Guido de Columnis – The Trojan War

A picture book of the fall of Troy

There is hardly any ancient legend that still holds the same fascination as the story of the fall of Troy. The episodes about the robbery of the Greek king's wife Helena by her lover Paris, the dramatic fights between the heroes Hector and Achilles and, last but not least, the outwitting of the Trojans with the help of the Trojan horse are part of our cultural awareness.

Nevertheless, the Troy legend had a special status in the aristocratic world of the Middle Ages, as numerous noble houses invented Trojan ancestors and traced their families back to various Trojan heroes.

Extremely popular in Europe

So it was not Homer's or Virgil's epics, which were anchored in the pagan world of gods, that formed the basis for the spread of the legend in the Middle Ages, but supposed eyewitness reports that purported to describe the events on the battlefield in detail.

The Sicilian Guido de Columnis also drew from these, whose Historia destructionis Troiae, written in the 13th century, achieved extraordinary popularity and was translated into numerous languages.