Ernoul

Ernoul is the name generally given to the author of a chronicle of the late 12th century dealing with the fall of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Ernoul himself is mentioned only once in history, and only in his own chronicle. He was a squire of Balian of Ibelin, an important crusader noble in Jerusalem, and accompanied his lord on an embassy from King Guy of Jerusalem to Count Raymond III of Tripoli in 1187. Balian and his retinue remained behind for a day at Nablus during the voyage to Tripoli; the rest were ambushed at the Battle of Cresson on May 1. It was Ernoul who investigated the almost-empty Templar castle of La Fève before news of the battle reached Balian. No other mention is made of Ernoul. However, it is clear that he was at the Battle of Hattin on July 4, as his chronicle gives an account from the rearguard, which was commanded by his master Balian.

According to M. R. Morgan, the squire Ernoul was the same man as Arnaix or Arneis of Gibelet, who was an important noble in the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus in the first half of the 13th century, and must have been connected to the Ibelins, who were also important there; the Gibelets had strong ties to the Ibelins throughout the 12th and 13th centuries in both Jerusalem and Cyprus. This identification is rejected by Peter Edbury, who suggests that Arneis lived too late to be Ernoul, and also that their names are too dissimilar.

The so-called Chronicle of Ernoul is actually a number of separate but similar manuscripts, stemming from an original source that does not survive but assumed to have been written by Ernoul himself. The basis of these is a 13th-century Old French translation of the Latin chronicle of William of Tyre, who wrote in the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the mid- to late-12th century. This French translation came to be known as the History of Heraclius or the Estoire de Eracles, because William of Tyre began his chronicle with the reign of Byzantine emperor Heraclius.

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