Les Chétifs is an episode in the twelfth century Crusade Cycle describing the fictitious adventures of a group of prisoners captured during the First Crusade. The present edition is based on all the known verse manuscripts, one manuscript in prose and a medieval Spanish translation. These versions have been compared in an analysis of the manuscript tradition and in detailed notes on the text. The edition itself has been laid out with the base text on one page, ard the variants on the facing page, whilst the prose version has been edited separately in an appendix. The texts have been provided with paleographic and literary notes, a full Table of Proper Names and a selective glossary. A full description of each manuscript is followed by an examination of a few facts preserved concerning some further manuscripts now lost. In the introduction all the major problems regarding the origins and development of the branch have been re-examined. The extant poem can be divided into three distinct episodes, each dominated by a different "Chétif". In the first, Richard de Chaumont fights a judicial duel on behalf of Corbaran, the captor of the prisoners, thereby securing their release. The second section sees Baudouin de Beauvais ridding the country of a terrible dragon, while in the third, Harpin de Bourges rescues Corbaran's nephew from a series of abductions. We have shown how the second of these episodes was interpolated after the composition of the other two. It has been claimed by many that Les Chétifs was written entirely, or mainly, in the orient. It is the contention of this thesis that this claim is unjustified and that the branch was composed in North Eastern France. Our refutation of the theory of oriental composition begins with a study of the provenance of the heroes, which illustrates how the original tale did indeed recount a real captivity, but that of a party of pilgrims from Fécamp, in Normandy, to Jerusalem, well before the First Crusade, The tale commemorating this event, long since lost, was to be incorporated, along with distant reminisceneas of the "Arrière-croisade" of 1101, into an early Cycle of the Crusade, which was later cast into a new cycle by Graindor de Douai in about 1190. Despite the oriental appearance of these original first and third episodes, it is certain that both were composed in Prance and based on medieval feudal and folk themes. Nevertheless there was no doubt a conscious effort on the part of successive authors and remanieurs to colour their work with genuine details of oriental life. The poem also includes certain topographical features of Syria and the Holy Land, but the overall impression is that they are vague and were probably borrowed from the Chanson d' Antioche and the Chanson de Jérusalem. In the early thirteenth century the cycle was subject to a further revision (probably at the time when the originally independent Swan-knight Cycle was affixed to it), and the episode of Baudouin de Beauvais and the dragon, which is of Armenian origin, was interpolated into it. It is this remaniement (and not that of Graindor de Douai, as has been hitherto supposed) that has survived and which is given in this edition. The general conclusion is that the branch of Les Chétifs was composed in various stages in Northern Prance. The language of the poet and that of most of the scribes localises the extant version to Picardy. The combined Swan-knight and Crusade Cycles, including Les Chétifs, were later abridged into a prose version, translated into Spanish and were recast into a final reworking known as the Second Cycle of the Crusade, in the mid-fourteenth century. The relationship between these three versions and the original verse redaction is the subject of one chapter, whilst another examines the extent to which Les Chétifs has left any influence on other works of the period.

The period of the Crusades was one of the most important periods in the history of both Western Europe and the Middle East, for it was during this period that the peoples of Western Europe made their first major incursion on eastern soil. The result of this was that an unprecedented amount of contact was established between East and West, forcing each side to become more closely acquainted with the culture of the other. As far as this cultural exchange is concerned, one of the most significant parts of the crusading period was that encompassing the first two crusades and their aftermath (490/1096-564/1169), as it was during this period that crusaders and easterners first clashed with each other, and were forced to learn much about each other. This sudden clash and forced acquaintance resulted in the development of certain attitudes on each side towards the other. This thesis concerns itself with the development of the attitudes of the Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities towards the Franks (western crusaders) in the major theatre of conflict of the area, the Levant. In the thesis as many texts as possible from the literature of the period are examined, in order to extract information from them concerning the developments in Levantine knowledge of and attitudes towards the Franks. The texts examined include both contemporary and later historical, geographical and judicial texts from the area, and also local works of literature. In addition to the Muslim, Christian and Jewish texts, and for the sake of comparison and completeness, brief consideration is also given to a number of works of Byzantine and Frankish writers. Naturally, use is also made of secondary works by modern scholars. In this way this thesis provides a detailed examination of cross-cultural inter-faith relations during this formative period.

From 900 to 1150, major institutional and political changes took hold in Europe. With the advent of the castellans and consolidation of the agnatic noble family, new terms of reference were deployed by writers to reflect these changes. Contributing to the militarization of the aristocracy were exempla and descent myths in house histories and hagiography. Public recitation of this literature thus familiarized the arms-bearer with his heroes, nourished his martial piety and motivated him to defend his patria. Patria also carried an anagogical significance: the heavenly Jerusalem. This permitted its earthly counterpart--Palestine and the literal Jerusalem--to be incorporated into this concept of patria. With the unforseen taking of Jerusalem in 1099, clerical chroniclers in France took the opportunity to cast the pilgrimage and victory in epic terms, reverting to the use of certain conventions of epic intended to motivate arms-bearers in the twelfth century and beyond to defend the Holy Land.

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Despite ruling over arguably the most powerful Christian nation in the period, in a time when European and middle-eastern history entered a new phase of interaction due to the Crusades, John's reign has received little scholarly attention. The only major monograph is Chalandon's Les Comnènes from 1912, since which a number of new sources have come to light, together with numerous studies on his contemporaries. Despite the impression that sources are lacking for his reign, in fact there are over 50,000 words of court letters and poetry that allow us to take the political pulse of the Komnenian court. When incorporated with the extra information found in Syriac, Arabic, Russian, Hungarian and many other texts, archaeological remains, sigillographic and numismatic evidence, John's reign is in fact very well covered, and ripe for analysis. Between fieldwork in Turkey, Serbia and Kosovo and translations of these previously unused texts, this thesis contains new material on top of over a century of updated methodologies and research since Chalandon. As such, this thesis will reevaluate assumptions concerning John and his reign, including rewriting the narrative itself, which has previously been distorted due to the agendas of the few sources used. Through the reconstruction of this narrative John's empire can be reexamined, and how it operated in the changed world of the twelfth century determined. The empire found itself in a more multi-polar power dynamic, and tackled this by operating more as an empire than it had as a larger polity as in the previous century: incorporating other peoples as clients and emphasing the rhetoric of imperial piety and legitimacy of the Roman empire. Equally, all of John's actions on the frontiers were fuel for the political theatre that was Constantinople, and this dynamic shaped his actions and resulted in the empire that Manuel inherited.