.), Lamberti Ardensis Historia comitum Ghisnensium, in MGH Scriptores 24 (1879), pp. 550 to 642
- D.-C. Godefroy-Menilglaise (ed. and trans.), Chronique de Guines et d'Ardre par Lambert, cure d'Ardre (Paris, 1855), Latin with French
Translations
- L. Shopkow, The History of the Counts of Guines and Lords of Ardres (2001), English, not free (not freely online)
- Godefroy-Menilglaise's French translation (1855)