Cilician Armenian Métissage and Hetoum’s la Fleur Des Histoires de La Terre D’orient

Abstract

Although little known today, La Fleur des histoires de la terre d’Orient, written by the Cilician Armenian prince Hetoum of Korikos, was a popular text throughout the late medieval and early modern period. Fifteen manuscript copies of the original French text and thirty-one copies of the scribal Latin translation survive.¹ The Latin text was later translated back into French: anonymously in British Library MS Cotton Otho.D.V. and then in 1351 by the monk Jean le Long, as part of a collection of Eastern travel literature and works relating to the Mongols.² Hetoum s work enjoyed a similar popularity with the early European printers.There were three undated, early sixteenth-century printings of the original French text, under the tide Sensuyrent les fleurs des histoires de la terre Dori- ent: first in Paris by Philippe Le Noir, second in Paris by Denys Janot after Le Noir, and third in Lyon, also after Le Noir, for Benoist Rigaud. These editions show that Hetoum’s text was considered more than a historical curiosity, for Le Noir attempts to bring the book up to date by replacing the original Book IV and its plan to reconquer the Holy Land with a new book entitled “des Sarrazins e desTurcz depuis le premier iusqus aux pre-sens q’ont conqueste Rhodes Hongrye et dernierement assailli Austriche” [A history from the beginning to the present of the Turks who had conquered Rhodes, Hungary, and lately besieged Austria]. Also, in 1529, Le Long’s French translation of the Latin text was published under the title L’Hysloire merueilleuse plaisante et recreatiw du grand Empereur de Tartaric. Editions of the Latin text were published six times throughout the sixteenth centurv.3

The generic discontinuities and unexpected conjunctions of La Fleur des histoires bear witness to the complexities of its authors cultural location as part of a Cilician Armenian diasporic community. The text demonstrates an innovative cross-cultural negotiation in advance of modem European colonialism and in excess of medieval European attempts at cultural hegemony.