466 



CHRONICLES, HISTORIES, MEMOIRS. 



utterances, the historians, all of whom were clerks and monks, did not 

 abandon the use of Latin, in which they recorded, without stopping to weigh 

 their probability, the wildest stories and legends (Fig. 360). But the 

 Crusades, the first of which dates from 1096, gave a fresh impulse to historical 

 writing, and for a century and a half there was a long succession of historians 

 of the Crusades, who described them in various languages, but principally 



Fig. 361. Alfonso X., the Wise, King of Castile (12521284), the supposed Author of the famous 

 "Cronica de Espafia." Votive Statue in the Toledo Cathedral. After the " Iconografiu 

 Espanola," hy Carderera. 



in Latin (Fig. 361). These historians relate, for the most part, facts of which 

 they were themselves witnesses, and some of them import into their works the 

 pious enthusiasm which animated those who took part in the Crusades. Each 

 of these writers has his special characteristics, from Guibert de Xogent, who 



