28 Chrissis
regard to literary sources, the main accounts produced locally, either on the
Byzantine or on the Latin side, are crucial for establishing the outline of events
in Romania, even though they are not particularly detailed when it comes to
crusading.12 Of particular interest are also the works of crusade theorists and
propagandists, like Marino Sanudo Torsello, Ramon Lull, William of Adam,
and Philip de Mézières, who were particularly active in the late 13th and 14th
centuries, and who often included Romania in their discussions even though
their attention was usually fixed on Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Information
about the response to crusade calls and the mobilisation of crusaders through-
out Europe, or about the expeditions they participated in, is scattered through
a wide variety of chronicles, troubadour songs, and treatises. The material
is very uneven. For major campaigns, such as the crusades of Nicopolis and
Varna, there are numerous sources, some of them extensive and originating
from eye-witness accounts. For smaller expeditions, sometimes all we have is
passing references in chronicles. The provenance of the sources depends to
a large extent on the political realities of western involvement in Romania at
the time. For example, a good source for 13th-century crusading efforts for the
Latin Empire is the rhymed chronicle of Philippe Mouskes, originating from
Flanders, the homeland of the Latin Emperors and of a large part of the rein-
forcements recruited on their behalf. In the late 14th and 15th centuries, on the
other hand, Burgundy under Philip the Good became heavily involved in the
war efforts against the Ottomans; so the Burgundian Jehan de Wavrin is one of
our best sources for the crusade of Varna.13
and Anthony Luttrell and Elizabeth Zachariadou, eds., Sources for Turkish History in the
Hospitallers’ Rhodian Archive (Athens, 2008), esp. pp. 13–18 and 25–29. A discussion of
the Hospitaller archive in Malta as a source for the order’s presence in the Aegean in:
Zacharias Tsirpanlis, “Το αρχείο των Ιωαννιτών Ιπποτών και η σημασία του για τη μεσαιωνική
ιστορία της Δωδεκανήσου” [“The Hospitaller Archive and its Importance for the Medieval
History of the Dodecanese”], in idem, Η Ρόδος και οι Νότιες Σποράδες στα χρόνια των Ιωαννιτών
Ιπποτών (14ος–16ος αι.) [Rhodes and the Southern Sporades during the Hospitaller era (14th–
16th c.)] (Rhodes, 1991), pp. 11–21. For the Catalan presence in the Levant, see: Antonio
Rubio y Lluch, ed., Diplomatari de l’Orient català, 1301–1409 (Barcelona, 1947).
12 The Byzantine historians (Akropolites, Pachymeres, Gregoras, Kantakouzenos, Doukas,
Sphrantzes, etc.) cover the greatest part of the period, although coverage of the late 14th
to the early 15th century is rather patchy. On the Latin side, after the early years of the
conquest (Villehardouin, Robert of Clari, Henry of Valenciennes), the most important
continuous narrative is the Chronicle of the Morea, though it is not always dependable.
13 The major relevant sources are noted in the corresponding sections below and in the
bibliography at the end of the volume.