Joseph of Exeter was a twelfth-century

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

poet from

Exeter Exeter () is a city in Devon, South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter was established as the base of Legio II Augusta under the personal comm ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Around 1180, he left to study at Gueldres, where he began his lifelong friendship with Guibert, who later became Abbot of

Florennes Florennes (; wa, Florene) is a municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Namur, Belgium. As of 1 January 2006, Florennes has a total population of 10,754. The total area is 133.55 km² which gives a population density of 81 inhabita ...

. Some of their correspondence still survives.

Career

His most famous poem is ''

De Bello Troiano ''Daretis Phrygii Ilias De bello Troiano'' ("The Iliad of Dares the Phrygian: On the Trojan War") is an epic poem in Latin, written around 1183 by the English poet Joseph of Exeter.Mortimer ''Angevin England'' p. 210 It tells the story of the ten ...

'' ("On the Trojan War") in six books, most of which was written before 1183, but which was finished after 1184. When his uncle Baldwin,

Archbishop of Canterbury The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Justi ...

, to whom the ''De Bello Troiano'' is dedicated, set off to the

Holy Land The Holy Land; Arabic: or is an area roughly located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Eastern Bank of the Jordan River, traditionally synonymous both with the biblical Land of Israel and with the region of Palestine. The term "Holy ...

on the

Third Crusade The Third Crusade (1189–1192) was an attempt by three European monarchs of Western Christianity (Philip II of France, Richard I of England and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor) to reconquer the Holy Land following the capture of Jerusalem by ...

, he persuaded Joseph to accompany him. After Baldwin's death in 1190, Joseph returned home. He immortalized the crusade in his poem '' Antiocheis'', of which only fragments survive.Mortimer, Richard ''Angevin England 1154-1258'' Oxford: Blackwell 1994 p. 210 Several other poems, now lost, have been attributed to him, but there is no way of knowing if they were actually his work.

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References

* * * * * {{Short description, 12th-century English poet and writer Writers from Exeter Medieval Latin poets 12th-century Latin writers Christians of the Third Crusade English male poets

Career

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