Crusade, Settlement and Historical Writing in the Latin East and Latin West, c. 1100-c.1300 9781783277339, 9781805431510, 1783277335

Table of contents :
Front cover
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
List of Abbreviations
The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction
1 History-Writing and Remembrance in Crusade Letters
2 A ‘swiðe mycel styrung’: The First Crusade in Early Vernacular Annals from Anglo-Norman England
3 To Bargain with God: The Crusade Vow in the Narratives of the First Crusade
4 ‘The Lord has brought eastern riches before you’: Battlefield Spoils and Looted Treasure in Narratives of the First Crusade
5 Foundation and Settlement in Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana: A Narratological Reading
6 After Ascalon: ‘Bartolf of Nangis’, Fulcher of Chartres and the Early Years of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
7 Repurposing a Crusade Chronicle: Peter of Cornwall’s Liber Revelationum and the Reception of Fulcher of Chartres' Historia Hierosolymitana in Medieval England
8 Between Chronicon and Chanson: William of Tyre, the First Crusade and the Art of Storytelling
9 History and Politics in the Latin East: William of Tyre and the Composition of the Historia Hierosolymitana
10 ‘When I became a man’: Kingship and Masculinity in William of Tyre’s Chronicon
11 Laments for the Lost City: The Loss of Jerusalem in Western Historical Writing
12 The Silences of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum 1
13 The Natural and Biblical Landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Orientalis
14 The Masculine Experience and the Experience of Masculinity on the Seventh Crusade in John of Joinville's Vie de Saint Louis
15 Writing and Copying History at Acre, c. 1230-91
Index

Citation preview

Crusade, Settlement and Historical Writing in the Latin East and Latin West, c. 1100–c. 1300

Crusading in Context Series Editor William J. Purkis The crusading movement was a defining feature of the history of Europe, the Mediterranean and the Near East during the central and later Middle Ages. Ideas and practices associated with it touched the lives of people within and beyond Christendom and the Islamicate world, regardless whether they were ever directly engaged in, witnesses to, or victims of acts of crusading violence themselves. This series aims to situate the medieval experience of the crusades and crusading societies in the broader social, cultural and intellectual contexts of the Middle Ages as a whole. Chronologically, its scope extends from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, and contributions from a range of disciplines are encouraged. Monographs and edited collections are both welcome; critical editions and translations of medieval texts will also be considered. Proposals and queries should be sent in the first instance to the series editor or to Boydell and Brewer, at the addresses below. Prof. William J. Purkis, School of History and Cultures, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT [email protected] Boydell and Brewer Ltd, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP12 3DF [email protected] Previously published Eyewitness and Crusade Narrative: Perception and Narration in Accounts of the Second, Third and Fourth Crusades, Marcus Bull Baldric of Bourgueil: “History of the Jerusalemites”: A Translation of the Historia Ierosolimitana, translated by Susan B. Edgington with an introduction by Steven J. Biddlecombe The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative, Beth C. Spacey The Bible and Crusade Narrative in the Twelfth Century, Katherine Allen Smith

Crusade, Settlement and Historical Writing in the Latin East and Latin West, c. 1100–c. 1300

Edited by Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Contributors 2024 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2024 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978 1 78327 733 9 hardback 978 1 80543 151 0 ePDF The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate Cover image: Detail of an historiated initial ‘R’ of Godfrey of Bouillon being placed in his coffin, and Baldwin of Boulogne being crowned king of Jerusalem. © The British Library Board Yates Thompson 12, f.51v detail

Contents List of Illustrations

vii

Acknowledgements viii Notes on Contributors

ix

List of Abbreviations

xiii



The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer

1

History-Writing and Remembrance in Crusade Letters Thomas W. Smith

2

A ‘swiðe mycel styrung’: The First Crusade in Early Vernacular Annals from Anglo-Norman England James H. Kane

48

3

To Bargain with God: The Crusade Vow in the Narratives of the First Crusade Edward J. Caddy

68

4

‘The Lord has brought eastern riches before you’: Battlefield Spoils and Looted Treasure in Narratives of the First Crusade Connor C. Wilson

86

5

Foundation and Settlement in Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana: A Narratological Reading Katy Mortimer

6

After Ascalon: ‘Bartolf of Nangis’, Fulcher of Chartres and the Early Years of the Kingdom of Jerusalem 121 Susan B. Edgington

7

Repurposing a Crusade Chronicle: Peter of Cornwall’s Liber Revelationum and the Reception of Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana in Medieval England Stephen J. Spencer

8

1 34

102

137

Between Chronicon and Chanson: William of Tyre, the First Crusade and the Art of Storytelling 155 Andrew D. Buck

v

Contents 9

History and Politics in the Latin East: William of Tyre and the Composition of the Historia Hierosolymitana Ivo Wolsing

174

10 ‘When I became a man’: Kingship and Masculinity in William of Tyre’s Chronicon Katherine J. Lewis

191

11 Laments for the Lost City: The Loss of Jerusalem in Western Historical Writing Katrine Funding Højgaard

211

12 The Silences of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum 1 Helen J. Nicholson

228

13 The Natural and Biblical Landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Orientalis 242 Beth C. Spacey 14 The Masculine Experience and the Experience of Masculinity on the Seventh Crusade in John of Joinville’s Vie de Saint Louis 259 Mark McCabe 15 Writing and Copying History at Acre, c. 1230–91 Peter W. Edbury

277

Index

289

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Illustrations 2. A ‘swiðe mycel styrung’: The First Crusade in Early Vernacular Annals from Anglo-Norman England, James H. Kane Figure 2.1: Old English annal entry on the First Crusade in Chronicle I. London, British Library, Cotton Caligula A. XV, fol. 136r

53

Figure 2.2: Old English annals in Chronicle I, s.a. 1093–1109, showing various scribes at work. London, British Library, Cotton Caligula A. XV, fol. 136r

53

Table 2.1: Events in Chronicle I, s.a. 1093–1109

52

3. To Bargain with God: The Crusade Vow in the Narratives of the First Crusade, Edward J. Caddy Table 3.1: Comparative table regarding depictions of the vow in the Gesta Francorum group

81

7. Repurposing a Crusade Chronicle: Peter of Cornwall’s Liber Revelationum and the Reception of Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana in Medieval England, Stephen J. Spencer Figure 7.1: The start of the chapters in Peter of Cornwall’s Liber that are based on Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia. London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 51, fol. 448v

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141

Acknowledgements The inspiration for this volume was a series of panels on ‘Historical Writing, the Crusades and the Latin East’, held at the Leeds International Medieval Congress (IMC) in 2021. So excited were we as organisers of those panels, and now editors of this volume, about the richness and quality of the research offered, that we decided to approach William Purkis and Caroline Palmer about publishing a collection of those papers in Boydell’s Crusading in Context series. We were delighted that they both enthusiastically supported the project and helped us to bring it to fruition, and we wish to express our deepest gratitude to them, to the anonymous peer reviewer and to the team at Boydell, for that confidence in our abilities and for guiding us so seamlessly through the publication process. We would also like to thank the contributors for their timely and quality submissions, as well as their good grace in dealing with editorial issues as they arose, and all those who participated in the IMC sessions as chairs and audience members. Finally, we would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for their financial support in the production of this volume, and the Leverhulme Trust and the Irish Research Council for sponsoring the sessions from which this volume arose.

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Notes on Contributors

Andrew D. Buck is a Lecturer in Medieval History at Cardiff University and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He was Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Dublin from 2019–22 and has published widely on the principality of Antioch and the political and cultural history of the crusader states, including a monograph, The Principality of Antioch and its Frontiers in the Twelfth Century (2017), three edited volumes, and some two-dozen articles and book chapters. His current research focuses on history creation in and about the crusader states, with recent and forthcoming publications on the account of the First Crusade found in William of Tyre’s Chronicon, an anonymous Jerusalemite Historia of the Latin kingdom, as well as wider conceptions of Outremer in medieval Latin Christian historical writing. Edward J. Caddy is a Ph.D. candidate at Queen Mary University of London and Secretary of the London Society for Medieval Studies. His research interests include canon law, crusader studies, medieval historical writing and pilgrimage. His thesis sets out to explore the place of the crusade vow within the development and formalisation of crusading from c. 1050 through to c. 1200. Peter W. Edbury is Professor Emeritus at Cardiff University. He has written widely on the history of Cyprus and the Latin East, including The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades 1191–1374 (1991) and (with the late John G. Rowe) William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East (1988). He has provided critical editions of John of Ibelin’s Le Livre des Assises (2003) and Philip of Novara’s Le Livre de Forme de Plait (2009). Together with Massimiliano Gaggero of the Università degli Studi di Milano, he is to publish imminently a new edition of the Chronicle of Ernoul and the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre (2023). Susan B. Edgington is an honorary senior research fellow at Queen Mary University of London. She works on textual and literary aspects of writings on the earlier crusades, including, currently, an edition and translation of the Gesta Francorum Ierusalem expugnantium of ‘Bartolf of Nangis’ in collaboration with Thomas W. Smith. Katrine Funding Højgaard is an information specialist at University College Copenhagen and has taught courses in medieval history, the crusades and animals and monsters at University of Copenhagen. She studied medieval history at Aalborg University and Fordham University and obtained her Ph.D. in January 2021 at the University of Copenhagen. Her dissertation, ‘Narrating the Defeat: The Loss ix

Notes on Contributors of Jerusalem in Western Historical Writing, 1187–1229’, examined the reactions to and memory of the 1187 loss of Jerusalem in Western historical writing, with a special focus on the role of emotions in the creation of a new memory tradition. Her research interests include the crusades, the history of Emotions, memory studies, manuscript studies, historiography and medieval animal studies. She has presented papers at Danish and international conferences, including Leeds IMC, and was co-organiser of the 2021 conference ‘The Loss of Jerusalem – Reactions, Memory and Afterlife in the West, 1187–1500’. James H. Kane is Lecturer in Medieval History at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. He teaches widely across the ancient, medieval and early modern periods, with a particular focus on the history of the central Middle Ages. Together with Keagan Brewer, he has published The Conquest of the Holy Land by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum (2019) and is preparing a new edition and translation of the ‘Latin Continuation of William of Tyre’. He is currently writing a monograph on the crusading cross. Katherine J. Lewis is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Huddersfield. Her research focuses on medieval gender history, as well as religious and cultural history. She has published on female saints, especially St Katherine of Alexandria and other virgin martyr saints, as well as on Margery Kempe and the cult of Henry VI. She is the author of Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England (2013) and co-editor of Crusading and Masculinities (2019). Mark McCabe is an independent scholar and Secondary School Humanities teacher. He was awarded his Ph.D. at the University of Huddersfield in 2020 for a thesis entitled ‘“Opus Virile”: Masculinity and Crusade Narratives 1200–1309’. His research interests include twelfth- and thirteenth-century historical narratives and their construction of gender, identity and the experience of warfare. Katy Mortimer is Lecturer in Medieval Studies at Canterbury Christ Church University. She completed her Ph.D., entitled ‘Understanding Representations of Crusader-Muslim Diplomacy in Western Christian Texts, c. 1095–c. 1202’, at Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2023. Her research interests include interfaith contact, narrative theory, and medieval historical writing. Her publications include an article in the inaugural volume of Medieval People entitled ‘Networks of Crusading: An Introductory Overview of Digital Resources for Research into People, Place, and Space’ (2022), and a chapter on crusader cannibalism in the festschrift for Susan Edgington, Chronicle, Crusade, and the Latin East (2022).

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Notes on Contributors Helen J. Nicholson has recently retired as Professor in Medieval History at Cardiff University. She has published extensively on the Templars and Hospitallers, the crusades, medieval warfare and various related subjects. She has recently published Sybil, Queen of Jerusalem, 1186–90 (2022) and Women and the Crusades (2023). Thomas W. Smith is Keeper of the Scholars and Head of Oxbridge (Arts and Humanities) at Rugby School, where he teaches history. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Asiatic Society. His first monograph, Curia and Crusade: Pope Honorius III and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1216–1227 (2017), was Highly Commended in the British Records Association’s Janette Harley Prize 2018. He is currently completing a second monograph on The Epistolary Culture of the First Crusade, and, with Susan B. Edgington, an edition and translation of the Gesta Francorum Ierusalem expugnantium traditionally attributed to ‘Bartolf of Nangis’. Beth C. Spacey is a Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Queensland. She is a historian of medieval European religious cultures specialising in the crusades, and has published on ideas about the miraculous, masculinities and landscapes in the medieval Latin Christian historiography of the crusades. Her first book, The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative, was published in March 2020. Stephen J. Spencer is an Assistant Professor in Medieval History at Northeastern University London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. His first book, Emotions in a Crusading Context, 1095–1291, appeared in 2019 and was awarded the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East’s Ronnie Ellenblum Best First Book Award in 2022 and the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean’s Second Prize for the Dionisius A. Agius Prize in 2021. His recent and forthcoming publications focus on the Third Crusade, especially its source base and memorialisation in western Europe. These include a forthcoming monograph entitled Rewriting the Third Crusade: Information Dissemination, Memory Formation, and the Writing of History in Medieval England, based on research conducted during a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at King’s College London (2019–23); a forthcoming article in The English Historical Review that argues for a redating of the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi; and a survey of scholarship on the Third Crusade for History Compass (2022). Connor C. Wilson is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research interests include the crusades, monasticism and monastic writing, particularly on the subject of war. His current research examines reactions to spoils and spoil-taking in medieval warfare. His Ph.D. thesis was completed in 2018 at Royal Holloway, University of London and he has also lectured in History at Lancaster University. He has published articles and book chapters on xi

Notes on Contributors ideas of holy war and the military orders. His first book was published as The Battle Rhetoric of Crusade and Holy War, c. 1099–c. 1222 (2023). Ivo Wolsing is a postdoctoral researcher in Medieval History at the Institute for History, Leiden University. In April 2022, he successfully defended his dissertation at the Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen. His research focuses on the interaction between Latin literature and literature in other languages (Old French, Arabic) during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as well as cross-cultural interactions in the crusader states and Norman Sicily. He has published articles on these topics in the journals al-Masaq (2019), Viator (2020) and Medieval Encounters (2022).

xii

Abbreviations AA

Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana: History of the Journey to Jerusalem, ed. and trans. S. B. Edgington (Oxford, 2007) BB Baldric of Bourgueil, The Historia Ierosolimitana of Baldric of Bourgueil, ed. S. J. Biddlecombe (Woodbridge, 2014) CA The Chanson d’Antioche: An Old French Account of the First Crusade, trans. S. B. Edgington and C. Sweetenham (Farnham, 2011) FC Fulcher of Chartres, Fulcheri Carnotensis Historia Hierosolymitana (1095–1127), ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1913) GF Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum: The Deeds of the Franks and the Other Pilgrims to Jerusalem, ed. [R. A. B. Mynors] and trans. R. Hill (London, 1962) Bartolf of Nangis, ‘Gesta Francorum Iherusalem expugGFIE nantium’, in RHC Occ, III, 491–543 GN Guibert of Nogent, Dei gesta per Francos et cinq autres textes, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Turnhout, 1996) GP Gilo of Paris, The Historia vie Hierosolimitane of Gilo of Paris and a Second, Anonymous Author, ed. and trans. C. W. Grocock and J. E. Siberry (Oxford, 1997) HAI Hystoria de via et recuperatione Antiochiae atque Ierusolymarum (olim Tudebodus imitatus et continuatus): I Normannni d’Italia alla prima Crociata in una cronaca cassinese, ed. E. D’Angelo (Firenze, 2009) Howden, Chronica Roger of Howden, Chronica magistri Rogeri de Houedene, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols (London, 1868–71) Howden, Gesta Roger of Howden, Gesta regis Henrici secundi: The Chronicle of the Reigns of Henry II and Richard I, A.D. 1169–1192, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (London, 1867) IP1 Das Itinerarium peregrinorum: Eine zeitgenössische englische Chronik zum dritten Kreuzzug in ursprünglicher Gestalt, ed. H. E. Mayer (Stuttgart, 1962)

xiii

Abbreviations IP2

Kb

Libellus

MGH MGH SRG n.s.

MGH SRM

MGH SS OV PL PT RA RC RHC Occ RHC Or RM

WT

‘Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi; auctore, ut videtur, Ricardo, canonico Sanctae Trinitatis Londoniensis’, in Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (London, 1864–65), I Epistulae et chartae ad historiam primi belli sacri spectantes: Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100, ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Innsbruck, 1901) The Conquest of the Holy Land by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Anonymous Libellus de expugnatione Terre Sancte per Saladinum, ed. and trans. K. Brewer and J. H. Kane (Abingdon, 2019) Monumenta Germaniae Historica Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, nova series, ed. H. Bresslau et al., 25 vols in 27 (Hanover, 1922–2010) Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, ed. B. Krusch et al., 7 vols in 8 (Hanover, 1888–1969) Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores (in folio), ed. G. H. Pertz et al., 32 vols in 34 (Hanover, 1826–1934) Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford, 1969–80) Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1841–64) Peter Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere, ed. J. H. Hill and L. L. Hill (Paris, 1977) Raymond of Aguilers, Le ‘Liber’ de Raymond d’Aguilers, ed. J. H. Hill and L. L. Hill (Paris, 1969) Ralph of Caen, Radulphi Cadomensis Tancredus, ed. E. D’Angelo (Turnhout, 2011) Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens occidentaux, 5 vols (Paris, 1844–95) Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens orientaux, 5 vols (Paris, 1872–1906) Robert the Monk, The Historia Iherosolimitana of Robert the Monk, ed. D. Kempf and M. G. Bull (Woodbridge, 2013) Willelmi Tyrensis Archiepiscopi Chronicon, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, 2 vols (Turnhout, 1986)

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The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer

The period of the crusades and the Latin settlement of the eastern Mediterranean was an important one for medieval historical writing. Indeed, it has been recently suggested that the chroniclers of the First Crusade (1095–99), faced with the need to couch events in a more overtly exegetical register, ‘pioneered a new way of writing about the recent past’.1 Whether or not one accepts the notion that such writers adopted a fundamentally new mode of composition, there can be little doubt that this initial expedition left a significant imprint on medieval literary cultures. For a start, the vast number of extant narratives is unusual by medieval standards. More than this, though, the enterprise is renowned for popularising the medieval monograph format, with many writers electing to compose standalone histories characterised by a narrow focus on the crusade. As the crusading movement progressed, some embedded crusade accounts into works with wider chronological and geographical scopes, but the free-standing ‘crusade’ history was an outcome of nearly all subsequent expeditions (or at least the major ‘numbered’ ones).2 It is perhaps a by-product of this textual tradition – among other factors, such as modern historians’ propensity to compartmentalise evidence to facilitate historical analysis and the hangover of nineteenth-century scholarly conventions – that crusading expeditions are often treated in isolation: a discrete series of holy wars related to, but somehow distinct from, the Latin Christian settlements established in the wake of the First Crusade, known collectively as the crusader states, the Latin East or, when viewed from the West, Outremer (‘the land across K. A. Smith, The Bible and Crusade Narrative in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2020), p. 90. 2 For example, for the Third Crusade, see The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la guerre sainte, ed. and trans. M. Ailes and M. Barber, 2 vols (Woodbridge, 2003); IP2; for the Fourth Crusade, see Geoffrey of Villehardouin, La conquête de Constantinople, ed. E. Faral, 2 vols (Paris, 1938–39); Robert of Clari, La conquête de Constantinople, ed. P. Lauer (Paris, 1924); and for the Fifth Crusade, see Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatina’, in Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, späteren Bischofs von Paderborn und Kardinal-Bischofs von S. Sabina, Oliverus, ed. H. Hoogeweg (Tübingen, 1894), pp. 161–280; Quinti belli sacri scriptores minores, ed. R. Röhricht (Geneva, 1879). 1

1

Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer the sea’). One need only cast an eye over the many modern general histories of the crusades to appreciate that most devote comparatively little space to the crusader states.3 Instead, the history of those polities on the fringes of Latin Christendom has usually been detailed separately, so much so that even the validity of the long-standing descriptor ‘crusader states’ has been disputed.4 Consequently, the historiography of the crusades and the crusader states has developed along slightly different contours. For the purposes of this volume, the most significant difference, to be discussed in greater detail below, is that whereas texts – especially historical narratives – pertaining to the crusades have been subjected to an unparalleled degree of literary scrutiny in recent years, the textual evidence for the Latin East has less frequently been examined through the same interpretative lens. Certainly, the study of the crusader states has enjoyed a revival over the last decade, but such valuable work has primarily been geared towards reconstructing events and the lives of individual rulers, as well as the political and religious institutions of the Latin East and the nature of intercultural contact.5 This historiographical distinction, practical though it might be for modern historians, is nevertheless surprising from a medieval perspective. The boundaries between crusade and settlement are far from clear-cut in twelfth- and thirteenthcentury texts. Only the first book of Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana is concerned with the First Crusade; books 2 and 3 focus on the formation of the Latin East down to 1127. The value of Albert of Aachen’s narrative of the First Crusade in books 1–6 of his Historia Ierosolimitana is now widely recognised,

See H. E. Mayer, The Crusades, trans. J. Gillingham, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1988); J. Richard, The Crusades, c. 1071–c. 1291, trans. J. Birrell (Cambridge, 1999); C. Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (London, 2006); T. S. Asbridge, The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land (London, 2010). A notable outlier is A. Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader States (Harlow, 2004). 4 C. MacEvitt, ‘What was Crusader about the Crusader States?’, Al-Masāq 30 (2018), 317–30. Compare A. D. Buck, ‘Settlement, Identity, and Memory in the Latin East: An Examination of the Term “Crusader States”’, English Historical Review 135 (2020), 271–302. 5 M. Barber, The Crusader States (New Haven, CT, 2012); K. J. Lewis, The Counts of Tripoli and Lebanon in the Twelfth Century: Sons of Saint-Gilles (Abingdon, 2017); A. D. Buck, The Principality of Antioch and Its Frontiers in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2017); S. John, Godfrey of Bouillon: Duke of Lower Lotharingia, Ruler of Latin Jerusalem, c.1060–1100 (Abingdon, 2017); Crusader Landscapes in the Medieval Levant: The Archaeology and History of the Latin East, ed. M. Sinibaldi, K. J. Lewis, B. Major and J. A. Thompson (Cardiff, 2016); S. B. Edgington, Baldwin I of Jerusalem, 1100–1118 (Abingdon, 2019); N. Morton, The Crusader States and their Neighbours: A Military History, 1099–1187 (Oxford, 2020); B. Hamilton and A. Jotischky, Latin and Greek Monasticism in the Crusader States (Cambridge, 2020); A. V. Murray, Baldwin of Bourcq: Count of Edessa and King of Jerusalem (1100–1131) (Abingdon, 2021); H. J. Nicholson, Sybil, Queen of Jerusalem, 1186–1190 (Abingdon, 2022). 3

2

The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction although his account of the first two decades of Latin settlement in books 7–12 remains relatively understudied. In fact, these neat transitions between crusade and settlement are misleading. Book 6 of Albert’s work ends not with the battle of Ascalon (commonly interpreted by modern historians as the expedition’s endpoint), but with Bohemond of Taranto’s attempt to expand his power base in the East by besieging Latakia in summer 1099 and his eventual reconciliation with other prominent figures who remained in the Holy Land.6 Similarly, book 1 of Fulcher’s Historia, at least in the form it survives, continues all the way to summer 1100 and concludes with two blows to the fledging crusader states: the capture of Bohemond by the Dānishmendid ruler Malik Ghāzī and the death of Jerusalem’s first ruler, Godfrey of Bouillon.7 William, archbishop of Tyre, is renowned as a crucial authority on events in the Latin East, especially for the period 1127–84, but the first eight (of twenty-three) books of his Chronicon comprise a narrative of the First Crusade that few historians have taken seriously.8 Oliver of Paderborn preached and participated in the Fifth Crusade and wrote a key narrative of the expedition, the Historia Damiatina.9 Yet he also composed a history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem – the Historia regum terre sancte – which starts with the First Crusade and ends with preparations for the Fifth Crusade.10 These examples alone suggest that, for medieval authors, writing the history of the crusades and writing the history of the Latin East were closely related, perhaps even indistinguishable. One of the main aims of this volume, therefore, is to place them in dialogue as part of a collective historiographical tradition, or at least a complimentary and interconnected series of traditions. Another aim is to recognise that the boundaries between historical writing produced in the Latin West and Latin East were so porous in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that one wonders whether the similarities and synergies outweigh the differences between Latinate texts regularly labelled ‘western’ or ‘eastern’ in origin or character. The letters written by or for crusaders were sent back to western Europe, where they were copied (and sometimes confected) by monastic scribes who played a key role in their transmission. William of Tyre was a native of Jerusalem but received nearly twenty years of training in the West before returning to his homeland, and he utilised sources that originated from both regions.11 In the early thirteenth century, his Chronicon was translated into

6 7 8 9

10 11

AA, pp. 476–85. Bohemond had already claimed Antioch by this point. FC, pp. 343–51. WT, I, 105–418. Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatina’, in Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, ed. Hoogeweg, pp. 161–280. Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia regum terre sancte’, in Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, ed. Hoogeweg, pp. 80–158. P. W. Edbury and J. G. Rowe, William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 13–22, 32–58.

3

Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer Old French and several continuations were fashioned in both the Latin East and Latin West, at times in dialogue with each other.12 The Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum is principally an anonymous account of the fall of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem to Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn in 1187, probably originally composed by a churchman who witnessed the sultan’s investment of the Holy City in October that year. However, as Keagan Brewer and James Kane have shown, it was later extended using a narrative of the Third Crusade (1187–92) compiled in London – the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi (IP2) – and disseminated by the monks of Coggeshall Abbey, Essex.13 Likewise, the Historia orientalis (History of the East) of Jacques de Vitry, bishop of Acre (1216–27), was written in the East but intended primarily for audiences in the West, where it was copied extensively. It was even envisaged as the second of three books in a larger historiographical project, with another of Jacques’ extant works, the Historia occidentalis (History of the West), intended as book 1.14 The present volume thus cuts across these artificial divides to bring together fifteen chapters that consider historical writing about the crusades and the crusader states, produced in both the Latin West and the Latin East. The aims of this introductory chapter are twofold: first, to frame the chapters that follow by situating them in their wider historiographical context; and second, to provide an entry-point into the topic of history-writing about the crusades and Latin East for uninitiated readers by synthesising key interventions and trends, especially since the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Writing the Crusades The study of literature pertaining to the crusades and the Latin East is less a new avenue of enquiry than a very old one that has enjoyed a rejuvenation and reconceptualisation in recent years. The study of textual sources has always been fundamental to the crusade historian’s craft, but nineteenth- and twentieth-century investigations were usually vested in seeking to determine a text’s reliability and usefulness for reconstructing ‘what happened’. This tradition dates back to Leopold von Ranke, whose pioneering method of critically evaluating primary sources (Quellenkritik) was applied to the evidence for the First Crusade by his

For which, see Peter W. Edbury’s contribution to this volume. On this text, see also J. H. Kane, ‘Wolf’s Hair, Exposed Digits, and Muslim Holy Men: The Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum and the Conte of Ernoul’, Viator 47:2 (2016), 95–112. 14 J. Bird, ‘The Historia orientalis of Jacques de Vitry: Visual and Written Commentaries as Evidence of a Text’s Audience, Reception and Utilization’, Essays in Medieval Studies 20 (2003), 56–74; Jacques de Vitry, The Historia occidentalis of Jacques de Vitry, ed. and trans. J. F. Hinnebusch (Fribourg, 1972); Jacques de Vitry, Histoire orientale: Historia orientalis, ed. and trans. J. Donnadieu (Turnhout, 2008). 12

13 Libellus.

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The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction student Heinrich von Sybel.15 In his Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges (1841), the latter cautioned that the expedition’s vast corpus of sources ‘requires judgement in selection and arrangement’, and that it was necessary to guard against the ‘distortion of facts’ stemming from personal bias and the infusion of legendary material.16 Accordingly, von Sybel prioritised ‘the true, primitive sources, the narratives of eye-witnesses’, chief among which was the anonymous account of the First Crusade known as the Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum.17 However, it does not follow that von Sybel was incapable of appreciating the literary qualities of later, non-participant works. For instance, he found much to admire in William of Tyre’s style: ‘His pictures are remarkable for detail, without being overcharged; his language is to the purpose and dignified; his thoughts are thoroughly well expressed. The same treatment is maintained throughout with no apparent effort’.18 Quellenkritik has exerted, and continues to exert, a powerful hold over crusades historiography. That is why, for example, the relationship between two of our most detailed accounts of the Third Crusade – Ambroise’s Estoire de la guerre sainte and the aforementioned IP2 – has elicited so much scholarly attention. Most historians follow Gaston Paris’ interpretation that the Estoire is the earlier work, which was translated into Latin by the compiler of IP2, although some have reversed the relationship and others have attempted to resolve the debate by proposing that the two chroniclers were comrades who discussed the venture and shared material.19 More revealing still is the seemingly endless historiographical fixation with determining the primacy of the narratives of the First Crusade, centring on the Gesta Francorum’s relationship with several other early accounts, even when a radical reinterpretation of this relationship has threatened to render

15 16 17 18 19

On Ranke and von Sybel, see C. Tyerman, The Debate on the Crusades (Manchester, 2011), pp. 131–41. H. von Sybel, Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges (Düsseldorf, 1841); trans. L. D. Gordon, The History and Literature of the Crusades (London, 1861), p. 132. Gordon, The History and Literature of the Crusades, pp. 191, 159. Gordon, The History and Literature of the Crusades, p. 265. See L’Estoire de la guerre sainte: Histoire en vers de la troisième croisade (1190–1192) par Ambroise, ed. Gaston Paris (Paris, 1897), pp. lix–lxxvi; F. Vielliard, ‘L’Utilisation de l’Itinerarium peregrinorum par L’Estoire de la guerre sainte: Traduction et adaptation’, in Par les mots et par les textes: Mélanges de langue, de littérature et d’histoire des sciences médiévales offerts à Claude Thomasset, ed. D. James-Raoul and O. Soutet (Paris, 2005), pp. 807–18; L’Estoire de la guerre sainte, ed. C. Croizy-Naquet (Paris, 2014), pp. 83–92; J. D. Hosler, ‘Embedded Reporters? Ambroise, Richard de Templo, and Roger of Howden on the Third Crusade’, in Military Cultures and Martial Enterprises in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Richard P. Abels, ed. J. D. Hosler and S. Isaac (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 177–91.

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Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer the whole exercise impossible.20 Regardless of whether these debates are ever definitively resolved, they are clear indicators that the ‘earliest is best’ mentality has proved difficult to dislodge. Though Quellenkritik remained the dominant methodology, several early forays were made into the literary aspects of crusade texts in the twentieth century, when studies of the idea of crusading became popular. One was Paul Rousset’s Les origines et les caracteres de la premiere croisade (1945). Rousset’s flawed methodology of seeking to emphasise and explain the religious origins and character of the First Crusade, including the pious convictions of its participants, through recourse to sources that were primarily composed by churchmen after the expedition made his book easy prey for critics.21 Yet in some ways Rousset was ahead of his time. If one ignores his central argument, much of the book is in fact an analysis of the vocabulary of crusade texts. The rhetoric of pilgrimage, crusader spirituality, martyrdom, the miraculous and vengeance permeates Rousset’s book, and he made important forward strides in acknowledging (like Paul Alphandéry before him) the presence of biblically-infused language in the sources and bringing chansons de geste into conversation with Latin chronicles.22 In a similar vein, Jonathan Riley-Smith’s widely (and rightly) celebrated The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (1986) is primarily a critical examination of the ideas espoused by Pope Urban II and the ways in which they were distorted and reconfigured by the crusaders’ experiences during the expedition. The final chapter, however, considered how three northern French Benedictine monks, Baldric of Bourgueil, Guibert of J. France, ‘The Anonymous Gesta Francorum and the Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem of Raymond of Aguilers and the Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere of Peter Tudebode: An Analysis of the Textual Relationship between Primary Sources for the First Crusade’, in The Crusades and their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton, ed. J. France and W. G. Zajac (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 39–69; J. Rubenstein, ‘What is the Gesta Francorum, and who was Peter Tudebode?’, Revue Mabillon n.s. 16 (2005), 179–204; M. Bull, ‘The Relationship between the Gesta Francorum and Peter Tudebode’s Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere: The Evidence of a Hitherto Unexamined Manuscript (St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, 3)’, Crusades 11 (2012), 1–17; S. Niskanen, ‘The Origins of the Gesta Francorum and Two Related Texts: Their Textual and Literary Character’, Sacris Erudiri 51 (2012), 287–316; S. Niskanen, ‘Copyists and Redactors: Towards a Prolegomenon to the editio princeps of Peregrinatio Antiochie per Vrbanum papam facta’, in Transmission of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. O. Merisalo, M. Kuha and S. Niiranen (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 103–14. 21 C. Verlinden, ‘Review of Les origines et les caracteres de la premiere croisade, by Paul Rousset’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 26 (1948), 220–5 (at 225); J. L. LaMonte, ‘Review of Les origines et les caracteres de la premiere croisade, by Paul Rousset’, Speculum 23 (1948), 328–31. 22 P. Rousset, Les origines et les caracteres de la premiere croisade (Neuchâtel, 1945); P. Alphandéry, ‘Les citations bibliques chez les historiens de la première croisade’, Revue de l’histoire des religions 99 (1929), 139–57. 20

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The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction Nogent and Robert the Monk, imposed coherence and theological sophistication on the inchoate ideas found in their foundation text, the Gesta Francorum. This process of ‘theological refinement’, as Riley-Smith famously characterised it, transformed the crusade into a quasi-monastic, primarily French venture that would more easily appeal to ecclesiastical audiences. Though Jay Rubenstein has expressed dissatisfaction with the concept of ‘theological refinement’, and few today adhere to the strict separation of the ‘crude’ participant narratives and ‘refined’ non-participant ones, Riley-Smith demonstrated the value of considering audience expectations, while his technique of tracing the evolution of ideas by comparing the early chronicles remains influential.23 The emergence of literary approaches to crusade texts also resonates with twentieth-century scholarship exploring European attitudes towards the crusading movement, such as Elizabeth Siberry’s Criticism of Crusading, 1095–1274 (1985) and David Trotter’s Medieval French Literature and the Crusades (1100–1300) (1988). The latter warned against both using Old French literature to access ‘public opinion’ and imposing rigid genre classifications, although his conclusion that the crusades were ‘neither as ubiquitous nor as influential as has generally been assumed’ in medieval French literature has been challenged by a spate of recent work in this field.24 Meanwhile, in the 1970s and 1980s, scholars in the broader field of medieval studies responded in a meaningful way to what is now known as the ‘linguistic turn’. Often perceived as commencing with Hayden White’s Metahistory (1973), this ‘turn’ recognised the centrality of emplotment and narrativity as vehicles for creating meaning in historical texts, effectively demonstrating that the analytical principles usually reserved for ‘fiction’ or ‘literature’ could be profitably applied to historians’ ‘sources’.25 Ground-breaking research was soon conducted on the features of medieval historiography and the contexts in which it was produced, with Nancy Partner’s Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in TwelfthCentury England (1977) and Gabrielle Spiegel’s The Chronicle Tradition of

J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (Philadelphia, PA, 1986), pp. 135–52; J. Rubenstein, ‘Miracles and the Crusading Mind: Monastic Meditations on Jerusalem’s Conquest’, in Prayer and Thought in Monastic Tradition: Essays in Honour of Benedicta Ward SLG, ed. S. Bhattacharji, R. Williams and D. Mattos (London, 2014), pp. 197–210. 24 E. Siberry, Criticism of Crusading, 1095–1274 (Oxford, 1985); D. A. Trotter, Medieval French Literature and the Crusades (1100–1300) (Geneva, 1988), p. 249. See also P. A. Throop, Criticism of the Crusades: A Study of Public Opinion and Crusade Propaganda (Amsterdam, 1940); M. Aurell, Des Chrétiens contre les croisades, XIIe–XIII siècles (Paris, 2013). 25 H. White, Metahistory (Baltimore, MD, 1973). For useful introductions to the ‘linguistic turn’, see E. A. Clark, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn (Cambridge, MA, 2004); R. M. Stein, ‘Literary Criticism and the Evidence for History’, in Writing Medieval History, ed. N. Partner (London, 2005), pp. 67–87. 23

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Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer Saint-Denis: A Survey (1978) just two important examples.26 Crusade historians were slower to the plate. However, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, there has been a marked intensification of scholarship that critically analyses the literary characteristics of sources for the crusades. To give just three representative examples: in 2006, Caroline Smith examined the framework of ideas associated with crusading in thirteenth-century texts written by or for the laity; Jean Flori’s Chroniqueurs et propagandistes: Introduction critique aux sources de la première croisade appeared in 2010 and remains the best survey of the stylistic features of First Crusade chronicles composed before 1110; and in 2017, Stefan Vander Elst analysed a selection of Latin chronicles, chansons de geste and romances as excitationes, designed to whip up enthusiasm for crusading.27 In one way or another, all three of these books explored the possibility that crusades-related literature acted as ‘propaganda’ to buoy crusade recruitment, although it should be noted that this function, and the suitability of the term ‘propaganda’, have been disputed.28 Central to this historiographical shift has been the work of Marcus Bull. The seeds of Bull’s approach, which would later germinate into a full-scale monograph study, can be traced in his contribution to a 2003 Festschrift for his former Ph.D. supervisor, Jonathan Riley-Smith. The primary purpose was to incorporate collections of miracle stories into the study of crusader motivation, but Bull used the opening pages of that chapter to reflect on the First Crusade’s source base, especially the narrative accounts. He raised doubts about the category of ‘eyewitness’, memorably declaring that the term was ‘so embedded in the crusade historian’s lexicon that it tends to obscure how problematic it is on the basic level of what in fact is the nature of “witness”’, before noting that:

N. F. Partner, Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England (Chicago, IL, 1977); G. M. Spiegel, The Chronicle Tradition of Saint-Denis: A Survey (Brookline, MA, 1978). See also S. Fleischman, ‘On the Representation of History and Fiction in the Middle Ages’, History & Theory 22 (1983), 278–310; G. M. Spiegel, Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (Berkeley, CA, 1993); G. M. Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (London, 1997); M. Otter, Inventiones: Fiction and Referentiality in Twelfth-Century English Historical Writing (Chapel Hill, NC, 1996). 27 C. Smith, Crusading in the Age of Joinville (Aldershot, 2006); J. Flori, Chroniqueurs et propagandistes: Introduction critique aux sources de la première croisade (Geneva, 2010); S. Vander Elst, The Knight, the Cross, and the Song: Crusade Propaganda and Chivalric Literature, 1100–1400 (Philadelphia, PA, 2017). 28 Compare N. L. Paul, ‘A Warlord’s Wisdom: Literacy and Propaganda at the Time of the First Crusade’, Speculum 85 (2010), 534–66; J. Rubenstein, ‘The Deeds of Bohemond: Reform, Propaganda, and the History of the First Crusade’, Viator 47:2 (2016), 113–35. 26

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The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction perhaps too little scholarly attention has been paid to the narrative sources as cultural artefacts above and beyond their value as repositories of information contributing to the bigger macronarrative of the recreated crusade – the quantum that itself functions as the primary analytical object. One should ask how far some of our very deep-rooted assumptions about what made a crusade what it was are simply reinscriptions of the frames of reference developed by contemporary historiography. More fundamentally still, how far is the story that we make of crusading a reflection not of the experience itself – in so far as this was indeed something more than a formless mass of countless human actions – but of the narrativizing strategies that contemporaries themselves chose to apply?29

Bull expanded upon these observations in a 2010 article that emphasised the ambiguities, tensions and inconsistencies of the participant narratives of the First Crusade, as well as the importance they attached to collective action, to demonstrate that these texts failed to anticipate the formation of the Latin East.30 The article ended by inviting scholars to explore ‘the constructed quality of these cultural artefacts’, an invitation that was effectively taken up by a host of scholars who contributed to the 2014 collection Writing the Early Crusades: Text, Transmission and Memory, edited by Bull and Damien Kempf.31 Two further studies by Bull should also be read in this connection: a 2016 essay in which he properly introduced the field of crusade studies to narratology and his 2018 monograph, Eyewitness and Crusade Narrative: Perception and Narration in Accounts of the Second, Third and Fourth Crusades.32 The latter, an important step away from the sources for the First Crusade, challenged historians to ‘go the long way round’ when reconstructing events: to avoid the shortcut of assessing texts exclusively on the basis of the author’s proximity to events, and instead to consider the ways in which an eyewitness, or ‘autoptic’, quality manifests itself.33 In other words, eyewitness is less a quality intrinsically tied to notions of ‘trustworthiness’ and ‘reliability’ and more a feature of the texts that appears in various

29

30 31

32

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M. Bull, ‘Views of Muslims and of Jerusalem in Miracle Stories, c. 1000–c. 1200: Reflections on the Study of First Crusaders’ Motivations’, in The Experience of Crusading, Volume 1: Western Approaches, ed. M. Bull and N. Housley (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 13–38 (at 15, 16). M. Bull, ‘The Eyewitness Accounts of the First Crusade as Political Scripts’, Reading Medieval Studies 36 (2010), 23–37. Bull, ‘The Eyewitness Accounts of the First Crusade as Political Scripts’, p. 35; Writing the Early Crusades: Text, Transmission and Memory, ed. M. Bull and D. Kempf (Woodbridge, 2014). M. Bull, ‘Narratological Readings of Crusade Texts’, in The Crusader World, ed. A. J. Boas (Abingdon, 2016), pp. 646–60; M. Bull, Eyewitness and Crusade Narrative: Perception and Narration in Accounts of the Second, Third and Fourth Crusades (Woodbridge, 2018). Bull, Eyewitness and Crusade Narrative, pp. 2–3.

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Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer guises and performs multiple functions. Three main theoretical concepts, borrowed from narratology, informed Bull’s analysis here: the narrator (which prevents us from connecting everything back to the author’s circumstances); focalisation (the perspective through which the story is narrated); and the storyworld (‘the global ecology inhabited by the actors within a narrative’).34 Ultimately, Bull concluded that historians should proceed with greater caution – ‘on amber’ – when mobilising textual expressions of historical experiences and memories to reconstruct the distant past.35 Bull’s methodology has not received universal approval. It carries ‘grave risks’, wrote John France, according to whom ‘History is about events, and texts are primarily valuable for what they tell us about them and those involved’.36 Others have complained of its rhetorical quirks, with Colin Morris lamenting in 2004 that ‘“micronarrative”, “narrativity”, “narrativizing” and “emplotment” are among words not recognised by my usually adequate spell-check’.37 Yet many of these terms and others are seeping into the crusade historian’s lexicon, as the benefits of engaging with these concepts to think differently about our sources and subject them to more rigorous literary probing become ever clearer. Not all studies of crusade texts deploy the sort of narratological readings advocated by Bull; indeed, while some chapters in the present volume utilise technical terms borrowed from Bull, others do not. More broadly, much more work has been undertaken to understand the influences that informed the writing of crusade narratives, the intellectual milieus and traditions in which chroniclers worked and how medieval audiences may have responded. Owing to the efforts of Elizabeth Lapina, Nicholas Morton and Katherine Allen Smith, among others, who have built on the foundations laid by Alphandéry and Rousset, we now have a much better grasp of the degree to which the Bible and scriptural exegesis provided reference-points that crusade commentators exploited and that their medieval audiences almost certainly recognised more readily than their modern counterparts.38 Thus, those who wrote about the crusades frequently evoked the memory of the Maccabees, whose status as Old Testament warriors and martyrs made them natural exemplars of proto-crusaders, although some commentators, like Guibert of Nogent, evidently felt uneasy about ‘Judaising’ Latin Christians

Bull, Eyewitness and Crusade Narrative, pp. 51–67 (at 66). Bull, Eyewitness and Crusade Narrative, p. 345. 36 J. France, ‘Review of Eyewitness and Crusade Narrative: Perception and Narration in Accounts of the Second, Third and Fourth Crusades, by Marcus Bull’, War in History 27 (2020), 139–40 (at 140). 37 C. Morris, ‘Review of The Experience of Crusading, Volume 1: Western Approaches, ed. M. Bull and N. Housley; Volume 2: Defining the Crusader Kingdom, ed. P. W. Edbury and J. Phillips’, English Historical Review 119 (2004), 438–9 (at 438). 38 Alphandéry, ‘Les citations bibliques’, pp. 139–57; Rousset, Les origines, pp. 89–100. 34 35

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The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction through this comparison.39 Two studies are particularly innovative. Collectively, the nineteen essays in The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources (2017), edited by Lapina and Morton, illuminate the role of biblical imagery in justifying acts of violence, the challenges of distinguishing between deliberate and unintentional biblical citation (a topic previously discussed by Alan Murray) and the value of contextualising individual works within specific regional settings.40 Significantly, the volume also addressed several texts created in the Latin East.41 Katherine Allen Smith’s The Bible and Crusade Narrative in the Twelfth Century (2020) is the first monograph study on the topic and offers a methodological blueprint for future work. It demonstrated the spectrum of biblical themes, citations and allusions utilised by chroniclers of the First Crusade to describe not only the crusaders, who were frequently cast as the new Israelites, but also their enemies and the sacred geographies they encountered.42 Smith made a compelling case for treating the chroniclers as ‘whole people’, who were not only or even primarily ‘crusade historians’, and for taking seriously the training in scriptural exegesis that they received in monastic and cathedral schools and then brought to bear on narrating and explaining the seemingly unprecedented events of 1095–99.43 Going further still, she argued (perhaps controversially) that a close reading of scriptural framing and allegory ‘brings us closer to understanding what our authors were thinking, that is, what words and chains of association were in their minds, as they wrote’, even giving us a flavour of the experiences of twelfth-century readers, who were primed to ruminate over such scriptural citations.44 Offering an important corrective to Riley-Smith, she concluded that ‘the First Crusade’s chronicle tradition seems

39

40

41

42 43 44

E. Lapina, ‘Anti-Jewish Rhetoric in Guibert of Nogent’s Dei gesta per Francos’, Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009), 239–53; E. Lapina, ‘The Maccabees and the Battle of Antioch’, in Dying for the Faith, Killing for the Faith: Old-Testament Faith-Warriors (1 and 2 Maccabees) in Historical Perspective, ed. G. Signori (Leiden, 2012), pp. 147–59; N. Morton, ‘The Defence of the Holy Land and the Memory of the Maccabees’, Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010), 275–93; L. Russo, ‘Continuité et transformations de la typologie des Maccabées jusqu’aux origins du movement des croisades’, in La typologie biblique comme forme de pensée dans l’historiographie médiévale, ed. M. T. Kretschmer (Leiden, 2014), pp. 53–76. The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources, ed. E. Lapina and N. Morton (Leiden, 2017); A. V. Murray, ‘Biblical Quotations and Formulaic Language in the Chronicle of William of Tyre’, in Deeds Done beyond the Sea: Essays on William of Tyre, Cyprus and the Military Orders Presented to Peter Edbury, ed. S. B. Edgington and H. J. Nicholson (Farnham, 2014), pp. 25–34. See Parts 4 and 5 of The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources, ed. Lapina and Morton. Smith, The Bible and Crusade Narrative. Smith, The Bible and Crusade Narrative, pp. 13, 15–47. Smith, The Bible and Crusade Narrative, p. 211.

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Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer to be characterized not so much by progressive “theological refinement” … as by a consistently high level of theological engagement and creativity’.45 Smith’s work captures the refreshing willingness of crusade historians both to look outside the immediate environs of ‘crusade studies’ for inspiration and to question traditional categorisations of sources into discrete genres. In this regard, the pathfinding work of Simon Parsons and Thomas Smith on the epistolary evidence for the First Crusade is exemplary. Both have returned to the medieval manuscripts to produce new editions of several letters, replacing those published by Heinrich Hagenmeyer in 1901, and reassess their position within (and relationship to) the wider corpus of extant sources.46 In 2018, Parsons demonstrated that two letters attributed to Stephen of Blois – conventionally accepted as first-rate eyewitness evidence for reconstructing the First Crusade – are structurally, stylistically and textually connected to the earliest narrative histories of the enterprise.47 Smith has likewise warned that other letters in the corpus are of problematic authenticity, while his identification and analysis of new manuscript witnesses has developed considerably our knowledge of the letters’ transmission and reception. The act of copying letters, Smith posited, represents a form of monastic engagement with, even participation in, the crusades that he characterised as ‘scribal crusading’ – a concept that we suspect is applicable to a wide range of textual evidence for the crusades beyond epistles.48 Another manifestation of this desire to break down traditional genre boundaries is the expansion of scholarship on what might loosely be called ‘poetic sources’ for the crusades. Once treated as inherently deficient and suspect by historians, owing to their ‘fictional’ quality, chansons de geste and lyrics have stimulated some of the most exciting and original research in crusade studies since around 2010. This process has been aided by the appearance of English translations of the central trilogy or ‘cycle rudimentaire’ of the Old French Crusade Cycle (the Chanson d’Antioche, Chanson des Chétifs and Chanson de Jérusalem), in addition to over 200 Old French and Occitan lyrics as part of Linda Paterson’s project, Lyric Responses to the Crusades in Medieval France and Occitania.49 Smith, The Bible and Crusade Narrative, p. 212. Kb. 47 S. T. Parsons, ‘The Letters of Stephen of Blois Reconsidered’, Crusades 17 (2018), 1–29. 48 T. W. Smith, ‘The First Crusade Letter Written at Laodicea in 1099: Two Previously Unpublished Versions from Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 23390 and 28195T’, Crusades 15 (2016), 1–25; T. W. Smith, ‘Scribal Crusading: Three New Manuscript Witnesses to the Regional Reception and Transmission of First Crusade Letters’, Traditio 72 (2017), 133–69; T. W. Smith, ‘First Crusade Letters and Medieval Monastic Scribal Cultures’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 71 (2020), 484–501. 49 CA; The Chanson des Chétifs and Chanson de Jérusalem: Completing the Central Trilogy of the Old French Crusade Cycle, trans. C. Sweetenham (Farnham, 2016); Lyric Responses to the Crusades in Medieval France and Occitania, available at 45 46

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The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction Comparatively less work has been conducted on Middle High German lyrics, which remain ripe for further research.50 Of immediate relevance to the present volume, however, is the fact that bringing these vernacular sources into the fold has simultaneously cast new light on the composition of well-known narrative accounts. Simon Parsons and Carol Sweetenham have shown that there exists a complex relationship between extant chansons de geste and the Latin narratives of the First Crusade, with the former (or at least the traditions underpinning them) seemingly informing the latter.51 Linked to this, the oral traditions that fed the narratives are also coming into sharper focus.52 [accessed 21/10/2022]; L. M. Paterson, Singing the Crusades: French and Occitan Lyric Responses to the Crusading Movements, 1137–1336 (Cambridge, 2018). See also P. Péron, Les croisés en orient: La représentation de l’espace dans le cycle de la croisade (Paris, 2008); La Chanson d’Antioche: Chanson de geste du dernier quart du XIIe siècle, ed. and trans. B. Guidot (Paris, 2011); S. B. Edgington, ‘“Pagans” and “Others” in the Chanson de Jérusalem’, in Languages of Love and Hate: Conflict, Communication, and Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. S. Lambert and H. J. Nicholson (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 37–47; M. Janet, L’idéologie incarnée: Représentations du corps dans le premier cycle de la croisade (Chanson d’Antioche, Chanson de Jérusalem, Chétifs) (Paris, 2013); C. Sweetenham, ‘The Count and the Cannibals: The Old French Crusade Cycle as a Drama of Salvation’, in Jerusalem the Golden: The Origins and Impact of the First Crusade, ed. S. B. Edgington and L. García-Guijarro (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 307–28; Literature of the Crusades, ed. S. T. Parsons and L. M. Paterson (Cambridge, 2018). 50 E. Siberry, ‘Troubadours, Trouvères, Minnesingers and the Crusades’, Studi medievali 3rd s. 29 (1988), 19–43; W. E. Jackson, Ardent Complaints and Equivocal Piety: The Portrayal of the Crusader in Medieval German Poetry (Lanham, MD, 2003); A. V. Murray, ‘The Poet Friedrich von Hausen in the Third Crusade and the Performance of Middle High German Crusading Songs’, in Crusading and Warfare in the Middle Ages: Realities and Representations. Essays in Honour of John France, ed. S. John and N. Morton (Farnham, 2014), pp. 119–28. 51 S. T. Parsons, ‘The Use of Chanson de geste Motifs in the Latin Texts of the First Crusade, c.1095–1145’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2015); C. Sweetenham, ‘Reflecting and Refracting Reality: The Use of Poetic Sources in Latin Accounts of the First Crusade’, in Literature of the Crusades, ed. Parsons and Paterson, pp. 25–40. 52 S. B. Edgington, ‘Romance and Reality in the Sources for the Sieges of Antioch, 1097–1098’, in Porphyrogenita: Essays on the History and Literature of Byzantium and the Latin East in Honour of Julian Chrysostomides, ed. C. Dendrinos, J. C. Harris and J. Herrin (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 33–46; S. Loutchitsky, ‘“Veoir” et “oir”, legere et audire: Reflexions sur les interactions entre traditions orale et ecrite dans les sources relatives a la premiere croisade’, in Homo Legens: Styles et pratiques de lecture: Analyses comparees des traditions orales et ecrites au Moyen Age, ed. S. Loutchitsky and M.-C. Varol (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 89–125; C. Sweetenham, ‘What Really Happened to Eurvin de Créel’s Donkey? Anecdotes in Sources for the First Crusade’, in Writing the Early Crusades, ed. Bull and Kempf, pp. 75–88; S. John, ‘Historical Truth and

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Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer The blurring of the distinction between ‘history’ and ‘fiction’ in recent historiography is almost inseparable from another significant development: the growth of work on the memorialisation of the crusades in the Middle Ages. Literature (as well as other forms of material culture, such as art and architecture) played an essential role in the creation of crusading heroes, such as Godfrey of Bouillon, Richard I of England and Louis IX of France.53 Thus, as Cecilia Gaposchkin has demonstrated, Louis IX’s crusading career was a central feature of hagiographical literature written in support of his canonisation.54 Louis was canonised as a confessor in 1297, yet John of Joinville, author of the most detailed participant narrative of the Seventh Crusade (1248–54), insisted that the hardships he had endured during two crusades warranted the designation of a martyr.55 Given the centrality of crusading to Louis’ posthumous reputation, it might be assumed that this was the culmination of a long-standing association between the French monarchy and the crusades. James Naus, however, has unpicked this teleological narrative to reveal a more complex reality, whereby the fusion of crusading ideals with older ideas of sacral kingship spawned a new Capetian royal identity during the twelfth century.56 Western Europeans even turned to the crusaders’ adversaries for inspirational figures. Famously, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn was transformed from the principal opponent of the Third Crusade – denounced as a usurper and a pimp by some chroniclers – into a paragon of chivalric values.

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the Miraculous Past: The Use of Oral Evidence in Twelfth-Century Latin Historical Writing on the First Crusade’, English Historical Review 130 (2015), 263–301. For example, see S. John, ‘“Claruit ibi multum dux Lotharingiae”: The Development of the Epic Tradition of Godfrey of Bouillon and the Bisected Muslim’, in Literature of the Crusades, ed. Parsons and Paterson, pp. 7–24; S. John, ‘Godfrey of Bouillon and the Swan Knight’, in Crusading and Warfare in the Middle Ages, ed. John and Morton, pp. 129–42; J. Gillingham, ‘Some Legends of Richard the Lionheart: Their Development and Their Influence’, in Richard Coeur de Lion in History and Myth, ed. J. L. Nelson (London, 1992), pp. 51–69; S. J. Spencer, ‘“Like a Raging Lion”: Richard the Lionheart’s Anger during the Third Crusade in Medieval and Modern Historiography’, English Historical Review 132 (2017), 495–532; M. Ailes, ‘Remembering and Mythologizing Richard: Translation and the Representation of the Crusader King in Latin and French Accounts of Richard I’s Expedition to the Holy Land’, in Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain, ed. K. Hurlock and L. J. Whatley (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 67–90. On material culture, see The Crusades and Visual Culture, ed. E. Lapina et al. (Farnham, 2015). M. C. Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity, and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2008); M. C. Gaposchkin, ‘The Place of the Crusades in the Sanctification of Saint Louis’, in Crusades: Medieval World in Conflict, ed. T. F. Madden, J. L. Naus and V. Ryan (Farnham, 2010), pp. 195–209. Joinville and Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. C. Smith (London, 2008), p. 142; Gaposchkin, ‘The Place of the Crusades’, p. 203. J. Naus, Constructing Kingship: The Capetian Monarchs of France and the Early Crusades (Manchester, 2016).

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The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction Some even claimed that he was knighted, while others had him secretly convert to Christianity. As Margaret Jubb put it, in the case of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn ‘disentangling fact from fiction becomes extremely difficult’.57 Research on crusade chroniclers’ representations of Muslims more broadly also continues apace. Kristin Skottki’s Christen, Muslime und der Erste Kreuzzug: Die Macht der Beschreibung in der mittelalterlichen und modernen Historiographie (2015), which emphasises the complex and multivalent functions of ‘othering’ in First Crusade narratives, is a particularly valuable contribution to the field.58 Other studies have explored the memorialisation and narrativisation of key events. Benjamin Kedar’s 2004 longitudinal examination of the 1099 massacre at Jerusalem has served as a methodological model that scholars have started to replicate. Kedar charted how western writers approached this event, from the earliest chroniclers to modern historians, revealing the degree of variance between the Latin sources, the modification of earlier accounts by later writers and the long-standing influence of the non-participant accounts by Robert the Monk and William of Tyre.59 As ever, historians of crusading memory have gravitated to the proliferation of First Crusade narratives, yet Megan Cassidy-Welch has been instrumental in redressing this imbalance through her own scholarship and her editing of two key essay collections.60 In a 2017 article, Cassidy-Welch took the M. Jubb, The Legend of Saladin in Western Literature and Historiography (Lewiston, NY, 2000), p. 223. See also J. V. Tolan, Sons of Ishmael: Muslims Through European Eyes in the Middle Ages (Gainesville, FL, 2008), pp. 79–100. On the presentation of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn in medieval Arabic historiography, an excellent starting-point is C. Hillenbrand, ‘Saladin’s “Spin Doctors”’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6th s. 29 (2019), 65–77. 58 K. Skottki, Christen, Muslime und der Erste Kreuzzug: Die Macht der Beschreibung in der mittelalterlichen und modernen Historiographie (Münster, 2015), esp. pp. 252–485. See also S. C. Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (Ithaca, NY, 2009); N. Morton, Encountering Islam on the First Crusade (Cambridge, 2016). 59 B. Z. Kedar, ‘The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades’, Crusades 3 (2004), 15–75. For studies replicating Kedar’s approach, see K. Hirschler, ‘The Jerusalem Conquest of 492/1099 in the Medieval Arabic Historiography of the Crusades: From Regional Plurality to Islamic Narrative’, Crusades 13 (2014), 37–76; A. V. Murray, ‘The Siege and Capture of Jerusalem in Western Narrative Sources of the First Crusade, in Jerusalem the Golden, ed. Edgington and García-Guijarro, pp. 191–215; J. Wilson, ‘The “ʿasākir al-shām”: Medieval Arabic Historiography of the Siege, Capture and Battle of Antioch during the First Crusade 490–491/1097–1098’, Al-Masāq 33 (2021), 300–36. 60 Crusades and Memory: Rethinking Past and Present, ed. M. Cassidy-Welch and A. E. Lester (Abingdon, 2015), first published as a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History 40:3 (2014); Remembering the Crusades and Crusading, ed. M. Cassidy-Welch (Abingdon, 2017). See also the equally wide-ranging Remembering the Crusades: Myth, Image, and Identity, ed. N. L. Paul and S. Yeager (Baltimore, MD, 2012). 57

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Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer novel step of engaging with trauma theory to suggest that the loss of a relic of the True Cross at the battle of Ḥaṭṭīn in July 1187 was an example of ‘collective trauma’ for western Christians, while her 2019 monograph, War and Memory at the Time of the Fifth Crusade, applied two concepts from memory studies (‘war memory’ and ‘communicative memory’) to explore how contemporary writers navigated the potentially problematic Fifth Crusade (1217–21) – an expedition marked by a combination of success and failure.61 In addition, Lee Manion has examined the development and legacy of medieval crusading romance, demonstrating that crusading discourse held a persistent and malleable place in the English imagination, and left an indelible mark on English literature between c. 1300 and 1604.62 Gary Dickson’s The Children’s Crusade: Medieval History, Modern Mythistory (2008) should also be mentioned. Though its strict distinction between ‘history’ and ‘mythistory’ is unhelpful – one could contend that the process of mythologising the so-called Children’s Crusade (1212) began with the earliest commentators – the book provides an exemplary analysis of how thirteenth-century chroniclers like Alberic of Trios-Fontaines, Matthew Paris and Vincent of Beauvais embroidered and reimagined the story, as well as a wideranging survey of how it was remembered down to the twentieth century.63 One consequence of such work is that previously marginalised sources are gradually receiving the attention they deserve as literary and cultural artefacts, and as evidence for the ways in which medieval people and societies engaged with the crusading past (as we saw above with chansons de geste and lyrics). In 2012, Nicholas Paul’s landmark investigation into the construction of aristocratic family memories of crusading introduced scholars to an untapped corpus of dynastic histories.64 Likewise, narratives that were known, but passed over on the grounds that they were of little value for empirical reconstruction, are now being rehabilitated. For example, the Gesta Francorum Ierusalem expugnantium of ‘Bartolf of Nangis’, once dismissed as ‘in no way important’, has been shown by Susan Edgington to offer a valuable, if potentially distorted, window onto the lost 1106 recension of Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia.65 Moreover, in one of few works to contextualise the composition of crusade history in the wider tradition of 61

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M. Cassidy-Welch, ‘Before Trauma: The Crusades, Medieval Memory and Violence’, Continuum 31 (2017), 619–27; M. Cassidy-Welch, War and Memory at the Time of the Fifth Crusade (Philadelphia, PA, 2019). L. Manion, Narrating the Crusades: Loss and Recovery in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge, 2014). G. Dickson, The Children’s Crusade: Medieval History, Modern Mythistory (Basingstoke, 2008), pp. 131–96. N. L. Paul, To Follow in their Footsteps: The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2012), pp. 60–89. Gordon, The History and Literature of the Crusades, p. 186; S. B. Edgington, ‘The Gesta Francorum Iherusalem expugnantium of “Bartolf of Nangis”’, Crusades 13 (2014), 21–35.

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The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction western history-writing, Michael Staunton has enunciated how chroniclers engaged with the subject of crusading in late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century England, especially the setbacks of 1187 and the resultant Third Crusade.66 The emergence of literary approaches to crusade texts has also acted as a springboard for an array of thematic investigations. Indeed, crusade studies is in constant dialogue with other fields, including gender studies, the history of emotions and the environmental humanities. Consider, for example, the topic of gender and the crusades. Early work in this area was primarily (albeit not exclusively) concerned with assessing women’s contributions to crusading and the roles imputed to them in crusade texts, with Gendering the Crusades (2001), edited by Susan Edington and Sarah Lambert, and Natasha Hodgson’s Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (2007) making important advances.67 Increasingly, however, scholars have explored the depiction of masculine ideals and identities in crusades-related literature, exemplified by the 2019 collection Crusading and Masculinities.68 Joanna Phillips’ contribution to that volume typifies the aforementioned thematic diversification. It considers the little-studied topic of conceptions of sickness and health in a crusading context, demonstrating that accusations of illness and bodily infirmity were readily deployed by chroniclers to critique the masculine identities of crusade leaders.69 Others have examined the emotional rhetoric of crusading. Susanna Throop has charted the emergence and growth of the idea that crusading was an act of vengeance between 1095 and 1216, simultaneously exposing the significance of the related emotion word zelus, whereas Stephen Spencer has explored the spiritual, political and social representations and functions of fear, anger and weeping in western crusade narratives.70 Portrayals of miraculous occurrences on crusade have likewise been scrutinised by Elizabeth

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M. Staunton, The Historians of Angevin England (Oxford, 2017), pp. 216–80. Another good example of a work that sets crusade texts in a wider literary setting is P. DamianGrint, The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Inventing Vernacular Authority (Woodbridge, 1999). Gendering the Crusades, ed. S. B. Edgington and S. Lambert (Cardiff, 2001); N. R. Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (Woodbridge, 2007). Crusading and Masculinities, ed. N. R. Hodgson, K. J. Lewis and M. M. Mesley (Abingdon, 2019). J. Phillips, ‘Crusader Masculinities in Bodily Crises: Incapacity and the Crusader Leader, 1095–1274’, in Crusading and Masculinities, ed. Hodgson, Lewis and Mesley, pp. 149–64. See also J. Phillips, ‘William of Malmesbury: Medical Historian of the Crusades’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. R. M. Thomson, E. Dolmans and E. A. Winkler (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 129–38. S. A. Throop, Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 1095–1216 (Farnham, 2011); S. J. Spencer, Emotions in a Crusading Context, 1095–1291 (Oxford, 2019).

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Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer Lapina and Beth Spacey.71 The latter, in particular, has shown that miracles, visions and signs were malleable and effective rhetorical tools that the authors of crusade narrative employed to communicate divine sponsorship of crusading campaigns, to set them in the tradition of sacred history, to legitimise relics and to defend the actions of individual crusaders. As Spacey convincingly argued, how, and the extent to which, the miraculous was utilised in crusade narrative evolved with crusading’s changing fortunes between 1095 and 1204. Through a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History, co-edited with Cassidy-Welch, Spacey has also helped to open up another vein of research on representations of landscapes and nature in crusade texts – a topic that has hitherto primarily been explored in connection to the Baltic crusades.72

Writing the Latin East When it comes to scholarship on literary sources produced in, or about, the Latin settlements of the East, the extent of published work is much smaller. Much of the earlier scholarship focused on the authors and their lives, with a near total focus on William of Tyre.73 Over time, smaller studies began to consider the texts themselves, albeit still with an emphasis on William. As such, D. W. T. C. Vessey, R. H. C. Davis and Wolfgang Giese (who also offered insightful comments on the work of Fulcher of Chartres) sought to tease out elements of William’s authorial agendas and literary influences.74 It was with three monographs, though, that the historiographical landscape changed in earnest.

E. Lapina, Warfare and the Miraculous in the Chronicles of the First Crusade (University Park, PA, 2015); B. C. Spacey, The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative (Woodbridge, 2020). 72 B. C. Spacey and M. Cassidy-Welch, ‘Introduction: Landscapes of Conflict and Encounter in the Crusading World’, Journal of Medieval History 47 (2021), 293–301. See also M. Tamm, ‘A New World into Old Worlds: The Eastern Baltic Region and the Cultural Geography of Medieval Europe’, in The Clash of Cultures on the Medieval Baltic Frontier, ed. A. V. Murray (Aldershot, 2009), pp. 11–35; K. Villads Jensen, ‘Sacralization of the Landscape: Converting Trees and Measuring Land in the Danish Crusades Against the Wends’, in The Clash of Cultures on the Medieval Baltic Frontier, ed. Murray, pp. 141–50; T. K. Nielsen, ‘The Making of New Cultural Landscapes in the Medieval Baltic’, in Medieval Christianity in the North: New Studies, ed. K. Salonen, K. Villads Jensen and T. Jørgensen (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 121–53. 73 For an overview of the scholarship on William’s life, see Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, pp. 6–9. 74 D. W. T. C. Vessey, ‘William of Tyre and the Art of Historiography’, Mediaeval Studies 35 (1973), 433–55; R. H. C. Davis, ‘William of Tyre’, in Relations between East and West in the Middle Ages, ed. D. Baker (Edinburgh, 1973), pp. 64–76; W. Giese, ‘Stadtund Herrscherbeschreibungen bei Wilhelm von Tyrus’, Deutsches Archiv 34 (1978), 71

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The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction The first of these was Rainer Schwinges’ 1977 work, Kreuzzugsideologie und Toleranz: Studien zu Wilhelm von Tyrus.75 In this, Schwinges set out to compare William’s approach to Islam and Muslims with contemporaneous chroniclers, situating the author’s ideas in the wider context of crusade ideology and the twelfth-century renaissance. Though it would be an oversimplification – one often made – to say that Schwinges sought to portray William as actually tolerant of Islam, at least in the modern sense, it is nevertheless the case that he saw in the Chronicon a surprisingly complicated view of the crusaders’ Muslim enemies. It is worth noting, however, that the validity of this approach, as well as William’s novelty in this regard, can be challenged in light of modern scholarly discussions of Latin Christian views of Islam.76 In the second monograph dedicated solely to William of Tyre, Peter Edbury and John Rowe took a more holistic approach, seeking to draw out several of the key themes of William’s text, albeit only really from those books covering the years after the First Crusade (9–23).77 In William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East, therefore, Edbury and Rowe not only traced the wider literary – especially classical and biblical – influences on the Chronicon, they also discussed the author’s views of the Jerusalemite monarchy, the nature of legitimate power, the balance between kingdom and Church, the role of the papacy in Outremer, the Latins’ relations with Byzantium and, like Schwinges, the war against Islamic forces. In doing so, the authors challenged the prevailing historiographical approach of regarding the Chronicon as ‘a mine of information’, arguing, much like von Sybel, that it should instead be appreciated as ‘a treasure of historical literature’.78 The third book-length study of a Latin East text in this period, and the only one not dedicated to William of Tyre, is Verena Epp’s Fulcher von Chartres: Studien zur Geschichtsschreibung des ersten Kreuzzuges (1990). In a wide-ranging, albeit somewhat broad-brush, work, Epp considered how Fulcher’s perspective and work evolved during the twelfth century as a result of his experiences as participant in the First Crusade and inhabitant of the Latin East. Thus, Epp traced changes or continuities in approach across an array of thematic aspects, including Fulcher’s views of theology, piety, women, nature and power, both religious and secular.

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381–409; W. Giese, ‘Untersuchungen zur Historia Hierosolymitana des Fulcher von Chartres’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 69 (1987), 62–115. R. C. Schwinges, Kreuzzugsideologie und Toleranz: Studien zu Wilhelm von Tyrus (Stuttgart, 1977). For an English-language summary, see R. C. Schwinges, ‘William of Tyre, the Muslim Enemy, and the Problem of Tolerance’, in Tolerance and Intolerance: Social Conflict in the Age of the Crusades, ed. M. Gervers and J. Powell (Syracuse, NY, 2001), pp. 124–32. Skottki, Christen, Muslime und der Erste Kreuzzug, pp. 149–64; N. Morton, ‘William of Tyre’s Attitude towards Islam: Some Historiographical Reflections’, in Deeds Done beyond the Sea, ed. Edgington and Nicholson, pp. 13–24. Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre. Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, pp. 167–8.

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Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer The book is valuable equally for the light it sheds on the Historia’s composition and ‘linguistic design’ (sprachlichen Gestaltung), including the author’s intentions and the influence of biblical, ancient and medieval authorities, as well as the text’s vocabulary, syntax and prosimetric character.79 However, whereas the literary turn has reenvisaged the nature of crusade studies in relation to expeditionary texts, it cannot be said that the literary cultures of, or texts about, the Latin East have been properly incorporated into this historiographical charge. That is not to say, though, that there has been no scholarship devoted to deepening our knowledge of both the authors and texts known to us. By far the most prolific avenue for research, still, is William of Tyre, with several studies having considered, among other themes, his use of biblical language and models, his knowledge of law and class, the political nature of his narrative, his views of non-Latins and his attitudes towards gender.80 For the most part, such analyses have focused on sections of the Chronicon that detail the decades after Jerusalem’s capture in 1099, or even just the years that follow Fulcher’s endpoint (1127) – a trend predicated on the belief that the archbishop’s borrowing of other texts for the earlier portions makes those sections of limited value for assessing his authorial processes. Yet, more recently there have been efforts to rectify this and to actively chart William’s authorial skill through his account of the First Crusade.81 Studies on other texts have been few and far between. Regarding Fulcher, only a handful of works have sought to build upon Epp’s foundations, and, though V. Epp, Fulcher von Chartres: Studien zur Geschichtsschreibung des ersten Kreuzzuges (Düsseldorf, 1990). 80 It would be impractical to list everything written on William in the last three decades, but valuable entry-points are M. Tessera, ‘Prudentes homines … qui sensus habebant magis exercitos: A Preliminary Inquiry in William of Tyre’s Vocabulary of Power’, Crusades 1 (2002), 63–71; C. Kostick, ‘William of Tyre, Livy, and the Vocabulary of Class’, Journal of the History of Ideas 65 (2004), 353–68; J. Rubin, ‘The Debate on Twelfth-Century Frankish Feudalism: Additional Evidence from William of Tyre’s Chronicon’, Crusades 8 (2009), 53–62; M.-L. Favreau-Lilie, ‘Machtstrukturen und Historiographie im Königreich Jerusalem: die Chronik Wilhelms von Tyrus’, in Macht und Spiegel der Macht: Herrschaft in Europa im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert vor dem Hintergrund der Chronistik, ed. N. Kersken and G. Vercamer (Wiesbaden, 2013), pp. 447–62; T. S. Asbridge, ‘William of Tyre and the First Rulers of the Latin Principality of Antioch’, in Deeds Done beyond the Sea, ed. Edgington and Nicholson, pp. 35–42; Murray, ‘Biblical Quotations and Formulaic Language in the Chronicle of William of Tyre’, pp. 25–34; A. E. Zimo, ‘Us and Them: Identity in William of Tyre’s Chronicon’, Crusades 18 (2020), 1–19; A. D. Buck, ‘William of Tyre, Femininity, and the Problem of the Antiochene Princesses’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 70 (2019), 731–49. 81 B. C. Spacey, ‘Refocusing the First Crusade: Authorial Self-Fashioning and the Miraculous in William of Tyre’s Historia Ierosolimitana’, Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture 5:2 (2019), 51–67; A. D. Buck, ‘William of Tyre, Translatio Imperii and the Genesis of the First Crusade: Or, the Challenges of Writing History’, History 107 (2022), 624–50. 79

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The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction important, those that have examined the non-crusade portions of the Historia have largely focused on specific aspects of the author or his text, such as furthering the debate on Fulcher’s attitude to the crusading project or examining his views of Turkish communities and pilgrims.82 Alongside this, some recent work has sought to trace how the reception and adaptation of Fulcher’s Historia by authors in the Latin West might offer a window onto how events in the Latin East were being filtered into wider literary developments.83 A few shorter studies have also been produced on the Antiochene author Walter the Chancellor, largely centring on his views of warfare and Muslims (especially vis-à-vis his captivity following the battle of the Field of Blood in 1119).84 Similarly, we have only a few focused works on Jacques de Vitry and his Historia orientalis, and these have predominantly examined his views of non-Latins and the political structures of the Latin East.85

J. Rubenstein, ‘Tolerance for the Armies of Antichrist: Life on the Frontiers of TwelfthCentury Outremer’, in Papacy, Crusade, and Christian-Muslim Relations, ed. J. L. Bird (Amsterdam, 2018), pp. 81–96; I. Wolsing, ‘Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Turkish Alterity in Chronicles from the Latin East, 1099–1127’, Viator 51:2 (2020), 189–227; J. Doherty, ‘Fulcher of Chartres and Armed Pilgrims, 1104–27’, in Chronicle, Crusade, and the Latin East: Essays in Honour of Susan B. Edgington, ed. A. D. Buck and T. W. Smith (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 273–83. 83 Edgington, ‘The Gesta Francorum Iherusalem expugnantium of “Bartolf of Nangis”’, pp. 21–35; A. D. Buck, ‘Remembering Outremer in the West: The Secunda pars historiae Iherosolimitane and the Crisis of Crusading in Mid-Twelfth-Century France’, Speculum 97 (2022), 377–414. See also the contributions of Susan Edgington and Stephen Spencer to this volume. 84 A. Mallett, ‘The “Other” in the Crusading Period: Walter the Chancellor’s Presentation of Najm al-Dīn Il-Ghāzī’, Al-Masāq 22 (2010), 113–28; K. Skottki, ‘Of “Pious Traitors” and Dangerous Encounters: Historiographical Notions of Interculturality in the Principality of Antioch’, Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 1 (2014), 75–115, esp. 94–104; N. Morton, ‘Walter the Chancellor on Ilghazi and Tughtakin: A Prisoner’s Perspective’, Journal of Medieval History 44 (2018), 170–86; T. S. Asbridge, ‘The Portrayal of Violence in Walter the Chancellor’s Bella Antiochena’, in Syria in Crusader Times: Conflict and Co-Existence, ed. C. Hillenbrand (Edinburgh, 2020), pp. 163–83. 85 J. Donnadieu, ‘La représentation de l’Islam l’Historia orientalis: Jacques de Vitry historien’, Le Moyen Âge 114 (2008), 487–508; J. Vandeburie, ‘“Consenescentis mundi die vergente ad vesperam”: James of Vitry’s Historia orientalis and Eschatological Rhetoric after the Fourth Lateran Council’, in The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources, ed. Lapina and Morton, pp. 341–59; M.-G. Grossel, ‘L’image de la féodalité dans l’Historia orientalis de Jacques de Vitry’, in Autour des Assises de Jérusalem, ed. J. Devard and B. Ribémont (Paris, 2018), pp. 63–78; J. Vandeburie, ‘Latins and Levantine Christian Minorities after the Fourth Lateran Council (1215): Jacques de Vitry’s Descriptions of Eastern Christians in the Kingdom of Jerusalem’, in Minorities in Contact in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. C. Almagro Vidal, J. Tearney-Pearce and L. Yarbrough (Turnhout, 2020), pp. 143–67. 82

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Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer The picture is largely the same regarding the wider corpus of texts from or about the Latin East, with scattered analyses of various narratives or literary cultures.86 More recently, however, several publications have suggested a growing desire to better understand the literary cultures relating to the Latin East. Peter Edbury has done much to clarify the development of the Old French Continuations of William of Tyre – a textual tradition that, together with the closely-associated Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, is fundamental for studying the history of the Latin East between 1184 and 1277.87 Furthermore, one edited and one co-authored volume, Laura Morreale and Nicholas Paul’s The French of Outremer: Communities and Communications in the Crusading Mediterranean (2018) and Jane Gilbert, Simon Gaunt and William Burgwinkle’s Medieval French Literary Culture Abroad (2020), have investigated aspects of vernacular literary and historical production in the Frankish East.88 To these can also be added Jonathan Rubin’s exemplary Learning in a Crusader City: Intellectual Activity and Intercultural Exchanges in Acre, 1191–1291 (2018), which considers the learned communities of crusader Acre in the last century of its existence.89 More overtly important to this volume are two further monographs. The first of these is Timo Kirschberger’s Erster Kreuzzug und Ethnogenese: In novam formam commutatus – Ethnogenetische Prozesse im Fürstentum Antiochia und im Königreich Jerusalem (2015), which used the texts produced in Outremer, albeit primarily those that deal with the First Crusade and the very early years of settlement, to trace processes of ethnogenesis within the settler communities.90 While Kirschberger’s approach is not without its faults, particularly its reliance on the stability of ever-fluid discussions on the provenance of early crusade narratives, the very act of treating such texts as collective cultural artefacts of the Frankish B. Z. Kedar, ‘The Tractatus de locis et statu sancte terre ierosolimintane’, in The Crusades and their Sources, ed. France and Zajac, pp. 111–33; D. Gerish, ‘Remembering Kings in Jerusalem: The Historia Nicaena vel Antiochena and Royal Identity Around the Time of the Second Crusade’, in The Second Crusade: Holy War on the Periphery of Latin Christendom, ed. J. Roche and J. Møller Jensen (Turnhout, 2015), pp. 51–90; J. H. Kane, ‘Between Parson and Poet: A Re-Examination of the Latin Continuation of William of Tyre’, Journal of Medieval History 44 (2018), 56–82. 87 For example, see P. W. Edbury, ‘New Perspectives on the Old French Continuations of William of Tyre’, Crusades 9 (2010), 107–13. 88 The French of Outremer: Communities and Communications in the Crusading Mediterranean, ed. L. K. Morreale and N. L. Paul (New York, 2018); J. Gilbert, S. Gaunt and W. Burgwinkle, Medieval French Literary Culture Abroad (Oxford, 2020). 89 J. Rubin, Learning in a Crusader City: Intellectual Activity and Intercultural Exchanges in Acre, 1191–1291 (Cambridge, 2018). 90 T. Kirschberger, Erster Kreuzzug und Ethnogenese: In novam formam commutatus – Ethnogenetische Prozesse im Fürstentum Antiochia und im Königreich Jerusalem (Göttingen, 2015). On ethnogenesis, see Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800, ed. W. Pohl and H. Reimitz (Leiden, 1998). 86

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The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction East is an important step and one that offers new insights into how Latin settlers constructed new identities formed from the act of crusading. Most recently, Julian Yolles’ Making the East Latin: The Latin Literature of the Levant in the Era of the Crusades (2022) has appeared.91 Though this book was published too late for its findings to be incorporated into the chapters included in this volume, some preliminary comments are possible here. First, the author’s detailed literary survey of the Latin cultures of the Levant offers fresh routes of travel for historians traversing the historiographical pathways relating not only to the more widely known works of Fulcher of Chartres, Ralph of Caen, Walter the Chancellor and William of Tyre, but also an array of lesser-known historical texts and poems. In doing so, Yolles argues that we should elevate the status of the Frankish Levant’s latinity, the products of which are of a skill and adaptability that pay testament to a vibrant written culture, one demonstrably seeking to express the new identities of the settler communities, both secular and religious.92 Yolles’ book thus aims, like several of the chapters offered below, to better establish the place that the Latin East should be afforded in understanding the cultural and literary responses to the crusading movement across medieval Christendom. *** One of the main guiding principles of this volume is to examine how individual crusading campaigns and the Frankish settlements of the eastern Mediterranean were narrativised and remembered across the Latin East and the Latin West. More than that, though, it seeks to bring the historical writing cultures of these two areas, often treated as geographically distinct, into dialogue with each other. By offering such a wide-ranging, geographically and temporally diverse perspective, one that incorporates and considers lesser-studied texts, methodologies, events and regions of textual production, it is hoped that the following essays will help scholars to achieve a more holistic understanding of the impact that both crusading and settlement had on the literary cultures of Latin Christendom. Indeed, what emerges most prominently here is the far-reaching potential that a study of historical writing, crusade and settlement holds for scholars – a fact which speaks to the significant impact that these events had on the people and places involved. When taken as a whole, this volume, and several chapters in particular (Buck, Edbury, Edgington, Funding Højgaard, Nicholson, Smith, Spacey, Spencer), shine a light on the underlying literary developments and networks of communication and identity that tied the Latin East and Latin West together.

J. Yolles, Making the East Latin: The Latin Literature of the Levant in the Era of the Crusades (Washington, DC, 2022). 92 Yolles, Making the East Latin, pp. 219–25. 91

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Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer Further to this, it becomes clear that the events related to the crusades and the Latin East offered important opportunities for medieval authors to experiment with form and genre, both of which showed a level of plasticity across the period. The surprising and significant success of the First Crusade in particular inspired authors to find innovative ways to tell its story (Buck, Caddy, Kane, Mortimer, Smith, Wilson) and to afford its landed consequences a level of social meaning (Edgington, Mortimer), while moments of great distress or crisis, like the loss of Jerusalem and the failure of subsequent attempts at its recovery, likewise prompted authorial investigation (Funding Højgaard, Nicholson, Spacey, Wolsing). Central to this is the fact that the fast-moving, at times highly dramatic and changeable, nature of crusading and settlement stimulated the very act of writing – with the entire period constituting one of intense historical production. Importantly, this fostered the conditions needed for extensive efforts at rewriting and editing. Changing fates and perspectives, especially political and military crises, prompted authors to rethink how past events had been narrated (Buck, Edgington, Mortimer, Nicholson, Spacey, Spencer), while texts and stories forged in one geographical space could find themselves being redacted and reshaped to meet the cultural and commemorative needs of a different region (Buck, Edbury, Edgington, Funding Højgaard, Smith, Spacey, Spencer). Of importance here, though, is not just what authors said, but also what was left unsaid, as political currents that surrounded texts and authors had to be carefully navigated (Kane, Nicholson). The chapters in this volume also help to further elucidate that historical writing composed between c. 1100 and c. 1300 was not simply focused on recording what had happened; it also set out to engage with, and shape, contemporary views of idealised behaviours and identities. In addition, therefore, to several chapters’ emphasis on the need to pay closer attention to the individual authorial motives and agendas of historical writers (Buck, Edgington, Lewis, McCabe, Mortimer, Nicholson, Spacey, Wolsing), a stress is similarly placed on situating authors within broader contemporary conversations and ideas. Whether this regards gender (Lewis, McCabe), ideologies of crusading (Caddy, Wilson), responses to disaster (Funding Højgaard, Nicholson, Spacey) or the responsibilities and identities of settler powers and communities (Buck, Edbury, Lewis, Mortimer, Spacey, Wolsing), it is evident that texts and their authors, both in the Latin East and the Latin West, must be situated and examined within wider didactic trends that transcended geographical boundaries. Several analytical tendrils thus intertwine and snake their way throughout the various contributions to this volume. This has manifested certain editorial challenges in deciding how best to order and present the contributions, as any discrete thematic structuring threatens to divide the chapters from each other arbitrarily and artificially. It is our hope, therefore, that readers will approach the chapters offered here not just as single entities, but as a collective discussion, one that can help to open new avenues for debate, prompt fresh evaluation of

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The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction long-standing historiographical truisms and, most importantly, place the Latin East and the Latin West in dialogue. Turning to the contributions, the volume begins with Thomas Smith’s wideranging response to historians’ long-standing need to better understand how the epistolary form intersected with, and contributed to, the literary outpouring inspired by the invention of crusading. As Smith notes, the letters sent home by crusaders fighting in the Holy Land have traditionally been interpreted as reliable missives from the front, and thus as less distorted by hindsight and authorial agenda than longer forms of historical writing. Building upon new research that has begun to recognise that the epistles sent from crusader armies often transmitted chunks of crusade narrative, Smith locates letters sent across the period 1095–1291 within the broader context of historical writing about crusading expeditions. In considering the narrative strategies found in such epistles, Smith argues that crusade letters are vital witnesses to the processes of history-writing and remembrance. The epistolary form proved a highly popular genre in medieval Europe, one that attracted widespread audiences and represented an ideal format for writers in the Latin West who sought to confect crusading history for their own purposes or, as was most common, to encourage collective memorialisation around major events or famous crusaders. What is significant here, then, is that crusade missives stand as testament to the genre-fluidity that characterises so much of the historical record for the central Middle Ages. Following this is James Kane’s consideration of another narrative form: the annal. Focusing on the Old English annals often described under the umbrella term the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and their detailing of the events of the First Crusade, Kane discusses a genre and region of literary production that have been underappreciated in historiographical discussions of the early crusades. While it is well known that English authors showed distinct interest in later expeditions, especially the Third Crusade, it is often assumed that chroniclers directly contemporary to the First Crusade were rather less concerned with this new form of holy war. Starting with the Peterborough Chronicle and a brief Old English annal about the First Crusade scribbled in the margins of an Easter table in British Library, Cotton MS Caligula A.XV, Kane analyses the development of early twelfthcentury textual traditions about that initial venture, particularly among the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury. In doing so, he examines points of intersection and divergence in both Latin and vernacular accounts. What Kane’s study reveals is an instantaneous, if short-lived, English interest in the First Crusade that preceded the creation of a basic and largely uniform continental narrative of the venture. Though this chapter does not undermine the sense that the Canterbury monks reflected reservations felt about the venture by their archbishop, St Anselm, and king, William II, as witnessed by the annals’ silences on key crusading events like the capture of Jerusalem, Kane emphasises the value of resisting the gravitational pull of the more famous and decidedly richer narratives of the First Crusade. In short, in widening our sense of the scope of different genres of crusade narrative 25

Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer and mining the many lesser annals that were produced in Europe towards the end of the eleventh century, it is argued that we can find insightful perspectives on Pope Urban’s project that were developing as the crusade itself unfolded. Staying with the First Crusade, Edward Caddy offers a new perspective on representations of the institutional mechanics of the nascent crusading movement by examining how chroniclers of that initial venture described the taking and fulfilment of the crusade vow. This taps into a historiographical consensus that has seen the vow as an integral component of the crusade idea from the very start of the crusading movement. While Caddy accepts that our earliest written witnesses to Pope Urban II’s own conception of the venture did include the stipulation that participants must take and complete a vow in order to receive the promised spiritual rewards, he demonstrates that this is not borne out in the narrative histories, which allude to the vow sporadically, inconsistently and by means of a diverse linguistic framework. Thus, the Benedictine reworkings of the Gesta Francorum offer contrasting visions of Urban’s conception of the vow at Clermont, while none mention its fulfilment during the capture of Jerusalem on 15 July 1099. Likewise, though some of the interrelated family of texts that surround the Gesta Francorum do mention the crusaders discharging their vows, not all do. Caddy suggests that it is only in later reworkings, written in the context of attempts to define the crusade, that we encounter a clearer and more coherent framing of the vow in terms of an initial promise and eventual fulfilment – a trend seen not just in the Latin West, but also in the Latin East through the Chronicon of William of Tyre. As Caddy argues, this perhaps surprising reality requires that historians be mindful of the fact that the development of the crusade as an institution was a dialogic process, one that the narratives of that venture both reflected and contributed to. Connor Wilson then explores how spoil-taking and material reward were treated by medieval authors in the context of holy war. He considers how accounts of crusaders gaining looted spoils could find a purpose and function in texts designed first and foremost to detail a new form of Christian penitential warfare, one that emphasised the importance of right intent to gaining spiritual reward. Focusing on the First Crusade, Wilson situates this expedition against the backdrop of wider socio-cultural discussions of the role and importance of spoil-taking in war, arguing that authors of crusade texts could hardly ignore the reality of spoilacquisition given that the act was so well recognised and widespread by the time Urban summoned the venture in 1095. Therefore, loot-taking is a significant feature of various texts, as the writers devised creative ways to incorporate and comment upon material gain while still emphasising the religious nature of the venture. Spoils thus served to communicate idealised hierarchical structures, for instance demonstrating the responsibility leaders had for those in their following or who were worse off than them. Similarly, descriptions of spoil-acquisition provided opportunities to comment and reflect on the discipline and morality of the Christian army: crusaders could revel in spoils post-battle, but only once they had entirely 26

The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction routed the enemy and God’s victory had been assured. In sum, spoil-taking, like the vow, both spoke and contributed to wider ideals that crusade chroniclers were developing and articulating in the first half of the twelfth century. The volume then moves to the first of three contributions on Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana, that being Katy Mortimer’s narratological study of this famous text. Significantly, Mortimer considers the Historia as a whole, examining key aspects of Fulcher’s coverage of the First Crusade and the reigns of Baldwins I and II of Jerusalem to shed new light on the text’s function as a foundation narrative for the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. This is achieved through the adoption of several analytical concepts from narrative theory, such as sceneshifts, story arcs and narrative time, which serve to tease out the underlying strands of Fulcher’s authorial approach and how his agendas may have developed across the three recensions of his work. Mortimer argues that, in his account of the First Crusade, Fulcher’s theological narrative programmes sidestepped individual heroism and instead emphasised group action, with individualism mentioned almost exclusively when it undermined the crusade and thus required a return to collective action. This fed into Fulcher’s coverage of the reigns of the two Baldwins, as the focus on collective action alleviated potential criticism of Baldwin I’s failure to contribute to the siege of Jerusalem in 1099 and, in turn, enabled his reign to serve as the blueprint for ideal rule in the Holy Land. For Baldwin II’s reign, however, we see how Fulcher sought to establish legitimacy by responding to trauma, especially the king’s period of captivity in the early 1120s, through the evocation of themes embedded in his account of the First Crusade, such as unity and the marvellous. Importantly, this formed part of a wider authorial effort to situate the formation of Outremer, like the events of the crusade, in the context of sacred history. Next, Susan Edgington seeks to better understand the form of the Historia’s now-lost 1106 recension, here called the ‘first’ recension. She does so by comparing Fulcher’s last, or ‘third’, recension (which ends around the time of the author’s death in 1127) with two texts known to have used the earliest version: the Gesta Francorum Ierusalem expugnantium, a product of early twelfth-century Flanders that is commonly (but probably apocryphally) attributed to ‘Bartolf of Nangis’, and the Dei gesta per Francos of Guibert, abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy in northeastern France. Homing in on the period after the battle of Ascalon in August 1099, Edgington carefully and comparatively examines these three texts’ discussions of the accession and coronation of Baldwin I, the designs and actions of Daibert of Pisa (who became patriarch of Jerusalem) and the failed miracle of the Holy Fire at Easter 1101. This analysis provides further important insights into Fulcher’s editorial process and his attempts to first construct, and then protect, the reputation of the burgeoning Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Just as significantly, though, this chapter analyses the reception of the Historia by two contemporary western authors, with ‘Bartolf’ placing a strong emphasis on preserving Fulcher’s words and Guibert adopting a more eclectic style that focused on incorporating 27

Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer new information as he discovered it, even if it contradicted earlier parts of his work. This demonstrates the real hunger for information on crusade and settlement in the early twelfth-century Latin West, as well as the ways in which authors interpreted and utilised such information for their own authorial agendas. Continuing with the theme of reception, Stephen Spencer’s chapter explores the Liber revelationum of Peter of Cornwall and its selective, but significant, use of Fulcher’s Historia. It does so by examining the numerous variant readings found in the Liber that correspond with a particular version of Fulcher’s text preserved in an unexplored twelfth-century manuscript – one created at the Benedictine abbey of St Augustine, Canterbury – and thus casts light on the reception of the Historia Hierosolymitana c. 1200 at Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate, where Peter was prior. Here, Spencer hypothesises that the Canterbury manuscript could reflect a further, previously unrecognised stage in Fulcher’s own editorial process. More concretely, however, he argues that Peter and his scribes incorporated chapters from the Historia dealing with miraculous occurrences, but that this was not a passive process. Rather, the appropriation and repurposing of Fulcher’s crusade chronicle served a specific end: to contribute towards Peter’s wider literary goal of proving the existence of God, angels and life after death. This can be seen through several alterations the Liber makes to its base text, including the addition of unique chapter headings and short contextual sentences, as well as the omission of substantial parts of the corresponding chapters in Fulcher’s Historia. By analysing these editorial processes, this chapter not only exposes new evidence for the reception of Fulcher’s Historia, and by extension the level of medieval English interest in crusading history, but also demonstrates how crusade narratives could be repackaged to perform new purposes, and the advantages to be had in turning to source types that modern historians of the crusades have traditionally bypassed. Following on from these analyses of Fulcher are three chapters on another author situated in the Latin East: William of Tyre. Andrew Buck’s chapter focuses on two largely neglected aspects of William’s Chronicon – his interaction with crusading chansons de geste and use of oral modes of storytelling. Taking as a case study the betrayal of Antioch during the First Crusade by the tower guard Firuz, it is argued that, contrary to previous historiographical consensus, William was not only distinctly aware of the traditions that eventually crystallised into the Chanson d’Antioche, he also deployed the epic mode when relating the crusade’s story in order to emulate the methods of group storytelling – the so-called ‘camp-fire cultures’ – that fed into history creation surrounding that initial venture. Examining both the Chronicon’s content and the author’s use of certain type-scenes, it is argued that William’s text shares clear similarities with the Antioche in how the relationship between Firuz and the crusade leader Bohemond of Taranto developed, the deal that eventually led the former to surrender Antioch to the latter and the events that surrounded the city’s capture. Furthermore, William’s use of direct speech, narratorial interjection, emotion, humour, gesture and ritual all speak to an author who recognised the value of incorporating aural cues that 28

The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction would have allowed for performance. This, in turn, would have served to better transmit, and legitimise, the story of Antioch’s capture to his audiences. As such, Buck situates William’s account of the First Crusade, largely overlooked in modern scholarship, within the wider flourishing of history creation sparked by the First Crusade and the genre-spanning historiographical developments underway in twelfth-century Latin Christendom. This, it is argued, emphasises the need for scholars to better situate the Latin East’s literary-historical traditions outside of its own geographical sphere. Ivo Wolsing then offers a contribution to recent work on the composition and purpose of William’s text. He contends that William’s creation of a coherent, single narrative, rather than a looser collection of writings, should be dated to the early 1180s, thereby situating the text more firmly in the period when the kingdom of Jerusalem’s political future was on a knife-edge (thanks to disputes over the regency of King Baldwin IV) and the archbishop’s own career was waning. Wolsing thus highlights the need to read the text within the specific context of Jerusalem’s political circumstances at this time, for this casts fresh and significant light on William’s authorial and editorial processes. In particular, Wolsing notes that William sought to divert any sense of blame for the kingdom’s deteriorating fortunes away from his two most important patrons, King Amalric of Jerusalem and Count Raymond III of Tripoli, by instead casting doubt over the behaviour of the military orders and those advisers who unduly influenced the author’s favoured leaders. Wolsing also argues that William’s depiction of the downfall of the Fāṭimid Caliphate at the hands of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn in the 1160s acts as something of a mirror for the text’s Jerusalemite audience. Indeed, its emphasis on the need for a strong regent in times of monarchical crisis, albeit with the caveat that a regent who lacked close dynastic ties to the ruling family should not be given overreaching powers, would have had particular resonance in the kingdom. This chapter thus recognises both the ways in which William’s account was shaped by crisis and changing political circumstances and the imperative for William to offer meaning to audiences in the Latin East and the Latin West. It must, therefore, be read accordingly. Katherine Lewis further explores the influence of the fraught political climate of the kingdom of Jerusalem in the 1170s and 1180s on William’s work by considering how issues such as King Baldwin IV’s leprosy, and thus his inability to father children, affected the author’s approach to describing the masculinity of the Holy City’s rulers. Situating her methodology against wider advances in the field that emphasise close textual readings of social and cultural markers, as well as considerations of William’s attitudes towards gender, Lewis looks to trace the ways that Jerusalem’s royal men were described acting as men. Lewis takes as a case study the reign of King Baldwin III, chosen not just because it is one of the longest to be detailed in the Chronicon but also because, due to his power dispute with his mother, Queen Melisende, Baldwin’s masculine attributes were debated by contemporaries, including William. Lewis examines how William 29

Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer charted Baldwin’s rise from inauspicious beginnings, when the young king had to fight for independence from his mother and then establish his adulthood through increased personal continence, through to his presentation as the ideal, masculine ruler. Baldwin did this, moreover, by not only encapsulating the masculine physicality of a king, but also by performing his manhood through his defence of the realm. As Lewis demonstrates, William thus used masculine character traits to trace a dynastic line from Jerusalem’s first ruler, Godfrey of Bouillon, to King Amalric, taking in Queen Melisende along the way. In doing so, William provided a mirror onto, and a lesson for, the kingdom’s ruling elites who, in the 1180s, had left the Holy City facing disaster through their inadequacies. In short, we see once more how history could serve as a vital didactic tool for influencing, or at least attempting to influence, lived behaviour, and how the idealised heroes of crusading and settlement could sit at the very heart of this. Following on from this and tying in with several chapters that consider genre, Katrine Funding Højgaard offers a contribution on literary responses to the fall of Jerusalem to the Sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn in October 1187. More specifically, she situates literary discussions of the Holy City’s loss within the long history of city laments – a genre that began in ancient Mesopotamia but was then crystallised, influentially so for western Christian writers, through the Old Testament. As a result of this process, the city lament became defined by certain genre tropes and structural techniques, including divine abandonment, contrasting fortunes, assignment of responsibility and the weeping goddess (or mother). By exploring the presence of these and other tropes in the works of German chroniclers like Arnold of Lübeck and Otto of St Blasien, English historians such as Roger of Howden and William of Newburgh and other narrative accounts, including the Danish Historia de profectione Danorum in Hierosolymam, Funding Højgaard’s broad-ranging study considers the nature of the response to the events of 1187 in western European historical writing. It is argued that Jerusalem’s fall retrospectively marked a moment of historical discontinuity, but also that it cannot be understood as an isolated event; rather, both the biblical and historical Jerusalem, along with the city lament genre, provided a framework for understanding the Holy City’s loss and a template through which to mourn. The chapter also offers insights into the interplay between emotions and memory, especially the role of language in creating a common narrative that conveys a sense of mutual grief. In short, the city lament genre helped to create an emotional mnemonic community. What is particularly interesting here is that those expressing sadness – those contributing to the formation of the emotional mnemonic community – were themselves geographically distant from the place and events they described. Staying with responses to the events of 1187, Helen Nicholson discusses the text known as Itinerarium peregrinorum 1 (IP1), composed within the crusader camp outside Acre as the Latin forces of the Third Crusade awaited the arrival of the kings of England and France in late 1190/early 1191. Considering further the idea of form, Nicholson focuses not so much on what IP1 says, but rather on 30

The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction what it does not say – exploring the ways in which textual silences might be read as evidence for the preoccupations of authors and their audiences. Though IP1 is considered a generally reliable source, it omits several events mentioned by other contemporary commentators, including the coronation of Queen Sybil and King Guy as rulers of Jerusalem, Sybil’s role in the defence of Ascalon and Balian of Ibelin’s contribution to the defence of Jerusalem. The text also alludes to greater contact between Sybil and her brother-in-law, Conrad of Montferrat, who led the defence of Tyre, than other sources admit. Collectively, these features suggest that IP1 is a coherent and carefully-crafted narrative, one composed during a period when political intrigue was at its height. Indeed, the author (or authors) wrote at a critical point in the Third Crusade, with the siege of Acre in progress, the western kings absent and the conflict over the throne of Jerusalem that emerged between King Guy and Conrad of Montferrat reaching its peak. IP1 thus offers a crucial insight into an author working in near-real time – an author who was largely unable to draw upon the benefit of hindsight and instead deployed silence as a narrative device in the hope of projecting an image of future success and hurrying Richard I to the fray. Returning to the Latin East, Beth Spacey then draws our attention to the Historia orientalis of Jacques de Vitry, composed during the author’s tenure as bishop of Acre in the 1210s and 1220s. This chapter considers how Jacques’ descriptions of the biblical landscapes of the Levant served as touchstones inviting Latin Christians to reflect and act on the recent loss of the physical spaces of the Holy Land. Not only did Jacques provide detailed descriptions of the region’s rivers, lakes, seas, mountains, deserts, flora and fauna, he also situated discussions of them within a continuum of sacred history and as part of a wider commentary on the Frankish settlers’ worthiness to rule. Jacques was desperate to convey the serious implications for Christendom of the loss of the land and waterscapes of ‘the East’, which became symbols of divine retribution against an undeserving people. Yet, these descriptions spoke not just to settler communities, but also to the western audiences Jacques hoped to inspire to crusade, and so his text is imbued with a narrative thread that emphasised the redemptive power of the region: a paradise on earth. In short, Spacey reveals the challenges that the loss of Frankish territories after 1187 posed to historical writers and the innovative methods by which an author as skilled as Jacques de Vitry met those challenges in pursuit of didactic instruction. Moving further into the thirteenth century, Mark McCabe discusses how masculinity was embodied and enacted on crusade, as seen through the Vie de Saint Louis of John of Joinville. Composed in the years following the Seventh Crusade, a venture led by King Louis IX of France that ended in disaster on the banks of the Nile, Joinville’s Vie de Saint Louis was the first crusade narrative in which a participant offered a consistent first-person viewpoint and has long been recognised as a vital repository of information for those seeking to gauge the mindset of a crusader. As McCabe demonstrates, this text cannot be dismissed as 31

Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer a mere hagiographical account of St Louis, for it in fact serves as direct evidence of how a high-status lay crusader perceived himself, or at least how he wished for himself to be perceived. In other words, in refining over many years his stories of military prowess, the horrors of war (especially captivity), the importance of the honour-shame paradigm and the correct nature of homosocial relationships among soldiers, Joinville transmitted his conception of how an elite male crusader should think and behave. In exploring these aspects of Joinville’s work, McCabe demonstrates that the images of masculinity that recur throughout the Vie are valuable not just for the insights they provide into the practice of crusading, but, more importantly in the context of this volume, for further revealing the part played by crusade narrative in constructing and conveying ideals that could guide the lived behaviour of elite men. In the volume’s final chapter, Peter Edbury delves further into the issue of communication between the Latin East and Latin West, this time through an examination of the literary cultures of Latin-held Acre in the final six decades of its existence. Edbury focuses here on the transmission of the Old French Continuations of William of Tyre, the so-called Annales de Terre Sainte and the wider flourishing of historical writing and manuscript production that occurred in this period. He demonstrates that a local Frankish interest in classical and epic traditions imported from the Latin West, such as the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César and the Arthurian legends, sat alongside and in dialogue with histories of the crusader states. Thus, the Annales de Terre Sainte, a series of anonymous thirteenth-century compilations produced by clerics in Acre that share similarities up to the 1250s but then diverge according to compilatory interest, preserve much older annalistic traditions found in the Latin East that were tied to specific institutions, such as the Holy Sepulchre. Likewise, Edbury reveals how the Acre-produced versions of the Old French Continuations – the ‘ColbertFontainebleau’ and ‘Lyon’ variants of a text most commonly known as Eracles and another Continuation called the Chronique d’Ernoul – all diverge from recensions produced in France (having been adapted from earlier texts transmitted there from the Latin East). This transferral back from the Latin West, then, was met with a desire to significantly adapt the source material to better suit the needs of a local audience, particularly the local baronial clique. This chapter thus captures the powerful interest that Frankish communities, particularly those in Acre, had in preserving the history of Outremer, but also how easily textual and literary traditions passed between the Latin East and Latin West, even to the very end of the crusader presence in the Levant. Therefore, the fifteen chapters assembled here all offer new perspectives on the ways in which the crusades and the crusader states were conceptualised, written about and remembered between c. 1100 and c. 1300, while simultaneously bringing into sharper focus the myriad intersections between two geographic areas and settings for the creation of historical writing – the Latin East and Latin West – which are often treated separately. Collectively, the chapters that follow 32

The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction encourage us to question several distinctions and assumptions that have crept into modern scholarship: to recognise that the processes of writing about the crusades and the crusader states in the Middle Ages were analogous, perhaps even indistinguishable; that history-writing connected the Latin West and Latin East, with information, stories and texts flowing from one region to the other (and sometimes back again); and that it is both fruitful and necessary to treat ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ Latinate historiography as part of a single, complex tradition that could exhibit signs of uniformity but also develop differently. It is only by doing so that historians can truly gauge the extent to which the crusading movement and the Frankish settlements of the eastern Mediterranean informed and perhaps even reshaped the literary cultures of Latin Christendom.

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1

History-Writing and Remembrance in Crusade Letters1 Thomas W. Smith

The epistolary form, that is a text that follows the style of a letter, was central to the creation, transmission and reception of history-writing on the crusades in medieval Europe. Indeed, letter-like narratives emerging from crusading expeditions proved vital to the facilitation of long-term remembrance of these ventures. New research is revealing that the letters sent to audiences in the Latin West from the crusader armies in the East, which often transmit sections of crusade narrative wrapped in epistolary framing, were subject to similar literary impulses that drove the outpouring of longer-form history-writing and textual remembrance across the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They should not, therefore, be taken automatically as trustworthy eyewitness reportage, but must instead be treated with a critical eye towards both their authenticity and how their texts are woven from, and into, the fabric of other contemporary history-writing – something that Simon Parsons has demonstrated convincingly.2 I have addressed elsewhere the importance of returning to the manuscripts of letters and other crusade sources, and in this essay I want to approach the epistolary output of I am obliged to the editors for the invitation to contribute this chapter to the book and for their editorial work. I am grateful for honorary research fellowships at Oxford Brookes University, Royal Holloway, University of London, and the University of Kent, which allowed me access to electronic resources necessary to write this essay, and to Susan Edgington, who kindly supplied me with copies of her publications on the Lisbon letter. My thanks to the audience of the conference Understanding the Sources for the Crusades: New Approaches, held online between 22 and 23 January 2022, where I presented an earlier version of this paper, for their suggestions on this research. In particular, I am indebted to Katy Mortimer for helpful discussion on a number of the sources for the Second Crusade. 2 S. T. Parsons, ‘The Letters of Stephen of Blois Reconsidered’, Crusades 17 (2018), 1–29. See also T. W. Smith, ‘First Crusade Letters and Medieval Monastic Scribal Cultures’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 71 (2020), 484–501; T. W. Smith, ‘Framing the Narrative of the First Crusade: The Letter Given at Laodicea in September 1099’, Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture 5:2 (2019), 17–33; N. L. Paul, ‘A Warlord’s Wisdom: Literacy and Propaganda at the Time of the First Crusade’, Speculum 85 (2010), 534–66 (at 539–41, 544, 547–50, 554–6). At present, I am completing a monograph on The Epistolary Culture of the First Crusade, forthcoming in the Crusading in Context series with the Boydell Press. 1

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History-Writing and Remembrance in Crusade Letters the crusading movement from a different angle.3 Drawing upon letters stemming from crusading campaigns in the Holy Land, with the main focus falling on the First, Second and Fifth Crusades, this essay analyses two interconnected aspects of the epistolary culture of the crusading movement: historical writing and remembrance. It contributes to the scholarship on medieval epistolography and the crusades in the following ways. First, it emphasises the blurring of the boundaries between the genres of crusade letter-writing and the creation of longer-form historical narratives. Second, it demonstrates the dynamic versatility, porous borders and malleability of letter texts as vehicles for history-writing and remembrance. Third, it sheds light on how written correspondence helped to forge and maintain the ecclesiastical-political communities of writers and receivers of crusade letters, and, by extension, how these documents could act as touchstones for communal, spiritual remembrance.

History-Writing Although crusade letters had a sense of immediacy as news media, the information they contained also took the form of history-writing.4 There is extensive evidence that the senders and receivers of crusade epistles conceived of them as history-writing in their own right. The so-called ‘Laodicea letter’ from the end of the First Crusade, for example, which related the events of the expedition and its ultimate success in capturing Jerusalem, should be considered the first surviving written history of the entire campaign in Outremer, as I have argued elsewhere.5 Many campaign letters likewise wrap a core of narrative history in an epistolary framing, consisting of apparently personal communication and pleas for remembrance of veteran and deceased crusaders. The two letters that Stephen of Blois T. W. Smith, ‘New Manuscript Witnesses to the Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, the Historia Ierosolimitana of Albert of Aachen, and the Historia Hierosolymitana of Fulcher of Chartres: Preliminary Observations’, in Chronicle, Crusade, and the Latin East: Essays in Honour of Susan B. Edgington, ed. A. D. Buck and T. W. Smith (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 35–50; Smith, ‘First Crusade Letters’; T. W. Smith, ‘Scribal Crusading: Three New Manuscript Witnesses to the Regional Reception and Transmission of First Crusade Letters’, Traditio 72 (2017), 133–69; T. W. Smith, ‘The First Crusade Letter Written at Laodicea in 1099: Two Previously Unpublished Versions from Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 23390 and 28195’, Crusades 15 (2016), 1–25; T. W. Smith, ‘Oliver of Cologne’s Historia Damiatina: A New Manuscript Witness in Dublin, Trinity College Library MS 496’, Hermathena 194 (2013), 37–68. 4 On medieval news in a crusading context, see H. Birkett, ‘News in the Middle Ages: News, Communications, and the Launch of the Third Crusade in 1187–1188’, Viator 49:3 (2018), 23–61. Dr Helen Birkett (University of Exeter) is currently leading a research network on medieval news, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, which will result in a volume on the topic. 5 Smith, ‘Framing the Narrative of the First Crusade’, esp. p. 17; Kb, pp. 167–74. 3

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Thomas W. Smith sent from the First Crusade to his wife, Adela, for instance, demonstrate clear shifts in register between the epistolary form and what might be distinguished as history-writing.6 Stephen’s second letter, dated 29 March 1098, opens with passages of personal communication relating that he was in good health, had accumulated wealth and that the army had elected him as its leader.7 Stephen and his chaplain Alexander, who is named as the scribe later in the text, then effected the transition to a narrative of the events of the crusade with the bridging sentence: ‘You have heard how we had a considerable battle with the treacherous Turks after capturing the city of Nicaea and how with God’s aid we defeated them’.8 The first letter that Anselm of Ribemont sent to Archbishop Manasses of Reims from the crusade in late November 1097 displays a similar transition to crusade narrative after opening with personal communication. After acknowledging his subordinate relationship to the archbishop, Anselm requested that Manasses toil for peace at home and pray for the crusaders, both alive and dead.9 There follows a narrative history introduced by the following transition, which loops back to Anselm’s intention, expressed in the opening sentence, to keep Manasses informed on the progress of the campaign: ‘But let us put these matters aside and return to what we promised’.10 Anselm’s narrative displays a concern to chart the course of the crusade against chronological markers; the text is carefully punctuated with the date on which each action occurred, in a manner reminiscent of contemporary chronicles.11 ‘The use of chronology to structure the narrative’, Chris Given-Wilson writes, ‘continued throughout the Middle Ages to be a defining factor of many chronicles’, and here we see it at play in Anselm’s letter – a miniature chronicle in epistolary form.12 Moving to the Fifth Crusade, Jacques de Vitry’s seven letters sent from this expedition deliver a detailed serialised account of the venture that appear to be the result of careful planning. They feature texts characterised by his personal observations and experiences as he made his way to the Latin East (nos. 1, 2), as well as, after his arrival at the front, documents that offer a more detached

Parsons, ‘Letters of Stephen of Blois’, p. 14. Parsons, ‘Letters of Stephen of Blois’, p. 27; Letters from the East: Crusaders, Pilgrims and Settlers in the 12th–13th Centuries, trans. M. Barber and K. Bate (Farnham, 2010) (henceforth Letters), p. 22. 8 Letters, p. 22; Parsons, ‘Letters of Stephen of Blois’, p. 27: ‘Satis audisti quia, post captam Niceam civitatem, non modicam pugnam cum perfidis Turcis habuimus, et eos, Domino Deo subveniente devicimus’. 9 Kb, p. 144; Letters, p. 19. 10 Letters, p. 19; Kb, p. 144: ‘His autem omissis ad promissa redeamus’. 11 Kb, pp. 144–5; Letters, pp. 19–20. 12 C. Given-Wilson, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (London, 2004), p. xix. 6 7

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History-Writing and Remembrance in Crusade Letters perspective better suited to the mode of history-writing (nos. 3–7).13 As has been observed elsewhere, Jacques’ third letter is different in content, length and style to the other letters of his collection. It was probably not written by him, but by a third party who had been tasked with replacing a lost original.14 The question mark that hangs over the authorship of this epistle in fact is very useful for our purposes here, since the supposed re-writer of the letter appears to have sought to distil the essence of the lost original, and, in so doing, created a letter that is purely historical in focus, without any of the personal epistolary framing after the protocol that one might expect to have existed in the exemplar. Instead, the letter simply launches into narrative with an opening sentence that is almost annalistic in character: ‘May you know that in the year 1217 from the incarnation of Christ …’.15 These examples demonstrate that contemporaries wrote and received letters as history-writing and appear to have distinguished between that and the epistolary framing in which it was wrapped and as the format dictated. Contemporary conceptions of crusade letters also blurred the lines between the epistolary form and that of longer-form narratives. The lengthy account of the conquest of Lisbon during the Second Crusade in 1147, De expugnatione Lyxbonensi, is framed as a letter through the protocol that opens the text: ‘To Osbert of Bawdsey, R., greeting’.16 It is thought that an original letter provided much of the text and that a third party interpolated additional material, working it up into a longer narrative.17 Similarly, Odo of Deuil’s narrative of King Louis VII’s expedition on the Second Crusade is prefaced by a letter to his superior, Abbot Suger of St Denis.18 Odo claims to have written his letter while he was ‘still engaged in the hardships of the journey’ and with the intention of furnishing Suger with details about Louis’ deeds during the expedition.19 His letter functions as an apologia to his chronicle and illustrates the close connection between letterwriting and history-writing about the crusades. In fact, Caron Cioffi has argued that an epistolary style, characterised by repeated use of rhythmic cursus, can be Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de la cinquième croisade, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, trans. [into French] G. Duchet-Suchaux (Turnhout, 1998). 14 Serta Mediaevalia: Textus varii saeculorum x–xiii in unum collecti, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Turnhout, 2000), pp. 526–30; Letters, pp. 108–9. 15 Letters, p. 109; Jacques de Vitry, Lettres, p. 80: ‘Noveritis quod anno domini ab incarnatione MCCXVII …’. 16 De expugnatione Lyxbonensi: The Conquest of Lisbon, ed. C. W. David, new edn (New York, 2001), pp. 52–3: ‘Osberto de Baldreseia R., salutem’. 17 J. Wilson, ‘Enigma of the De expugnatione Lyxbonensi’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 9 (2017), 99–129 (at 105). 18 Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem: The Journey of Louis VII to the East, ed. and trans. V. G. Berry (New York, 1948), pp. 2–5. I am grateful to Katy Mortimer for her advice on this point. 19 Odo of Deuil, De profectione, pp. 2–3: ‘nam detentus adhuc in agone itineris’. See pp. 4–5 for Odo’s desire to furnish Sugar with details about the journey. 13

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Thomas W. Smith detected throughout Odo’s account, further exemplifying the blurred boundaries between epistola and historia.20 The chronicle of the Fifth Crusade composed by Oliver of Cologne, the so-called Historia Damiatina, supplies a useful comparator to De expugnatione Lyxbonensi, since it traces its origins to two letters that Oliver despatched to the Latin West while on crusade in Outremer.21 The first missive recounted events up to the capture of Damietta’s chain tower by the Christians (24 August 1218) – the occasion that appears to have prompted Oliver to record the course of the crusade in written form.22 The fall of the city of Damietta to the crusaders on 5 November 1219 supplied the impetus for Oliver’s second letter, which extended the history from the point where his first epistle finished.23 In response to the arrival of the second epistle in Europe, contemporaries repackaged the two texts, piecing them together as one and removing the protocol from the second and appending its text to that of the first; the end result, a longer narrative presented as a single long letter, resembles in this sense De expugnatione Lyxbonensi.24 While these multiple versions of his narrative were in circulation, Oliver continued working on the text, making additions and revisions both in the Latin East and upon his return to the West. By the time of its completion in the third and final redaction, the Historia had shed its epistolary cloaking entirely and taken on the form of a chronicle.25 This is an example of the ‘fast historiography’ that emerged in the age of the crusades according to Lars Boje Mortensen, and which Henry Bainton has identified particularly with the format of the crusade newsletter.26 This evidence demonstrates that fluid boundaries existed between epistolae and historiae, and that, in the former, contemporaries identified cores of history-writing whose interest transcended the initial addressees of letters, and which could be moulded into more complete historiae. It also underscores Bainton’s observation that the ‘shared entanglement with narrative’ at the heart of letters and history-writing in this period often makes it difficult to distinguish

20 21 22 23 24 25

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C. A. Cioffi, ‘The Epistolary Style of Odo of Deuil in his “De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem”’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 23 (1988), 76–81. Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, späteren Bischofs von Paderborn und Kardinal-Bischofs von S. Sabina, Oliverus, ed. H. Hoogeweg (Tübingen, 1894), p. lviii. Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, p. cxl. Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, pp. cxl–cxli. Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, p. clxi. Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, pp. clvi–clvii. On the question marks hanging over the transmission of the later redactions, see Smith, ‘Oliver of Cologne’s Historia Damiatina’, pp. 45–6. L. B. Mortensen, ‘Comparing and Connecting: The Rise of Fast Historiography in Latin and Vernacular (12th–13th Cent.)’, Medieval Worlds 1 (2015), 25–39; H. Bainton, History and the Written Word: Documents, Literacy, and Language in the Age of the Angevins (Philadelphia, PA, 2020), p. 20.

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History-Writing and Remembrance in Crusade Letters one from the other.27 In other words, crusade letters were history-writing in their own right. The contemporary recognition of epistles from crusades as history-writing meant that it was a straightforward prospect for scribes to use them as sources to write longer histories. The most obvious manifestation of this is the verbatim interpolation of letters into chronicles, a process seen so frequently that it makes epistles, in comparison to charters, treaties and legislation, the most common documentary type to be reproduced in high medieval history-writing.28 This is such that a pair of examples will suffice to demonstrate this point. The first is the Annales Disibodenbergenses, compiled in the mid-twelfth century, which preserve the letter given by the leadership of the First Crusade at Laodicea in September 1099. This, as noted above, contains the first surviving written narrative of the campaign in the East.29 The second is Roger of Howden who, writing at the end of the twelfth century, copied into his works several letters sent from the East during the Third Crusade, including two sent by Richard I of England from Jaffa on 1 October 1191 that recounted recent events to both his vassals and the abbot of Clairvaux respectively.30 Continuing with this theme, James Kane has drawn attention to the preponderance of letters found in the early thirteenth-century Latin Continuation of William of Tyre, where the anonymous continuator made extensive use of epistles in constructing its text: half of book 2 is made up of nine letters relating the disastrous situation in the Latin East following the battle of Ḥattīn.31 The ‘selfsufficiency’ of such letters, as Bainton terms it, meant that chroniclers needed to do very little work to mould them into their own history-writing; they could simply ‘lay them down like narrative building blocks and combine them with narratives they had composed themselves’.32 Moreover, in her forensic analysis of the so-called ‘Lisbon letter’, which recounts the siege of that city during the Second Crusade in 1147, Susan Edgington has revealed how the crusading priest Winand sent an original letter to Archbishop Arnold I of Cologne, the text of which was subsequently taken up ‘by [the priest] Arnulf for his letter to Bishop Milo of Thérouanne and by [the priest] Duodechin [of Lahnstein] as the basis for his longer letter to Abbot Cuno of Disibodenberg. This lost version was also used in the Cologne annals’.33 As Edgington notes, there may even have been

27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Bainton, History and the Written Word, pp. 18–19. Bainton, History and the Written Word, pp. 18–19. ‘Annales Sancti Disibodi’, ed. G. Waitz, in MGH SS 17 (Hanover, 1861), 17–18. Howden, Chronica, III, 129–30, 130–3. J. H. Kane, ‘Between Parson and Poet: A Re-examination of the Latin Continuation of William of Tyre’, Journal of Medieval History 44 (2018), 56–82 (at 58, 66). Bainton, History and the Written Word, p. 21. S. B. Edgington, ‘The Lisbon Letter of the Second Crusade’, Historical Research 69 (1996), 328–39 (at 334).

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Thomas W. Smith other reworked versions of the letter, now lost.34 The Lisbon letter thus demonstrates the ways that contemporaries utilised and propagated historical writing in epistolary form, and also how one letter text could spawn multiple traditions as a form of ‘fast historiography’. Letters also enjoyed wider reception in manuscript traditions when attached to longer-form narratives. The invented letters of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos to Count Robert I of Flanders and of Patriarch Symeon of Jerusalem to the Latin West circulated as appendices to the Historia Iherosolimitana of Robert the Monk in one-third of the nearly one hundred surviving manuscripts.35 These documents served not only to gather together related texts and to extend Robert’s Historia, but also, as Carol Sweetenham observes, to incite audiences to crusading activity.36 Scribes could also use the letter texts in more selective ways, and scholars have identified intertextualities between crusade epistles and longer narratives where scribes silently used one to infuse the other.37 In his analysis of the letters of Stephen of Blois, Parsons identifies intertextualities with the Gesta Francorum, the Gesta Francorum Ierusalem expugnantium, the Historia of Fulcher of Chartres and the Liber of Raymond of Aguilers.38 It is not always clear, however, in which direction this relationship of dependence runs. Traditional approaches that assume the authenticity of the letters insist that they infused the chronicles, but recent research that problematises the processes by which crusade letters were created suggests that sometimes it was the other way around – that is, scribes also used the texts from chronicle narratives in order to invent or adapt letters.39 In high medieval history-writing, crusade letters therefore stood as ready-made modular elements of narrative to be repeated and reconstituted as scribes saw fit. But the

34

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36 37

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S. B. Edgington, ‘The Capture of Lisbon: Premeditated or Opportunistic?’, in The Second Crusade: Holy War on the Periphery of Latin Christendom, ed. J. T. Roche and J. M. Jensen (Turnhout, 2015), pp. 257–72 (at 266). Kb, pp. 129–36, 146–9, respectively. I argue in my forthcoming book, The Epistolary Culture of the First Crusade, that Symeon’s letter is also an invention. On the manuscript transmission of the letters, see Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade: Historia Iherosolimitana, trans. C. Sweetenham (Aldershot, 2005), p. 8. Kempf and Bull counted eighty-four surviving manuscripts of Robert’s Historia: RM, p. xlii. Kraft counted ninety-four, including seven manuscripts known to have been lost (verschollene Manuskripte): F. Kraft, Heinrich Steinhöwels Verdeutschung der Historia Hierosolymitana des Robertus Monachus: Eine literarische Untersuchung (Strasbourg, 1905), pp. 153–64. Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade, trans. Sweetenham, p. 6. See, for example, Hagenmeyer’s commentary throughout Kb, especially pp. 185–432; J. Rubenstein, ‘What is the Gesta Francorum, and who was Peter Tudebode?’, Revue Mabillon n.s. 16 (2005), 179–204 (at 203). Parsons, ‘Letters of Stephen of Blois’, pp. 11–16. Parsons, ‘Letters of Stephen of Blois’; Smith, ‘First Crusade Letters’.

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History-Writing and Remembrance in Crusade Letters epistolary form also represented an attractive target genre for those desirous of crafting short-form histories of crusading from longer extant texts.

Remembrance It was but a short step from historical writing to the act of remembrance, which crusade letter texts sought to inspire and facilitate.40 Of the memorial culture of the crusading movement, Megan Cassidy-Welch states that it was inherently social, driven by the particular mores of different communities to communicate and commemorate the crusade. One of the multiplicity of media through which they achieved this, as she identifies, was letters.41 If ‘the crusades as a phenomenon were understood within a dialectical framework that involved those who went on crusade and those who remained at home’, as she and Anne E. Lester suggest, then arguably campaign letters from the crusading front supply some of its most direct and significant examples.42 As part of the information that such documents transmitted to audiences back in the Latin West, authors foregrounded news of the deaths of prominent crusaders, accompanied by appeals for their remembrance through prayer. The aforementioned Anselm of Ribemont requested the following of Archbishop Manasses of Reims in the first of his missives from the First Crusade: I beseech you and the canons of the church of the Holy Mother at Reims, my fathers and lords, that you remember us, not only me and the others who continue to strive in the service of God, but also those of the army of the Lord who have fallen in combat or died in peace.43

N. L. Paul and S. Yeager, ‘Introduction: Crusading and the Work of Memory, Past and Present’, in Remembering the Crusades: Myth, Image, and Identity, ed. N. L. Paul and S. Yeager (Baltimore, MD, 2012), pp. 1–25 (at 1). In addition to the essays in the same collection, on remembrance and the crusading movement, see M. Cassidy-Welch, War and Memory at the Time of the Fifth Crusade (University Park, PA, 2019); Crusades and Memory: Rethinking Past and Present, ed. M. Cassidy Welch and A. E. Lester (Abingdon, 2015); Remembering the Crusades and Crusading, ed. M. Cassidy-Welch (Abingdon, 2017); N. L. Paul, To Follow in their Footsteps: The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2012). 41 M. Cassidy-Welch, ‘Remembering in the Time of the Crusades: Concepts and Practices’, in Remembering the Crusades and Crusading, ed. Cassidy-Welch, pp. 3–10 (at 4). 42 M. Cassidy-Welch and A. E. Lester, ‘Memory and Interpretation: New Approaches to the Study of the Crusades’, in Crusades and Memory: Rethinking Past and Present, ed. Cassidy Welch and Lester, pp. 1–12 (at 7). 43 Translation lightly adapted from Letters, p. 19; Kb, p. 144: ‘Precor etiam uos et canonicos sanctae matris ecclesiae Remensis, patres et dominos meos, ut memores nostri sitis, nec solummodo mei uel eorum, qui in seruitio Dei adhuc desudant, sed et illorum, qui de exercitu Domini armis corruerunt aut in pace quieuerunt’. 40

41

Thomas W. Smith Nicholas Paul highlights Anselm’s letter as the first recorded evidence of ‘concerns about death, distance, and memory’ in crusader sources.44 Fear of not being remembered can be traced in the campaign letters, but it also appears in the narratives penned after the combat had finished, such as in the texts of Peter Tudebode and Fulcher of Chartres.45 Such concern that crusaders be remembered by others underscores the social nature of remembrance. As social correspondence, crusade epistles fashioned both information networks and the communal identities of writers of news and the receivers who, so the authors of letters hoped, would be drawn together with them in ongoing acts of collective remembrance. The social contacts invoked by crusader epistles were personal, spiritual connections that were thought to defy geographical distance. As Jacques de Vitry wrote in his letter of 1216/17 to the Parisian masters and Ligarde of St Trond: ‘Minds joined by the Holy Spirit cannot be separated by geographical distance’.46 Epistolary communication closed the physical gap, and this opening sentence from Jacques’ letter invited recipients to make a spiritual, almost telepathic, connection with him while he was on crusade. It is important to note here that these social acts of remembrance were not simply unidirectional, that is, only those in the Latin West remembering those of their co-religionists in the East, even if the preponderance of evidence is skewed in favour of such an understanding. In the same letter, Jacques, deploying a direct quotation from Romans 1.9, reassured his addressees ‘that without ceasing I make a commemoration of you’.47 This is perhaps evidence that the act of remembrance brought with it a social expectation of a certain amount of reciprocity. While kin were remembering absent crusaders, those crusaders appear also to have been engaging in their own acts of remembrance of life back in Europe – encapsulated, in fact, by the very act of writing a letter home. Although some crusade letters bear relatively limited lists of recipients in their inscriptio clauses, all the surviving documents studied here are preserved exactly because wider communities of receivers of news were expected to consume and disseminate them. In his second letter to Manasses, from July 1098, Anselm of Ribemont asked the archbishop to: ‘Please pass on the news to the others so that you may all likewise suffer with us and rejoice with us in

Paul, To Follow in their Footsteps, pp. 135–6 (quote at 135). Paul, To Follow in their Footsteps, pp. 136–7. 46 Letters, p. 99; Jacques de Vitry, Lettres, p. 40: ‘Mentes quas spiritus sanctus coniunxit, locorum diversitas non disiungit’. 47 Letters, p. 99 renders this as ‘that without ceasing I make mention of you always [in my prayers]’, but here I prefer the translation from the Douay-Rheims Bible: [accessed 05/01/2022]; Jacques de Vitry, Lettres, p. 40: ‘quod sine intermissione memoriam vestri facio’. 44 45

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History-Writing and Remembrance in Crusade Letters our successes’.48 Named addressees were in a privileged position to have been selected. In his letter to Abbot Wibald of Corvey from the Second Crusade, sent in autumn 1148, King Conrad III of Germany wrote that: ‘Because we know that you greatly desire to have news of us, that is, of our prosperous state, we have thought fit to announce this to you first’.49 The prestige attached to being the first to receive news from a crusading magnate, prince or king must have been high. It solidified the authority and position of the chosen addressee – think here of Stephen of Blois’ wife, Adela, ruling their lands in his absence – and this prestige and status was reinforced in the dissemination every time a letter was copied or read aloud. It was not only named addressees of epistles who accrued prestige, but also those mentioned in their main texts, who were usually prominent crusaders who had fallen during their campaigns, as mentioned above. The lists of those commemorated could be quite long. In September 1218, Jacques de Vitry wrote to his friends in the Latin West (‘dilectissimis in Christo amicis’).50 He asked them to: Pray for our dead companions, Master Walter of Tournai, archdeacon of our church, who was the instrument of the Lord for many good deeds in the city of Acre. Pray for Master Constant of Douai, dean of our church, John of Cambrai, cantor of our church, Lord Reinier who was our clerk before becoming pastor of St Michael in Acre, our servant H. and others who ministered to the Christian army with us. Pray, too, for those dead companions who departed from us in this exile and who joined the Lord in happiness, Master Thomas, chancellor of Noyon, Master Leonius, who taught theology at Acre, Master Alexander, nephew of the cardinal R[obert], John the Younger of Cambrai, nephew of our cantor, who departed to Christ after abandoning all his family and belongings to Him.51

Translation lightly adapted from Letters, p. 27; Kb, p. 157: ‘Ceteris uero per uos notificetur, ut pariter nobiscum patiamini et in prosperis nobiscum gaudeatis’. 49 Translation lightly adapted from Letters, p. 47; Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser, ed. F. Hausmann, vol. IX, MGH Diplomatum Regum et Imperatorum Germaniae (Vienna, 1969), p. 357: ‘Quod maxime de nobis te desiderare cognovimus, de prosperitate videlicet status nostri, hoc primitus tibi significare opportunum duximus’. 50 Jacques de Vitry, Lettres, p. 88. 51 Letters, p. 116; Jacques de Vitry, Lettres, pp. 104, 106: ‘Orate pro sociis nostris defunctis, scilicet pro magistro Waltero de Tornacho, archidiacono ecclesie nostre, per quem dominus in Acconensi civitate multa bona operatus est. Orate pro magistro Constantio de Duacho, decano ecclesie nostre, pro domno Iohanne de Cameracho, ecclesie nostre cantore, pro domno Reinero, quondam clerico nostro, nunc autem Sancti Michaelis in Accon pastore, pro H. serviente nostro et pro aliis in exercitu christiano nobiscum ministrantibus. Orate etiam pro sociis nostris defunctis qui, nobis in hoc exilio relictis, ad dominum feliciter transierunt, scilicet pro magistro Thoma cancellario Noviomensi, pro magistro Leonio, qui legebat de theologia in civitate Acconensi, pro magistro Alexandro, nepote magistri I[oberti] cardinalis, pro Iohanne iuniore de Cameraco, nepote cantoris 48

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Thomas W. Smith As Jacques’ list reveals, the communities of remembrance that such correspondence created across the Latin West were predominantly elite. Stephen of Blois’ first letter to Adela from 1097 records that during the siege of Nicaea: ‘We suffered some losses, but not many. Baldwin of Flanders, count of Ghent, was the only knight of renown to fall’.52 Even if letter-writers such as Anselm’s requested thoughts and prayers for all those in the army who had perished, and Jacques nodded towards his ‘servant H.’, those singled out by name were almost exclusively individuals of note, especially in letters written by secular crucesignati. ‘Individuals are listed as especially worthy of memory’, Cassidy-Welch observes, ‘not just if they died in battle or as part of the supporting army of pilgrims on crusade but if they had a relationship with the author or his audience’.53 We can thus identify in the epistolary sources something resembling a two-tier system of commemoration, where high-ranking crusaders could benefit from specific, and therefore more efficacious, prayers on their behalf, and humbler pilgrims were lumped in with the general dead. Through the evidence assembled here, we can begin to glimpse the different strands of the webs of community that crusade letters spun. These webs hung most densely around particular hubs, such as Reims, the destination for Anselm of Ribemont’s letters and a centre for history-writing inhabited by individuals such as Robert the Monk, who had access to the Gesta Francorum there (else he could not have used it as the foundation for his rewriting), and Baldric of Bourgueil (who also rewrote the Gesta), who were probably friends.54 The strands of such webs spun outwards through the connections of linking figures – such as Manasses, Robert and Baldric – and across media, from letters to chronicles, and vice versa in the case of invented epistolary narratives. The textual traditions at the heart of these networks were dynamic. Jacques de Vitry crafted variant versions of his letters for multiple named addressees, tailoring their content accordingly. He crafted, for instance, an alternate version of the letter to his friends from September 1218, cited above, and despatched it to Pope Honorius III.55 Interestingly for our purposes, in the version of the epistle sent to the curia, Jacques omitted his request for prayers for the dead.56 Could this suggest that communities of remembrance were forged nostri, cui, relictis omnibus pro Christo cum diviciis suis, migravit ad Christum’. On this passage, see Cassidy-Welch, War and Memory, p. 70. 52 Letters, p. 17; Parsons, ‘Letters of Stephen of Blois’, p. 26: ‘de nostris, quidam occisi sunt, sed vere non multi: nominativus miles nullus, nisi Flandrensis Balduinus, comes de Ganz’. 53 Cassidy-Welch, War and Memory, p. 70. See also pp. 71, 83. 54 G. Strack, ‘The Sermon of Urban II in Clermont and the Tradition of Papal Oratory’, Medieval Sermon Studies 56 (2012), 30–45 (at 36); Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade, trans. Sweetenham, p. 3; P. J. Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270 (Cambridge, MA, 1991), pp. 15–16. 55 Jacques de Vitry, Lettres, pp. 88–109. 56 Jacques de Vitry, Lettres, pp. 104, 106.

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History-Writing and Remembrance in Crusade Letters chiefly through social relationships that were approximately balanced in terms of hierarchy? In any case, we can say with certainty that Jacques’ epistolae were circulating simultaneously with variant texts among different networks. We must imagine the letter texts and the ideas and values that they carried being transmitted around Europe in multiple overlapping and cross-fertilising networks, all unified under the umbrella of an imagined single Christian community that stretched not only across geographical space, but also from the past into the future. This is another manifestation of the spiritual desires that drove donors and testators to make gifts to monastic communities in this period.57 When audiences engaged with the letters in modes of remembrance, they were making a connection with others, alive and dead, across time and space, using the epistles as touchstones. As we have seen, remembrance in crusade letters was ‘inherently dialogic’, predicated upon discourse between senders and receivers of news.58 But it also transcended the limits of those communities by virtue of being deliberately public and performative.59 This increased the efficacy of the act of remembrance by making it more widespread. Exploration of the manuscript traditions reveals that the letter texts were malleable, with porous boundaries that allowed individuals outside the direct network of the named recipients to join, and help to forge, the community of remembrance. Through the act of reading, copying, listening to, meditating and praying upon the letters, sometimes years later, scribes and audiences reanimated them as artefacts of remembrance and the names of crusaders contained therein.60 This may be thought of as a form of ‘scribal crusading’, an idea that I have advanced elsewhere.61 We can identify an example of this process in the two postscripts that were attached to the Laodicea letter once it began to circulate in the Latin West. Sparked by the narrative of the deeds of the First Crusaders contained in the document, the first postscript, which was added by a contemporary western scribe, probably around 1100, called on other observers to remember returning veterans and pay their debts: ‘we pray and beseech you not to forget your brothers who are returning home to you; by being generous to them and settling their debts’.62 Apparently shortly thereafter, a second postscript was added that listed the dates of the main battles of the crusade.63 This appears to have been designed to facilitate liturgical commemoration of the victories.64

Cassidy-Welch, War and Memory, p. 30. Cassidy-Welch, ‘Remembering in the Time of the Crusades’, p. 3. 59 Cassidy-Welch, ‘Remembering in the Time of the Crusades’, p. 3. 60 Smith, ‘First Crusade Letters’, pp. 499–500. 61 Smith, ‘Scribal Crusading’. I am developing this approach more fully in a monograph study. 62 Letters, p. 36; Kb, pp. 173–4: ‘Rogamus et obsecramus uos … ut sitis fratrum memores uestrorum, qui ad uos reuertuntur, benefaciendo eis et soluendo debita eorum’. 63 Kb, p. 174. 64 Smith, ‘The First Crusade Letter Written at Laodicea’, pp. 5–6. 57 58

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Thomas W. Smith It is clear that we should interpret the calls to remembrance in crusade letters, along with other sources, through spiritual and liturgical lenses. Nicholas Paul is certainly right to refer to lists of the dead transmitted in crusade letters (such as the example from Jacques de Vitry cited above) as ‘ritual naming’, and we should be alive to identifying other ritualistic elements in the documents.65 As Katherine Allen Smith observes, such sources were ‘imbued with the social values, spiritual ideals, and historical aesthetics particular to the cloister’.66 It is only natural that spiritual and liturgical modes of commemoration predominated in the ecclesiastical, and often monastic, communities which received, copied and consumed the letter texts.67 Effectively, the permeable borders of crusade letters in manuscript helped them become dynamic touchstones for remembrance. The porous, malleable nature of epistles extended their utility by allowing audiences to make their own contributions to the cultures of remembrance that flourished in the ecclesiastical communities of the Latin West during the age of the crusades.

Conclusion History-writing and remembrance were intrinsically linked in the letters from the crusades. Such writing, when wrapped in the epistolary form, was a highly popular and widespread genre that attracted not only a wide audience, as attested by the fertile manuscript traditions of crusade missives, but also represented a popular target genre for writers in the West confecting history in the form of imagined and reimagined epistles. As Bainton observes of high medieval letters, the forms of epistola and historia were close to interchangeable, and the documents examined here supply evidence of this in a crusading context.68 However, crusade letters are characterised not only by their status as transmitters of historical narrative, but as deliberately created artefacts of remembrance. One might suggest that the popularity of news from, and historical writing about, the crusades in epistolary form also influenced the selection of this format to encode pleas for remembrance. This ensured the style’s wide, rapid and long-term dissemination among the ecclesiastical-political communities of Europe who were eager for news of crusading

Paul, To Follow in their Footsteps, p. 36. K. A. Smith, ‘Monastic Memories of the Early Crusading Movement’, in Remembering the Crusades and Crusading, ed. Cassidy-Welch, pp. 131–44. 67 On liturgy and crusades, see, for example, M. C. Gaposchkin, Invisible Weapons: Liturgy and the Making of Crusade Ideology (Ithaca, NY, 2017); R. D. G. Allington, ‘Prayer Warriors: Crusading Piety in Rome and the Papal States (1187–1291)’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Saint Louis University, 2017); A. Linder, Raising Arms: Liturgy in the Struggle to Liberate Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2003); C. T. Maier, ‘Crisis, Liturgy and the Crusade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 48 (1997), 628–57. 68 Bainton, History and the Written Word, pp. 18–20. 65 66

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History-Writing and Remembrance in Crusade Letters deeds accomplished in the East; indeed, the act of sharing and engaging with the letters forged a Christian community of remembrance on the home front. Letters were also popular with their audiences, since this medium more easily lent itself to fast reproduction and modification than longer-form narratives. Scribes could thus contribute to the remembrance of crusaders by adding postscripts to letters already in circulation, calling on others to share in the remembrance of dates of battles, the sacrifices of returning veterans and the names of the fallen. The popularity of crusade epistles in manuscript traditions, which stretched beyond the moment of their initial reception into the following years, decades and centuries, extended the effective lifespan of that community of remembrance, which should be measured not only in terms of geographical expanse (mapped onto the human networks that shared and consumed letters), but also in terms of chronological extent. By engaging with crusade epistles in the ways outlined above, long after crusading expeditions had come to an end, audiences reanimated the documents as artefacts of remembrance. This should be understood as a further indication of the genre-fluidity that characterised the varied forms of crusade narrative that survive to us, as well as in the context of medieval donors seeking perpetual prayers on behalf of their souls from monastic communities. Cassidy-Welch writes that ‘it was often the ritual performance of remembering that a testator or donor was most concerned with ensuring’.69 Arguably, then, we can perceive this same devotional impulse behind the remembrance and spiritual celebration of historical crucesignati in the reception of crusade letters throughout the Middle Ages.

69

Cassidy-Welch, War and Memory, p. 29.

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2

A ‘swiðe mycel styrung’: The First Crusade in Early Vernacular Annals from Anglo-Norman England 1 James H. Kane

Martin Brett once observed that ‘the practice of history in England was almost dead’ in 1066, the year of the battle of Hastings and the beginning of the Norman Conquest.2 Much the same could perhaps be said about 1096, the year when the earliest crusaders set out from western Europe on a massive armed pilgrimage that would shape the eastern Mediterranean for centuries to come.3 The scarce fuel that was left in the historiographical fire in England at that time simmered mainly in the complex series of interrelated Old English annals now known by the umbrella term ‘the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’.4 Surviving in nine separate manuscripts written between the late ninth and mid-twelfth centuries, the different versions of these annals are usually labelled alphabetically as ‘Chronicles A–I’.5 When read in their entirety, they encompass the history of Britain, as refracted through an Anglo-Saxon (and, later, Anglo-Norman) lens, from the invasion of 1

2 3 4

5

This chapter draws on work that I undertook in 2017 as a research assistant to Daniel Anlezark in preparation for his forthcoming monograph on the Chronicles. An earlier version was presented online at the Leeds IMC in July 2021, and some of the material discussed here has recently been published in a different form in an article in Notes and Queries (see n. 19 below). I am very grateful to Professor Anlezark, members of the IMC audience, and the editors and reviewers of Notes and Queries for their helpful advice, comments and questions. I would particularly like to thank Stephen Spencer and Andrew Buck for their thoughtful feedback on this chapter. M. Brett, ‘John of Worcester and His Contemporaries’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages, ed. R. H. C. Davies (Oxford, 1981), pp. 101–26 (at 101). J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, 2nd edn (Philadelphia, PA, 2009). Though far from satisfactory, this term is firmly ensconced in scholarship: see P. Stafford, ‘The Making of Chronicles and the Making of England: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles after Alfred’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6th s. 27 (2017), 65–86. The most comprehensive study is now P. Stafford, After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150 (Oxford, 2020). For an overview of the manuscripts and the relationships between different versions of the text, see S. Keynes, ‘Manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain: volume 1, c. 400–1100, ed. R. Gameson (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 537–52.

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The First Crusade in Early Vernacular Annals Julius Caesar until early 1155, soon after the coronation of King Henry II (r. 1154–89).6 Most scholars agree that the annals forming the ‘common stock’ of this tradition were compiled during the reign and possibly under the auspices of King Alfred of Wessex (r. 871–99) at the end of the ninth century.7 Over the next 250 years, they were sporadically updated, and occasionally reframed, at various sites throughout England.8 This more or less ongoing process of annalistic compilation played a central role in keeping history-writing alive in England around the turn of the twelfth century. It also laid the groundwork for what R. W. Southern described nearly fifty years ago as ‘the first historical revival’ after the Norman Conquest.9 The forerunner of this revival was Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury’s biographer, Eadmer, whose Historia novorum in Anglia, written between c. 1093 and the late 1120s, ushered in a vibrant new phase in the creation of Latin histories in England and Normandy.10 William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum Anglorum (completed c. 1125–26, then revised until 1134), Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum (completed before c. 1133, then revised until c. 1157), John of Worcester’s Chronicon ex chronicis (completed in 1140) and Orderic Vitalis’ Historia ecclesiastica (completed in Normandy in 1141) exemplify the richness and sophistication of historiographical works produced by English (or Anglo-Norman) chroniclers in Eadmer’s wake.11

6

7

8 9

10 11

This took place at Westminster Abbey on 19 December 1154: W. L. Warren, Henry II (London, 1973), p. 53. The final event recorded s.a. 1154 in Chronicle E, the longest version, is the installation of William of Vatteville as abbot of Peterborough in January 1155: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition: volume 7, MS E, ed. S. Irvine (Cambridge, 2004), p. 138 (hereafter MS E). For a nuanced discussion of the ‘common stock’ annals and their formation during Alfred’s reign, see S. Irvine, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in A Companion to Alfred the Great, ed. N. G. Discenza and P. E. Szarmach (Leiden, 2014), pp. 344–67. Despite the doubts now surrounding Alfred’s personal influence on these annals, D. Anlezark, Alfred the Great (Kalamazoo, MI, 2017), p. 7 argues that the king ‘had a large hand in [their] production’. Stafford, After Alfred. R. W. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing, 4: The Sense of the Past’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th s. 23 (1973), 243–63 (at 246). C. C. Rozier, ‘Between History and Hagiography: Eadmer of Canterbury’s Vision of the Historia novorum in Anglia’, Journal of Medieval History 45 (2019), 1–19. On these writers, see especially A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 164–80; R. M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury, 2nd edn (Woodbridge, 2003); Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. R. M. Thomson, E. Dolmans and E. A. Winkler (Woodbridge, 2017); Brett, ‘John of Worcester’; P. McGurk, ‘John of Worcester’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (hereafter ODNB); D. E. Greenway, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’, in ODNB; Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations, ed. C. C. Rozier, D. Roach, G. E. M. Gasper and E. van Houts

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James H. Kane Outside the Anglo-Norman sphere of influence, the astonishing success of the First Crusade, culminating in the capture of Jerusalem on 15 July 1099, inspired an even more extensive surge of historical writing among chroniclers in northern France and beyond.12 Their accounts of the crusade continue to invite detailed historical analysis not only for their insights into the tumultuous events of the late 1090s, but also for what they reveal about how those events were interpreted and memorialised after the fact.13 While no comparably detailed treatment of the First Crusade by an English historian survives from the period between 1095 and the mid-1120s, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle shows that the crusade made an almost immediate historiographical impression in the Anglo-Norman realm. Lengthier narratives of its course and denouement appeared subsequently in the aforementioned works by William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, John of Worcester and Orderic Vitalis.14 Most of these writers were well-acquainted with particular manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and freely made use of them as sources, though only Henry seems to have done so in writing about the crusade.15 The lack of any sustained scholarly analysis of the extant annal entries on the First Crusade in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is perhaps understandable on the grounds that they add little or nothing to our factual knowledge of the expedition.16 Nevertheless, their mere existence raises interesting questions about how the historiographical impulses triggered by the First Crusade intersected with the last phase of the English vernacular annalistic tradition. Analysing that intersection is precisely the purpose of this chapter. In particular, my aim is to look closely at the neglected Old English annals on the crusade in two manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle – those preserving ‘Chronicle E’ and ‘Chronicle I’ – to tease out what they reveal about attitudes towards the First Crusade in late eleventh-century England, specifically in Canterbury, with which they have both

12

13 14 15

16

(Woodbridge, 2016); J. Tahkokallio, The Anglo-Norman Historical Canon: Publishing and Manuscript Culture (Cambridge, 2019). J. Flori, Chroniqueurs et propagandistes: Introduction critique aux sources de la première croisade (Geneva, 2010); M. Bull, ‘The Historiographical Construction of a Northern French First Crusade’, Haskins Society Journal 25 (2013), 35–55. See especially the studies in Writing the Early Crusades: Text, Transmission and Memory, ed. M. Bull and D. Kempf (Woodbridge, 2014). See Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 178–88; D. Roach, ‘Orderic Vitalis and the First Crusade’, Journal of Medieval History 42 (2016), 177–201. Stafford, After Alfred, p. 24. What the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says about the crusade is either cited or briefly discussed by A. Graboïs, ‘Anglo-Norman England and the Holy Land’, Anglo-Norman Studies 7 (1985), 132–41 (at 136); C. Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago, IL, 1988), p. 15; F. Barlow, William Rufus, rev. edn (New Haven, CT, 2000), pp. 362 n. 100, 366 n. 118; S. T. Parsons, ‘The Inhabitants of the British Isles on the First Crusade: Medieval Perceptions and the Invention of a Pan-Angevin Crusading Heritage’, English Historical Review 134 (2019), 273–301 (at 275).

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The First Crusade in Early Vernacular Annals convincingly been connected.17 Examining the contextual factors that may have shaped these annals allows us to consider what it meant to write about the First Crusade in England before the appearance of the more extensive narratives penned by William of Malmesbury and his contemporaries from the 1120s on. Though the apparent indifference of Archbishop Anselm and King William II (r. 1087–1100) towards the crusade no doubt contributed to an initial lack of enthusiasm among Anglo-Norman chroniclers, especially in Latin, the vernacular evidence shows that there was what Simon Parsons has called ‘a receptive audience in England’ for information about the expedition to Jerusalem, at least in the south-east of the kingdom.18 Paying attention to this evidence is crucial if we wish to develop a fuller understanding of the earliest documented historiographical responses to the events of the First Crusade in the Latin West.

Christians and ‘Pagans’ in Chronicle I The first – and by far the briefer – of the annal entries that form the focus of this chapter was written in the right-hand margin of an Easter table in the manuscript London, British Library, Cotton Caligula A. XV.19 Scholars who work on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle usually refer to this as ‘Chronicle I’ or ‘the Canterbury Annals’.20 The reason for the latter designation is that the manuscript was produced in the scriptorium at Christ Church, the monastic house attached to Canterbury Cathedral, which David Dumville has described as ‘something of an academicclearing house’ for English chronicles after the Norman Conquest.21 The Easter

17

18

19

20

21

D. N. Dumville, ‘Some Aspects of Annalistic Writing at Canterbury in the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries’, Peritia 2 (1983), 23–57 (at 34–40); Stafford, After Alfred, pp. 268, 276–8, 303–4. Parsons, ‘Inhabitants’, p. 275. On William’s apparent ‘dearth of interest’ in the crusade and Anselm’s own lack of support for the initiative, see K. Hurlock, ‘The Norman Influence on Crusading from England and Wales’, in Crusading and Pilgrimage in the Norman World, ed. K. Hurlock and P. Oldfield (Woodbridge, 2015), pp. 65–79 (at 72–3). London, British Library, Cotton Caligula A. XV, fols 132v–139r. See J. H. Kane, ‘An Early Vernacular Annal on the First Crusade from Christ Church, Canterbury’, Notes and Queries 68 (2021), 248–51. The first application of the label ‘I’ to these annals was in Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel: A Revised Text, ed. C. Plummer, 2 vols (Oxford, 1892–9), II, xxxvii; see also The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. G. N. Garmonsway (London, 1953). The annals were first edited by Felix Liebermann in Ungedruckte anglo-normannische Geschichtsquellen (Strassburg, 1879), pp. 1–8; the most recent edition is an appendix to The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition: volume 8, MS F, ed. P. S. Baker (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 129–34 (hereafter MS F). Baker calls these annals ‘the Canterbury Annals’. Dumville, ‘Some Aspects’, p. 38.

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James H. Kane table covers the period from 988 to 1268.22 It is accompanied by thirty-seven Old English annals between 988 and 1109, two additional vernacular ‘outliers’ for the years 925 and 1130, and a subsequent set of Latin annals concluding with an account of Duke Arthur I of Brittany’s capture at Mirebeau in 1202.23 The various unknown scribes responsible for the Old English entries in Caligula A. xv had an overriding focus on Canterbury and the activities of its archbishops. As Pauline Stafford has argued, their annals exhibit a tightly demarcated historical viewpoint ‘constructing a past structured through the reigns of kings and the accessions and deaths of archbishops, entwined specifically with the history of Christ Church’.24 Despite this, the annalists were by no means reluctant to look elsewhere. Their interest strayed especially far from south-eastern England (at least implicitly) in the entry for 1096, a terse statement recording the departure of the First Crusaders in a matter-of-fact way (see Figure 2.1): ‘Here [i.e. in this year] the Christian people went to fight the pagan [people]’.25 A glance at this annal’s immediate context reveals that it is embedded in a cluster of entries focusing primarily on Anselm’s archiepiscopate:26 Table 2.1. Events in Chronicle I, s.a. 1093–1109. Year

Event(s)

1093

[i] Anselm consecrated as archbishop of Canterbury; [ii] King Malcolm III of Scotland killed.

1096

Crusaders depart to fight ‘pagans’.

1097

Anselm travels to Rome (beginning of first exile on continent).

1100

[i] Death of King William II of England; [ii] accession of King Henry I; [iii] Anselm returns from abroad.

1105

St Ælfheah’s body inspected and found to be intact.

1109

Death of Anselm.

22 23

24

25

26

Computistical data were originally entered for the years 988–1193 before being extended to encompass the period 1194–1268: see Kane, ‘Early Vernacular Annal’, p. 248. Dumville, ‘Some Aspects’, p. 39 n. 4. The entry s.a. 925 details the birth, lifespan and death of St Dunstan; the entry s.a. 1130 notes the consecration of the choir in Canterbury Cathedral on 4 May that year. Stafford, After Alfred, p. 278. MS F, p. 131: ‘Her ferde þæt cristene folc to gewinnene þæt hæðene’. All translations are my own unless otherwise stated. On the function of the temporal adverb ‘here’ (her) in Old English annal entries, see P. Clemoes, ‘Language in Context: Her in the 890 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, Leeds Studies in English n.s. 16 (1985), 27–36. MS F, p. 131. The notice of Anselm’s death s.a. 1109 is the last vernacular annal in the manuscript, other than the second of Dumville’s aforementioned ‘outliers’ s.a. 1130 (see n. 22 above).

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Figure 2.1. Old English annal entry on the First Crusade in Chronicle I. London, British Library, Cotton Caligula A. XV, fol. 136r. © The British Library Board.

Figure 2.2. Old English annals in Chronicle I, s.a. 1093–1109, showing various scribes at work. London, British Library, Cotton Caligula A. XV, fol. 136r. © The British Library Board.

James H. Kane From a surface reading, at least, it is difficult to escape the impression that Anselm’s time as archbishop dictated the overarching shape and much of the content of this particular section of the Canterbury Annals. If so, it would be reasonable to draw the conclusion that the annals for 1093–1109 in Chronicle I were all entered by a single scribe after Anselm’s death, as Stafford appears to suggest by identifying these entries as the product of ‘the final scribe of the vernacular annals’.27 Closer inspection, however, indicates that there were probably several different scribes at work here. The entry s.a. 1093, for instance, betrays clear evidence of two distinct hands in the shape and proportions of multiple letters and in alternative spellings of the demonstrative dative pronoun ‘this’ (‘ðison’ in the first part of the annal on Anselm’s consecration; ‘ðisan’ in the second part on the death of Malcolm III of Scotland). The scribe of the annal for 1096 seems also to have been responsible for the entry s.a. 1097 but was probably distinct from the scribes of the annal for 1093. There may have been at least two, and perhaps even three, scribes behind the entry s.a. 1100: this seems particularly clear if we consider that different forms of a were employed in the first and second parts of the annal, and distinct forms of g in the second and third parts.28 The entries for 1105 and 1109 may have been written by two additional scribes, or perhaps only one. Whatever the case, they appear distinct from the entries made by the other hands just discussed.29 Another noteworthy feature is that the name ‘Anselm’ is spelled variously throughout the entries: once with the medial diphthong ea (s.a. 1093), once with the medial æ ligature (s.a. 1096 [ii]) and twice in the ‘standard’ form with the medial vowel e (s.a. 1097, 1109). It is, of course, true that some of the idiosyncrasies identified here may be explained by the fact that these annals were entered at a time when a ‘hybrid’ type of handwriting with both English and Norman characteristics was emerging at Christ Church.30 While the entries for 1093–1109 may have been written out by one scribe after Anselm’s death, on balance the evidence suggests that multiple scribes were engaged in entering these vernacular annals in the margins of the Easter table. What this indicates in turn is that the annals were kept up progressively as the community at Christ Church heard about events that they believed were worth

Stafford, After Alfred, p. 277. The difficulty with this reading, however, is that it necessitates identifying a change of scribe half-way through the word ærcebiscop (‘archbishop’). It may simply be that the second scribe employed two different forms of g and was responsible for both the second and third parts of the entry. 29 The brevity of the entry s.a. 1109 makes it barely sufficient for the sake of close palaeographical comparison. 30 N. Ker, English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1960), pp. 26–8; T. Webber, ‘The Norman Conquest and Handwriting in England to 1100’, in Cambridge History of the Book in Britain: volume 1, ed. Gameson, pp. 211–24 (at 212–15). 27

28

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The First Crusade in Early Vernacular Annals recording – that is to say, that they were entered roughly contemporaneously.31 In the case of the annal on the First Crusade, it seems likely that this was written in the manuscript either while the various crusading armies were leaving Europe or soon after. The earliest crusaders to depart in March 1096 were those who accompanied Walter Sansavoir and Peter the Hermit.32 In the case of the forces under aristocratic leadership, the contingent most likely to have sparked the interest of an annalist working in Canterbury, that of William II’s brother, Duke Robert II of Normandy (r. 1087–1106), did not set out until the autumn of the same year.33 It is thus probable that the annal in question was entered in late 1096 or early 1097. As I have observed elsewhere, in palaeographical terms alone this would make Chronicle I’s entry for 1096 the oldest extant record of crusading activity in a vernacular western European language (and perhaps even in Latin).34 Although rich vernacular reimaginings of the events of the First Crusade were later disseminated in texts such as the fragmentary Occitan Canso d’Antioca and the various poems associated with the Old French Crusade Cycle, most notably the Chanson d’Antioche, the Chanson des Chétifs and the Chanson de Jérusalem, none of these works survive in manuscripts dating to the period before the late twelfth century.35 What this ultimately leads us to is the somewhat surprising realisation that the earliest documented historiography of the First Crusade was written in a vernacular language spoken only by a small proportion of the people who took part in it.36 This may seem odd in light of the relative absence of engagement with crusading in English vernacular texts for the century or so after 1096, as highlighted by Laura Ashe, but it is important to remember here that Old English was one of

31 32

33

34

35

36

Kane, ‘Early Vernacular Annal’, p. 249. On the vicissitudes of the first contingents, see J. France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 88–93. France, Victory in the East, pp. 102–3. On Robert’s contingent, see S. T. Parsons, ‘Crusading Participation in Normandy and Its Borderlands: The Evidence from the Old French Traditions of the First Crusade’, Haskins Society Journal 29 (2018), 201–23. It is worth noting in this connection that Robert’s uncle, Odo of Bayeux, the former earl of Kent, set out on crusade with him, but died in Sicily on 6 January 1097: see D. Bates, ‘Odo, earl of Kent’, in ODNB. My sincere thanks to Andrew Buck for this point. Kane, ‘Early Vernacular Annal’, p. 249. The Canso d’Antioca: An Occitan Epic Chronicle of the First Crusade, trans. C. Sweetenham (Aldershot, 2003); CA; The Chanson des Chétifs and Chanson de Jérusalem: Completing the Central Trilogy of the Old French Crusade Cycle, trans. C. Sweetenham (Farnham, 2016). On the relatively limited scope of participation by English and Anglo-Norman crusaders more broadly in the First Crusade, see Tyerman, England and the Crusades, pp. 15–16; Hurlock, ‘Norman Influence on Crusading’; Parsons, ‘Inhabitants’.

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James H. Kane the few western vernaculars with a historiographical tradition mature enough to accommodate such annal entries in the final years of the eleventh century.37 Setting all this aside, there remains the question of how to interpret the meagre content of Chronicle I’s entry for 1096 in both its textual and cultural context. Purely on a narrative level, the annal is characteristically concise, stating only that Christians went to fight ‘pagans’ in 1096. The annalist does not explain who these Christians were, indicate their destination (or origin), elaborate on the identity of their opponents, or explore their aims and motivations. In that sense, the entry makes no concessions to uninitiated readers. This indicates that the annalist felt this entry did not require an explanatory framework, possibly because news of the crusade’s departure was so well known that further details were deemed unnecessary in a terse annal composed for monastic readers. Furthermore, although the adjective hæðen, the Old English equivalent of the Latin paganus (and etymon of modern ‘heathen’), had tended to evoke invading Danes rather than far-distant Muslims when deployed in older entries of other manuscripts in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tradition, the dichotomy between ‘Christian people’ (‘cristene folc’) and ‘pagan people’ (‘hæðene’) could only have been intended to mean one thing in an Old English annal written at Canterbury in 1096.38 It is possible, of course, that the annalist failed to specify the nature of these particular ‘pagan people’ (primarily the Seljuk Turks) because he lacked precise information about them, but it is more likely that he simply believed further details were not essential for contemporaries to understand his annal.39 Both the concision and the thematic isolation of this entry make it very difficult to determine whether the First Crusade aroused anything other than a passing interest among the monks of Christ Church. With the benefit of hindsight, knowledge of the crusaders’ stunning victories, especially their capture of Jerusalem, inevitably suggests to a modern observer that the annals for Anselm’s archiepiscopate in L. Ashe, ‘The Ideal of Knighthood in English and French Writing, 1100–1230: Crusade, Piety, Chivalry and Patriotism’, in Writing the Early Crusades, ed. Bull and Kempf, pp. 155–68 (at 157). It should be noted that there were also established annalistic traditions in Welsh and Irish in the centuries leading up to the twelfth century. 38 K. Scarfe Beckett, Anglo-Saxon Perceptions of the Islamic World (Cambridge, 2003) discusses ideas about Muslims in early medieval England. On the notion of Danes as ‘pagans’, see J. L. Nelson, ‘England and the Continent in the Ninth Century: II, the Vikings and Others’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6th s. 13 (2003), 1–28 (at 6, 11). N. I. Petrovskaia, ‘Which “Pagans”? The Influence of the Crusades on Battle Narratives in Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia’, in Writing Battles: New Perspectives on Warfare and Memory in Medieval Europe, ed. M. Ní Mhaonaigh, R. Naismith and E. A. Rowe (London, 2020), pp. 147–64 explores the fluidity of the term ‘pagan’ in medieval literary texts. 39 On the relative lack of conceptual familiarity with the ‘Turks’ (as opposed to ‘Saracens’ more broadly) among Latins prior to the crusade, see N. Morton, Encountering Islam on the First Crusade (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 79–83. 37

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The First Crusade in Early Vernacular Annals Chronicle I are incomplete, requiring at least one more entry s.a. 1099 to conclude a story whose climax in that year struck many contemporaries as one of the greatest miracles of all time.40 As such, Chronicle I’s annal on the First Crusade could be read as nothing more than a tentative first step down a hazy narrative path, a brief notice written in or soon after 1096 at a time when the prospects of the expedition were impossible to assess with any degree of confidence. Bearing in mind, however, that the scribes at Christ Church must have heard at least something about the crusaders’ triumph at Jerusalem three years later, what seems at first like absence of closure may well be the product of a deliberate – and, if so, potentially telling – choice to exclude this information from the annals. While it is tempting to adduce insufficient space as an explanation for this choice, the fact that the entry s.a. 1100 appears to have been supplemented progressively in such a way as to fill out the available parchment below the previous entry (s.a. 1097) suggests that news of the fall of Jerusalem was withheld from Chronicle I after it reached England, presumably in the autumn of 1099. Certainly, there are no indications of erasure or emendation to suggest that any meaningful attempt was ever made to accommodate it, as notices of the death of King William II (2 August 1100), the accession of King Henry I (r. 1100–35) and Anselm’s subsequent return from his first exile were inserted here.41 To explore why scribes working at Christ Church may have opted to omit the crusaders’ most celebrated victory, it is necessary to turn now to a second, more detailed Old English annal for 1096 that conveys a similar sense of open-endedness with respect to the story of the First Crusade.

The First Crusade in Chronicle E The manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 636 is both the most extensive and the most intensively studied surviving manuscript of the AngloSaxon Chronicle.42 As the only version of the text to contain a set of vernacular annals extending into the mid-twelfth century, it is particularly prized by linguists for the light it sheds on the transition from Late West Saxon, the dialect of Old English adopted as a kind of literary standard in the tenth and eleventh centuries,

RM, p. 4 features Robert the Monk’s famous statement interpreting the capture of Jerusalem as inferior only to the Creation and the Crucifixion. More broadly, see B. C. Spacey, The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative (Woodbridge, 2020). 41 Henry I was crowned at Westminster on 5 August 1100: C. W. Hollister, Henry I, ed. A. Clark Frost (New Haven, CT, 2001), pp. 106–7. On Anselm’s first period of exile prior to his return to England in the summer of 1100, see S. N. Vaughan, ‘Anselm in Italy, 1097–1100’, Anglo-Norman Studies 16 (1994), 245–70. 42 See especially M. Home, The Peterborough Version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Rewriting Post-Conquest History (Woodbridge, 2015). 40

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James H. Kane to Early Middle English.43 Often referred to as ‘Chronicle E’, this version is known more generally as ‘the Peterborough Chronicle’ because it was compiled by two separate scribes at Peterborough Abbey in the Fens of eastern England.44 The first scribe, working c. 1121 on the basis of a previous version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle known as ‘Chronicle /E’ (or ‘Chronicle √E’), wrote out everything up to the annal for that year and interpolated Peterborough-related material into earlier entries, before proceeding to add further annals for the period 1121–31. The second scribe then entered annals for 1132–54 en bloc.45 While these circumstances mean that the extant annal for 1096 in the manuscript of Chronicle E stands further from the beginning of the First Crusade than its counterpart in Chronicle I, there is good reason to believe that both entries were composed at roughly the same time. Before explaining this, however, we must consider the annal itself and reflect on what it says about the crusade. The first thing to point out here is that Chronicle E’s entry s.a. 1096 is not focused solely or even primarily on the journey to Jerusalem. In structural terms, it is a tripartite annal. The first section deals with William II’s courts at Windsor (Christmas 1095) and Salisbury (13 January 1096), the death of Bishop William of Durham at the former (1 January 1096) and the king’s punishment of certain leading figures in the failed rebellion of 1095 led by Robert of Mowbray.46 The central section of the annal relates the circumstances surrounding the departure of the First Crusade and the travails of the first waves of pilgrims in Hungary. The final section details various troubles throughout England and Wales in 1096, particularly ‘manifold taxes’ (‘mænigfealde gylda’), ‘a very grievous famine which very much afflicted this country’ and a series of fruitless and destructive military raids on Welsh territory.47 The central section of the annal, which is the focus of our concern here, reads as follows: In this year, too, at Easter, there was a very great commotion among this entire people, and [among] many other peoples, on account of Urban, who was called ‘pope’ although he held nothing of the [Holy] See in Rome; and a countless multitude with women and children went so that they might fight against the pagan peoples. Because of this expedition, the king and his brother, [Duke] Robert, came to an agreement in such a way that the king went over the sea [i.e. the English Channel] and redeemed all of Normandy for himself with money, just as they had agreed. And after this, the duke set out, and with him the

43 44 45 46

47

The Language of the Peterborough Chronicle, ed. A. Bergs and J. Skaffari (Frankfurt, 2007). Home, Peterborough Version, pp. 1–20; Stafford, After Alfred, pp. 296–304. Stafford, After Alfred, pp. 296–9. Barlow, William Rufus, pp. 346–58. MS E, p. 107: ‘swiðe hefigtymne hunger þe þisne eard … swiðe gedrehte’.

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The First Crusade in Early Vernacular Annals [count] of Flanders and the [count] of Boulogne, and also many other princes; and Duke Robert and those who travelled with him remained in Apulia for the winter. But of the people who went by way of Hungary, many thousands died there and along the way, and many dragged [themselves] home, miserable and starving, towards winter.48

In terms of what this entry has to say about the First Crusade, several features are worth noting. Right at the outset, the presentation of the crusade as a ‘very great commotion’ (‘swiðe mycel styrung’) is a strikingly close Old English equivalent of the Latin phrase motio valida, perhaps most familiar to historians of crusading in the description of the First Crusade as a ‘powerful movement throughout all the regions of the Gauls’ in the opening passage of the Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum.49 The use of such phrasing to convey the intensity of the crusade is corroborated in similar testimony from various other continental texts from the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. The annals of the abbey of Saint-Colombe at Sens, for example, record that in 1096, ‘the Christian people were stirred up against the barbarians, pagans, Saracens or Turks’.50 Likewise, the Annals of Mouzon refer to the First Crusade as the ‘movement of Christians going to Jerusalem’ (‘motio Christianorum euntium Ierusalem’), while the continuation of the Deeds of the Abbots of Lobbes uses virtually the same language to describe the crusaders collectively as the ‘movement of those going to Jerusalem’ (‘motio euntium in Hierusalem’).51 Although the annalist is unlikely to have drawn on any of these texts, Chronicle E’s entry nevertheless provides valuable early evidence that the First Crusade was conceived of outside the dominant Latin historiographical mode of the 1090s as a great ‘commotion’ or ‘movement’ of

MS E, p. 107: ‘Ðises geares eac to þam Eastran wearð swiðe mycel styrung geond ealle þas þeode ⁊ fela oðra þeodan þurh Urbanus se wæs papa gehaten þeah þe he þæs setles naþing næfde on Rome; ⁊ ferde unarimedlice folc mid wifan ⁊ cildan to þi þet hi uppon hæðene þeodan winnan woldan. Durh þas fare wearð se cyng ⁊ his broðor Rodbeard eorl sehte, swa þet se cyng ofer sæ for ⁊ eall Normandig æt him mid feo alisde, swa swa hi þa sehte wæron. And se eorl syððan ferde ⁊ mid him se eorl of Flandran ⁊ se of Bunan ⁊ eac manege oðre heafodmen; ⁊ se eorl Rotbeard ⁊ þa þe mid him ferdon þone winter on Puille wunedon. Ac þes folces þe be Hungrie for, fela þusenda þær ⁊ be wæge earmlice forforan, ⁊ fela hreowlice ⁊ hungerbitene ongean winter ham tugon’. Although the Old English word eorl literally means ‘earl’, it was used to signify various other noble titles. 49 GF, p. 1: ‘motio ualida per uniuersas Galliarum regiones’. 50 ‘Annales Sancate Columbae Senonensis’, ed. G. H. Pertz, in MGH SS 1 (Hanover, 1826), p. 106: ‘Hoc anno commota est gens christiana apud Iherusalem contra barbaros, paganos, Sarracenos, sive Turcos’. 51 ‘Annales Mosomagenses’, ed. G. H. Pertz, in MGH SS 3 (Hanover, 1839), p. 162, later referring to the Second Crusade (s.a. 1147) as the ‘motio secunda christianorum’; ‘Gesta abbatum Lobbiensium’, ed. G. H. Pertz, in MGH SS 21 (Hanover, 1869), p. 313. 48

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James H. Kane people. Although the annalist does not explicitly laud English involvement in the crusade, the remark that this ‘commotion’ took place ‘among this entire people’ as well as ‘many other peoples’ is a rare endogenous gesture to the participation of crusaders from the Anglo-Norman realm in this momentous event.52 That the annalist saw Pope Urban II (r. 1088–99) as the instigator of the crusade is unmistakeable in the statement that it took place ‘on account of’ (‘þurh’) him.53 Any positive intimations here are nevertheless quickly dispelled by the remark that Urban ‘was called “pope” although he held nothing of the [Holy] See in Rome’.54 The entry is somewhat misleading here: Urban had returned to Rome at the end of 1093, after a period of exile while it was occupied by the forces of his rival, the Antipope Clement III, though the situation in the city remained volatile for some time.55 But the annalist’s stance makes sense when we take into account Frank Barlow’s observation that ‘there was general ignorance [in England] about who was the lawful pope’ in the decade or so after the death of Gregory VII on 25 May 1085.56 William II’s refusal to recognise Urban as pope until 1097 and Anselm of Canterbury’s ambivalence regarding certain aspects of the pontiff’s legal authority may also have influenced the annalist here, at least indirectly.57 With all this in mind, it is perhaps unsurprising that Chronicle E’s entry s.a. 1096 does not elaborate on the causal relationship between Urban and the First Crusade as hinted at in the multivalent Old English preposition þurh.58 Even if the annalist displays no obvious knowledge of, or concern with, the proceedings of the Council of Clermont in November 1095, including Urban’s infamous and much-scrutinised crusading address, the entry in question testifies to his familiarity with the idea that the pope played a central role in launching the First Crusade.59 From an English perspective, the annalist’s interest in the crusade appears to lie primarily with the involvement of William’s brother, Robert of Normandy.60 More specifically, the entry focuses on how Robert’s crusading preparations led to a cessation of hostilities between the king and the duke, who mortgaged Normandy 52 53 54 55

56

57

58 59

60

MS E, p. 107. MS E, p. 107. MS E, p. 107. See A. Becker, Papst Urban II. (1088–1099), 3 vols (Stuttgart and Hanover, 1964–2012), I, 98–104; C. Wickham, Medieval Rome: Stability and Crisis of a City, 900–1150 (Oxford, 2014), pp. 423–25. Barlow, William Rufus, p. 342. R. W. Southern, ‘Anselm [St Anselm]’, in ODNB, discusses Anselm’s ‘pre-Hildebrandine’ understanding of his own ‘relationship with both popes and kings as essentially pastoral’. This word has various potential meanings, including ‘through’, ‘by’, ‘by means of’, ‘on account of’ and ‘by reason of’. Parsons, ‘Inhabitants’, p. 275. See W. M. Aird, Robert Curthose: Duke of Normandy, c. 1050–1134 (Woodbridge, 2008).

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The First Crusade in Early Vernacular Annals to William for 10,000 marks to raise funds for the journey to Jerusalem.61 The identification of Count Robert II of Flanders (r. 1093–1111) and Count Eustace III of Boulogne (r. c. 1089–1125), both unnamed in this instance, as Duke Robert’s principal travelling companions betrays the annalist’s concern with the wider geopolitical context in which the Anglo-Norman aristocracy was implicated.62 Here, Robert is discernibly – albeit subtly – positioned as the most significant figure in this group in the formulation ‘Duke Robert and those who travelled with him’.63 Curiously, however, despite the annalist’s evident preoccupation with Robert and his relationship with the king, he has nothing to say about the course of the duke’s crusade between his arrival in Apulia in the autumn of 1096 and his return to Normandy from the Holy Land, again in the company of Robert of Flanders and Eustace of Boulogne. This is recorded towards the end of the entry for 1100 without explicit acknowledgement that the crusaders had taken Jerusalem in the previous year: ‘Also in [1100], in autumn, the [duke] Robert [of Normandy] and the [count] Robert of Flanders and Eustace, [count] of Boulogne, came home from Jerusalem into Normandy’.64 As with Chronicle I, the absence of any reference to the capture of Jerusalem in Chronicle E’s annal for 1099 poses something of a dilemma, perhaps even more so in this case given how detailed the latter chronicle is in general.65 It is difficult to decide how best to explain this apparent lacuna. On the one hand, the capture of Jerusalem may have been deemed sufficiently well known not to warrant inclusion, but the recording of other presumably famous contemporary incidents throughout Chronicle E (such as the death of William II and accession of Henry I in 1100) casts doubt on such a hypothesis.66 A slightly more plausible explanation is that the climax of the crusade was thought to lie outside the scope of a series of annals whose focus by the late eleventh century was centred squarely on north-western Europe, yet many earlier entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle feature events that took place well beyond this region, including conflict between Christians and Muslims. Chronicle C, for example, details the disastrous defeat of

61 62

63

64 65 66

Aird, Robert Curthose, pp. 157–64; Barlow, William Rufus, pp. 362–6. On Eustace’s ‘increasing enmeshment in the Anglo-Norman polity’, see H. J. Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies: Boulogne and Politics in Northern France and England, c. 879–1160 (Leiden, 2003), pp. 129–79. For Eustace as a crusader, see H. J. Tanner, ‘In His Brothers’ Shadow: The Crusading Career and Reputation of Eustace III of Boulogne’, in The Crusades: Other Experiences, Alternate Perspectives, ed. K. J. Semaan (Binghamton, NY, 2003), pp. 87–103. MS E, p. 107. MS E, p. 110: ‘Ðeoses ylces geares eac innan hærfest com se eorl Rotbert ham into Normandi, ⁊ se eorl Rotbert of Flandran ⁊ Eustatius eorl of Bunan fram Ierusalem’. The entry s.a. 1099 in Chronicle E is comparatively brief, occupying only twelve lines in Irvine’s edition: MS E, p. 109. MS E, pp. 109–10.

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James H. Kane Emperor Otto II (r. 973–83) in Calabria by Muslims from Sicily on 13 July 982.67 Chronicle E’s entry s.a. 1086 alludes to the capture of Toledo by King Alfonso VI of León and Castile in the previous year, making the rather hyperbolic claim that Alfonso and his forces ‘went and slew and drove away all the heathen people and won their land back through God’s support’.68 Exclusion of events at Jerusalem in 1099 on grounds of perceived irrelevance (or at least, lesser relevance) therefore seems unlikely. It may be instead that the omission of Robert of Normandy’s crusading exploits between 1096 and 1100, including his involvement in the capture of Jerusalem, was the product of an effort to downplay Robert’s contribution to the achievements of the crusade and thus to undermine his claims to having been a successful warrior and leader. Whether the crusaders’ victory at Jerusalem was left out due to presumed familiarity, ignored because it was felt to be peripheral or suppressed for the sake of damnatio memoriae, it is notable that the annalist frames the less aristocratic component of the First Crusade as an abject failure. His sad tale of the ‘countless multitude with women and children … who went by way of Hungary’ is a distinctly unflattering capsule narrative of the experiences of the non-noble crusaders.69 Marred by the deaths of ‘many thousands’ along the way, the annalist presents this element of the crusade culminating in the return of ‘miserable and starving’ pilgrims.70 Although the annalist refrained from offering explicit critique here, he clearly saw this as an ignominious outcome for a venture that had started so promisingly as a ‘swiðe mycel styrung’. Reflecting on his evident misgivings about the crusade may help us to pinpoint the composition of this entry with greater chronological precision. As noted above, Chronicle E’s entry s.a. 1096 in its surviving form was written at Peterborough around 1121. This, however, was copied from a lost manuscript containing a set of annals for the period between 1080 and 1121 added to Chronicle /E, which I will refer to as ‘Proto-Chronicle E’ for convenience.71 Proto-Chronicle E seems to have served as a source for the continuators and interpolators who reworked the annals at Peterborough in and after the 1120s, as well as for several of the major Latin historians of the early twelfth century.72 It may also have been at the disposal of the Anglo-Norman poet Geffrei Gaimar, who certainly drew on a

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68 69 70 71

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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition: volume 5, MS C, ed. K. O’Brien O’Keeffe (Cambridge, 2001), p. 85. On this event, see G. A. Loud, ‘Southern Italy and the Eastern and Western Empires, c. 900–1050’, Journal of Medieval History 38 (2012), 1–19 (at 11–12). MS E, p. 98: ‘ferdon ⁊ ofslogon ⁊ aweg adrifan eall þet hæðena folc ⁊ gewunnon heora land ongean þurh Godes fultum’. MS E, p. 107. MS E, p. 107. Stafford, After Alfred, pp. 299–304. MS E, p. lxxxv; Stafford, After Alfred, pp. 300–10.

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The First Crusade in Early Vernacular Annals version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle when composing his Estoire des Engleis in the late 1130s, but the Estoire says very little about the First Crusade.73 Whatever the case, Proto-Chronicle E was certainly used by the twelfth-century compilers of the annals of the Cistercian abbey of Waverley in Surrey.74 These annals in fact furnish Latin translations of Proto-Chronicle E’s entries for the period from c. 1000 to 1121, including an account of the First Crusade that is almost identical in content to its Old English counterpart: In this year, there was a great movement of Christians at Easter throughout this land, and throughout many lands, at the admonition of Pope Urban, who had been expelled from Rome at that time; and a countless multitude went with their wives and children so that they might conquer the pagans in Jerusalem. And as a result of this movement, King William and his brother, Robert Curthose, came to an agreement, and the king crossed the sea, and he received all of Normandy in pledge from his brother, just as was agreed between them. Duke Robert went in that movement, and with him the count of Flanders, and the count of Boulogne, and many other barons. And Duke Robert and his companions were in Apulia for the winter; but others went by way of Hungary, and thousands of them died along the way, and many returned home miserable and starved.75

Aside from the comment that Urban II ‘had been expelled from Rome’, the explicit identification of ‘the pagans in Jerusalem’ as the crusaders’ target and the inclusion of Robert of Normandy’s moniker ‘Curthose’, this Latin annal for 1096 is indistinguishable from the vernacular equivalent as preserved in Chronicle E. It is thus likely that the original Old English account of the First Crusade in Proto-Chronicle E was very similar to the one copied into Laud Misc. 636 at Peterborough in the early 1120s.76 Weighing this up with Cecily Clark’s suggestion See I. Short, ‘Gaimar’s Epilogue and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Liber vetustissimus’, Speculum 69 (1994), 323–43; Stafford, After Alfred, p. 320. 74 Stafford, After Alfred, p. 314; J. Marvin, ‘Waverley Annals’, in Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. G. Dunphy and C. Bratu, 2 vols (Leiden, 2010), II, 1496–7. 75 ‘Annales Waverleienses’, in Annales monastici, ed. H. R. Luard, 5 vols (London, 1864–69), II, 130–411 (at 205–6): ‘Hoc anno fuit magna motio Christianorum ad Pascha per patriam istam, et per multas terras ammonitione Urbani Papae, qui tunc a Roma expulsus erat; et ivit populus innumerabilis cum uxoribus et pueris suis, ut conquirerent super paganos in Jerusalem. Et per illam motionem concordati sunt rex Willelmus et Robertus Curtoose frater ejus, et rex mare transiit, et totam Normanniam a fratre suo in vadimonium recepit, sicut pactum inter eos fuit. Robertus consul ivit in motione illa, et cum eo consul Flandriae, et consul Boloniae, et multi alii barones. Et consul Robertus et socii ejus fuerunt in hyeme in Pulia; sed alii iverunt per Hungeriam [sic], et ex illis multa milia per viam perierunt, et multi miseri et famelici domum redierunt’. 76 See also MS E, p. lxxxv, where Irvine notes that ‘the Waverley Annals offer important evidence for the existence of an archetype of E extending to 1121 which was very close to E but not E itself’. 73

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James H. Kane that ‘the annals [for 1080–1121] may have been composed soon after the events they describe’, I would argue that Chronicle E’s account of the First Crusade, like that of Chronicle I, was probably incorporated in late 1096 or early 1097 after news of the crusaders’ turbulent progress (or, in many cases, failure to progress) through Hungary had begun filtering back to England.77 Such a reading aligns well with the annalist’s largely negative interpretation of the crusade, which betrays no knowledge whatsoever of its eventual achievements in Syria and Palestine. Establishing that Chronicle E’s annal for 1096 was most likely contemporary with the events it relates does not necessarily help to localise it or shed light on the circumstances in which it was first written down. Consideration of other textual and extra-textual factors is necessary here. In this respect, it should be noted that Clark observed a ‘generally southern’ and particularly ‘a slight Westminster (or London) bias’ in the Old English annals for 1080–1121.78 A more precise suggestion, which Clark found unconvincing, or at least unprovable, is that Proto-Chronicle E was compiled at Canterbury.79 Despite Clark’s hesitation, this is a reasonable hypothesis in light of the sheer amount of vernacular chronicling that took place there in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. As Dumville and Stafford have shown, Chronicles A, B, D, F and I were all either used or updated in Canterbury at this time, predominantly at Christ Church.80 Though there is no way to situate the composition of Proto-Chronicle E conclusively in this context, the text was certainly known at Christ Church by c. 1100.81 In addition, as Stafford explains, recent work on post-Conquest intellectual connections between Christ Church, the ‘rival’ Canterbury house of St Augustine’s, Peterborough and Rochester has led to the suggestion that Ernulf, the prior of Christ Church and then abbot of Peterborough from 1107 to 1114, may have been responsible for providing his former brethren in the Fens with a copy of Proto-Chronicle E at the beginning of the 1120s, when he was bishop of Rochester.82 As with several other surviving manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, all of this naturally indicates a monastic milieu for the compilation and dissemination of the Old English annals for 1080–1121. In recent decades, however, it has been suggested that the later vernacular annals, like the Alfredian ‘common stock’ at the heart of the whole tradition, were closely associated with the royal court, if

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78 79 80 81

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The Peterborough Chronicle 1070–1154, ed. C. Clark, 2nd edn (London, 1970), p. xxi. The Peterborough Chronicle, pp. xxii–xxiii. The Peterborough Chronicle, pp. xxi–xxii. Dumville, ‘Some Aspects’; Stafford, After Alfred, p. 268. T. Licence, Edward the Confessor: Last of the Royal Blood (New Haven, CT, 2020), p. 255 (see also 254–5, strengthening the case that Proto-Chronicle E was a product of Christ Church). Stafford, After Alfred, pp. 303–4.

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The First Crusade in Early Vernacular Annals not outright products of it.83 Stafford has demonstrated how careful we must be about assuming such a tight connection here, but it is nevertheless possible to detect the faint imprint of royal attitudes in Chronicle E’s short account of the First Crusade.84 This emerges in the annalist’s explicit scepticism regarding Urban II’s legitimacy, in his foregrounding of the agreement between William II and Robert of Normandy, and in his generally uncomplimentary portrayal of the crusade. Whether by design or not, the absence of any record of Robert’s exploits in the East between his Italian sojourn and his return to Normandy also resonates with what seems to have been a distinct lack of crusading appeal at William’s court. My point here is not that the king himself or any of his closest advisers had a hand in shaping the content of this annal. I do, however, agree with Stafford that ‘the court becomes a major theme and structuring element’ in Chronicle E’s annals from around 1090 on, and that these entries are ‘increasingly well-informed or at least more concerned with political events’.85 The public occasions on which the king displayed his crown and the major feasts in connection with which these crown-wearings usually took place thus came to serve as the major anchor points of vernacular annals.86 In Stafford’s view, this enhanced focus on the court reflects both its ‘new oppressiveness’ and ‘the significance of it and its meetings in the display and exercise of royal power’.87 Despite this, Stafford is careful to emphasise that Chronicle E’s annals ‘are not inconsistent with monastic environments’.88 In that sense, the entry s.a. 1096 that derives from Proto-Chronicle E coheres exactly with what we might expect from a scribe working at Christ Church, Canterbury during the archiepiscopate of Anselm, whose own response to the crusade was, in Christopher Tyerman’s words, ‘distinctly lukewarm’.89 Though it is impossible to say whether the annalists for 1096 in either Chronicle E or Chronicle I had any direct contact with Anselm or the king, the positioning of the First Crusade in both texts, and especially in the former, is very much

83

84 85

86

87 88 89

N. P. Brooks, ‘“Anglo-Saxon Chronicle(s)” or “Old English Royal Annals”?’, in Gender and Historiography: Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford, ed. J. L. Nelson, S. Reynolds and S. M. Johns (London, 2012), pp. 35–48. Stafford, After Alfred, pp. 315–16. Stafford, After Alfred, p. 310, noting also (at 109) that hints of this element are discernible even earlier, e.g. in the annals for 1085–87. See also Home, Peterborough Chronicle, pp. 64–5. Stafford, After Alfred, p. 315. On such occasions, see Hollister, Henry I, pp. 113–14. Stafford, After Alfred, p. 315. Stafford, After Alfred, p. 310. Tyerman, England and the Crusades, p. 18. See also J. A. Brundage, ‘St. Anselm, Ivo of Chartres, and the Ideology of the First Crusade’, in J. A. Brundage, The Crusades, Holy War and Canon Law (Aldershot, 1991), pp. 175–87 (no. IX); S. Niskanen, ‘St Anselm’s Views on Crusade’, in Medieval History Writing and Crusading Ideology, ed. T. Lehtonen and K. Villads Jensen (Helsinki, 2005), pp. 64–70.

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James H. Kane characteristic of attitudes to crusading that were current at the highest level of English politics in the late 1090s. This raises an interesting question about why crusading notices were included in Chronicles E and I in the first place. References to Eustace of Boulogne on crusade in the entries s.a. 1096 and 1100 in Chronicle E may reflect the Christ Church community’s indirect connection with his mother, Ida of Lorraine, through Anselm, who had corresponded with her since at least the late 1070s.90 Chronicle I’s annal for 1096 contains insufficient details to support similarly precise suggestions. Interrogating how such annals might have been read and put to use within the community that produced them, however, raises the possibility that they were intended to fulfil some kind of commemorative purpose for the monks who composed and engaged with them.91 Thomas Smith’s important and insightful recent work on how early crusading historiography enabled monks to ‘[engage] with the crusading movement from behind cloister walls as scribal crusaders’ bears directly on the issues at hand in the writing and dissemination of the entries discussed here.92 Nevertheless, the potential for the crusading annals in Chronicles E and I to function as a commemorative hook for the monks of Christ Church was surely weakened by the absence of any reference to the capture of Jerusalem, the event that imbued the First Crusade with its enduring spiritual resonance in the Latin West. The possible purpose – or purposes – of these unusual entries thus invites closer consideration in future.

Conclusion Although the annals discussed in this chapter reveal nothing new about the First Crusade itself, they do offer a precious glimpse of initial textual responses to the crusade in England at a time before the dominant narrative had crystallised in the continental histories. This glimpse reveals an instantaneous (if short-lived) interest in the First Crusade among scribes writing in Old English at Christ Church, Canterbury during the archiepiscopate of Anselm, most likely before his first period of exile on the continent. While the content of the annals for 1096 in the E and I versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the somewhat puzzling absence of any reference to the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, need not be read as unmediated expressions of Anselm’s reservations about the crusade, or of King William II’s apparent indifference to it, both texts unmistakeably reflect a Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, pp. 123, 133, 147. I would like to thank Andrew Buck for drawing Ida and Anselm’s relationship to my attention. 91 I am grateful to Stephen Spencer for this suggestion. 92 T. W. Smith, ‘First Crusade Letters and Medieval Monastic Scribal Cultures’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 71 (2020), 484–501 (at 501); see also T. W. Smith, ‘Scribal Crusading: Three New Manuscript Witnesses to the Regional Reception and Transmission of First Crusade Letters’, Traditio 72 (2017), 133–69. 90

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The First Crusade in Early Vernacular Annals very different perspective than the rich Latin accounts subsequently produced in France and Germany. Those accounts continue to exert a strong gravitational pull on the attention of modern historians. Twelfth-century English chroniclers like William of Malmesbury were themselves far from immune to the attraction of such texts when writing about the First Crusade. But we should not let their brilliance eclipse seemingly minor or less important witnesses to the historiographical reception of the crusade, like the hundreds of relevant entries surviving in extant annals from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Paying attention to such sources is crucial if we wish to refine our grasp of how information and traditions about the crusade were disseminated, compiled and memorialised within specific local contexts. It is also key to illuminating the ways in which people thought and wrote about the crusade while it was still unfolding, that is, in the years before the coalescence of the earliest Latin narratives, whose influence persists to this day. All of those narratives, even the oldest ones, were indelibly conditioned by knowledge of what the crusaders had done in July 1099. Being products of the years leading up to that moment, the Old English annals are thus rare textual snapshots of the First Crusade in progress, unburdened by any of the teleological baggage that it would be retrospectively saddled with. As imagined from Canterbury in late 1096 or early 1097, then, the capture of Jerusalem was only a pipe dream. That the monks of Christ Church chose not to update their annals when that dream materialised says a great deal about their historiographical priorities, and perhaps also about those of their archbishop and king.

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3

To Bargain with God: The Crusade Vow in the Narratives of the First Crusade 1 Edward J. Caddy

According to the Hystoria de via et recuperatione Antiochiae atque Ierusolymarum (hereafter Hystoria de via), after the conquest of Jerusalem by the forces of the First Crusade in July 1099, Robert ‘Curthose’, duke of Normandy (c. 1050–1134), declared: ‘So now, since I have fulfilled my vow, if the Lord should grant it, I wish to return to my own [land]’.2 Though these words cannot be considered Robert’s own, given that the Hystoria de via was compiled at the abbey of Monte Cassino at some point between 1130 and 1153, their sentiment would probably have resonated with many in the Latin army.3 Nearly four long years after participants had sworn vows and committed themselves to the expedition, their remarkable journey had ended: the Holy City of Jerusalem had been returned to Latin Christian control and the crusaders’ votive obligation discharged. As Fulcher of Chartres (c. 1059–c. 1127) remarked: ‘Now that we had visited the city, our long-lasting labour was completed’.4 Focusing on a key aspect of this labour, that is the crusade vow, this chapter seeks to reveal some of the challenges faced by medieval authors when constructing their accounts in relation to this new form of ritualised obligation. Oaths were a familiar A version of this paper was given at the Leeds IMC in July 2021. I am grateful to the attendees for their thoughtful comments and questions. I would like to express my gratitude to Andrew Buck, James Kane and Stephen Spencer for inviting me to contribute to this volume. My thanks especially to James Kane and Katy Mortimer for reading drafts. All remaining errors are my own. 2 HAI, p. 129: ‘Nunc itaque, quia votum meum complevi, si Dominus dederit, ad meos reverti desidero’. 3 HAI, p. xvi. On this text, see also L. Russo, ‘The Monte Cassino Tradition of the First Crusade: From the Chronica monasterii Casinensis to the Hystoria de via et recuperatione Antiochiae atque Ierusolymarum’, in Writing the Early Crusades: Text, Transmission and Memory, ed. M. Bull and D. Kempf (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 53–62 (at 59–60). For the crusade of Robert ‘Curthose’, see S. T. Parsons, ‘Crusading Participation in Normandy and its Borderlands: The Evidence from the Old French Traditions of the First Crusade’, Haskins Society Journal 29 (2018), 201–23; W. M. Aird, Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy, c. 1050–1134 (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 153–90. 4 FC, p. 331: ‘qua visitata, consummatus est labor diuturnus’. 1

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The Crusade Vow in the Narratives of the First Crusade feature of medieval Christian society for lay and religious alike; accordingly, the crusade vow would have been at once familiar and new to Latin Christians. Indeed, when medieval historical writers sought to relate the extraordinary events of the expedition, they did so according to pre-existing social and religious frameworks. This topic will be explored by first examining the place of the crusade vow at the Council of Clermont (the genesis of the venture) in the three Benedictine reworkings of the anonymous Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum: Baldric of Bourgueil’s Historia Ierosolimitana, Robert the Monk’s Historia Iherosolimitana and Guibert of Nogent’s Dei gesta per Francos.5 The analysis will then turn to the crusaders’ arrival at the Holy Sepulchre following the conquest of Jerusalem, as detailed by the texts of the Gesta Francorum ‘family’. It will be my contention as a result that modern scholarship has overstated the significance of the crusade vow to the institution of crusading in the era of the First Crusade. During this inchoate period, it seems, there did not exist a clear language for the chroniclers to draw upon when describing this obligation. Rather, this very inchoateness is borne out in how these texts cover the crusade vow.

The Vow in Urban II’s Letters Modern scholarship on the crusade vow is relatively sparse. When the vow has received attention, this research has typically been concerned with the legal implications of such a commitment. James Brundage’s seminal 1969 study Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader brought the topic to the fore. It was more ambitious than previous works and dealt with earlier evidence to investigate what Brundage identified as the dual origins of the crusade: pilgrimage and holy war.6 Following Michel Villey, Brundage argued that the vow was introduced by Pope Urban II (r. 1088–99) to ‘convert the momentary zeal of would-be Crusaders into a permanent obligation which could be enforced’.7 It was, in other words, the means by which an individual’s intention to participate in an armed expedition to the Holy Land was transformed into a binding commitment. Despite not receiving sustained analysis since Brundage, the vow’s place within the modern understanding of crusading has been firmly entrenched as a

BB; RM; GN. J. A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader (Madison, WI, 1969), pp. xiii–xviii. 7 J. A. Brundage, ‘The Votive Obligation of Crusaders: The Development of a Canonistic Doctrine’, Traditio 24 (1968), 77–118 (at 77); M. Villey, La croisade: Essai sur la formation d’une theorie juridique (Paris, 1942), pp. 119–20; Paul Chevedden has, unconvincingly to my mind, suggested that the crusade vow was first deployed in the early 1090s during the reconquest of Tarragona: P. E. Chevedden, ‘Pope Urban II and the Ideology of the Crusade’, in The Crusader World, ed. A. J. Boas (Abingdon, 2016), pp. 7–53 (at 21). 5 GF; 6

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Edward J. Caddy result of one of the field’s fiercest historiographical debates: the definition of a ‘crusade’. This is a thorny issue that I shall not engage with at length here, but it achieved some level of standardisation through the work of Jonathan Riley-Smith, who championed the ‘pluralist’ position and identified the defining features of a crusade as papal authorisation, the indulgence, the vow, the cross and privileges.8 For Riley-Smith, therefore, ‘what made a man a crusader was the taking of a vow’.9 This model was embraced widely, with Norman Housley asserting that the ‘vow, cross, and indulgence’ were ‘the key elements of crusading’.10 Although not subscribing to this school of thought, Christopher Tyerman likewise determined that the vow was a ‘central element of the crusade’.11 At its inception, the crusade vow, and the consequent obligations and indulgences, dictated the terms of participation in the First Crusade. It was only after having made this vow, which was symbolised by attaching a cloth cross to one’s clothing, that participants were eligible to receive the unique combination of temporal and spiritual benefits associated with the crusade.12 Just as the vow marked out a crusader to God, it was the sign of the cross that marked them out among men. From the earliest days of crusading, then, the cross served as a physical marker to distinguish participants.13 Importantly, it is possible, on the basis of surviving epistolary evidence, to partially reconstruct Urban’s view of the expedition and the place of the crusade vow, which is explicitly mentioned in one of his extant letters and implied in another two.14 In a letter addressed to all the faithful in Flanders, sent at the end of December 1095, Urban ordered that any men ‘whom God has inspired to this vow’ were to be ready to depart for Jerusalem on Assumption Day, that is 15 August 1096.15 A similar supposition was made in a letter sent to the counts of Besalú, Empurias, Roussillon and Cerdaña after January 1096, in which the pope declared that those who had resolved to travel to Asia should instead fulfil their obligation by fighting the Muslims in Spain.16 Such fleeting references to the vow 8 9

10 11

12 13 14

15 16

J. Riley-Smith, What Were the Crusades?, 4th edn (Basingstoke, 2009), p. 5. Riley-Smith, What Were the Crusades?, p. 45. N. Housley, Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400–1536 (Oxford, 2002), p. 12; N. Housley, Contesting the Crusades (Oxford, 2006), p. 20. C. Tyerman, The Invention of the Crusades (Basingstoke, 1998), p. 39. The Councils of Urban II, Volume 1: Decreta Claromontensia, ed. R. Somerville (Amsterdam, 1972), p. 74. G. Constable, ‘The Cross of the Crusaders’, in G. Constable, Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 45–91. For a recent re-examination of these letters, see G. Strack, ‘Pope Urban II and Jerusalem: A Re-examination of His Letters on the First Crusade’, Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture 2:1 (2016), 51–70. Kb, pp. 136–7 (at 137): ‘si quibus autem vestrum Deus hoc votum inspiraverit’. Papsturkunden in Spanien: Vorarbeiten zur Hispania Pontificia, ed. Paul Kehr, 2 vols (Berlin, 1926–28), I, 287–8.

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The Crusade Vow in the Narratives of the First Crusade and the assumed obligations suggest that the recipients of Urban’s letters were well-enough informed about the vow that they understood its form and substance without further instruction. A third letter, issued from Cremona in October 1096, reminded the monks of the congregation of Vallombrosa, some of whom he had heard desired to travel with the knights to Jerusalem, that they were forbidden from going on this expedition as they had ‘already vowed themselves to spiritual warfare’.17 Urban acknowledged the merits of such a sacrifice, but lamented that ‘it is planned by the wrong kind of person’.18 His desire was for arms-bearers (‘militum’) to lead this expedition, whereas professed religious should remain behind unless permitted to go by their bishops and abbots. In line with contemporary monastic understanding, Urban reminded the monks that their vow of stability was incompatible with this new votive obligation. Urban’s restriction on the participation of monks in the First Crusade is also mentioned in his letter of September 1096 to the people of Bologna.19 Urban II thus decreed, and western Christians seem to have accepted, that, in order to participate in this new endeavour, one must swear a vow. When the pope referred to the crusade vow, it was as a proper votum, a solemn promise made to God.20 Indeed, it was precisely because the expedition was framed as a voluntary penitential pilgrimage, a popular and established custom within Christianity, that contemporaries agreed to enter into this binding covenant. Though the crusade project was new, the demand that participants formally commit themselves to an expedition with a vow was not: eleventh-century pilgrims in the Latin West were accustomed to making vows. While Holy Land pilgrimage had a long and rich history in the Latin West, no text of any pre-crusade pilgrimage vow exists.21 However, an examination of the 17

18 19 20

21

‘Papsturkunden in Florenz’, ed. W. Wiederhold, in Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Götingen, Phil.-hist. Kl. (1901), pp. 313–14 (at 313): ‘eos autem qui de relicto seculo spirituali se militie devoverunt’. ‘Papsturkunden in Florenz’, p. 313: ‘sed non recta divisio’. Kb, pp. 137–8. Bernold of Constance (d. 1100) stated that, at the Council of Piacenza in March 1095, Urban II asked men to ‘promise to take an oath’ (‘iureiurando promitterent’) to aid the Byzantine emperor against invading Muslim forces. It is not known if any swore such an oath, but the level of commitment required may have escalated between Piacenza and Clermont, for Bernold recorded that, at Clermont, participants vowed (‘devoverunt’) themselves to the expedition. See Bernold of Constance, ‘Chronicon’, ed. I. S. Robinson, MGH SRG n.s. 14 (Hanover, 2003), pp. 520, 528. It is possible that the change in phrasing reflects Urban II’s decision to enjoin military assistance with a penitential pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The silence on the matter is not surprising, considering that vows were very often sworn privately or only mentally resolved upon. The earliest example of a crusade vow is found in 1226, when Louis VIII (1187–1226) set out certain conditions on the vow

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Edward J. Caddy surviving evidence for journeys to the Holy Land suggests that such a vow would likely have been sworn by most, and in doing so it was considered a proper vow, a votum.22 Richard of Verdun, abbot of Saint-Vanne (970–1046), declared openly his vow (‘sui votum’) to go to Jerusalem in 1027, and led more than 700 pilgrims to the Holy City.23 In a letter to the Marquis Raniero, the Benedictine monk, reformer and cardinal, Peter Damian (1007–72), mentioned that eight men on pilgrimage had ‘fulfilled the vow of their pious desire’ upon entering Jerusalem.24 According to the Vita Lietberti episcopi Cameracensis, when Lietbert of Cambrai (d. 1076) decided upon a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1054, he was bound to the expedition with a vow (‘voto’).25 Likewise, when the ‘Great German Pilgrimage’ of 1064 reached Jerusalem, it was there that the pilgrims ‘fulfilled their vows to the Lord’.26 In each instance, therefore, the author used votum to refer to the pilgrimage vow, in the same way that Urban II did for the crusade vow. There also seems to have been a rudimentary sense that this vow was fulfilled upon arrival at Jerusalem.

The Terminology of the Vow in First Crusade Chronicles Based on the literary tradition of using votum to refer to pilgrimage vows, the conscious framing of the crusade as a special kind of pilgrimage, as well as Pope Urban II’s own letters on the expedition, one might expect the crusade vow to be denoted consistently by the expedition’s chronicles as a votum. This is not the case. When referred to as the object of the sentence, the vow could be a debitum

22

23 24

25

26

that he would take for the Albigensian Crusade (1209–26). See Layettes du Trésor des Chartes, ed. A. Teulet, 3 vols (Paris, 1863–75), I, 69–70. It was likely recorded because of Louis’ specific restrictions. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law, pp. 9, 17 n. 62; E. A. Clark, The Life of Melania the Younger: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (New York, 1984), p. 52; Charlemagne’s Courtier: The Complete Einhard, ed. and trans. P. E. Dutton (Peterborough, ON, 1998), p. 72. More generally, see A. Graboïs, Le pélèrin occidental en terre sainte au Moyen Âge (Brussels, 1998), pp. 35–8. ‘Vita Richardi abbatis S. Vitoni Vidunensis’, ed. W. Wattenbach, MGH SS 11 (Hanover, 1854), p. 288. Peter Damian, Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. K. Reindel, MGH Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit, 4 vols (Munich, 1983–93), IV, 1–5 (at 3): ‘expleto pii desiderii voto’. ‘Vita Lietberti episcopi Cameracensis auctore Rodolfo monacho S. Sepulchri Cameracensis’, ed. A. Hofmeister, in MGH SS 30:2 (Leipzig, 1934), pp. 838–66 (at 853, 858). ‘Annales Altahenses Maiores’, ed. W. Giesebrecht and E. von Oefele, in MGH SS 20 (Hanover, 1868), p. 815: ‘Ibidem igitur per 13 dies intima devotione vota sua Domino solventes’.

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The Crusade Vow in the Narratives of the First Crusade (‘debt’ or ‘obligation’),27 a iuramentum (‘oath’),28 a promissum (‘promise’),29 a sponsio (‘solemn promise’)30 or a votum (‘vow’).31 When verbs are used, there is even greater variety: adimplere (‘to fulfil’),32 adnuere (‘to promise’),33 complere (‘to make complete’),34 spondere (‘to promise solemnly’),35 persolvere (‘to pay out’),36 promittere (‘to promise’)37 and vovere (‘to vow’).38 Although votum is used most frequently and in the widest range of accounts, there is no consistency across the works surveyed, and rarely internal agreement.39 The disparity is such that it is not possible to create a unified theory of the crusade vow from the accounts of the First Crusade. Another series of oaths sworn during the First Crusade has been subjected to extended analysis: the compact sworn between Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (1057–1118) and the leaders of the First Crusade.40 There is similar variety in the language used, with the agreement referred to as a concordium (‘agreement’), or words denoting an ‘oath’ such as iuramentum, iusiurandum and sacramentum.41 Whereas the crusade, in theory, held all who swore the vow to the same binding commitment, the agreements made at Constantinople in 1096–97 seem to have been negotiated with the western lords as they arrived at the city. As such, it is reasonable to assume that different types of obligations are being discussed here,

p. 92. BB, p. 21. 29 RM, p. 15. 30 RM, p. 15. 31 RA, p. 249; FC, p. 140; RM, p. 7; AA, p. 412; RC, p. 704; GFIE, p. 515; HAI, pp. 129, 131. 32 RM, p. 8. 33 AA, p. 8. 34 RC, p. 704; HAI, p. 129. 35 FC, p. 138. 36 GFIE, p. 515. 37 RM, p. 15. 38 AA, pp. 50, 90, 386; GN, pp. 117, 291; FC, p. 140. 39 Of the texts surveyed that mention the crusade vow on more than one occasion, just three consistently use the same term, in each case a derivative of votum: GN, GFIE and HAI. 40 See A. C. Krey, ‘A Neglected Passage in the Gesta and its Bearing on the Literature of the First Crusade’, in The Crusades and Other Historical Essays Presented to Dana C. Munro, ed. L. J. Paetow (New York, 1928), pp. 57–78; J. H. Pryor, ‘The Oaths of the Leaders of the First Crusade to Emperor Alexius I Comnenus: Fealty, Homage – Pistis, Douleia’, Parergon n.s. 2 (1984), 111–41; J. H. Hill and L. L. Hill, ‘The Convention of Alexius Comnenus and Raymond of Saint Gilles’, American Historical Review 58 (1953), 322–7; J. Shepard, ‘When Greek Meets Greek: Alexius Comnenus and Bohemond in 1097–8’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 12 (1988), 227–37. 41 PT, p. 15; AA, pp. 87, 89, 93; FC, p. 178; GN, p. 248. 27 GF, 28

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Edward J. Caddy and that the inconsistency in language may be an attempt by the chroniclers to reflect the range of commitments made. In this period, iuramentum was the standard word for an oath, derived from the verb iurare (‘to swear’).42 Iusiurandum, which also meant ‘oath’, was formed from ius and the gerund of iurare. Sacramentum, from the verb sacrare, in turn derived from sacer, that is ‘sacred’ or ‘holy’, entered into the Christian tradition as a military oath of loyalty.43 By the eleventh century, sacramentum broadly carried the same meaning as iuramentum and iusiurandum. Indeed, Joshua Hey has argued that twelfth-century Anglo-Norman sources do not seem to differentiate between oath-nouns for oaths of loyalty, and that authorial preference rather than logic dictated terminology.44 Votum is derived from the past participle of the Latin verb vovere, meaning ‘to vow’ or ‘to promise’.45 It is set apart from other oath-nouns by its reservation for promises made directly to God or the saints, such as vows of pilgrimage. A key example of this from the chronicles of the First Crusade is the vow made by Bohemond I of Antioch (d. 1111) after his capture by the Dānishmendid Turks at the battle of Melitene in 1101. He swore that, should he be released from captivity, he would make a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Leonard at Noblat in the Limousin.46 According to Ralph of Caen’s Tancredus, Bohemond stated: ‘I shall fulfil my vow of visiting him [St Leonard] or I shall die in the attempt’.47 The Hystoria de via noted that it was at St Leonard’s shrine that Bohemond ‘fulfilled his vow’ (‘votum suum perfecit’).48 Both authors use votum to refer to vows of pilgrimage and crusade throughout.49 It would thus seem that some chroniclers recognised that this new obligation, the crusade vow, should be considered on a par with pilgrimage vows.

Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. P. G. W. Glare, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2012), s.v. ‘iuramentum’. Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. Glare, s.v. ‘sacramentum’; Etymological Dictionary of Latin, ed. de Vaan, s.v. ‘sacer’. 44 J. Hey, ‘Oaths, Kings and Subjects: A Study of the Oaths Sworn to Kings by Subjects in England, c. 870–c. 1200’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of St Andrews, 2018), pp. 15–19. 45 W. Eisenhut, Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft Suppl. 14 (1974), pp. 964–73, s.v. ‘votum’; Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. Glare, s.v. ‘votum’; Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, ed. M. de Vaan (Leiden, 2008), s.v. ‘votum’. 46 See A. Poncelet, ‘Boémond et S. Leonard’, Analecta Bollandiana 31 (1912), 24–44; G. Beech, ‘A Norman-Italian Adventurer in the East: Richard of Salerno, 1097–1112’, Anglo-Norman Studies 15 (1993), 25–40. 47 RC, p. 713: ‘ego votum visitandi eum, aut praemoriar, aut absolvam’. 48 HAI, p. 135. 49 The relationship between the Tancredus and the HAI has long been known, but this is not an instance of the latter lifting exact phrasing from the former. If the story is borrowed, it is reshaped and inserted into a different point in the narrative. 42

43

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The Crusade Vow in the Narratives of the First Crusade It may be, then, that linguistic inconsistencies in oath-words reflect the difficulties faced by medieval historical writers when incorporating the crusade into a pre-existing social and religious framework. The crusade had been preached as a pilgrimage, and contemporaries certainly seem to have viewed it as one, but the vow that bound participants to the expedition does not appear to have been seen so clearly as a natural successor to the pilgrimage vow. Even in the context of crusade sermons, epistolary evidence and likely access to returning crusaders, both those who made it to the Holy Sepulchre and those who did not, there had not yet developed a precise lexicon of crusade terminology. Variations instead reflect the continued influence of authorial preferences, determined by social, cultural and linguistic differences, and are made more prominent by the remarkable burst of historical writing that was inspired by the First Crusade.

The Vow in Accounts of the Council of Clermont The Gesta Francorum, which circulated in Europe in the early twelfth century and formed the foundation for many of the Latin chronicles of the First Crusade, has, according to John France, ‘become the “normal” account of the First Crusade’.50 Yet, as noted above, it was nevertheless reworked by three Benedictine monks.51 In his prologue to the Historia Ierosolimitana, Baldric, abbot of the Benedictine abbey at Bourgueil, noted c. 1105–07 that he had reworked the text because it was so uncultivated and dishevelled (‘inculta et incompta’) that even those with the simplest tastes would be put off reading it.52 Guibert of Nogent likewise used his prologue in Dei gesta per Francos, written about 1109, to note that he had come across a previous work (the Gesta Francorum) that ‘violated the laws of grammar’ and vowed to correct it.53 Finally, Robert the Monk, thought to be the same Robert who served as abbot of Saint-Remy-de-Reims in the later 1090s, who drew on unidentifiable sources to introduce new material to the narrative (1106–07/1110), outlined various reasons for the Gesta Francorum’s lack of success, such as that it contained no description of the foundation of the crusade at the Council of Clermont.54

50

51 52 53 54

J. France, ‘The Anonymous Gesta Francorum and the Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem of Raymond of Aguilers and the Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere of Peter Tudebode: An Analysis of the Textual Relationship between Primary Sources for the First Crusade’, in The Crusades and their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton, ed. J. France and W. G. Zajac (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 39–69. For an alternative interpretation, see C. Symes, ‘Popular Literacies and the First Historians of the First Crusade’, Past & Present 235 (2017), 37–67 (at 48–9). BB, p. 4. GN, p. 81. RM, p. 3.

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Edward J. Caddy Returning to the Gesta Francorum, the text very briefly covers Clermont: the act of marking participants with a cross is mentioned, but nothing is said of the vow.55 If the author was a southern Italian, as many scholars believe, he would not have been in the vicinity of the council, which perhaps accounts for the lack of information.56 However, it is possible that the author was aware of these events and instead chose to present the outset of the crusade in a different manner.57 For example, there is the suggestion that participants were verbally bound to the expedition in some way: the Franks said ‘they would all with one accord follow in the footsteps of Christ’.58 But this suggests an agreement between men, rather than one made individually between each man and God. Here, then, is evidence that the Benedictine monks must have relied on other sources for information on the vow. Robert tells us that Urban proclaimed: Anyone who has a mind to undertake this holy pilgrimage and enters into that bargain with God and devotes himself as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, shall wear the sign of the Cross on his forehead or his chest. And conversely anyone who seeks to turn back having taken the vow shall place the cross on his back between his shoulders.59

The pope’s speech ‘touched a chord, and more than 300,000 decided to go on pilgrimage and took action to carry out [their vow] insofar as God had given them the ability’.60 Robert has Urban himself issue instructions on taking the cross and espouse the idea that the cross symbolised the vow. Even if the finer contours of Urban’s speech here are fictional, speeches, as with any other rhetorical device, p. 2. Several other chroniclers describe participants being marked with the cross at Clermont, more so than those who mention the vow: RM, p. 7; BB, pp. 10, 11; GN, p. 117; FC, p. 140. 56 J. Rubenstein, ‘What is the Gesta Francorum, and who was Peter Tudebode?’, Revue Mabillon n.s. 16 (2005), 179–204 (at 184). 57 Consider the debate among these sources as to who should be credited with instigating the First Crusade, Pope Urban II or Peter the Hermit. See H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Pope Urban II and the Idea of Crusade’, Studi medievali 36 (1995), 721–42; J. Flori, Pierre l’Ermite et la première croisade (Paris, 1999), esp. pp. 67–90. 58 GF, p. 2: ‘dicentes sese Christi unanimiter sequi uestigia’. 59 RM, p. 8: ‘Quicumque ergo huius sancte peregrinationis animum habuerit, et Deo sponsionem inde fecerit, eique se libaturum hostiam vivam, sanctam et bene placentem devoverit, signum dominice crucis in fronte sua sive in pectore preferat; qui vero inde voti compos regredi voluerit, inter spatulas retro ponat’; Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade: Historia Iherosolimitana, trans. C. Sweetenham (Aldershot, 2005), p. 82. 60 RM, p. 8: ‘Placuit omnibus, et plus quam trecenta milia mente iter concipiunt, et adimplere satagunt, prout unicuique posse contulit Dominus’; Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade, trans. Sweetenham, p. 83. 55 GF,

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The Crusade Vow in the Narratives of the First Crusade were expected to meet the tests of plausibility.61 Robert’s account of the First Crusade was the most successful by a significant margin.62 It is not possible to establish exactly how his account was received by readers, but the inclusion of the vow at this moment indicates that it was considered appropriate for his audience. In this way, despite potential inaccuracies in the precise form of Urban’s speech, Robert’s representation of it, and his positioning of the vow, offers a window onto perceptions of this obligation in the first decade of the twelfth century. In short, it demonstrates that contemporaries would have accepted that Urban had called this expedition a ‘holy pilgrimage’ and that participants were required to swear a formal vow. Guibert’s account covers many of the same elements in a more substantial and rhetorical manner. He does not use direct speech, but relates that Urban absolved everyone who ‘vowed’ (‘voverunt’) to participate and established a sign of this ‘honourable promise’ (‘honestae professionis’).63 He continued: If anyone, after accepting this symbol, or after the promise of a public vow, then went back on his good intentions, either out of weak regret, or out of domestic affection, such a person, according to the pope’s decree, would be considered everywhere an outlaw, unless he came to his senses and fulfilled the obligation which he had dishonourably laid aside.64

Going beyond Robert’s version, detailing what would happen to those who failed to fulfil the terms of their vow, Guibert elevates the act: in his retelling, the commitment was both honourable and public. This was perhaps an attempt to place the crusade vow within the nexus of existing twelfth-century oaths, which his readers would have known were made binding by their public profession.65 Baldric, by contrast, does not mention the crusade vow explicitly, but he does detail that participants were marked with the cross and that ‘wives rejoiced as their beloved husbands went away’.66 He also commented unkindly on those religious men who ‘unwisely left their places of residence and proceeded to go on the journey’ without the consent of their abbots and bishops, as Urban did in 61

62 63 64

65 66

D. S. Bachrach, ‘Conforming with the Rhetorical Tradition of Plausibility: Clerical Representation of Battlefield Orations against Muslims, 1080–1170’, International History Review 26 (2004), 1–19 (at 2); C. C. Wilson, The Battle Rhetoric of Crusade and Holy War, c. 1099–c. 1222 (Abingdon, 2022). RM, pp. ix–x. GN, p. 140. GN, p. 140: ‘Quod si quis, post hujus signi acceptionem, aut post evidentis voti pollicitationem, ab ista benivolentia, prava poenitudine, aut aliqua suorum affectione resiliret, ut exlex perpetuo haberetur omnino praecepit, nisi resipisceret, idemque, quod omiserat foede, repeteret’. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law, pp. 33–4. BB, p. 11: ‘gaudebant uxores, abeuntibus maritis dilectissimis’.

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Edward J. Caddy his letter to the congregation of Vallombrosa.67 Although some elements of the crusade are recorded, therefore, the vow is not. Importantly, Robert and Baldric were almost certainly eyewitnesses to the council at Clermont. However, both wrote at least ten years after the event, and so their accounts are informed not only by their memories, but also by the outcome of the crusade, as well as their own narrative intentions and personal interpretations of that day.68 Guibert, who based his account on secondary evidence, noted that he did not provide a verbatim account of Urban’s words at Clermont, but rather rewrote them according to the pope’s meaning (intentio).69 Regardless of personal attendance, none gave a full account of the council or Urban’s speech, instead preferring to pick out and highlight the themes that were of particular interest to them and their target audiences. Even at this stage, the vow was thus simply another narrative device that an author might, or might not, draw upon in constructing their image of the crusade. It is possible in this regard that Urban failed to mention the crusade vow in his speech at Clermont, and that Robert and Guibert included it to fulfil their respective narrative intentions, which would align with historiography that argues that the vow was a product of the experience of crusading only once the expedition was underway.70 Yet, the range and substance of accounts that first mention the vow at the council indicates otherwise.71 It is curious, then, that Baldric omitted the vow from his account, especially if Georg Strack is correct in arguing that the author utilised the pope’s letter to Flanders of December 1095 (which overtly mentions the votum).72 However, this editorial decision perhaps indicates that the vow was not a central element in this chronicler’s conception of the crusade. It would seem, therefore, that at the Council of Clermont, the point at which those outside of Urban’s inner circle were first informed of the crusade, participants were told that a vow should be sworn in order to take part in the expedition. When Robert and Guibert mention this, they do so casually and without extravagance. Their accounts afford a great deal more attention to explaining the significance and symbolism of being marked with the cross than the form and substance of 67 68

69 70

71 72

BB, p. 12: ‘Nam et multi heremite et reclusi et monachi, domiciliis suis non satis sapienter relictis, ire uiam e perrexerunt’. On eyewitness testimony in crusade narratives, see M. Bull, Eyewitness and Crusade Narrative: Perception and Narration in Accounts of the Second, Third and Fourth Crusades (Woodbridge, 2018). GN, p. 111. A. Noth, Heiliger Krieg und heiliger Kampf in Islam und Christentum: Beiträge zur Vorgeschichte und Geschichte der Kreuzzüge (Bonn, 1966), pp. 120–39. This view was convincingly dismissed by J. A. Brundage, ‘The Army of the First Crusade and the Crusade Vow: Some Reflections on a Recent Book’, Mediaeval Studies 33 (1971), 334–43. FC, pp. 138, 140; AA, p. 8. Strack, ‘Pope Urban II and Jerusalem’, pp. 58, 62–3.

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The Crusade Vow in the Narratives of the First Crusade the vow, how it might be fulfilled or what happened to this votive obligation should a participant die before they reached Jerusalem. Details about the crusade vow at Clermont, slight as they are, thus represent only what each chronicler deemed acceptable to their audiences. Since the vow was omitted from the Gesta Francorum, Robert and Guibert made a conscious decision to insert it, albeit not to elevate its importance. In foregrounding the vow, they likely sought to make the narrative more acceptable to a monastic audience, as in this context it would have made greater intrinsic sense that an expedition akin to a pilgrimage would be committed to with a vow. This would certainly align with Jonathan Riley-Smith’s proposed model of ‘theological refinement’ to describe the authorial projects of the three Benedictine authors.73 According to this, the Gesta Francorum was adapted by each so that it would become more spiritually satisfying, with the crusading host presented as akin to ‘a monastery in motion’.74 Despite their individual interpretations, these authors shared an overarching aim of locating the crusade within an existing theological framework that was recognisable – and appealing – to their readers.75 The weight assumed in swearing a vow would have been well-understood by the clergy, as would the idea of the crusade as conceived by Urban, which would have been propagated during his initial preaching tour and afterwards via his letters that circulated in Europe. By inserting the vow into their accounts of the Council of Clermont and using the language of a proper vow, Robert and Guibert had, even more than Baldric, asserted the holy nature of the expedition. Yet, the Benedictine chroniclers did not go so far as to attempt to establish a firm outline of the actual substance of the crusade vow. In the same way that these chroniclers tended to portray crusade deserters ambiguously, partly because of their affections for particular families, it is possible that the crusade vow was dealt with only loosely because it allowed them to avoid confronting the question of what happened to all those who did not fulfil the terms of their vow, either through death or inaction.76 Such a concern might explain why none of the Benedictine accounts detail the fulfilment of crusade vows at the Holy Sepulchre following the conquest of Jerusalem in July 1099 – although it is equally possible that they

J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (Philadelphia, PA, 1986), pp. 135–52. But see also the response in J. Rubenstein, ‘Miracles and the Crusading Mind: Monastic Meditations on Jerusalem’s Conquest’, in Prayer and Thought in Monastic Tradition: Essays in Honour of Benedicta Ward SLG, ed. S. Bhattacharji, R. Williams and D. Mattos (London, 2014), pp. 197–210. 74 Riley-Smith, The First Crusade, p. 150. 75 M. T. Fumagelli Beonio Brocchieri, ‘The Intellectual’, in The Medieval World: A History of European Society, ed. J. Le Goff, trans. L. G. Cochrane (London, 1990), pp. 181–211. 76 On the desertions, see A. Sitár, ‘Deserters from the First Crusade and their Ambiguous Portrayal in Twelfth-Century Latin Sources’, Graeco-Latina Brunensia 23 (2018), 109–26. 73

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Edward J. Caddy expected their audiences to know the point at which the vows were fulfilled. What is clear, however, is that depictions of the vow reveal that the novelty and significance of the crusade, particularly its success, posed distinct challenges to historical writers who sought to incorporate these events into their pre-existing literary and social frameworks.

Discharging the Vow at the Holy Sepulchre Turning away from Clermont, and instead to the moment when the crusaders realised their ambition to capture the Holy City on 15 July 1099, we must look not to the Benedictine works for coverage – as noted above, none discusses the vow at this point – but rather to three other works intimately related to the Gesta Francorum. These are: the Peregrinatio Antiochie per Vrbanum papam facta (PA), which survives in a single thirteenth-century manuscript – Cambridge, St Catherine’s College, MS 3; the Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere, written by Peter Tudebode, a Poitevin priest and participant in the crusade; and the aforementioned Hystoria de via, which is further removed from the other texts and amalgamates material from the Peregrinatio Antiochie, Peter Tudebode’s Historia and two other sources (the Tancredus of Ralph of Caen and the Liber of Raymond of Aguilers).77 Marcus Bull and Samu Niskanen have drawn attention to the relationship between these texts, and offered some preliminary conclusions, though much work is yet to be done. Bull, who did not analyse the Hystoria de via, believed the Gesta Francorum to be the earliest surviving narrative, from which the Peregrinatio Antiochie and Peter Tudebode’s Historia descended.78 Niskanen has pushed for the recognition of a lost source common (CS) to all four works and has proposed several potential stemmata.79 He maintained that the sum of reported events across the Peregrinatio Antiochie and Gesta Francorum is virtually identical, and, where divergences exist, they are usually stylistic. By contrast, the account attributed to Peter Tudebode and the Hystoria de via tend to be more individualistic in their content. S. Niskanen, ‘The Origins of Gesta Francorum and Two Related Texts: Their Textual and Literary Character’, Sacris Erudiri 51 (2012), 287–316; M. Bull, ‘The Relationship between the Gesta Francorum and Peter Tudebode’s Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere: The Evidence of a Hitherto Unexamined Manuscript’, Crusades 11 (2012), 1–17; S. Niskanen, ‘Copyists and Redactors: Towards a Prolegomenon to the editio princeps of Peregrinatio Antiochie per Vrbanum papam facta’, in Transmission of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. O. Merisalo, M. Kuha and S. Niiranen (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 103–14; HAI, pp. xxviii–xl. The extent to which the De Hierosolymitano itinere was the work of Peter Tudebode has been questioned by Rubenstein, ‘What is the Gesta Francorum’, p. 202. 78 Bull, ‘Relationship’. 79 Niskanen, ‘Copyists’.

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80

The Crusade Vow in the Narratives of the First Crusade The excerpts in the table below detail the actions of the army of the First Crusade following the conquest of Jerusalem in July 1099: Table 3.1. Comparative table regarding depictions of the vow in the Gesta Francorum group. GF, p. 92

PT, p. 141

PA, fol. 88r

HAI, p. 126

Mox concurrerunt per uniuersam urbem, capientes aurum et argentum, equos et mulos, domosque plenas omnibus bonis. Venerunt autem omnes nostri gaudentes et prae nimio gaudio plorantes ad nostri Saluatoris Iesu sepuichrum adorandum, et reddiderunt ei capitale debitum.

Mox concurrerunt per universam civitatem, capientes aurum et argentum, equos et mulos, et domos plenas omnibus diviciis. Postea venerunt omnes gaudentes et pre nimio gaudio plorantes ad nostri Salvatoris Sanctum Sepulchrum.

Mox concurrerunt per universam civitatem, capientes aurum et argentum, equos mulos et domos plenas omnibus bonis. Venerunt autem omnes nostri gaudentes et pre nimio gaudio plorantes ad nostri Saluatoris Iesu sepuichrum adorandum, et reddiderunt ei capitale debitum.

Gaudebant etiam quod cursum itineris peregrinationis, quem devoverant, jam consummatum esse cernebant, gratias agentes Deo, qui eis in cunctis misericordia ejus praeveniente atque subsequente cooperator exstiterit.

After this our men rushed round the whole city, seizing gold and silver, horses and mules and houses full of all sorts of goods. And they all came rejoicing and weeping from excess of gladness to worship at the Sepulchre of our Saviour Jesus, and there they paid their principal debt to him.

After this our men rushed round the whole city, seizing gold and silver, horses and mules and houses full of all sorts of goods. Afterwards they all came rejoicing and weeping from excess of gladness to worship at the Sepulchre of our Saviour.

After this our men rushed round the whole city, seizing gold and silver, horses and mules and houses full of all sorts of goods. Afterwards they all came rejoicing and weeping from excess of gladness to worship at the Sepulchre of our Saviour Jesus, and there they paid their principal debt to him.

And they rejoiced because they discerned that the course of the pilgrimage journey which they had devoted themselves to was now complete, giving thanks to God, who had shared their labour with his mercy preceding and following them in all things.

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Edward J. Caddy As can be seen, the Gesta Francorum, Peregrinatio Antiochie and Peter Tudebode’s Historia are virtually identical in their retelling of this moment, with the exception of the final clause (‘et reddiderunt ei capitale debitum’).80 The Gesta Francorum and Peregrinatio Antiochie do not follow the pilgrimage tradition or Urban’s letters, and neither use the rhetoric of vows. Nor do they specify what this ‘debt’ is, or how it was accumulated. Instead, it is seemingly assumed that their audience would know. This clause is as close as the Gesta Francorum comes to explicitly mentioning the crusade vow, and it is notable that Peter Tudebode – who also does not mention the vow – omits it. It is known that Tudebode made certain editorial changes to CS, of which we see an example here, though his rationale for doing so in this instance is not clear. It could be that, as with Baldric’s account of the Council of Clermont, the vow was not an integral part of Tudebode’s narrative. Whatever the case, he made an editorial decision to omit the clause and, in doing so, brought his account in line with most other narratives of the First Crusade, for it was seemingly standard practice not to mention the fulfilment of the crusade vow.81 While the divergence between the Gesta Francorum, Peregrinatio Antiochie and Peter Tudebode’s Historia appears primarily stylistic, the account given in the Hystoria de via is substantially different. This is to be expected, considering the range of sources that were employed by its author, although this moment also differs from Raymond of Aguilers’ Liber or Ralph of Caen’s Tancredus.82 There exist similar elements, such as the descriptions of the crusaders rejoicing at their success, but the Hystoria de via reframes the actions and intentions of the Latins following the Holy City’s capture. In the three earlier texts, prominence is given to more traditional elements of the conquest, with men seizing ‘gold and silver, horses and mules and houses full of all sorts of goods’ before they pay their ‘debt’ to the Lord. The fulfilment of vows and the completion of the pilgrimage are subordinated to the martial actions and material desires of the army following the conquest – their initial concern is for earthly rather than spiritual treasures. In the Hystoria de via, these elements are dropped entirely. Instead, this moment is presented as the culmination of the pilgrimage and reflects the text’s spiritual framing of the expedition. Whereas the Gesta Francorum and Peregrinatio Antiochie hint at the fulfilment of vows, the Hystoria de via offers a clear picture of the matter and so uses a derivative of votum to convey the weight of the obligation. By the time this latter text was constructed, around 1130 at the Rosalind Hill translated this phrase as ‘and there they fulfilled their vows to him’: GF, p. 92. Although the fulfilment of crusade vows by worshipping at the Holy Sepulchre is perhaps implied here, I have favoured a more literal translation, following The Crusades: A Documentary History, trans. J. A. Brundage (Milwaukee, WI, 1962), p. 64. 81 Just one text explicitly states that vows were fulfilled after the conquest of Jerusalem: GFIE, p. 515. 82 There are perhaps echoes of RA, p. 300. 80

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The Crusade Vow in the Narratives of the First Crusade earliest, it is possible that a more concrete understanding of the crusade vow had emerged. The Hystoria de via’s consistent use of votum could thus reflect the fact that, as the shape and perception of crusading had developed substantially over the course of the twelfth century, so had attitudes to the crusade vow.83 This, in turn, allowed for historical writers to better incorporate it into their accounts of the crusade. Indeed, this development in chroniclers’ approaches to the crusade vow is likewise reflected in the Chronicon of William of Tyre (c. 1130–86), composed between c. 1170 and c. 1184, which mentions the vow (here rendered solely as votum) more frequently than any of the earlier chronicles on the First Crusade.84 William had spent two decades in Europe (c. 1145–65), during which time he claims to have been educated in both civil and canon law.85 William also received theological training in Paris from Peter Lombard (d. 1160), whose influential Sententiae explicitly treated vows in relation to the sacrament of marriage.86 Lombard lectured twice on the Sententiae in the six years William was under his tutelage, and so it is likely that the latter embraced its doctrine.87 If so, William would likely have viewed the crusade vow in the same way as Peter presented other forms of vow: as evidence (testificatio) of a ‘freely-made promise in a matter which pertained to God’.88 This constitutes a solemn vow made with the knowledge of the Church, violation of which would be mortally sinful.89 In consistently using votum, William consciously sought to elevate the obligation beyond a binding agreement between men, thus ensuring his audience recognised the weight of obligation assumed in swearing the crusade vow.

Conclusion The Council of Clermont and the conquest of Jerusalem were key events in medieval narratives of the First Crusade. Both moments offered opportunities for contemporary chroniclers to convey their own narrative programmes for defining the emerging institution of crusading, of which the vow was only one component. 83

84 85 86 87 88

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It has been suggested that the crusade vow inspired the canonists and theologians of the twelfth century to formulate a coherent theory of the vow. See Brundage, Medieval Canon Law, pp. 33–7. WT, I, 135, 136, 154, 220. WT, II, 880–8. See also P. W. Edbury and J. G. Rowe, William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 13–15, 61–84. On William and Peter Lombard, see WT, I, 880; M. Doyle, Peter Lombard and His Students (Toronto, 2016), pp. 181–90. Doyle, Peter Lombard, pp. 97, 99, 107. Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, ed. I. C. Brady, 2 vols (Grottaferrata, 1971–81), II, 3–5: ‘Votum est testificatio quaedam promissionis spontaneae, quae Deo et de his quae Dei sunt proprie fieri debet’. Peter Lombard, Sententiae, II, 11–14.

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Edward J. Caddy In line with the modern historiographical view that the vow was an integral element of the crusade, it would be expected that instances of the making, breaking and fulfilment of vows would be salient across these texts.90 The two case studies examined here demonstrate that this was not the case. Instead, when the crusade vow is presented as sworn or fulfilled, it is not treated as an essential constitutive event, one that is necessary to drive the narrative forward and to define crusading. Swearing and fulfilling vows are supplementary events, without which the core story of the First Crusade remains intact. In defining the vow as a fundamental feature of the crusade, then, modern scholarship has overplayed its importance, particularly in the first decades of the twelfth century. The vow was undeniably a feature of the crusade idea that Pope Urban II preached at the Council of Clermont, and it may have been introduced to capitalise on momentary religious fervour and bind participants to the expedition until their obligation was fulfilled, but the chroniclers did not consistently portray it in this way. This is not to say that the mentioning of the vow serves no function in the texts, or that it is unimportant; rather, the arguments presented here reflect the flexibility with which medieval writers deployed the vow. Some mention it sparingly, others not at all. Certain chroniclers who came across the Gesta Francorum, such as Robert the Monk and Guibert of Nogent, decided that a key part of the narrative was missing, and so inserted the vow. As such, its inclusion in these works represents a small, though by no means insignificant, element in their process of ‘theological refinement’. However, the omission of the vow in the accounts by Baldric of Bourgueil and Peter Tudebode implies that not all contemporaries considered it a vital ingredient in the idea of crusading. On the whole, the broad lexicon across the surviving corpus of texts reveals an undeveloped linguistic framework, with authors likely expecting that contemporary audiences would understand references to the vow even when votum was not used. Some accounts do appear to have been crafted in such a way that the place, importance and weight of the crusade vow aligned with the authors’ literary aims, but it was only later in the twelfth century, when the formal institution of crusading had begun to develop, that chroniclers like the author of the Hystoria de via and William of Tyre offered a more sophisticated and uniform interpretation of the vow and its significance, insisting that it constituted a solemn votum to God. Consequently, while we might be able to understand how individual authors incorporated the vow according to their own interests and background, it is not possible to identify and reconstruct a single, universally acknowledged contemporary attitude to it in the era of the First Crusade – a fact that speaks also to the challenge that the crusade’s surprising success posed for authors who sought 90

No text mentions unfulfilled crusade vows in relation to deserters. If the vow were introduced to capitalise on the momentary zeal inflamed by crusade sermons, acting as the means by which individuals were bound to the expedition, this silence is difficult to explain.

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The Crusade Vow in the Narratives of the First Crusade to bring order to a story and institution that yet defied distinct structure. In view of both the inconsistent presentation of the vow in early accounts of the First Crusade, and the emergence of a clearer conception in the later twelfth century, it is important to pay further scholarly attention to the literary construction of crusading as an institution in this early period. In the case of the vow, subjecting these texts to closer scrutiny may well lead historians to rethink its centrality to modern definitions of crusade.

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‘The Lord has brought eastern riches before you’: Battlefield Spoils and Looted Treasure in Narratives of the First Crusade Connor C. Wilson

The modern study of the crusades, as well as public understanding of those phenomena, continues to operate under the shadow of association between that series of medieval military campaigns and modern western intervention in the Near and Middle East. While this association does not have its origins in US operations following the events of 11 September 2001, it was carelessly reinforced in the wake of those acts of terrorism by President George W. Bush.1 The association endures in part through the rhetoric of extremist groups.2 This understanding of such intervention, allegedly motivated by the desire to exploit regional resources, and its supposed historical precedents, gained renewed attention within the sphere of mainstream US politics in 2016. On the campaign trail, then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump argued for the imperative to seize Iraqi oil reserves, thereby denying them to factions such as ISIS, declaring that: ‘You know, it used to be to the victor belong the spoils … I always said: Take the oil’.3 This was condemned by one commentator as advocating simple theft, although legal scholar and former US General Charles Dunlap was quick to respond by clarifying the distinction between licit spoil-taking and illegal pillage.4 The soon-to-be president’s critics did grant him a level of historicity to the adage, conceding that only in recent centuries has the matter of war spoils been the subject of increasingly elaborate definition and regulation by international law.5 Yet this is perhaps to dismiss the extent to which spoil-taking in the medieval and early modern world 1 2 3 4

5

White House Archives, 16 September 2001 [accessed 06/05/2022]. See J. Roche, ‘“Crusaders” and the Islamic State Apocalypse’, The International Journal of Military History and Historiography 41 (2021), 308–42. J. G. Stewart, ‘Trump’s Calls to Pillage Iraqi Oil’ [accessed 06/05/2022]. C. J. Dunlap Jr., ‘Don’t Conflate Illegal Pillage with “Spoils of War” and Other Lawful Takings’ [accessed 06/05/2022]. Stewart, ‘Trump’s Calls to Pillage Iraqi Oil’.

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Battlefield Spoils and Looted Treasure in Narratives of the First Crusade could be limited in its scope and earnest in its self-regulation. Although often discussed in monetary terms, instances of conflict, both medieval and modern, demonstrate that material worth, or even immediate utility, may not be the most significant attribute in understanding the role of spoils in conflict. The mass seizure of US military equipment by Taliban forces during the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan demonstrates this point forcefully, with morale, prestige, momentum, and perceived political and religious legitimacy all crucial factors in understanding the significance of such plundering.6 It remains open to further scholarly investigation how spoil-taking on crusading campaigns, as well as in other forms of sanctified medieval warfare, fit into a broader value system that crossed the chasms of military reality, sincere spirituality and the violence of an expanding Christian society.7 This chapter is a small step into that further investigation. In supposedly breaking the mould of conventional warfare, the crusading movement provides a unique avenue into the issue of war spoils. Focusing upon the early Latin narrative accounts of the First Crusade, this chapter explores the myriad ways in which the acquisition and use of spoils were formulated by the writings and actions of both clerics and the laity, from diverse signifiers of vice to reflections of sincere devotion. It highlights the didactic ends to which accounts of the acquisition, use and misuse of spoils were put, and argues that war spoils provided authors of crusade narrative with a unique mirror for morality. Moreover, it will draw attention to the avenues by which these literary models linked spoils to issues of morale, discipline and campaign cohesion, as well as to the expansion and development of the Christian landscape in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Battlefield Spoils in Early Medieval Warfare The taking of war spoils, be it victuals and livestock, treasures or captives for ransom, was a central element of medieval conflict, as a driver of conquest, a supplement for pay and, perhaps somewhat more contentiously in the case of T. Shelton, ‘The Taliban’s New Armoury of US-Made Equipment Includes Planes, Guns and Night-Vision Goggles’, ABC News, 23 August 2021 [accessed 06/05/22]; C. McFall, ‘US Abandoned $7B in Military Equipment in Afghanistan Ahead of Taliban Takeover’, Fox News, 28 April 2022 [accessed 06/05/2022]. 7 My research does not consider the seizure of relics, in part because the topic has received sufficient attention elsewhere: P. Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages, rev. edn (Princeton, NJ, 1990); D. M. Perry, Sacred Plunder: Venice and the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade (University Park, PA, 2015); W. J. Purkis, ‘“Holy Christendom’s New Colony”: The Extraction of Sacred Matter and the “Colonial” Status of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem’, Haskins Society Journal 30 (2018), 177–210. 6

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Connor C. Wilson crusading, as a motivator for service. Unlike lands and titles, moveable wealth occupied a ubiquitous position in medieval warfare and society, demarcated by its immediacy and mobility, such that wealth changing hands, either voluntarily or by coercion, was linked inextricably to medieval conflict. Though the financial tribute that could serve as a resolution to campaigning was the preserve of royal or aristocratic war leaders, plunder was a more unpredictable element, and so the perennial problems of discipline and cohesion facing those in command were often compounded by the introduction of plunder to a given situation.8 The notion that soldiers were well-placed to utilise force or the threat of force against the unarmed in order to line their own pockets was recognised by both medieval clergymen and the laity. This motif was presented, and challenged, in the narrative of the Gospels. In detailing the preaching of John the Baptist, forerunner to Christ’s own ministry, the third chapter of the Gospel of Luke depicts a group of Roman soldiers (though likely auxiliaries of Jewish heritage) seeking out John so that they might inquire what actions should be taken to conform with his message of redemption. John is both forceful and specific in his answer: the soldiers should do violence to no man (often translated as ‘do not extort money from anyone’), nor should they calumniate (or falsely accuse) any man. Finally, he implores the men to be content with their wages (Luke 3.14).9 In subsequent centuries, wherein combatants often received no sort of standardised remuneration, plunder offered one of few possible avenues for material enrichment and frequently went hand-in-hand with military victory. This is despite the fact that the ability of aristocratic army leaders to manage, and benefit from, the taking of plunder remains debated. Timothy Reuter highlighted an anecdote of Gregory of Tours in which the Frankish king Clovis I (d. 511) claimed only the share of plunder afforded to him by the casting of lots, which chimes with similar examples attested elsewhere.10 That assemblies of massed soldiery had, perhaps even without much in the way of noble leadership, the collective force to pursue their own enrichment in coordination, rather than in subordination to those of higher station, is certainly suggested by instances of division by lot. In the post-Roman West, the need for war leaders to satisfy those involved in their armed expeditions is reflected by instances where such men were depicted

The topic of war spoils in the medieval period has received limited scholarly treatment. Significant contributions, varying in geographical and chronological focus, include D. Hay, ‘The Division of the Spoils of War in Fourteenth-Century England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th s. 4 (1954), 91–109; T. Reuter, ‘Plunder and Tribute in the Carolingian Empire’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th s. 35 (1985), 75–94. On this topic in the context of crusading, see W. G. Zajac, ‘Captured Property on the First Crusade’, in The First Crusade: Origins and Impact, ed. J. P. Phillips (Manchester, 1997), pp. 153–80. 9 All biblical references are to the Douay-Rheims translation. 10 Reuter, ‘Plunder and Tribute’, p. 79. 8

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Battlefield Spoils and Looted Treasure in Narratives of the First Crusade not simply as distributors of plunder, but as the providers of opportunities for taking it. Gregory of Tours describes the Merovingian king Theoderic (d. 534) promising his warriors to lead them into a country where they might find as much gold and silver as they could desire, as well as cattle, slaves and clothing.11 For those looking to make their fortunes through conflict in early medieval Europe, peace could pose a serious problem. Austrasian soldiers, for example, are recorded by the chronicler Fredegar as issuing complaints and threats over a peace made between their king, Sigebert I (d. 575), and his brother, Guntram (d. 592), as it robbed them of their chance to fight and to take plunder.12 Likewise, Carolingian rulers, even with more sophisticated and centralised state institutions in place, as well as a great need for funding, divided treasures across the army, for example, following the capture of Pavia in 774.13 However, the profit that the Carolingians reaped from plundering expeditions also supposedly found its way into the hands of the Church, as well as the poor, through alms-giving.14 Long before the development of the codified ‘laws of arms’ found in the later medieval period, the desire for plunder was a recognised problem when it came to military discipline. This posed an even more acute issue for medieval historical writers in cases of conflicts between Christian powers, in which it was understood that there were, or at least there ought to have been, proper conventions of behaviour. William of Poitiers, for example, describes an illuminating event during William of Normandy’s subjugation of south-east England following his victory at Hastings in which the duke, determined to secure Dover, advanced on its castle, only to have the garrison offer its immediate surrender. Fearing the loss of their chance at plunder, the customary fate of fortifications taken by storm, the Norman soldiers supposedly attempted to disrupt this surrender by setting fire to the castle.15 William of Poitiers specifically notes how the Norman duke was forced in response to compensate the garrison, paying for the repair to buildings and other losses, albeit the guilty soldiers were saved from execution by their lowly status and great number.16 What is evident, therefore, is that the taking of plunder was a central and recognised – if at times problematic – aspect of warfare

11 12 13 14

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Gregory of Tours, ‘Gregorii episcopi Turonensis libri Historiarum X’, ed. B. Krusch and W. Levison, in MGH SRM 1.1 (Hanover, 1951), pp. 107–8. Fredegar, ‘Chronicarum quae dicuntur Fredegarii scholastici libri IV cum continuationibus’, ed. B. Krusch, in MGH SRM 2 (Hanover, 1888), p. 112. Reuter, ‘Plunder and Tribute’, p. 80. Einhard, ‘Einhardi Vita Karoli Magni’, ed. O. Holder-Egger, in MGH SRG 25 (Hanover, 1911), pp. 37, 41. See J. France, ‘Siege Conventions in Western Europe and the Latin East’, in War and Peace in Ancient and Medieval History, ed. P. de Souza and J. France (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 158–72 (at 171–2). William of Poitiers, The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. and trans. R. H. C. Davis and M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1998), pp. 144–5.

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Connor C. Wilson on the eve of the First Crusade. It was thus a problem that no subsequent author of that expedition would have been able to simply ignore.

Plunder, War Spoils and the First Crusade That the campaigns of the First Crusade ought to have broken the mould of conventional warfare is signalled by contemporary documentation of Pope Urban II’s call to arms in November 1095. The Council of Clermont mandated that righteous intent was a prerequisite to attain the offered indulgence: ‘Whoever for devotion alone, not for the attainment of honour or money, goes to Jerusalem to liberate the Church of God can substitute this journey for all penance’.17 Those writing to elucidate and refine how the subsequent successes in the Holy Land were to be understood within western Christendom likewise stressed the notion that a new form of warfare had come into existence. In his account of Urban’s sermon, the northern French Benedictine monk Guibert of Nogent made a sharp contrast between the spiritually meritorious First Crusade and the ‘undue’ (‘indebita’) wars waged among Christians in the West, wherein soldiers were driven by pride and cupidity and therefore ‘merited eternal death and definite damnation’.18 Pointedly, Guibert described the ‘new and incomparable victory of the expedition to Jerusalem’ as being completed by men who were not driven by a desire for fame, money or territorial expansion.19 Such formulations seem later to have exerted some influence on Bernard of Clairvaux who, like Guibert, drew on the example of Judas Maccabeus in praising supposedly selfless, spiritually righteous warriors. His treatise on the fledgling Order of the Temple, Liber ad milites templi de laude novae militiae (The Book for the Knights of the Temple in Praise of the New Knighthood), presented the Templars as a reformed, sanctified knighthood. Such men, Bernard claimed, safely fought ‘the battles of their Lord, fearing neither sin if they smite the enemy, nor danger at their own death; since to inflict death or to die for Christ is no sin’, while at the same time he argued that secular knights fought for ‘no purpose except death or sin’.20 Such criticisms The Councils of Urban II, Volume 1: Decreta Claromontensia, ed. R. Somerville (Amsterdam, 1972), p. 74: ‘Quicumque pro sola devotione, non pro honoris vel pecunie adeptione, ad liberandam ecclesiam Dei Hierusalem profectus fuerit, iter illud pro omni penitentia ei reputetur’. Translation taken from J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (Philadelphia, PA, 1986), p. 29. 18 GN, pp. 112–13: ‘perpetuus interitus et certa dampnationis exitia meruistis’. 19 GN, p. 86: ‘nova et incomparabili Iherosolimitane expeditionis victoria’. 20 Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘De laude novae militiae ad milites templi’, in PL 182: cols 923, 924: ‘praelia Domini sui, nequaquam metuentes aut de hostium caede peccatum, aut de sua nece periculum: quandoquidem mors pro Christo vel feranda, vel inferenda, et nihil habeat criminis’, ‘nullis nisi aut mortis, aut criminis’. Translations taken from Bernard of Clairvaux, Treatises III, trans. D. O’Donovan (Kalamazoo, MI, 1977), pp. 132–4. 17

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Battlefield Spoils and Looted Treasure in Narratives of the First Crusade of the ‘worldly’ (‘saecularis’) knighthood were not all spiritual, as Bernard also insisted that these men were driven to nothing except ‘unreasonable flashes of anger’ (‘irrationabilis iracundiae’), as well as ‘the thirst for empty glory or the hankering after some earthly possession’.21 Yet martial glory and earthly possessions of all kinds were the natural, if not necessarily inevitable, consequences of victory. Similarly, provisioning an army, especially one traversing a significant distance, necessitated ongoing expenditure or foraging – an activity that is difficult to prosecute without some level of thievery and violence, even if such actions would have been considered illicit by contemporary commanders and clerics alike. These inescapable elements of medieval warfare could hardly be erased by those commentators who sought to make sense of the campaigns of 1096–99. Those authors who contributed to the proliferation of Latin narrative histories of the First Crusade, much like those who celebrated the comparable Norman conquests of England and southern Italy, worked within a rhetorical tradition that demanded plausibility and verisimilitude.22 The likely presence of crusade veterans among the audiences of crusade narratives would have heightened the need for ‘truthful’, or at least realistic, material, otherwise an account of war might run the risk of having its credibility shattered by first-hand familiarity. This danger is perhaps betrayed by a marginal note in the manuscript of the De expugnatione Lyxbonensi, an account of the English capture of Lisbon during the Second Crusade in 1147, which admits that an oration imputed to the English warband’s leader, Hervey of Glanville, did not capture his actual words.23 Nevertheless, such writers laboured extensively to insist that those crusaders who either settled in the Holy Land or returned to Europe with greater wealth had done so through divine direction, and with correct, rightful intention. How, then, did the authors of First Crusade narratives present these potentially problematic elements of conflict, specifically material wealth gained either as spoils of war (i.e. profits arising directly from success in battle) or from looting? One of the earliest texts, the Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, is pointedly concerned with issues of material wealth, or more specifically the lack of it. Its author continually attests to the crusade as a venture of poverty – there are references to the poor quality of the arms carried by the crusaders, who are

Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘De laude novae militiae ad milites templi’, col. 923: ‘inanis gloriae appetitus, aut terranae qualiscunque possessionis cupiditas’. Translation from Bernard of Clairvaux, Treatises, pp. 132–3. 22 R. Morse, Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Representation, and Reality (Cambridge, 1991), p. 7; M. Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester, 2011), pp. 350–427; D. S. Bachrach, ‘Conforming with the Rhetorical Tradition of Plausibility: Clerical Representation of Battlefield Orations against Muslims, 1080–1170’, International History Review 26 (2004), 1–19 (at 2–3). 23 De expugnatione Lyxbonensi: The Conquest of Lisbon, ed. and trans. C. W. David (New York, 2001), p. 104. 21

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Connor C. Wilson collectively described prior to the battle of Antioch as a ‘nation of beggars’ (‘gens mendica’), a phrase later repeated when describing the lament of the Egyptian vizier al-Afdal following his defeat at Ascalon on 12 August 1099, where he had been overcome by this ‘gente mendica’ who carried nothing but the bag and scrip.24 A profound concern for the plight of the poorer members of the expedition is also voiced in a speech attributed to the papal legate, Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy, which follows the Gesta’s account of his death: None of you can be saved if he does not respect the poor and succour them; you cannot be saved without them, and they cannot survive without you. They ought every day to pray that God will show mercy towards your sins, by which you daily offend him in many ways, and therefore I beseech you, for the love of God, to be kind to them, and to help them as much as you can.25

Christopher Tyerman has recently drawn attention to how Adhémar’s words not only prioritised Christian morality, but also that this ideal is intertwined with the practical realities of the expedition.26 Adhémar’s speech occurs at a crucial moment within the narrative, perhaps reflecting the author’s concern for the stability of the journey in the wake of the capture of Antioch. In this way, the Gesta makes clear connections between the wealth of the participants, the penitential nature of the journey and the continuation and ultimate success of the expedition. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the nature of the expedition, moveable wealth – comprising valuables that could be liquidated in some way – was an essential part of maintaining ties between the leaders and their followers on the First Crusade. With no overall leader appointed to act as the ultimate arbiter for the division of spoils and to direct foraging efforts, the acquisition of moveable wealth was seemingly subject to different, albeit not absent, forms of regulation. Some ordinances thus seem to have been issued separately by Bohemond of Taranto and Godfrey of Bouillon to their respective forces.27 Albert of Aachen, who relied on the oral testimonies of returning crusaders, described how poorer participants who did not benefit from the wealth provided by any of the princes banded together for the purpose of foraging and agreed on the equal division of pp. 51, 96. p. 74: ‘Nemo ex vobis saluari potest nisi honorificet pauperes et reficiat, vosque non potestis saluari sine illis, ipsique viuere nequeunt sine vobis. Oportet igitur ut ipsi cotidiana supplicatione pro vestris orent delictis Deum, quem in multis cotidie offenditis. Unde vos rogo ut pro Dei amore eos diligatis, et in quantum potestis eos sustentetis’. 26 C. J. Tyerman, ‘Commoners on Crusade: The Creation of Political Space?’, English Historical Review 136 (2021), 245–75 (at 262–3). On the role of pauperes during the expedition, see C. Kostick, The Social Structure of the First Crusade (Leiden, 2008), pp. 95–157. 27 Bohemond supposedly issued such regulations on plunder at the beginning of his campaign: GF, p. 8; AA, p. 68. 24 GF, 25 GF,

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Battlefield Spoils and Looted Treasure in Narratives of the First Crusade spoils.28 The word used to describe these crusaders, conspirati, was understood by William Zajac to be indicative of something more than a simple loose association of convenience.29 Zajac’s proposition that such behaviour was akin to martial confraternities by which men swore to each other’s mutual aid was reliant on rather insubstantial evidence, as he himself admitted, but it is enticing precisely because such an emphasis on equality among participants and common need is echoed in scriptural allusions to the early Christian community found across a number of early crusade narratives.30 As is the case with the instructions of Bishop Adhémar, social harmony was a positive end in both a moral and practical sense. The theoretical egalitarianism between those marked as crucesignati, classless ideals of Christian brotherhood, as well as legal incorporation and mutual oaths between participants, further signal the connection between military discipline and moral community. Wealth was naturally among the most serious challenges to this harmony and a cause of resentment between social classes, particularly when it came to the division of spoils.31 Wealth was also a crucial factor in the maintenance of noble retinues and more broadly systems of patronage, for almost all men and women of significant rank could be located within the mouvance of a lord or ‘prince’.32 In Ralph of Caen’s Tancredus, the titular hero, Tancred of Hauteville, is described as becoming so wealthy that ‘no one who fought for him was in want’.33 In reality, the material success of an individual leader might mean little to those who were within the mouvance of another, which could account for much of the fractiousness between the most prominent figures of the First Crusade. Likewise, it is on charges of greed and over-caution, often compounded by tension between the princes, that the leaders of the First Crusade faced serious internal challenges, as such hostility frequently emerged from those of a lower social status banding together to bolster their influence.34 However, as we shall see further below, for the authors of the narrative accounts of the crusade, the accrual and distribution of moveable wealth was an important means by which to communicate images of idealised crusading behaviour.

28 29

30 31 32 33

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AA, p. 220. On Albert’s sources, see AA, pp. xxvi–xxviii. Zajac, ‘Captured Property on the First Crusade’, p. 168. On this, see K. A. Smith, The Bible and Crusade Narrative in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 160–71. Tyerman, ‘Commoners on Crusade’, pp. 259, 262. On this, see J. France, ‘Patronage and the Appeal of the First Crusade’, in The First Crusade: Origins and Impact, ed. J. P. Phillips (Manchester, 1997), pp. 5–20. RC, p. 12: ‘nemo, qui ei militaret, egebat’. Translation taken from The Gesta Tancredi of Ralph of Caen: A History of the Normans on the First Crusade, trans. B. S. Bachrach and D. S. Bachrach (Aldershot, 2005), p. 29. Tyerman, ‘Commoners on Crusade’, p. 245.

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Materialism and Spirituality Issues of material wealth served to intersect, rather than divide, the spheres of the moral and the practical. For those writing in the wake of Jerusalem’s capture in July 1099, the crusaders’ physical success became their spiritual success, making wealth encountered on the path to triumph a unique mirror of behaviour, narratively speaking. These spheres have previously been separated in modern historiography, manifesting significant debate over what truly motivated those who answered Urban’s call to travel east. Half a century ago, the dominant framework was economic and sociological, and suggested that the lack of land available to warring knightly families, as well as the norms of inheritance, produced a class of younger sons and opportunists who sought their fortune elsewhere.35 This framework signalled that spiritual or ideological motivation was either largely inconsequential or even a cynical legitimising veneer for violent conquest. Yet, forceful arguments have since been advanced against the idea that materialism was a significant motivation in the recruitment of the First Crusade, with Jonathan Riley-Smith instead emphasising the dominance of piety, even if others have nevertheless interpreted the expedition as an opportunity for inexperienced knights to win renown or as part of a broader trend of European expansionism.36 Despite the notion of economic motivation losing favour, and Urban’s requirement that the crusaders not travel out of a desire for wealth or else forfeit the journey’s spiritual merit, when faced with an enemy of seemingly insurmountable size at the battle of Dorylaeum on 1 July 1097, the crusaders were supposedly encouraged by the idea that victory would result in the acquisition of great riches. As the Gesta Francorum’s author notes: ‘we passed a secret message along our line, praising God and saying, “Stand fast all together, trusting in Christ and in the victory of the Holy Cross. Today, please God, you will all gain much booty”’.37 Importantly, the phrasing of this passage displays plainly the author’s priorities when it came to presenting the nature of the expedition to Jerusalem. Through this description of wealth as a motivator for the crusading soldiery on the cusp of battle, it is made clear that such rewards would only be forthcoming if the crusaders’ actions pleased God. While not all instances of such a promise are quite so unambiguous, the Gesta’s author sought very obviously to explain here that wealth, like victory, was a gift from God – which in turn helped to incorporate For an overview of this interpretation, see H. E. Mayer, The Crusades, trans. J. Gillingham, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1988), pp. 21–3. 36 Cf. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, pp. 44–7; Kostick, The Social Structure of the First Crusade, pp. 187–212; L. Kjær, ‘Conquests, Family Traditions and the First Crusade’, Journal of Medieval History 45 (2019), 553–79. 37 GF, pp. 19–20: ‘Factus est itaque sermo secretus inter nos laudantes et consulentes atque dicentes: “Estote omnimodo unanimes in fide Christi et Sanctae Crucis victoria, quia hodie omnes diuites si Deo placet effecti eritis”’. 35

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Battlefield Spoils and Looted Treasure in Narratives of the First Crusade such desires into the presentation of the mindsets of the spiritually motivated crusaders. This idea, that the taking of spoils could serve moralising ends, had an ancient literary pedigree, with material rewards presented as the God-given result of righteous warfare in the Old Testament.38 Yet, this enactment of righteous intent required continual performance, with the Gesta’s author taking particular care at various points to highlight the attitude of crusaders towards personal gain. Before the crusaders reach Anatolia, for example, the text remarks on the difficulty of obtaining provisions, claiming that locals took them for robbers rather than peregrini and so refused to sell them victuals or livestock. The seizing of these items here was thus presented as a justified response to the denial of essentials.39 Another example of crusaders exhibiting the correct moral behaviour when faced with an opportunity for material gain can be found in the aftermath of the final defeat of Karbughā, atabeg of Mosul, at Antioch. Here, the Gesta claims that crusaders opted to pursue fleeing Turks rather than seek spoils.40 Prioritising the rout of their opponents over personal gain in order to ensure that the enemy could not rally or attempt a feint, and so threaten the Christians again, is a narrative trope deployed by other contemporary writers. However, such instances reflect more than a simple recurrence of a rhetorical topos. Instead, they reveal how moral and practical concerns could be closely intertwined for crusade authors. Classical histories, as well as the most important military manual of the medieval West, Vegetius’ De re militari, made clear the dangers that could befall those who were too quick to take plunder before ensuring a complete victory.41 Moments where crusaders are recorded following this guidance fit perfectly into the explanatory framework deployed by several early authors of the crusading movement wherein the dichotomy between spiritual and physical dangers would not have been conceived of in the same manner as by authors examining modern conflict. Those narratives that succeeded the Gesta Francorum, and in some instances attempted to improve upon its narrative, reformulated many of these instances and introduced their own anecdotes. When Guibert of Nogent detailed how Bohemond of Taranto’s men looted the homes of residents of Anatolia, he stressed that pillaging was only the result of trade being refused.42 The First Crusade narratives do, of course, contain numerous instances where plunder was seized without shame from Muslim enemies.43 This is perhaps unsurprising given the tremendous need for supplies to keep any fighting force together, as well as the particular pressures resulting from the long-distance nature of the crusading See Deuteronomy 20.10–14; Numbers 31.7–18, 52–4. p. 8. 40 GF, p. 70. 41 Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science, trans. N. P. Milner (Liverpool, 2011), pp. 87–8 n. 1, 114–15. 42 GN, pp. 138–9. 43 RM, pp. 78, 90; RC, p. 89; OV, V, 45, 117. 38

39 GF,

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Connor C. Wilson expedition, which was a far cry from most internecine wars fought in western Europe. As such, regardless of the authors’ moralising agendas, such realities would have been so well-appreciated by lay audiences with first-hand experience of warfare that it was unnecessary to remove them entirely. When writing about instances of resource taking, then, Guibert focused on detailing the relief that spoils, even those gained illicitly and without shame, brought to the crusaders following an encounter with the enemy. In such cases, victuals and livestock could be even more prominent than moveable treasures.44 The idea that relief through spoils followed a God-given victory was an intrinsic part of the biblical cycles of sin, suffering through calamity, redemption through discipline and finally victory prior to an inevitable fall again into sin. This sequence was first mapped onto ‘secular history’ by historians such as Orosius and Eusebius, forming well-recognised tropes that influenced later authors.45 Accordingly, the authors of crusade narratives more insistently cast the crusading Franks in the role of God’s chosen people, akin to the Old Testament Israelites.46 The notion of God-given rewards was also the subject of further development by those who followed the Gesta. When describing the climatic battle of Antioch, fought on 28 June 1098, Robert the Monk was specific in his formulation of the promise of war spoils, advancing through direct speech the subordination of the material to the spiritual fruits of victory. Thus, in a pre-battle sermon, Adhémar of Le Puy is said to have remarked: Nothing bad can happen to you at all. He who dies here will be happier than he who lives, for instead of his temporal life, he will gain eternal joy. Conversely, he who remains alive will triumph over his enemies in victory; he will be made wealthy by their riches and suffer no want. You know what you have suffered, and what you see presently before you. The Lord has brought eastern riches before you; in fact, He has placed them in your hands.47

Similar formulations are found in the histories of Albert of Aachen and Baldric of Bourgueil.48 Robert does not limit the depiction of God-given spoils to instances of direct speech, though. Following successful action in Anatolia, he notes that

GN, p. 158. Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, pp. 64–81. 46 Smith, The Bible and Crusade Narrative, pp. 112–28. 47 RM, p. 74: ‘Nullum vobis contingere omnino potest infortunium. Qui hic morietur, vivente felicior erit, quia pro temporali vita gaudia adipiscetur eterna. Qui vero remanserit superstes, super inimicorum suorum triumphabit victoria, divitiisque illorum ditabitur, et nulla angustiabitur inopia. Vos scitis quid perpessi estis, et quid in presentiarum ante vos videtis. Orientales divitias adduxit vobis Dominus ante faciem vestram, immo in manibus vestris’. 48 AA, p. 277; BB, p. 45. 44 45

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Battlefield Spoils and Looted Treasure in Narratives of the First Crusade ‘those who were poor were suddenly made rich with God’s help’.49 The evidence examined above suggests that those who came to revise and further embellish the account of the First Crusade found in early works such as the Gesta Francorum were careful to develop the notion that wealth attained on the expedition was God-given. Spoils of war were brought into line with the central conception of holy war, albeit frequently subordinated to crusading’s spiritual rewards. Certain authors went to particular lengths to contextualise spoil-taking more acutely within the explanatory framework of this new form of warfare, stressing didactic lessons heavily concerned with the motives and intentions of participants. Albert of Aachen’s Historia Ierosolimitana, for example, repeatedly emphasises the spiritual and physical risks of plundering, offering specific warnings against such behaviour during battle. Following the final victory at Antioch, Albert associated the taking of spoils with corruption and greed, while he writes that the chance of spoils was used by the enemy to lure Christians into danger at the battle of Ascalon.50 In a somewhat atypical moment of direct speech during the same episode, Godfrey of Bouillon is presented as warning that the pursuit of plunder was endangering the Christians. He thus exhorted his comrades: O rebellious and incorrigible men, who has bewitched you, that your hand is turned to forbidden and illicit plunder, before our enemy, with God’s help, has fallen to the sword? Alas! Leave off looting, resist the enemy, and do not give way now to those who are rising up and looking for bitter vengeance on you.51

That the association of greed with Christian warfare was of particular concern for Albert can be seen throughout his Historia, even extending into his coverage of the early years of Latin settlement. Notably, book 12 concludes with the story of an unsuccessful raid launched against Bedouin tribes by the Bures brothers near Tiberias during the reign of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem (r. 1118–31) in which the force of some sixty Christian warriors was either killed or captured. This defeat occurred, so Albert explained, because those who had undertaken the mission were so greedy for plunder that they took to the field on the day of the Lord’s Resurrection, ‘when all Christian men are accustomed to rest from their labours’.52

RM, p. 28: ‘Qui prius erant pauperes, Deo opitulante divites effecti sunt’. Translation taken from Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade: Historia Iherosolimitana, trans. C. Sweetenham (Aldershot, 2005), p. 112. 50 AA, pp. 335–7, 467. 51 AA, p. 467: ‘O viri rebelles et incorrigibiles, quis vos fascinavit ut ad predam vetitam et illicitam manus vestra converteretur, donec inimici nostri Deo auxiliante in gladio corruissent? Eia! relinquite predam, hostibus resistite, et nolite cedere nunc insurgentibus et amaram de vobis vindictam querentibus’. 52 AA, p. 874–8 (quote at 878): ‘quando omnes viri catholici solent quiescere a laboribus’. 49

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Connor C. Wilson However, Albert was not the only First Crusade author to pen stories about the dangers of battlefield looting. Guibert of Nogent likewise wrote of the opportunity for spoils being used by the crusaders’ opponents to tempt them away from the Latin army and into danger.53 Ralph of Caen also includes an anecdote wherein spoil-hungry crusaders pursued the enemy rather than supporting their allies and were ultimately captured. It is made clear how ironic it was that men who had recklessly chased spoils had themselves become spoils.54 Yet, this broader concern regarding the consequences of greed, which intertwined elements that were both moral and practical, spiritual and temporal, certainly did not find its origins in the crusading movement. Since the days of St Augustine, ecclesiastics writing on the nature of warfare and the kinds of violence that could be considered just in a Christian context, condemned fighting that was undertaken for plunder.55 In search of didactic meaning, crusade authors could, and indeed did, situate their commentaries on the nature of crusader plunder within a much wider moralistic dialogue. That there was no perceived ideological distinction, at least on the part of certain crusade commentators, between the divinely directed nature of the crusade, the behaviour of participants (especially regarding army discipline and cohesion), and the taking and distribution of wealth, is exemplified by the inclusion of the latter in accounts of miraculous occurrences. Perhaps the most striking example of this is found in the Tancredus, where a heavenly vision instructs the nobleman Anselm of Ribemont that in order for him to receive his spiritual reward, he must first pay the men in his service.56 This injunction is reinforced throughout by references to the efficient and virtuous ways in which the text’s titular hero, Tancred, utilised or spurned wealth during the crusade.57 Similarly, in Raymond of Aguilers’ text, a prohibition against turning aside to loot enemy tents for their gold and silver, made before the battle of Antioch, was transmitted through a miraculous vision of St Andrew.58 The vision directed at Anselm demonstrates how matters that might seem to represent practical facets of military organisation and discipline could, in the context of crusade writing, be sacralised by their involvement with mechanisms of salvation. Without undertaking the behaviours expected of him, Anselm could

53 54 55 56 57 58

GN, pp. 335–6. RC, pp. 26–7. F. H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1975), p. 26. RC, pp. 90–1. RC, pp. 11–12, 22–3, 50–1. Raymond of Aguilers, ‘Raimundi de Aguilers, canonici Podiensis, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem’, in RHC Occ, III, 254. The importance of the miraculous as a narrative tool by which authors shaped crusading ideology and stressed the legitimacy of such expeditions has been comprehensively surveyed in B. C. Spacey, The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative (Woodbridge, 2020).

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Battlefield Spoils and Looted Treasure in Narratives of the First Crusade not achieve the salvific recompense of the journey. In a similar vein, crusade leaders at the battle of Ascalon are said by Albert to have found it necessary to issue a warning of excommunication, as well as physical mutilation, to those who thought to take plunder before the Egyptian army was defeated.59 It is clear that, for those telling the story of the crusade, concerns around material wealth were not so antithetical to the representation of the First Crusade as an exercise in salvation that they should be entirely omitted; rather, they needed careful explanation and framing. It was in moments when greed threatened battlefield unity and discipline, then, that a focus on material gain was forcibly decried. In this regard, the need to pay soldiers either their due salaries or else a share of captured spoils as a means to combat greed, as well as the risk that not doing so had of causing disruption to discipline, was expressed in a homily of Maximus of Turin, although the idea is also attributed to St Augustine.60 As formulated in the sermon that Robert the Monk attributed to Adhémar of Le Puy, or in Guibert of Nogent’s version of a speech Raymond of Saint-Gilles purportedly delivered during the siege of Jerusalem, the promise of wealth actually complements (albeit usually in a subordinate fashion), rather than subverts, the central devotional spirituality that the authors of crusade narratives treated as paramount.61 As Ralph of Caen noted, spoils were ‘the prize of victory’ (‘victoriae precio’) – and so, as the victories of the crusaders were unanimously presented as God-given across the narrative corpus, so too could be the prizes of war.62 Importantly, the involvement of these prizes in the value systems that sought to guide and regulate their acquisition did not end with their capture. Beyond the obvious immediate uses of victuals and livestock, as well as money or other forms of ‘liquid’ wealth for provisioning and payment, the ends to which spoils were put could also form illustrative anecdotes that sought to provoke emulation. To give one example, the Gesta Francorum’s account of the battle of Ascalon provides extended detail on the capture of al-Afdal’s standard, described as having ‘a golden apple on the top of the pole, which was covered with silver’.63 It was Robert, duke of Normandy, who supposedly dispatched the standard bearer and subsequently redeemed the banner for twenty marks of silver, but, rather than retaining his prize, he gifted it to Jerusalem’s new Latin patriarch, Arnulf of Chocques, ‘in honour of God and the Holy Sepulchre’.64 That a trophy of war was presented here as an appropriate devotional gift for the custodian of the holiest church in Christendom is, while striking, not out of step with wider patterns of AA, p. 459. Maximus of Turin, ‘Homilia CXIV’, in PL 57: cols 517–19; Augustine of Hippo, ‘Epistola CXXXVIII’, in PL 33: cols 525–35. 61 RM, p. 74; GN, p. 280. 62 RC, p. 9. 63 GF, p. 95: ‘pomum aureum in summitatem hastae, quae erat cooperta argento’. 64 GF, pp. 95–7 (quote at 97): ‘in Dei honorem Sanctique Sepulchri’. 59

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Connor C. Wilson devotional gift-giving by secular elites – particularly those who could boast recent military successes – to churches and monastic institutions.65 Evidence from the Norman invasion of southern Italy and Sicily, from where the Gesta’s author likely heralded, a generation prior to the First Crusade, illustrates the importance of moveable wealth for the purpose of donation, as treasures were clearly viewed as a preferable offering to land or property by Robert Guiscard.66 War booty was among such offerings, which, as well as money, included exotic items and Muslim prisoners. Like Robert of Normandy’s crusading gift, then, such acts not only served the practical purpose of proclaiming lordship over newly acquired lands, they were also a means by which warriors whose origins were in freebooting and mercenary work could make clear their contribution to the war against Islam in the Mediterranean.67 The Gesta’s description of Robert’s actions at Ascalon thus tapped into recognised, if perhaps somewhat localised, practices of gifting spoils taken in battle against Muslims to better validate the realities of material gain within the crusade’s spiritual literary framework.

Conclusion Though contemporary evidence of ecclesiastical origin had from the outset warned against the adoption of the cross for reasons of personal gain, those writing in the wake of the First Crusade’s success could scarcely have ignored issues around material wealth encountered and procured by the earliest crusaders. It is evident that authors were at particular pains to account for foraging, violence and the seizure of goods from Christians, as opposed to Muslim populations. More broadly, the authors of First Crusade narratives, rather than offering a simple repudiation of spoil-taking, instead expressed serious interest in, and concern for, the issues that surrounded the matter of material wealth. The practical realities of campaigning were not considered dissonant with spiritual concerns; rather, they were often inextricably linked to them. Poverty underpinned the status of the early crusaders as pilgrims, yet distributed spoils ran along both communal and hierarchical lines, binding more securely the associations forged by legal and social convention. In this way, the topic of plundered wealth could encompass instructive material on matters of both military discipline and the moral community, serving as an ideal mirror of morality in the First Crusade texts. Numerous instances attest to the notion that seeking spoils in the immediacy of battle, particularly before the C. B. Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister: Nobility and the Church in Burgundy, 980–1198 (Ithaca, NY, 1987), pp. 247–54; M. Bull, Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony, c. 970–c. 1130 (Oxford, 1993), pp. 157–66. 66 G. A. Loud, ‘Coinage, Wealth and Plunder in the Age of Robert Guiscard’, English Historical Review 114 (1999), 815–43 (at 818). 67 Loud, ‘Coinage, Wealth and Plunder’, pp. 825–6. 65

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Battlefield Spoils and Looted Treasure in Narratives of the First Crusade outcome had been made definitively manifest, posed both a physical and spiritual risk. Yet, the delineation here may be unnecessary. While stories of the disasters that befell those seeking plunder can be situated within recognisable topoi and were evidently shaped by the developing ideology of the crusade in the first decade of the twelfth century, there is a sense that these didactic anecdotes were also provided to reflect the real experiences of the crusaders. Even the most didactic stories, carrying the requisite rhetorical style to entertain, required verisimilitude to remain believable. Beyond the battlefield, the division and subsequent use of wealth was likewise tied up in the same value systems encountered in such anecdotes. In a negative sense, the ability for wealth to be a focal point of social resentment is evident in instances such as Raymond of Aguilers’ account of a crusade veteran who accused the richer knights of food hoarding and racketeering at Antioch in 1098.68 On the other hand, the heavenly voice instructing Anselm of Ribemont to pay his soldiers in order to receive salvation, or episodes such as Robert of Normandy’s gift of al-Afdal’s standard, provide more positive formulations of material wealth, both during and beyond the campaign. It is my central, if broad, contention, therefore, that the value systems surrounding material wealth on crusade have been hitherto underappreciated in scholarship, partly owing to a framework that understands the motives and interests of combatants and commanders as being largely divergent with clerical or monastic chroniclers, theologians and jurists. Yet the representation in the texts of the acquisition and use of spoils illustrates how practical issues of campaigning were often melded with moral and spiritual concerns when it came to determining the literary construction of the idealised standards of behaviour by which the community of a crusader army ought to maintain its cohesion and momentum. In the absence of the sort of external regulation that wealth taken as spoils has been subjected to in the modern period, self-regulation, oriented by these standards, was presented by crusade authors as a key component in the prosecution and subsequent understanding of events that encompassed both tremendous violence and tremendous piety.

68

Raymond of Aguilers, ‘Historia Francorum’, in RHC Occ, III, 258; Tyerman, ‘Commoners on Crusade’, p. 261.

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Foundation and Settlement in Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana: A Narratological Reading1 Katy Mortimer

Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana, which covers the First Crusade and the early history of the so-called crusader states (c. 1095–1127), is not only an important piece of historical crusade writing, it also provides a foundation narrative for the states of Outremer, especially the kingdom of Jerusalem.2 Yet, few studies have considered Fulcher’s narrative strategies within this context, and the Historia is rarely included within wider considerations of crusade narratives as cultural artefacts.3 This is due in part to the fact that the Historia’s status as a ‘participant’ account of the First Crusade is complicated by Fulcher’s absence from the main army for most of the campaign, which undermines his ‘eyewitness’ credentials. Moreover, as noted in the present collection’s Introduction, within crusade studies, ‘eastern’ chronicles like Fulcher’s have yet to be examined in as much detail as those composed in western Christendom. There is much, therefore, still to be done to develop a fuller understanding of not only Fulcher’s account as a narrative, but also the process by which he shaped his work to offer a foundation story for the crusader states.

My thanks go to the volume’s editors for their invitation to contribute and support during the editorial process, to Andrew Jotischky for his careful reading and advice, to Susan Edgington for advice on the Latin of ‘Bartolf of Nangis’ and to the audience at Leeds IMC 2021 for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. 2 For a convincing discussion of why the term ‘crusader states’ continues to have traction, see A. D. Buck, ‘Settlement, Identity, and Memory in the Latin East: An Examination of the Term “Crusader States”’, English Historical Review 135 (2020), 271–302. 3 See the Introduction to this volume. The only monograph on Fulcher is V. Epp, Fulcher von Chartres: Studien zur Geschichtsschreibung des ersten Kreuzzuges (Düsseldorf, 1990). Though I have been unable to consult it, there is also a recent doctoral thesis: J. Lees, ‘The Historia Hierosolymitana of Fulcher of Chartres: Reform, Papacy and the Kingdom of Jerusalem’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Liverpool, 2019). 1

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Foundation and Settlement in Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana Indeed, foundation myths exist across the western canon of historical writing.4 As Naoíse Mac Sweeny notes, beginnings are (unsurprisingly) one of the most important elements of storytelling, for they set the scene.5 It is well established that the need for origin stories stems partly from a desire to make order out of chaos, particularly moments of great societal upheaval, and to provide legitimacy, both for events and new regimes.6 Like their classical predecessors, medieval historians wrote foundation narratives for various reasons. Walter Pohl observes that, from the late fourth century onwards, where once ‘Roman-ness’ was central to identity-building, now regional identities or ethnicities became more important.7 In a similar fashion, it has been argued that Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia forms part of a wider process of identity-construction in the crusader states, not least because the text emphasises the notion of ‘Frankishness’.8 Thus, Timo Kirschberger and Kristin Skottki have explored ‘ethnohistorical’ and religious readings of the Historia, arguing that central to its foundational agenda is the transformative nature of the First Crusade and the Latin settlement of Outremer.9 Key to these discussions is the prologue, which places events within a theological framework, and a later section at the end of the entry for 1124, which bookends the prologue’s narrative arc. In the former section, the crusaders are depicted as superior successors to the heroic warriors of the Bible, the Maccabees (although this is presented as a humility topos), which situates the crusade within the wider

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On foundation narratives in the western canon, see Foundation Myths in Ancient Societies: Dialogues and Discourses, ed. N. Mac Sweeney (Philadelphia, PA, 2015); Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800, ed. W. Pohl and H. Reimitz (Leiden, 1998); S. Reynolds, ‘Medieval “Origines Gentium” and the Community of the Realm’, History 68 (1983), 375–90. N. Mac Sweeney, ‘Introduction’, in Foundation Myths in Ancient Societies, ed. Mac Sweeney, pp. 1–19 (at 1). See also K. Toll, ‘The Making of Roman-Ness and the “Aeneid”’, Classical Antiquity 16 (1997), 34–56. Toll, ‘The Making of Roman-Ness’, pp. 34–5. W. Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Distinction’, in Strategies of Distinction, ed. Pohl and Reimitz, pp. 1–16 (at 1). On the importance of Frankish identity for both the crusaders and their narratives, see M. G. Bull, ‘Overlapping and Competing Identities in the Frankish First Crusade’, in Le concile de Clermont 1095 et l’appel à la croisade: Actes du colloque universitaire international de Clermont-Ferrand, 23–25 juin 1995 (Rome, 1997), pp. 195–211; T. Kirschberger, Erster Kreuzzug und Ethnogenese: In novam formam commutatus – Ethnogenetische Prozesse in Fürstentum Antiochia und im Königreich Jerusalem (Göttingen, 2015); A. V. Murray, ‘Ethnic Identity in the Crusader States: The Frankish Race and the Settlement of Outremer’, in Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. S. Ford, L. Johnson and A. V. Murray (Leeds, 1995), pp. 59–73. Kirschberger, Erster Kreuzzug, pp. 150–1; K. Skottki, Christen, Muslime und der Erste Kreuzzug: Die Macht der Beschreibung in der mittelalterlichen und modernen Historiographie (Münster, 2015), pp. 311–29.

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Katy Mortimer span of sacred time and as the next step in the long process of revelatory history.10 The later section, meanwhile, clearly distinguishes between those in the West (Franks, Latins) and those settled in the East (Jerusalemites, ‘eastern’ Latins).11 As both Kirschberger and Skottki argue, the inclusion of these sections in the ‘second’ or ‘1124’ recension of the Historia, which revised a first version completed c. 1106, means there is little doubt that Fulcher later sought to explicitly contextualise the First Crusade and the settlement of Outremer as the next step in divine history.12 That Fulcher turned to extending and editing his first recension at a time when the Franks of Outremer were experiencing a series of disruptive events – most notably the capture of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem by the Muslim emir Balak – suggests that the Historia should be understood as an attempt to understand and explain contemporary traumas by linking the reigns of the Jerusalemite kings to the miraculous First Crusade.13 Beyond shared cultural, ethnic and religious identities, then, there is more to be gleaned from Fulcher’s text by examining it as a foundation story, particularly in the context of his seeking to create order out of chaos. This chapter addresses this by discussing representations of the ‘divinely-willed’ First Crusade as a collective endeavour and by considering Fulcher’s representation of Jerusalem’s first two kings, Baldwin I and Baldwin II, and their complicated status as ‘narrative heroes’.

Fulcher and His Text Fulcher, a cleric most likely educated in Chartres, joined the First Crusade contingent of Stephen of Blois and Robert of Normandy before swiftly transferring to Baldwin of Boulogne, whom he accompanied to Edessa in 1097. As Fulcher was absent from the captures of Antioch and Jerusalem, he relied entirely on other sources to write his own history of these events. The most significant source was the anonymous Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, though he also FC, pp. 115–18; Kirschberger, Erster Kreuzzug, pp. 149–51; Skottki, Christen, Muslime und der Erste Kreuzzug, p. 304. Much has been written on the Maccabees as an exemplar or template for crusading. See, for example, N. Morton, ‘The Defence of the Holy Land and the Memory of the Maccabees’, Journal of Medieval History 36 (2012), 275–93. 11 FC, pp. 746–9; Kirschberger, Erster Kreuzzug, pp. 149–58. 12 For a detailed introduction to this topic, see J. Rubenstein, Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream: The Crusades, Apocalyptic Prophecy, and the End of History (Oxford, 2019). 13 On writing trauma in medieval histories, specifically concerning the crusades, see M. Cassidy-Welch, ‘Before Trauma: The Crusades, Medieval Memory and Violence’, Continuum 31 (2017), 619–27; T. Asbridge, ‘The Portrayal of Violence in Walter the Chancellor’s Bella Antiochena’, in Syria in Crusader Times: Conflict and Co-Existence, ed. C. Hillenbrand (Edinburgh, 2020), pp. 164–83; A. D. Buck, ‘Antioch, the Crusades, and the West c. 1097–c. 1200: Between Memory and Reality’, in Sources for the Crusades: Textual Traditions and Literary Influences, ed. N. R. Hodgson and L. Ní Chléirigh (Abingdon, forthcoming). 10

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Foundation and Settlement in Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana used Raymond of Aguilers’ Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, as well as oral testimony.14 As noted, Fulcher wrote his account in several stages, with at least three recensions known to us. The first was completed c. 1106; the second was begun before the death of King Baldwin I in 1118 and takes the narrative to the capture of Tyre in 1124; and the third extends this to 1127, probably ending due to Fulcher’s death. While we have manuscript traditions for the second and third recensions, the first version is lost – a fact that led the Historia’s editor Heinrich Hagenmeyer to exclude it from his recension numbering system. However, as Susan Edgington has convincingly shown, and discusses elsewhere in this volume, the Gesta Francorum Ierusalem expugnantium previously attributed to ‘Bartolf of Nangis’ is an important witness to the earliest recension.15 What is evident, therefore, is that Fulcher worked extensively to rewrite his text, often glossing or framing events to reflect current affairs. Stephen Spencer, in this volume, even makes the compelling argument that the Historia’s ‘I’ manuscript might bear witness to a further editorial stage between 1124 and 1127.16 Following the methodology employed by Edgington, a comparison of Fulcher’s second and third recensions with ‘Bartolf’ and other sources, particularly the Gesta Francorum, allows for several observations concerning his narrative strategies.17 A close reading demonstrates that Fulcher, like other contemporaries, applied ‘theological refinement’ to provide a clearer narrative framing to his text, in particular for his section on the First Crusade.18 Moreover, comparing books 2 and 3 of Fulcher’s Historia, as well as the second and third recensions, sheds further light on his narrative programme, especially the ways in which he revised the text in response to unfolding events in the Latin East and the importance he attached to good kingship.

RA. Though a full discussion of Fulcher’s sources (for which see FC, pp. 65–70) is beyond the scope of this study, he relied most demonstrably on the Gesta Francorum. As such, and as a result of word constraints and the reality that the use of another source does not explain any of the differences discussed below, a comparison between the Historia and the Gesta Francorum will serve as the analytical basis for the following arguments. S. B. Edgington, ‘The Gesta Francorum Iherusalem expugnantium of “Bartolf of Nangis”’, Crusades 13 (2014), 21–35. See Stephen Spencer’s chapter in the current volume. Edgington, ‘The Gesta Francorum’, pp. 21–35. See also Edgington’s chapter in the current volume. On ‘theological refinement’, see J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (Philadelphia, PA, 1986), pp. 135–52.

14 GF;

15 16

17 18

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The First Crusade: Collective Endeavour as Theological Refinement Like other First Crusade texts, Fulcher emphasises the divinely-willed nature of the expedition, situating this unprecedented military venture within a theological context and presenting its success as evidence that the crusaders were God’s chosen people. The failures and suffering experienced on the expedition were also understood as the work of God, and the journey itself conceptualised as a pilgrimage during which the Christians suffered for the redemption of their sins and in imitation of Christ.19 Unsurprisingly, the importance of collective Christian unity in God’s service is a theme found across the corpus of First Crusade texts.20 It is also found in numerous biblical and theological contexts, many of which these authors would have encountered, while solidarity between political leaders and among soldiers was already a well-established necessity.21 Thus, contemporary narrative accounts of warfare often present cohesion as leading to triumph and attribute suffering and failure to the breakdown of collective unity.22 It is worth noting here that the ‘historical’ books of the Bible, such as 1 and 2 Maccabees, like many classical and medieval texts, included ‘heroes’ as a key storytelling element around which much of the plot revolved. Given Fulcher’s clear knowledge of biblical, classical and medieval literary traditions, his account of the First Crusade is of particular interest, because it rarely, if ever, associates crusading triumph with the military prowess of an individual leader. This is a marked difference when compared to his known sources and to his later account of events in Outremer, which focuses heavily on the deeds of Jerusalem’s kings. That is not to say that the leaders were unnamed, but rather that references to individuals acting alone were generally represented as detrimental to the campaign. As such, while Fulcher names leaders or contingents throughout, the successes of the expedition are explained by collective endeavour. His account is thus purposefully shaped to draw attention away from heroes, instead centring the army as a unified body. In doing so, Fulcher emphasised the religious significance of the

W. J. Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095–c. 1187 (Woodbridge, 2008); Buck, ‘Antioch, the Crusades, and the West c. 1097–c. 1200’. 20 See, for example, the theme of divine punishment caused by political divisions in K. Mortimer, ‘Digesting Cannibalism: Revisiting Representations of Man-Eating Crusaders in Narrative Sources for the First Crusade’, in Chronicle, Crusade and the Latin East: Essays in Honour of Susan B. Edgington, ed. A. D. Buck and T. W. Smith (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 109–30. See also M. Bull, ‘The Historiographical Construction of a Northern French First Crusade’, Haskins Society Journal 25 (2013), 35–55 (at 49–52). 21 For biblical exemplars, see The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources, ed. E. Lapina and N. Morton (Leiden, 2017); K. A. Smith, The Bible and Crusade Narrative in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2020). For biblical references to unity, see Psalm 132.1, Proverbs 27.17 and Romans 15.5–6. 22 J. F. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe during the Middle Ages from the Eighth Century to 1340, 2nd edn (Woodbridge, 1997). 19

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Foundation and Settlement in Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana expedition as part of an authorial agenda that created a theologically and politically refined foundation narrative. Like the Gesta Francorum, Fulcher notes that the army first came together as one at the siege of Nicaea in September 1097, a point repeated twice.23 Before this, he focuses on his own contingent, that of Stephen of Blois and Robert of Normandy, although the other leaders are introduced. No individual acts of heroism are recorded; rather, the account concentrates on the expedition’s theological context and significance.24 This is achieved in both the second and third recensions through discussions of the Council of Clermont and the dissensions between Pope Urban II and the Antipope Clement III, as well as Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy taking the cross. These sections explain that internal discord led to the perceived evils that befell Christendom, and that joining together in the service of God would put an end to it all.25 Significantly, Adhémar – the only individual described as pledging himself to the venture – is cast as the expedition’s spiritual shepherd: ‘the bishop of Le Puy, called Adhémar, who afterwards busied himself with the apostolic duty, wisely and prudently directed the entire army of God, and vigorously inspired it to complete the undertaking’.26 Additionally, the 1127 recension includes the aforementioned theologically-refined prologue, which further underscores the divine nature of events. Fulcher’s decision to prioritise the theological context of the expedition from the beginning is made clearer by comparison with the Gesta Francorum. While the Gesta introduces the narrative by quoting Matthew 16.24 and briefly describing how Urban called the council at Clermont, the emphasis is predominantly on the response of the secular crusaders, achieved through repeated reference to the ‘Frankish’ army and leaders, who ‘went all the way to Constantinople by means of the road which, long before, Charlemagne, the wonderful king of the Franks, had caused to be prepared’.27 The text then breaks into an extensive sceneshift describing the so-called ‘People’s Crusade’ led by Peter the Hermit before listing the other contingents, focusing first on the Provençals led by Adhémar of Le Puy and Raymond of Saint-Gilles, and then on those led by Bohemond of Taranto, Robert of Normandy and Robert II of Flanders.28 The narrative then

FC, pp. 161, 183. FC, pp. 153–83. 25 FC, pp. 119–53. 26 FC, pp. 138–9: ‘episcopus Podiensis, nomine Ademarus, qui postea vice fungens apostolica cunctum Dei exercitum prudenter et consulte rexit et ad negotia peragenda vivaciter animavit’. 27 GF, pp. 1–2: ‘per viam quam iamdudum Karolus Magnus mirificus rex Francorum aptari fecit usque Constantinopolim’. Peter the Hermit is the exception to the focus on the lay leaders, although the inclusion of his unsuccessful effort can certainly be read as a lesson against breaking free from the noble leaders. 28 GF, pp. 5–6. 23 24

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Katy Mortimer shifts to Godfrey of Bouillon’s encounter with the Byzantine emperor, Alexios I Komnenos, at Constantinople, and on to a longer scene detailing Bohemond’s taking of the cross and his army’s march to Byzantium.29 The Gesta Francorum, though theologically contextualised, is more focused on the secular ‘Frankish’ nature of the expedition, as well as on Bohemond as the main hero ‘type’, the latter emphasised through a detailed cross-taking scene.30 Fulcher’s alternative process of theological refinement is found throughout the Historia. One example, that sets aside the prowess of individual crusaders in favour of combined effort, is the crusaders’ successful siege of Nicaea in 1097. While the Gesta Francorum records the acts of the leaders and their contingents, Fulcher, as will be detailed below, is rather terser on ‘mundane’ matters. Indeed, the former notes the strategic positions of each leader, though it focuses particularly on Raymond of Saint-Gilles and Adhémar of Le Puy at the south gate. It highlights both the spiritual and practical aspects of the war, recording that during the siege Raymond, ‘protected by divine strength and gleaming with earthly weapons, with his most powerful army … who were fortified on all sides with the sign of the cross, vigorously charged over and overcame [the enemy]’.31 While Raymond and Adhémar were unsuccessful in undermining a tower, their united attacks become an important plot point, underscoring their joint dedication.32 As such, the Gesta Francorum carefully detailed the importance of balancing individual prowess with collective action, presenting this as evidence of both crusader devotion to God and divine will. As the narrative progresses, the text records that the army divided from one another on the march from Nicaea and was ambushed at Dorylaeum. Here, narrative time lingers on Bohemond, recounting his rallying speech to the army and his calls for aid sent to the other leaders.33 Adhémar, Raymond, Godfrey and Hugh of Vermandois then appear, causing the Turks to flee, after which the text states: ‘and if the Lord had not been with us in battle, and had not quickly sent us the other battle-line, none of us would have escaped’.34 This again emphasises the importance of both divine intervention and collective unity.

pp. 6–9. On the complexities of Bohemond as a narrative ‘hero’, see S. T. Parsons, ‘The Valiant Man and the Vilain in the Tradition of the Gesta Francorum: Overeating, Taunts, and Bohemond’s Heroic Status’, in Crusading and Masculinities, ed. N. R. Hodgson, K. J. Lewis and M. M. Mesley (Abingdon, 2019), pp. 36–52. 31 GF, p. 15: ‘protectus divina virtute ac terrenis fulgebat armis cum suo fortissimo exercitu … Qui undique signo crucis armatus, vehementer irruit super illos atque superavit’. 32 GF, p. 15. 33 GF, pp. 18–19. 34 GF, p. 20: ‘et nisi Dominus fuisset nobiscum in bello, et aliam cito nobis misisset aciem, nullus nostrorum evasisset’. 29 GF, 30

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Foundation and Settlement in Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana As noted, Fulcher’s coverage of Nicaea is comparatively terse. Although Alexios is noted indirectly assisting the army by consenting to send food, no individual crusaders are named. Instead, Fulcher records the deeds of the leaders and crusaders collectively with terms such as ‘we’ (‘nos’) and ‘our heroes’ (‘heroes nostri’).35 While military strength is highlighted, it is firmly contextualised as a group effort, not the work of any one or few of the leaders or contingents. Conversely, for the march towards Dorylaeum, Fulcher does focus, like the Gesta Francorum, on the deeds of individuals, but the stress is instead on how their divisionary actions led to suffering rather than success, remedied only through renewed joint action. Fulcher records how the Turks set about ambushing the crusaders before naming the absent leaders, Godfrey, Raymond and Hugh.36 Shifting the narrative voice from third to first person, Fulcher notes, in a reflective passage, that: I know not for what reason they had withdrawn themselves from us, with a great amount of our people, where the road divided. As a result of this, irreparable harm occurred both from the killing of our men as well as from the Turks who were not killed or captured. And because they [the absent leaders] received our envoys from there late, therefore they were late in coming to our aid.37

This demonstrates the importance that Fulcher placed on military unity, as well as his narrative agenda of emphasising the acts of individual leaders only when they undermined the venture. This is further underscored by the shift into the narratorial first person, which disrupts the storytelling by drawing the narratee’s attention to the importance of the point being made.38 This trend of shifting away from textual heroes continues throughout, and while there is not space to cover all instances here, a few instructive examples are as follows. While the Gesta Francorum often focuses on moments of prowess during the siege of Antioch, especially regarding Bohemond, Fulcher rarely mentions the leaders individually.39 Bohemond is specifically referenced only once, as the FC, pp. 181–9. FC, pp. 189–97. 37 FC, p. 194: ‘nescio qua de causa, se a nobis subtraxerant cum gente magna nostrorum tramite bifurco. Unde nobis inrestaurabile damnum accidit tam de nostris interfectis quam de Turcis non occisis vel retentis. Et quia tarde legatos nostros inde habuerunt, ideo nobis tarde succurrerunt’. 38 The narratorial ‘I’ had various functions. Marcus Bull has examined how several crusade narratives, while holding ‘eyewitness’ status, preferred the unifying ‘we’ to ‘I’, and how the first-person singular could also signal uncertainty. ‘Fulcher’ the narrator, however, normally enters the text at times of didactic importance. See M. Bull, Eyewitness and Crusade Narrative: Perception and Narration in Accounts of the Second, Third and Fourth Crusades (Woodbridge, 2018), pp. 129–30 and passim. 39 GF, pp. 28–48; FC, pp. 215–35. 35 36

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Katy Mortimer recipient of the city from a Muslim inhabitant who had been inspired by divine revelation to betray Antioch to the crusaders.40 Yet, even here the inclusion of Bohemond was likely for narrative continuity and to emphasise the importance of securing the northern regions, rather than to highlight his individual role. Similarly, whereas the Gesta Francorum records in some detail the endeavours of individual leaders and their contingents during the battle of Antioch on 28 June 1098, Fulcher states only briefly, at the start of the section, who was present and where they were stationed.41 Thereafter, the focus returns to the whole army, referring only to the crusaders as the Franks or the Christians, never spotlighting anyone. During the siege of Jerusalem, where the Gesta Francorum spends a great deal of narrative time recording the deeds of the leaders, a significant chunk of the Historia is given over to detailing the march south, describing the city and its environs and placing these sites within their biblical context.42 The position of the leaders is again given once, before emphasising that the crusaders were a unit. Nevertheless, Fulcher’s narrative follows a well-established arc that represented Godfrey of Bouillon and his men entering Jerusalem first, with Raymond of Saint-Gilles’ contingent last. As will be explored further below, the inclusion of details highlighting a specific order of events, namely Godfrey being first to enter, centres on Fulcher’s wider narrative strategies – specifically the story arc that is discernible across the entire text – and relates to political concerns over legitimate rule in the Latin East. By comparing the Historia with the Gesta Francorum, then, it becomes clear that Fulcher actively glossed over acts of individual prowess to emphasise the divine and united nature of the expedition. This elevated its religious status, including in relation to events that later occurred in the Holy Land. Comparing Fulcher’s 1124 and 1127 recensions with ‘Bartolf’, moreover, suggests that this particular strategy of theological refinement was always part of the Historia. For example, regarding Nicaea, ‘Bartolf’, like Fulcher, describes no individual acts of prowess, while the separation on the march from the city is considered a great misfortune.43 ‘Bartolf’ follows a similar trajectory, namely that the crusaders suffered for their division, but that God willed their victory once they had reunited.44 Unlike Fulcher, however, there are a few sections where ‘Bartolf’ comments on the importance of individuals. One such is his account of the battle of Antioch, in which Godfrey of Bouillon receives significant narrative time, particularly in his function as the leader of a battle-line.45 FC, pp. 232–5. FC, pp. 255–8. 42 FC, pp. 271–92. 43 GFIE, p. 495. 44 GFIE, pp. 495–6. 45 GFIE, p. 504. See also Bohemond’s absence emboldening the Muslims inside Antioch (p. 498); Bohemond smoking out inhabitants within Antioch (p. 501); and Raymond 40 41

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Foundation and Settlement in Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana While we cannot be entirely certain which sections of ‘Bartolf’ appeared in the Historia’s first recension, it is likely that, like other contemporary authors, Fulcher stressed the crusade’s theological significance from the beginning by emphasising its collective nature, and that, like the rest of his account, he continued to edit and refine this over the years. This is also important in the context of his strategy to legitimise the claim to the Jerusalemite throne of Baldwin of Boulogne, the hero of book 2. In 1099, Godfrey of Bouillon was elected ruler of Jerusalem, an act that was neither straightforward nor unanimous, despite Fulcher’s claims to the contrary.46 However, a succession crisis emerged on his untimely death in 1100, despite Godfrey’s apparent decision to name Baldwin as his heir; as Edgington has noted, ‘Baldwin’s crusade had lacked the necessary consummation’ since he was absent from the conquest of Jerusalem.47 Consequently, Baldwin arguably lacked the spiritual credentials to rule Jerusalem that others could claim. Fulcher’s decision to move away from representations of crusade ‘heroes’ to an almost homogenous group could, therefore, have formed part of a strategy legitimising the rule of both of the first two kings of Jerusalem. This would account for several omissions, such as the removal of Godfrey’s prowess at Antioch. Likewise, the external influence of the succession crisis explains Fulcher’s inclusion of the information that placed Godfrey as first to enter Jerusalem, as this provided a direct line to Baldwin as part of the family who led the conquest of the Holy City. In sum, it highlighted the new king’s legitimacy, while also hinting at his military credentials by association.

Life in Outremer: A Tale of Two Kings With the crusade’s completion, the Historia’s narrative focus shifts to the deeds of Kings Baldwin I and Baldwin II. Book 2 is entirely taken up with Baldwin I’s reign through to his death in 1118, while book 3 covers that of Baldwin II. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Fulcher favours Baldwin I over other rulers, including Baldwin II, although the latter is still broadly heroised across much of the text.48 It will be argued below that books 2 and 3 can be read as a res gestae of the Jerusalemite of Saint-Gilles receiving the Tower of David during the siege of Jerusalem (p. 515). p. 516, FC, pp. 306–8. See also S. John, Godfrey of Bouillon: Duke of Lower Lotharingia, Ruler of Latin Jerusalem, c. 1060–1100 (Abingdon, 2018), pp. 178–218; S. B. Edgington, Baldwin I of Jerusalem 1100–1118 (Abingdon, 2019), pp. 59–114. 47 Edgington, Baldwin I, p. 187. 48 Broadly speaking, historians have considered Fulcher to be particularly critical of Baldwin II, especially later in his text. While certainly more critical of Baldwin II than Baldwin I, this impression is overstated, and is the result of cherry-picking key sections rather than contextualising Baldwin II within the entire storyworld. Conor Kostick, for example, in focusing on Clermont and Baldwin’s captivity, rightly notes that Fulcher’s second recension is more critical of lay kingship, but does not consider Baldwin’s entire narrative arc, which is markedly different beyond 1124 following the 46 GFIE,

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Katy Mortimer kings, and that book 2 can be considered a blueprint for ideal rulership in the Latin East, if not a quasi-mirror for princes. Furthermore, despite some criticism of both kings – always represented as divinely ordained – Fulcher firmly situates events in the crusader states, much like those of the First Crusade, in the context of sacred history. Fulcher’s decision not to focus on a single narrative hero for the First Crusade ends abruptly after the battle of Ascalon in August 1099, after which the focus shifts to Baldwin I.49 As noted, Fulcher transferred to Baldwin’s contingent in 1097, travelling with him to Edessa and away from the main crusading army. Fulcher explains Baldwin’s sojourn as an effort to secure the Holy Land against surrounding enemies, which was underscored by similar consideration of Bohemond’s decision to stay at Antioch. Thus, Baldwin, ‘brother of Duke Godfrey’ (‘Godefridi ducis fratre’), is first introduced after the battle of Dorylaeum, when Fulcher also states that ‘we saw a certain sign in the sky, which appeared flashing with a brilliant whiteness formed in the shape of a sword, with the point stretched forth towards the East’.50 Fulcher claimed not to know the meaning of this portent, but then turned immediately to noting how Baldwin’s contingent, to which the author now belonged, had marched towards Edessa.51 This section is an extended sceneshift away from the ‘main’ story arc, partly facilitated by the sentence with which it culminates: ‘I, Fulcher of Chartres, was chaplain of that Baldwin. I now wish, however, to resume the discussion of the army of God from which I have broken off’.52 In this section, Fulcher the narrator twice speaks directly to the narratee, thus drawing attention to the importance of the discussion. Moreover, in breaking from the overarching narrative agenda, this scene balances Baldwin’s military prowess with God’s will. For example, Fulcher states that, ‘trusting in the Lord and in his own valour, he [Baldwin] brought together with himself a few knights and set out towards the Euphrates River and captured there many towns, as much through strength as through strategy’.53 Baldwin is next mentioned after the battle of Ascalon. Following a short section covering the return of the princes to their native lands, Fulcher records how

49

50 51

52 53

king’s release from captivity. See C. Kostick, The Social Structure of the First Crusade (Leiden, 2008), pp. 42–3. For the crusader victory over Egyptian forces at Ascalon in 1099 as the widely understood inversion of biblical Babylon’s defeat of Jerusalem, see Smith, The Bible and Crusade Narrative, pp. 155–209. FC, pp. 203–9: ‘vidimus in caelo signum quoddam, quod alburno splendore fulgens apparuit in modum ensis figuratum, cuspide versus Orientem protento’. FC, pp. 203–9. FC, p. 215: ‘ego Fulcherus Cartonensis capellanus ipsius Balduini eram. Volo autem nunc de exercitu Dei sermonem quem desiui resumere’. FC, p. 208: ‘confidens in Domino et in valore suo, collegit secum milites paucos profectusque est versus Euphratem fluvium et comprehendit ibi plurima castra tam vi quam ingenio’.

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Foundation and Settlement in Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana Bohemond and ‘the Lord Baldwin, brother of the aforementioned Godfrey’, made their pilgrimage to Jerusalem.54 Fulcher then states that both rejoiced at the news of the crusade’s success, before noting: If the former [Godfrey and others] who by the speed of their journey had preceded them had performed well and usefully, it is not to be doubted that the latter two with their men, although they followed more slowly, would yet share in the same prize. For it was necessary that the land and towns already taken from the Turks with so much toil be guarded carefully, lest it happen, if everyone was then absent in Jerusalem, that the land be recklessly abandoned and recaptured by the Turks who had now been driven back as far as Persia.55

In highly rhetorical prose signalling the importance of the topic once again, the text also discusses Baldwin’s battles against the Turks in the north: Oh, how often in the meantime was the same Baldwin wearied by battles carried out against the Turks in the lands of Mesopotamia! And how many of their heads were cut off in that place, it is impossible to recite. He often happened to fight along with his small number of men against a great multitude of them, and, with God’s help, to be gladdened with triumph.56

Not only do these sections likely answer potential criticism of Baldwin’s excursion to Edessa and his delayed arrival in Jerusalem, they also establish Baldwin’s narrative arc as ‘hero’. This is achieved first by underscoring the importance of these sections through the use of extended sceneshifts, which include a different tone to the main story arc, as well as by Fulcher’s first-person narratorial voice. Second, the repetitive reference to Godfrey is key, as it anchors Baldwin I’s legitimacy as the new ruler by reminding the narratee of the latter’s relationship to the man who was first into Jerusalem and who would be its first Latin ruler. Third, the use of a miraculous portent, when combined with the explicit statement that Baldwin, although not part of the main expedition, was working to aid Christendom, confirms his dedication to holy war, his divinely-willed role in FC, p. 323: ‘domnus Balduinus, praefati Godefridi frater’. FC, pp. 323–4: ‘si illi, qui festinatione itineris praecesserant eos, bene et utiliter operati fuissent, quamvis eos tardius subsecuturi essent, hi duo cum suis participes tamen eiusdem fore bravii non est dubitandum. Erat enim necesse, ut terra et civitates cum tanto labore iam Turcis ablatae sollerter custodirentur, ne forte terra incaute derelicta, si cuncti Iherusalem tunc abissent, recursu repentino a Turcis usque Persidam iam repulsis resumeretur’. 56 FC, pp. 324–5: ‘O quotiens interim ipse Balduinus in Mesopotamiae finibus proeliis contra Turcos factis fatigatus est! Quotque capita eorum caesa illic fuissent, recitari non potest. Saepe contigit illum cum gente sua pauca contra multitudinem eorum magnam proeliari et Deo iuvante triumpho laetari’. 54 55

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Katy Mortimer events and hints at the important part he will play later.57 Finally, Baldwin’s presentation as a tireless warrior against the enemies of God on all sides proves him capable of ruling in Outremer.58 Baldwin I is thus presented as both a highly competent ruler, one able to defend the newly established crusader states, and a divinely-supported king with a legitimate claim to the throne. Across book 2, Fulcher’s primary focus is Baldwin’s military career, and he presents the king tirelessly expanding the kingdom’s frontiers according to God’s will. This is achieved in several ways, but most notably Baldwin’s victories are described as evidence of divine favour. For example, when Baldwin hears he is to be king and travels from Edessa to Jerusalem, his first scene as future king is an expansive entry covering a battle fought against Damascene forces north of Beirut. It is possible that the amount of narrative time given to this encounter partly reflects Fulcher’s presence, but it also functions as an exemplar for future engagements. Thus, during Baldwin’s march south, the qāḍī of Tripoli, Fakhr al-Mulk, sends Baldwin supplies and warns him of an impending attack by Duqāq of Damascus and Janāh al-Dawla of Homs. While Fulcher notes that the Christians, himself included, did not trust (‘non … crederemus’) this information, only later realising it was true, the king was nevertheless represented as well prepared and able to defeat his enemies through scouts, his foresight and with God’s mercy.59 Indeed, while the crusaders are initially fearful, Fulcher repeats how they placed their faith in God who, ‘looking down from heaven upon the earth, and upon our humility and difficulties, and indeed the dangers which we fell into on account of our love and service of Him, was moved by His goodness, by which He duly always came to help through His presence’.60 Fulcher’s version is highly rhetorical, reminding the narratee that victory was not the Christians’, but God’s: ‘Oh, how wonderful are the works of God! … But we ourselves did not conquer … for, He

Beth Spacey has noted that Fulcher’s decision not to comment directly on the meaning of this portent makes certainty unreachable, though it could symbolise the path for the crusaders, divine approval of violence or crusader victory – or a combination of all three. While it is somewhat ambiguous, by following the entire narrative arc we can add to these conclusions and assert with some confidence that the sign in the sky most likely also worked to highlight the military prowess and theological significance of Baldwin the ‘hero’. See B. C. Spacey, The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative (Woodbridge, 2020), p. 136. 58 The rulers of the Latin East were expected to be excellent warriors as well as politicians: A. V. Murray, Baldwin of Bourcq: Count of Edessa and King of Jerusalem (1100–1131) (Abingdon, 2021), pp. 122–3. 59 FC, pp. 354–65. 60 FC, p. 362–3: ‘prospiciens de caelo in terram humilitatem nostram atque angustiam necnon periculum, quod incideramus propter amorem eius atque servitium, motus pietate, qua rite semper praesens suis subvenit’. 57

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Foundation and Settlement in Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana conquers who is the sole omnipotent Creator of all’.61 This extended scene thus sets a precedent that peaceful contact with Muslims was acceptable if it furthered the Christian cause, that faith in God was central to military success, as it was during the First Crusade, and that in Baldwin could be found the head of a divinely united and driven army. Variations of these themes are found throughout book 2.62 Nevertheless, as noted above, even if criticism of Baldwin was relatively rare, he was not beyond chastisement. One example is the second battle of Ramlah in 1102, where Baldwin faced the Fāṭimids accompanied only by a small army. Here, Baldwin is accused by Fulcher of acting rashly, proceeding into battle in a disorderly fashion and without proper reinforcements ‘because he trusted in his own prowess more than he should have’.63 The king was forced to flee from a small, if still numerically superior, enemy, and although the soldiers of Christ (‘milites Christi’) showed bravery, ‘in the end, with God permitting it, they were overcome by the conquered’.64 However, Baldwin the narrative hero is almost immediately redeemed, as the Historia records how, in flight, ‘the Lord snatched him from the hands of his mighty enemies’ and he reached Arsuf safely.65 There, he joined with Hugh of Tiberias and, after waiting for reinforcements from Jerusalem, marched out onto the plains beyond Jaffa. Despite being at a numerical disadvantage and surrounded on all sides, Baldwin was victorious, ‘trusting utterly in the omnipotence of the Lord … [and] fortified by the wood of the Lord’s Cross’.66 Following this, a large chunk of narrative time is given over to reflecting on the importance of trusting in God rather than human judgement.67 Fulcher draws here on biblical heroic types, specifically representing Baldwin in the mould of King David, who sinned but repented and thus remained God’s chosen one.68 As such, this victory serves as the inverse of the previous failure, explaining any Christian losses and underscoring Baldwin’s status as the God-willed king of Jerusalem. It is, in other words, a redemptive arc for the text’s hero.69 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

68

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FC, pp. 363–4: ‘O quam admirabilia Dei facta … Sed nos non vicimus … Vicit enim ille, qui solus est omnipotens creator omnium’. See FC, pp. 393–400, 495–501, 534–6. FC, p. 439: ‘quia in probitate sua plus quam deberet confidebat’. FC, pp. 439–40: ‘Denique, Deo permittente, a superatis superati sunt’. FC, p. 442: ‘Dominus eum de manibus inimicorum suorum fortiorum eripuit’. FC, pp. 452–3: ‘in omnipotentia Domini prorsus confidentes … ligno dominicae crucis muniti’. FC, pp. 453–6. Samuel 11–12. On the use of comparisons with King David in this period, see R. M. Karras, Thou Art the Man: The Masculinity of David in the Christian and Jewish Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA, 2021). Later adaptors of Fulcher shaped these events in similar ways. See A. D. Buck, ‘Remembering Outremer in the West: The Secunda pars historiae Iherosolimitane and the Crisis of Crusading in Mid-Twelfth-Century France’, Speculum 97 (2022), 377–414 (at 401–2); S. J. Spencer, ‘Fear, Fortitude and Masculinity in William of Malmesbury’s

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Katy Mortimer Importantly, these themes are also found in ‘Bartolf of Nangis’. While Baldwin’s march south from Edessa is less descriptive, ‘Bartolf’ still mentions the role of divine will: through Christ, the Franks were strengthened and with the help of God they put their enemies to flight.70 Like Fulcher, ‘Bartolf’ chastises Baldwin’s rash and vain actions at Ramlah in 1102, and even offers harsher criticism, likening Baldwin and his men to impatient young goats (‘hoedi petulantes’). The text also perhaps ridicules them, or at least despairs, by stating that the soldiers might as well have discarded their weapons and gone forth with their hands behind their backs as the enemy was so greatly superior. The emphasis, like in Fulcher, is that Baldwin should have trusted in God rather than in his own capabilities.71 Similarly, ‘Bartolf’ ascribes Baldwin’s success on the plains beyond Jaffa to faith in God and to the presence of the True Cross. As Edgington notes, references to the True Cross are more extensive in ‘Bartolf’, but the earlier account does not labour the point, as does Fulcher, that Baldwin’s earlier failure was due to the relic’s absence.72 Edgington posits that this was likely due to Fulcher’s greater willingness to criticise the king following his death in 1118. While this is possible, it seems unlikely when viewed in the context of Fulcher’s account of the second battle of Ramlah. Instead, it is more likely that Fulcher later sought to draw these two points together to finesse his narrative arc, thus underscoring how wrong intent could lead to failure, but that actions such as these were redeemable. In this reading, although the narrative hero, King Baldwin, was, like all humans, far from faultless, he was both redeemable and redeemed. Understanding Baldwin I’s elevated status as a blueprint for rule in the Latin East becomes clearer when compared to representations of his successor as both count of Edessa and king of Jerusalem, Baldwin of Bourcq. While life in Frankish Outremer was never ‘stable’ (even by medieval standards), in the years following Baldwin I’s death in 1118 – when Fulcher extended and heavily reworked the Historia – a series of disruptive events probably served as a catalyst for, and influence upon, his writing. As noted above, it has been established recently that lived traumas could powerfully influence medieval historical writing.73 It is my contention that one of the reasons that Fulcher picked up his quill once more was in response to traumatic events that then informed how he developed his foundation narrative. This was not only as a means of recording and explaining the recent past, but also as a call to arms for those living in, and defending, the

Retelling of the First Crusade and the Establishment of the Latin East’, Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture 5:2 (2019), 35–50 (at 43–4). 70 GFIE, pp. 520–1. 71 GFIE, pp. 533–5. For a detailed discussion of these events, see Edgington, Baldwin I, pp. 134–8. 72 Edgington, Baldwin I, pp. 138–9. 73 See note 12 above.

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Foundation and Settlement in Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana Latin East, as well as for those who might support the crusade’s continued legacy in the Latin West. Perhaps most traumatic for Fulcher was the captivity of Baldwin II at the hands of the Artuqid emir Balak between April 1123 and August 1124. Though this was Baldwin’s second period of Muslim confinement, having been captured at the battle of Harran in 1104, his status as king of the holiest Christian site on earth imbued his second imprisonment with exceptional theological implications. Moreover, given the death of Prince Roger of Antioch at the Field of Blood in 1119, as well as the capture of Count Joscelin I of Edessa earlier in 1123, Baldwin’s captivity left three of the four crusader states without a ruler. It also heightened enduring tensions between Baldwin and the Jerusalemite nobility over his extended absences in the north as regent and protector of Antioch and Edessa.74 Baldwin’s captivity thus created religious and political crises at a time when anxieties over Muslim incursions and internal Frankish relations were already high – all themes that are echoed in the Historia. Indeed, there is a palpably heightened level of authorial anxiety in both the 1124 and 1127 recensions. In chapter 24 of book 2, for example, Fulcher the narrator reflects: It is certainly established that nothing in this world is certain, nothing stable, nor even pleasing for very long. For that reason, it is not good to covet earthly things, but to keep one’s heart directed always at God. Neither should we trust in transitory things, nor should we be alienated from eternal things … I have not seen a king punished with prison like this one. Whether this might signify something, I indeed know not; only God knows.75

Moreover, chapter 21 of book 3, entitled ‘how the populace of Jerusalem was not scorned very much, even though their king had been captured’, recounts how the people adopted God as their king rather than Baldwin.76 Later in this chapter, Fulcher affords much narrative space to reflecting on the importance of humility, asking how a person can be king who is vice-ridden and acts outside the law, and stating that a king who does not follow God’s law shall be conquered by his enemies.77 The passage is hyperbolic, reflecting on vices such as adultery, perjury, blasphemy, deceit, theft and oppression.78 Little is known of Baldwin II’s personality, but the Murray, Baldwin of Bourcq, pp. 93–194 (esp. 152–6, 171–6). FC, p. 687: ‘Liquet utique nihil in hoc saeculo esse certum, nihil stabile, nec etiam diu gratum. Ideo terrenis inhiare non est bonum, sed cor habere ad Deum semper intentum. Nec confidamus in caducis, ne alienemur aeternis … Regem non vidi velut hunc in carcere plecti. Significet si quid ignoro quidem, Deus hoc scit’. 76 FC, p. 673–4: ‘Quod populus Hierosolymitanus adeo non sit despectus, quamvis rex eorum esset captus’. 77 FC, p. 674. 78 FC, p. 674. 74 75

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Katy Mortimer surviving evidence suggests that this is not necessarily an accurate profile.79 The presence of this section in both the 1124 and 1127 recensions thus seemingly reflects anxieties and traumas felt during and after the king’s captivity. When discussing the king’s plans to escape captivity, however, Fulcher labours the point that no help came from Jerusalem; rather it was local Armenians who assisted him.80 The implication here is that although the king was to blame for his initial captivity, his lengthy stay was the fault of the Jerusalemite nobles. Their perceived selfishness is further highlighted in a section that follows the escape of Count Joscelin. While he initially convinces the Jerusalemites to help, and marches with an army to support Baldwin during a brief escape afforded by the Armenians, the army departs upon hearing that the king had been taken back into custody. ‘Eager [for the venture] to be somewhat profitable for themselves’, he noted, they instead attacked Aleppo.81 This self-serving behaviour, and its likely path to failure, is then juxtaposed against the successful capture of Tyre – where the 1124 recension finishes. Fulcher presents a united front between a Venetian support force and an army led by Patriarch Warmund of Jerusalem, spending a great deal of narrative time highlighting the city’s biblical past.82 In doing so, Fulcher not only foregrounds the importance of working together, he also places the Franks’ efforts within the context of sacred history. Drawing together the representations of Baldwin’s captivity with the extended scenes describing Tyre’s capture and significance, it seems likely that Fulcher wrote an end to the narrative in 1124 that sought to influence audiences in both the Latin East and Latin West. For the Frankish settlers, particularly in Jerusalem, the importance of unity is stressed – not only working together for God, but also in the name of saving their king from captivity. Moreover, while certainly chronological, the choice to end with the successful capture of Tyre was likely a means to appeal to westerners who might come to the aid of Outremer. Indeed, the 1124 recension did not end with descriptions of divine glory, but with the division of the city between the locals and the Venetians. This message of gains through martial aid would have enticed those predisposed to sending help. Fulcher appears to have begun writing again very soon afterwards, probably in response to Baldwin II’s release. On the surface, the mood of the 1127 recension, perhaps unsurprisingly, reads as markedly different.83 The addition of the text’s main prologue, as well as a section recording a marvel involving the sun burning Murray, Baldwin of Bourcq, pp. 207–9. FC, pp. 676–80. 81 FC, p. 688: ‘cupientes sibi aliquid prodesse’. 82 FC, pp. 693–720, 728–46. 83 On this later recension, albeit with the belief that Fulcher had lost confidence in the Frankish settlement project, see J. Rubenstein, ‘Tolerance for the Armies of Antichrist: Life on the Frontiers of Twelfth-Century Outremer’, in Papacy, Crusade, and ChristianMuslim Relations, ed. J. L. Bird (Amsterdam, 2018), pp. 81–96. 79 80

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Foundation and Settlement in Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana more brightly than usual, seemingly portends Baldwin’s release and reflects once more the Franks’ status as God’s chosen people.84 When these are also situated alongside the famous chapter that describes the ‘eastern’ nature of the Latins in Outremer, they suggest a more jubilant narratorial tone.85 This is supported in part by Baldwin II’s complete ‘redemption’ as narrative hero by chapter 42, as well as long sections reflecting on the marvellous nature of the landscape, flora and fauna of the Holy Land.86 Nevertheless, following the king’s release, the 1127 recension remains cautionary. Detailing a further Christian defeat, Fulcher laments how ‘divine dispensation hinders the one whom human prowess makes more prosperous, lest he for whom it is fitting be allowed to be glorified’, and that ‘He who not long before kindly delivered the strong and glorious city of Tyre to us, His Christians, and took it from its occupiers, is now pleased to withdraw His hand’.87 In line with the rest of the text, therefore, Fulcher suggests that Baldwin’s captivity was the result of placing his faith in his own prowess rather than in God. Despite this, he is subsequently represented as having been redeemed through God’s will. Baldwin II was not a model for kingship in the ilk of his predecessor, but he was also not beyond redemption and, although he was a complex character, he still holds the position of textual hero and worthy king of Jerusalem.

Conclusion Moving beyond ethnohistory and the theological context for the crusade, this chapter has sought to shed new light on the importance of Fulcher’s work as a foundation narrative. While a complete discussion of the many nuances present in the Historia is beyond the scope of this study, it has been shown that Fulcher utilised numerous strategies to create a piece of writing that not only explained unprecedented – and at times traumatic – events, but also brought legitimacy to a new regime and sought to effect change through his writing. This was achieved not only through theological refinement, in particular by portraying the First Crusade as an event raised above all others, but also by shaping the remainder FC, pp. 115–18, 746–8. FC, pp. 748–9. 86 As Spacey explains, events that were ‘marvellous … [were understood as] the result of natural processes instilled at Creation, yet inspired wonder because of their rarity or unexplained nature’. The inclusion of these extended sections on sacred and marvellous space further enhances the narrative arc of crusader and settler legitimacy by underscoring the divine nature of events and place. See Spacey, The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative, p. 17; Epp, Fulcher von Chartres, pp. 117–25. 87 FC, p. 756: ‘Obviat autem divina dispensatio ei, quem prosperiorem facit humana probitas, ne cui convenit ampliari patiatur’, ‘Qui Tyrum urbem fortissimam et gloriosissimam nobis Christianis suis paulo ante benigne tradidit et possessoribus eius abstulit, nunc ei manum retrahere libuit’. 84 85

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Katy Mortimer of the text to issue a stark warning against bad rule – in doing so, Fulcher clearly sought to speak to audiences in both the Latin East and the Latin West. Thus, Fulcher presented the First Crusade as a collective endeavour, whereby the feats of the crusader army, united in devotion to God and under His protection, eclipsed those of the individual. By shifting the Historia’s narrative focus in books 2 and 3, however, Fulcher used the reigns of Baldwin I and, to a lesser extent, Baldwin II to offer a blueprint for good rule over God’s chosen people in the Holy Land, one that contemporaries were expected to learn from and act upon.

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6

After Ascalon: ‘Bartolf of Nangis’, Fulcher of Chartres and the Early Years of the Kingdom of Jerusalem Susan B. Edgington

In the spring of 1106, an account of the First Crusade and the early years of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, the Historia Hierosolymitana written by Fulcher of Chartres, arrived in northern France. Unfortunately, there is no surviving copy of what would become the first recension of Fulcher’s text, which he continued to edit in at least two further recensions until 1127.1 However, we know of its existence not only from echoes in these later reworkings, but also from the works of two other writers – the apocryphal ‘Bartolf of Nangis’ and Guibert, abbot of Nogentsous-Coucy. Thus, the Gesta Francorum Ierusalem expugnantium (henceforth GFIE), a text unreliably attributed to ‘Bartolf’ and still relatively neglected by scholars, noted at the outset: Let us try to elucidate that which brother Fulcher of Chartres saw with his eyes, or the deeds which were told to him from memory by those who did them and which he brought together and gathered into one little book. But we who are thoroughly informed both by the content of the little book and by the accounts of others, and by penetrating investigation, avoiding a prolix narrative, content only with those things which we feel are relevant to the matter, have taken care conscientiously to modify the text of this volume.2

FC, pp. 42–8; J. Flori, Chroniqueurs et propagandistes: Introduction critique aux sources de la première croisade (Geneva, 2010), p. 226. 2 GFIE, p. 492: ‘enucleare tentemus quod frater Fulcherius Carnotensis, ut oculis vidit, aut facta ab eisdem qui fecerunt narrata memoriter et recollegit et in unum libellum congessit. Nos vero qui et libelli pagina, aliorumque narratu, arguta inquisitione edocti, prolixam narrationem vitantes, his tantum quae ad rem pertinere sentimus contenti, hujus voluminis textum diligenter transformare curavimus’. A new edition and English translation of the GFIE is being prepared by Susan B. Edgington and Thomas W. Smith. For recent work on the text, see S. B. Edgington, ‘The Gesta Francorum Iherusalem expugnantium of “Bartolf of Nangis”’, Crusades 13 (2014), 21–35; A. Derolez, ‘The Abbey of Saint-Bertin, the Liber Floridus, and the Origin of the Gesta Francorum Hierusalem expugnantium’, Manuscripta 57 (2013), 1–28. I have benefited from correspondence with Jay Rubenstein and his articles cited below, and with Anna Gutgarts whose publications on the GFIE and urban Jerusalem are forthcoming. 1

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Susan B. Edgington Likewise, Guibert of Nogent, who is rather better known among scholars, named his source as Fulcher when he incorporated material from the Historia into the seventh and final book of his account of the First Crusade known as Dei gesta per Francos.3 A comparison of these two works with Fulcher’s final version (1127) allows not only a degree of conjecture about the content of the lost text, but also enables an investigation into how it was edited and restructured by Fulcher writing in the Holy Land in the 1120s, and how it was received and utilised by two very different writers working in western Europe. Indeed, that it was around the same early date that the text came to the notice of both Guibert in Picardy and ‘Bartolf’ in Flanders, as well as the fact that they used their source in different ways, allows for a comparative study that can reveal more about contemporary efforts to shape the early history of crusade and settlement. In other words, this chapter, which is centred on how the three texts describe the months immediately following the crusader victory over Fāṭimid forces at Ascalon in August 1099, offers an important window onto both Fulcher’s approach to writing and how the early history of the crusader settlements was transmitted and adapted between the Latin East and Latin West.

‘After Ascalon’: Towards Reconstructing a Lost Text The questions that underlie the following investigation are twofold. First, how much of Fulcher’s first recension does the GFIE preserve, and how far can this be distinguished from ‘Bartolf’s’ additions? Second, how extensively did the GFIE’s author modify his exemplar, and what are the possible explanations for this? Key to this, of course, is a comparison with Fulcher’s own 1127 version of his work, but Guibert of Nogent’s Dei gesta may also provide corroborative evidence, for if both ‘Bartolf’ and Guibert preserve the same information, and yet it is omitted by Fulcher’s extant Historia, then there is a reasonable probability that it comes from the 1106 recension and Fulcher later omitted it for authorial reasons. It should be noted, however, that while a comparison between the GFIE and the 1127 Fulcher is relatively straightforward, Guibert’s use of the text was structured very differently. In his seventh book, before Fulcher’s history came to his notice, he had already brought together anecdotal and other material relating to the First Crusade and the period following, including references to Godfrey of Bouillon’s death in 1100, the accession of his brother Baldwin of Boulogne as king of Jerusalem, Daibert of Pisa’s appointment as papal legate in 1098 and the so-called ‘1101 Crusade’.4 Guibert explicitly denigrated Fulcher’s writing style. Nevertheless, he could not but appreciate Fulcher’s first-hand knowledge of events for the period after 1099, and so he used the Historia to fill out book 7, 3 4

GN, ‘Introduction’, pp. 15–16. GN, p. 329.

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After Ascalon: ‘Bartolf of Nangis’, Fulcher of Chartres albeit without duplicating or, apparently, revising what he had written previously. In the event, the amount of Fulcher material in Guibert’s appended section is relatively small, except on the matter of the failed miracle of the Easter Fire in 1101, and there is quite a lot else not found in ‘Bartolf’ or Fulcher, including the deeds of Gervase of Bazoches, lord of Tiberias and a local hero for Guibert and his readership, that demonstrates he was less indebted to the Historia than was the author of the GFIE.5 Although Fulcher was a participant in the First Crusade, he was with the main army only until the autumn of 1097, when he left with Baldwin of Boulogne. Thus, he could record only at second hand the sieges and battle of Antioch that were the defining phases of the First Crusade, and the all-important conquest of Jerusalem and victory over Fāṭimid forces at Ascalon. For these events his likely sources were the anonymous Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolitanorum and the Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem of Raymond of Aguilers.6 He probably also gathered oral information at different points, for example from crusaders who arrived in Edessa for respite during the siege of Antioch and after he travelled with Baldwin to complete their pilgrimage to Jerusalem late in 1099.7 Fulcher, therefore, really comes into his own after Ascalon, when his account is no longer informed by other extant sources. Moreover, until the arrival in the East of Ralph of Caen – who composed an account of the crusade and the Latin settlements ostensibly as a biography of Tancred of Hauteville – in 1107, that is, after the completion of the GFIE, Fulcher’s is the only surviving narrative written by a resident of the kingdom of Jerusalem.8 The importance of this was recognised grudgingly by Guibert and by medieval copyists who seized on Fulcher or the GFIE to augment or continue other accounts of the First Crusade. In addition to the complete text of the GFIE, which is found in fifteen manuscripts, we find selective use of this text in two extant manuscripts of Robert the Monk and three of Baldric of Bourgueil, both Benedictines who, like Guibert, reworked the Gesta Francorum.9 The earlier of these two Robert manuscripts – now held in Uppsala – dates from the second half of the twelfth century and originated in northern France.10 It includes chapters 31–33, comprising a long description and GN, pp. 334, 338–9; J. Rubenstein, ‘Guibert of Nogent, Albert of Aachen and Fulcher of Chartres: Three Crusade Chronicles Intersect’, in Writing the Early Crusades: Text, Transmission and Memory, ed. M. Bull and D. Kempf (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 24–37. 6 FC, pp. 65–70. 7 GFIE, pp. 518–19; S. B. Edgington, Baldwin I of Jerusalem, 1100–1118 (Abingdon, 2019), pp. 52–3, 54–6. 8 Flori, Chroniqueurs et propagandistes, p. 222. 9 For a challenge to this generally accepted view, see C. Symes, ‘Popular Literacies and the First Historians of the First Crusade’, Past & Present 235 (2017), 37–67. 10 Uppsala, Universitetsbibliotek, MS C 691. The second manuscript dates to the fifteenth century and was probably copied from the first: Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, MS Cod. Guelf. 354. 5

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Susan B. Edgington map of Jerusalem, and chapters 40–72, covering 1099 to 1106, copied as chapter 10 of Robert’s Historia Iherosolimitana. The copyist therefore not only recognised the importance of the GFIE, but also used it intelligently by including a unique description of Jerusalem as well as the later chapters that took the narrative forward into Baldwin I’s reign. The three thirteenth-century manuscripts of Baldric’s Historia Ierosolimitana, however, used only the later chapters of the GFIE, starting after the battle of Ascalon in 1099 and picking up the narrative in chapter 39 by slightly altering the wording to signal the change.11 Their transition to the new text concluded: ‘Then [the crusaders] went to the River Jordan, and, carrying palm leaves from Jericho as was customary, some vowed to depart and some to remain in Jerusalem forever’.12 This is the point at which ‘Bartolf’ takes up the tale, explaining that, of those who elected to remain in Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon was chosen to rule the kingdom and Arnulf of Chocques provisionally made patriarch. Godfrey also had Tancred with him, and there is a small but significant difference here between ‘Bartolf’ and the 1127 Fulcher: the earlier account explains that Godfrey had made Tancred captain of his soldiery, while the final version omitted this.13 Fulcher was not yet in Jerusalem, but was soon to arrive, and the indication that Tancred was held in high regard by Godfrey would help to explain the fierce succession dispute that followed Godfrey’s death in July 1100.14 However, it is a detail that is corroborated neither by Guibert of Nogent nor the other, independent, chronicler of these years, Albert of Aachen. Even the panegyric of Tancred written by Ralph of Caen does not go quite so far, although it makes it clear that Tancred had emerged as by far the wealthiest of the leaders from the sack of Jerusalem and claims that he commanded some eighty men out of about 200 who were left to defend the kingdom after the others’ departure.15 Tancred’s loyalty to Godfrey may be a detail that Fulcher later found uncomfortable, or simply irrelevant, by the 1120s. The events of the next two or three years are narrated in both the GFIE and Fulcher’s Historia, but, although the sequence is similar, there are four important and closely interconnected themes where a significant change of attitude is found between what was written before 1106 and what is in Fulcher’s Historia of 1127:

MS B: Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Reg. Lat. 631 (described at BB, pp. lxxvii–lxxix); MS F: London, British Library, MS Stowe 56 (BB, pp. lxxxi–lxxxiii); MS R: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 5135 (BB, p. xcv). The manuscripts are closely related. 12 Vat. Reg. Lat. 631, fol. 60v: ‘Dehinc flumen Iordanis adeuntes et palmas ex more de Iericho asportantes, quidam recedere, quidam remanere Ierosolimis in perpetuum voverunt’. 13 GFIE, p. 518; FC, pp. 321–2. 14 See below and Edgington, Baldwin I, pp. 72–3. 15 RC, p. 117. 11

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After Ascalon: ‘Bartolf of Nangis’, Fulcher of Chartres the succession crisis of 1100, kingship and coronation, the 1101 failure of the Holy Fire and relations with the patriarchate. One central character who links all these themes is Archbishop Daibert of Pisa, who arrived with an Italian fleet at Latakia on the Syrian coast in September 1099.16 Daibert was to prove a deeply divisive figure in the politics of the new kingdom of Jerusalem and one about whom the older Fulcher appears greatly to have modified his views from those presented in the GFIE. To begin with, the differences between the two versions are apparently slight. Whereas the archbishop is reported by ‘Bartolf’ to have arrived with others ‘from Pisa and Ravenna’, Fulcher calls them ‘Tuscans and Italians’.17 For Fulcher writing in the 1120s, this was a deliberate exclusion of the Pisan fleet from any part in the conquest of the littoral, which was an important policy of the earliest Latin rulers of Jerusalem. It should be noted that in this instance the author of the GFIE, a work produced in northern Europe, could have no interest in falsifying the account he received, and that furthermore its evidence regarding Pisan participation in naval blockades in this first decade is borne out by Albert of Aachen.18 Returning to the chronological narrative, both texts describe the journey south to Jerusalem undertaken in November 1099 by Archbishop Daibert, Baldwin of Boulogne (now count of Edessa) and Bohemond of Antioch. The account in Fulcher is much longer and written in the first person, with considerable detail about the hardships of travelling in a Syrian winter. The GFIE’s shorter account is consistent with its narrative of the earliest stages of the First Crusade when Fulcher was a participant. The latter recounted, in the first person and in some detail, his experiences on the journey to Constantinople, whereas ‘Bartolf’ wrote a shorter, third-person version that still recognisably described the same experiences. This modification by ‘Bartolf’ seems more likely than Fulcher later elaborating the narrative with vivid detail, and there is some corroboration for this from Guibert of Nogent, whose account of the journey is much shorter than Fulcher’s but retains some of the more striking details of a severe famine and, memorably, the stink of the corpses of the slain enemy that still pervaded the air in Jerusalem, descriptions not preserved in the GFIE.19 One further modification introduced later M. Matzke, Daibert von Pisa: Zwischen Pisa, Papst und ersten Kreuzzug (Sigmaringen, 1998). There is some evidence that Daibert had been appointed papal legate by Urban II to replace Adhémar of Le Puy, who had died at Antioch on 1 August 1098. However, his legatine authority would have lapsed when Urban himself died on 29 July 1099: A. V. Murray, The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Dynastic History 1099–1125 (Oxford, 2000), p. 82. 17 GFIE, p. 518: ‘multique alii Pisani et Ravennenses’; FC, p. 327: ‘cum quibusdam Tuscanis et Italis’. 18 S. B. Edgington, ‘The Capture of Acre, 1104, and the Importance of Sea Power in the Conquest of the Littoral’, in Acre and its Falls: Studies in the History of a Crusader City, ed. J. France (Leiden, 2018), pp. 13–29; Edgington, ‘The Gesta Francorum’, pp. 31–4. 19 GN, pp. 335–6. Cf. FC, pp. 332–3. 16

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Susan B. Edgington by Fulcher, or omitted by ‘Bartolf’, is an apologia for Bohemond and Baldwin’s absence from the later stages of the expedition to Jerusalem: If the former [Godfrey and others] who by the speed of their journey had preceded them had performed well and usefully, it is not to be doubted that the latter two with their men, although they followed more slowly, would yet share in the same prize. For it was necessary that the land and towns already taken from the Turks with so much toil be guarded carefully, lest it happen, if everyone was then absent in Jerusalem, that the land be recklessly abandoned and recaptured by the Turks who had now been driven back as far as Persia. From this it would come about that great harm befall all the Franks, both going and returning. Perhaps divine providence delayed them, judging that they would accomplish more in doing what needed to be done than engaging in a fait accompli.20

Between the two accounts, then, it is not easy to establish the balance of probability. Did Fulcher in 1106 feel keenly that Baldwin, by then king, needed his absence from the capture of Jerusalem to be justified, in which case ‘Bartolf’ did not see it as relevant to his story? Or did Fulcher in the 1120s, years into a new reign, wish to reveal doubts he had suppressed at the time? Guibert of Nogent preserved the echo of a fuller defence in his exemplar: After Antioch was captured, Bohemond, who had achieved rule over the city by the Franks’ famine, cold and bloodshed, preferred to distance himself there when the others left rather than to be bothered with the liberation of the Holy Sepulchre for Jesus … Baldwin had been held back not by avarice but by the defence of his own city and had likewise by no means rushed to besiege Jerusalem.21

We can therefore conclude that the 1106 text included some comment on the two leaders’ failure to participate in the siege of Jerusalem that was omitted FC, pp. 323–4: ‘quod si illi, qui festinatione itineris praecesserant eos, bene et utiliter operati fuissent, quamvis eos tardius subsecuturi essent, hi duo cum suis participes tamen eiusdem fore bravii non est dubitandum. erat enim necesse, ut terra et civitates cum tanto labore iam Turcis ablatae sollerter custodirentur, ne forte terra incaute derelicta, si cuncti Iherusalem tunc abissent, recursu repentino a Turcis usque Persidam iam repulsis resumeretur: unde damnum Francis non minimum cunctis contingeret evenisse, tam euntibus quam redeuntibus. Forsitan divina providentia distulit eos, plus in peragendis quam in peractis negotiis iudicans eos profuturos’. 21 GN, p. 335: ‘Feliciter igitur urbe capta Boemundus, qui Antiochiae fame, cruoribus ac frigore Francorum obtinuerat principari, apud eam, ceteris proficiscentibus, maluit remotari quam pro Iesu domini Sepulchri liberatione vexari … [Balduinus] etenim, non avaritiae obtentu sed propriae civitatis tuitione retentus, urbi similiter nequaquam obsidendae concurrerat’. 20

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After Ascalon: ‘Bartolf of Nangis’, Fulcher of Chartres by ‘Bartolf’, adapted to make an anti-Bohemond and pro-Baldwin statement by Guibert, and probably later elaborated by Fulcher into a full defence. The objective of Bohemond and Baldwin’s journey south was to complete the pilgrimage to Jerusalem by worshipping at the Holy Sepulchre, which they duly did. They were also able to join in the celebration of the Nativity in Bethlehem and, according to Fulcher and ‘Bartolf’, to go down to the River Jordan before returning home.22 There are, however, major differences in the accounts of an important ecclesiastical development the two leaders witnessed in Jerusalem. Fulcher (1127) reports with utmost brevity that Daibert was chosen as patriarch of Jerusalem, while Guibert of Nogent does not mention it at this point, probably because he had already discussed Daibert’s arrival and subsequent election at some length earlier in the part of book 7 completed before Fulcher’s Historia came into his possession.23 A summary of what Guibert earlier wrote about Daibert’s election is relevant to his reporting of later events, since it does not appear to have been modified after he read Fulcher’s Historia (1106). Having introduced Daibert (wrongly) as Pope Paschal II’s appointment to replace Adhémar of Le Puy as legate to the crusade, Guibert described his arrival in Jerusalem, as well as his denouncing and deposition of Arnulf of Chocques as patriarch on various, probably spurious, grounds.24 According to Guibert, it was the depraved and shamed Arnulf himself who proposed Daibert as his replacement: ‘Take this Pisan himself who is acting as legate!’25 Guibert is thus implacably hostile to Arnulf and an unwavering supporter of Daibert. It is possible, as Jay Rubenstein has proposed, that Guibert, like his fellow Benedictines Robert and Baldric, was working to a papal agenda, namely to reclaim the First Crusade as a papal initiative.26 However, one might then expect Ralph of Caen, who arrived in the Holy Land after joining the inner circle of Bohemond during the latter’s visit to northern France in 1105, which Rubenstein has linked to the same agenda, to be as partisan in his support of the papal legate. Yet Ralph was poorly informed about the events of Christmas 1099 – he misdated them to Easter 1100 – and his report reads that Daibert became patriarch with Bohemond’s support and that Arnulf, a man of ‘noble character’ 22 23 24

25

26

Their itinerary is confirmed by Albert of Aachen, including a detailed description of the detour to the river Jordan: AA, pp. 496–8. FC, p. 333; GN, pp. 290–3. GN, p. 292. Daibert’s position was not described as ‘legate’, but he was given charge of the Lord’s army by Pope Paschal: ‘super dominici exercitus cura vices suas’. Other sources agree that Daibert was sent by Pope Urban II, which is chronologically more likely. GN, p. 292: ‘“Hunc ipsum”, inquit, “Pisanum qui legatione fungitur accipite”’. For a balanced view of the evidence concerning Arnulf’s character and status, see B. Hamilton, The Latin Church in the Crusader States (London, 1980), pp. 12–16. J. Rubenstein, ‘The Deeds of Bohemond: Reform, Propaganda, and the History of the First Crusade’, Viator 47:2 (2016), 113–36 (at 130–2); Symes, ‘Popular Literacies’, pp. 63–6.

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Susan B. Edgington (‘magnae indolis’), freely agreed to stand down in the hope that Daibert would have more success in spreading the Christian faith.27 In the GFIE, agency was instead in the hands of the king and his barons: ‘Bartolf’ explained that an assembly was held ‘to deal with the circumstances of the kingdom and the Jerusalem Church’, at which Daibert was appointed patriarch and Arnulf deposed and made guardian of the church of the Holy Sepulchre.28 Daibert was praised for his learning and episcopal experience, but: There was also another more important reason they retained Daibert: he more or less had in his power the Pisans and Genoese with whom he had come, so that they would want and do whatever he wanted. Therefore, they considered that it would be necessary and very advantageous for their state if they had such a man by whose industry and shrewdness they could capture by ship the cities that were situated on the coast.29

‘Bartolf’, therefore, is alone in stressing Godfrey’s ‘more important’ and pragmatic motive in accepting Daibert as patriarch and agrees with Ralph of Caen about Arnulf’s dignified stepping aside for a still influential position as archdeacon in the Jerusalem Church. Guibert and the writer of the GFIE agree, though, in making no adverse comment on Daibert’s own motives in seeking or accepting the patriarchate; in fact, they praise his character highly. Such unadulterated praise is missing from Fulcher’s final version. There, Daibert first appears as ‘a certain Pisan archbishop called Daibert’ and departs as ‘Daibert, who had been patriarch of Jerusalem, a prudent man and powerful in counsel’.30 The only other significant reference to him is towards the end of the final recension, among events of 1124, where Fulcher recorded that ‘also in Jerusalem Duke Godfrey and Lord Bohemond received their land from Patriarch Daibert for the love of God’.31 The context of this statement is political, a dispute between Jerusalem and Antioch over the recently captured city of Tyre, and was intended to strengthen the Roman Church’s claim to control the disposition of lands captured by the Latins in favour of Jerusalem. Since Daibert could have conferred title to their lands only during Bohemond’s time RC, p. 118. p. 519: ‘de statu regni et Ecclesiae Iherosolymitanae tractantes’. 29 GFIE, p. 519: ‘Erat et aliud quo eum magis retinuerunt: Pisanos enim et Januenses, cum quibus ipse Daimbertus venerat, in sua quasi potestate habebat, ut quicquid ipse vellet, ipsi vellent et facerent. Ideoque necessarium et valde opportunum reipublicae suae duxerunt, si talem virum haberent cujus industria et sollertia civitates super mare sitas navigio caperent’. 30 FC, p. 327: ‘archiepiscopus quidam Pisanus, nomine Daibertus’; pp. 466–7: ‘Daibertus, qui patriarcha Hierosolymorum fuerat, vir prudens et consilio pollens’. 31 FC, pp. 741–2: ‘in Hierusalem quoque dux Godefridus et dominus Boamundus acceperunt terram suam a patriarcha Daiberto propter amorem Dei’. 27

28 GFIE,

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After Ascalon: ‘Bartolf of Nangis’, Fulcher of Chartres with Godfrey in Jerusalem at Christmas 1099, Fulcher’s argument would have been stronger in 1124 if he had mentioned it at that time. Instead, he appears to say as little as possible about Daibert at any point. All was to change when Godfrey died in July 1100, just a year after the capture of Jerusalem, as the question of the succession to the kingdom of Jerusalem became urgent. If Godfrey had named his younger brother Baldwin as heir, this did not find its way into Fulcher’s writing as represented by ‘Bartolf’, Guibert or even Fulcher in 1127. The last of these said only that ‘all the people of Jerusalem were expecting him to succeed to the rule of the kingdom as heir’.32 In the GFIE there is an indication that the matter of inheritance had been discussed: ‘In August, after Baldwin returned to Edessa, a messenger from Jerusalem met him at haste, and he announced to him both the death of his brother Godfrey and that the kingdom had been left to him by that same brother, by hereditary right’.33 If Godfrey had indeed named Baldwin as his successor then it may have been on his deathbed in the presence of both Daibert and Arnulf, as Ralph of Caen wrote.34 Albert of Aachen referred more generally to an oath made to Godfrey by Daibert and Tancred that ‘they would not confer the throne on anyone except his brothers or one of his blood’.35 In the pre-Fulcher part of book 7 of his Dei gesta, Guibert had written about Godfrey’s death and burial, praising his piety and recording his refusal to wear a crown in Jerusalem where Christ had worn a crown of thorns (on which see below).36 He then reverted to an earlier theme, Godfrey’s ancestry and how this made him a worthy king.37 Believing that Baldwin would be no less worthy than his brother, Guibert continued, an unspecified ‘they’ brought Baldwin from Edessa to rule over the new Christian settlement.38 In a veritable eulogy, Guibert praised FC, pp. 352–3: ‘omnis populus Hierosolymitanus eum in regni principem substituendum heredem exspectarent’. 33 GFIE, p. 520: ‘in mense Augusto, postquam Balduinus Edessam rediit, nuntius ei festinus de Iherusalem occurrit, qui nuntiavit et obitum fratris sui Godefridi, et regnum sibi hereditario jure ab eodem fratre dimissum’. The word ‘hereditario’ was omitted in the copy used to augment Baldric of Bourgueil, but whether this was a deliberate or significant omission is beyond the scope of this study. 34 RC, p. 119. For a fuller discussion, see A. V. Murray, ‘Daimbert of Pisa, the Domus Godefridi and the Accession of Baldwin I of Jerusalem’, in From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and Crusader Societies 1095–1500, ed. A. V. Murray (Turnhout, 1998), pp. 81–102 (at 87–8). 35 AA, p. 522: ‘nulli regnum Ierusalem se reddituros nisi fratribus suis aut uni de sanguine eius’. 36 GN, pp. 317–18. 37 GN, p. 129. 38 GN, p. 318: ‘a fraterna eum temperantia et sagacitate futurum degenerem nulla ratione credentes, Balduinum ex Edessa transferunt et sanctae illius Christianitatis novae coloniae regnare constituunt’. 32

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Susan B. Edgington Baldwin’s modesty, fearless courage and generosity, though how well informed he was about the king’s character is doubtful. With access to Fulcher’s account of the succession, Guibert modified his own, still stressing the brothers’ shared lineage but writing that the Jerusalemites sent intermediaries and summoned Baldwin to ‘royal powers’ (‘regia iura’).39 In this reprise, however, Guibert’s description of Baldwin was completely different, portraying him as an oriental potentate in appearance and behaviour.40 If he gleaned this from the 1106 text, it left no trace in the parallel sources by ‘Bartolf’ and the later Fulcher. Because Guibert was aware of Baldwin’s treatment of Daibert, which he depicts as tyrannical, by the date he was writing his second account of the succession, he may well have been subtly introducing a despotic king. Guibert was thus unaware of, or glossing over, an attempt by Daibert, in alliance with Tancred, to prevent Baldwin from becoming king and to install Bohemond of Antioch instead. Albert of Aachen is the main source for this conspiracy, which was foiled by men loyal to Godfrey.41 Albert’s Historia appears to be very well informed about the same years ‘after Ascalon’ for which we have only Fulcher as eyewitness, but it is far from unbiased and Daibert was a particular target for Albert’s vituperation. About the decision to elect Daibert and depose Arnulf, Albert was scathing, implying that he bought his way to the patriarchate.42 Albert went on to describe a previous career of corruption and greed in Italy and Spain, including a scandalous rumour that the money and gifts used to bribe Bohemond and Baldwin and to win Godfrey’s favour were stolen from the papal treasury after Urban II’s death. Having prepared the ground, Albert describes how the newly appointed patriarch formed an alliance with Tancred, who was bitter about his prospects, to prevent Baldwin from succeeding his brother.43 Although neither of the two sources derived from the lost first recension of Fulcher’s Historia so much as mentions the conspiracy, any more than does Fulcher in 1127, ‘Bartolf’ shows awareness of ill-feeling between Baldwin and the patriarch once the new king arrived in Jerusalem, claiming that they ‘were somewhat at odds with each other on account of certain suspicions and mutterings GN, pp. 338–9. J. Rubenstein, ‘Tolerance for the Armies of Antichrist: Life on the Frontiers of TwelfthCentury Outremer’, in Papacy, Crusade, and Christian-Muslim Relations, ed. J. L. Bird (Amsterdam, 2018), pp. 81–96. Rubenstein uses this passage to show that Guibert was aware of rumours that Baldwin had ‘gone native’ (pp. 89–90). He further argues that Fulcher’s attitude changed and, whereas he was comfortable with a degree of co-existence alongside ‘Saracens’ in the 1100s, he was disillusioned with it by the 1120s. 41 Murray, ‘Daimbert of Pisa’, pp. 81–2, 89–91, 99. 42 AA, p. 496. 43 Albert’s account of their developing cooperation and conspiracy is long and detailed but not relevant here: AA, pp. 516–24, 538–40. Ralph of Caen remarks only that Baldwin’s succession ‘stirred up a flame of great dissension and war’, RC, p. 119: ‘magnae dissensionis et belli flammam suscitasset’. 39 40

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After Ascalon: ‘Bartolf of Nangis’, Fulcher of Chartres of the people’, and that ‘Baldwin’s coronation and enthronement as king were delayed to the feast day’.44 Fulcher himself was a little more specific: Patriarch Daibert was not present at this assembly because accusations had been made against him to Baldwin and they were at variance with one another, and the majority of the clergy then hated him. For this reason he was residing on Mount Sion, deprived of his seat, and he was there until the offence of ill will towards him was removed.45

It appears that both the earlier and the later Fulcher recognised that it could not be pretended that the patriarch welcomed Baldwin’s arrival in Jerusalem, but neither accused the former of treachery. Conversely, Guibert’s eclectic use of his source made it possible for him to pass over entirely Baldwin’s arrival, his delayed coronation and the reason for it. After describing Baldwin’s oriental appearance, therefore, he recorded his miraculous evasion of Muslim ships tracking him as he made his way south, an escape that was the result of prayer and a promise to defend the kingdom in obedience to God. Then, oddly, there is a reference to Daibert’s arrival in Jerusalem in the company of Bohemond and Baldwin – obviously a reference to the pilgrimage of November 1099 – which Guibert noted had slipped his mind (‘illud me preterierat’).46 He then included nothing about Baldwin’s coronation and only a few lines describing a subsequent expedition into Arabia, which may have been included only so that he could point out that Fulcher was mistaken in locating the site of the biblical Aaron’s death.47 If ‘Bartolf’ had named Mount Sinai instead of Mount Horeb, which is the error Guibert claims ‘his priest’ had made, then it would be a neat piece of evidence about the content of their shared source, but in fact no name is given to the mountain in the GFIE.48 Fulcher’s final account of the expedition is long and detailed, and ‘Bartolf’s’ shorter. This is consistent with the early chapters of the GFIE, where Fulcher’s first-person experiences are abbreviated and distanced to the third person, but it is also likely that the later Fulcher expanded this section of his Historia when he

p. 522: ‘quia … aliquatenus obliqui erant propter quasdam suspiciones et populi submurmurationes, de ejus coronatione atque regni intronizatione usque ad festum dilatum est’. 45 FC, pp. 368–9: ‘huic autem celebritati patriarcha Daibertus non interfuit, quia de quibusdam apud Balduinum erat insimulatus et discordes adinvicem habebantur, quem etiam maior cleri pars exosum tunc habebat. quapropter in monte Sion sede privatus tunc morabatur et fuit ibi donec delictum ei malivolentiae solutum est’. 46 GN, pp. 339–40. 47 GN, p. 340: ‘Et istic presbiteri illius mei titubavit opinio’. 48 GFIE, pp. 522–3. 44 GFIE,

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Susan B. Edgington had the leisure and also access to books of reference, for some of the descriptions are derived from the Roman geographer Solinus.49 Baldwin, Fulcher and the expeditionary force returned to Jerusalem on 21 December, and the period of absence had evidently allowed Baldwin’s supporters to work on the patriarch, for all was prepared for the king’s coronation in Bethlehem on Christmas Day 1100. ‘Bartolf’ wrote: And there a golden crown had been prepared with regal ornaments; also Patriarch Daibert was reconciled with Baldwin, and on Christmas Eve, as was customary, everyone assembled for that most holy night in Bethlehem, the place of the Nativity, and before that splendid manger, to spend it in ceremonies and sermons and vigils; and when the night’s hymns had duly been performed with the appropriate Masses, at the third hour of the day Baldwin was crowned and elevated to kingship by Patriarch Daibert and received with honour by all, both clergy and people. When everything had been completed in accordance with custom, they returned with joy to Jerusalem that same day.50

This is a fuller description than Fulcher later allowed: in a sentence he gave the same place and date, but merely wrote that ‘Baldwin was anointed and crowned king with honour by the aforesaid patriarch in the presence of the bishops, priests and people’.51 The GFIE’s ‘in accordance with custom’ (‘de more’) is interesting given there was no real precedent for Baldwin’s coronation as king of Jerusalem. If it was an addition by ‘Bartolf’, then he may have been referring to Frankish ceremonial or western practice in general. The date and location of Baldwin’s coronation were possibly the result of compromise between Baldwin’s adherents and the patriarch, but both were highly significant. First, all available sources make much of Godfrey’s celebrated refusal to wear a crown in Jerusalem, discussed

FC, pp. 370–83. Fulcher acknowledged his debt to Solinus for information about natural history towards the end of his 1127 recension: FC, pp. 783–4: ‘hoc autem, quod dixi tantillum, a Solino exquisitore sagacissimo et dictatore expertissimo, prout valui, excerpsi’. 50 GFIE, p. 523: ‘Ibique aurea corona cum ornamentis regalibus praeparata, Daimberto etiam patrarcha cum Balduino reconciliato, in vigilia Natalis Domini, sicut mos erat noctem sacratissimam loco Nativitatis, et ante praesepium illud splendidum, cum caeremoniis et orationibus et vigillis praecedere, Bethlehem omnes convenerunt; hymnisque nocturnis cum missis pertinentibus rite peractis, hora diei tertia Balduinus in regem a patrarcha Daimberto coronatus et sublimatus est,et ab universis, tam a clero quam a populo, honorifice receptus. Omnibusque de more expletis solemniter, ea die cum gaudio Iherusalem redierunt’. 51 FC, p. 385: ‘a patriarcha memorato, una cum episcopis cleroque ac populo adsistentibus, in regem honorifice sub sacra unctione sublimatus et coronatus est rex Balduinus’. 49

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After Ascalon: ‘Bartolf of Nangis’, Fulcher of Chartres below, and the choice of Bethlehem obviated an objection on these grounds.52 Then the date, Christmas Day 1100, was exactly three hundred years after the coronation of Charlemagne, famous for fighting the Muslim foe. In addition, Bethlehem was where the prophet Samuel had anointed David as king of Israel, and so Baldwin was positioning himself in succession to the Old Testament kings of Jerusalem.53 In his 1127 recension, Fulcher defended Baldwin’s decision to be crowned in 1100 when his predecessor ‘did not want to be crowned, and then the idea was not liked by some others’, concluding that ‘what those cruel men had done as an insult to Christ was turned to our salvation and glory’ by His death on the Cross.54 In 1099, when Godfrey was elected to rule the newly conquered city, the crown had already been refused by the Occitan crusade leader Raymond of Saint-Gilles, who, at least according to his chaplain Raymond of Aguilers, gave as his reason that ‘the name of kings in that city horrified him’.55 In the apocalyptic atmosphere of the time, Godfrey may have shared this horror, and so – according to the later historian William of Tyre – ‘from humility, he refused to be invested with a golden crown, as is customary with kings, in the city where the Redeemer of the human race wore a crown of thorns for our salvation’.56 But it is well to read what William wrote a few lines later about Godfrey’s title: ‘For this reason some hesitate to include him in the enumeration of kings, not perceiving his merits’, going on to write that Godfrey seemed to him the best of kings.57 ‘Bartolf’ and Guibert were not among the hesitant, which makes it probable that their common exemplar also routinely referred to Godfrey as king, although he himself chose instead to use a humbler title, which ‘Bartolf’ expressed elegantly: ‘And while he lived he was not duke or king but servant and protector of the land’.58 In other Albert of Aachen stated explicitly that Baldwin was unwilling to wear a crown of gold in Jerusalem where Jesus had been crowned with thorns, and this was why he chose to be crowned in Bethlehem: AA, p. 550. 53 Sam. 16.12–13. 54 FC, p. 385: ‘quoniam noluit et tunc laudatum a quibusdam non fuit’; p. 386: ‘sed quod illi truces ad improperium ei fecerunt, gratia Dei ad salutem nostrani et gloriam versum est’. 55 RA, p. 152: ‘At ille nomen regium se perorrescere fatebatur in illa civitate’. 56 WT, I, 431: ‘humilitatis causa corona aurea, regum more, in sancta civitate noluit insigniri … quam humani generis Reparator in eodem loco … pro nostra salute spineam deportavit’. The influence of apocalyptic ideas on Godfrey’s election and title is discussed by J. Rubenstein, Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse (New York, 2011), pp. 293–301. 57 WT, I, 431: ‘Unde quidam in catalogo regum, non distinguentes merita, eum dubitant connumerare’. 58 GFIE, p. 520: ‘qui dum viveret, non dux vel rex, sed servus et protector patriae exstitit’. For ‘Bartolf’s’ use of ‘king’ for Godfrey, see GFIE, p. 516: ‘in regem … extulerunt’; p. 518: ‘sublimatus in regem’; p. 519: ‘cum rege Godefrido’. In his edition, Hagenmeyer 52

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Susan B. Edgington words, his gesture was a pious expression of kingship as service rather than a total rejection of the monarchical idea. Ralph of Caen, writing not much later, without exception called Godfrey ‘king’, strengthening the probability that he was regarded as king by inhabitants of the kingdom, even though he preferred not to use the title.59 Writing around the same time in the Rhineland, Albert of Aachen was very clear that in 1099 Godfrey reluctantly accepted ‘lordship of the city and guardianship of the Lord’s Sepulchre’, but he also wrote that he ‘was raised up to be prince and ruler of his brothers on the throne of the kingdom of Jerusalem’.60 For Albert, he remained ‘Duke Godfrey’, but when his brother succeeded him it was explicitly on the throne of Jerusalem (‘in throno Ierusalem’).61 Albert was aware of the ‘crown of thorns’ argument against crown-wearing in Jerusalem, as shown by his explanation of Baldwin’s choice of Bethlehem for his coronation, and his careful avoidance of the kingly title for Godfrey strongly suggests that western writers eagerly embraced Godfrey’s humble rejection of the title of king as part of his legend. The question of Godfrey’s title is important because of its bearing on his relationship with the patriarchate. The idea that Daibert succeeded in establishing an ecclesiastical state in Jerusalem, and that this was at the root of his opposition to Baldwin, has been very influential, but it has been shown to be based on William of Tyre’s much later testimony.62 The dissension between king and patriarch is attested by contemporary writers, although none goes as far as Albert of Aachen. A flavour of his opinion of Daibert has already been provided, and, as well as being the fullest source for the conspiracy to prevent Baldwin’s accession, Albert devoted most of book 7 (his longest of twelve) to Daibert’s venality and corruption. As has already been indicated, both ‘Bartolf’ and Guibert were wholly admiring of Daibert, and their agreement on this suggests that this was the version of his character that reached them after 1106. Fulcher, who was with the king throughout these years, must have known the truth, but he said very little about Daibert, even though by 1127, when Baldwin I was long dead, he might have expressed himself more freely. It can only be conjectured that he was torn between his loyalty to Baldwin and, as a priest, his allegiance to the Church.

59 60 61 62

turned the logic upside-down and argued that because a chapter heading read ‘De morte regis Godefridi’ it could not have been written by Fulcher: FC, p. 349 n. 1. RC, pp. 117, 118, 119. AA, pp. 446–8: ‘dominium urbis et custodiam dominici sepulchri’; p. 450: ‘Godefrido ad principem et rectorem suorum confratrum in solio regni Ierusalem exaltato’. AA, p. 528. Murray, Crusader Kingdom, p. 84 n. 95, for a discussion and refutation of the idea most influentially proposed in J. Hansen, Das Problem eines Kirchenstaates in Jerusalem: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Kreuzzüge (Luxembourg, 1928), pp. 42–9. See also Murray, ‘Daimbert of Pisa’, pp. 82–6; S. John, Godfrey of Bouillon: Duke of Lower Lotharingia, Ruler of Latin Jerusalem, c. 1060–1100 (Abingdon, 2018), pp. 178–218.

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After Ascalon: ‘Bartolf of Nangis’, Fulcher of Chartres As a result, in 1127, Fulcher was reticent about the next stage in Baldwin’s contest with Daibert, the failure of the Holy Fire in the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Easter 1101, writing simply that the miraculous kindling of lamps failed to occur.63 Rubenstein has written an excellent analysis and discussion of this event and its outcome based on the long accounts found in the GFIE and Guibert’s Dei gesta, as well as several other sources.64 As he points out, Guibert was the only writer to recognise the significance of Baldwin appearing crowned when the fire finally kindled the lamps: ‘It cannot be told how their grief was healed by relief when on account of the blessing of this gift the king consented to wear a crown that day within the city, in the Temple of the Lord, something he had never presumed to do before’.65 Although on the same occasion of the Holy Fire’s appearance Daibert was confirmed as patriarch, his days were now numbered. The ongoing dissension was plotted in detail only by Albert of Aachen, but gossip about it evidently reached the Latin West, for a passage in Guibert’s Dei gesta suggests that rumours were circulating even before he saw the lost Fulcher recension.66 In the autumn of 1104, Daibert sailed for Rome to complain about his deposition to the pope, but, although he was reinstated, he died en route to the Holy Land in 1105, his death recorded by ‘Bartolf’ with a eulogy.67 Since our other witness to the earliest recension of Fulcher’s Historia, Guibert of Nogent, did not include the same level of detail, the GFIE uniquely provides contemporary evidence of a positive attitude to the controversial prelate, underlining the importance of this formerly undervalued source.

Conclusion The disputed accession of King Baldwin I and his ensuing quarrel with Patriarch Daibert were chosen as the focus of this study of the years ‘after Ascalon’ because they illustrate so clearly the reception of an early version of Fulcher’s Historia Hierosolymitana, now lost, by two authors writing in western Europe. There are other aspects of the lost work that could have been discussed, but it can nevertheless be seen here that, in addition to discovering important insights into

FC, pp. 395–6. J. Rubenstein, ‘Holy Fire and Sacral Kingship in Post-Conquest Jerusalem’, Journal of Medieval History 43 (2017), 470–84. 65 GN, p. 343: ‘Dici non potest quibus convaluerit meror ille solatiis, cum eo die, quod numquam presumpserat, intra eandem urbem in Templo Domini coronari rex ipse consenserit ob huius favorem muneris’. 66 GN, p. 292 ‘Nec mora hunc eundem post regis gloriosi Godefridi occubitum, cum regnaret Balduinus frater eius, qui Edessae prefuerat, proditionis insimulant sicque certo dampnatum crimine eum, qui metropolitanus fore destiterat, patriarchatu privant’. The implication seems to be that Daibert was found guilty without a trial. 67 GFIE, pp. 538–9. 63

64

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Susan B. Edgington the likely content of Fulcher’s earliest recension, we can note that ‘Bartolf’ and Guibert of Nogent treated their exemplar very differently. The latter was eclectic in his use of it, showing a greater sense of simply viewing Fulcher as one of many sources of information, while the GFIE probably preserved much more of it, albeit quite how much cannot be established fully. Moreover, both the use of Fulcher’s text and the GFIE’s wide dissemination, as suggested by the number of extant manuscripts, reflect the hunger – even in the immediate aftermath of the crusader conquests – for accounts of the First Crusade and the ensuing years of settlement, for which there were fewer written accounts available. It is also possible to see, conjecturally, the changes that Fulcher made to his early version when he rewrote it in the 1120s, revealing shifts in politics and attitudes twenty years later in the kingdom of Jerusalem. In both the Latin East and the Latin West there was evidently demonstrable contemporary interest in detailing the foundation of the crusader states. A study of these three texts shows how specific details of the inception of these polities were transmitted in divergent forms across these two areas of Latin Christendom. For Fulcher, returning to his words some twenty years after their composition, there was an evident desire to interpret the events ‘after Ascalon’ within the political context of his own time, whereas, for authors who responded to the first recension in the Latin West, we find moments that reflect their own concerns and interests. In other words, the story of the Latin East, like the story of the First Crusade, was both malleable and subject to conscious and unconscious authorial intervention.

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7

Repurposing a Crusade Chronicle: Peter of Cornwall’s Liber Revelationum and the Reception of Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana in Medieval England 1 Stephen J. Spencer

Modern historiographical discussions of the dissemination and reception of First Crusade histories in the Middle Ages have long centred on the textual tradition linked to the anonymous Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum. This focus is understandable: the Gesta Francorum, or a very similar text, influenced an array of early twelfth-century chroniclers, most notably the northern French Benedictines Baldric of Bourgueil, Robert the Monk and Guibert of Nogent, and several of these so-called ‘Gesta-derivatives’ went on to enjoy fairly wide – in the case of Robert’s Historia Iherosolimitana, exceptionally wide – manuscript circulations.2 However, as historians have gradually exposed the role of other early crusade accounts in transmitting the venture’s narrative, the importance of the Historia Hierosolymitana by the northern French cleric Fulcher of Chartres

My thanks to the Leverhulme Trust for supporting this research through an Early Career Fellowship at King’s College London; the staff of Lambeth Palace Library for allowing me to inspect MS 51 and reproduce a photograph here; Andrew Buck and Thomas Smith for kindly taking the time to comment on early drafts and affording me access to forthcoming publications; and to James Kane for generously reading and refining a full draft. The ideas presented here were beneficially trialled in summer 2021 at the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East ECR Conference and the 9th International Conference of the Medieval Chronicle Society. 2 J. France, ‘The Use of the Anonymous Gesta Francorum in the Early Twelfth-Century Sources for the First Crusade’, in From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and Crusader Societies, 1095–1500, ed. A. V. Murray (Turnhout, 1998), pp. 29–42; J. Flori, Chroniqueurs et propagandistes: Introduction critique aux sources de la première croisade (Geneva, 2010), pp. 67–169; RM, pp. x, xlii–xlvii, lxv–lxxiv; BB, pp. lxx–ci; J. Tahkokallio, The Anglo-Norman Historical Canon: Publishing and Manuscript Culture (Cambridge, 2019), p. 74 n. 209; S. Niskanen, ‘Copyists and Redactors: Towards a Prolegomenon to the editio princeps of Peregrinatio Antiochie per Vrbanum papam facta’, in Transmission of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. O. Merisalo, M. Kuha and S. Niiranen (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 103–14. 1

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Stephen J. Spencer – which is linked to, but often diverges from, the Gesta Francorum tradition – has become increasingly apparent.3 Much of this scholarship has focused on Fulcher’s homeland, France, where his work was consulted by Guibert of Nogent and, as recent studies by Susan Edgington and Andrew Buck have elucidated, served as a foundation text for the chroniclers known as ‘Bartolf of Nangis’ and ‘Lisiard of Tours’.4 We also know that the Historia reached England in the twelfth century because, as Heinrich Hagenmeyer established in his 1913 critical edition, both Orderic Vitalis and William of Malmesbury named Fulcher as a source, though only William demonstrably utilised his text.5 This chapter draws attention to neglected evidence suggesting that Fulcher’s Historia achieved a wider dissemination in England than its use by these two famous Anglo-Norman chroniclers implies. It does so by exploring London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 51 – the sole surviving witness to the Liber revelationum, compiled c. 1200 by Peter of Cornwall, prior of Holy Trinity, Aldgate. The Liber, an enormous collection of revelatory material (mainly concerning visions) divided into two books, was assembled by three scribes working under Peter’s

Heinrich Hagenmeyer argued that Fulcher used the Gesta Francorum and Raymond of Aguilers’ Historia, yet Fulcher’s account is sufficiently different for Jean Flori to categorise it among ‘Les sources “indépendantes”’: Anonymi Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolymitanorum, ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1890), pp. 58–60; FC, p. 66; Flori, Chroniqueurs et propagandistes, pp. 171, 219–57; Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095–1127, trans. F. R. Ryan, ed. H. S. Fink (New York, 1973), pp. 25–6. 4 S. B. Edgington, ‘The Gesta Francorum Iherusalem expugnantium of “Bartolf of Nangis”’, Crusades 13 (2014), 21–35; A. D. Buck, ‘Remembering Outremer in the West: The Secunda pars historiae Iherosolimitane and the Crisis of Crusading in Mid-TwelfthCentury France’, Speculum 97 (2022), 377–414; Flori, Chroniqueurs et propagandistes, pp. 223–5; J. Rubenstein, ‘Putting History to Use: Three Crusade Chronicles in Context’, Viator 35 (2004), 131–68; J. Rubenstein, ‘Guibert of Nogent, Albert of Aachen and Fulcher of Chartres: Three Crusade Chronicles Intersect’, in Writing the Early Crusades: Text, Transmission and Memory, ed. M. Bull and D. Kempf (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 24–37 (at 26–30). 5 FC, pp. 81–3; William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols (Oxford, 1998–9), I, 660–1; OV, V, 6–7; J. O. Ward, ‘Some Principles of Rhetorical Historiography in the Twelfth Century’, in Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography, ed. E. Breisach (Kalamazoo, MI, 1985), pp. 103–65 (at 121, 122, 131–2, 144); R. M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury, 2nd edn (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 178–88 (at 180–2); S. J. Spencer, ‘Fear, Fortitude and Masculinity in William of Malmesbury’s Retelling of the First Crusade and the Establishment of the Latin East’, Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture 5:2 (2019), 35–50. For overviews of the use of Fulcher’s Historia by later writers, see FC, pp. 71–91; Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095–1127, pp. 46–51. 3

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Repurposing a Crusade Chronicle supervision.6 While the prologue and the most original chapters, especially those written by Peter himself, recounting tales he had heard, were transcribed and translated by Robert Easting and Richard Sharpe in 2013, those transposed from Fulcher’s Historia (and most deriving from other identifiable written sources) remain unedited and unstudied.7 To begin to redress this, the first part of this chapter seeks to identify the recension of Fulcher’s work that was available at Holy Trinity, while the second considers how Peter and his scribes approached and utilised the text.

The Reception of Fulcher’s Historia Hierosolymitana Four chapters (870–73) in book 2 of Peter’s Liber were copied verbatim from book 1 of Fulcher’s Historia by a single scribe, labelled ‘Scribe B’ by Easting and Sharpe.8 The first sentence of chapter 870 identifies the author as ‘Fulcherus’ and his work, somewhat misleadingly, as ‘Historia Francorum’, perhaps reflecting Fulcher’s regular use of the ethnonym Franci, including in his prologue.9 Nonetheless, the title ‘Historia Ierusalem’ appears above each of the two columns at the top of R. Easting and R. Sharpe, Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations (Toronto, 2013), pp. 35–6, 342–53. On Peter’s oeuvre, see also R. W. Hunt, ‘The Disputation of Peter of Cornwall against Symon the Jew’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke, ed. R. W. Hunt, W. A. Pantin and R. W. Southern (Oxford, 1948), pp. 143–56; R. Sharpe, ‘Peter of Cornwall’s De reparatione lapsus: A “Lost” Work Traced’, Scriptorium 38 (1984), 79–81; R. Easting and R. Sharpe, ‘Peter of Cornwall, the Visions of Ailsi and his Sons’, Mediaevistik 1 (1988), 207–62; C. Gebauer, Visionskompilationen: Eine bislang unbekannte Textsorte des Hoch- und Spätmittelalters (Münster, 2013), pp. 49–80; M. D. Barbezat, ‘Converse with the Dead as a Technology of the Self: Agreements to Return from the Other-World in Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations’, Journal of Medieval History 48 (2022), 32–56. 7 Easting and Sharpe, Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations. 8 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 51, fols 448v–450r. Rather than replicating the twentieth-century editorial principles used in Hagenmeyer’s edition of Fulcher’s Historia, I have followed the manuscript as closely as possible. Therefore, there are minor orthographical differences between my transcriptions and the corresponding passages in Hagenmeyer’s edition (such as my use of the consonantal u rather than v). On ‘Scribe B’, see Easting and Sharpe, Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations, pp. 343, 347. Peter’s use of Fulcher’s Historia is briefly noted in M. R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Lambeth Palace (Cambridge, 1930), p. 71; IP1, p. 101; Easting and Sharpe, Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations, pp. 39, 545–6, 583. 9 LPL MS 51, fol. 448v; FC, p. 116. On Fulcher’s use of Franci, see W. Giese, ‘Untersuchungen zur Historia Hierosolymitana des Fulcher von Chartres’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 69 (1987), 62–115 (at 74); A. D. Buck, ‘Settlement, Identity, and Memory in the Latin East: An Examination of the Term “Crusader States”’, English Historical Review 135 (2020), 271–302 (at 274–6). 6

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Stephen J. Spencer the page (Figure 7.1).10 This is one of very few occasions when Peter explicitly identified his source, with over ninety per cent of the Liber’s chapters lacking an attribution.11 Fortunately, enough of Fulcher’s Historia was copied into the Liber to identify the recension that was available at Holy Trinity. As is well known, Fulcher produced at least three versions of his work, with significant revisions undertaken during the 1120s. The earliest version, finished by 1106, does not survive, although Edgington has made a compelling case for accessing it via ‘Bartolf of Nangis’, and Jay Rubenstein has contended that at least the ‘substance’ of the 1106 version is preserved in the first half of the so-called ‘L’ manuscript of Fulcher.12 The extant manuscripts thus attest to two phases of revision: Hagenmeyer identified seven manuscripts that ended in 1124 (the first recension) and seven manuscripts that continued to 1127 (the second recension).13 Thomas Smith has recently expanded the total number of known manuscripts to eighteen, with at least one of the newly-discovered witnesses representing the 1124 recension and another the 1127 recension.14

LPL MS 51, fol. 448v. Easting and Sharpe, Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations, p. 39. 12 Edgington, ‘The Gesta Francorum Iherusalem expugnantium of “Bartolf of Nangis”’, p. 35; Rubenstein, ‘Guibert of Nogent, Albert of Aachen and Fulcher of Chartres’, p. 27. 13 FC, pp. 91–111. An eighth witness to the 1124 recension was also included in Hagenmeyer’s edition (siglum Z), but he was unable to locate the manuscript Kaspar von Barth had consulted in Basel in 1618 and therefore used the latter’s transcription of variant readings. Intriguingly, a manuscript fragment, brought to scholarly attention by Thomas Smith, is based in the Universitätsbibliothek Basel (E III 17). See FC, pp. 98–9; K. von Barth, ‘Animadversiones et glossaria manuscripta ad Bongarsianos scriptores historiae Palestinae sive Gestorum dei per Francos. Num. V: Ad Fulcherii Carnotensis, Historiam Palaestinam animadversiones’, in Reliquiae manuscriptorum omnis aevi diplomatum ac monumentorum ineditorum adhuc, ed. J. P. von Ludewig, 12 vols (Frankfurt, 1720–41), III, 291–368; T. W. Smith, ‘New Manuscript Witnesses to the Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, the Historia Ierosolimitana of Albert of Aachen, and the Historia Hierosolymitana of Fulcher of Chartres: Preliminary Observations’, in Chronicle, Crusade, and the Latin East: Essays in Honour of Susan B. Edgington, ed. A. D. Buck and T. W. Smith (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 35–49 (at 44–5). On the differences between the recensions, and the evolution of Fulcher’s attitude towards the crusade, see V. Epp, Fulcher von Chartres: Studien zur Geschichtsschreibung des ersten Kreuzzuges (Düsseldorf, 1990), pp. 10–19; J. Rubenstein, ‘Tolerance for the Armies of Antichrist: Life on the Frontiers of Twelfth-Century Outremer’, in Papacy, Crusade, and Christian-Muslim Relations, ed. J. Bird (Amsterdam, 2018), pp. 81–96 (at 94–6). 14 Smith, ‘New Manuscript Witnesses’, pp. 44–9. Fifteen manuscripts are listed in M. Bull, ‘Fulcher of Chartres’, in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, 10 11

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Figure 7.1. The start of the chapters in Peter of Cornwall’s Liber that are based on Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia. London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 51, fol. 448v. Image courtesy of Lambeth Palace Library.

Stephen J. Spencer Peter of Cornwall and his scribes undoubtedly used a manuscript in the 1124 recension, for when there is significant variation between the manuscripts of Fulcher, the Liber mirrors the text found in manuscripts of the 1124 redaction (Hagenmeyer’s sigla: ABFIOR). For example, when describing how ‘the king of the Persians’ discovered that the Latins were besieging Antioch and then sent a relief army under the command of Karbughā, atabeg of Mosul, the Liber states: ‘Nam soldanus rex scilicet Persarum unde iam parum prefatus sum habita legatione quod Franci Antiochiam obsidebant, statim gente multa coadunata contra Francos exercitum suum misit, cuius fuit Corbagath dux et admiratus’. Here, the Liber follows the 1124 recension by including ‘unde iam parum prefatus sum’, using ‘coadunata’ instead of ‘congregata’ and ‘admiratus’ instead of ‘satrapa’, as well as by omitting ‘gentis’ from ‘cuius gentis fuit’.15 Such examples can be multiplied many times over. Chapter 871 of the Liber replicates the 1124 group of manuscripts by using ‘Domino’ rather than ‘Deo’ in ‘Cum autem placuit Domino laborem populi sui consummari’; ‘nostris tunc egit’ instead of ‘nostris negotium istud tractavit’; ‘aliquid de negotio nostro agere uolebamus’ rather than ‘aliquid boni negotii nostri acturi eramus’; ‘gentem suam’ and ‘obstupefacti ualde’, not ‘gentem’ and ‘obstupefacti’; and ‘De quibus multi mox occisi fuerunt, pluresque fugiendo’ rather than ‘unde plures qui potuerunt fugiendo’.16 In fact, we can be even more precise. The variant readings indicate that the manuscript used by Peter was London, British Library, Royal MS 5 B.XV, fols 65r–133v, or a very closely related manuscript. This witness shall henceforth be referred to as ‘I’, the siglum it was assigned in both Hagenmeyer’s edition and the Recueil des historiens des croisades. While the editors of the Recueil classified the ‘I’ manuscript in the 1127 recension on the basis that it includes the prologue and excludes the princes’ letter to Pope Urban II of September 1098 – both characteristics of the second redaction – Hagenmeyer convincingly argued that it instead belongs to the 1124 recension, because ‘it is identical to the text offered in ABFOR’.17 He also noted that ‘I’ occasionally contains errors that ‘were obviously made by a scribe who was unable to decipher his base text correctly, or through carelessness’, and proposed that the scribe probably had two manuscripts of the Historia Hierosolymitana before him.18 The latter hypothesis was based on a single scribal error on folio 82v, where the scribe reproduced both the 1124 and 1127 versions of a verse. The ‘sub Geminis Phoebus cum bis novies fuit ortus’ of the 1124 recension was combined with the 1127 recension’s ‘Bis novies orto Gemino sub sidere Phoebo’ to create the peculiar version in the ‘I’ manuscript: ‘Bis nouies orto Gemini sub sidere Phebo, sub Geminis Phebus Volume 3 (1050–1200), ed. D. Thomas and A. Mallett (Leiden, 2011), pp. 401–8 (at 406). LPL MS 51, fol. 449r; FC, p. 242. 16 LPL MS 51, fols 448v, 449r; FC, pp. 230, 232, 233, 234. 17 ‘Préface’, in RHC Occ, III, xxxv; FC, pp. 95–6. 18 FC, p. 96. 15

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Repurposing a Crusade Chronicle cum bis nouies fuit ortus’.19 However, there is an alternative explanation for this hybrid passage: the ‘I’ manuscript may represent a previously unknown intermediary stage between the 1124 and 1127 recensions, whereby Fulcher had added the prologue and excised the leaders’ letter, but had not yet finished revising the script. This would be entirely in keeping with what Marcus Bull has described as Fulcher’s ‘stop-go’ composition process, as well as the fact that the 1120s represent a period of particularly intensive revision for the author.20 Unfortunately, the point at which the ‘I’ manuscript ends does not resolve the matter, although it is worth noting that this is slightly earlier than in other witnesses to the 1124 recension. The last full chapter in ‘I’ concerns the 1124 capture of Tyre (book 3, chapter 34 in Hagenmeyer’s edition), with the text breaking off mid-sentence (‘Pascalis seruus Dei, reuerentissimo’) at the start of the next chapter on the Privilegium of Pope Paschal II, yet most manuscripts in the 1124 recension conclude with a short chapter describing the distribution of lands around Tyre (book 3, chapter 36).21 Though we are all eternally grateful to Hagenmeyer for his manuscript descriptions and detailed recording of variant readings, there are two drawbacks to his edition that obscure the significance of ‘I’ vis-à-vis the reception of Fulcher’s text. First, he did not discuss this manuscript’s provenance, which is indicative of a broader lack of concern for the provenance and regional reception of manuscripts that owed much to his uncompromising adherence to Quellenkritik.22 In fact, ‘I’ was produced in the twelfth century at the Benedictine abbey of St Augustine, Canterbury, making it a rare witness to the reception of Fulcher’s work in England.23 Significantly, Thomas Smith has drawn attention to another manuscript of the Historia Hierosolymitana of English origin: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Greaves 55. Since this witness dates to the early thirteenth century and seemingly belongs to the 1124 recension, future research may well reveal a relationship with the ‘I’ manuscript.24 Second, Hagenmeyer’s transcription of the latter contains numerous errors. At times, omissions and additions are ignored, such as when both ‘I’ and the Liber omit ‘merito’ from ‘Etiam patefieri considerantibus tali miraculo erat merito dignum’ or where the addition of ‘iam’ to form ‘Apparuit enim Dominus noster cuidam Turco gratie sue iam preelecto’ goes unnoticed.25 19 20 21

22 23

24

25

FC, p. 257; London, British Library, Royal MS 5 B.XV, fol. 82v. Bull, ‘Fulcher of Chartres’, p. 405. BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fol. 133v; FC, pp. 47, 742 n. h, 746 n. h. FC, pp. 95–6; T. W. Smith, ‘First Crusade Letters and Medieval Monastic Scribal Cultures’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 71 (2020), 484–501 (at 487). St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, ed. B. C. Barker-Benfield, 3 vols (London, 2008), I, 527–8; G. F. Warner and J. P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, 4 vols (London, 1921), I, 104–5. Smith, ‘New Manuscript Witnesses’, p. 48; A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, ed. F. Madan, H. H. E. Craster and N. Denholm-Young (Oxford, 1895–1953), II(ii), p. 748. FC, pp. 170, 231; LPL MS 51, fol. 448v; BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fols 71v, 79r.

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Stephen J. Spencer Unfortunately, these are not anomalies. The ‘I’ manuscript and Liber describe the appearance of Christ to many of the Latins trapped inside Antioch in 1098 in the following terms: ‘Interea tamen eorum non immemor Dominus, pluribus sepe quod dictis affirmabant apparuit, quia confirmando eos promittebat populum ad presens uictoria gauisurum. Tunc clerico cuidam pro timore mortis aufugienti, apparuit Dominus inquiens: “Quo frater protendis iter?”’ Hagenmeyer correctly listed ‘quia’ and ‘gauisurum’ as ‘I’ variants, but failed to notice the distinctive readings of ‘confirmando’ (rather than ‘confortando’) and the addition of ‘iter’ to Christ’s question.26 Elsewhere in Hagenmeyer’s edition, the readings specified for ‘I’ are incorrect: on one occasion a variant of ‘meditatus autem ille secum quid inde facturus esset’ is suggested, yet in reality the text reads ‘meditans autem ille secum quid facturus esset’, which is identical to the Liber.27 Variants are also misspelt, with, for example, ‘prosiliuere’ recorded as ‘prosiluiere’.28 Sometimes a variant is listed where it does not exist, such as when ‘navim de maioribus’ is noted as a variant, but ‘I’ has the same reading as the other witnesses: ‘nauim inter ceteras’.29 These are merely a few representative samples from a much larger pool of errors. Though individually minor and inconsequential (and produced long before the invention of the word processor!), collectively these mistakes obfuscate many of the parallels between ‘I’ and the Liber, and they suggest that anyone relying on Hagenmeyer’s edition to trace variant readings should proceed cautiously. Indeed, it is clear that Hagenmeyer did not personally inspect ‘I’, instead relying on a photographic reproduction supplied by the London-based photographer Donald Macbeth.30 The situation is exacerbated further by the fact that even fewer of the ‘I’ variants were recorded in the Recueil edition.31 For our purposes, the essential point here is that Peter’s Liber replicates variant readings that are unique to the ‘I’ manuscript of Fulcher. A useful example is a passage from chapter 871 of Peter’s work, detailing how God, pleased by the crusaders’ daily prayers, ordained that Antioch be delivered to them through Turkish fraud: ‘Cum autem placuit Domino laborem populi sui consummari, forsitan precibus eorum placato, qui cotidie preces supplices ei fundebant, concessit pietate sua eorundem Turcorum fraude et traditione clandestina urbem Christianis reddi’. This sentence comprises four readings specific to ‘I’: ‘placato’ instead of

26 27 28 29

30

31

FC, p. 245 nn. a, e; LPL MS 51, fol. 449r; BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fol. 80r–v. FC, p. 231 n. n; LPL MS 51, fol. 448v; BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fol. 79r. FC, p. 255 n. p; LPL MS 51, fol. 450r; BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fol. 82r. FC, p. 169 n. k; LPL MS 51, fol. 448v; BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fol. 71v. FC, p. 96. See also FC, p. vi, where Hagenmeyer thanked the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Heidelberg for funding to procure photographs of manuscripts from England and France. See ‘Historia Iherosolymitana, Gesta Francorum Iherusalem peregrinantium, ab anno domini MXCV usque ad annum MCXXVII, auctore domno Fulcherio Carnotensi’, in RHC Occ, III, 311–485.

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Repurposing a Crusade Chronicle ‘placatus’; ‘preces supplices’ rather than ‘preces inde supplices’ (another variant overlooked by Hagenmeyer); the omission of ‘per’ from ‘sua per eorundem’; and ‘fraude et traditione’, not ‘fraudem, traditione’.32 A long list of Muslim emirs who fought at the battle of Antioch (28 June 1098) – a distinctive feature of the 1124 recension, with Fulcher providing an attenuated list for the 1127 redaction – again points to the influence of the ‘I’ manuscript, for its variant readings and distinctive spellings of several names are reflected in the Liber, rendered in italics here: ‘Principes Turcorum multi erant. Et quos admiratos prenominabant, hii sunt: Corbagat, Meleduchac, Amirsoliman, Amirsolendais, Amirhegibbe, Amirmaroane, Amirmahummeth, Caraiath, Coteloseniar, Megalgotelon, Baltulius, Boessach, Amirbaiach, Aoxian, Samsadole, Amirgoian, Ginahadole, Amirtodigun, Amiruathap, Soqueman, Boldagis, Amirilias, Gelisaslan, Gigremis, Amigogus, Artubech, Amirdalis, Amircaraor, Amirmolse, et multi alii’.33 It is worth noting, once again, that Hagenmeyer mistakenly transcribed several of these names – thus, he rendered ‘Megalgotelon’ as ‘Megalgotelo’, ‘Baltulius’ as ‘Balchulf’ and ‘Amigogus’ as ‘Amirgogus’ – and erroneously suggested that the sentence ends ‘et multi nobiles alii’ in ‘I’, when it is simply ‘et multi alii’.34 An earlier passage from chapter 873, relating how Christ ended the crusaders’ suffering inside Antioch, is equally revealing: ‘Set cum placuit Domino labori famulorum suorum finem dare, qui et angorem tanti mali amplius tolerare non poterant nec quicquam habentes quod comederent’. Here, the readings ‘qui et angorem’ (rather than ‘qui etiam angorem’), ‘tanti mali’ (rather than ‘tantimodum’), ‘nec quicquam’ (rather than ‘nec iam quicquam’) and ‘habentes quod comederent’ (rather than ‘habentes quid comederent’) all correspond with variants in ‘I’.35 A conversation between Karbughā and one of his emirs regarding the Franks’ intentions, and whether they would sortie out of Antioch to fight, confirms the relationship: ‘Respondit Amirdalis: “Adhuc ignoro, set nunc expecta parumper.” Cumque ita prospiceret uexilla principum nostrorum altrinsecus ordinate preferri, et acies diuisas decenter subsequi, mox ait Corbagat: “Ecce Franci! At ille quid putas?”’ The ‘nunc’, ‘ita’ and ‘At ille quid’ are all specific to ‘I’.36 Only very rarely does the Liber differ from the ‘I’ manuscript, and never substantially so. The wholesale extraction of material from Fulcher’s Historia necessitated some minor adjustments to wording, usually at the beginning of chapters. Consider the opening sentence of chapter 872, which relates how Antioch was besieged by an enormous Muslim army the day after the Christians had subjugated the city: ‘Cum autem Antiochia ciuitas a Christianis capta fuisset ut dictum est, sequenti LPL MS 51, fol. 448v; BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fol. 79r; FC, pp. 230–1. LPL MS 51, fol. 449v; BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fol. 81r. For the readings in other manuscripts, see FC, p. 250. 34 FC, p. 250 n. d. 35 LPL MS 51, fol. 449v; BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fol. 80v; FC, p. 247. 36 LPL MS 51, fols 449v–450r; BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fol. 81v; FC, pp. 253–4. 32

33

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Stephen J. Spencer die Turcorum multitudo innumera circa eandem urbem obsidionem apposuerunt’. In the 1124 recension, including ‘I’, the sentence starts with ‘Cumque’ (amended to ‘Et cum’ for the 1127 recension), rather than the Liber’s ‘Cum autem’. The addition of ‘a Christianis’ is also unique, almost certainly reflecting a desire to link chapter 872 to the previous chapter, which described the capture of Antioch on 2–3 June 1098.37 Elsewhere, we find ‘Boimundus’ rather than the ‘I’ manuscript’s ‘Buamundus’, ‘Baldewinus’ rather than ‘Balduwinus’, the use of ‘illis’ instead of ‘eis’ in ‘cum illis adero’, the substitution of ‘tum’ for ‘tunc’ in ‘Tunc quidam Turcus Amirdalis’, a ‘uehementissime’ in place of a ‘uehementer’ and one instance of variation in word order – where the Liber reads ‘Petrum heremitam quendam’, ‘I’ has ‘Petrum quendam heremitam’.38 It is therefore possible that Peter’s scribe consulted a manuscript related to ‘I’, rather than the Canterbury manuscript itself. However, the paucity and insignificance of such divergences is suggestive of scribal preference or error. Indeed, the correlations between the Liber and ‘I’ far outweigh these minor differences: there are at least forty-five instances where Peter’s Liber echoes readings solely preserved in the ‘I’ manuscript, a figure that ignores the numerous parallels in word order. The Liber revelationum is, therefore, a significant (perhaps even the lone) witness to the availability of Fulcher’s Historia Hierosolymitana in London. It indicates that, at some point before 1200, the ‘I’ manuscript, or possibly one very close to it, was brought to Holy Trinity Priory, where select chapters were incorporated into a very different sort of work.

Repurposing Fulcher’s Historia Hierosolymitana How, then, did Peter of Cornwall use Fulcher’s Historia? In his prologue to the Liber revelationum, Peter described his aims in the following terms: I, Peter, minister of the church of Holy Trinity, London, scanning in my reading the lives and acts of the saints in various volumes, for the benefit of many have collected into this one volume revelations and spiritual visions which happened to them, in which God, or angels, or souls, or men once dead were either seen or have spoken. And so, I have thought fit to call this the Book of Revelations. Anyone who takes pains to read through this book … will not doubt that God, and angels, and the souls of men exist, and live after the death of the body …39

LPL MS 51, fol. 449r; BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fol. 80r; FC, p. 242. LPL MS 51, fols 448v, 449r–v, 450r; BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fols 79r, 80r, 80v, 81v, 82r. 39 LPL MS 51, fol. 2r; trans. Easting and Sharpe, Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations, pp. 39–40. 37

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Repurposing a Crusade Chronicle Accordingly, each of the four chapters copied from the Historia Hierosolymitana details a miraculous occurrence: chapter 870, the appearance of crosses on the shoulders of crusaders who drowned in a shipwreck in 1097; chapter 871, three visions experienced by an Antiochene Turk, elsewhere named Firuz, in which Christ persuaded him to betray the city to the Christians; chapter 872, Christ’s consolation to a terror-stricken cleric, whom he dissuaded from fleeing Antioch, now in Latin hands; and chapter 873, the encouraging message a deserter received from his deceased brother, urging him to trust that divine assistance would be forthcoming, as he descended the city’s wall.40 Very little new material was added. Each chapter has a unique heading not taken from the Historia.41 An original sentence was also introduced at the start of chapter 871 to provide the necessary context to the fall of Antioch: ‘When the Franks were besieging Antioch, they were often the superiors but often the inferiors of the Turks’.42 Fulcher had expressed a similar view in the preceding chapter of his Historia, albeit using different words.43 Despite the lack of novel information, this was more than a simple exercise in copying the relevant chapters from Fulcher’s text, for there are clear signs of critical engagement. Indeed, what Peter or his scribe chose to include and exclude is one of the most interesting facets of the work. In chapter 870, only the first part – approximately one-third – of Fulcher’s chapter on the drowned participants was reproduced, with the copyist dropping his source once the miracle had been related.44 The visions experienced by two timorous deserters from Antioch, treated together in a single chapter of the Historia, were fashioned into two separate chapters of the Liber.45

40

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42 43 44 45

LPL MS 51, fols 448v–450r. On stigmata and the importance of visions in Fulcher’s crusade theology, see W. J. Purkis, ‘Stigmata on the First Crusade’, Studies in Church History 41 (2005), 99–108; Epp, Fulcher von Chartres, pp. 64–76; and, more broadly, Giese, ‘Untersuchungen zur Historia Hierosolymitana des Fulcher von Chartres’, pp. 74–100. LPL MS 51, fols 448v, 449r: ‘Qualiter cruces inuente sunt insignite, super carnes Francorum mortuorum peregre in Ierusalem profisciscentium’ (ch. 870); ‘Qualiter Christus apparuit cuidam Turco Sarraceno per ter dicens se esse Christum, et precipiens ei ut Antiochiam redderet Cristianis’ (ch. 871); ‘Qualiter Christus apparuit cuidam clerico fugienti ab Antiochia timore mortis, monens eum ut secure rediret securus de uictoria Christianorum’ (ch. 872); ‘Qualiter quidam Christianus mortuus in obsidione Antiochie apparuit fratri suo fugam timore mortis paranti, monens eum ne fugeret, certissimam Christianis promittens uictoriam’ (ch. 873). LPL MS 51, fol. 448v: ‘Franci cum Antiochiam obsiderent sepe Turcis fuerunt superiores sepe autem inferiores’. FC, p. 229: ‘Multotiens invasiones et proelia invicem Turci et Franci egerunt: vincebant et vincebantur; nostri tamen saepius quam illi triumphabant’. LPL MS 51, fol. 448v; FC, p. 170. LPL MS 51, fol. 449r–v; FC, pp. 244–7.

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Stephen J. Spencer The most striking omission is Fulcher’s chapter on the discovery of the relic of the Holy Lance on 14 June 1098.46 This chapter was skipped, perhaps because it was considered outside the scope of Peter’s project. Most of the Liber’s constitutive chapters describe visions, for which reason it has been dubbed De visionibus, and as Peter signalled in the prologue, his goal was to collect ‘revelations and spiritual visions … in which God, or angels, or souls, or men once dead were either seen or have spoken’.47 All the excerpts from Fulcher’s Historia meet these criteria, and so the lack of visionary content probably explains the absence of the finding of a relic of the True Cross on 5 August 1099; according to Fulcher, the fragment was revealed by a certain Syrian.48 Fulcher’s account of the Lance’s inventio certainly lacks the detailed visionary foregrounding of other early accounts, most notably that by Raymond of Aguilers, perhaps rendering it unsuitable for inclusion in Peter’s collection.49 On the other hand, the 1124 recension (including the ‘I’ manuscript) placed greater emphasis on the visions experienced by the Lance’s discoverer than the 1127 recension. The Latin term visio features three times in the 1124 version: Moreover, it happened that, after the city was taken, a certain man discovered a lance which was found in a hole in the ground in the church of the blessed Apostle Peter, asserting it to be that with which Longinus pierced the side of the Lord. He said that this was revealed to him in a vision from the Apostle St Andrew. And, after the apostle himself appeared to him three times with advice, he dug beneath the pavement where it had been shown to him through the vision, and there he discovered the lance concealed, perhaps deceitfully. He first divulged this vision to the bishop [Adhémar] of Le Puy and Count Raymond [of Saint-Gilles]. Yet the bishop thought it was false, whereas Count Raymond hoped it was true.50

46

47 48

49 50

FC, pp. 235–41. On the Lance, see C. Morris, ‘Policy and Visions: The Case of the Holy Lance at Antioch’, in War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J. O. Prestwich, ed. J. Gillingham and J. C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1984), pp. 33–45; T. Asbridge, ‘The Holy Lance of Antioch: Power, Devotion and Memory on the First Crusade’, Reading Medieval Studies 33 (2007), 3–36. LPL MS 51, fol. 2r; trans. Easting and Sharpe, Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations, pp. 39–40. FC, pp. 309–10. RA, pp. 68–76; GF, pp. 57–60; B. C. Spacey, The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 75–86. BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fol. 79v: ‘Contigit autem postquam ciuitas capta, a quodam homine lanceam unam inueniri, quam in ecclesia beati Petri apostoli fossa humo repertam, asseuerabat esse illam de qua Longinus latus perforauit domini. Aiebat enim a sancto Andrea apostolo reuelatum hoc esse sibi uisione. Et monitione ab ipso apostolo ter illi facta, fodit subter pauimentum ubi per uisionem ei monstratum fuerat, et inuenit ibi lanceam fallaciter forsitan occultatam. Hanc uisionem propalauit primitus episcopo

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Repurposing a Crusade Chronicle As Beth Spacey has persuasively argued, some crusade chroniclers appear to have thought carefully about terminology when describing visions and dreams. Whereas visum signalled a mundane apparition, visio implied greater confidence in the revelatory experience.51 An awareness of this distinction is surely reflected in Fulcher’s decision to remove all traces of visio from the 1127 redaction: Moreover, it happened that, after the city was taken, a certain man discovered a lance which was found in a hole in the ground in the church of the blessed Apostle Peter, asserting it to be that with which, according to the Scriptures, Longinus punctured Christ in the right side. He said that this was revealed by the Apostle St Andrew. And when it had been discovered, and he himself had told this to the bishop of Le Puy and Count Raymond, the bishop thought it was false, whereas the count hoped it was true.52

The most likely scenario is that Peter ignored the chapter on the Lance not because it was incompatible with his overarching goal, but rather because, in the 1124 recension, Fulcher implied deception and then insisted that the relic’s authenticity was rejected following the finder’s ordeal by fire at Arqa in April 1099.53 As such, Peter’s Liber is evidence that Fulcher’s scepticism and reordering of material pertaining to the Lance in the 1124 redaction influenced the opinion of at least one near-contemporary, who chose to exclude a key miraculous component of the First Crusade from his collection. The final chapter (873) is particularly interesting, as it is substantially longer than the three preceding it. The miracle, in which a fleeing crusader was visited and comforted by his deceased brother, is related in the first seventy-eight words, yet the chapter continues for another 772 words. The scribe copied out the remainder of the chapter from Fulcher’s Historia, which detailed the Latins’ suffering and the proclamation of a three-day fast, but then proceeded to reproduce verbatim two whole chapters on Peter the Hermit’s embassy to Karbughā and the crusaders’ preparations for combat, as well as part of the next chapter on the battle of Antioch.54 Given the precision with which miraculous content was mined from the Historia for chapters 870–72, it seems unlikely that this was accidental. Rather,

51 52

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Podiensi et Raimundo comiti. Quod tamen episcopus falsum esse putauit, comes uero Raimundus uerum esse sperauit’. Spacey, The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative, pp. 65–86. FC, pp. 235–7: ‘Accidit autem, postquam civitas capta est, a quodam homine lanceam unam inveniri, quam in ecclesia beati Petri apostoli fossa humo repertam, adseverabat esse illam, de qua Longinus in latere dextro Christum secundum Scripturas pupugit. Aiebat enim hoc a sancto Andrea apostolo revelatum fuisse. Et cum sic inventa fuisset et episcopo Podiensi atque Raimundo comiti hoc ipse intimasset, id episcopus falsum esse putavit, comes vero verum speravit’. FC, pp. 238–41. LPL MS 51, fols 449r–450r; BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fols 80v–82r; FC, pp. 246–56.

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Stephen J. Spencer it appears that the crusaders’ victory in the battle of Antioch was deliberately incorporated to authenticate, or at least add credibility to, visions in which the Christians, in return for their trust in God, were promised divine assistance and victory in battle. Tellingly, chapter 873 breaks off with Karbughā fleeing from the Franks quicker than a deer and thus ignores roughly half the corresponding chapter in the Historia, although it is somewhat surprising that the next two sentences were not reproduced as well: ‘But why did he flee, he who had so many people and was well-furnished with horses? Because he strove to fight against God, the Lord, seeing him from afar, utterly destroyed his pomp and will’.55 Chapter 872 of the Liber, detailing how Christ thrice visited a Turk and eventually persuaded him to deliver Antioch to the Latins, supports this interpretation. Rather than copying only the visionary content, the scribe continued to the end of the chapter in Fulcher’s Historia, detailing the clandestine operation to take the city on the night of 2–3 June, the massacre and flight of the Muslim inhabitants, and the decapitation of Antioch’s fleeing governor, Yaghī Siyān.56 Thus, chapters 872 and 873 both conclude with the flight of Muslim leaders. The impression, then, is that the capture of Antioch legitimised the visionary experiences and therefore warranted inclusion in Peter’s collection. An analysis of the four chapters in Peter of Cornwall’s Liber thus suggests that this was not mindless copying, but rather the appropriation and repurposing of a crusade chronicle for specific ends. Moreover, when combined with other evidence, it becomes clear that the miraculous components of Fulcher’s work were central to its appeal. Peter’s approach to the Historia Hierosolymitana can be usefully compared to that of Guibert of Nogent, who, having come across Fulcher’s work while writing book 7 of his Dei gesta per Francos, addressed many of the same passages.57 While the miraculous appearance of crosses on the dead was accepted by Peter, Guibert warned that Fulcher, if still alive, should think carefully as to whether this truly happened and expressed his own doubt by listing examples of falsified stigmata.58 Guibert was more open to the possibility that God appeared to Antioch’s betrayer – again, accepted as genuine by Peter – but noted that no such thing was reported by either the returning crusaders he had interviewed or those who had sent him letters about the expedition.59 Whereas Peter appears to have taken seriously Fulcher’s objection to the Holy Lance’s authenticity, Guibert outright rejected the latter’s testimony and ridiculed ‘the

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56 57 58 59

LPL MS 51, fol. 450r; BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fol. 82r: ‘Set cur fugit qui tantam gentem habebat, et equis bene munitam? Quoniam contra Deum bellare nitebatur, cuius pompam et arbitrium prospiciens Dominus omnino cassauit’. LPL MS 51, fols 448v–449r; BL Royal MS 5 B.XV, fol. 79r–v; FC, pp. 230–5. GN, p. 329. GN, pp. 329–30. GN, pp. 331–2.

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Repurposing a Crusade Chronicle priest Fulcher, who, while our men were suffering from hunger at Antioch, was feasting at leisure in Edessa’.60 In fact, Guibert seems to be an outlier. The episodes incorporated into Peter’s Liber proved popular with other twelfth- and thirteenth-century ecclesiastical commentators. Admittedly, none feature in Orderic Vitalis’ Historia ecclesiastica, yet this simply reflects the fact that, despite naming Fulcher in the preface to book 9, there is little evidence that Orderic actually used the text, instead prioritising Baldric of Bourgueil’s account.61 In contrast, William of Malmesbury was undoubtedly influenced by Fulcher’s Historia when he recorded that the betrayer of Antioch gave his son to Bohemond of Taranto as hostage, ‘declaring that he did so by the express command of Christ given him in a dream’.62 The visions Fulcher imputed to the two deserters reappear in both the Historia Nicaena vel Antiochena, composed in Jerusalem c. 1145–47, and, much later, Humbert of Romans’ preaching manual, De predicatione crucis, written before 1272.63 In a similar fashion to Peter, Humbert, who alluded to a ‘Historia anthiochena’ by Fulcher of Chartres, directly connected the visions to the crusaders’ success in battle.64 He also reworked Fulcher’s account of the finding of the Lance (seemingly the version in the 1124 recension), conveniently ignoring Fulcher’s doubts over its veracity, while the author of the Historia Nicaena vel Antiochena – who also appears to have used the 1124 recension – simply prioritised Robert the Monk’s account of the discovery.65 Evidently, Peter’s complete omission of the story of the Lance was not the only option available to him. 60 61 62

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GN, p. 332: ‘Fulcherii presbiteri, qui, nostris apud Antiochiam fame periclitantibus, feriatus epulabatur Edessae’. OV, V, xiv, 6 n. 1, 172 n. 1; FC, pp. 81–2; D. Roach, ‘Orderic Vitalis and the First Crusade’, Journal of Medieval History 42 (2016), 177–201 (at 179–82). William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, I, 636–7: ‘Christi edicto, quod per somnium didicisset, id se facere professus’. William did not allude to the stigmata of 1097 or the visions experienced by crusaders fleeing Antioch. D. Gerish, ‘Remembering Kings in Jerusalem: The Historia Nicaena vel Antiochena and Royal Identity around the Time of the Second Crusade’, in The Second Crusade: Holy War on the Periphery of Latin Christendom, ed. J. T. Roche and J. M. Jensen (Turnhout, 2015), pp. 51–89 (at 53–4); Humbert of Romans, Humbertus Romanis De predicatione crucis, ed. V. Portnykh and C. Vande Veire (Turnhout, 2018), pp. ix–xi; S. J. Spencer, Emotions in a Crusading Context, 1095–1291 (Oxford, 2019), pp. 32–3. Humbert of Romans, De predicatione crucis, pp. 61, 147–8; J. MacGregor, ‘The First Crusade in Late Medieval Exempla’, The Historian 68 (2006), 29–48 (at 36–7). Humbert of Romans, De predicatione crucis, p. 147; ‘Historia Nicaena vel Antiochena’, in RHC Occ, V, 167; FC, pp. 83–4; Gerish, ‘Remembering Kings in Jerusalem’, pp. 57–65. The recension of Fulcher used by Humbert is not discussed in the Introduction to Humbert of Romans, De predicatione crucis, pp. vii–lxv. All the material Humbert extracted from Fulcher’s Historia features before the 1106 version ends (FC, p. 509). However, Humbert’s coverage of the finding of the Lance corresponds with the extended version in the 1124 recension, before Fulcher edited the chapter for the 1127 recension.

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Stephen J. Spencer Nevertheless, that Peter deliberately ignored Fulcher’s account of the Lance’s discovery is made more likely by the fact that another thirteenth-century writer adopted the same strategy. The account of the First Crusade in Oliver of Paderborn’s Historia regum terre sancte is heavily dependent on Fulcher’s Historia. Oliver detailed the sight of crosses imprinted on the shoulders of drowned crusaders in 1097 and, despite severely abridging most of his source, related all three of Christ’s appearances to the Antiochene traitor, making only minor adjustments.66 Oliver’s careful curation of the latter episode is probably also reflected in his willingness to establish the tale’s veracity through a rare addition (‘as we have learnt from upholders of the truth’), perhaps anticipating the reader’s disbelief that Christ would appear to a Turk.67 The consolation Christ offered to a cleric fleeing Antioch also features, although Oliver omitted the second visionary tale, a deserter’s vision of his brother, before following Fulcher in recording that the Latins undertook a three-day fast and sent Peter the Hermit to deliver a defiant message to Karbughā.68 Much like Peter of Cornwall, Oliver made no mention of the Holy Lance. The Liber revelationum also affords insights into the memorialisation of the First Crusade at Holy Trinity Priory c. 1200. The fact that three of the four chapters focus on events at Antioch supports Buck’s observation that Antioch was a key node in the memory of the expedition during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, owing to its reputation as a site where the crusaders both proved their dedication to liberate Jerusalem and performed heroic acts.69 Peter’s Liber demonstrates that the concentration of miraculous events at Antioch was another contributing factor. Indeed, Spacey has argued that the Jerusalemite chronicler William of Tyre purposefully recrafted the narrative of the First Crusade encountered in his sources to ensure that the bulk of miraculous episodes occurred during the siege

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Compare Humbert of Romans, De predicatione crucis, p. 147, ll. 75–80; FC, pp. 236 n. b, 237 n. a. Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia regum terre sancte’, in Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, späteren Bischofs von Paderborn und Kardinal-Bischofs von S. Sabina, Oliverus, ed. H. Hoogeweg (Tübingen, 1894), pp. 84, 86. On this text, see J. Bird, ‘Oliver of Paderborn’, in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, Volume 4 (1200–1350), ed. D. Thomas and A. Mallett (Leiden, 2012), pp. 212–29 (at 222–4). Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia regum terre sancte’, p. 86: ‘sicut accepimus ab assertoribus veritatis’. Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia regum terre sancte’, p. 87. A. D. Buck, ‘Antioch, the Crusades, and the West c. 1097–c. 1200: Between Memory and Reality’, in Sources for the Crusades: Textual Tradition and Literary Influences, ed. N. R. Hodgson and L. Ní Chléirigh (Abingdon, forthcoming); A. D. Buck, ‘“Weighted by such a great calamity, they were cleansed for their sins”: Remembering the Siege and Capture of Antioch’, Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture 5:2 (2019), 1–16.

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Repurposing a Crusade Chronicle of Jerusalem, not Antioch.70 Intriguingly, this Antioch-specific focus is seemingly reflected in another, more famous product of the scriptorium at Holy Trinity, the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi (or IP2), which, based largely upon the text now known as IP1 and Ambroise’s Estoire de la guerre sainte, was probably compiled under Peter of Cornwall’s supervision before c. 1201.71 In this compilation, Ambroise’s reference to the First Crusade as ‘a different pilgrimage, when Antioch was besieged and taken by force by our men’, was rendered as ‘the expedition to Antioch, which our people powerfully captured’.72 Though only a minor alteration, when it is considered in conjunction with the centrality of Antioch to the chapters incorporated into the Liber, such evidence points to a particular interest in the siege of Antioch within the priory, which probably reflects wider patterns of commemoration in England. After all, in the mid-thirteenth century, Henry III commissioned the creation of four ‘Antioch chambers’, visually depicting the ‘story’ or ‘history of Antioch’ (‘historiam Antiochie’), at the Tower of London, Winchester Castle and the palaces at Clarendon and Westminster, while Simon Parsons has argued that the Old French Siège d’Antioche ‘should be associated with the Angevin literary scene circa 1170–1200, probably in England, and possibly with some relationship to the archiepiscopal household of Canterbury’.73 Perhaps most importantly of all, Peter’s Liber serves as a reminder that the crusades and so-called ‘crusade texts’ were perceived not in isolation, but rather within wider devotional and intellectual contexts. The crusade setting appears almost irrelevant to the chapters cultivated from Fulcher’s Historia, or, at least, this was not the guiding principle behind their inclusion. Bookended by chapters from the Visio Taionis episcopi de inventione librorum Moralium S. Gregorii and Eusebius of Caesarea’s Historia ecclesiastica, Fulcher’s revelatory tales are just four among nearly 1,100 extracts drawn from around 275 works.74 70

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B. C. Spacey, ‘Refocusing the First Crusade: Authorial Self-Fashioning and the Miraculous in William of Tyre’s Historia Ierosolymitana’, Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture 5:2 (2019), 51–65. S. J. Spencer, ‘The Composition Date of the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi (IP2) Reconsidered’, English Historical Review (forthcoming). Ambroise, The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la guerre sainte, ed. and trans. M. Ailes and M. Barber, 2 vols (Woodbridge, 2003), I, 172 (II, 174): ‘l’autre veie, / Quant Antioche fud assise / E nostre gent par force enz mise’; IP2, p. 396: ‘Antiochena expeditione, quam gens nostra potenter obtinuit’. S. Lloyd, English Society and the Crusade, 1216–1307 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 199–200; L. J. Whatley, ‘Romance, Crusade, and the Orient in King Henry III of England’s Royal Chambers’, Viator 44:3 (2013), 175–98 (at 181); S. T. Parsons, ‘The Inhabitants of the British Isles on the First Crusade: Medieval Perceptions and the Invention of a Pan-Angevin Crusading Heritage’, English Historical Review 134 (2019), 273–301 (at 299). LPL MS 51, fols 447v–448r, 450r–v; Easting and Sharpe, Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations, pp. 35, 545, 546.

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Conclusion An examination of both Peter of Cornwall’s Liber revelationum and the underexplored ‘I’ manuscript of Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana leads to several important conclusions. First, it suggests that anyone relying on Hagenmeyer’s edition of Fulcher’s text to trace variant readings should proceed with caution, for a comparison of ‘I’ against his edition has revealed an alarming number of errors. Second, it attests to the fact that Fulcher’s Historia was more popular in Anglo-Norman England than has hitherto been recognised. Since the four chapters in Peter’s Liber reflect the numerous variant readings found in the ‘I’ manuscript, we can be confident that the latter (a product of St Augustine’s, Canterbury), or possibly a copy of it, entered Holy Trinity Priory, London, before or in 1200. There, Prior Peter and his scribes incorporated select chapters from Fulcher’s account of the First Crusade into the Liber revelationum in pursuit of the literary goal of proving the existence of God, angels and life after death, thereby exemplifying how a crusade chronicle could be repackaged to perform a wider devotional purpose – one perhaps unforeseen by its original author. In this regard, the Liber revelationum also offers insights into the intellectual environment of Holy Trinity’s scriptorium, better known for its production of a key narrative of the Third Crusade, the aforementioned Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi – an environment in which creative compilation was the norm and, as we have seen, at least one history of the crusading past was read. Finally, the Liber is a valuable window onto how Fulcher’s account was understood and received by near-contemporaries, providing a useful counterpoint to the gloomy Guibert of Nogent. Thus, Peter connected the visionary assurance offered to those fleeing Antioch to the crusaders’ eventual triumph in the battle of Antioch, and he omitted the Holy Lance altogether, seemingly on account of Fulcher’s scepticism in the 1124 recension. The appropriation of the same miraculous components by other twelfth- and thirteenth-century authors suggests that these were key to the Historia’s success. In exploring such adaptations, therefore, we can appreciate both the endurance and success of the crusade’s story across several generations of medieval writers – a success that was rooted in the narrative potential that story possessed from the very start.

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Between Chronicon and Chanson: William of Tyre, the First Crusade and the Art of Storytelling 1 Andrew D. Buck

The Chronicon of Archbishop William of Tyre is not only a source of unparalleled significance for historians of the Latin East, it is also one that offers an important window onto historical writing in twelfth-century Christendom.2 Comprising over 1,000 pages of Latin text in the modern critical edition, its twenty-three books span (roughly) the period of Latin Christian involvement in the Levant and Syria from the genesis of the First Crusade in 1095 through to the mid-1180s. The text reflects an extensive writing process, one that most historians argue began c. 1170 and lasted until the period immediately preceding the author’s death c. 1184/86.3 Unsurprisingly for such a lengthy and important work, the Chronicon and its author have attracted widespread interest. However, except for Peter Edbury and John Rowe’s 1988 study, scholars have rarely taken a broad-ranging approach to the Chronicon. Instead, recent work has largely focused on examining specific elements or themes of the text, with a growing interest in William’s authorial

Versions of this chapter were given (in person and online) in Dublin, London, Leeds, Nottingham, North Carolina and Poznań. I would like to thank those audiences, as well as Susan Edgington, Martin Hall, James Kane, Katy Mortimer, Simon Parsons, Stephen Spencer and Michael Staunton for their advice on my arguments and for sharing materials. Finally, my thanks go to the Irish Research Council for the Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship during which this research was undertaken. 2 The title of Chronicon, attached to the text by its modern editor, is preferred here to Historia Ierosolymitana, as suggested by Peter Edbury and John Rowe. See WT and P. W. Edbury and J. G. Rowe, William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East (Cambridge, 1988), p. 1. 3 Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, pp. 23–31; B. Z. Kedar, ‘Some New Light on the Composition Process of William of Tyre’s Historia’, in Deeds Done Beyond the Sea: Essays on William of Tyre, Cyprus and the Military Orders Presented to Peter Edbury, ed. S. B. Edgington and H. J. Nicholson (Farnham, 2014), pp. 3–12. For an alternative view, arguing that William’s writing of a standalone account of the crusade probably began very soon after his return to the East in 1165, see A. D. Buck, ‘William of Tyre, Translatio Imperii, and the Genesis of the First Crusade: Or, the Challenges of Writing History’, History 107 (2022), 624–50 (at 645–9). For a view that dates most of William’s writing to the early 1180s, see Ivo Wolsing’s chapter in this volume. 1

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Andrew D. Buck strategies mirroring the emergence of literary approaches to crusade narratives.4 The Chronicon’s first eight books, which account for over a third of the entire work and include the author’s retelling of the First Crusade, have nevertheless either been ignored, largely because they are viewed as derivative and of little value in tracing William’s authorial voice or ideological standpoints, or approached only to confirm arguments regarding related texts, especially Albert of Aachen’s Historia Ierosolimitana and the so-called ‘Lost Lotharingian Chronicle’.5 Some recent work has begun to redress this, but a close, careful and detailed analysis of William’s account of the First Crusade remains necessary, especially given Edbury and Rowe’s somewhat offhand – or at least not fully explored – concluding remark that ‘only in the story of the First Crusade did [William’s] narrative achieve a genuine homogeneity’.6 Such a study is vital to achieving a better understanding of the author and his text, for these sections offer the best opportunity to trace William’s historical method by pinpointing his use and adaptation of other sources to craft his own version of events. But re-examining William’s account of the First Crusade is also valuable because it will help to situate the Chronicon more firmly within the wider flourishing of history creation during the twelfth century and beyond, in both a crusading and non-crusading R. C. Schwinges, Kreuzzugsideologie und Toleranz: Studien zu Wilhelm von Tyrus (Stuttgart, 1977); T. Rödig, Zur politischen Ideenwelt Wilhelms von Tyrus (Frankfurt am Main, 1990); N. Morton, ‘William of Tyre’s Attitude towards Islam: Some Historiographical Reflections’, in Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, ed. Edgington and Nicholson, pp. 13–24; T. S. Asbridge, ‘William of Tyre and the First Rulers of the Latin Principality of Antioch’, in Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, ed. Edgington and Nicholson, pp. 35–42; A. D. Buck, ‘William of Tyre, Femininity, and the Problem of the Antiochene Princesses’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 70 (2019), 731–49; B. C. Spacey, ‘Refocusing the First Crusade: Authorial Self-Fashioning and the Miraculous in William of Tyre’s Historia Ierosolimitana’, Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture 5:2 (2019), 51–67. 5 For recent studies that have overtly ignored William’s earlier books (yet are still valuable), see A. V. Murray, ‘Biblical Quotations and Formulaic Language in the Chronicle of William of Tyre’, in Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, ed. Edgington and Nicholson, pp. 25–34; A. E. Zimo, ‘Us and Them: Identity in William of Tyre’s Chronicon’, Crusades 18 (2020), 1–19. On William, Albert of Aachen and the ‘Lost Lotharingian Chronicle’, compare P. Knoch, Studien zu Albert von Aachen (Stuttgart, 1966), pp. 29–63; S. B. Edgington, ‘The Historia Iherosolimitana of Albert of Aachen: A Critical Edition’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1991), pp. 17–30. 6 Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, p. 167. For newer work, see T. Kirschberger, Erster Kreuzzug und Ethnogenese: In novam formam commutatus – Ethnogenetische Prozesse im Fürstentum Antiochia und im Königreich Jerusalem (Göttingen, 2015), pp. 87–8, 106–14, 160–70; D. Crispin, Ihr Gott kämpft jeden Tag für sie: Krieg, Gewalt und religiöse Vorstellungen in der Frühzeit der Kreuzzüge (1095–1187) (Leiden, 2019), pp. 189–97; Spacey, ‘Refocusing the First Crusade’, pp. 51–67; Buck, ‘William of Tyre, Translatio Imperii, and the Genesis of the First Crusade’, pp. 624–50. 4

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William of Tyre, the First Crusade and the Art of Storytelling context. This chapter takes as its case study an examination of the compositional processes behind William’s account of a vital stage in the First Crusade: the siege and capture of Antioch, which took place between October 1097 and June 1098. More specifically, it focuses on the deal made to surrender the city to the Italo-Norman crusade leader, Bohemond of Taranto, by the Antiochene traitor often called Firuz. It will argue that, whereas historians have so far only considered William’s account in light of its relationship to Latin histories of the crusade, there is reason to believe that he was also aware of, and in turn influenced by, the oral chanson tradition(s) detailing the venture.7 To recognise this, and to incorporate such findings into an analysis of the Chronicon’s content, places William’s authorial approach more into line with the endemic borrowing of epic frameworks by other crusade authors and with the new, hybridised methods of historical writing in twelfth-century Europe.8 Echoes of the epic in the Chronicon also suggest that William attempted to provide an innovative, perhaps even partly performable, version of the Latin East’s foundational moments. Far from being derivative and of little value for understanding either William’s approach to writing or the underlying purposes of his text, the Chronicon’s account of the First Crusade instead provides a vital snapshot of the varied authorial strategies employed by one of medieval Christendom’s most important historical writers.

The Capture of Antioch and Echoes of the Chansons The siege and capture of Antioch left a profound and lasting impression on Latin Christian commentators. It represents the longest single narrative phase of most Latin accounts of the First Crusade and spawned various oral traditions, which developed from ‘camp-fire cultures’ during the venture.9 These oral traditions were adapted for various audiences, intersected with written sources and eventually crystallised c. 1200 into the Chanson d’Antioche – though other versions survive to us, either wholly or in fragments, such as the Occitan Canso d’Antioca and the Anglo-Norman Siège d’Antioche.10 The stories and dialogues surrounding the For the traditional view of William’s crusade sources, see Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, pp. 45–6. 8 P. Damian-Grint, The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Inventing Vernacular Authority (Woodbridge, 1999); M. Staunton, The Historians of Angevin England (Oxford, 2017); S. T. Parsons, ‘The Use of Chanson de geste Motifs in the Latin Texts of the First Crusade, c. 1095–1145’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2015). 9 C. Sweetenham, ‘What Really Happened to Eurvin de Créel’s Donkey? Anecdotes in Sources for the First Crusade’, in Writing the Early Crusades: Text, Transmission and Memory, ed. M. Bull and D. Kempf (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 75–88. 10 S. B. Edgington, ‘Romance and Reality in the Sources for the Sieges of Antioch, 1097–1098’, in Porphyrogenita: Essays on the History and Literature of Byzantium and 7

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Andrew D. Buck heroism, suffering, cowardice and death, as well as intercultural friendship in the case of Bohemond and Firuz, experienced across those eight months punctuate the sources and helped to shape emerging crusading ideals.11 However, though the resonance and malleability of the story of Antioch’s capture in the Latin West have been well established, the extent to which similar crusading memories, particularly those transmitted through the chansons, were manifested in the Latin East has often been downplayed.12 It is within this context that we can view the general scholarly silence on the potential relationship between William of Tyre’s account of the First Crusade and the oral, epic versions that circulated across Latin Christendom. In 1912, Wilhelm Tiedau did contend that the Chronicon fed elements of the Chanson d’Antioche – albeit not the sections discussed below – through a rather convoluted process. He argued that the thirteenth-century Old French translation of William of Tyre known as Eracles was used by the compiler of an Old Castilian crusade text known as the Gran Conquista de Ultramar (GCU), which in turn was used by the postulated editor of the Antioche, Graindor of Douai.13 However, although the GCU did evidently draw upon the Chronicon/Eracles for its account of the crusade (as well as traditions linked to, and independent of, the surviving Antioche), Tiedau’s view of the William/Eracles–GCU–Antioche relationship cannot be accepted in light of most modern historiographical views of how the chanson traditions crystallised, as well as the accepted dating of the GCU to the very end of the thirteenth century.14 Anouar Hatem, who championed the notion of chanson materials originating from the Latin East, failed to note any similarities between the Chronicon and the

the Latin East in Honour of Julian Chrysostomides, ed. C. Dendrinos, J. C. Harris and J. Herrin (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 33–47; The Canso d’Antioca: An Occitan Epic Chronicle of the First Crusade, ed. and trans. C. Sweetenham and L. M. Paterson (Aldershot, 2003); CA; S. T. Parsons, ‘A Unique Song of the First Crusade? New Observations on the Hatton 77 Manuscript of the Siège d’Antioche’, in Literature of the Crusades, ed. L. M. Paterson and S. T. Parsons (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 55–74. 11 A. D. Buck, ‘Antioch, the Crusades, and the West c. 1097–c. 1200: Between Memory and Reality’, in Sources for the Crusades: Textual Traditions and Literary Influences, ed. N. R. Hodgson and L. Ní Chléirigh (Abingdon, forthcoming). For an overview on the scholarship surrounding Bohemond and Firuz, see K. Skottki, ‘Of “Pious Traitors” and Dangerous Encounters: Historiographical Notions of Interculturality in the Principality of Antioch’, Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 1 (2014), 75–115. 12 On this, and for an opposing view, see A. D. Buck, ‘Settlement, Identity, and Memory in the Latin East: An Examination of the Term “Crusader States”’, English Historical Review 135 (2020), 271–302 (at 281–5). 13 W. Tiedau, Geschichte der Chanson d’Antioche des Richard le Pèlerin und des Graindor de Douay (Göttingen, 1912), pp. 9, 20–1, 62, 81, 88–9, 100, 103, 108, 115–16. 14 CA, pp. 4–36; S. T. Parsons, ‘The Gran Conquista de Ultramar, Its Precursors, and the Lords of Saint-Pol’, Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture 5:2 (2019), 101–16.

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William of Tyre, the First Crusade and the Art of Storytelling Antioche, even when discussing the relationship between the Firuz–Bohemond materials in the Latin and Old French sources.15 Those scholars who have since pondered William’s divergence from the written accounts have largely contented themselves with vague hints at oral sources or by alluding to his taste for fiction (as Peter Knoch put it, his love of ‘erotic events’).16 Yet, William’s Jerusalemite heritage and career, as well as the two decades he spent in the schools of Europe (c. 1145–c. 1165), would almost certainly have brought him into some form of contact with chanson traditions – such as they existed during this period – in both the Latin East and West.17 William himself stated that accounts of the crusade were still told in Jerusalem during his time when noting of Godfrey of Bouillon that ‘there were also many other deeds of this famous man, magnificent and worthy of admiration, which, down to the present day, have become as a popular story (‘historia’) in the mouths of men’.18 He also noted that certain of Jerusalem’s kings, especially Baldwin III and Baldwin IV (the latter of whom William tutored), liked to listen – the verb used on both occasions was audire – to such stories (again, historiae).19 As such, and in light of the increased understanding of the interrelated nature of oral and written traditions of the First Crusade, it would have been somewhat odd for William not to have engaged with the oral material in some way when compiling his crusade account.20 Quite how, and how much, he did so, remains to be considered and forms the basis of the rest of this chapter. It would be impossible to provide a complete overview of William’s account of Antioch’s taking, which constitutes nearly three whole books of the Chronicon.21 Rather, as noted above, the primary focus here is on several instances when, during coverage of the city’s betrayal to Bohemond and the other crusaders by 15

16

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18 19 20 21

A. Hatem, Les poèmes épiques des croisades: Genèse – historicité – localisation. Essai sur l’activité littéraire dans les colonies franques des Syrie au Moyen Âge (Paris, 1932), pp. 205–15. R. Levine, ‘The Pious Traitor: Rhetorical Reinventions of the Fall of Antioch’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 33 (1998), 59–80 (at 48–54); Knoch, Studien zur Albert, p. 207 n. 26. Recently, Simon John has noted how ‘simplistic’ the traditional stance regarding William’s use of oral evidence is, though he did not go so far as to trace direct parallels with the chansons. See S. John, ‘Historical Truth and the Miraculous Past: The Use of Oral Evidence in Twelfth-Century Latin Historical Writing on the First Crusade’, English Historical Review, 130 (2015), 263–301 (at 275 n. 58). On William’s education, see Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, pp. 13–22. WT, I, 430: ‘Fuerunt et alia multa eiusdem incliti viri magnifica et admiratione digna opera, que usque in presens in ore hominum pro celebri vertuntur historia’. WT, II, pp. 715–16, 961–2. Sweetenham, ‘What Really Happened’, pp. 75–88; Parsons, ‘The Use of Chanson de geste Motifs’. WT, I, 240–340.

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Andrew D. Buck Firuz (or Emirfeirus, as William calls him), there are clear points of crossover with the Chanson d’Antioche traditions, either in terms of specific details and themes or certain type-scenes. Importantly, such a study exposes not only William’s knowledge of traditions that fed the Antioche, but also his use of epic framings as a distinct storytelling device that reveals an author wielding a hybridised method of history creation aimed at providing didactic, entertaining, perhaps even performable, descriptions of key moments in the Latin East’s foundation. The first potential point of intersection regards how, having secured Firuz’s compliance, Bohemond approached the other crusade leaders to gain their approval that whosoever could engineer the city’s fall should keep it. In William’s account, Bohemond carefully probed the leaders’ attitudes without revealing his relationship with Firuz. Though ‘he realised he would be unable to accomplish much with some of them’, he secured the ‘ready agreement’ (‘grato assensu’) of Godfrey of Bouillon, Count Robert of Normandy, Count Robert II of Flanders and Hugh of Vermandois. Only Count Raymond of Toulouse opposed him.22 Nevertheless, the matter ‘fell into an almost perilous delay’, as neither Firuz nor Bohemond, criticised here for placing ‘domestic and personal’ business (‘domestica et familiari’) over ‘common need’ (‘utilitate communi’), would enact the plan without complete support.23 When news then arrived of an advancing relief force led by Karbughā, atabeg of Mosul, William had Bohemond return to the wider council of leaders and reveal his deal with Firuz, which stipulated that: I am bound to give a large amount of money to him and also to his heirs, [and] if the desired outcome can be brought about, I have agreed by the good faith established between us to award [him] no few estates and complete freedom in perpetuity as payment for [his] labour.24

Though Raymond again voiced his opposition and ‘with a great deal of impudence declared himself unwilling to cede his share to anyone’, the others rejoiced and ‘granted possession of the city with its appurtenances [to Bohemond] in perpetuity by hereditary right, agreeing among each other, and binding themselves by giving their right hands, that they would reveal to no one what had been secretly entrusted to them’.25

WT, I, 288: ‘se apud quosdam illorum non multum posse proficere’. WT, I, 288–9: ‘in periculosam pene descendit dilationem’. 24 WT, I, 292: ‘multam illi pactus sum pecuniam dare sibique et heredibus eius in perpetuum non modica predia et libertatem omnimodam quasi pro labore salarium, si res optatum sortiri poterit eventum, fide interposita compromisi’. 25 WT, I, 293: ‘qui partes suas se nemini cedere proterve nimis asseverabat’, ‘urbem cum suis pertinentiis iure hereditario possidendam concedunt in perpetuum, compromittentes adinvicem et datis dextris se obligantes quod sibi creditum nemini revelarent archanum’. 22 23

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William of Tyre, the First Crusade and the Art of Storytelling Unsurprisingly, given their importance, these events occur in nearly every crusade account. Most, especially the Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum and those that built upon it, have Bohemond first rejected outright by everyone and later accepted upon word of Karbughā’s proximity, while Firuz is simply offered riches and honours.26 Albert of Aachen and Ralph of Caen instead suggested that the Norman had immediate universal support due to the intervention of the expedition’s spiritual leader, Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy – albeit Albert also has the other leaders promise to keep the deal a secret and give their right hands as symbols of their honour; while, in addition to money, Bohemond promises to raise Firuz in status to rival his nephew, Tancred of Hauteville.27 Thus, despite some parallels, especially with Albert, William’s overall narrative is more elaborate and sits somewhere between these traditions. As regards the divided leadership, this partly aligns with Gilo of Paris’ Historia vie Hierosolimitane, which describes how Bohemond had the support of most (‘pars maxima’), while unnamed others wavered with doubt (‘dubitans pars altera nutat’).28 However, rather more compelling are the similarities with the Chanson d’Antioche, which initially aligns with Albert and Ralph by noting Adhémar’s intercession, but then moves closer to William when Bohemond makes a further plea: all agreed bar Raymond, who stated that ‘there is no way I shall agree! … If I do not get my share it will be bought at a high price!’.29 The Antioche likewise has the leaders return to their tents ‘in a state of despair’ and do nothing for a few days following Raymond’s opposition, before they rounded on the latter and forced him to relent.30 Finally, in terms similar to William’s, Bohemond declares that, in return for his help, Firuz ‘would without question be given his lands and property free of obligation; he would get 1000 bezants of income to use as he pleased; and during my lifetime nobody would contest his right to this’.31 Across both aspects of this part of the narrative, therefore, the Antioche is the source closest in tone and content to William’s account. With the deal now agreed, William then incorporates three largely original scenes that explain Firuz’s actions, particularly by exploring his familial relationships. In the first, William addresses his audience to note that ‘in the meantime, it is said, something had happened that had likewise roused [Firuz] to the earlier conceived work [that is the betrayal]’.32 While Firuz busied himself with duties he held in the household of Antioch’s governor, Yaghī Siyān, ‘by chance he pp. 44–5; PT, pp. 61–2; RM, pp. 52–4; BB, pp. 94–5; GN, pp. 81–2. AA, pp. 270–2; RC, pp. 60–2. 28 GP, p. 160. 29 CA, pp. 236–7, 240–1. 30 CA, pp. 241–2. 31 CA, p. 240. 32 WT, I, 293: ‘Acciderat autem medio, ut dicitur, tempore quiddam, quod ad conceptum prius opus eum nichilominus animaverat’. 26 GF, 27

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Andrew D. Buck is said to have sent home his son, who he already considered an adult, for an urgent reason, albeit one hidden from us’.33 Arriving there, the son came upon a detestable scene (‘rem … detestabilem’), as his mother was found in an ‘illicit embrace of the flesh’ (‘illicita carnis copula’) with one of the major Turkish leaders. ‘Touched inwardly with a sorrow of the heart’ (‘dolore cordis tactus intrinsecus’), a phrase drawn from Genesis 6.6 in which God regretted the creation of man, the son hurriedly reported his discovery to his father.34 Hearing his son’s words, Firuz: stirred up by anguish from the act and set on fire by marital zeal, is reported to have said: ‘It is not sufficient for [these] filthy dogs that they should oppress us with the undue yoke of servitude and weaken our patrimony with daily exactions, but also they violate the laws of the marital bed and dissolve conjugal rights. If I live, I shall cut short this insolence of theirs, rendering by the Lord’s authority a worthy retribution in accordance with their deserts!’35

And so, though he concealed his pain, he sent his son – upset at the disgrace brought upon his mother – to Bohemond via ‘the usual route’ (‘solito itinere’) to advise him not to delay in keeping his promise by enacting their plan the following night.36 In the second scene, introduced in a similar fashion to the first through the comment that ‘during those same days something happened, which in great matters is frequently known to occur’, William turned to Firuz’s relationship with Yaghī Siyān and the city chiefs.37 The context for this is that many important citizens suspected that someone was secretly negotiating Antioch’s betrayal, and expressed their concerns to Yaghī Siyān, particularly regarding the Christian populace. Firuz was especially suspect because he was ‘an industrious man and more powerful than the other faithful people in the city’, and so he was summoned to appear before them in the hope that he might reveal his guilt.38 However, ‘as he was an industrious man and greatly keen of eye’, Firuz immediately realised that he

33 34 35

36 37 38

WT, I, 293: ‘casu filium, quem habebat iam puberem, ex causa urgente sed nobis occulta domum direxisse dicitur’. WT, I, 293. WT, I, 293–4: ‘Ille vero, facti acerbitate permotus et zelo maritali succensus, dixisse fertur: “Non sufficit canibus inmundis quod nos indebite iugo premunt servitutis et nostra cotidianis exactionibus debilitant patrimonia, nisi et thori leges violent et iura dissolvant coniugalia. Ego, si vixero, hanc eorum, auctore domino, adbreviabo insolentiam, dignam pro meritis compensationem retribuens!”’. WT, I, 294. WT, I, 294: ‘Accidit autem per eosdem dies quiddam, quod in maioribus negociis solet contingere frequentius’. WT, I, 294–5: ‘vir erat industrius et pre ceteris fidelibus in urbe potentior’.

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William of Tyre, the First Crusade and the Art of Storytelling was held in suspicion and sought to conceal his plans.39 In a further moment of dialogue, which William introduces by noting that Firuz was ‘reported to have said’ (‘fertur dixisse’) these things, the latter deflected his detractors by praising their abundant caution and suggesting a plan to root out any potential traitors through frequent guard changes.40 In doing this, William noted, Firuz convinced them of his innocence and kept them ignorant of his real actions; he also retained the opportunity to enact his plan with Bohemond that very night, for he knew that his proposed advice could not be fulfilled so late in the day.41 In the third scene, William returns to the theme of familial ties to discuss Firuz’s relationship with his younger brother. Contrasting Firuz, described as ‘a man of God’ (‘viro dei’), with his brother, ‘who was very different in mind from him and unlike him in outlook’, William noted how the former kept his plans a secret ‘since he did not expect much in his [brother’s] integrity, rather he considered him suspect’.42 As the pair stood atop Antioch’s walls and watched out over the crusaders departing their camp as if going to face Karbughā (as stipulated in the betrayal plan), Firuz tested his sibling’s sympathies for the Latins by expressing that ‘I feel pity, my brother’ (‘Misereor, frater mi’), for those ‘who follow the grace and faith of our religion’, since they faced an almost certain death the following day.43 In reply, the brother stated that: You are consumed by foolish concern and wearied by confused sympathy. If only they had already all been killed by the swords of the Turks! For, from the first day of their arrival, our situation has become much worse, and it will scarcely be possible that as much benefit comes to us from them as the trouble that we have already suffered by reason of them.44

Firuz now realised that he was correct to doubt his brother, and, ‘as if avoiding a pestilence, he hated him in his heart and cursed him in his mind’.45 So that the ‘service of Christ’ (‘Christi obsequium’) would be unhindered, and ‘placing the common safety of the faithful over brotherly love’, he decided to commit fratricide.46 On the night of the city’s betrayal, Firuz came to his tower, where 39 40 41 42 43

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45 46

WT, I, 295: ‘vir industrius erat et oculi valde perspicacis’. WT, I, 295. WT, I, 295–6. WT, I, 297: ‘longe alterius mentis et disparis propositi’, ‘quoniam de eius non multum presumebat sinceritate … sed suspectum habens eum’. WT, I, 297–8: ‘nostre professionis gratiam et fidem consequuto’. WT, I, 298: ‘“Stulta”, inquit, “sollicitudine consumeris et indiscreta compassione fatigaris: utinam Turcorum gladiis iam occubuissent universi! A die enim introitus eorum primo multo deterior facta est nostra conditio, vixque esse poterit ut tantum nobis per eos utilitatis accedat, quantum molestiarum eorum occasione passi sumus”’. WT, I, 298: ‘nunc tanquam pestem declinans abhorret animo, execratur in conscientia’. WT, I, 298: ‘caritati fraterne publicam fidelium preponens salutem’.

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Andrew D. Buck he discovered his sleeping brother and, knowing that he might oppose the nearly complete plan, transfixed him with a sword, ‘being both pious and wicked with the same deed’.47 With these scenes, the text elucidates Firuz’s motivations, familial ties and character, while simultaneously offering a deeper sense of the situation facing the Christians who lived in Antioch, which forms a significant and original aspect of William’s coverage.48 Significantly, none of these scenes are found elsewhere, at least not in these forms. Some thematic and tonal similarities are worth commenting upon, however. For one, Firuz’s son (or children) appears in several sources: in some he likewise acts as a messenger to the crusaders, while in others he is captured and it is a desire to save him that inspires Firuz’s betrayal.49 Similarly, Fulcher of Chartres and Ralph of Caen have Firuz come before Yaghī Siyān, either to reveal a series of visions in which he had been told to convert (Fulcher) or to ask that grain exactions be lessened (Ralph).50 The Chanson d’Antioche traditions again offer the clearest sense of an evidential relationship. For example, the Antioche includes a war council held by Yaghī Siyān and his chiefs, among whom is Firuz, in which the governor tells them to ‘keep a close watch on the town and exercise every suspicion’ in case of Frankish trickery, while Firuz hurried from this meeting to enact his plans; for, as he noted in a message to Bohemond, ‘if you wait even as long as dawn tomorrow, you will be dead’ (thus also echoing William’s account of Firuz’s words to his brother regarding the death awaiting the crusaders the next day).51 Likewise, the Antioche includes a conversation between father and son in which the former steels himself to carry out the deal, this time in the face of his child’s steadfast desire to convert to Christianity following a short period of Frankish captivity, and at the end of it supresses outward signs of his designs ‘for appearances’ sake’.52 The Antioche is WT, I, 299: ‘facto pius et sceleratus eodem’. For example, William foregrounds the siege by noting Antioch’s Christian heritage and the survival of certain Christian bloodlines (including Firuz’s) and concocts a story regarding Yaghī Siyān’s plan to have all the faithful murdered on the day the crusaders eventually enter (see WT, I, 285–7, 296–7). Likewise, Firuz’s reference to the ‘undue yoke of servitude’ alludes to a central theme of William’s description of the crusade’s genesis, on which see Buck, ‘William of Tyre, Translatio Imperii, and the Genesis of the First Crusade’, pp. 629–44. 49 GF, p. 45; PT, p. 62; RM, p. 53; BB, pp. 94, 96; GN p. 82; FC, p. 99; RC, p. 60; AA, p. 272; CA, pp. 233–6. 50 FC, p. 98; RC, pp. 56, 59–60. 51 CA, pp. 241–3. 52 CA, pp. 235–6. In some accounts, including the Siège d’Antioche and GCU, the son is an adult, while in others, including the Antioche, he is a child. This could mean that William’s rather strange comment that Firuz already considered his son to be an adult alludes to competing versions with which he came into contact. See Parsons, ‘A Unique Song’, pp. 66–7. 47 48

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William of Tyre, the First Crusade and the Art of Storytelling also the only other source to mention Firuz’s wife, save for the Siège d’Antioche and GCU.53 It relates how, when Firuz revealed his pro-crusader sympathies to her as they looked out from the walls over the crusaders, she exclaimed that ‘you will regret the day you uttered those words’ and promised to reveal his treachery, at which point he threw her from the battlements.54 Though the latter diverges from William’s account of her infidelity, the inclusion of marital strife is thematically similar, and the notion of the traitor deciding to kill one of his own family members atop the walls after being scolded for his sympathies bears a striking resemblance to William’s similar use of teichoscopy – a type-scene often found in romance literature – in his account of Firuz’s fratricide.55 Moreover, while nearly every source includes Firuz’s brother, and several mention his death, most, in particular the Gesta Francorum and related works, have him killed by the crusaders as they entered the city, not realising who he was.56 Interestingly, Ralph of Caen notes how Firuz had not told his brother of his plans for fear he would betray him, but again the most obvious resemblances are with the Antioche.57 In the latter, Firuz brings the crusaders, led by Robert of Flanders, to his brother to ascertain whether he will help. When the brother responds to this request by declaring ‘what is this utter nonsense I am hearing?’, it is Robert who does the deed at the instigation of Firuz, who commented that it was ‘better for him to die than for you to not take the city’.58 This mirrors William’s account of the brother’s response, Firuz’s active role in his death and the suggestion that the needs of all Christians were prioritised over fraternal affection. For the final case study, we move to the moment when the crusaders finally made it onto Antioch’s walls. Here, again, William provides a version that is unique, though still clearly demonstrative of a relationship with other traditions. When the crusaders approached the walls with Firuz looking down, William recorded that none would take the ladder first, despite requests to do so by both Firuz and Bohemond.59 Consequently, it was the intrepid Bohemond who climbed up first, and ‘when at the battlement of the wall, he reached out a hand. Seizing it, he who was within, knowing that it was the hand of Bohemond, is reported to have said: “Long live this hand!”’.60 To win Bohemond’s favour, Firuz then led Parsons, ‘A Unique Song’, pp. 64–5 and n. 58. pp. 243–4. 55 S. T. Parsons, ‘Women at the Walls: Teichoscopy, Admiration, and Conversion on the First Crusade’, in Chronicle, Crusade, and the Latin East: Essays in Honour of Susan B. Edgington, ed. A. D. Buck and T. W. Smith (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 89–107. 56 GF, p. 47; PT, p. 64; RM, p. 54; BB, p. 97; GN, p. 83. 57 RC, p. 62. 58 CA, pp. 249–50. 59 WT, I, 299. 60 WT, I, 299: ‘cumque iam muri propugnaculo … manum adhibuisset, comprehendens eam qui erat interior, sciens quia Boamundi esset manus, dixisse fertur: “Vivat hec manus!”’ 53

54 CA,

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Andrew D. Buck him to the body of his blood-soaked (‘sanguine cruentatum’) brother, and, ‘having kissed warmly that man steadfast and sincere of faith’, the Norman prince returned to the walls, ‘briefly poked his head out through the gap’ and, in a muffled voice (‘voce suppressa’), called down to the others to come up.61 Yet, because those below worried that what was being called down to them was entirely deceitful (‘totum … sophisticum’), it took Bohemond’s descent to convince them of his safety, at which point they filled the wall quickly. As William then commented, ‘we have heard’ (‘audivimus’) that among those who ascended were Robert of Flanders and Tancred of Hauteville, ‘by whose example the rest were guided’.62 With the crusaders led (‘duce’) by the one who had introduced them (‘qui eos introduxerat’), that is Firuz, they swiftly occupied ten towers, killed the guards and began the city’s sack.63 This version of events is largely unique. In no other (bar the interrelated GCU) is Bohemond first on the walls – the Gesta Francorum even offered veiled criticism for his hanging back and allowing others to take this risk, though Ralph of Caen suggested he tested the rope.64 There are some tonal similarities with other texts, like Albert of Aachen’s inclusion of the crusaders’ hesitancy and fear when awaiting news of those who had mounted the walls, or Robert the Monk’s – and following him Gilo of Paris’ – eventual meeting between Bohemond and Firuz in which the former bent his head and thanked the latter upon seeing his grief at the accidental killing of his brothers (for some traditions included multiple siblings).65 The Chanson d’Antioche displays the closest parallels. In terms of direct similarities, it emphasises the important role played by Robert of Flanders and Tancred of Hauteville, and it is the only other source to have Firuz adopt an active leadership role in taking the towers.66 Moreover, William’s notion of Firuz showing Bohemond his murdered brother raises additional links with the aforementioned moment in the Antioche where the traitor brings the crusaders to his brother and has him killed.67 The pair even physically embrace each other in the Antioche, albeit not on the walls as William has it, but during

WT, I, 299–300: ‘Deosculatus … viri constantiam et fidei sinceritatem”, “emisso paulisper per cancellum capite’. 62 WT, I, 300: ‘quorum doctrina ceteri regebantur’. 63 WT, I, 300. 64 GF, p. 46; RC, p. 62; Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS 1920, fol. 104v. See also S. T. Parsons, ‘The Valiant Man and the Vilain in the Tradition of the Gesta Francorum: Overeating, Taunts and Bohemond’s Heroic Status’, in Crusading and Masculinities, ed. N. R. Hodgson, K. J. Lewis and M. M. Mesley (Abingdon, 2019), pp. 36–52. 65 AA, pp. 274–8; RM, p. 54; GP, p. 168. 66 CA, pp. 247–51. 67 CA, pp. 249–51. 61

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William of Tyre, the First Crusade and the Art of Storytelling an earlier, furtive meeting within the crusader camp.68 There are also moments where William might have been in dialogue with chanson traditions, as although the Antioche emphasises the crusaders’ fearful refusals to be first up the ladder, it has Bohemond, when encouraged to ascend, instead declare that ‘I could not bring myself to climb that ladder for a tower full of pure gold’.69 Finally, echoing William’s description of Bohemond extending his hand as he reached the walls, the Antioche notes that when the man chosen to go first, Fulcher of Chartres (not the chronicler), climbed the ladder, he ‘raised his hand in a sign of blessing’.70 What this all serves to demonstrate is that there is some form of relationship between William of Tyre’s Chronicon and the traditions that informed the Chanson d’Antioche. Instances of intertextuality, such as Raymond of Saint-Gilles’ opposition or the specific terms offered to Firuz, are significant indicators of this link, but perhaps more intriguing are those occasions when William incorporated type-scenes that intersect with passages found in the Antioche. Indeed, these reveal William’s willingness to adopt chanson-esque, or more rightly epic, modes of storytelling when constructing his text. The rest of this chapter thus considers the precise nature of William’s relationship to the epic mode and the implications of such findings for our understanding of both his authorial approach and the Chronicon’s purpose.

William and the Art of Storytelling One method by which William employs chanson-esque forms of storytelling involves foregrounding himself as the narrator at key moments. The uses of interjectio ex persona auctoris, as well as the wider use of the first person (especially the first-person plural), though known in other Latin histories, were key elements of the epic mode’s creation of a community between narrator and audience. This is especially so in relation to claims about the authenticity or truth of content, explanations behind why events occurred and directions as to audience response.71 It is in this context that we can interpret William’s three original scenes regarding Firuz’s motives for acting, and his clarifiers, when detailing these 68 CA, p. 240. Though Sweetenham translates ‘assés fu acolés’ as ‘welcomed him warmly’,

I follow here Simon Parsons’ alternative translation of ‘embraced him warmly’, which is much closer to William’s account. Interestingly, the Siège d’Antioche takes this further and notes that the pair even shared kisses of affection. See Parsons, ‘Women at the Walls’, pp. 98–103. 69 CA, pp. 245–8. 70 CA, pp. 247–8. 71 R. Traschler, ‘Orality, Literacy and Performativity of Arthurian Texts’, in Handbook of Arthurian Romance: King Arthur’s Court in Medieval European Literature, ed. L. Tether and J. McFadyen (Berlin, 2017), pp. 273–92 (at 285–6); D. Boutet, ‘The Chanson de geste and Orality’, in Medieval Oral Literature, ed. K. Reichl (Berlin, 2012), pp. 353–70 (at 354–5).

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Andrew D. Buck potentially spurious stories, that such things were ‘frequently known to occur in great matters’ (‘quod in maioribus negociis solet contingere frequentius’); that something was said (‘ut dicitur’) to have happened; or that a figure was reported to have said (‘dixisse fertur’) something.72 While such comments often feature in Latin chronicles, the fact that they appear here in passages with clear similarities to the Antioche points to an epic influence. Indeed, such interjections suggest an anticipation of audience incredulity that had to be addressed directly, either by noting that they were common occurrences or by signposting underlying – and perhaps authoritative – sources. That at one point, when describing the free-for-all of crusaders climbing the ladder once Bohemond had proven his safety, William notes that ‘we have heard’ (‘audivimus’) this, attests that he almost certainly utilised oral sources. Another indicator is the use of reported speech, for its presence in Latin histories has elsewhere been taken to reflect either the transmission of an oral source or the adoption of epic modes of performable storytelling.73 It is significant, therefore, that there is a high proportion of ostensibly original reported speech in the elements of William’s text that deal with the relationship between Bohemond and Firuz, and with the latter’s familial and personal reasons for acting. Fictive speeches are created (or perhaps transmitted) to introduce the audience to Firuz’s anger at his wife’s infidelity (and his greater impetus to act against the city’s Muslim overlords); his skilful deflection of those, including Yaghī Siyān, who suspected his collusion with the crusaders; and, finally, his decision to kill his brother.74 Interestingly, and likewise in line with methods of oral storytelling, in these moments we are given insights into Firuz’s emotional state and physical cues as to the actions that accompanied his words.75 When Firuz vowed to surrender the city in revenge for having been cuckolded, he was ‘stirred up by anguish and set on fire by marital zeal’; when he addressed Yaghī Siyān and the other Muslim lords of the city, William is at pains to stress his shrewd (‘perspicacis’) nature; and when he conversed with his brother over supporting the crusaders, we discover the traitor’s pity (‘misereor’) for them and how, despite his feelings of brotherly

WT, I, 293, 294, 295, 299. C. Sweetenham, ‘2000 Cows and 4000 Pigs at One Sitting: Was the Gesta Francorum Written to be Performed in Latin?’, The Medieval Chronicle 13 (2020), 266–88 (at 271–2); B. Pohl, ‘Poetry, Punctuation and Performance: Was there an Aural Context of Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum?’, Tabularia 15 (2016), 177–216 (at 186–7). 74 WT, I, 293–4, 295, 298. 75 Boutet, ‘The Chanson de geste’, pp. 356–7; Sweetenham, ‘2000 Cows and 4000 Pigs’, p. 272. 72 73

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William of Tyre, the First Crusade and the Art of Storytelling love, he hated (‘abhorret’) his sibling, from whom he recoiled ‘as if avoiding a pestilence’ (‘tanquam pestem declinans’).76 Perhaps the most interesting moment regards William’s report that, as Bohemond scaled the ladder onto Antioch’s walls, Firuz reached out his hand (‘manum adhibuisset’) and shouted ‘Long live this hand!’ (‘Vivat hec manus!’).77 This moment, which undoubtedly invokes notions of Rex vivat!, is almost cinematic – it certainly has distinctly performable, ritualistic and perhaps even comedic qualities. Yet, it also serves a rather serious purpose: for it acts as the moment when Firuz formally, ceremonially, hands control of Antioch to Bohemond. It can also be viewed in dialogue with William’s description of the agreement made with the other leaders to allow Bohemond to keep the city. Here, then, William adopted highly formulaic charter language through the use of the verb concedere, the allusion to heredity right (‘iure hereditario’) and appurtenances, as well as the description of Bohemond’s right to possession in perpetuity (‘in perpetuum)’. This was then matched to a sense of ritual theatre through the leaders’ extension of their right hands to bind themselves to the agreement. Notably, the use of obligare also provides an original legal gloss to an act also described by Albert of Aachen. William is here tapping into the fact that charters and legal transactions had a long history of oral and ritualised performance in medieval Christendom, such as through the recitation of oaths or clauses, or by use of the hands to execute signs or actions.78 By evoking the language and movements that would have accompanied such agreements to frame the moments when Bohemond is promised and then receives Antioch, William utilises wider registers of performance to not only elevate the sense of a legitimate transfer of power, but also, perhaps, to incorporate the audience as witnesses to the pact. An attempt to imbue the story with performable, vivid qualities surely also lies behind William’s description of how Bohemond and Firuz kissed warmly (‘deosculatus’) before the former poked his head out over the walls and called on his men to ascend with a muffled voice (‘voce suppressa’).79 These aspects all contribute a sense of the physical behaviours of these men in key moments – in the case of Bohemond peeking out over the walls, it potentially also offers a moment of levity. We might even view other moments as similarly designed to entertain

WT, I, 293–4, 295, 298 (quote at 293–4): ‘facti acerbitate permotus et zelo maritali succensus’. 77 WT, I, 299. 78 The scholarship on this is vast. See L. Roach, ‘Public Rites and Public Wrongs: Ritual Aspects of Diplomas in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England’, Early Medieval Europe 19 (2011), 182–203; G. Koziol, The Politics of Memory and Identity in Carolingian Royal Diplomas: The West Frankish Kingdom (840–987) (Turnhout, 2012); L. Moore, ‘By Hand and by Voice: Performance of Royal Charters in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century León’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 5 (2013), 18–32. 79 WT, I, 299–300. 76

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Andrew D. Buck as much as to inform or explain. These include Firuz’s rather dramatic speech denouncing the Muslim rulers of the city as ‘filthy dogs’ (‘canibus inmundis’) who violated the laws of the marital bed, as well as the knowing nods to the audience’s greater knowledge of the unfolding treachery as Firuz addressed Yaghī Siyān and deflected the latter’s suspicions by praising his cautious fear of betrayal and offering a false plan to prevent it.80 Indeed, both tap into wider, and popular, European dialogues on Muslim immorality.81 So, what does this all mean? For one thing, it is clear beyond reasonable doubt that William was aware of certain traditions that fed the crusading chansons. It is possible to postulate, therefore, albeit not to definitively prove, that the Chronicon serves, at least in part, as a crucial witness to Outremer-specific traditions of the Chanson d’Antioche. If true, this would further demonstrate the chansons’ geographical malleability and add to the wider evidence for their presence in the Latin East.82 What is perhaps most significant and tangible, however, is that William clearly viewed the epic mode as a valid and important medium through which to tell the story of the crusade. In this regard, the author’s comment regarding how stories of Godfrey of Bouillon’s crusading exploits were still told in his own time takes on a new significance, for there is an alternative, less literal translation to the one presented above. Rather than noting how Godfrey’s deeds ‘have become as a popular story in the mouths of men’, it is possible to render this instead as ‘have been translated as a popular history in the mouths of men’.83 Indeed, the use of historiae here, and when discussing how Baldwins III and IV loved to listen to histories, could be significant, for this demonstrates the value William attached to the veracity of such celebri tales, even when compared to written histories. The signposting to the mouths (ore) of men also marks a clear indication of oral delivery, while the use of the verb vertere (‘to transform’, or, as is also possible, ‘to translate’) could denote a shift in language, i.e. into the vernacular, or even act as a play on the different registers or modes of storytelling that surrounded the crusade. Either way, William’s utilisation of chanson-esque framings clearly transcends a simple predilection for fiction, and instead reveals a desire to recreate forms of storytelling that emerged from the camp-fire cultures of the crusade itself. Having almost certainly heard one or more tellings of Antioch’s betrayal, in addition to those he would have read in his textual sources, William adopted and adapted various type-scenes, as well as epic forms of storytelling, to build his own version – one that he perhaps felt would provide a degree of eastern Frankish ownership over these traditions. As Suzanne Fleischman has noted, epic WT, I, 293–6. S. C. Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (Ithaca, NY, 2009), pp. 155–247. 82 Buck, ‘Settlement, Identity, and Memory’, pp. 281–5. On the role of the written word in preserving the oral, see Boutet, ‘The Chanson de geste’, pp. 359–63, 366–7. 83 WT, I, 430: ‘in ore hominum pro celebri vertuntur historia’. 80

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William of Tyre, the First Crusade and the Art of Storytelling songs were ‘sung about heroes and traitors’, so for William to have moved into this form for these events is rather fitting.84 Importantly, incorporating the epic mode into William’s authorial arsenal not only situates him alongside other crusade authors, it also places him in dialogue with contemporary trends in European historical writing – in particular with those authors who, although writing in the vernacular, had begun to appeal more obviously to the laity. In the case of the latter, as shown by Peter Damian-Grint and others, such texts drew on an epic mode of storytelling that sought to build a clear relationship between author and audience through the creation of more overt narratorial personas and by directing readers’ responses, interpretations and expectations – a process that intensified in the thirteenth century.85 William of Tyre was not the only Latin author to adopt genre-transcending modes of writing, both within and outside a crusading context, with many of his educated contemporaries, like Walter Map, recognising the need to draw on varied modes of storytelling to both educate and entertain.86 While several such narrative – or, more rightly, rhetorical – devices, such as claims of authority and direct interjection, can ultimately be traced back to classical authors like Cicero, in whose works William was steeped, it is evident that wider influences were at work.87 As Michael Staunton has noted in relation to sources created in response to the Third Crusade, by the end of the twelfth century ‘the interplay between the chanson de geste tradition, the French verse estoire tradition, and the Latin historical tradition had become increasingly blurred, especially in crusade writing’.88 There even emerges the possibility that elements of William’s text were written to be performed, or at the very least read aloud. This need not surprise us: Richard Traschler, though discussing vernacular literature, has recently described the Middle Ages as an aural culture, with orality and performance co-existing with, and embedded into, the creation and transmission of the written word.89 It was not only vernacular authors who did this, but also writers of Latin histories, like Dudo of Saint-Quentin and Orderic Vitalis.90 In a crusading context, in addition 84 85 86 87 88 89

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S. Fleischman, ‘On the Representation of History and Fiction in the Middle Ages’, History and Theory 22 (1983), 278–310 (at 294–5). Damian-Grint, New Historians, pp. 142–71; Fleischman, ‘On the Representation of History and Fiction’, pp. 278–310. N. F. Partner, Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England (Chicago, IL, 1977), pp. 183–211. M. Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester, 2011), pp. 265–427. Staunton, The Historians of Angevin England, pp. 137–49 (quote at 147). Traschler, ‘Orality, Literacy and Performativity’, p. 273. See also K. Reichl, ‘Plotting the Map of Medieval Oral Literature’, in Medieval Oral Literature, ed. K. Reichl (Berlin, 2012), pp. 3–70; Boutet, ‘The Chanson de geste’, pp. 359–62. Pohl, ‘Poetry, Punctuation and Performance’, pp. 177–216; R. Ray, ‘Orderic Vitalis and William of Poitiers: A Monastic Reinterpretation of William the Conqueror’, Revue

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Andrew D. Buck to historians’ greater understanding of the interconnectedness of the crusading chansons with Latin histories, Carol Sweetenham has recently suggested that our earliest First Crusade text, the Gesta Francorum, was written in such a way that it could be performed, even to a lay audience, with many of her signifiers for this featuring in the Chronicon, including reported speech, the use of the first person, addressing the audience, humour, emotion and action.91 Perhaps, then, William envisaged that his account of the First Crusade, or elements of it, might be read aloud or adapted for his fellow ecclesiastics in the East, or more likely for the royal court in Jerusalem, which, as noted, was known to welcome the reading of histories. It seems likely, too, that it formed part of efforts to direct the young King Baldwin IV, William’s tutee, in the responsibilities of being a king in the Holy Land, especially given the king’s apparent love of listening to such tales.92 That William’s approach to storytelling drew upon, or had much in common with, oral and vernacular traditions could also explain why it was that the Chronicon, despite its great size, was translated into Old French (the highly popular Eracles) in the early thirteenth century. Though the translator made some changes to William’s narrative, the crux of his story survives intact, especially those elements that detail the First Crusade.93 Perhaps revealingly, the Firuz episode is rendered particularly faithfully, with even some of William’s narrative devices translated verbatim, such as his claim that such things were known to happen during major events or the exclamation ‘Long live this hand!’.94 That elsewhere the translator removed William the first-person author/actor, but here allows his narratorial voice to remain, is indicative of the latter’s resonance with vernacular traditions.95 In short, there was no particular need for the translator to ‘vernacularise’ the content of William’s Chronicon because it had already been informed by epic traditions. Much like suggestions at potential oral performance, such eventualities should not perhaps be seen as accidental or coincidental. Though William wrote in Latin, he was clearly aware of emerging vernacular traditions in historical writing, and so he possibly adopted modes of storytelling that would make his text more easily transmitted and translated, thus increasing its chances of impacting not only the Jerusalemite court, but also surviving for posterity and promoting the needs of the Latin East among the European elites most likely to answer or promote the call for crusade. If this is so, then the great many surviving

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belge de philologie et d’histoire 50 (1972), 1116–27. Sweetenham, ‘2000 Cows and 4000 Pigs’, pp. 266–88. On lay literacy in a crusading context, see also N. L. Paul, ‘A Warlord’s Wisdom: Literacy and Propaganda at the Time of the First Crusade’, Speculum 85 (2010), 534–66. On William as royal tutor, see Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, p. 17. P. Handyside, The Old French William of Tyre (Leiden, 2015), pp. 7–19, 26–67. ‘L’estoire de Eracles empereur et la conqueste de la terre d’Outremer’, ed. M. P. Paris, in Guillaume de Tyr et ses continuateurs, 2 vols (Paris, 1879–80), I, 179, 180, 184. Handyside, The Old French William of Tyre, pp. 26–32.

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William of Tyre, the First Crusade and the Art of Storytelling manuscripts of Eracles (over fifty) attest to the enduring legacy and success of William’s original writings.

Conclusion This chapter has aimed to shed new light on the compositional processes that lay behind William of Tyre’s account of the First Crusade. By focusing on his coverage of the betrayal of Antioch to the crusaders, it has been possible to trace the influence of crusading chanson traditions – both in terms of detail and modes of storytelling – on the form and function of the Chronicon. These findings are significant not just for understanding William’s authorial strategies, but also for our knowledge of the Frankish cultures that underpinned Latin Christian settlement in the Holy Land. Indeed, it is now ever clearer that William was an innovative and powerful storyteller, one who sought – like many of his contemporaries in the Latin West – to push the boundaries of what historical writing might look like and how it might engage its audience by utilising registers of performable storytelling to enhance his narrative. That he did so primarily for an audience in the Latin East challenges any notions that the epic tales of crusading heroism that found such wide appeal in Europe, and which crystallised into the central trilogy of the Old French Crusade Cycle in the early thirteenth century, were of little interest to those who lived in the crusader states. Rather, by both preserving the oral crusading traditions specific to Outremer and replicating the methods by which they emerged and were transmitted, William’s Chronicon serves as a crucial witness to the rich cultures of history creation that existed in the Latin East.

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History and Politics in the Latin East: William of Tyre and the Composition of the Historia Hierosolymitana Ivo Wolsing Introduction: The Dating of the Historia William of Tyre’s Historia Hierosolymitana is one of the most important texts handed down from the first period of the kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1187), as it is the only contemporary local source covering the years 1127 (when Fulcher of Chartres’ chronicle ended) to 1184.1 As archbishop of Tyre, chancellor of the kingdom, tutor of the future king, Baldwin IV (r. 1174–85) and respected diplomat, William provides his readers with a unique insight into the political and ecclesiastical culture of the Latin East.2 While his work is generally praised for its stylistic qualities, and several thematic aspects have been studied, its literary dimension is yet to be fully interpreted in the context of its production.3 One element that has made literary interpretations of the Historia so difficult is its drawn-out composition process. William indicates that he started writing at the behest of King Amalric (r. 1163–74) around the time he returned to Jerusalem The use of the title Historia Hierosolimitana, as opposed to Chronicon (the title given to the text by its modern editor and employed in the other chapters of this volume), reflects not only the preferences of Peter W. Edbury and John G. Rowe in William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East (Cambridge, 1988) (see p. 1), but also my own sense that the composition of the text is more characteristic of a Historia than a chronicle. 2 On William’s life, see R. Hiestand, ‘Zum Leben und zur Laufbahn Wilhelms von Tyrus’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 34 (1978), 345–80; H. E. Mayer, Die Kanzlei der lateinischen Könige von Jerusalem, 2 vols (Hanover, 1996), I, 166–253. 3 A. V. Murray, ‘William of Tyre and the Origin of the Turks: Observations on Possible Sources of the Gesta orientalium principum’, in Dei gesta per Francos: Études sur les croisades dédiées à Jean Richard, ed. M. Balard, B. Z. Kedar and J. Riley-Smith (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 217–29; B. Hamilton, ‘William of Tyre and the Byzantine Empire’, in Porphyrogenita: Essays on the History and Literature of Byzantium and the Latin East in Honour of Julian Chrysostomides, ed. C. Dendrinos, J. C. Harris and J. Herrin (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 219–33; A. D. Buck, ‘William of Tyre, Femininity, and the Problem of the Antiochene Princesses’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 70 (2019), 731–49; B. C. Spacey, ‘Refocusing the First Crusade: Authorial Self-Fashioning and the Miraculous in William of Tyre’s Historia Ierosolymitana’, Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture 5:2 (2019), 51–66. 1

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History and Politics in the Latin East in the 1160s.4 His own comments seem to suggest that by 1170 he had already decided to put into writing an account of a recent royal campaign into Egypt.5 Adding to and revising his writings for a solid fifteen years, he appears to have stopped in early 1184.6 For the intermediate period it is difficult to pinpoint which sections date to when, while the political situation in the Latin East was changing rapidly. Indeed, Peter Edbury and John Rowe have deemed it ‘hazardous to attempt to link William’s understanding of past events with specific incidents in his own day which could have had a bearing on his writing’.7 Nonetheless, this chapter argues that, while the dating of individual chapters may remain elusive, the final composition emanated from the years 1181–82, when William’s political career was in tatters and the kingdom in disarray. These matters had a distinct effect on William’s selection of materials, the ordering of composition and even the phrasing he considered especially relevant at the time of writing. In 1941, August Krey suggested that William initially intended to write just a history of King Amalric, but that by the latter’s death in 1174 he ‘had only his notes from current affairs from 1167–1174’. At the same time, Krey argued, William was supposedly working on a more general history of the kingdom, as well as a history of Islam known as the Gesta orientalium principum. Around 1182, with his career damaged following a failure to be appointed patriarch and factionalism abounding in the kingdom, he would have hastily joined together the pieces already written, only to add a little more at the beginning of 1184.8 Edbury and Rowe were somewhat more forceful in their assertion that ‘one suggestion is that his account of King Amalric’s Egyptian campaign of 1167 was one of the first sections to be written’.9 Moreover, they hypothesised that, prior to his departure for Rome to attend the Third Lateran Council in the autumn of 1178, William had drafted large sections of his work, which he started to revise after returning to Jerusalem in 1180.10 Benjamin Kedar has suggested, on the basis of William’s naming of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (or Holy Resurrection), that books 1–8 and 22–23 belong to the work’s second redaction (i.e. after 1180), while books 9–21 belong to an earlier redaction, which was only partly revised 4

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William says at various points in his work that Amalric asked him to start writing a history of Jerusalem. For example, see WT, I, 99: ‘Accessit preterea domini Amalrici regis … iussio non facile negligenda et instantia multiplex, que ad idipsum maxime nos impulit’ (‘moreover, an order arrived from the lord king, Amalric, not easy to disregard and repeated with insistence, that strongly compelled us to this very thing’). WT, II, 934: ‘hec omnia scripto mandare iam conceperamus’ (‘we had already thought of committing all these things to writing’). Hiestand, ‘Zum Leben’, pp. 371–2. Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, p. 27. A. C. Krey, ‘William of Tyre: The Making of an Historian in the Middle Ages’, Speculum 16 (1941), 149–66 (at 154). Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, p. 27. Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, pp. 28–9.

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Ivo Wolsing in the 1180s.11 Kedar’s argument is that, after 1180, William decided to change the name of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to the Church of the Resurrection, as it was known among Greek- and Arabic-speaking Christians. This must have been a painstaking process, unfortunately cut short by the author’s death, leaving us with the fact that books 1–8 and 22–23 speak exclusively of the Church of the Resurrection, while books 9 through 21 use both terms. The argument presented here concerns only books 19–21, that is, the books dealing with King Amalric’s reign and the first half of Baldwin IV’s. Taking these books as a case study, this chapter highlights some of the possibilities of dating William’s text through close textual and contextual analysis. In so doing, it will be argued that William had gathered much of his material, and had likely drafted sections of these books, before he departed for Rome in 1178. Yet the composition of the Historia itself seems to stem from the years 1181–82, so that the narrative as we have it represents a later, rather than an earlier, stage of William’s writing. Not only does the text itself provide ample clues for this later dating, but, upon closer inspection, all arguments for an earlier dating become inconclusive. This has important consequences for the interpretation of William’s version of the events of 1167–71. One can infer that the political instability of the kingdom from 1180 onwards, as well as William’s own career setbacks, had a powerful impact on the form and function of his text. This is most clearly observable in William’s attempts to clear the name of his patron, Count Raymond III of Tripoli (d. 1187), from a series of failures for which he was likely held responsible. At the same time, the Historia contains a broader message disavowing the factionalism and personal ambitions that plagued the kingdom in the early 1180s. William offers a clear parallel in his detailed account of the situation faced by the Fāṭimid Caliphate during the 1160s. This account can be seen as both a mirror and a warning for William’s prospective audience, which should be located primarily in the Latin East.12

Arguments for a Later Dating In the absence of any external evidence regarding the Historia’s composition process, we are left with William’s own work, which contains stylistic changes and scattered remarks that provide chronological clues. For instance, Amalric’s B. Z. Kedar, ‘Some New Light on the Composition Process of William of Tyre’s Historia’, in Deeds Done beyond the Sea: Essays on William of Tyre, Cyprus and the Military Orders Presented to Peter Edbury, ed. S. B. Edgington and H. J. Nicholson (Farnham, 2014), pp. 3–11. 12 William himself is silent about his audience, apart from a general dedication (at the very start of his work) ‘to the venerable brothers in Christ’ (WT, I, 97). For the view that William had a wider audience in mind after 1179, see Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, pp. 170–2. 11

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History and Politics in the Latin East 1167 campaign into Egypt receives conspicuously more attention than his 1163 and 1164 campaigns. This may represent a near-contemporaneous composition, but can also be explained by the fact that William returned to the kingdom after the 1164 campaign, and started gathering information from then on.13 Much, too, has been made of William’s assertion that the Fāṭimid Caliphate exists ‘until the present day’ (‘usque in presens’), which seems to suggest that at least a part of book 19 (ending in 1169) was written before 1171, when the last caliph, al-‘Āḍid, died and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn rose to power in Egypt.14 However, following his remark that the Fāṭimid Caliphate was still in existence, William explicitly dates the passage to 1181. Although this may represent a later addition at the end of the chapter, it is consistent with the other dated and datable passages over the course of books 18–21. Indeed, apart from the remark about the Caliphate’s implied existence, all datable passages in these books can be dated to after 1174, and most of them to after 1180.15 In addition, there are several other arguments that point to a more thorough revision of books 19 and 20 in the early 1180s. One is the odd character description of King Amalric, which spans two chapters ostensibly to allow for a witty anecdote about the king’s curiosity in spiritual matters.16 William first duly lists the king’s qualities: he was wise, thoughtful, action-ready, quite educated, though not as much as his brother Baldwin III, and while too fat, he was able to withstand cold and heat. His only fault seemed to be that he put too much trust in his delegates, which some saw as a token of trust, rather than a vice. At this point, William’s tone changes abruptly, and he lists the king’s vices in crescendo. He was too shy, an adulterer, a relentless prosecutor of church possessions and incredibly avaricious, such that his subjects’ wealth was not at all safe while he reigned.17 The picture that emerges from the first chapter of William’s description is hardly flattering, and it ends on a negative note. After a digression on the king’s curiosity in the nature of Christ, William ends with an addendum: the king was so fat that his breasts hung as low as his waistbelt.18 It is this image that is supposed to stay with the reader, and not the king’s intelligence and curiosity. It is hard to imagine that such a portrait would have been favourably received by the king while he was alive. The sharp change of tone in the first section,

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Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, p. 27. WT, II, 892. See also Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, p. 27; Kedar, ‘Some New Light’, p. 4. Kedar, ‘Some New Light’, p. 4. To Kedar’s list of loci we may add 19.12, where William speaks of ‘king Amalric of good memory’ (‘rex bone memorie Amalricus’), thus dating the passage to after Amalric’s death in 1174 (WT, II, 881). WT, II, 864–8. WT, II, 864–6. WT, II, 867–8 (at 868): ‘Pinguis erat supra modum, ita ut more femineo mamillas haberet cingulotenus prominentes’.

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Ivo Wolsing as well as the added comment about the king’s corpulence in the second, are almost certainly indicators that William added these more negative sections after Amalric’s death, expanding what was originally one chapter into two. Moreover, it seems unlikely that these sections were written during Baldwin IV’s minority (1174–76), when William was the boy-king’s tutor, and when Raymond III of Tripoli, in his capacity as regent, promoted William to chancellor of the kingdom. Shortly thereafter, in the autumn of 1178, William was sent to attend the Third Lateran Council, held in Rome in March 1179, and in early 1180 he was part of an embassy to Constantinople – a clear indicator of his high status in the kingdom. Even if William could find time to compose a narrative in between the multiplicity of duties in which he was involved, there was no reason for him to depict his ward’s father in such a negative light. There is reason to believe that William’s unflattering statements about the king’s deceased father post-date his return to Jerusalem in the summer of 1180. After a failed apparent coup d’état by Raymond III and Prince Bohemond III of Antioch at Easter 1180, the former was declared persona non grata and denied entry into Jerusalem for two years.19 William was closely aligned with Raymond, having received his offices through the count, and declared him in 1183 as ‘the one and only way of hope for all’.20 It has been argued that this alignment was the underlying cause for William’s lost bid to become patriarch of Jerusalem in November 1180.21 William must have been present in Jerusalem for the patriarchal election, but, after losing out to Eraclius, he disappears almost entirely from the record for about a year. Between November 1180 and September 1181, William’s name survives in only one charter, given at Acre in March 1181.22 Compared to the preceding years, when William was not only chancellor but a respected diplomat and royal tutor, 1181 saw his political importance diminish greatly. He was not included, as he had been a year earlier, among the members of a diplomatic mission to Constantinople in 1181, nor was he present when Patriarch Eraclius and many of the prominent barons travelled to Antioch to quell a noble rebellion in that same year.23 Between his daily duties as archbishop and the occasional signing of a

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K. J. Lewis, The Counts of Tripoli and Lebanon in the Twelfth Century: Sons of SaintGilles (Abingdon, 2017), pp. 247–52; B. Hamilton, The Leper King and His Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 150–8. WT, II, 1064: ‘unica enim et singularis videbatur omnibus salutis via’. P. W. Edbury and J. G. Rowe, ‘William of Tyre and the Patriarchal Election of 1180’, English Historical Review 93 (1978), 1–25; Hiestand, ‘Zum Leben’, pp. 358–62. Die Urkunden der lateinischen Könige von Jerusalem, ed. H. E. Mayer and J. Richard, 4 vols (Hanover, 2010), II, 423. Mayer, Die Kanzlei, I, 242–53; A. D. Buck, ‘The Noble Rebellion at Antioch, 1180–82: A Case Study in Medieval Frontier Politics’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 60 (2016), 93–121.

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History and Politics in the Latin East royal document, there would have been ample time to join together the information he had gathered during the 1170s into a single, more or less coherent narrative. Intratextual evidence may provide additional support for a later composition date of the Historia, although much more work needs to be done in this regard. There is a stylistic difference, as Andrew Buck notes, between William’s narrative of the First Crusade and the rest of his work. Whereas the first eight books contain instances of prolepsis and analepsis, these are notably absent in places where one might expect them in later books.24 An additional stylistic argument can be made here: in general, William often uses the phrase ‘while these things were happening’ (‘dum hec … geruntur/aguntur’) to juxtapose events that happened in different places more or less simultaneously. This turn of phrase is used rather sparsely in Latin literature but appears to have been a favourite of Livy’s.25 Although William uses this type of conjunction quite often, it does not occur at all in books 3–7, which form the bulk of his narrative of the First Crusade. This would corroborate Buck’s hypothesis that William’s crusade narrative was originally a standalone narrative that was incorporated into the Historia at a later date.26 Perhaps even more telling is William’s use of the words ‘bereft of military knowhow’ (‘rei militaris expers’). This combination of words seemingly does not appear in Latin literature before William’s time except for the similar ‘operum militarium expers’ found in one passage of Livy’s Ab urbe condita.27 William, however, uses variants of this phrase no fewer than five times, suggesting that the composition of books 18–21 took place around the same time.28 It is important to stress that the initial findings presented here are only potential indicators of textual (dis)unity and should be corroborated by future stylometric research. It seems, then, that William was not only revising, but actively shaping, his narrative in 1181. He himself indicates that he was working on it in that year; it 24

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A. D. Buck, ‘William of Tyre, Translatio Imperii, and the Genesis of the First Crusade: Or, the Challenges of Writing History’, History 107 (2022), 624–50. I thank Andrew for sending me an early version of this article. On William’s knowledge of Livy, see M. R. Tessera, ‘Prudentes homines … qui sensus habebant magis exercitatos: A Preliminary Inquiry into William of Tyre’s Vocabulary of Power’, Crusades 1 (2002), 63–71; C. Kostick, ‘William of Tyre, Livy, and the Vocabulary of Class’, History 65 (2005), 353–68. Buck, ‘William of Tyre, Translatio Imperii, and the Genesis of the First Crusade’, pp. 645–9. Livy, Titi Livi ab urbe condita, ed. R. S. Conway and C. F. Walters et al., 6 vols (Oxford, 1919–2016), II (Libri VI–X), 7.32.10. WT, II, 836, 882, 904, 920, 970. A complicating factor in the dating of these passages is the fact that William mentions in 21.7 (WT, II, 970) that Nūr al-Dīn had died recently (nuper). This would suggest that this passage should be dated to not long after 1174. However, we should be careful not to attach too much significance to these words, as they are imprecise and may reflect a stylistic choice to temporally align the text with the time it describes.

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Ivo Wolsing is consistent with all the datable passages in books 19 through 21, as well as with his rather unflattering portrait of Amalric; and his phrasing contains clues that point in the same direction. To this we may add that at two points in book 19 William adds sections taken from the Gesta orientalium principum.29 There are only a few other places where William refers to the Gesta: the prologue, dating to 1184, and in a passage in book 1, chapter 3, which is dated to 1182.30 It is thus clear that William had the Gesta at hand while he was revising or composing the early chapters of his narrative in the early 1180s, and so it is significant that the only other time that he mentions the Gesta is during the course of the 1167 Egyptian campaign in book 19 – and not only once, but twice in short succession!

The Fāṭimids: A Caliphate in Hiding? The dating of book 19 to 1181 leaves us with a problem: William’s remark that the Fāṭimid Caliphate was still in existence at the time of writing, which ostensibly brings forward the composition date by an entire decade. To answer this issue, it is worth examining closely this remark and its surrounding lines. After a digression on the establishment of the Fāṭimid Caliphate in Kairouan (modern Tunisia) and the subsequent conquest of Egypt in 969, William states that: From that day until the present there has never not been a rival to the Eastern Caliph, who had been the sole ruler for so many years. This rival reigns in Egypt, and contends with him for recognition, even considering himself higher in rank. But whoever wishes to know more about these things, let him read that History that we wrote with much diligence about the Eastern princes and their actions, from the time of the earlier mentioned seducer Muḥammad, namely 577 years, to the present day, that is the year 1181.31

WT, II, 884–5, 890–2. On the Gesta, see H. Möhring, ‘Zu der Geschichte der orientalischen Herrscher des Wilhelm von Tyrus: die Frage der Quellenabhängigkeiten’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 19 (1984), 170–83; Murray, ‘William of Tyre and the Origin of the Turks’, pp. 217–29. 30 WT, I, 99–100, 109. 31 WT, II, 892: ‘Ab illo ergo die usque in presens non defuit caliphe Orientali, qui tot annis fuerat monarcha, emulus in Egypto regnans, cum eo de paritate contendens, immo etiam se preferens: hec siquis plenius scire voluerit, illam legat Historiam, quam de Orientalibus principibus et eorum actibus a temporibus predicti seductoris Mehemeth, videlicet per annos quingentos LXXVII usque in presentem diem, qui est annus ab incarnatione domini millesimus centesimus octogesimus primus, cum multa scripsimus diligentia’. This section may provide an additional clue to the dating of the revisions. The year A.H. 577 started on 17 May 1181. As both the years A.H. 577 and A.D. 1181 are given, this would suggest William revised this section over summer/autumn 1181. 29

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History and Politics in the Latin East William seems to indicate here that the material of his digression relates to similar content found in his Gesta orientalium principum. Whether this concerns a verbatim copy, or an abridged or otherwise adapted version, is impossible to ascertain. It is possible, as Kedar suggests, that William, when composing his narrative over the summer of 1181, combined material he had written a decade earlier and overlooked the inconsistency that came with noting that the Fāṭimid Caliphate still existed.32 Another explanation seems to me to be more likely, however. William was definitely aware that Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn was in power in Egypt from 1171 onwards and could have easily omitted the statements in question altogether. Moreover, one could ask why William would have included such a long digression on a state that no longer existed in the first place. Clearly, he deemed the origins and history of the Fāṭimids so important that he devoted considerable space to it. Key to understanding William’s ideas about the Fāṭimid Caliphate is his narrative of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s takeover of the Egyptian vizierate in spring 1169. Writing about these events, William claims that Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn: at the very start of his vizierate, went to the caliph, his lord, as if to show him the customary reverence. It is said that he knocked him down with a club which he carried in his hand, killed him and murdered all his children with a sword, so that he would not have to answer to any superior and might be sultan and caliph himself … It is said, however, that there were some who secretly took several of the caliph’s sons with the intention that once the administration of the kingdom was given back to the Egyptians, an heir with the name, dignity and blood of his predecessors would not be found lacking.33

This brief chapter is revealing, for it shows that, as often is the case with regime changes, the exact circumstances of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s takeover of Egypt were unknown to William and the fate of the last caliph shrouded in mystery. In reality, it was not until 10 September 1171 that Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn formally put an end to Fāṭimid rule in Egypt by having the khutba (Friday prayer) read in the name of the ‘Abbāsid caliph, al-Mustaḍī, instead of al-‘Āḍid, in the main mosque of Fustat.34 Three days Kedar, ‘Some New Light’, p. 5. WT, II, 925: ‘Hic primis auspiciis sui principatus ad calipham, dominum suum, ut solitam exhiberet reverentiam ingressus, clava, quam gestabat in manibus, dicitus eum ad terram prostratum occidisse omnemque eius gladio transverberasse progeniem, ut ad nullum superiorem habens respectum ipse sibi et calipha et soldanus esset … Non defuerunt tamen, ut dicitur, qui de filiis caliphe occulte quosdam eriperent ea intentione, ut reddita Egyptiis aliquando regni administratione non deesset qui predecessoribus suis nominis, dignitatis et sanguinis heres existeret’. 34 F. Daftary, The Ismā‘īlīs: Their History and Doctrines, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 252–3; H. Möhring, Saladin: der Sultan und seine Zeit, 1138–1193, 2nd edn (Munich, 2012), pp. 48–9. 32

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Ivo Wolsing later, the last Fāṭimid caliph died, aged only twenty. His family, including his eldest son and heir-apparent, al-Dāwūd, was permitted to live in honorary custody in the old caliphal palace.35 William was clearly not acutely aware of these developments when he wrote that Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn immediately killed the caliph and his offspring following his seizure of power in Egypt. Perhaps even more curious is William’s remark that some of al-‘Āḍid’s sons escaped Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s alleged purge, so that there would be a legitimate heir once Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s occupation of Egypt ended. This was not wishful thinking but seems to have had a basis in fact given that there were several uprisings and plots against Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s rule from 1169 onwards.36 The most prominent of these was a conspiracy, uncovered in the spring of 1174, which saw various high-ranking officials, including the famous poet ‘Umāra, executed on 6 April 1174. According to the later historians Ibn al-Athīr (1160–1233) and Abū Shāma (1203–68), the conspiracy involved not only Fāṭimid loyalists, but also the Sicilians and King Amalric.37 Some sources even include the Nizārī sect known as the Assassins among the conspirators.38 Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s secretary, ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Isfahānī (1125– 1201), however, does not mention the Franks and Sicilians, nor is there any trace in William of Tyre’s work that he or Amalric knew of the conspiracy.39 Even if the conspiracy was not as large as Muslim historians assert, it seems unlikely that the Franks were unaware of what happened in April 1174. There is evidence of diplomatic contacts between the Franks and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn throughout 1169–74, and Muslim sources mention Frankish diplomats in Cairo around the time of ‘Umāra’s execution.40 A letter written by ‘Imād al-Dīn expresses Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s condolences to Baldwin IV at the death of Amalric.41 At the same time,

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Daftary, The Ismā‘īlīs, p. 253; Möhring, Saladin, pp. 49–50. Daftary, The Ismā‘īlīs, pp. 253–5; A.-M. Eddé, Saladin, trans. J. M. Todd (Cambridge, MA, 2011), pp. 38–43. The account of Ibn al-Athīr is translated in Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athīr for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh. Part 2: The years 541–589/1146–1193: The Age of Nur al-Din and Saladin, ed. and trans. D. S. Richards (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 218–21. Of the work of Abū Shāma, only a partial translation into French exists in ‘Le livre des deux jardins’, in RHC Or, IV, 3–522; V, 3–206. For an in-depth analysis of the Arabic source material, see Y. Lev, Saladin in Egypt (Leiden, 1999), pp. 86–94. Most modern biographers take Ibn al-Athīr more or less at face value. See, for example, J. P. Phillips, The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin (New Haven, CT, 2019), pp. 83–5; Möhring, Saladin, p. 50. For a more critical view, see Eddé, Saladin, pp. 56–60. Lev, Saladin in Egypt, pp. 86–7. Unfortunately, this section of ‘Imād al-Dīn’s work has not been translated into any European language. I base my observations here on Lev, Saladin in Egypt, pp. 87–8. M. A. Köhler, Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East, trans. P. M. Holt and K. Hirschler, 2nd edn (Leiden, 2013), pp. 179–212. E. Harvey, ‘Saladin Consoles Baldwin IV over the Death of His Father’, Crusades 15 (2017), 27–33.

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History and Politics in the Latin East there is reason to doubt the Franks’ involvement in the plot to kill Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. As Yaacov Lev has observed, the execution of ‘Umāra and the others had all the characteristics of a political trial, where old rivalries of the civilian elite were settled.42 It was well known that the Franks had warm relations with the Fāṭimids until 1168, so the suspicion of collaboration with the enemy would have made sense to an Ayyūbid audience.43 Due to the lack of further evidence it is impossible to assess the extent of the plot, or whether Amalric was involved. What is clear is the importance of this event to Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, for its discovery and the sultan’s quick reaction were celebrated by his secretary, al-Qāḍi al-Fāḍil, as a victory over the enemies of the Sunni faith in an official report sent to Damascus shortly after the trial.44 William’s suggestion that there were Fāṭimid ‘sleeper cells’ indicates that he had at least heard of resistance against Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. The latter’s rule may have been a matter of fact, but it was not undisputed. William stresses the legitimacy of a potential Fāṭimid pretender by emphasising that his familial ties to the last reigning caliph, his name, dignity and blood, would be suitable. In so doing, he casts Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn as an illegitimate and temporary foreign occupier in Egypt and hints at a possible future restoration of the Caliphate. In William’s eyes, the Caliphate had not definitively ended with al-‘Āḍid’s death in 1171 (or 1169, if we go by William’s version of the events), rather his heirs endured and retained rightful claim to Egypt. The immediate result of this is that the primary ground on which parts or versions of William’s nineteenth book have been dated to before 1171, that is the allusion to the Caliphate’s continued existence, can be problematised. Instead, we are left with the dating provided by the author himself, that is 1181, a terminus post quem that he alludes to in the course of his narrative, and in the two-faced portrait of Amalric at the start of the book.

The Nizārī Embassy to King Amalric Book 20 is harder to date. The only dating given by Kedar is the reference to Patriarch Amaury of Jerusalem being of good memory (‘bone memorie’), which dates the start to after 1180.45 A second reference can be found at the end of chapter 30, where William notes that Bishop Ralph of Bethlehem, his predecessor as chancellor of the kingdom, died in spring 1174. He adds that the see would remain vacant until the second year of Baldwin IV’s reign (1176 or 1177), which Lev, Saladin in Egypt, pp. 86–94. The same motif of collaboration with the Franks was employed in official sources dealing with the revolt of black and Armenian troops in 1169, on which see Lev, Saladin in Egypt, pp. 81–4; Eddé, Saladin, pp. 40–3. 44 Al-Fādil’s letter is preserved in the work of Abū Shāma. A partial translation into French is given in ‘Le livre des deux jardins’, in RHC Or, IV, 168–75. 45 WT, II, 913. 42

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Ivo Wolsing indicates that the issue had been resolved some time ago.46 This would suggest a terminus post quem of about 1178 at the very earliest. It is possible that the rest of the chapter and the preceding one were drafted around that time too. William relates how a group of Nizārīs lived in the mountains near Tripoli and were led by one called The Old Man. They paid an annual tribute of 2,000 gold pieces to the Templars for their safety, but in 1173 their leader, the illustrious Rashīd al-Dīn Sinān, allegedly sent a messenger to King Amalric asking to lift the tribute. In return, they promised to convert to Christianity and live peacefully.47 Amalric accepted, but, before the messenger could reach his home, he was killed by a Templar called Walter of Le Mesnil, according to William ‘a worthless man, one-eyed, whose breath is in his nostrils, with no discretion at all’.48 Hearing this, the king immediately made his way to Sidon, seized Walter and incarcerated him. There is every reason to cast doubt on William’s somewhat fantastical description of the history of the Nizārīs, but his assertion that they were willing to convert and work with the Franks should be taken quite seriously. In the face of persecution, Shi‘a Muslims are allowed to dissimulate, that is conceal, their religious beliefs, a practice commonly known as taqiyya. What bound them to the Franks were their mutual enemies: Nūr al-Dīn and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn.49 The prospect of an ad hoc alliance between the Franks and Nizārīs, and even the dissimulation of the Muslim faith on the part of the latter, should therefore be taken as a serious possibility at a time when, as we have seen, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s grip on Egypt was all but secure. The chapters also provide clues to the composition process of the Historia. A curious parallel can be found in the work of the English courtier, Walter Map (d. 1210). Thus, Walter tells a story that is remarkably similar to William’s in a chapter of his De nugis curialium (Courtiers’ Trifles), composed at various stages between c. 1180 and 1200.50 We can infer that this chapter was written before 1184 from the fact that Walter mentions Joscelin of Bohon (d. 1184) as bishop of Salisbury. Walter’s version is much shorter and slightly different from William’s. Whereas in William’s text the Nizārīs appeal to King Amalric, in Walter’s they WT, II, 955–6. For a discussion of this episode, see B. Hamilton, ‘The Templars, the Syrian Assassins and King Amalric of Jerusalem’, in The Hospitallers, the Mediterranean and Europe: Festschrift for Anthony Luttrell, ed. N. Jaspert, K. Borchardt and H. J. Nicholson (Abingdon, 2007), pp. 13–24. 48 WT, II, 955: ‘vir nequam et monoculus, cuius spiritus in naribus eius, omnino penes se nichil habens discretionis’. The expression ‘spiritus in naribus eius’ is from Isaiah 2.22. 49 On the alleged conversion of the Nizārīs, see also Lewis, The Counts of Tripoli, pp. 214–19. 50 Walter Map, De nugis curialium: Courtiers’ Trifles, ed. and trans. M. R. James, rev. C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983), p. 66. See also J. Byron Smith, Walter Map and the Matter of Britain (Philadelphia, PA, 2017), pp 37–62. 46 47

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History and Politics in the Latin East send a messenger to the king’s namesake, Patriarch Amaury. More importantly, Walter does not mention the annual tribute that the Nizārīs paid to the Templars. Notwithstanding the differences in length and detail, the general storyline is the same: a Nizārī messenger appeals to the Franks for conversion to Christianity; the Franks accept his proposal, but the messenger is killed by the Templars before he is able to return to The Old Man. In the end, Walter’s story does not so much focus on the Nizārīs but is more concerned with the stories of the Templars’ behaviour in Outremer. He ends his story by saying, ‘what they may do in Jerusalem, I do not know; here, they live peacefully enough’.51 The question arises how the story ended up in Walter’s inventory. Chronology seems to preclude the option that Walter took the story either directly from William’s text or from another textual source. As we have seen, Walter’s chapter was likely composed before William finished his Historia, although we must be aware of the fact that the De nugis curialium contains many chapters that are later additions. Nevertheless, William’s Historia was not widely disseminated in western Europe until it was translated into Old French in the early thirteenth century, and the only other contemporary description of the Nizārīs, the Tractatus de locis et statu sancte terre Ierosolimitane, does not detail the embassy.52 A textual form of transmission is complicated even further by the fact that William’s text clearly speaks of the king as the recipient of the Nizārī embassy, whereas Walter’s text speaks of the patriarch – a confusion that could have occurred easily in an oral context given their shared forename. A possibility, noted by Helen Nicholson and others, is that Walter heard the story of the Nizārī embassy at the Third Lateran Council, where he and William were both present.53 Although, as Meriem Pagès notes, substantial evidence for such an encounter is lacking, Walter does mention the council in the following chapter.54 Moreover, he tells another of William’s stories in the preceding chapter. In this, the Templars abduct Naṣr al-Dīn, a son of Egypt’s vizier who wanted to convert to Christianity. In Walter’s version, Naṣr al-Dīn promises to hand over Walter Map, De nugis curialium, p. 66: ‘Quid agant Ierosolimis nescio; nobiscum satis innocenter habitant’. 52 Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, pp. 3–4; B. Z. Kedar, ‘The Tractatus de locis et statu sancte terre ierosolimitane’, in The Crusade and their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton, ed. J. France and W. G. Zajac (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 111–34. See also M. Pagès, From Martyr to Murderer: Representations of the Assassins in Twelfthand Thirteenth-Century Europe (Syracuse, NY, 2014). 53 H. J. Nicholson, ‘Before William of Tyre: European Reports on the Military Orders’ Deeds in the East, 1150–1185’, in The Military Orders, Volume 2: Welfare and Warfare, ed. H. J. Nicholson (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 111–18; Pagès, From Martyr to Murderer, p. 57; E. Böhme, Die Außenbeziehungen des Königreiches Jerusalem im 12. Jahrhundert. Kontinuität und Wandel im Herrscherwechsel zwischen König Amalrich und Balduin IV. (Berlin, 2019), p. 259 n. 617. 54 Walter Map, De nugis curialium, p. 70. 51

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Ivo Wolsing Cairo to the Templars but is killed by its citizens when he confesses to being Christian.55 In William’s version, the Templars sell Naṣr al-Dīn to the Egyptians for a large sum before he can convert, upon which the Egyptians kill him.56 There is a marked difference between Walter’s and William’s portrayal of the Templars. For Walter, the Templars’ killing of the Nizārī embassy is dismissed as hearsay and their role in Naṣr al-Dīn’s murder downplayed. For William, they take an active role in both killings and seem to be motivated by gold. The actions of the military orders were discussed at some length during the Third Lateran Council, as indicated by its ninth canon, which articulates their privileges and attempts to find a balance between their critics and proponents.57 It is distinctly possible that William’s stories about the Templars’ greed were part of the ‘strongly worded complaints’ that were the basis upon which the ninth canon was drawn.58 This could suggest that William had at least a draft version of this story in his mind when he left for Rome in autumn 1178. On the basis of the two preceding sections, therefore, it can be argued that William had gathered a large amount of his material during the 1170s and that parts of his narrative existed by the time of his departure for Lateran III. By 1178, William had written a standalone narrative of the First Crusade, as well as some disconnected episodes, such as the material on the Templars. However, as has been advanced here, it is my contention that the text as we have it is most likely a product of the years 1181–82, when William’s political career had been halted by Eraclius’ election as patriarch and the falling out between his patron, Raymond III of Tripoli, and Baldwin IV. The text shows an author actively engaged in the composition of his work not only by arranging his material into chapters and books, but also by inserting extra paragraphs, such as the negative description of Amalric, and even entire chapters, such as the digression on the origins of the Fāṭimid Caliphate. The extent to which the surviving text corresponds with the 1181–82 version, or was later subject to further revision, is impossible to ascertain. Chronologically, it cannot have been much more than books 1–21, though it is possible that it corresponds with Kedar’s first revision, or more rightly recension, of books 9–21.

The Political Situation of the Early 1180s The argument that the Historia was shaped into a coherent narrative c. 1181–82 has consequences for our interpretation of the form and function of the text. Between William’s first departure from the kingdom in late 1178 and his eventual return Walter Map, De nugis curialium, pp. 62–6. WT, II, 838–40. 57 D. Summerlin, The Canons of the Third Lateran Council: Their Origins and Reception (Cambridge, 2019), pp. 80–6. 58 Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, ed. G. Alberigo et al., 3rd edn (Bologna, 1973), p. 216. 55 56

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History and Politics in the Latin East in early summer 1180, the political situation in Jerusalem had deteriorated drastically. In the late 1170s, Counts Philip I of Flanders and Henry I of Champagne had travelled to Jerusalem, bringing with them knights and manpower. Serious negotiations were held to marry the king’s sister, Sybil, to Duke Hugh III of Burgundy, thus potentially securing a powerful alliance. By summer 1180, however, none had accomplished anything for the kingdom. Philip’s stay between 1177 and 1178 was nothing short of a fiasco, whereas internal unrest in France had recalled Henry and prevented Hugh from sailing to Jerusalem.59 At the same time, the kingdom was internally divided after the attempted coup by Raymond III and Bohemond III, and the former was no longer welcome at court. According to William, Raymond’s involvement in the kingdom was ‘hindered by a multiplicity of affairs’ (‘multiplicitate negociorum impeditus’) in Tripoli during these years – a statement that was not untrue, but diligently concealed the real reason for his absence.60 An overarching theme in books 19–21 is avarice, or, more precisely, several actors’ tendency to prioritise personal gain over the needs of the kingdom. A poignant example is found in William’s criticism of the military orders, especially the Templars. We have already seen how William describes their greed as the underlying cause for the killing of the Nizārī embassy in 1173, thereby frustrating the possibility of an alliance against the Zengids and Ayyūbids. Likewise, the Templars’ selling of Naṣr al-Dīn to the Egyptians precluded the possible establishment of a Christian vassal state in Egypt. Detailing the reasons for Amalric’s invasion of Egypt in 1168, William states that it was the grandmaster of the Hospitallers, Gilbert of Assailly, ‘an empty-headed idiot’, who was responsible for convincing Amalric to attack.61 The Jerusalemites had established a de facto client state in Egypt by 1167 and had exacted a large tribute as a result. Presumably, the Hospitallers had accumulated a large amount of debt, which caused Gilbert to convince the king to jettison the highly profitable agreement between the Fāṭimids and the kingdom.62 William also does not mention the Templars’ decisive presence at the battle of Montgisard (1177).63 Time and again, therefore, William would have us think that the military orders’ greed played a decisive role in the deterioration of the kingdom. William’s portrayal of the military orders gains particular importance in light of the political situation of 1181. By then, it would have been apparent that Baldwin IV would soon need another regent, as his leprosy prevented him from carrying out his royal duties. Raymond III was an obvious choice, as the closest relative to the king and the one who had previously conducted the kingdom’s affairs during Baldwin’s minority. As Kevin Lewis has shown, however, this first regency was Hamilton, The Leper King, pp. 132–58. WT, II, 1019. See also Lewis, The Counts of Tripoli, pp. 247–52. 61 WT, II, 917: ‘vir … instabilis et mente vagus’. 62 WT, II, 917–18. 63 WT, II, 991–2. 59 60

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Ivo Wolsing fraught with ill-advised policy, such as the decision not to intervene in Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s campaign against Nūr al-Dīn’s son, al-Ṣāliḥ, in 1175.64 Moreover, he had been unable to redeem himself during the failed siege of Ḥārim (1177–78) or the battle of Marj Ayyun (1179), where the Franks suffered a serious defeat at the hands of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn.65 William describes these events across book 21, but downplays Raymond’s accountability by arguing that his behaviour in 1175 was influenced by the royal constable, Humphrey III of Toron, while the defeat at Marj Ayyun was wholly the responsibility of the grandmaster of the Templars, Odo of St-Amand.66 Raymond is also conspicuously absent from William’s chapter dealing with the end of the siege of Ḥārim, where it was above all Philip of Flanders who pushed the other leaders to abort the campaign.67 It would appear that William’s narrative is consciously tailored to redeem his patron from the negative press he had undoubtedly received after his first regency. Taken together, these observations shed a different light on William’s narrative of the years 1173–74. Clearly, William considered the story of the Nizārī embassy relevant, for he devoted two chapters to it. Its function is not merely to emphasise the Templars’ intractability, however. While the killing of the envoy would have been a serious affront to Sinān, Amalric’s reaction shows that he was willing and able to punish the perpetrators, thus removing diplomatic obstacles for further negotiations. There seems to have been no talk of collaboration between the Franks and Nizārīs after the fallout of 1173, though, not even when Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn was besieging their fortresses of Masyaf in 1175–76. Farhad Daftary proposes that Nūr al-Dīn’s death reconfigured the geopolitical situation in Syria, forcing the Nizārīs to work with the former’s heir against Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn.68 Yet at least half a year had passed between the incident and Nūr al-Dīn’s death on 15 May 1174, during which no new negotiations seemingly occurred. A possible explanation may be that in late 1173 or early 1174 Raymond III of Tripoli was released from a ten-year captivity at the hands of Nūr al-Dīn.69 As Bernard Hamilton notes, Raymond had reason to distrust the Nizārīs for killing his father in 1152.70 It is possible, though by no 64

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Lewis, The Counts of Tripoli, pp. 239–42. According to an anonymous report handed down by Abū Shāma, ‘the brother of the bishop of Tyre’ (‘‘akhū ‘usquf ṣūr’) died during the battle of Marj Ayyun (‘Le livre des deux jardins’, in RHC Or, IV, 202). According to Bernard Hamilton, William therefore held a grudge towards Odo of St-Amand and the Templars (Hamilton, ‘The Templars’, p. 22). This claim cannot be substantiated on the basis of the scant surviving evidence, but may be one factor for William’s recurrent animosity towards the Templars and Odo in particular. WT, II, 971–4, 1001–2. WT, II, 994–6. Daftary, The Ismā‘īlīs, pp. 369–70. There is doubt as to exactly when Raymond was released, but it must have been before 18 April 1174. See Lewis, The Counts of Tripoli, p. 219. Hamilton, ‘The Templars’, pp. 22–3.

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History and Politics in the Latin East means certain, that Raymond was the driving force behind the Franks’ decision not to reopen negotiations with the Nizārīs between 1174 and 1176 and that William is deliberately omitting Raymond’s involvement in the situation. This possibility is underscored by the fact that William is categorical in ascribing the blame to Walter of Le Mesnil – a strategy he also employs on other occasions where he deflects criticism from Raymond. Even though we cannot gauge the attitude of those involved in 1173–74 from William’s narrative, by 1181 it must have become obvious that the botched collaboration between the Franks and the Nizārīs was a strategic mistake as regards containing Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. Likewise, the description of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s takeover of Egypt obtains a new importance when interpreted against the backdrop of the political situation of 1181. Over the course of book 19, William makes it abundantly clear that the Fāṭimid Caliphate was ruled de facto by a vizier, while the caliph lived remotely from politics, surrounded by a small group of familiares. The political situation in Jerusalem in the 1180s differed greatly from the Egypt of the 1160s, but the picture of a young king incapable of exercising any authority over his regent may nevertheless have struck a chord with William’s readers in the Latin East. He devotes much attention to the struggle between two claimants to the vizierate, Shāwar and Shīrkūh (Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s uncle), that weakened the country in the process. It is perhaps significant that William uses the word procurator to denote both the Egyptian viziers and Baldwin IV’s regents. The fact that Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, as a low-born outsider (‘vir quidem genere humilis’), was able to exploit the situation and claim Egypt for himself gains particular relevance if we consider that Baldwin IV had Guy of Lusignan, who was (barely) noble enough (‘satis nobili’), firmly swear an oath that he would not attempt to claim the kingdom when he was invested with the regency in 1182.71 In such a world of glory-seeking outsiders, it was better to entrust the fragile monarchy to someone who was not only capable, but also closely related to the king.72

Conclusion As a result of the analysis offered here, several hypotheses can be made regarding the composition process of William of Tyre’s Historia, and the possible impact this has on our interpretation of its form and function. First, it seems that Krey was right in assuming that the composition of the Historia mainly took place in the early 1180s – he gives 1182, but it is clear that William was already composing his narrative in 1181. However, this does not seem to have been a hasty process, as Krey suggests, but rather a conscious and careful ordering of the material he

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WT, II, 971, 1007, 1048–50. William puts great emphasis on bloodlines and even suggests Raymond III had an ancestry more royal than Baldwin IV. See WT, II, 965–7.

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Ivo Wolsing had gathered during his busy years as archbishop, tutor, chancellor and diplomat.73 The choices William made regarding which material to include or to omit – the editing, joining and juxtaposition of several episodes – thus represent a relatively late stage of William’s writing. Second, it is likely that William had at least drafted some sections before he left Jerusalem in late 1178, although we cannot know their form and extent. As the chapter describing the personal characteristics of King Amalric shows, William likely rewrote or added to these drafts when organising his material. There is no evidence that supports the claim that William started writing his narrative with King Amalric’s reign, or that large sections of his work were written before he left for Rome. On the contrary, books 19–21 contain a coherent narrative carefully crafted to deflect the blame for Amalric and Raymond’s failures onto the military orders. This unity can also be seen in the fact that William employs the same unique phrases throughout these books, although more work needs to be done in this regard. This chapter also shows the potential that comes with dating the main process of composition to 1181–82. We see how William made a conscious effort to clear the name of his patron, Raymond III of Tripoli. He did so by effectively writing Raymond’s agency out of the decisive moments of failure by blaming others directly or for influencing the count.74 Likewise, the material detailing the infighting that led to the eventual downfall of the Fāṭimids in the 1160s could be interpreted as a mirror for William’s audience. Indeed, it emphasised the need for a strong regent when the monarchy was weak, as well as the danger in placing too much power in the hands of a regent who was not related to the ruling house. This, in turn, suggests that, although William may have realised that his text had potential use for an audience in western Europe, it was aimed primarily at an audience internal to the Latin East. Through didactic discourse, William tried to infuse his text with a wider message. In the end, William is categorical: to withstand the threat of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, the Latins needed unity under the leadership of the most capable man in the kingdom, Raymond III of Tripoli.

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Krey, ‘William of Tyre’, pp. 149–66. William employs this strategy more often, blaming, for instance, the civil war between Baldwin III and Melisende on those influencing the queen and the young king. Likewise, Baldwin IV’s decision to refuse Raymond III entry into Jerusalem in early 1182 is blamed on those around the king. See WT, II, 777–8, 1019.

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‘When I became a man’: Kingship and Masculinity in William of Tyre’s Chronicon1 Katherine J. Lewis

In 1169, King Amalric of Jerusalem (d. 1174) summoned the nobility of the realm to discuss the manifold problems threatening his kingdom, the enemies of which were increasing in volume, power and valour. According to the Jerusalemite chronicler William of Tyre, this summons was necessary because the provident (‘providi’) princes and prudent men (‘discreti’) of the realm were found wanting, ‘and in their place grew up pernicious progeny who uselessly occupied the position of such great men and squandered the qualities inherited from their fathers. The realm had become so weakened as a consequence that even those whose senses were less well trained could perceive this’.2 Amalric’s nobles, William suggested, unanimously pronounced that this debasement of the kingdom’s elite men was the result of sinfulness, and that the kingdom was now unable to protect itself. The only solution they could offer, however, was to beg for aid from the rulers of western Europe. This episode forms a vital moment in the Chronicon of William of Tyre, who was, at the time of this anecdote, tutor to the king’s son, Baldwin IV, and an increasingly trusted figure at court. It expresses an axiom that underpins his entire narrative: that the men of William’s own time had degenerated from the virtuous character and redoubtable prowess of their forefathers, and that this accounted for the parlous state of the kingdom.3 Importantly, the decline in morality that William traces here was also a commentary on an explicit decline in manhood. And yet, despite its rich potential for shedding light on perceptions of how a man should act – perceptions that underpinned structures of power and politics – the

I am extremely grateful to Andrew Buck for his assistance with this essay. WT, II, 941: ‘et in eorum loco soboles succrescebat perniciosa, que locum tantorum virorum inutiliter occupabat et bona paterna in usus dilapidabat destabiles, unde regnum in tantam devenerat debilitatem, quantam cognoscere poterant etiam qui sensus habebant minus exercitatos’. 3 P. W. Edbury and J. G. Rowe, William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 155–8. 1

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Katherine J. Lewis Chronicon remains a largely untapped source.4 This chapter seeks to highlight the political function of gender in William’s text by using as a case study his account of the reign of King Baldwin III (d. 1163) and examining what it can reveal about the symbiotic relationship between medieval kingship and masculinity.5 The Chronicon is approached not as evidence for a ‘real’ Baldwin, as such, but as a means to analyse what the depiction of his manhood can reveal about the gendering of power and the role of masculinity within the political culture of the kingdom of Jerusalem.6 As argued here, then, masculinity was a structuring principle not only for William’s narrative, but for the polity he describes.7

William of Tyre and Masculine Rule Histories of the Middle Ages have traditionally placed a disproportionate emphasis on kings and other powerful men. However, modern discussions of the political activities of medieval men have not usually been about such men as men. The central role that gender played in both supporting and eroding the standing of individual men, and the extent to which established norms of masculinity were woven into medieval institutions and processes of power, remains relatively underexamined. Yet, critical analysis of these phenomena is necessary in order to scrutinise the various ways in which masculinity was harnessed to confirm and alter power relations.8 Across different settings there is a common theme, summarised neatly by John Tosh: ‘The political order can be seen as a reflection

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The only substantial study is A. Firth, ‘The Creation of the Jerusalemite Dynasty in the Twelfth Century: Kingship, Military Masculinity and Fatherhood in William of Tyre’s Historia’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Huddersfield, 2016). I am very grateful to Dr Ashley Firth for many illuminating conversations about gender within the chronicle. Space does not permit a full discussion of William’s depiction of Baldwin III’s kingship and masculinity here. For more detailed analysis, see Firth, ‘The Creation of the Jerusalemite Dynasty’, pp. 152–4, 193–5, 248–65. Cf. the approach adopted by Stephen J. Spencer regarding the representation and function of emotions in historical narratives. For an outline of this, see S. J. Spencer, Emotions in a Crusading Context, 1095–1291 (Oxford, 2019), pp. 8–10. This formulation is influenced by Andrew D. Buck’s discussion of the ‘analytical superstructures’ of William’s text in A. D. Buck, ‘William of Tyre, Translatio Imperii and the Genesis of the First Crusade: Or, the Challenges of Writing History’, History 107 (2022), 624–50. E. A. McVitty, Treason and Masculinity in Medieval England: Gender, Law and Political Culture (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 8–14. See also C. Fletcher, Richard II: Manhood, Youth and Politics, 1377–99 (Oxford, 2008) and the essays contained in The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Political Culture in Europe, ed. C. Fletcher, S. Brady et al. (London, 2018).

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Kingship and Masculinity in William of Tyre’s Chronicon of the gender order in society as a whole, in which case the political virtues are best understood as the prescribed masculine virtues writ large’.9 William’s own understanding of masculinity is made manifest in his portraits of the kings of Jerusalem.10 In the Chronicon, he provides key information about their manners, lives and appearance as prefaces to the chronological accounts of their reigns, which are informed by what William says of their dispositions in advance.11 As Ashley Firth has discussed at length, William’s narrative is predicated on the commonplace notion that the ideal king must embody virtues that were explicitly classified as masculine: chief among them strength, reason, prudence, largesse and self-control.12 All kings were expected to be accomplished warrior-leaders in part because this assured the security of the realm, while successful military campaigns offered participants material rewards and prestige. A warrior-leader was also quintessentially masculine, exhibiting prowess, courage, acumen and charisma.13 The origins and circumstances of Outremer, founded through conflict and never entirely at peace, dictated that the kingdom of Jerusalem was almost constantly on a war-footing, a reality that placed even more of a premium on its rulers epitomising these masculine traits to both practical and ideological ends.14 The military successes of individual rulers thus evidenced the legitimacy of the whole dynasty.15 Godfrey of Bouillon, the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem, set the standard for his successors. William’s portrait describes him as follows: Now, just as he was the first-born according to the flesh, so also according to the inner man he had the prerogative of morals and was entitled to first place 9

10 11

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J. Tosh, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity and the History of Gender’, in Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History, ed. S. Dudink, K. Hagemann and J. Tosh (Manchester, 2004), pp. 41–58 (at 41). William’s approach here was influenced by classical precedents (especially Suetonius) via Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne. See Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, pp. 70–2. Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, pp. 70–84. Firth, ‘The Creation of the Jerusalemite Dynasty’, pp. 113–95. See also K. J. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England (London, 2013), pp. 22–36. K. A. Fenton, Gender, Nation and Conquest in the Works of William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 100–28; R. M. Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia, PA, 2003), pp. 20–66. Crusading more widely also came to inform notions of kingship and chivalry. See the following chapters in Crusading Masculinities, ed. N. R. Hodgson, K. J. Lewis and M. M. Mesley (Abingdon, 2019): M. M. Mesley, ‘Performing Plantagenet Kingship: Crusading and Masculinity in Matthew Paris’s Chronica majora’ (pp. 275–95); D. Cantor-Echols, ‘Kingship on Crusade in the Chronicle and Poem of Alfonso XI of Castile’ (pp. 296–310); K. J. Lewis, ‘“…doo as this noble prynce Godeffroy of boloyne dyde”: Chivalry, Masculinity and Crusading in Late Medieval England’ (pp. 311–28); R. B. Desjardins, ‘“Lest his men mutter against him”: Chivalry and Artifice in a Burgundian Crusade Chronicle’ (pp. 329–44). Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, p. 77.

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Katherine J. Lewis by merit. Lord Godfrey was a religious man, merciful, pious and God-fearing, just, withdrawing from all evil, earnest and balanced in his word, despising the vanities of the time, which is rare at that age, and especially in one of military profession. He was constant in his prayers, diligent in works of piety, notable for his liberality, gracious in his affability, meek and merciful, in every way commendable and pleasing to God. He was also tall in body, so that he was considered smaller by the greatest and taller by the average, unprecedently strong, with solid limbs, a manly chest, a handsome face, moderately blond hair. In the use of weapons and military discipline he was considered by all to be matchless.16

William’s Godfrey exhibits an exemplary blend of manly qualities: a combination of innate virtue, ideal conduct and physical advantages honed to a peerless standard of martial excellence. Although Godfrey reportedly refused the title of king, for William he embodied all the required characteristics of a monarch. As the Chronicon asserts: ‘To us he seems not only the king, but the best of kings, a light and a mirror to others’.17 In line with this, Godfrey took on legendary status in the later Middle Ages, joining the ranks of the Nine Worthies and becoming ‘a light and a mirror’ of chivalry and leadership well beyond the temporal existence of the kingdom of Jerusalem.18 The gender identity embodied by Godfrey and the other kings of Jerusalem constitutes a form of hegemonic masculinity that drew its power from the assumption that women should (as a rule) be excluded from authority, primarily on the grounds of allegedly natural shortcomings.19 This system also excluded most men and created hierarchies of dominance and subordination.20 As Tosh puts it: 16

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WT, I, 426–7: ‘Fuit autem, sicut et secundum carnem primogenitus, ita et secundum interiorem hominem morum gerens prerogativam et cui merito primitiva competerent, dominus Godefridus vir religiosus, clemens, pius ac timens deum, iustus, recedens ab omni malo, serius et stabilis in verbo, seculi vanitates contempnens, quod in illa etate et militari presertim professione rarum est, in orationibus iugis, in operibus pietatis assiduus, liberalitate insignis, affabilitate gratiosus, mansuetus et misericors, in omni via sua commendabilis et deo placens. Fuit autem et corpore procerus, ita ut et maximis minor et mediocribus maior haberetur, robustus sine exemplo, membris solidioribus, torace virili, facie venusta, capillo et barba flavus mediocriter, in usu armorum et exercitio militari omnium iudicio quasi singularis’. WT, I, 431: ‘Nobis autem non solum rex, sed regum optimus, lumen et speculum videtur aliorum’. S. John, Godfrey of Bouillon: Duke of Lower Lotharingia, Ruler of Latin Jerusalem, c.1060–1100 (Abingdon, 2017), pp. 227–53; Lewis, ‘“…doo as this noble prynce Godeffroy of boloyne dyde”’, pp. 311–28. See R.W. Connell, Masculinities, 2nd edn (Oakland, CA, 2005) for her influential conception of hegemonic masculinity. Studies of medieval masculinity often draw on Connell. See W. M. Aird, ‘Frustrated Masculinity: The Relationship Between William the Conqueror and His Eldest Son’,

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Kingship and Masculinity in William of Tyre’s Chronicon ‘formal politics may be seen as a dynamic factor in maintaining and strengthening the gender order: the state acts to reinforce masculine norms’.21 This is reflected in William’s description of the defective characters of substandard leaders, especially Guy of Lusignan. When Guy, as husband to Sybil of Jerusalem, was appointed regent of the kingdom in 1183 by his wife’s brother, the ailing leper, King Baldwin IV, William recounts that, having initially been eager to take on the role, Guy soon came to regret accepting it: ‘We have said that the count recklessly assumed the aforesaid burden upon himself, for this reason: he did not with sufficient care balance his strength with the task assigned to him. For he laid an unbearable weight on his shoulders to which both his strength and prudence were unequal’.22 William here deliberately foreshadows Guy’s apparent incompetence as a ruler. When recounting the later campaign of La Tubanie, in which Guy, facing the invading forces of the Ayyūbid Sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn in the autumn of 1183, had avoided battle and instead forced the Muslim leader’s withdrawal during a tactical standoff, William stated that the regent ‘had behaved less vigorously and less prudently [than was needed], and because of his imprudence and utter inadequacy the state of the kingdom had almost collapsed’.23 Yet, as William was aware, Guy had been placed in charge of the kingdom’s armed forces despite having little to no previous experience of military leadership, which arguably provides some mitigation for his hesitancy and inability to inspire the other great lords to united and effective action under his command. Equally, the tactical standoff was by this point an established and sensible practice of warfare in the Latin East.24 William’s account makes no such concessions. It emphasises instead that Guy’s campaign, and his rule, was a dangerous failure. The kingdom’s regent was thus congenitally incapable of embodying the key masculine attributes of strength (both physical and moral) and wisdom that qualified kings to rule.25 William could also use gendered language to collectively denigrate men, particularly those who were not Frankish, like the Egyptians and, especially, the

21 22

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in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. D. M. Hadley (London, 1999), pp. 39–55; Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity; McVitty, Treason and Masculinity; L. G. Jones, ‘Representations of Hegemonic Masculinities in Medieval Leonese-Castilian and Almohad Chronicles’, Speculum 97 (2022), 737–74. Tosh, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity’, p. 41. WT, II, 1050: ‘Inconsiderate autem onus huiusmodi prefatum sibi assumpsisse comitem ea diximus ratione, quod non satis diligenter vires suas cum eo quod iniungebatur munere compensavit: inpar enim et viribus et prudentia pondus inportabile humeris imposuit’. WT, II, 1057: ‘…minus strenue minusque prudenter se gesserat quodque eius inprudentia et omnimoda insufficientia regni status pene lapsus fuerat’. B. Hamilton, The Leper King and His Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 189–92. For a more detailed discussion of William’s depiction of Guy, see Firth, ‘The Creation of the Jerusalemite Dynasty’, pp. 163–7.

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Katherine J. Lewis Byzantines.26 For example, William relates that when Emperor John II Komnenos (r. 1118–43) tried to annex the principality of Antioch in 1138, its ruler, Raymond of Poitiers, and his nobles were unwilling to cede to the emperor’s demands on the grounds that it seemed: ‘harsh and very hard to bear that the city, acquired by our people at such great risk and restored to the Christian faith at the cost of so much of the blood of our fortunate princes … should fall into the hands of the effeminate people of the Greeks’.27 As Luka Špoljarić has observed, William’s contrast between the manly First Crusaders and the ‘effeminate’ Greeks implies that the latter would be unable to defend Antioch.28 Gender justifies Frankish rule over Antioch, the legitimacy of which was equivocal.29 Importantly, Andrew Buck has argued that William’s ‘views on gender intersected with his Jerusalemfocused narrative strategies’.30 His focus on kingship and its inextricable link to masculinity was not simply conventional or abstract, however. The Chronicon articulates William’s conviction that the stability and survival of the kingdom of Jerusalem rested, above all else, on the manly quality of its rulers. As with the requirement for a leader to be a warrior, this expectation was true for all realms, but was an especially pressing concern for the frontier kingdom of Jerusalem. The person of the king was inseparably fused with Jerusalem’s constitution, in the sense both of health and political establishment. This perception underpins William’s justification of Baldwin III’s calculated abandonment of his troops when withdrawing from battle against Nūr al-Dīn at Bānyās in 1157: ‘if he had died that day, doubtless the kingdom would have descended into the utmost danger, for in the case of a knight, however extraordinary, the fate is that of one man, but in the case of a king, the danger is to all men’.31 Consequently, William’s attitude to masculinity, and especially its function within the text, was influenced not only by gender ideology, but also by the specific political circumstances within which he wrote in the 1170s and 1180s.32 26 27

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Firth, ‘The Creation of the Jerusalemite Dynasty’, pp. 95–105. WT, II, 677–8: ‘Durum enim videbatur et grave nimis quod civitas, tanto nostre gentis adquisita periculo tantoque sanguinis felicium principum dispendio christiane fidei restituta … in manus effeminati Grecorum populi descenderet’. This is despite William’s characterisation of John himself as an accomplished military leader, on which see L. Špoljarić, ‘Rhetoricizing Effeminacy in Twelfth-Century Outremer: William of Tyre and the Byzantine Empire’, Annual of Medieval Studies at the CEU 15 (2009), 9–21 (at 15). Špoljarić, ‘Rhetoricizing Effeminacy’, p. 16. A. D. Buck, ‘William of Tyre, Femininity, and the Problem of the Antiochene Princesses’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 70 (2019), 731–49 (at 747). WT, II, 831: ‘qui si illa die defecisset, regnum omne proculdubio in supremum … descendisset periculum: in milite enim, quantumvis eximio, unius sors est, in rege vero universorum periculum’. Similarly, Andrew Buck and Erin Jordan stress that William’s assessments of politically active women were not purely determined by issues of gender. See Buck, ‘William of

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Kingship and Masculinity in William of Tyre’s Chronicon A paramount concern for William was the condition of Baldwin IV, who, as already noted, was a leper (and so could neither marry nor sire children). The latter parts of the chronicle describe the impact that Baldwin’s illness and his inability to father an heir had on the cohesiveness of the nobility. William feared that this would ultimately destroy the integrity of the kingdom, which was in no fit state to withstand the encroaching threat of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, whom he describes as ‘a magnificent man’.33 This is vital context against which to understand the trajectory of failing masculinity that frames William’s account of the fortunes of the kingdom across the twelfth century. William’s expression of anxiety about the current inadequacy of the men of Jerusalem in comparison to their illustrious and invincible predecessors, as highlighted above, was an issue to which he returned in book 21, chapter 7, noting: It is often asked, and indeed seems rightly to be asked, why it is that our fathers, though smaller in number, withstood so strongly and so frequently in conflict the larger forces of the enemy, by divine favour … but the men of our time are found to have turned and been defeated many times by the few.34

William offers three explanations here: that modern men are wholly sinful and have given themselves over to ‘abominable vices’; that they have become unused to military discipline through a lack of training; and, finally, that the hitherto divided Muslims have been unified and are now being led by the formidable Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn.35 The immorality and shortcomings of contemporary youth in comparison to their fathers is a familiar cliché.36 But, for William, it must also have seemed an objective reality, contingent on the course of recent events and a logical explanation for the changing fortunes of the kingdom.37 It was also an attractive explanation because it afforded practical remedies: the kingdom could be saved if its men adopted virtuous conduct, both in the sense of morality and prowess.

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Tyre, Femininity, and the Problem of the Antiochene Princesses’; and E. L. Jordan, ‘Women of Antioch: Political Culture and Powerful Women’, in Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Moving beyond the Exceptionalist Debate, ed. H. J. Tanner (Basingstoke, 2019), pp. 225–46. WT, I, 408: ‘viro … magnifico’. See also Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, pp. 151–66. WT, II, 969: ‘Solet queri, et vere merito querendum videtur, quid cause sit quod patres nostri in numero pauciore maiores hostium copias in conflictu sepe sustinuerunt fortius et frequentius, propicia divinitate … nostri autem temporis homines versa vice et a paucioribus sepius devicti’. WT, II, 969–70. Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, pp. 155–8. Cf. William Caxton’s complaints about the state of men in late fifteenth-century England as born of events, discussed in Lewis, ‘“…doo as this noble prynce Godeffroy of boloyne dyde”’, pp. 316–19.

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Katherine J. Lewis In common with other medieval historians, William recognised the value of the past as a repository of exemplars to improve the quality of modern manhood. As Peter Edbury and John Rowe put it: ‘part of William’s intention was to inspire people to renewed efforts by recounting the achievements of past rulers’.38 While it undoubtedly shone a light onto the manly behaviours of those in the Latin East, William’s emphasis on immorality may also have been aimed at readers in the Latin West, intended to inculcate shame for the lack of support previously offered to Outremer and to inspire in them a heroic response.39 While the exemplary kings of Jerusalem are shown to share certain fundamental manly attributes, they are also individualised by their portraits. For William, masculinity was clearly a sort of algorithm that could be the sum of different variables in the person of successive rulers, provided there was a productive overall balance of qualities. In the prologue, William asserts that he will be truthful in recounting ‘the manners, lives and personal appearance of kings, whether commendable or subject to a mark of disapproval, as the series of events seemed to require’.40 Relating negative aspects of their character and conduct, rather than simply rendering the kings as unblemished paragons, serves to make their portraits more realistic and relatable – an undoubtedly deliberate narrative attempt to inspire physical emulation through believability.41 In addition to political circumstances, though, any individual’s masculinity and the judgements made about it were inflected by other aspects of their identity: social status, occupation, ethnicity and faith, among others. Within William’s depiction of Baldwin III, especially his account of the somewhat tortuous route by which he became sole ruler of Jerusalem in opposition to his mother, Queen Melisende, who sought to retain influence in the kingdom, the young king’s age and life cycle were particularly important qualifiers of his masculinity. Yet, these did not provide fixed or clear-cut benchmarks of adult manhood.42 This has decisive implications for William’s depiction not only of Baldwin, but also of Melisende.

Masculinity and the Reign of Baldwin III Before exploring these issues, it is necessary to establish some basic context, or at least the context provided by William of Tyre. Baldwin III was born in 1130, the eldest son of Melisende and her husband, Fulk of Anjou.43 Melisende was 38 39 40 41 42

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Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, p. 61. Buck, ‘William of Tyre, Translatio Imperii and the Genesis of the First Crusade’, p. 26. WT, I, 98: ‘de regum moribus et vita et corporum habitudine sive commendabilia sive note subiacentia, prout rerum gestarum series videbatur deposcere’. For example, while William praised King Baldwin I as a courageous warrior and diligent ruler, he disclosed that he was unable to resist sexual temptations. See WT, I, 454. Karras, From Boys to Men, pp. 12–17. For fuller accounts of the events summarised here, see B. Hamilton, ‘Women in the Crusader States: The Queens of Jerusalem (1100–1190)’, in Medieval Women, ed. D.

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Kingship and Masculinity in William of Tyre’s Chronicon eldest daughter and heir to King Baldwin II (r. 1118–1131), who before his death invested Melisende, Fulk and the infant Baldwin as his joint successors. Fulk died suddenly in 1143 following a hunting accident when Baldwin was thirteen. Baldwin was crowned alongside his mother, but the rule of the kingdom was undertaken by Melisende alone and, as we shall see, William praised her management of government. The only kingly responsibility she could not discharge in person was leadership of the kingdom’s armed forces, and so in 1143 she appointed her cousin, Manasses of Hierges, as constable. However, Manasses alienated the established nobility by treating them, as William suggested, with imperious disdain. When Baldwin grew older and began to demonstrate his capability as a warrior-leader, he came to resent Manasses, believing the constable to have turned Melisende against him. Encouraged by his supporters, William notes, Baldwin sought to establish his autonomy as king in 1152. Melisende conceded to a division of the kingdom, but Baldwin, further incited by his supporters, was not satisfied and invaded his mother’s lands. The denouement of this conflict took place in Jerusalem, with Melisende sheltering in the Holy City’s citadel, the Tower of David, which Baldwin then attacked with siege weapons. This continued for several days until peace was achieved between the two via mediation. Although Baldwin subsequently ruled independently, he continued to involve Melisende in government, as demonstrated by charter evidence. Turning to William, within the portrait he provides of Baldwin III at the start of book 16, reference is made twice to him becoming a man: He was an adolescent of excellent natural quality, and even then he showed clear evidence which explained the manliness he afterwards fully achieved. When he became a man, just as in his appearance and the entire condition of his body, he surpassed the rest, he outdid them rather excellently in the elegance of his shape.44

Expounding on Baldwin’s ‘excellent natural’ qualities, William stated further that he was: ‘a tall person, taller than average, his limbs in proportion with the height of his body. He was certainly good-looking with his very elegant appearance, his lively colour that indicated innate vigour, clearly in these [attributes] in part representing his mother and not degenerating from his maternal grandfather’.45 Baker (Oxford, 1978), pp. 143–74 (at 148–57); H. E. Mayer, ‘Studies in the History of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 26 (1972), 96–182. 44 WT, II, 714: ‘Fuit autem adolescens optime indolis, id se certis promittens indiciis, quod postea in virile evadens etatem pleno rerum persolvit experimento. Nam vir factus, sicut facie et tota corporis habitudine pre ceteris differentius forme preminebat elegantia’. 45 WT, II, 715: ‘Erat autem corpore procerus, mediocribus maior, ad corporis proceritatem membrorum habens consonam. Fuit sane facie decorus elegantissima, colore vivido et innatum designante vigorem, a quibus plane in ea parte matrem referens et ab avo non degener materno’.

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Katherine J. Lewis Baldwin therefore had certain endemic traits caparisoned in a body of splendid beauty and impressive frame. The reference to his ‘lively colour’ expresses the perception that complexion was indicative of personality and constitution and relates to humoral theory. A ruddy complexion signified a sanguine nature, which was the ideal for men.46 It is significant that the qualities of Baldwin’s that William identifies as ‘natural’ and ‘innate’ are inherited from his mother, Melisende, and her father, Baldwin II. His own father, Fulk, is very much left out of the equation. Earlier, William had described Baldwin II as tall, whereas Fulk is said to have been of middling height.47 This enforced the sense of physiological proximity to the line that began with Godfrey of Bouillon and his brother, Baldwin of Boulogne. Thus, even though Baldwin II had no son, William was able to demonstrate that he was at least able to transmit his ‘innate’ advantages to his grandson instead, here via Melisende. As Deborah Gerish has argued, Melisende was ‘the keystone in an arch connecting rulers who had participated in the First Crusade to rulers who had not’, and so for William she transmitted crucial masculine traits across generations.48 As we will see below, she also exhibited them in her own conduct. Given that a central purpose of William’s account was to promote Jerusalem’s royal family and inspire support, both as regards underscoring its legitimacy to internal audiences and prompting external aid from the Latin West, this emphasis on the ruling dynasty’s inherent and inherited traits is not surprising. Yet, William’s portrait of Baldwin is underpinned by an awareness that such purportedly inherent traits did not, on their own, make a man. This is also expressed in William’s earlier quoted criticism of the ‘pernicious progeny’ who had ‘squandered the qualities inherited from their fathers’.49 Lineage gave Baldwin the propensity to be manly in status-specific ways, but in order to realise that potential he had to undergo the education and training that were an indispensable part of the maturation of high-status men, enabling the shift from adolescence to adulthood.50 William’s portrait of Baldwin shows awareness of this in the observation that: He was also well-educated, and much more so than his brother Amalric, who succeeded him. Indeed, when he was able to snatch some leisure from public duties, he gladly devoted himself to reading. He was especially a listener of 46

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For the role of complexion and the humors within ideas about gender, see J. Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science and Culture (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 171–87. WT, I, 550 (for Baldwin II), 631 (for Fulk). Apart from Fulk, all the kings are described as tall: Firth, ‘The Creation of the Jerusalemite Dynasty’, pp. 131–2. D. Gerish, ‘Royal Daughters of Jerusalem and the Demands of Holy War’, Leidschrift: Historisch Tijdschrift 27:3 (2012), 89–112 (at 102). WT, II, 941. Karras, From Boys to Men, pp. 33–41; M. Bennett, ‘Military Masculinity in England and Northern France c. 1050–c. 1225’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. D. M. Hadley (London, 1999), pp. 71–88.

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Kingship and Masculinity in William of Tyre’s Chronicon histories, diligently investigating the deeds and manners of former kings and the best princes.51

Given the focus of William’s own narrative, this comment is highly self-referential, and may have been intended, at least in part, to contribute to the education of Baldwin IV, to whom, as mentioned above, William was tutor.52 The portrait also gives a flavour of how Baldwin III’s character was shaped by, and responded to, the demands of warfare: he was patient in hardship and, in the manner of the best prince, most prudent in the doubtful events of war; at times of great need, which he often endured for the growth of the kingdom, showing the constancy of a king and never relinquishing the composure of a strong man.53

William’s articulation of Baldwin’s kingly masculinity therefore constitutes a conventional blend of purportedly natural, hereditary qualities, alongside others that had been acquired and had to be affirmed through active demonstration. Baldwin was not without fault, however. Later in his portrait, William reveals that Baldwin indulged in immoral pursuits: ‘[through] gambling and destructive games of this kind, he sought out more than is fitting to a king’s dignity, and accomplishing his carnal zeal, in his desires he is said to have inflicted injury to the marriages of others’.54 William then continues with his second reference to Baldwin attaining manhood: But this was in his adolescence, for when he became a man, following the apostle, he ‘did away with childish things’ [1 Corinthians 13.11]. Indeed, by following the virtues, he compensated for the faults of his earlier age. For, having taken a wife, he is said to have lived most continently with her, and those things he had done in his youth that were less pleasing to God and subject to a mark of disapproval, with the hazard of his [young] age driving him, he afterwards

WT, II, 715: ‘erat autem et commode litteratus et fratre suo domino Amalrico, qui ei successit, multo amplius: cum vero quid ocii ex occupationibus publicis decerpere poterat, libenter incumbebat lectioni; historiarum precipue auditor, antiquorum regum et optimorum principum gesta moresque diligenter investigabat’. 52 Firth, ‘The Creation of the Jerusalemite Dynasty’, pp. 125–6. Amalric and Baldwin IV were also said by William to have been eager readers of history. See WT, II, 865, 962. 53 WT, II, 716: ‘Erat autem et laboris patiens et in dubiis bellorum eventibus, more optimi principis, maxime providus, in summis necessitatibus, quas pro regni incremento pertulit sepius, regiam preferens constantiam et fortis viri nusquam deserens securitatem’. 54 WT, II, 716: ‘dampnificos talorum ludos plusquam regiam deceret maiestatem sequebatur, et carnis curam perficiens in desideriis iniuriam alienis inferre dicebatur matrimoniis’. 51

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Katherine J. Lewis wiped away with the advantage of wiser counsel and he transformed for the better by more beneficial study.55

The actual event of Baldwin’s marriage does not occur until book 18, chapter 22. It took place in September 1158 when Baldwin married Theodora, niece of Manuel I Komnenos, thereby contracting an alliance with Byzantium. In describing the marriage, William reiterates that this is the point at which the king laid aside all his previous frivolities, again quoting the verse from 1 Corinthians, this time in full: ‘When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I understood like a child, I reasoned like a child: but when I became a man I did away with childish things’.56 Continuing, William notes that Baldwin is also said ‘to have loved his wife afterwards with a commendable affection, and it is believed that he kept his faithfulness to her to the last, and, as if changed by this, he put aside trivial acts, and began to embrace serious matters and treat salubrious things more attentively’.57 For William, and by extension his audience, Baldwin’s renunciation of his previously dissolute ways is vital evidence of morality and the ability to resist temptation, which is thereby evidence both of manhood and the capacity for rulership.58 Baldwin demonstrates the self-mastery that was fundamental both to definitions of masculinity and of kingship. William noted, too, that the king abhorred overindulgence in food and drink, ‘asserting that it was the fuel of the worst crime’.59 A cardinal tenet of didactic definitions of kingship was that, in order to rule others, a man must first be able to rule himself, otherwise there was no basis for his authority.60 William’s identification of marriage as a watershed moment at which Baldwin finally attained full adult manhood is conventional (though perhaps somewhat surprising in the context of Baldwin IV’s shortcomings in this regard).61 It is important to note, however, that Baldwin was twenty-seven or twenty-eight by the time he got married in 1158 and had been ruling autonomously since 1152. Yet, significantly, this was not the point at which William declares Baldwin to be a man. 55

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WT, II, 716: ‘Sed hoc in adolescentia: nam vir factus, secundum apostolum, evacuavit quae erant parvuli. Insignibus enim virtutis sequute vicia prioris compensavit etatis: uxore enim suscepta, cum ea vixisse continentissime dictus est, et que in adolescentia minus deo placita et note subiacentia, lubrico etatis impellente, contraxerat, postmodum prudentiore usus consilio detersit et studio in melius reformavit saniore’. WT, II, 843–4. WT, II, 844: ‘Nam et uxorem postmodum commendabili dilexisse dicitur affectu et thori fidem usque ad extremum ei creditur conservasse illibatam postpositisque levibus actibus, quasi mutatus ab illo, seria cepit amplecti et attentius tractare salubria’. For a detailed discussion of William’s handling of the sex lives and marriages of all the kings, see Firth, ‘The Creation of the Jerusalemite Dynasty’, pp. 170–95. WT, II, 717: ‘pessimi criminis fomitem esse asserens’. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity, pp. 25–8. Karras, From Boys to Men, pp. 16–17.

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Kingship and Masculinity in William of Tyre’s Chronicon To explore William’s perspective on Baldwin’s achievement of adult masculinity further, another customary benchmark of manhood needs to be considered: age of maturity. This entails consideration of what is probably now William’s best-known pronouncement on the necessity of masculine qualities to successful rule, one that sits at the heart of his discussion of Baldwin III’s reign but, importantly, does not describe a man: His [Baldwin’s] mother [Melisende] was an extremely prudent woman, having almost full experience in all worldly affairs, clearly overcoming the nature of the female sex, so that she could put her hand to great things and strive to emulate the magnificence of the greatest princes and to follow their pursuits without an inferior stride. For while her son was still under the age of puberty, she ruled the kingdom with such diligence and administered it with such control that she could rightly be said to have equalled her ancestors in that respect; for as long as her son desired to be led by her counsel, the people enjoyed a coveted tranquillity and matters in the kingdom advanced prosperously.62

William’s justification of Melisende’s position here and elsewhere has been taken as evidence that he (and others) regarded Melisende as the ruler of Jerusalem, not queen mother/regent.63 Certainly, the way William describes Melisende renders her functionally a king, not a queen.64 Moreover, when discussing the council of Acre in 1148, at which the crusader forces led by Conrad III of Germany and Louis VII of France discussed the future direction of the campaign known as the WT, II, 717: ‘Erat autem mater mulier prudentissima, plenam pene in omnibus secularibus negociis habens experientiam, sexus feminei plane vincens conditionem, ita ut manum mitteret ad fortia et optimorum principum magnificentiam niteretur emulari et eorum studia passu non inferiore sectari. Regnum enim, filio adhuc intra puberes annos constituto, tanta rexit industria, tanto procuravit moderamine, ut progenitores suos in ea parte equare merito diceretur; cuius quandiu regi voluit consilio filius, optata tranquillitate gavisus est populus, et prospero cursu regni procedebant negotia’. See also WT, II, 777, where Melisende is similarly described as ‘vires et animum transcendens femineum’, and WT, II, 850, as ‘mulier provida et supra sexum femineum’. 63 S. Lambert, ‘Queen or Consort: Rulership and Politics in the Latin East, 1118–1228’, in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe: Proceedings of a Conference held at King’s College London, April 1995, ed. A. J. Duggan (London, 1997), pp. 153–169 (at 156). Erin Jordan argues that Melisende was co-ruler both with Fulk and then with Baldwin III: E. L. Jordan, ‘Corporate Monarchy in the Twelfth-Century Kingdom of Jerusalem’, Royal Studies Journal 6 (2019), 1–15. Sarah Lambert demonstrates that, by contrast, later continuations of William’s chronicle attempted to downplay or elide completely her status as a ruler: S. Lambert, ‘Images of Queen Melisende’, in Authority and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Chronicles, ed. J. Dresvina and N. A. Sparks (Newcastle, 2012), pp. 140–65. 64 Firth subtitles her chapter on Melisende, ‘A Twelfth-Century Female King?’, in Firth, ‘The Creation of the Jerusalemite Dynasty’, pp. 236–68. 62

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Katherine J. Lewis Second Crusade, Melisende is presented as ‘a prudent and circumspect woman, having a manly heart’.65 The trope of high-status women having the capability to transcend feminine shortcomings and take on the manly qualities essential to rulership appears in many different contexts.66 Bernard of Clairvaux even drew on it in a letter sent to Melisende in 1143–44 in which he enjoins her, given the recent death of Fulk and the youth of Baldwin III, that: ‘you must put your hand to strong things and show a man in a woman … You must dispose all things so prudently and moderately that, from your acts, all who see them will think you a king rather than a queen’.67 It was a deeply rooted tenet of misogynistic discourse that women were inherently incapable of wielding authority and should not habitually be allowed to occupy public office.68 Claiming that women rulers like Melisende were able to think and act in masculine ways had the advantage of justifying their position without calling into question the patriarchal foundations of governmental systems. It also construed such women as the exception rather than the rule.69 William’s account of Melisende as a manly woman thus articulates the maxim that any ruler (whether a man or a woman) must be possessed of masculine attributes. It also divulges a performative understanding of gender: the masculinity requisite to rule was not inevitably endemic to men and could be enacted by women. Politics was, by definition, an inherently masculine activity,

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WT, II, 761: ‘prudens et circumspecta mulier, cor habens virile’. For William’s application of the same trope to other politically active women of whom he approved, see Firth, ‘The Creation of the Jerusalemite Dynasty’, pp. 230–1. See, for example, C. Lumbley, ‘Imperatrix, Domina, Rex: Conceptualizing the Female King in Twelfth-Century England’, Medieval Feminist Forum 55 (2019), 64–99; K. J. Lewis, ‘A King, Not a Servant: The Prose Life of St Katherine of Alexandria and Ideologies of Masculinity in Late Medieval England’, in Hagiography and the History of Latin Christendom, 500-1500, ed. S. K. Herrick (Leiden, 2020), pp. 397–416. For translation and original text, see . See for example John Chrysostom’s use of Adam and Eve to justify man’s preeminence over women, in A. Blamires, Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1992), p. 59. There is still a persistent tendency in modern scholarship to refer to Melisende and other politically active women as ‘extraordinary’ when in fact women’s exercise of power was routine in this period. On this, see the introduction and essays included in Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400, ed. H. J. Tanner, L. L. Gathagan and L. L. Huneycutt (Basingstoke, 2019). For discussion of William’s depiction of women’s involvement in politics in the Latin East, see Firth, ‘The Creation of the Jerusalemite Dynasty’, pp. 212–35; N. R. Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 181–8; Buck, ‘William of Tyre, Femininity, the Problem of the Antiochene Princesses’; Jordan, ‘Women of Antioch’.

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Kingship and Masculinity in William of Tyre’s Chronicon but that did not mean that all men were capable of rule, or that one had to be a man in order to participate.70 The same understanding of political masculinity underpins William’s depiction of Baldwin IV. William gives this account of Baldwin’s condition in 1183: the leprosy which had afflicted him since the start of his reign, since early adolescence in fact, became much worse than usual. He had lost his sight and the extremities of his body became so diseased and damaged that he could not use his hands and feet. However, although some suggested to him that he should abdicate and lead a retired life, drawing an income from royal revenues, he had refused to step down from royal office or from administration of the kingdom. For although his body was weak and powerless, yet was he mighty, because he carried himself beyond his strength to hide his illness and bear the troubles of a king.71

William claims that while Baldwin’s ability to rule was severely hampered by his illness, and unlike Baldwin III he could not use marriage to establish his manhood, he nevertheless embodied the necessary masculine qualities of a king. This invites comparison with Melisende, whose body was also notionally hampered, but in a different way. It is notable that, whereas for the other rulers William provides a description of their appearance, including physique and hair colour, he does not do so either for Melisende or Baldwin IV. Baldwin is described as resembling his father in all respects, including build and carriage, but we are not given specific details of his own individual appearance.72 This is arguably because Melisende and Baldwin IV were rulers whose bodies did not ‘fit’ the office that they occupied; one because she was a woman and the other due to his disability. Hence, William highlights that both were able to surmount their outward appearance and physical disadvantages and to exhibit the character and qualities of kings. The fortitude with which William depicts Baldwin overcoming his disabilities is clearly intended

Cf. Deborah Gerish’s comment that ‘for William, the sex of Jerusalem’s ruler was less important than that ruler’s wisdom and ability to maintain consensus’ in Gerish, ‘Royal Daughters’, p. 110. 71 WT, II, 1049: ‘morbo quoque elephantioso, quo ab initio regni sui et a primis adolescentie auspiciis molestari ceperat, preter solitum ingravescente lumen amiserat et corporis extremitatibus lesis et computrescentibus omnino manus pedesque ei sum denegabant officium. Regiam tamen dignitatem et administrationem nichilominus, licet a nunnullis ei suggereretur ut decederet et de bonis regiis sibi tranquillam seorsum eligenti vitam honeste provideret, hactenus detrectaverat deponere. Licet enim corpore debilis esset et inpotens, forti tamen pollebat animo et ad dissmulanduam egretudinem et at subportandam regiam sollicitudinem supra vires enitebatur’. 72 WT, II, 962. 70

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Katherine J. Lewis to serve as further proof of his manhood.73 Likewise, William’s emphasis on Baldwin’s masculinity formed part of a concerted defence of the king against suggestions that his leprosy was a divine punishment and that his kingship contributed to the demise of the kingdom’s strength.74 To return to William’s account of Melisende, with its emphasis on her ‘overcoming the nature of the female sex’, this has already been subject to a good deal of insightful analysis.75 These passages have mostly been considered for what they reveal about Melisende herself and attitudes towards medieval women’s wielding of political power more widely. But they also shed light on Baldwin III, especially on the question of exactly when it was that he became a man. This question has implications for the outbreak of armed conflict between Melisende and Baldwin and how William’s depiction of the hostilities should be read. The following analysis builds on previous scholarly interpretations of this conflict by highlighting the extent to which William’s account hinges on Baldwin’s gender. In modern discussions of Melisende and Baldwin, it is noted that Baldwin was fifteen, the age of majority in Outremer, in 1145.76 This is sometimes accompanied by a more or less explicit assumption that Melisende should therefore have stepped aside, leaving Baldwin to rule on his own. The fact that she did not has inspired derogatory judgements characterising her as ambitious, self-serving and rash.77 However, reaching the legal age of inheritance was not necessarily the point at which an individual would assume power. Over the high and later Middle Ages, there were several royal minorities in northern Europe, but no uniformity of practice as to the point at which they ended. It was dependent not purely on age of majority but on the character and experience of the individual, as well as the wider political circumstances.78 According to William, the nobility deemed it 73 74 75

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For a more detailed discussion of Baldwin IV’s masculinity, see Firth, ‘The Creation of the Jerusalemite Dynasty’, pp. 157–61, 184–7, 195. Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, pp. 76–9. See for example Lambert, ‘Queen or Consort’, pp. 156–9; Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land, pp. 185–8; Buck, ‘William of Tyre, Femininity, and the Problem of the Antiochene Princesses’, pp. 734–7. Hamilton, for example, points out that this was ‘an occasion which was marked by no public solemnity’. See Hamilton, ‘Women in the Crusader States’, p. 152. It was Hans Eberhard Mayer’s opinion that ‘had she been wise, she would have taken this opportunity to withdraw honourably and with dignity. But, as in the past, her thirst for power was greater than her wisdom’. See Mayer, ‘Studies in the History of Queen Melisende’, p. 166. For a critique of this stance, see Jordan, ‘Corporate Monarchy’, p. 9 n. 39. W. M. Ormrod, ‘Coming to Kingship: Boy Kings and the Passage to Power in FourteenthCentury England’, in Rites of Passage: Cultures of Transition in the Fourteenth Century, ed. N. F. McDonald and W. M. Ormrod (York, 2004), pp. 31–49; E. J. Ward, Royal Childhood and Child Kingship: Boy Kings in England, Scotland, France and Germany, c. 1050–1262 (Cambridge, 2022).

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Kingship and Masculinity in William of Tyre’s Chronicon preferable for Melisende – diligent, accomplished, wise and manly – to continue ruling, rather than for her to surrender the throne to Baldwin, even though he was technically of age.79 We have already seen that William declared: ‘as long as her son desired to be led by her counsel, the people enjoyed a coveted tranquillity and matters in the kingdom advanced prosperously’.80 As Natasha Hodgson observes: ‘evidently William considered the rule of an experienced regent preferable to that of an untried youth’.81 It is telling that William says that Melisende ruled ‘while her son was still under the age of puberty’.82 Using puberty as a benchmark is far more flexible and equivocal than a legally established age of majority. After all, the bare fact that Baldwin was fifteen did not mean that he was a man. As noted already, William’s account gives the impression that Baldwin had not acquired the necessary maturity to rule even by his early twenties. In 1152, moreover, William notes that Baldwin was goaded by his supporters – who were driven by their hatred of Manasses and outrage at the latter’s arrogant conduct – into asserting himself against his mother: these [men] also urged the Lord King to remove his mother from the rule of the kingdom, saying that now he had reached adulthood it was shameful to be ruled by the authority of a woman and to commit the responsibility of the management of his own kingdom to someone other than himself.83

William foreshadows this incident at the outset of his account of Baldwin’s reign in 1143. In the earlier passage, Baldwin’s supporters also draw on the idea that his masculinity was being stunted by Melisende: ‘saying it was unworthy of a king, for whom it was fitting to command all others, to always be hanging from the teat of his mother, as if he were the son of a commoner’.84 This jibe served the purpose of infantilising Baldwin and even used the notion of status to bring his suitability to be king into question. It also reduced Melisende’s role to that 79

80 81 82

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For this point and further details of Melisende’s supporters, see A. V. Murray, ‘Women in the Royal Succession of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291)’, in Mächtige Frauen? Koniginnen und Fürstinnen in europäischen Mittelalter, 11–14. Jahrhundert, ed. C. Zey (Ostfildren, 2015), pp. 131–62 (at 142–3). Hamilton also commented that Melisende ‘was not a regent clinging tenaciously to power after the heir had reached his majority, but the acknowledged co-ruler of the kingdom’. See Hamilton, ‘Women in the Crusader States’, p. 153. WT, II, 717. Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land, p. 185. WT, II, 717: ‘filio adhuc intra puberes annos constituto’. WT, II, 778: ‘Hii dominum regem impellebant etiam ut matrem a regni amoveret potestate, dicentes eum iam ad adultam pervenisse etatem, indignum esse ut femineo regeretur arbitrio et regni proprii curam alii quam sibi committeret moderandam’. WT, II, 717: ‘indignum esse dicentes regem, quem omnibus aliis preesse convenit, quasi privati filium semper ad matris ubera dependere’.

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Katherine J. Lewis of a biological function of womanhood. William does this, it could be suggested, to establish that the blame for the rift between mother and son lay partly in the conduct of Manasses, but also with those who provoked Baldwin by questioning his manhood with their highly-directed insults. Yet, Baldwin is also implicitly culpable here, because William makes it clear that those who incited the king were self-interested and untrustworthy and that Baldwin was too malleable to resist responding to their taunts. As William put it, Baldwin was ‘in the manner of others of the same age “as pliable as wax toward vice”’.85 This provides further confirmation that William sought to establish that Baldwin was not yet mature enough to rule. It was almost certainly a means to validate Melisende’s position as queen, but the taking of wise advice from appropriate counsellors was also an aspect of self-mastery, and thus of masculinity. As William no doubt sought to communicate to his royal audience, following this guidance would prevent any king from acting in an impetuous or self-serving manner that could endanger the realm.86 However, Baldwin’s subsequent actions against his mother served to demonstrate the antithesis of the temperate character required of a king, and his relentless bombardment of the citadel of Jerusalem is a metonym for the wider threat that this familial conflict posed to the security and integrity of the whole kingdom. From the young king’s perspective, Melisende’s actions could have been seen as an attempt to hold back his maturity, especially with the appointment of Manasses. Baldwin had by this time already established himself as an effective military leader and, by extension, a man and a king.87 William’s account, though, directs the reader to conclude that the rivalry and strife between Melisende and Baldwin was not caused by the mother’s ambition and selfishness, but by the son’s immaturity and impatience.88 Underlying the events of 1152 is William’s previously imparted information that Baldwin was indulging himself in gaming and having sex with other men’s wives. This may also imply that Baldwin was abusing his position to fulfil his lusts.89 All of this helps to make sense of William’s statement that it was not until Baldwin got married, which was four years after he began to rule independently, that he finally left adolescence behind and fully ascended to manhood. For William, Baldwin’s attainment of manhood, which culminated in the moment of his marriage, was an ongoing process, and a protracted one

WT, II, 717: ‘more aliorum eiusdem etatis, “cereum in vicia flecti”’. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity, pp. 30–3. 87 Firth, ‘The Creation of the Jerusalemite Dynasty’, pp. 152–4. 88 Firth points out that rather than viewing Melisende versus Baldwin as a struggle between mother and son, it is arguably more appropriate to view it as a struggle between a king and his son, paralleling it with the conflict between Henry II of England and his son Henry the Young King. See Firth, ‘The Creation of the Jerusalemite Dynasty’, pp. 262–3. 89 Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land, p. 130. 85 86

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Kingship and Masculinity in William of Tyre’s Chronicon at that. In the context of the 1180s, this may well have served as a lesson that a responsible, masculine ruler was one who sought to attain social and emotional maturity even after reaching the age of majority.

Conclusion It is perhaps no surprise that, for the rest of William’s account, Baldwin proved himself to be a great king.90 Accordingly, after Baldwin’s death on 10 February 1163, even the king’s great adversary, Nūr al-Dīn, is said by William, perhaps apocryphally, to have acknowledged Baldwin’s singularity and to have expressed sympathy for the people of Jerusalem, saying: ‘they have lost a prince such as the rest of the world does not have today’.91 Significantly, in terms of Baldwin’s depiction in the Chronicon, his arguable pre-eminence over the other rulers of Jerusalem is not despite his flaws, but because of them. Giving a mixed picture of Baldwin supports the claim made by William in his prologue, written at the end of his writing process in the 1180s, that in recounting the manners, lives and personal appearance of kings he will bravely include both praiseworthy traits and flaws. However, there is more to it than this. Depicting Baldwin’s transformation from rebellious adolescent to self-regulated man is all the more powerful precisely because he was so badly behaved before his apotheosis to ideal king.92 There clearly was a tacit acceptance in some quarters that high-status young men could, or perhaps would, be immoral. This makes it especially meaningful that Baldwin is depicted as having first given in to temptation and then resisted it through the exercise of temperance and probity – both foundations of ideal masculinity and ideal kingship. Accordingly, Baldwin’s marriage had wider significance than the provision of heirs, although that was essential.93 William’s statement that Baldwin was faithful to his wife thereafter signals that, now he had attained manhood, he would control the passions of his youth. Those energies would be productively channelled instead towards Baldwin’s most imperative duty: safeguarding and extending the kingdom of Jerusalem. There are obvious clues here that such an image of moral ambiguity on the path towards rightful, masculine kingship would have had particular resonance for William’s audiences in the Latin East and Latin West at a time when there

WT, II, 809–61. WT, II, 861: ‘principem amiserint qualem reliquus hodie non habet orbis’. 92 The dynamics at work here are discussed at greater length in Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity, pp. 84–102. In particular, this is in relation to King Henry V of England, another admired warrior-leader who had an antagonistic relationship with a parent and who was rumoured to have been dissolute as a youth. Yet, he put this all behind him to become a new man at the age of twenty-six and the epitome of kingly virtue. 93 For concerns that the key factor behind Baldwin’s marriage to Theodora was that he lacked a son and heir, see WT, II, 834. 90 91

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Katherine J. Lewis was some disquiet over Baldwin IV’s leprosy and divisions over who should act as regent.94 There is little doubt, therefore, that this would have served a deliberate didactic purpose. Yet, William’s account of Baldwin III’s ascent to manhood is only one example of the profound synergy between kingship and masculinity that can be mapped out in the Chronicon. Even when William was not commenting explicitly on instances of manly or effeminate conduct, the text is thoroughly imbued with ideas about masculinity.95 William’s worldview, and that of his audience, was both consciously and unconsciously shaped by gendered assumptions. Further analysis of the depiction and function of masculinity within the Chronicon is vital both in its own right and as a complement to important existing scholarship examining his portrayal of women. Masculinity was not only an asset that William identified and described in individuals and groups, it was also an essential tool, which he employed to make sense of the past and of the present.

A narrative fashioning of dialogues around power to answer potential criticisms of Baldwin IV’s reign has been noted elsewhere in William’s text. See A. D. Buck, ‘The Noble Rebellion at Antioch, 1180–82: A Case Study in Medieval Frontier Politics’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 60 (2016), 93–121 (at 113–16). 95 There are parallels here with arguments about William’s use of biblical and classical quotation and allusion, which, so it has been argued, was often instinctive rather than deliberate. See Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, pp. 32–7; A. V. Murray, ‘Biblical Quotations and Formulaic Language in the Chronicle of William of Tyre’, in Deeds Done beyond the Sea: Essays on William of Tyre, Cyprus and the Military Orders Presented to Peter Edbury, ed. S. B. Edgington and H. J. Nicholson (Farnham, 2014), pp. 25–34. 94

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Laments for the Lost City: The Loss of Jerusalem in Western Historical Writing Katrine Funding Højgaard

In July 1187, the Christian army of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem suffered a devastating defeat at the Horns of Ḥaṭṭīn. Three months later, on 2 October, the city of Jerusalem fell to an army commanded by the Muslim Sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. The loss of Jerusalem was a watershed moment, unleashing a massive literary response across Latin Christendom: letters streamed from the crusader states to the Latin West, while in response the papacy issued letters and dispatched legates.1 Gradually, news spread to western annalists and chroniclers and, over time, the events of 1187 took root in the minds of western Christians, who commemorated the loss by retelling the story of the defeat in letters, chronicles, poems and treatises. Contemporary and near-contemporary historians, writing in the decades after Jerusalem’s fall, display conscious desires and initiatives to preserve the memory of this loss and to transmit its narrative to future generations. Through a process of lamentation, authors deployed rich emotional language and situated recent events within a larger timeframe by referencing previous destructions of Jerusalem, especially the Old Testament devastation of the Holy City in 587 BCE. In doing so, the city’s fall became a universal loss. It is this literary drive that is the focus of this chapter, which aims to situate Latin Christian reactions to 1187 in a wider framework of city laments and to demonstrate that references to Old Testament prophecies, especially those contained in the Book of Lamentations, helped twelfth- and thirteenth-century chroniclers to forge a cross-temporal emotional mnemonic community.2

On this, see H. Birkett, ‘News in the Middle Ages: News, Communications, and the Launch of the Third Crusade, 1187–1188’, Viator 49:3 (2018), 23–61; T. W. Smith, ‘Audita Tremendi and the Call for the Third Crusade Reconsidered, 1187–1188’, Viator 49:3 (2018), 63–101. 2 This phrase draws on ideas found in E. Zerubavel, Social Mindscapes: An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology (Cambridge, MA, 1997) and will be discussed further below. All biblical references refer to the Douay-Rheims edition and translation. 1

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The City Lament Genre The tradition of lamenting the destruction of a city is a long-standing literary genre found in epic poetry, drama, liturgy and folktales.3 City laments are collective expressions of grief, but they also share traits with individual laments, including a desire to keep memories alive.4 An individual lament – often caused by the death of a person, which may be sad and unexpected – is far more prevalent and has developed a ‘carefully ritualised emotional outlet’.5 By contrast, the destruction of cities or whole populations, being far less common, lacks the same traditional form, albeit common ‘structures, patterns, and types of discourse’ can be identified through a comparative approach to collective reactions to the demise of cities.6 Although well known from the Old Testament Book of Lamentations, the origins of city laments can be traced even earlier. They are first found in ancient Mesopotamia and the responses to the fall of the city-state of Ur to the ancient Elamites in around 2000 BCE.7 Various scholars have convincingly argued that ancient Akkadian and Sumerian texts functioned as precursors to the texts of the Hebrew Bible, especially in Ezekiel, Lamentations, Isaiah and Psalm 137.8 In line with this, in 1993, F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp outlined the resemblances and differences between ancient Mesopotamian city laments and the Book of Lamentations, and his comparison with the Hebrew Bible laid the groundwork for the study of a genre common to both Mesopotamian and biblical laments, thereby establishing the basis for all subsequent scholarship.9 Indeed, he defined nine generic features for studying city laments: subject and mood; structure and poetic technique; 3

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A. Suter, ‘Introduction’, in The Fall of Cities in the Mediterranean: Commemoration in Literature, Folk-Song, and Liturgy, ed. M. R. Bachvarova, D. Dutsch and A. Suter (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 1–12 (at 1). Lament: Studies in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond, ed. A. Suter (Oxford, 2008). Suter, ‘Introduction’, p. 1. A. Karanika, ‘Messengers, Angels, and Laments for the Fall of Constantinople’, in The Fall of Cities in the Mediterranean, ed. Bachvarova, Dutsch and Suter, pp. 226–51 (at 227). See also M. Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 83–101. J. Jacobs, ‘The City Lament Genre in the Ancient Near East’, in The Fall of Cities in the Mediterranean, ed. Bachvarova, Dutsch and Suter, pp. 13–35. T. M. Boyadjian, The City Lament: Jerusalem across the Medieval Mediterranean (Ithaca, NY, 2018), p. 12. See also M. W. Green, ‘Eridu in Sumerian Literature’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1975); P. W. Ferris Jr., The Genre of Communal Lament in the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Atlanta, GA, 1992); R. Heskett, Reading the Book of Isaiah: Destruction and Lament in the Holy Cities (New York, 2011); D. L. Petter, The Book of Ezekiel and Mesopotamian City Laments (Fribourg, 2011). F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep, O Daughter of Zion: A Study of the City-Lament Genre in the Hebrew Bible (Rome, 1993).

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The Loss of Jerusalem in Western Historical Writing divine abandonment; assignment of responsibility; divine agents of destruction; description of destruction; the weeping goddess; lamentation proper; and the restoration of the city and the return of the gods. Moreover, he demonstrated that the Hebrew Bible contains evidence of a genre related to the Mesopotamian city lament but with features native to Israel.10 Although it is unlikely that twelfth-century Latin Christian authors would have been directly informed by the Mesopotamian tradition, they clearly wrote in accordance with the biblical city lament genre, and so Dobbs-Allsopp’s work provides a useful framework for analysing literary responses to the loss of Jerusalem in 1187. It is worth nothing that two of Dobbs-Allsopp’s generic elements, divine abandonment and, consequently, the return of the gods, play no significant role here. In part, this is likely the result of the fact that the Book of Lamentations ends instead by combining divine abandonment and divine anger, the latter being subject to more attention from twelfth- and thirteenth-century chroniclers.11 Likewise, although authors borrowed heavily from the Old Testament when lamenting the loss of Jerusalem, their understanding of God’s role in the destruction of the city was seemingly influenced more by the New Testament. The crusade texts reflect the notion that God, while omnipresent and capable of punishment, was also forgiving, and that, if the Christians were repentant, he would be merciful and forgive their transgressions. As Dobbs-Allsopp noted, however, a text need not contain all nine generic elements to be identified as a city lament, even if, the more it incorporates, the more convincingly it belongs to the genre.12 That the remaining seven elements appear to varying degrees in the chronicles, as the following analysis will demonstrate, allows these texts to be considered part of the tradition.

Basic Features of the City Lament Three of Dobbs-Allsopp’s criteria are essential for a text to be categorised as a city lament: subject and mood; lamentation proper; and description of destruction. These are basic generic features concerning content and style. To define anything as a generic city lament, the subject in question must be the destruction of a city. Moreover, descriptions of city destructions share a mournful and sombre mood. Both the Mesopotamian city laments and the Book of Lamentations include detailed descriptions of the destructions of the city and of the surrounding area, for instance by comparing Jerusalem with Sodom (Lamentations 4.6). Both also relate the destruction of temples (Solomon’s Temple in Lamentations), the massacre of the city’s inhabitants and the total breakdown of society (for example, when people Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep, O Daughter of Zion, pp. 159–60. Lamentations 5.22: ‘But thou hast utterly rejected us, thou art exceedingly angry against us’. 12 Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep, O Daughter of Zion, pp. 30–2. 10 11

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Katrine Funding Højgaard cannot perform their jobs due to the destruction of the city or community).13 Mourning death, the loss of property and the destruction of cities is typically expressed with exclamatory interjections and references to weeping (emotional outbursts are central to the genre). Such common interjections alone do not determine whether a text belongs to the genre, but, when they are combined with other city lament features, they may indicate that the text aligns with it.14 The literary tradition for describing the loss of Jerusalem that developed in the decades after 1187 generally reflects the basic features of the city lament. Early letters from the Latin East, as well as contemporary historiography, contain many emotional markers and frequently allude to an inability to speak in connection with the grief. Alas-exclamations, like proh dolor!, ve! and heu, heu!, are common, express feelings of shock and horror, and emphasise the insufficiency of language – what Michael Staunton has termed ‘the convention of inexpressibility’. 15 Furthermore, authors generally adopt a sombre tone when treating the defeats of 1187. For instance, the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi laments the loss of the relic of the True Cross at Ḥaṭṭīn with alas-interjections (‘heu!’) and rhetorical speechlessness (‘quid plura?’), while historians like Robert of Auxerre and Ralph of Coggeshall have proh dolor interjections scattered throughout their descriptions of events in the Holy Land.16 Several chroniclers refer to the lamentations by Jeremiah, most notably the authors of the Historia peregrinorum and the Historia de profectione Danorum in Hierosolymam.17 In a chapter on ‘the lamentable fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem’, Magister Tolosanus emphasises the extent of their sorrow through the convention of inexpressibility, writing that ‘we are hardly able to relate without tears that the Lord’s Cross was captured by the Saracens’.18

Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep, O Daughter of Zion, pp. 66–75. Heskett identifies various city destructions in the Book of Isaiah, including Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah: Heskett, Reading the Book of Isaiah, pp. 14, 163 n. 56. 14 Dobbs-Allsopp calls this a cumulative force. Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep, O Daughter of Zion, pp. 90–2. 15 M. Staunton, The Historians of Angevin England (Oxford, 2017), p. 121. 16 IP2, p. 15; Robert of Auxerre, ‘Roberti canonici S. Mariani Autissiodorensis Chronicon’, ed. O. Holder-Egger, in MGH SS 26 (Hanover, 1882), pp. 249–52; Ralph of Coggeshall, Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson (London, 1875), p. 23: ‘Igitur anno MCLXXXVII tradita est Hierusalem (proh dolor!) in manibus nefandorum a Christianis’. 17 ‘Historia peregrinorum’, ed. A. Chroust, in MGH SRG n.s. 5 (Berlin, 1928), p. 117; ‘Historia de profectione Danorum in Hierosolymam’, in Scriptores minores historiae Danicae medii aevi, ed. M. C. Gertz, 2 vols (Copenhagen, 1917–22), II, 462. 18 Magister Tolosanus, Chronicon Faventinum, ed. G. Rossini (Bologna, 1936–39), pp. 103, 106: ‘De flebili casu regni Jerosolimitani’, ‘sine lacrimis vix dicere quimus, capta est a Saracenis crux Dei’. 13

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The Loss of Jerusalem in Western Historical Writing Historians like Otto of St Blasien and William of Newburgh likewise include lengthy descriptions of the events of 1187 with indications of how the loss of Jerusalem affected western Christianity. The pope received the lamentable (‘lamentabilis’) news and was bewailing (‘conquerens’) the disaster.19 News of the defeat reached the Latin West as both a sad (‘tristis’) and wretched (‘miserabilis’) rumour.20 Other works, like the Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum, are extremely emotional throughout, while the first chapter in book 4 of Arnold of Lübeck’s Chronica Slavorum is one long lamentation over the downfall of Jerusalem, and is laden with emotional rhetoric and biblical quotes drawn chiefly from the Old Testament.21 Furthermore, Walter Map’s De nugis curialium – a satirical collection of court gossip and anecdotes – adopts a graver tone, writing that the Holy City is now ‘laid waste by a fiercer plague than that which Jeremiah bewailed in the Lamentations’.22 He then declares that ‘many are the cries of woe, the plagues, disasters, and death which prophets have pronounced against this bitterly afflicted city, this time it seems as if the Lord had fulfilled their oracles to the uttermost’.23 This shift in mood is significant, for it suggests that the loss of Jerusalem represented a separate category from the rest of Map’s work. The basic city lament features have varying foci in the accounts of Jerusalem’s fall in 1187, but, in general, the inclusion of direct references to Lamentations and emotional descriptions of the city’s loss in contemporary historiography reflects an active engagement with the city lament genre.

Structure and Poetic Technique The Mesopotamian city laments and the Book of Lamentations share some characteristic structural devices and poetic techniques. The most prominent of these are the contrast motif, whereby the poet compares the glorious past to the desolate present, and the reversal motif, which represents the breakdown of order (for instance, when enslaved peoples come to rule in Lamentations 5.8).24

Otto of St Blasien, Die Chronik Ottos von St. Blasien und die Marbacher Annalen, ed. and trans. F. -J. Schmale (Darmstadt, 1998), p. 86. 20 William of Newburgh, ‘Historia rerum Anglicarum’, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols (London, 1884–89), I, 271, 273. 21 Libellus; Arnold of Lübeck, ‘Arnoldi Chronica Slavorum’, ed. J. M. Lappenberg, in MGH SS 21 (Hanover, 1869), pp. 162–4. 22 Walter Map, De nugis curialium: Courtiers’ Trifles, ed. and trans. M. R. James, rev. C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983), pp. 42–3: ‘pesteque cruenciori depopulatam quam fleuerit Ieremias in Trenis’. 23 Walter Map, De nugis curialium, pp. 44–5: ‘Cum tot illi contribulatissime ciuitati prophete predixerunt ululatus et pestes, clades et mortes, hac uice uidetur Dominus eorum oracula cumulasse’. 24 Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep, O Daughter of Zion, pp. 32, 38–44. 19

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Katrine Funding Højgaard The contrast motif appears repeatedly in twelfth-century historiography, usually when quoting the Book of Lamentations, such as Lamentations 1.1: ‘How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! How has the mistress of the gentiles become as a widow: the princes of provinces made tributary!’ This motif is used by, among others, Arnold of Lübeck, the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi and the Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae.25 In such cases, then, authors generally quote generously from the Old Testament, especially the Book of Lamentations, to compare the present destruction of Jerusalem with a glorious past. Besides quoting scripture, some employ other techniques to establish this juxtaposition. For example, in his Hystoria Constantinopolitana, Gunther of Pairis uses the crusader victory in 1099 as an exemplar for prospective pilgrims at the beginning of the thirteenth century.26 Likewise, the author of the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi contrasts defeat in 1187 with the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 by recalling the heroes of the First Crusade.27 This is a common motif. Otto of St Blasien juxtaposes liberation (‘liberatio’) and desolation (‘desolatio’).28 In his Chronica, Roger of Howden also mentions similarities between the 1099 victory and 1187 defeat, pointing to the fact that the names of the pope, the patriarch of Jerusalem and the German emperor were the same in 1187 as they had been in 1099.29 Contrasts that present contemporary events as worse than the past are similarly popular. Walter Map, for example, juxtaposes the homonymous jubilum and nubilum. While a Jubilee (jubilum) year brings forgiveness, peace and joy, Walter writes that the year 1187 must instead be called nubilous (nubilum), or cloudy – a year of fights, mourning and sadness.30 The author of the Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris uses Jerusalem’s violent history of multiple conquests to accentuate the significance of its present loss, writing that ‘the reason for the lamentation in our time is much more serious than the previous evil that gave

Arnold of Lübeck, ‘Chronica Slavorum’, p. 169; IP2, p. 22; Libellus, p. 208. Gunther of Pairis, Hystoria Constantinopolitana, ed. P. Orth (Zürich, 1994), p. 113: ‘Eo tempore quo celebris ista expedicio sub nobili duce Gotefrido ceterisque Francorum ac Theutonicorum principibus facta est, infidelis ille populus ita ut nunc christianis omnibus occisis vel captis terram illam occupaverat’; trans. A. J. Andrea, The Capture of Constantinople: The ‘Hystoria Constantinopolitana’ of Gunther of Pairis (Philadelphia, PA, 1997), p. 70: ‘At that time when that famous expedition led by the noble Duke Godfrey and other French and German princes was made, that infidel people, then as now, had occupied that land, having killed or captured all Christians’. 27 IP2, p. 22. 28 Otto of St Blasien, Chronik, p. 86. For similar comparisons between 1099 and 1187, see William of Newburgh, ‘Historia rerum Anglicarum’, I, 255; Robert of Auxerre, ‘Chronicon’, p. 252. 29 Howden, Chronica, II, 323. 30 Walter Map, De nugis curialium, pp. 40–3. 25 26

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The Loss of Jerusalem in Western Historical Writing rise to lamentation’.31 Although the past offered many reasons to lament the ruins of the Holy City, the present disaster was the worst yet, truly a subject worthy of lamentation. In Gunther of Pairis’ text, the holy topography of Christ’s birth, life, death and resurrection is contrasted to the present state of Jerusalem, which is ‘now dominated by the barbarism of a heathen people’.32 In a similar fashion, the Historia de profectione Danorum compares the Holy Land of Christ’s life with that land’s present defilement by the occupation of the Muslims and the expulsion or slaughter of the people.33 In both early letters and later chronicles, the reversal motif is frequently articulated through the topos of stabula equorum (that is the enemy’s use of Christian churches as stables for horses), which can likewise be found in First Crusade narratives.34 In his letter to the secular leaders of the Latin West, issued in September 1187, Patriarch Eraclius of Jerusalem writes that ‘the perfidious enemies of the Cross of Christ have turned our churches into stables for the horses, and they lie with Christian women in front of the altars’.35 Similarly, Arnold of Lübeck claims that the Muslims made God’s temple ‘a stable for their horses’ (‘stabulum equorum’), and the same notion features in the Annales Stederburgenses.36 The contrast and reversal motifs are therefore clearly used to point out the unusual nature of Jerusalem being in Muslim hands. In other words, the Christian chroniclers present it as a great loss, one which had inverted natural order.

Assignment of Responsibility In the Mesopotamian city laments, responsibility for city destructions is often assigned to the arbitrary decision of the divine assembly that governs destructive forces. In these laments, cities are usually depicted as innocent. By contrast, city destruction in the Book of Lamentations is the result of human transgression, with

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‘Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris’, ed. A. Chroust, in MGH SRG n.s. 5 (Berlin, 1928), p. 1: ‘cum utique huius nostri temporis planctus causa omnem priorem superet planctus molestiam’. Gunther of Pairis, Hystoria Constantinopolitana, p. 112: ‘ibi nunc prophane gentis dominatur barbaries’; trans. Andrea, The Capture of Constantinople, pp. 69–70. ‘Historia de profectione Danorum in Hierosolymam’, II, 462. See, for example, BB, pp. 5–6 and its extrapolation in WT, I, 133. N. Jaspert, ‘Zwei unbekannte Hilfsersuchen des Patriarchen Eraclius vor dem Fall Jerusalems (1187)’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 60 (2004), 483–516 (at 515): ‘perfidi quidem inimici Crucis Christi coram altaribus iacent cum feminis christianis, in ecclesiis equorum stabula facientes’; trans. M. Barber and K. Bate, Letters from the East: Crusaders, Pilgrims and Settlers in the 12th–13th Centuries (Farnham, 2010), p. 79. Arnold of Lübeck, ‘Chronica Slavorum’, p. 169; ‘Annales Stederburgenses’, ed. G. H. Pertz, in MGH SS 16 (Hanover, 1859), p. 221.

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Katrine Funding Højgaard the motif of human sin omnipresent. City destruction stems from divine anger, a punishment for human sinfulness.37 In contemporary historiography after 1187, responsibility for defeat falls mainly on the sinfulness of the Christian people. Authors adopt the established concept of peccatis exigentibus hominum – the idea that Christians suffered defeat because of their sins.38 This concept has its roots in the Old Testament, where the overarching theme is human transgression followed by the just judgement of an interventionist God who has a hand in all events, and thus ‘a pattern of sin, repentance, and forgiveness was established’.39 St Augustine of Hippo explained defeat in battle as ‘a humiliation visited on the conquered by the divine judgement, either to correct or to punish their sins’.40 By the eleventh century, this was well established in the historiographical tradition and was used by Pope Gregory VII and Orderic Vitalis, among others, to explain reversals for the Church.41 The sinfulness of Christians, coupled with God’s active role, is a recurrent theme in historiography composed after the loss of Jerusalem. Otto of St Blasien describes the succession crisis in the crusader states leading up to the events of 1187, perhaps intimating that it was a contributing factor, although his description mainly focuses on earthly events and the strength of the enemy.42 Walter Map’s work is also marked by a limited focus on human sinfulness, although he implicitly complains that God is too cruel. His view is reminiscent of Lamentations 2.20–22 and 5.1–18, where the poet questions the fairness of Yahweh’s punishment and complains about the hunger, thirst, rape, social collapse and slavery experienced during the siege. A single instance of the confession of sins appears in Lamentations 5.16, but the general focus in Lamentations 5 is the harshness and injustice of Yahweh’s punishment.43 This is an interesting difference, since most of the twelfth- and early thirteenth-century authors considered here focus primarily on human sinfulness, and look introspectively towards their own sins and those of their fellow Christians. The Historia peregrinorum, for example, notes that ‘the sins of men’ (‘peccatis hominum’) were responsible for God’s anger, and that ‘finally God permitted the Holy Cross and the king to be captured and victory was

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Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep, O Daughter of Zion, pp. 52–5. Divine assemblies appear several times in the Old Testament: I Kings 22.20; Job 1.6–12, 2.1–6; Zechariah 1.7–17, 3.1–3; Isaiah 6. See Heskett, Reading the Book of Isaiah, p. 14. For an investigation of the origins of this concept, see E. Siberry, Criticism of Crusading, 1095–1274 (Oxford, 1985), p. 69. Siberry, Criticism of Crusading, p. 70. Augustine of Hippo, City of God, trans. H. Bettenson, ed. G. R. Evans (London, 2003), pp. 874–5. Siberry, Criticism of Crusading, pp. 71–2. Otto of St Blasien, Chronik, pp. 82–8. Yahweh punishes the sins of the forefathers, hence the injustice. Lamentations 5.7: ‘Our fathers have sinned, and are not: and we have borne their iniquities’.

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The Loss of Jerusalem in Western Historical Writing granted to the Turks’.44 Tolosanus writes that the Christians were expelled ‘due to our sins’, whereas Robert of Auxerre points to the sinfulness of the Christian inhabitants of the crusader states: ‘The clergy, along with the people and the whole country, indulged in various luxuries and became filthy with crimes and shameful acts’.45 Contrary to the Book of Lamentations, which questions Yahweh’s judgement, the chroniclers generally agree that the fair and just God had a valid reason to expel the Latin Christians from Jerusalem. Roger of Howden writes that the defeat at Ḥaṭṭīn happened through the ‘worthy judgement of God’ (‘digno Dei judicio’), which is the exact phrasing later deployed by Ralph of Coggeshall when describing the death of the bishop of Acre at that battle.46 Arnold of Lübeck is more explicit, remarking that ‘because of the evil behaviour of men, [God] wished to impose an awful judgement upon that land’.47 While some authors emphasise the general sinfulness of Christians, thereby following Pope Gregory VIII’s directions that all Christians were to blame for the defeat, other commentators specifically criticise the Latins of the crusader states. For instance, William of Newburgh devotes an entire chapter to describing how the Holy Land, from the biblical past through to the 1180s, repeatedly cast out its people because of their sinfulness, emphasising in this regard the area’s most recent Christian inhabitants.48 The ruling population of the Latin East is likewise blamed in the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, the first chapter of which describes how: [In 1187] the Lord’s hand was aroused against His people – if we can properly call them ‘His’, as their immoral behaviour, disgraceful lifestyle, and foul vices had made them strangers to Him. For shameful practices had broken out in the East, so that everywhere everyone threw off the veil of decency and openly turned aside to filthy things.49

‘Historia peregrinorum’, ed. Chroust, p. 120: ‘Tandem permissione divina capta sancta cruce et rege Turcis applaudit victoria’; trans. G. A. Loud, The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa: The History of the Expedition of the Emperor Frederick and Related Texts (Farnham, 2010), p. 139. 45 Magister Tolosanus, Chronicon Faventinum, p. 104: ‘nostrorum hoc exigunt merita peccatorum’; Robert of Auxerre, ‘Chronicon’, p. 250: ‘Nimis enim in varios luxus effluxerant, et clerus et populus totaque terra illa facinoribus et flagiciis sordescebat’. 46 Howden, Chronica, II, 320: ‘digno Dei judicio’; Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, p. 21. 47 Arnold of Lübeck, ‘Chronica Slavorum’, p. 167: ‘propter malitiam hominum terribile super terram illam exercere volebat iudicium’; trans. G. A. Loud, The Chronicle of Arnold of Lübeck (Abingdon, 2019), p. 140. 48 William of Newburgh, ‘Historia rerum Anglicarum’, I, 249–55. 49 IP2, p. 5: ‘aggravata est manus Domini super populum Suum, si tamen recte dixerimus Suum, quem conversationis immunditia, vitae turpitudo, vitiorum faeditas fecerat 44

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Katrine Funding Højgaard Lamenting the defeat at Ḥaṭṭīn, the author of the Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae identifies sin as the root cause of the disaster: ‘And also woe to the sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, through whom the faith of all Christians is profaned, and for whom Christ is forced to be whipped and crucified once more’.50 Here, the author writes generally about the sinfulness of Christians, and also launches a direct attack against the inhabitants of the Holy City: The men dwelling in Jerusalem, loving their land, [which was] full of sins, more than Christ, moved by the remembrance of their beautiful wives, sons, and daughters, and also of Mammon, whom they served, took counsel as to how they might leave with all of these after abandoning the Holy City and the sacred places.51

The peccatis exigentibus topos thus serves as a universal explanation of defeat. Like in the Old Testament, human sinfulness gives God reason to punish the inhabitants of the Holy Land and, as we shall see, prompts him to behave as the agent of their destruction.

Divine Agents of Destruction In the Mesopotamian city laments, named gods, especially Enlil, act as warrior deities who take an active part in events. Similarly, the Book of Lamentations identifies Yahweh as the one who caused the destruction – a vengeful God who goes into battle on his day of anger.52 God’s role in events is a major theme in descriptions of the 1187 loss of Jerusalem. Magister Tolosanus writes that ‘God’s hidden judgment came forth in our times’, and the author of the Historia de expeditione proclaims a desire to appease God’s wrath, despite recognising that it was undoubtedly deserved.53 Given that the Historia de expeditione is an account of

alienum. Jam enim eousque flagitiorum consuetudo proruperat, ut omnes, abjecto erubescentiae velo, palam et passim ad turpia declinarent’; trans. H. J. Nicholson, Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A Translation of the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi (Aldershot, 1997), p. 23. 50 Libellus, pp. 156–7: ‘Ve autem et genti peccatrici, populo graui iniquitate, per quem omnium christianorum fides blasfematur, et pro quibus Christus iterum cogitur flagellari et crucifigi’. 51 Libellus, pp. 206–207: ‘homines Ierusalem inhabitantes humum suam peccatis plenam plusquam Christum diligentes, pulcrarum mulierum filiorem et filiarum Mammone quoque cui seruiebant recordatione commoti, consiliati sunt quatinus cum hiis omnibus, sancta ciuitate locisque sacris relictis, euaderent’. 52 Lamentations 1.5, 12–15, 21; 2.1–9, 17, 21. 53 Magister Tolosanus, Chronicon Faventinum, p. 104: ‘occulta Dei iudicia nostris prodeunt temporibus’; ‘Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris’, ed. Chroust, p. 1.

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The Loss of Jerusalem in Western Historical Writing Emperor Frederick Barbarossa’s expedition to the East, the author may well have envisaged another crusade to re-liberate Jerusalem and appease the angry God. The author of another narrative of Frederick’s crusade, the Historia peregrinorum, writes explicitly about God’s anger. In 1187, ‘the sins of men decreed that “the Lord made way for his anger” over the Holy City and the whole kingdom of Jerusalem’, referencing Psalm 77.50, where God’s anger is manifested through the plagues of Egypt.54 It was only through divine judgement (‘divino iudicio’), not through any human act, that the Holy Land was destroyed.55 According to Walter Map, ‘the Lord … let loose out of hell the spirit of discord’, or, as William of Newburgh put it, ‘the hand of the Lord was weighted down over the land of Jerusalem’.56 Some authors even cast Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn as God’s instrument for destruction, his rod of fury (virga furoris) – a moniker borrowed from Isaiah 10.5: ‘Woe to the Assyrian, he is the rod and the staff of my anger, and my indignation is in their hands’.57 William of Newburgh describes how this rod of divine fury advanced to the Holy City, albeit he has Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn transform from a rod into a mallet.58 The virga furoris motif also appears in the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, where the Lord permits ‘the rod of His fury, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, to rage and exterminate the obstinate people’.59 This text even suggests that Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn knew that it was not earthly powers that decided the outcome of military battles, but rather God, and that his victories at Ḥaṭṭīn and Jerusalem were the result of Christian sin.60 Indeed, where Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn is ascribed agency, it is as a reactionary opportunist. Generally, therefore, the Muslim enemy lacks agency in contemporary crusade historiography, appearing only as the pawn of God, who has decided upon the defeat of the Christians.

‘Historia peregrinorum’, ed. Chroust, p. 117: ‘peccatis hominum exigentibus viam fecit dominus semite ire sue super sanctam civitatem et universum regnum Ierusalem’; trans. Loud, Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa, p. 136. 55 ‘Historia peregrinorum’, ed. Chroust, p. 117. 56 Walter Map, De nugis curialium, pp. 42–3: ‘Dominus … spiritum discordie soluit ab inferis’; William of Newburgh, ‘Historia rerum Anglicarum’, I, 249: ‘aggravata est manus Domini super terram Ierosolymitanam’. 57 The virga furoris theme also occurs in Carolingian sources about Viking invasions. See S. Coupland, ‘The Rod of God’s Wrath or the People of God’s Wrath? The Carolingian Theology of the Viking Invasions’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 42 (1991), 535–54. 58 William of Newburgh, ‘Historia rerum Anglicarum’, I, 260, 241: ‘Sanctam quoque Civitatem idem furoris divini malleus adiit’, ‘non jam virga sed malleus’. 59 IP2, pp. 5–6: ‘et virgam furoris Sui Salahadinum ad obstinatæ gentis exterminium debacchari permisit’. 60 IP2, p. 17. 54

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The Weeping Goddess Motif A goddess grieving over the destruction of her city is common to the Mesopotamian city laments. This does not have a literal counterpart in the monotheistic Book of Lamentations, where Yahweh is the only god. Still, it is echoed in the personification of Jerusalem as a woman mourning the city’s destruction, and in the city fulfilling the role as the maiden daughter of Zion.61 Moreover, throughout Lamentations Jerusalem is portrayed as a mother and the citizens her children.62 The weeping goddess motif appears in varied forms across our corpus, as Jerusalem is anthropomorphised as a woman – as a mother and as a child – in both the early letters and the later narrative accounts. We also find examples of Jerusalem personified, but not necessarily gendered. When Patriarch Eraclius wrote to Pope Urban III from the besieged Jerusalem, he referred to ‘the Holy City of Jerusalem, which formerly was wont to have dominion far and wide over the neighbouring lands’.63 Although Eraclius does not explicitly gender the city, a civitas is always grammatically feminine, while, apart from this grammatical feminisation, the gendering of cities as female deities was rooted in an ancient Middle Eastern tradition, one later incorporated and consolidated, with modifications, into the Old Testament.64 More importantly, Jerusalem often features in crusade texts as the solitary mistress, a metaphor for Jerusalem’s loss of power that was inherited from the Book of Lamentations. The author of the Historia de expeditione clearly paraphrases Lamentations 1.1: ‘The land of the Lord and the city of the King of all kings, which was once the Lady of [all] peoples and the ruler of every province, is now made subject to the slavery of barbarian foulness; I judge it worthy of lamentation by every Christian’.65 Similar passages occur in the chronicles of Arnold of Lübeck and Magister Tolosanus, both directly quoting Lamentations 1.1. Jerusalem is described as a woman who used to be strong, a former domina gentium, but is now a tributary and enslaved.66 61 62

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Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep, O Daughter of Zion, pp. 75–8. See also Heskett, Reading the Book of Isaiah, p. 15. Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep, O Daughter of Zion, pp. 81–2. Papsturkunden für Kirchen im Heiligen Lande, ed. R. Hiestand (Göttingen, 1985), p. 327: ‘Nam ciuitas sancta Ierusalem, que quondam per finitimas terras longe lateque dominari consueuerat’; trans. P. W. Edbury, The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade: Sources in Translation (Aldershot, 1998), p. 163. D. Morris, ‘The Servile Mother: Jerusalem as Woman in the Era of the Crusades’, in Remembering the Crusades: Myth, Image, and Identity, ed. N. L. Paul and S. Yeager (Baltimore, MD, 2012), pp. 174–94 (at 175). ‘Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris’, ed. Chroust, p. 1: ‘qua terra domini et civitas regis regum onmium que prius domna gentium et princeps provinciarum exstitit, nunc in servitutem barbarice feditatis redacta est, omni christiano lugendum dignum iudico’; trans. Loud, Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa, p. 33. Arnold of Lübeck, ‘Chronica Slavorum’, p. 169; Magister Tolosanus, Chronicon Faventinum, p. 104.

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The Loss of Jerusalem in Western Historical Writing David Morris has studied the concept of the feminised city in crusade sources and, in some cases, has found a ‘conceptual link between the purported rape of women and the violation of a fully feminized Jerusalem’, whereby the sources confer ‘upon Jerusalem the powerful image of an abused and oppressed woman’.67 While contemporary historians may not explicitly sexualise Jerusalem, the gendered city is nevertheless described as a former master who is now a slave, and such allusions could symbolise abuse and oppression in a city recently conquered by Muslims. The mother motif can also appear less overtly, such as in the Historia peregrinorum, in which Henry of Strassburg refers to Jerusalem as ‘mother and nurse of your faith’.68 The Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi labels Jerusalem the lady of cities reduced to servitude, again reflecting the influence of Lamentations.69 The Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae does not so much talk about a weeping goddess as a totally destroyed and humiliated mistress.70 Jerusalem is likewise not limited to its role as domina; instead, the city performs a dual role as a mother and a child. As the cradle of Christianity, the Holy City’s importance aligns with David Morris’ argument that ‘places of origin such as a city or a country generate powerful feelings of attachment that result in the use of the language of parenthood to describe the foci of collective loyalty’.71 Accordingly, several twelfth- and early thirteenth-century sources expand the weeping goddess motif by applying the language of parenthood in connection to both Jerusalem and the pope, alternately giving Jerusalem the role of mother and child. In his letter to Urban III, Patriarch Eraclius addresses the pope with the common descriptor ‘your fatherhood’ (‘vestra paternitas’).72 After this, Eraclius requests aid on behalf of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, like sons to their father (‘tanquam filii ad patrem’), asking the pope to rouse his ‘paternal affection’ (‘paterna affectione’) on behalf of the city.73 Eraclius presents the inhabitants of Jerusalem as children and the pope as their father, but it is strongly implied that the city itself is also a child – one who needs protection against the current dangers. In most cases, however, Jerusalem’s role as mother is emphasised, as typified by this passage in Otto of St Blasien’s chronicle:

Morris, ‘The Servile Mother’, p. 174. ‘Historia peregrinorum’, ed. Chroust, p. 124: ‘mater et nutrix fidei vestre’; trans. Loud, Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa, p. 142. 69 IP2, p. 22: ‘urbem quae domina urbium in servitutem redigitur’. 70 Libellus, pp. 208–9. 71 Morris, ‘The Servile Mother’, pp. 174–5. For the use of motherhood imagery in connection to the Baltic crusades, see T. K. Nielsen, ‘Sterile Monsters? Russians and the Orthodox Church in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia’, in The Clash of Cultures on the Medieval Baltic Frontier, ed. A. V. Murray (Farnham, 2009), pp. 227–52. 72 Papsturkunden für Kirchen im Heiligen Lande, ed. Hiestand, p. 327. 73 Papsturkunden für Kirchen im Heiligen Lande, ed. Hiestand, p. 327. 67 68

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Katrine Funding Højgaard When [the pope] received the awful news of the destruction of the land beyond the sea, he imposed penance on the whole Church to placate God, and he sent out cardinal bishops and priests as legates to all the lands subject to the Church on this side of the sea, lamenting the disaster with paternal affection, and informing the sons of Mother Church that, ‘mindful of the breasts’ [Song of Songs 1.3] through whose milk the ancient church in Jerusalem was nourished, they should bring help to their suffering mother.74

Here, Otto presents a distinctive bodily image of Jerusalem as a mother with lactating breasts. The parental metaphor is unmistakeable, with the western sons urged to help their eastern mother. However, the image is more complex since we see ‘paternal affection’ on the western side too, indicating that Jerusalem has a twofold role as mother and child: mother of the western Christians and daughter of God. The Historia de profectione also touches on this bodily metaphor, though not in a gendered sense. The author asks, ‘how should the head of the body act, with the most graceful members amputated, other than searching for healing medicine?’75 Since this precedes a description of Pope Gregory VIII’s letter, we may interpret the head as the pope and the amputated members as Jerusalem. The presence of this theme is significant in that it both resembles the generic weeping goddess motif of city laments and, in some cases, develops it further by describing Jerusalem as both a mother and a child. Authors may have feminised Jerusalem because they were influenced by biblical tradition, yet, in describing Jerusalem as a child that needs parental care and aid from the Latin West, this hints at a desire to use this trope to recruit future crusaders to save the defenceless and suffering child in the East.

An Emotional Mnemonic Community The written reactions to the loss of Jerusalem in 1187 display nearly all of DobbsAllsopp’s nine elements of the city lament genre, albeit no account includes every one, and no generic feature is present in every chronicle. As a corpus, they generally fit the city lament genre, while the collective nature of the emotional reactions described brings to mind the concept of ‘emotional communities’, defined

Otto of St Blasien, Chronik, p. 88: ‘Qui lamentabili de subversione transmarine terre accepto nuncio, omni ecclesie ad placandum Deum indicta penitencia, legatos suos cardinales episcopos et presbyteros in omnes cismarine ecclesie fines direxit, filiis ecclesie matris confusionem paterno conquerens affectu et, ut matri vim pacienti memores uberum, quorum lacte primitiva ecclesia in Ierusalem nutrita in eis virili robore convaluit’; trans. Loud, Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa, pp. 175–6. 75 ‘Historia de profectione Danorum in Hierosolymam’, II, 462: ‘Quid igitur ageret caput corporis, amputatis decentioribus membris, nisi medicinam querere curationis?’ 74

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The Loss of Jerusalem in Western Historical Writing by Barbara Rosenwein as ‘groups in which people adhere to the same norms of emotional expression and value – or devalue – the same or related emotions’.76 Rosenwein’s methodology calls for the analysis of a wide range of source types from a defined geographic area in order to ‘gather a dossier of sources for each emotional community’ and to delineate the coexistence of several emotional communities within an overarching emotional community, ‘tied together by fundamental assumptions, values, goals, feeling rules, and accepted modes of expression’.77 Since this study is primarily based on a homogeneous selection of narrative accounts and is not limited to a defined area, it is not possible to identify any subordinate emotional communities. Rather, the evidence examined above reflects an overarching community that corresponds to what William Reddy has defined as an ‘emotional regime’: ‘the set of normative emotions and the official rituals, practices, and emotives that express and inculcate them’.78 Another limitation of the evidence is the degree of performative and stylistic elements displayed in the written accounts of the loss of Jerusalem. Emotional outbursts should be viewed as rhetorical models rather than genuine, lived emotions. As such, it makes more sense to examine the standards for expressing emotions rather than the emotions themselves.79 After the loss of Jerusalem in 1187, therefore, a standard for how to express emotions had already been communicated in the letters sent from the Latin East before Pope Gregory VIII’s famous crusade appeal. However, this standard was then consolidated and spread throughout the West with the dissemination of the papal bull Audita tremendi, which confirmed that the loss ought to be lamented by all Christians.80 Expressions of sorrow and despair were expected reactions, and the pope promulgated certain emotional practices.81 In the sources for the fall of Jerusalem, emotional expressions are markedly present, though they vary in degree and extent and are mostly collective, which points towards a Christian community united in its grief over the city’s loss. Although emotional expressions indicate an overarching Christian emotional community, emotional practices are not the only element to connect the authors. The many references to Lamentations, as well as memories of the past destructions of 76 77 78 79 80

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B. H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2006), p. 2. B. H. Rosenwein, ‘Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions’, Passions in Context 1:1 (2010), 1–32 (at 12–13); Rosenwein, Emotional Communities, p. 24. W. M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge, 2001), p. 29. On this point, see also S. J. Spencer, Emotions in a Crusading Context, 1095–1291 (Oxford, 2019), p. 248. Smith, ‘Audita Tremendi’, pp. 63–101. On ‘emotional practices’, see M. Scheer, ‘Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and is That What Makes Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion’, History and Theory 51 (2012), 193–220.

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Katrine Funding Højgaard Jerusalem, form a mnemonic layer in the community, that is they serve as a trigger to instruct the nature of remembrance. It is a common assumption within collective memory studies that remembering is a social activity.82 Eviatar Zerubavel’s concept of ‘mnemonic communities’ is especially pertinent here, for he has contended that much of what people ‘remember’ is not tied to what they personally experienced. Instead, they remember ‘as members of particular families, organisations, nations, and other mnemonic communities to which [they] happen to belong’.83 Zerubavel argues that no memories are created in a vacuum, for all humans share memories in different cognitive communities where past characters and events serve as ‘figures of memory’.84 Therefore, when twelfth-century authors ‘remember’ Jeremiah and the Old Testament destruction of Jerusalem, they refer to memories created within a mnemonic community that spans multiple generations. The prophets of the Old Testament and even the heroes of the First Crusade are figures remembered collectively through a communal written heritage. When writing about the loss of Jerusalem in 1187, contemporary historians recalled characters and events beyond their personal memory, things belonging to long-term cultural memory, but they remembered them interpersonally through ‘mental membership in various social communities’.85 Part of being a social human ‘presupposes the ability to experience events that happened to groups and communities long before we even joined them as if they were somehow part of our own past’.86 Significantly, the city lament genre stresses the connection between memory and emotion. The destruction of a city (or its conquest) is a violent event that inspires strong emotions; it is also one that is remembered and stored in collective memory. As Andromache Karanika has observed: ‘ultimately, lament is the genre most connected not just to memory-making but also to memory-sharing and transitions in life, for individuals and communities’.87 The destruction of cities binds communities together in common grief, generating a shared voice that shapes collective memory. It is a genre that ‘addresses par excellence communal trauma, grief, and memory’.88 The city lament genre thus tied twelfth- and early thirteenthcentury historians together in a cross-temporal emotional mnemonic community.

82

83 84

85 86 87 88

For example, see M. Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris, 1952); J. Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination (Cambridge, 2011). Zerubavel, Social Mindscapes, p. 90. E. Zerubavel, Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past (Chicago, IL, 2003), p. 2. Zerubavel, Social Mindscapes, p. 7. Zerubavel, Social Mindscapes, p. 90. Karanika, ‘Messengers, Angels, and Laments’, p. 226. Karanika, ‘Messengers, Angels, and Laments’, p. 227.

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Conclusion Twelfth- and thirteenth-century historians mourned the loss of Jerusalem with a language inspired by the Old Testament and used stylistic elements known from the city lament genre. They considered sin as a reason for the defeats, with God in an active role as avenger, elements that reflect both Mesopotamian city laments and the Book of Lamentations; and they repeated and remodelled the weeping goddess motif. These historians were probably not aware of the Mesopotamian city lament genre, but, by finding inspiration in the Old Testament, they nevertheless joined this ancient literary tradition. Indeed, the fall of cities is a universal theme, one expressed within a cross-temporal emotional mnemonic community. Although a city is not necessarily levelled to the ground, attacks and invasions can be equated with destruction, at least in a figurative sense. A transfer of power, such as that which occurred at Jerusalem in 1187, could consequently be staged as a destruction of biblical proportions. When, in 2001, the Twin Towers were razed to the ground, New York ‘fell’ along with them. The attack on the United States and the striking images of New York’s changing skyline sent shockwaves around the world, creating, if anything, a collective trauma at the turn of a new millennium. In response, New York University’s Center for Ancient Studies held a conference titled ‘Saving the City: Destruction, Loss, and Recovery in the Ancient World’ in April 2002, with papers subsequently appearing in a special issue of The Classical World.89 In the first paper, Daniel Fleming looked to ancient Mesopotamia for consolation through the Lament over Ur, which carries a ‘human voice’ and ‘bequeaths us a record of how such a loss could be mourned’.90 Even separated by four millennia, the ancient laments provide familiar language and a model for mourning the fall of a city. From the twentieth century BCE to the twenty-first century CE, city laments transgress boundaries and provide a universal way of comprehending and responding to such dramatic events. Historians of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries therefore sit as part of a conversation crossing time and space, for the loss of Jerusalem in 1187 was a unique event that simultaneously reflected a universal experience of lamenting the loss of a city.

M. S. Santirocco, ‘Saving the City: Destruction, Loss, and Recovery in the Ancient World: Introduction’, The Classical Word 97 (2003), 3–4. 90 D. E. Fleming, ‘Ur: After the Gods Abandoned Us’, The Classical Word 97 (2003), 5–18 (at 5). 89

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The Silences of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum 1 Helen J. Nicholson

One of the key criteria for evaluating the accuracy of a primary source is its closeness to the events it describes, so that historians generally give much greater weight to accounts produced during or soon after events than those produced a generation later, and to works composed by those involved in events rather than those recounting events at second- or third-hand. The history of the crusader states immediately before and during the Third Crusade has thus been thrown into doubt by recent scholarship that has called into question the date of composition and authorship of several of the Latin Christian sources for the years 1186–92. The detailed and purportedly eyewitness account in the Chronique d’Ernoul, which formed the basis of the account in the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre, has been shown by Peter Edbury to have reached its current form in the 1230s rather than the late 1180s.1 James Kane and Keagan Brewer have analysed the Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum and the so-called ‘Latin Continuation of William of Tyre’ and established that, rather than dating from the early 1190s, the latter must date from at least ten years later, while the former is a composite text incorporating material composed very soon after events, at the end of the 1180s or early 1190s, but brought into its current form long afterwards, perhaps after 1222.2 Catherine Croizy-Naquet has questioned the authorship and P. W. Edbury, ‘Ernoul, Eracles, and the Beginnings of Frankish Rule in Cyprus, 1191–1232’, in Medieval Cyprus: A Place of Cultural Encounter, ed. S. Rogge and M. Grünbart (Münster, 2015), pp. 29–51; P. W. Edbury, ‘Ernoul, Eracles, and the Collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem’, in The French of Outremer: Communities and Communications in the Crusading Mediterranean, ed. L. K. Morreale and N. L. Paul (New York, 2018), pp. 44–67. I am very grateful to Peter for sending me an advanced copy of his article ‘The Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation of William of Tyre, 1184–1247: Structure and Composition’, in Chronicle, Crusade, and the Latin East: Essays in Honour of Susan B. Edgington, ed. A. D. Buck and T. W. Smith (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 203–22. The date and composition of the chronicle attributed to Ernoul and the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre are discussed in The Chronique d’Ernoul and the Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation of William of Tyre, ed. P. W. Edbury and M. Gaggero, 2 vols (Leiden, 2023), I, 6–30; II, 1–44. 2 J. H. Kane, ‘Between Parson and Poet: A Re-examination of the Latin Continuation of William of Tyre’, Journal of Medieval History 44 (2018), 56–82; J. H. Kane, ‘Wolf’s Hair, Exposed Digits, and Muslim Holy Men: The Libellus de expugnatione Terrae 1

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The Silences of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum 1 date of the Estoire de la guerre sainte, usually attributed to Ambroise, and Stephen Spencer has asked whether the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi could have been composed before 1201 rather than the early 1220s.3 As long ago as 1962, Hans Eberhard Mayer showed that the Itinerarium peregrinorum 1 (so called because it later formed the basis of the first book of the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi) was written during the Third Crusade, before 2 September 1192, and was a primary source for many of the events it describes.4 Subsequent scholarship argued that the text was composed by a clerk in the entourage of Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, who led a contingent of the Third Crusade.5 More recently, I have argued that it was composed in the crusader camp during the autumn and winter of 1190–91, after the death of Archbishop Baldwin at Acre on 19 November 1190, the final event recorded in the work, but before the death of Duke Frederick of Swabia on 20 January 1191, who is mentioned as still alive. I further suggested that it could have been sent to King Richard I of England and his crusade army in Sicily in the winter of 1190–91 to urge them to hurry their embarkation for the Holy Land.6 If this dating is correct, IP1 – as I will refer to it here – is one of the most contemporary Latin Christian accounts of events in the Holy Land in 1187–90, but the author or authors could include only information that was available to them over a very short period of time: from the arrival of Archbishop Baldwin and his entourage in the East in September 1190 until mid-January 1191.7 Therefore, to some degree at least, IP1 reflects the situation in the crusader camp at a critical point in the Third Crusade, when the siege of Acre appeared to be making little progress, Queen Sybil of Jerusalem was dead, her half-sister Isabel was the yet-uncrowned heir and the rivalry for the throne of Jerusalem between King Guy Sanctae per Saladinum and the Conte of Ernoul’, Viator 47:2 (2016), 95–112; K. Brewer and J. H. Kane, ‘Introduction’, in Libellus, pp. 1–107 (at 96–8). 3 L’Estoire de la guerre sainte, ed. C. Croizy-Naquet (Paris, 2014), pp. 50–92; S. J. Spencer, ‘The Composition Date of the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi (IP2) Reconsidered’, English Historical Review (forthcoming). 4 IP1, pp. 245–357; see pp. 85, 103 for discussion of the date of composition. 5 For example, Hannes Möhring argued that Joseph of Exeter, nephew of Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, who accompanied him on the Third Crusade, could have been the author of IP1: H. Möhring, ‘Joseph Iscanus, Neffe Balduins von Canterbury, und eine anonyme englische Chronik des Dritten Kreuzzugs: Versuch einer Identifikation’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 19 (1984), 184–90. 6 H. J. Nicholson, ‘The Construction of a Primary Source: The Creation of Itinerarium peregrinorum 1’, Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 37 (2019), 143–65. 7 The contradictions within the text – such as not accusing Count Raymond III of Tripoli of treachery at the beginning of the narrative but referring to him as a traitor at the end (IP1, pp. 253, 354) – suggest that more than one writer may have compiled it. Alternatively, as the text was put together very quickly, it is likely that it was never thoroughly checked by the author.

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Helen J. Nicholson (Sybil’s bereaved spouse) and Conrad of Montferrat (who had married Isabel) had reached its peak. The author or authors of IP1 wrote without hindsight; writing in real time, they did not know how events would work out. But arguably they would have included only information that they wanted King Richard and his company to know, to make their summons more effective. IP1 presents a generally reliable but perplexing narrative, which omits some events mentioned by other contemporary commentators and includes some information that is only partial. This chapter will focus on five instances. Four are omissions: the coronation of Sybil and Guy in 1186 and Count Raymond III of Tripoli’s role in the fall of the kingdom; the queen’s role in the defence of Ascalon; Balian of Ibelin’s part in the defence of Jerusalem; and the Templars’ and Hospitallers’ contribution to the protection of the crusader states against the Sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn in 1187–89. The fifth instance is an allusion to greater positive contact between Queen Sybil and her brother-in-law, Conrad of Montferrat, than other sources admit, although on the other hand Muslim authors indicate that Conrad cooperated more fully with Guy than IP1 implies.8 The question to be considered is whether these omissions and silences were due to a lack of information or a deliberate authorial choice. If deliberate, the decision to omit or summarise certain events suggests that these events were significant to the conflicts and interests of the crusaders at Acre in the winter of 1190–91, before the arrival of the kings of France and England, Philip Augustus and Richard I, in April and June 1191 respectively.

The Coronation of 1186 and its Aftermath IP1 begins with an explosive diatribe against the sins of the people of the Holy Land, followed by a stirring description of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s victory at the battle of the Spring of the Cresson on 1 May 1187, focusing on the death of the Templar brother Jakelin of Mailly, described as martyrdom.9 Only then does it tell the reader something of earlier events, describing Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s rise to power, his capture of Egypt, his takeover of Damascus and his conquest of lands further north and east.10 Then we learn that the people were dangerously divided because of a struggle over the kingdom of Jerusalem between Count Raymond III of Tripoli and Guy, eighth king of the Latins. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn took advantage of this dispute to gain the kingdom.11 For details of Queen Sybil’s life and her involvement in the events of the Third Crusade, see my study in Routledge’s ‘Rulers of the Latin East’ series, Sybil, Queen of Jerusalem, 1186–1190 (Abingdon, 2022). Some of the discussion that follows here also appears in that book. 9 IP1, pp. 246–9 (esp. 249). 10 IP1, pp. 249–53. 11 IP1, pp. 253–4. 8

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The Silences of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum 1 This is a straightforward summary of events in autumn–winter–spring 1186–87. The text does not blame anyone for the disasters that befell the kingdom of Jerusalem, except Prince Reynald of Châtillon, lord of Transjordan, for breaking the truce with Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn – in fact, Reynald had regularly led raids into Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s territory every winter, truce or no truce, and claimed the right as lord of Transjordan to take toll from every caravan passing through his territory.12 But, unlike Ambroise (or whoever composed the Estoire de la guerre sainte), the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, Roger of Howden and William of Newburgh, IP1 did not, at this point in the narrative, accuse Raymond III of Tripoli of treachery.13 IP1 does not mention the treaty that Raymond made with Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn in autumn 1186; it does not even state that he had no right to dispute the crown with Guy. As the son of Hodierna, the third daughter of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Queen Morphia, Raymond was first cousin once removed of King Baldwin IV and his elder sister Sybil, Guy’s wife. Hence, although Raymond’s claim to the throne of Jerusalem was not as strong as the claim of Baldwin IV and Sybil in terms of strict primogeniture, he could claim a better right because he was a generation closer to King Baldwin II. IP1 remained neutral on this point. Nor does IP1 have anything to say about the coronation of Queen Sybil and King Guy, which the Chronique d’Ernoul, the Libellus, Roger of Howden, Guy of Bazoches and William of Newburgh depict as the main cause of Raymond’s disaffection.14 Roger of Howden evidently heard about it when he arrived at the siege of Acre in summer 1191, as he recorded a story (discussed below) in his

Imād al-Dīn in Abū Shāma, ‘Le livre des deux jardins’, in RHC Or, IV, 259; similar in Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athīr for the Crusading Period from al-Kāmil fī’l-Ta’rīkh, Part 2: The Years 541–589/1146–1193: The Age of Nur al-Din and Saladin, trans. D. S. Richards (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 316–17. 13 L’Estoire de la guerre sainte, ed. Croizy-Naquet, pp. 404, 406–7 (lines 2447–50, 2507–21, 2541–3); The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la guerre sainte, ed. and trans. M. Ailes and M. Barber, 2 vols (Woodbridge, 2003), I, 39, 40–1; II, 67–8 (lines 2443–6, 2502–16, 2536–8); IP2, p. 13, trans. as Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A Translation of the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, trans. H. J. Nicholson (Aldershot, 1997), p. 31; Howden, Gesta, I, 359–60; Howden, Chronica, II, 316; William of Newburgh, ‘Historia rerum Anglicarum’, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols (London, 1884–89), I, 256–9. IP1 did accuse Count Raymond of treachery at a much later point in the narrative, during the dispute over Isabel of Jerusalem’s divorce: IP1, p. 354. 14 Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, ed. L. de Mas Latrie (Paris, 1871), pp. 130–9; Libellus, pp. 108–11; Howden, Gesta, I, 358–9; Howden, Chronica, II, 315–16; Guy of Bazoches, ‘Cronosgraphia’, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 4998, fols 35r–64v (at fol. 63vb); William of Newburgh, ‘Historia rerum Anglicarum’, I, 255–6. 12

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Helen J. Nicholson Gesta regis Henrici secundi, which he later revised in the Chronica.15 The Latin Continuation of William of Tyre has a similar but more developed story, one more sympathetic to Sybil and Guy.16 But IP1 simply left it out, and began the account with Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s first great victory over the forces of the kingdom of Jerusalem, at Cresson on 1 May 1187. Was this silence deliberate? Arguably the details of the events at Sybil’s coronation were not essential to an account of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s victories that set the scene for the Third Crusade. Whatever happened at Sybil’s coronation, IP1 needed only to state that there was a dispute over who should rule the kingdom and as a result Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn was able to conquer it. If IP1 was written to urge King Richard and his crusade army to hurry their embarkation for the Holy Land, then IP1’s focus on Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s devastation of the Holy Land formed a more dramatic and effective opening to the work than the coronation. It could also be that IP1 omitted this event because the various accounts of events in Jerusalem in September 1186 disagreed over what happened. It appears that Sybil was told she could not become queen unless she agreed to divorce Guy and chose another husband. She agreed, then chose Guy as her husband and crowned him king.17 The surviving witnesses for these events would have included Patriarch Eraclius of Jerusalem (whose duties the archbishop of Canterbury took over when he arrived at Acre, during the patriarch’s illness), clergy who had been in attendance during the ceremony, King Guy and his entourage, members of the entourage of Sybil’s maternal uncle, Count Joscelin III of Courtenay, as well as other nobles who had been present and their entourages.18 These would all have been in the crusader camp in 1190–91 and able to explain what had happened to incoming crusaders, such as the author(s) of IP1 and Roger of Howden. But the fact that Roger of Howden revised the account in his Gesta (where Sybil agrees to divorce Guy because she realises that this is the only way she can become queen) to something more sympathetic to the queen in his Chronica (where she agrees only because the patriarch and the Templars and Hospitallers give her no choice) suggests that these witnesses had conflicting memories of events four years past.19

Howden, Gesta, I, 358–9; Howden, Chronica, II, 315–16; J. Gillingham, ‘Roger of Howden on Crusade’, in Medieval Historical Writing in the Christian and Islamic Worlds, ed. D. O. Morgan (London, 1982), pp. 60–75. 16 Die lateinische Fortsetzung Wilhelms von Tyrus, ed. M. Salloch (Leipzig, 1934), pp. 64–7 (henceforth LFWT). 17 B. Z. Kedar, ‘The Patriarch Eraclius’, in Outremer: Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem Presented to Joshua Prawer, ed. B. Z. Kedar, H. E. Mayer and R. C. Smail (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 177–204 (at 196–8); Nicholson, Sybil, Queen of Jerusalem, pp. 117–23. 18 IP1, p. 349. 19 Howden, Gesta, I, 358–9; Howden, Chronica, II, 315–16. 15

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The Silences of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum 1 However, the events at the coronation revealed that Sybil’s succession was controversial, and that there were conflicting attitudes towards her husband, Guy of Lusignan. IP1 stressed the queen’s legitimacy to rule through her descent from Fulk of Anjou (and thus her relationship to Richard I) and King Amalric of Jerusalem and noted that with her death Guy lost his claim to the throne. It depicted Sybil as a key figure, the bearer of royal authority in the realm.20 Discussion of the succession dispute of 1186 would have undermined this image of the queen, so rather than dwell on the succession question IP1 simply mentioned that there was a conflict between King Guy and the count of Tripoli and left the coronation out.

Queen Sybil’s Defence of Ascalon Three of the accounts of the crusade written during or shortly after the expedition mention Queen Sybil’s involvement in the defence and/or surrender of the city of Ascalon, which had been her centre of activity between late 1176 and 1186 when she was countess of Jaffa and Ascalon. Ralph of Coggeshall wrote that after the battle of Ḥaṭṭīn the queen, wife of King Guy, went with her household and her two daughters to the city of Ascalon and fortified it, but a year later (1188) she surrendered the city to Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn in exchange for the release of her husband.21 Roger of Howden wrote that Sybil gave Ascalon to Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn to redeem her husband Guy. He placed the surrender in 1189.22 The Latin Continuation of William of Tyre has a longer account, one more sympathetic to the queen, who appears in command of the defence.23 IP1, in contrast, did not mention the queen’s involvement in defending Ascalon. According to IP1, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn thought that he would not be able to take the city by siege and so offered that, if the city were surrendered to him, he would release the king immediately with fifteen of the more elite prisoners and allow the people of the city to depart with their property. Therefore, the city was surrendered – IP1, the Libellus and the Chronique d’Ernoul mention a solar eclipse on the day that the surrender was agreed, which fixes the date to 4 September 1187 – but Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn broke his promise. He did not release Guy, but sent him as a prisoner to Damascus, and would not release him until he promised to abjure the kingdom.24 IP1 eventually reported Guy’s release early in the following summer.25 The point that IP1 made here was that Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s word could not be trusted: he had promised to release Guy at once, but he failed to do so. On the other side, pp. 266, 335–7. Ralph of Coggeshall, Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson (London, 1875), p. 22. 22 Howden, Gesta, II, 93, with virtually the same words in Howden, Chronica, III, 20. 23 LFWT, pp. 74, 78, 89–90. 24 IP1, p. 263. For the eclipse, see also Libellus, pp. 188–9; Chronique d’Ernoul, p. 185. 25 IP1, p. 268. 20 IP1, 21

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Helen J. Nicholson Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s secretary ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Isfahānī, the historian Ibn al-Athīr and the qāḍī Bahā’ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād indicated that Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn did release Guy just as he had promised, as if the original agreement had been that Guy would not be released immediately.26 This apparent dispute over the terms of surrender was good reason for IP1 not to mention the queen’s presence at Ascalon during Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s siege. Reporting that the queen had been tricked into surrendering this strategic city, even though it demonstrated her dedication to her husband, would have been damaging to her reputation and undermined the position of the widowed Guy. In contrast, IP1 admitted the queen’s involvement in the surrender of Jerusalem but blamed others for forcing her into it.

The Surrender of Jerusalem Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s siege of Jerusalem began on 20 September 1187; the city was surrendered on 2 October 1187.27 With the exception of IP1 and the Latin Continuation of William of Tyre, the Latin Christian writers agreed with the Muslim contemporary commentators ‘Imād al-Dīn and Ibn al-Athīr that the patriarch of Jerusalem was one of the commanders of the defence of the city, and that the Frankish nobleman Balian of Ibelin (stepfather of Queen Sybil through his marriage to her stepmother, the dowager queen Maria Komnene) was the leading light in negotiating surrender terms with Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn.28 They differed on whether the terms were good. The Chronique d’Ernoul and the later Old French Continuations of William of Tyre, which were based on Ernoul’s version of events at this point, stressed that Balian negotiated the best terms for the Christians in the city that he could. This account described in detail how Balian, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn and other leading persons contributed generously towards paying the ransom required for each man, woman and child within Jerusalem, and the vast crowds of refugees who departed from the surrendered city. The reader is left with the impression that everyone, or at least virtually everyone, was allowed to go free, although the fact that the Templars, ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Isfahānī, Conquête de la Syrie et de la Palestine par Saladin (al-Fatḥ al-qussî fî l-fatḥ al-qudsî), trans. H. Massé (Paris, 1972), p. 106; Ibn al-Athīr, Chronicle, p. 60; Bahā’ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin or al-Nawādir al-Sulսṭāniyya wa’l-Maḥāsin al-Yūsufiyya by Bahā’ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād, trans. D. S. Richards (Aldershot, 2002), p. 91. 27 Ibn al-Athīr, Chronicle, pp. 331–2; Libellus, pp. 198–9, 210–11. 28 Chronique d’Ernoul, pp. 175–6, 186–7, 214–31; ‘L’Estoire de Eracles empereur et la conqueste de la terre d’Outremer’, in RHC Occ, II, 70–1, 81, 85–7, 88–98, 100; La continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 1184–1197, ed. M. R. Morgan (Paris, 1982), pp. 57, 63, 65–73; Libellus, pp. 204–11; Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines historiarum’, in Radulfi de Diceto decani Lundoniensis opera historica: The Historical Works of Master Ralph de Diceto, Dean of London, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (London, 1876), II, 56; Ibn al-Athīr, Chronicle, pp. 332–4; ‘Imād al-Dīn in Abū Shāma, ‘Le livre des deux jardins’, in RHC Or, IV, 327–9. 26

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The Silences of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum 1 Hospitallers and burghers of the city are criticised for not giving sufficiently generously to ransom the poor hints that many were not.29 ‘Imād al-Dīn and Ibn al-Athīr agreed that many of the Franks were ransomed but commented that through inefficiency and corruption very little of the ransom payments reached Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s treasury. They confirmed that many were reduced to servitude: Ibn al-Athīr put the number of captives at 16,000.30 Ralph of Diceto, dean of London, recorded that Patriarch Eraclius of Jerusalem, Balian of Nablus (i.e. Balian of Ibelin) and Reynald, lord of Sidon, negotiated the terms of surrender and handed over Jerusalem and eleven other named fortresses and cities to Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. They did this to ransom King Guy and the master of the Temple. The detailed list of surrendered fortresses, and the fact that Diceto ends his account of the surrender with the comment that the king’s brother (not previously mentioned) was released at once and the king and the master of the Temple the following Easter, suggest a hint of apology, as if Diceto was trying to put a positive spin on this disaster by showing that Jerusalem was not the only city that had been surrendered, and the terrible loss had brought some gain.31 The account of the siege in the Libellus refers to the testimony of an eyewitness who was in the city during the siege and took part in the defence. The Libellus was bitterly opposed to the surrender terms, asserting that the city could have held out longer and that the defenders declared that they would sooner have fought to the death than surrender on terms that condemned many to slavery. This account compared Balian and the other negotiators, named as Rainer of Nablus and Thomas Patricius (both associates of Balian and former witnesses of documents for King Amalric), to Judas Iscariot, who sold Christ to His enemies, calling them ‘the worst of merchants’ (‘mercatores pessimi’).32 IP1 did not mention Balian at all. It stated that the patriarch of Jerusalem and Queen Sybil were in charge of the city but were forced to negotiate its surrender because the common people were afraid and begged them to make peace. The surrender agreement was more to be wept over than commended (‘flenda magis quam commendanda’) and 14,000 were enslaved because they could not afford to pay their ransom.33 Chronique d’Ernoul, pp. 217–30; ‘L’Estoire de Eracles empereur’, pp. 88–100; La continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, pp. 67–72. On Ernoul’s work and how it was adjusted by the compiler of the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre, see Edbury, ‘Ernoul, Eracles, and the Collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem’, pp. 44–67. 30 Ibn al-Athīr, Chronicle, pp. 332–4; ‘Imād al-Dīn in Abū Shāma, ‘Le livre des deux jardins’, in RHC Or, IV, 330–1. 31 Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines historiarum’, II, 56. 32 Libellus, pp. 198–217 (esp. 210–11); Brewer and Kane, ‘Introduction’, pp. 10–12, 41–2 and n. 188. For Rainer or Renier of Nablus and Thomas son of Johannes Patricius, burgher of Jerusalem, see also P. W. Edbury, John of Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 18, 145–6; Kane, ‘Wolf’s Hair’, pp. 110–11. 33 IP1, p. 264. 29

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Helen J. Nicholson Why did IP1 not mention Balian’s role in negotiating the surrender? Towards the end of IP1 there is a ferocious attack on Balian, who is described as treacherous, cruel, wicked, fickle and faithless.34 Why not also blame him for the deplorable surrender terms of Jerusalem? I suggest that IP1 did not single out Balian for blame because he was not solely responsible for what happened. IP1’s verdict on the defeats at both Ḥaṭṭīn and Jerusalem was that they were the result of communal human sin, not the sins of any single individual.35 At Ḥaṭṭīn, defeat was due to the seven deadly sins (‘VII criminalia’), ‘from which the unfortunate army would perish’, and it was ‘not his power, but our iniquity’ that gave Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn the victory.36 Jerusalem fell because of God’s anger (‘iram domini’), and the city ‘was subjected to an alien race because of the evil of those dwelling in her’.37 The fact that IP1 did not blame Balian for the loss of Jerusalem reminds us that, although the other accounts that survive gave him a leading role, he was not the only person involved in negotiations and may not have made the final decision on them. The patriarch of Jerusalem had also been involved in the surrender process; if the author of IP1 was in the entourage of the archbishop of Canterbury, who acted as the patriarch’s locum tenens while the latter was ill in autumn 1190, he might not have wanted to denigrate the patriarch by dwelling on the surrender negotiations.38 It is interesting, however, that IP1 mentions Queen Sybil in this situation where no other contemporary source mentioned her – she was mentioned only by the later Latin Continuation of William of Tyre, which was following IP1 at this point.39 Perhaps some in the crusader army in autumn–winter 1190–91 did blame her for the surrender and this work set out to defend her by pointing out that she had no choice in the matter.

The Templars’ and Hospitallers’ Role in the War against Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn After describing the heroic deaths of the Templar brothers Jakelin of Mailly at the Spring of the Cresson on 1 May 1187 and Nicholas after the battle of Ḥaṭṭīn on 4 July that year, IP1 refers to the Templars in passing on several occasions. These include during the evacuation of Jerusalem; as joint custodians, with the Hospitallers, of King Henry II of England’s money; and reporting the release of

pp. 353–4. On the development of this theme in the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, see S. Vander Elst, ‘“The holiness of that forsaken place”: The Purpose of Sin in the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi’, Studies in Philology 116 (2019), 195–208. 36 IP1, pp. 257, 260: ‘quibus infelix exercitus erat … periturus’, ‘non sua potentia, sed inquitas nostra’. 37 IP1, pp. 264, 265: ‘alienigenis subditur a malicia habitancium in ea’. 38 IP1, p. 349. 39 LFWT, p. 75. 34 IP1, 35

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The Silences of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum 1 Gerard of Ridefort, master of the Templars, a year too late – implying that he was freed after the surrender of Montreal (Shaubak) in late spring 1189 rather than in early summer 1188. However, the text does not then mention the Templars until after the beginning of the siege of Acre, where it describes them on guard duty alongside the Hospitallers.40 The Hospitallers appear only briefly before the siege of Acre: their master, Roger of Moulins, is killed at Cresson (Gerard of Ridefort, by contrast, escapes); they are mentioned as the owners of a church at Jerusalem from whose pinnacle the Muslims removed a cross after capturing the city; and they feature alongside the Templars during the evacuation of Jerusalem and, as noted above, as co-custodians of King Henry II of England’s money.41 Both orders receive brief mentions in combat roles during the siege of Acre, with a longer description of the Templars’ role in the battle of 4 October 1189 and the death of Gerard of Ridefort.42 IP1 merely alludes to the Templars’ surrender of fortresses to obtain the release of Gerard of Ridefort and says nothing about the Templars’ defence of Gaza or the Hospitallers’ defence of Bait Jībrin in summer 1187, although these are described by the Libellus.43 It does not mention their role supporting Conrad of Montferrat in the defence of Tyre, yet brothers of both orders witnessed a number of the documents Conrad issued at Tyre in 1187–88, and when Brother Terricus of the Temple wrote to King Henry II of England early in 1188 he detailed the assistance that the brothers had given Conrad during Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s recent assault on the city.44 Neither does IP1 mention the military orders’ long defences of their fortresses in Galilee – the Templars at Safed or the Hospitallers at Belvoir (Kaukab), both described by ‘Imād al-Dīn – focusing instead on the defence of Stephanie of Milly’s fortresses of Kerak and Montreal in Transjordan, which were finally surrendered in return for the release of her son Humphrey IV of Toron, first husband of Queen Sybil’s aforementioned younger half-sister Isabel.45 Nor does it mention the Templars’ successful defence of their tower at Tortosa, their surrender of Darbsāk (Trapesac) and Baghrās (Gaston) or Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s cautious by-passing of the Hospitallers’ castle of Marqab.46 The obvious conclusion to draw from these omissions is that the author of IP1 was not particularly interested in the military orders, except where their heroism could be used to draw or strengthen a moral point: in their self-sacrifice in battle

pp. 248–9, 259–60, 268, 269, 275, 310. pp. 248, 265, 266, 269. 42 IP1, pp. 310, 312–14, 316, 349. 43 IP1, p. 275; Libellus, pp. 164–5, 186–7, 190–1. 44 Die Urkunden der lateinischen Könige von Jerusalem, ed. H. E. Mayer and J. Richard, 4 vols (Hanover, 2010), II, 863, 865, 868, 869, 871, 872, 875, 877, 884 (nos. 519, 520, 521, 522, 524); Howden, Gesta, II, 41; Howden, Chronica, II, 346–7. 45 ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Isfahānī, Conquête de la Syrie, pp. 81–2, 149–53; IP1, pp. 273–5. 46 ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Isfahānī, Conquête de la Syrie, pp. 124–6, 141–4. 40 IP1, 41 IP1,

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Helen J. Nicholson in May and July 1187 and during the siege of Acre. The defence of Kerak and Montreal demonstrated the heroism and self-sacrifice of Christian warriors in the face of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s attack just as well as the defence of Safed and Belvoir and showed that through their efforts the defenders had wrung a concession from Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn in the form of their lord’s release. In the same way, the determination of the defenders of Antioch is rewarded by the arrival of aid from King William II of Sicily.47 In fact, according to ‘Imād al-Dīn, Stephanie of Milly and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn had agreed the terms of Humphrey’s release after Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn captured Jerusalem and it was only the refusal of the garrisons of these fortresses to surrender that delayed his freedom. Either the author of IP1 did not know the terms of the agreement or chose to ignore it because it did not fit the message of the narrative.48 Moreover, given IP1’s largely unsympathetic attitude towards Conrad of Montferrat, it would have tended to play down any assistance that he received from other Latin Christians, preferring to depict him as an isolated figure who defied established authority structures rather than as a key player in the defence of the kingdom, uncle of the late King Baldwin V and brother-in-law of the queen.

Queen Sybil and Conrad of Montferrat The Muslim writers Ibn al-Athīr and ‘Imād al-Dīn agree with IP1 that on 2 October 1187 Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn allowed Sybil to leave Jerusalem with the patriarch and even to see her husband Guy.49 IP1 states that she then intended to take ship for Europe, but Conrad of Montferrat – the younger brother of her first husband, William Longsword of Montferrat – took her ship away to Tyre. The author recorded no more on this, stating ‘we will pass over it in the interests of brevity’ (‘brevitatis studio supersedemus’).50 The incident was not mentioned by any other contemporary writer. Conrad certainly did need ships to defend Tyre, so the story is not implausible. Presumably, this was information that the author of IP1 was given in the crusader camp by one of the late queen’s entourage. The failure to give more detail is consistent with IP1’s general attitude towards Conrad, minimising his role in the defence of the crusader states against Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. IP1 always calls Conrad ‘marquis’, although in fact he was not marquis at this time as his father was still alive; he did not call himself ‘marquis’ in his charters until April 1192.51 IP1 initially pp. 270–2. ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Isfahānī, Conquête de la Syrie, pp. 105–7. 49 IP1, p. 266; Ibn al-Athīr, Chronicle, pp. 333–4; ‘Imād al-Dīn in Abū Shāma, ‘Le livre des deux jardins’, in RHC Or, IV, 332. 50 IP1, p. 266. 51 Die Urkunden der lateinischen Könige von Jerusalem, ed. Mayer and Richard, II, 909 (no. 533). 47 IP1, 48

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The Silences of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum 1 depicted Conrad as a hero, who came to the Holy Land on pilgrimage, evaded capture by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s forces and became defender of Tyre.52 It acknowledges that Conrad’s arrival was a great help to the Christians who later came to the East.53 Archbishop Baldwin’s party had personal experience of this, as they had spent almost a month at Tyre in September–October 1190 recuperating from their sea voyage to the East before going on to Acre.54 IP1 went on to describe Conrad’s successful defence of Tyre against two sieges by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, and his defiance of the sultan’s moral blackmail when he tried to persuade ‘the marquis’ to surrender Tyre in return for the release of his father, the Old Marquis.55 But IP1 states that Conrad did not continue as well as he had begun. He was an extraordinary man of action and strove hard in all his endeavours, but his later deeds would discredit his earlier achievements.56 The reference to his obstruction of the queen after the fall of Jerusalem and his refusal to hand over Tyre to King Guy in spring 1189 revealed Conrad to be – in IP1’s narrative – a danger to the king and queen and so, by extension, to the kingdom.57 In contrast, Muslim commentators believed that Guy and Conrad reached an agreement in spring 1189 after their initial standoff. According to Bahā’ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād, when Guy tried to gain admission to Tyre, Conrad retorted that he was the lieutenant of the kings across the sea, and he could not give it up to Guy without their permission. ‘Imād al-Dīn had heard something similar.58 But Bahā’ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād, ‘Imād al-Dīn and Ibn al-Athīr reported that Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn thought that the king had then come to terms with Conrad and that they proposed to unite their forces against Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. The Franks undertook several cooperative engagements against Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s forces, which culminated in their army moving off to besiege Acre in August 1189.59 There is another possible interpretation of Conrad’s action in October 1187. Archbishop Joscius of Tyre had set out to Europe to get aid for the kingdom. Conrad also sent visual propaganda to Europe to assist recruitment; according to Bahā’ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād, this took the form of ‘a picture of Jerusalem on a large sheet of paper, depicting the Sepulchre to which they [i.e. the Latin Christians]

pp. 261–3. p. 262: ‘cuius adventus et venturis christicolis processit ad commodum’. 54 ‘Epistolae Cantuarienses: The Letters of the Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, from A.D. 1187 to A.D. 1199’, in Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (London, 1864–65), II, 328 (no. 345). 55 IP1, pp. 266–8. 56 IP1, p. 262. 57 For IP1’s account of the standoff between Guy and Conrad at Tyre, see IP1, pp. 305–7. 58 Bahā’ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, p. 91; ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Isfahānī, Conquête de la Syrie, p. 163; IP1, pp. 305–6. 59 Imād al-Dīn al-Isfahānī, Conquête de la Syrie, pp. 163–8; Bahā’ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, pp. 91–6; Ibn al-Athīr, Chronicle, pp. 360–1. 52 IP1, 53 IP1,

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Helen J. Nicholson come on pilgrimage and which they revere’.60 Conrad could have told his sisterin-law that she did not need to go to Europe herself; the archbishop would carry the appeal for aid while she and her daughters remained in a place of safety in the East, acting as a focus for warriors arriving from the West and lending her authority to the Christian leaders of what remained. That is what the queen did: she went to Tripoli and remained there until spring 1189 when she returned with her husband and an army of crusaders.61 However, by October 1190, when Archbishop Baldwin and his companions arrived at Acre, it was clear that Conrad was aiming at the throne of Jerusalem. IP1 described Conrad’s plot with the duke of Swabia in late summer 1190, which led to his plan to divorce the heir, Sybil’s younger half-sister Isabel, from her husband, Humphrey IV of Toron, and to claim the crown of Jerusalem for himself by marrying her.62 The archbishop of Canterbury condemned the divorce and remarriage.63 If Guy wanted to retain the throne of Jerusalem, he needed to get aid from his relatives and superiors in the West quickly. Conrad’s ambition also jeopardised any claims that Richard might make on the kingdom by virtue of his own descent from Fulk through the elder male line via Count Geoffrey of Anjou (alluded to briefly by IP1 as part of the genealogy of the kings of Jerusalem).64 The author of IP1, defending Guy’s and Richard’s interests against Conrad’s claims, had every interest in presenting the worst possible interpretation of Conrad’s past actions.

Conclusion I now return to the question posed at the beginning of this chapter: how far were IP1’s omissions and silences due to a lack of information and how far were they deliberate? There certainly were conflicts of information that may have made it difficult to work out the actual course of events, but the author or authors of IP1 also deliberately sidestepped some issues that were discussed by other contemporary writers, and framed events to fit the narrative they were compiling. This, in turn, suggests that, despite being a very early and hastily assembled historiographical response to the events it describes, IP1 offers a coherent and carefullycrafted narrative, one geared towards achieving specific literary goals.

Bahā’ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, p. 125; M. Barber, The Crusader States (New Haven, CT, 2012), p. 325; C. Morris, ‘Picturing the Crusades: The Uses of Visual Propaganda, c. 1095–1250’, in The Crusades and their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton, ed. J. France and W. G. Zajac (Abingdon, 1998), pp. 195–216 (at 197). 61 IP1, pp. 269, 305. 62 IP1, pp. 334–5. 63 IP1, pp. 352–4. 64 IP1, p. 335. 60

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The Silences of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum 1 In the early pages of IP1, the defeats at Ḥaṭṭīn and the loss of Jerusalem are blamed on communal human sin and God’s judgement, rather than on the actions of individuals. A few individual acts of heroism and self-sacrifice are highlighted to emphasise the failure of the Christian community as a whole and to demonstrate that virtue is rewarded, either with Heaven (in the case of martyrs on the battlefield) or by winning concessions from the enemy (as the defenders of Kerak and Montreal did). But, as the narrative progresses, individuals do receive blame: the case against Conrad is slowly built up, and Balian and his allies, who were not blamed for the loss of Jerusalem, are roundly condemned for their role in engineering Isabel’s divorce from Humphrey. The Templars and Hospitallers, who supported Conrad in the defence of Tyre in 1187–88, are generally sidelined and presented as supporting forces with a few heroic individuals rather than powerful military players in their own right. Readers of IP1 were led to believe that the Christians had suffered together in 1187, but they had all been equal sinners, under equal threat from Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. Now they had the hope of defeating Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, but they were divided by self-interested individuals, such as Conrad and the leading Frankish nobles of the kingdom of Jerusalem: Balian, Reynald of Sidon and Pagan of Haifa.65 IP1 offered a clear message: the Latins should unite behind the rightful king – Guy, as widower of Queen Sybil – and work together to defeat their common enemy. This narrative suggests that in the winter of 1190–91, before the arrival of Kings Philip and Richard, the crusaders at Acre were deeply divided over Guy’s and Conrad’s conflicting claims to the throne of Jerusalem. IP1 defended the reputation of Guy and opposed Conrad’s succession at a time when it seemed all too likely that the latter would succeed. What this demonstrates, moreover, are the distinct narrative challenges faced by an author (or authors) who sought to detail events in the crusader states as carefully and as positively as possible during a moment of great crisis and political fluidity in the hope of ushering forward the expected military aid. In other words, we see here how the historiographical construction of events in the Latin East could intersect with and play a key role in the promotion of crusading. The account found in IP1 would have been a timely reminder to Richard I and his crusade army that they must hurry to the Holy Land to give Guy their support before it was too late.66 In the event, as we know, Conrad did succeed – although he was then struck down by an assassin. In the winter of 1190–91, the author(s) of IP1 did not know that, but they set out to do all they could to prevent it.

pp. 353–4. Nicholson, ‘The Construction of a Primary Source’, pp. 143–65.

65 IP1, 66

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13

The Natural and Biblical Landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Orientalis Beth C. Spacey

When Jacques de Vitry (1160/70–1240) was writing his Historia orientalis (History of the East), likely composed in stages during his tenure as bishop of Acre (1216–27), the Latin-held territories of the Levant were significantly diminished in comparison to the first century of their existence.1 The former lands of the kingdom of Jerusalem south of the port city of Tyre, including the city of Jerusalem itself, had all been captured by the Ayyūbid sultan of Egypt and Syria, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, in the late 1180s, though some key footholds, such as the port of Acre, had been recovered in the intervening years.2 After the sultan’s death in 1193, though, the focus of crusading endeavour in the eastern Mediterranean became firmly fixated on Egypt, then ruled by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s brother, al-‘Ādil. Jacques himself participated in the Fifth Crusade between 1218 and 1221; a campaign that sought, and failed, to recapture Jerusalem by first subduing Egypt.3 The vast and varied landscapes and waterscapes of the Levant, then, many of which were viewed by Latin Christian contemporaries as sacred beyond any other places in God’s created order, remained outside of Latin hands, having only briefly been held by them in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries – a fact lamented by Jacques. Indeed, this On Jacques de Vitry’s life and works, see especially J. Donnadieu, Jacques de Vitry (1175/1180–1240) entre l’orient et l’occident: l’évêque aux trois visages (Turnhout, 2014). For an edition and French translation of the Historia orientalis, see Jacques de Vitry, Histoire orientale, Historia orientalis, ed. and trans. J. Donnadieu (Turnhout, 2008) (hereafter HOr). English translations are my own. For a useful overview of the debate surrounding the Historia orientalis’ date of composition, and the argument for a composition date between 1216 and 1224, see HOr, pp. 10–12. 2 For overviews of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s conquests in Syria in the 1180s, see P. M. Cobb, The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades (Oxford, 2014), pp. 184–93; J. Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History, 3rd edn (London, 2014), pp. 130–5; and N. Morton, The Crusader States and their Neighbours: A Military History, 1099–1187 (Oxford, 2020), pp. 168–89. 3 For an overview of the Fifth Crusade, see especially Riley-Smith, The Crusades, pp. 197–205. On Jacques and the memory of the Fifth Crusade, see M. Cassidy-Welch, War and Memory at the Time of the Fifth Crusade (University Park, PA, 2019), pp. 42–61, 125–47. 1

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Landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Orientalis loss, and Jacques’ belief in the imperative that Latin Christendom recoup these territories, are central themes of the Historia orientalis.4 The text is at once a crusade narrative, an itinerary of sacred sites, a history of the Holy Land, a treatise on the flora, fauna and peoples of ‘the East’, an antiIslamic polemic and more besides. It draws on many textual influences, including the works of Augustine of Hippo, Pliny the Elder, Julius Solinus, Isidore of Seville, William of Tyre and, of course, the Old and New Testaments.5 Moreover, while Jacques’ discussion may reach out to the exoticised fringes of the known world, much like the mappa mundi he tells us he also consulted in the preparation of his narrative, the city of Jerusalem remains firmly positioned at its centre.6 Although it was composed in the Latin East, it was written for audiences in western Europe, where, as Jessalynn Bird has shown, it proved popular.7 Jean Donnadieu, the text’s most recent editor, has counted no fewer than 124 manuscripts dating from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries.8 Most of the modern scholarship on the Historia orientalis focuses on its representations of the people and religions of the East, likely because of the originality of these passages.9 While the wealth of information that Jacques provides concerning eastern Christians also proved popular among late medieval audiences in the Latin West, his descriptions of foreign lands, natural and wondrous phenomena, and so-called monstrous races also appear to have contributed to the work’s popularity.10 The Dominican preacher Arnold of Liège (d. c. 1308) even amended the title of the work to emphasise these aspects, calling it Tractatus On this sense of loss in the broader circle of Innocent III’s preachers and scholars, of whom Jacques was one, see B. Bolton, ‘“Serpent in the dust: sparrow on the housetop”: Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Circle of Pope Innocent III’, Studies in Church History 36 (2000), 154–80 (esp. 155–6). 5 This is not an exhaustive list, and, while some of these sources are explicitly named by Jacques, others have been identified by scholars. See HOr, p. 31. 6 HOr, p. 406. 7 J. Bird, ‘The Historia Orientalis of Jacques de Vitry: Visual and Written Commentaries as Evidence of a Text’s Audience, Reception and Utilization’, Essays in Medieval Studies 20 (2003), 56–74 (at 56). 8 HOr, p. 8. 9 See, for example, A. Jotischky, ‘Penance and Reconciliation in the Crusader States: Matthew Paris, Jacques de Vitry and the Eastern Christians’, Studies in Church History 40 (2004), 74–83; M. Tamminen, ‘Saracens, Schismatics and Heretics in Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Orientalis: Criticism, Messages and the Use of Sources’, in Changing Minds: Communication and Influence in the High and Later Middle Ages, ed. C. Krötzl and M. Tamminen (Rome, 2013), pp. 127–50; and J. Vandeburie, ‘Latins and Levantine Christian Minorities after the Fourth Lateran Council (1215): Jacques de Vitry’s Descriptions of Eastern Christians in the Kingdom of Jerusalem’, in Minorities in Contact in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. C. Almagro Vidal, J. Tearney-Pearce and L. Yarbrough (Turnhout, 2020), pp. 143–67. 10 Bird, ‘The Historia Orientalis’, p. 59. 4

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Beth C. Spacey de naturis rerum, historia Ierosolimitane, mirabilibus mundi (A Treatise on the Nature of Things, History of Jerusalem, Wonders of the World), while others abbreviated this to simply De mirabilibus mundi.11 Viewing Jacques’ descriptions of eastern Christians alongside his broader account of the people and places of ‘the East’, Marie-Geneviève Grossel has revealed how the Promised Land of the Historia orientalis extends beyond precise geographical and temporal parameters and is presented in such a way as to emphasise its status as a land that has repeatedly revealed the failures of its occupants over time.12 As Grossel indicates, the landscapes and waterscapes of the Holy Land are central concepts underpinning the Historia orientalis. The present chapter builds on this insight to offer a sustained analysis of the form and function of these themes. Places are multivalent in Jacques’ narrative; the landscapes and waterscapes of the Holy Land are texts. To read them, at least as they are portrayed in Jacques’ narrative, is to engage with the natural, the historical and the exegetical. In other words, Jacques – or at least the Jacques conjured by the narrator – conveys these as places of natural, historical and scriptural significance that facilitate meditation on sacred place and time. That these three modes should intersect in the discussion of place in a medieval Latin Christian context has been examined by Natalia Lozovsky, who has shown that descriptions of places have much in common with, and can feature in, works of history and exegesis.13 This relationship can be attributed in large part to all three ‘types’ of writing – insofar as it is appropriate to separate medieval Latin writing into discrete genres – having the central aim of deriving a better understanding of God, a connection most influentially identified by St Augustine, with whose work we know Jacques was familiar.14 Medieval ecclesiasts believed that a fuller knowledge of nature, or of God’s created order, would facilitate a fuller understanding of the Creator, as would meditation on scripture and historical events. That the written word, and descriptions of the topography of the Holy Land in particular, could be designed to prompt internal spiritual exercise of this sort had an established tradition by the early thirteenth century and was especially evidenced in later pilgrim narratives.15 While the Historia orientalis does resemble this latter genre in places, its prompts to meditate on the works of God are by no means limited to those portions of the text, as this chapter demonstrates. Recent scholarship has, moreover, identified the centrality of the exegetical mode for the discussion of the landscapes of the Holy Land in Latin Christian Bird, ‘The Historia Orientalis’, pp. 58–9. M.-G. Grossel, ‘La terre qui mange les hommes, “l’Orient”, espace d’altérité chez Jacques de Vitry’, Cahiers des recherches médiévales et humanistes 21 (2011), 87–101. 13 N. Lozovsky, ‘The Earth is Our Book’: Geographical Knowledge in the Latin West ca. 400–1000 (Ann Arbor, MI, 2000), esp. pp. 35–6, 68–9. 14 Lozovsky, ‘The Earth is Our Book’, pp. 10–13, 20. 15 D. Webb, Medieval European Pilgrimage c. 700–c. 1500 (Basingstoke, 2002), p. 176. 11

12

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Landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Orientalis texts about the crusades and the Latin East. In her study of exegesis in twelfthcentury crusade texts, Katherine Allen Smith demonstrates how the discussion of the sacred places of the Holy Land enabled authors to locate the First Crusade in sacred space and time, a mechanism that Jacques de Vitry employed frequently in his Historia orientalis.16 Similarly, James Kane has shown how the anonymous author of the early thirteenth-century Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum (Little Book about the Conquest of the Holy Land by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn) uses discussions of the sacred topography of the Holy Land to situate those events in relation to sacred history.17 Less attention has been paid, however, to engagement with the environments of the Levant that is not obviously exegetical or framed in sacralised terms, especially when that material is held to be derivative of classical or early medieval authorities. A holistic examination of the form and function of landscapes and waterscapes in the Historia orientalis reveals that these themes, in their various guises, all contribute to Jacques’ lament for the Latin East and argument for renewed crusading enthusiasm among his western European audience.

Natural Metaphor and the Salvation of Souls Jacques’ preoccupation with the Holy Land as a place that had known Christ’s love longer than any other, and in which the sinful are chastised and the repentant blessed, is firmly established in his first chapter. It is a land, Jacques explains, the mastery of which God has handed to many people over time, though almost all have taken it for granted. In an extensive exegetical collage, Jacques weaves together three Old Testament books to make his point: ‘Almost all have made no distance between the sacred and profane [Ezekiel 22.26], considered as nothing the desirable land [Psalm 105.24], the land flowing with milk and honey [Numbers 14.8]’.18 Each of these allusions refers to God’s historical punishment of the faithlessness of the Israelites, and hints at the promise, in the omitted section of Numbers 14.8, that ‘if the Lord be favourable, he will bring us into [the Promised Land]’. Jacques continues his exposition on the singularity of the Holy Land by drawing again on the Old Testament (in this instance, Zachariah 2.8): it is like the pupil of the Lord’s eye, simultaneously the entirety of the body and the most tender part, ‘thus, if dirt falls into the eye, we hasten to remove it

K. A. Smith, The Bible and Crusade Narrative in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 98–112. 17 J. H. Kane, ‘“Blood and water flowed to the ground”: Sacred Topography, Biblical Landscapes and Conceptions of Space in the Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum’, Journal of Medieval History 47 (2021), 366–80. 18 HOr, p. 96: ‘Omnes fere inter sanctum et prophanum non habentes distantiam, pro nihilo habuerunt terram desiderabilem, terram lacte et melle manantem’. 16

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Beth C. Spacey immediately, if possible’.19 In the same way, Jacques explains, sinful inhabitants are chastised and rejected from the Holy Land. It becomes abundantly clear, as the Historia orientalis progresses, that Jacques holds the most lamentably unworthy incumbents of that land to have been the most recent, that is the people he calls the Pullani – the descendants of Franks who had settled in the Latin East.20 Jacques’ narrative of historical cycles of divine retribution against unworthy inhabitants of the Holy Land is supported by recourse to natural metaphors that help to convey the land’s spiritual – and by extension physical – vitality. As Lydia Walker has identified, Jacques was adept at ‘weaving together metaphors of ecological and human redemption’.21 Consequently, his use of natural imagery slides between the literal and the metaphorical, such that at times one is not entirely certain how literally he intends certain phrases to be interpreted. When inhabited by the righteous, the Holy Land blooms, in both a spiritual and literal sense; the land’s fecundity is a barometer of the spiritual merit of its occupants. For example, having described the origins and early practices of the military orders of the Hospitallers, Templars and Teutonic Knights, Jacques enters into an extended metaphor about the spiritual wellbeing of the land: Besides, by the many regular and religious men – anchorites, monks, canons, pious and enclosed virgins dedicated to God, chaste and holy widows – the Holy Land blossomed like a paradise of delight, and exhaled a perfume like roses, lilies and violets. For the Lord had blessed the crown of the year of his kindness, whence the beautiful parts of the desert grew so fertile that the verdure of branch and rush was springing forth where serpents and dragons had dwelt before [Isaiah 35.7].22

Isaiah 35, to which Jacques alludes at the end of this passage, is a prophecy of the restoration of the righteous to Jerusalem. The chapter (Isaiah 35.1) begins: ‘The land that was desolate and impassable shall be glad, and the wilderness p. 96: ‘ita quod sordes intrinsecus in oculum decidentes statim, pro posse nostro, ab eadem removere festinamus’. 20 HOr, pp. 288–94. Jacques also discussed the Pullani in one of his letters, written in 1217: Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de Jacques de Vitry (1160/1170–1240), évêque de SaintJean-d’Acre, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Leiden, 1960), pp. 86–7. 21 L. M. Walker, ‘Miraculous Rivers and Monstrous Cities: Landscapes and Gender Performance in Thirteenth-Century Crusading Culture’, Journal of Medieval History 47 (2021), 394–412 (at 395). 22 HOr, p. 272: ‘Multis preterea viris regularibus et religiosis: anachoretis, monachis, canonicis, sanctimonialibus et inclusis virginibus Deo dicatis, viduis castis et sanctis, Terra sancta velut paradisus voluptatis florebat, et tanquam ex rosis, liliis et violis, odorem suavitatis spirabat. Benedixerat enim Dominus corone anni benignitatis sue, unde adeo pinguescebant speciosa deserti, quod ubi serpentes prius et dracones habitaverant, oriebatur viror calami et iunci’. 19 HOr,

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Landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Orientalis shall rejoice, and shall flourish like the lily’. Therefore, Jacques identifies the Holy Land in the first half of the twelfth century as inhabited by the righteous, a past situation rendered more poignant given the subsequent punishment that led to the diminution of the Latin East. Much of the natural metaphor used in the Historia orientalis reflects Jacques’ intellectual and social milieux, though not without some innovation to suit his agendas in this particular work. Jacques had been both a student and master at the Paris schools and was part of the circle of Peter the Chanter, a figure influential in the development of anti-heretical ideas.23 He was also counted among Pope Innocent III’s ‘army of crusade preachers’, as Penny Cole puts it, having preached the Albigensian Crusade in 1212 and composed several crusade sermons.24 Consequently, Jacques’ use of key scriptural allusions in the Historia orientalis is indicative of his familiarity with anti-heretical discourses. An example of this is seen in his frequent recourse to the Parable of the Tares (Matthew 13.24–30), which had an established history of association with anti-heretical theory and preaching.25 Jacques’ contemporary, Peter of Les Vaux-de-Cernay, a nephew of the influential anti-heretical preacher Guy of Les Vaux-de-Cernay, drew on this Parable in his narrative of the early years of the Albigensian Crusade to equate the heretics of the Midi with the tares sown by the devil among the souls of the righteous.26 In the Historia orientalis, by contrast, Jacques uses the Parable to equate certain eastern Christian practices with heretical error. For example, he explains that the Jacobites, a term used to denote the West Syrian Christian Orthodox community, had turned to their error – by which he means the practice of infant circumcision – after ‘the enemy had sown tares [Matthew 13.25–6]’.27 Jacques also wove the Parable into his metaphorical palette alongside other agrarian and viticultural scriptural references, including the Song of Songs, an allusion influentially employed by Bernard of Clairvaux in reference to the See Donnadieu, Jacques de Vitry, pp. 84–106; J. Bird, ‘The Victorines, Peter the Chanter’s Circle, and the Crusade: Two Unpublished Crusading Appeals in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Latin 14470’, Medieval Sermon Studies 48 (2004), 5–28. 24 P. J. Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270 (Cambridge, MA, 1991), p. 109. On his crusade sermons, see J. Bird, ‘James of Vitry’s Sermons to Pilgrims’, Essays in Medieval Studies 25 (2008), 81–113. 25 See M. D. Barbezat, Burning Bodies: Communities, Eschatology, and the Punishment of Heresy in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2018), pp. 35–60. On the Parable of the Tares in the writing of Bernard of Clairvaux, see B. M. Kienzle, Cistercians, Heresy, and Crusade in Occitania, 1145–1229: Preaching in the Lord’s Vineyard (York, 2001), pp. 93–5. 26 See B. C. Spacey, ‘“The Root of Bitterness”: Crusade and the Eradication of Heresy from the Occitanian Landscape in Peter of Les Vaux-de-Cernay’s Historia Albigensis’, in The Crusades and Nature: Natural and Supernatural Environments and Encounters, ed. J. Bird and E. Lapina (forthcoming). 27 HOr, p. 306: ‘postea inimico superseminante zizania’. 23

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Beth C. Spacey community of the faithful.28 For example, Jacques marries imagery of viticulture and pestilence in one of his lamentations about the spiritual travails of the Levant, which he incorporates into his chapter about the Ismā‘īlī Shi‘a group otherwise known as the Assassins. Jacques explains how this group, like others in the region, had turned away from Christianity towards Islam ‘like a young seedling that had not yet fully taken root in the faith’.29 Consequently, ‘the region of the East was corrupted’ and its people ‘polluted by contagion’.30 Jacques laments that there was not one ‘Catholic man’ (‘vir catholicus’) to stand against this ‘plague’ (‘pesti’) because, before the time of Muḥammad, the Eastern Church had already been laid waste by ‘so great a multitude of treacherous heretics prevailing against a faithful few’.31 He attributes this to the absence of prelates capable of capturing ‘the little foxes destroying the vineyard of the Lord of hosts and tearing his seamless tunic’.32 Here, Jacques situates Islam within a historical continuum of heresy, identifying it as yet another threat to the wellbeing of the community of Christian souls in the East. As Jacques primes his intended audience for his narration of the First Crusade in the early chapters of the Historia orientalis, he describes how the Eastern Church had become overwhelmed: And for this reason she was left by the Lord just as a bower in a vineyard and as a hut in a cucumber garden [Isaiah 1.8]. And yet in some of its members, [it was] like a few grapes when the vintage is finished and a little olive after the shaking of the olive tree [Isaiah 24.13], as Job in the land of Uz and Lot in the region of Sodom, like the lily among thorns, enduring between the hammer and the anvil.33

Again, Jacques’ recourse to Isaiah underscores his broader emphasis on the historical (and prophesied) cycles of sin, punishment and restoration in the Holy Land. Jacques returns to discuss the Eastern Church in these terms later in the narrative, explaining how, during the later twelfth century, it began to flourish and ‘the vineyard of the Lord to grow new grapes, so that in this seemed fulfilled See Kienzle, Cistercians, Heresy, and Crusade, pp. 78–90; and Spacey, ‘“The Root of Bitterness”’. 29 HOr, p. 156: ‘tanquam planta novella nondum plene radicatus erat in fide’. 30 HOr, p. 156: ‘regio orientalis corrupta est … coinquinate contagio’. 31 HOr, p. 156: ‘tanta perfidorum hereticorum multitudo adversus paucos fideles prevalens’. 32 HOr, pp. 156–8: ‘vulpeculas vineam Domini Sabaoth demolientes et eius tunicam inconsutilem laniantes’. 33 HOr, pp. 158–60: ‘Et propter hoc a Domino derelicta est tanquam umbraculum in vinea et tanquam tugurium in cucumerario. Que tamen in quibusdam membris suis, quasi pauci racemi finita vindemia et pauce olee post concussionem olive, quasi Iob in terra Hus et Loth in regione Sodomorum, quasi lilium inter spinas, inter malleum et incudem adhuc perseverans’. 28

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Landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Orientalis what is written in the Song of Songs: “Winter is passed, the rain is departed and gone, the flowers have appeared in our land, the time to prune has arrived [Song of Songs 2.11]”’.34 Jacques’ reference to pruning in the Lord’s vineyard is part of an underlying sense of eschatological urgency woven throughout the Historia orientalis, one that often relies on the use of natural metaphor. Here, the pruning, as with the harvest in the Parable of the Tares, hints at the reaping of souls by angels at the end of the world. An anticipation of the Last Judgement, and the importance of the recapture of the Holy Land as part of its unfolding, surfaces throughout the text, often with recourse to natural metaphor. For example, Jacques also draws on viticultural imagery in his consideration of the significance of the Holy Land’s Jews in Christian eschatology: They were slaughtered by neither the Saracens themselves nor the Christians, the woody trunk assigned to the winter fire and the rejected vine reserved by the Lord until a time when, because the fruit is precious at the end of the world, the remnants of Israel will be saved, it ought to grow and produce grapes; which, converted in bitterness, now produces nothing but wild grapes [cf. Isaiah 5.2, 4].35

Here, Jacques relays the belief that the Jews would convert to Christianity in the End Times, while also repeating the Augustinian injunction against the coerced conversion of Jews.36 Elsewhere, and in seeking to emphasise what Jacques believed had been lost as a result of divine judgement upon the sinful Pullani, the former juxtaposes his description of the crimes of the latter against a discussion of how the Holy Land had thrived in the early decades of the Latin East. He returns to the metaphor of the Lord’s vines to convey this, reporting how ‘the vine of the Lord exhaled a sweet perfume even to the end of the earth’.37 However, he continues, the devil, tormented by the light of the Holy Land as manifest in the annual miracle of the Holy Fire, ‘began to think in a thousand ways and procure by various devices how he might secretly pour in his poison, tear down the Lord’s vineyard and sow

p. 218: ‘vinea Domini novos botros germinare’. pp. 328–30: ‘nec tamen ab ipsis Saracenis sicut nec a Christianis trucidantur, truncum silvestrem igni deputatum hiemali et vineam reprobam ad tempus Domino reservante, eo quod fructum pretiosum in fine mundi, quando reliquie Israel salvabuntur, debeat germinare et facere uvas, que modo in amaritudine conversa non facit nisi labruscas’. 36 Jacques is tapping into Christian discourses surrounding ‘the doctrine of Jewish witness’. See J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley, CA, 1999), pp. 23–65. 37 HOr, p. 278: ‘Cum igitur predicta Domini vinea usque ad extremum terre spiraret et suavitatem odoris’. 34 HOr,

35 HOr,

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Beth C. Spacey weeds among the shepherds sleeping in the field [cf. Matthew 13.25]’.38 Here, Jacques again draws on the Parable of the Tares to convey his ideas about the Pullani; later in the gospel (Matthew 13.38–9), Christ explains that ‘the cockle, are the children of the wicked one. And the enemy that sowed them, is the devil’.39 Jacques turns to further natural metaphors elsewhere in the section of the Historia orientialis dedicated to narrating the shortcomings of the Pullani. He describes how they had become adept at concealing the true meaning behind their words, ‘covered and adorned with beautiful leaves without fruit, like barren willows’.40 Jacques makes the comparison to the first Frankish settlers explicit, describing the Pullani as corrupted and degenerate descendants, ‘like the dregs of wine and the watery sediment of oil, like the weed grasses of grain and the rust from silver’.41 Natural metaphors, whether explicitly drawn from scriptural precedents or simply redolent of such, as with these latter examples, are a recurring feature of the Historia orientalis, and were employed as a key mechanism to convey ideas about the community of Christian souls in the Holy Land. However, discussions of spiritual landscapes, like Christ’s vineyard, are also accompanied by descriptions of physical ones, though the distinction is by no means clear-cut.

The Landscapes of a Promised and Promising Land The detailed descriptions of physical landscapes and waterscapes in the Historia orientalis serve a range of purposes in Jacques’ narrative. On the one hand, as Grossel has recognised, an emphasis on their beauty and promise in material terms may have been intended to make the prospect of crusading more appealing to would-be crusaders or settlers, should the text, or parts thereof, find its way before a lay audience.42 Alongside this, references to sites of scriptural significance emphasise the importance of the reconquest efforts Jacques calls for. Related to this, holy sites testified to the words of scripture, and Jacques appears to have drawn repeatedly on their ability to offer physical proof of episodes of historical divine retribution.

pp. 278–80: ‘cepit mille modis cogitare et variis machinationibus procurare qualiter venenum suum posset latenter infundere, vineam Domini demoliri et in agro dormientibus pastoribus zizania superseminare’. On the miracle of the Holy Fire as part of the Easter liturgy at the church of the Holy Sepulchre and its significance within the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, see J. Rubenstein, ‘Holy Fire and Sacral Kingship in Post-Conquest Jerusalem’, Journal of Medieval History 43 (2017), 470–84. 39 Matthew 13.38–9: ‘Zizania autem, filii sunt nequam. Inimicus autem, qui seminavit ea, est diabolus’. 40 HOr, p. 290: ‘foliis pulcherimis sine fructu, velut steriles salices cooperti et ornati’. 41 HOr, p. 288: ‘tanquam fex ex vino et amurca ex oleo, quasi lolium ex frumento et rubigo ex argento’. 42 Grossel, ‘La terre qui mange les hommes’, p. 90. 38 HOr,

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Landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Orientalis Jacques’ descriptions of the landscapes of the Levant are situated in his survey of the polities of the Latin East as established during and after the First Crusade. In this section of the Historia orientalis, which is located between a narrative of the First Crusade and a scorching condemnation of the descendants of the Frankish settlers, Jacques describes the history and geography of multiple towns and regions. Over the course of chapters 21–63, Jacques shifts from focusing on strategic locations and the sites of notable twelfth-century military encounters important to the consolidation of the Latin East, such as the siege of Sidon in December 1110, to concentrating on the forms of religious life lived by those who dwelt in proximity to the holy places of sacred history, such as the Syrian monks who lived near the Sea of Galilee. While the narrative focus of these passages shifts from the near to distant history of the region and back again, the discussion of the landscapes remains important throughout, spatially anchoring the narrative’s shifting temporalities. Jacques’ use of descriptions of places that did not necessarily correspond with their character at the time when he was writing has been identified by Grossel as a device deliberately intended to convey the uncertain status of those places through the presentation of a ‘fragmentary temporality’.43 It is also likely, however, that Jacques followed earlier geographers in deferring to classical authorities.44 Jacques’ overview of the twelfth-century expansion of the Latin East includes descriptions – some of which owe a level of detail to William of Tyre’s Chronicon – of Arsuf, Caesarea, Acre, Beirut, Sidon, Montreal, Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli, Tyre and Aleppo, all of which are described in bucolic terms. Caesarea, besides its convenient port, enjoys ‘the greatest abundance of gardens, pastures and flowing waters’.45 Acre nestles between the sea and the mountains, the Belus river flowing past, ‘very conveniently established with gardens and vineyards and surrounded by villages and sufficiently abounding in arable land’.46 The vineyards, forests and fruit trees of Beirut and Sidon are noted, as are the waterways of Edessa.47 The lands and waters of Antioch are similarly well-positioned, fertile, pleasant and abundant.48 Tripoli is described at some length, with Jacques emphasising its cultivable land and many water sources. Jacques, who was likely drawing here on elements of William of Tyre’s description of the region contained in a long discussion of the city of Tyre, adds that one of these sources, which springs from Lebanon, travels via underground passages and waters all the gardens of the Grossel, ‘La terre qui mange les hommes’, p. 93. Lozovsky, Geographical Knowledge, p. 152. 45 HOr, p. 176: ‘Hortorum autem et pascuorum et aquarum fluentium plurimam habet ubertatem’. Cf. WT, I, 469–70. 46 HOr, p. 178: ‘satis commode fundata hortis et vineis et casalibus circumstantibus et arrabili terra sufficienter abundans’. Cf. WT, I, 485. 47 HOr, pp. 178, 180, 184. 48 HOr, p. 186. 43 44

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Beth C. Spacey region, is thought to be ‘the fountain of gardens’ of the Song of Songs.49 To help make his point, Jacques adapts William’s text to graft a phrase from the appropriate biblical verse into his description, when he comments that the waters ‘run with a strong stream from Lebanon’.50 Jacques, again likely adapting William, also refers to the Song of Songs in his description of Tyre, which he unfolds at some length: After [other maritime strongholds] follows Tyre, an eminent and most famous city, situated in the heart of the sea, surrounded by sea waves from almost every direction, a suitable and secure port offering a station to ships beneath its walls. It is the metropolis and capital of the entire province of Phoenicia, surrounded by a wall, outworks and lofty towers, most favoured by an abundance of fish, irrigated with sweet water from springs and streams, abundant and pleasant with vines and gardens, fruit-bearing trees and fertile fields. In its territory, in a slightly elevated place, is a spring or well, above which it is said the wearied Lord rested from the journey when passing through the lands of Sidon and Tyre. Moreover, it has the clearest waters flowing internally, so that, copiously bubbling up, it irrigates all the orchards and vegetable gardens and the whole region. In the Canticles, Solomon calls this ‘the well of living waters’.51

Jacques thus weaves together several aspects of the landscapes and waterscapes of Tyre that he considers worthy of note, ranging from the strategic to the sacred, all the while conveying an enthusiasm for the verdancy of the region. Jacques’ description of Tyre also includes an example of how his narrative can shade towards natural history, as he incorporates informative asides at various points. It is from Tyre, Jacques informs us, that Tyrian purple is obtained, as it was here that the pigment was first extracted from sea snail shells.52 Jacques does not tell us the source of this information, remarking only that the people of Tyre p. 188; WT, I, 588–9. p. 188: ‘fluunt impetu de Libano’. Cf. WT, I, 589 who instead quotes verbatim Song of Songs 4.15: ‘Fons hortorum, puteus aquarum viventium, quae fluunt impetu de Libano’ (‘The fountain of gardens: the well of living waters, which run with a strong stream from Libanus’). 51 HOr, p. 198: ‘Post has vero sequitur Tyrus, egregia et famosissima civitas, in corde maris sita, ex omni parte fere marinis fluctibus circundata, portum idoneum et securam infra menia prebens navibus stationem. Est autem metropolis et caput universe Phenicis provincie, muro et antemurali et turribus eminentibus circunspecta, piscium fertilitate commodissima, fontibus et rivis aque dulcis irrigua, vineis et hortis, arboribus fructiferis et agris frugiferis fertilis et amena. In cuius territorio in loco aliquantulum | edito est fons sive puteus supra quem fessus ex itinere dicitur quievisse Dominus cum transiret per fines Sidonis et Tyri [Matthew 15.21; John 4.6]. Habet autem aquas limpidissimas intrinsecus ita copiose scaturientes, quod omnia pomaria et hortos olerum et universam irrigat regionem. Hunc Salomon in Canticis puteum aquarum viventium [Song of Songs 4.15] appellat’. Cf. WT, I, 588–60. 52 HOr, p. 202. 49 HOr, 50 HOr,

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Landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Orientalis ‘are said’ (‘dicuntur’) to have been the first to extract the natural dye. However, a remarkably similar description is found in William of Tyre, while Pliny the Elder also describes the process behind the pigment’s production at some length in his Naturalis Historia.53 Given that Jacques cites both elsewhere in the Historia orientalis, it is possible that he drew on either of these texts to reference the history of Tyrian purple from there. Jacques does reveal more of his own research into the sacred history and geography of the Levant elsewhere in the text. In his description of the region around the Sea of Galilee, he explains that he had read that John the Baptist had eaten nothing but locusts and honey while in the desert (Matthew 3.4), although he struggled to believe that St John would have eaten locusts, even if it was customary to do so in that region, because he had refused to eat bread. To get to the bottom of this, Jacques explains, he asked a Syrian monk who resided in a large monastery in the area. The monk advised Jacques that, in their refectory, the monks were often provided with a herb (herba) known as a langosta or locusta. It was this that St John had eaten.54 Thus, Jacques offers an explicit example of how meditation on the landscapes of the Holy Land can facilitate a fuller understanding of scripture. In the same chapter, Jacques considers further features of the landscape, this time turning his focus further south to the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. Jacques describes the salinity of the Dead Sea and explains that it is because of the water’s unpalatable nature that it is also known as the ‘Devil’s Sea’.55 Close by the Dead Sea is a lofty mountain of salt, and on the banks there grow trees that bear fruit with a beautiful outer skin. However, the inside of the fruit is ‘ash, and just like foul-smelling cinders’.56 Jacques explains this phenomenon in terms of historical acts of divine punishment of the land’s inhabitants and with reference to the narrative of Genesis: ‘Indeed, the Lord rained down fire and brimstone over Sodom, Gomorrah and three other cities’.57 This explanation for the nature of the fruit around the Dead Sea is likely derived from the work of Josephus, who is referenced as a source elsewhere in the Historia orientalis, here regarding the WT, I, 584; Pliny the Elder, Natural History, ed. and trans. H. Rackham, W. H. S. Jones and D. E. Eichholz, 10 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1938–62), III, 202–7 (IX.60–5). 54 This is possibly a reference to the edible pods of the carob tree. The carob is also known in English as the ‘locust tree’ and, rather circuitously given Jacques’s discussion, as ‘St John’s bread’. 55 HOr, p. 224: ‘mare Diaboli’. 56 HOr, p. 224: ‘cinis et quasi favilla fetida’. This is likely a reference to Calotropis procera, also known as the Dead Sea Apple or Apple of Sodom. Fulcher of Chartres also describes these fruits in similar, but not identical, terms, which may be a consequence of their having a common source in Josephus (see below). Unlike Jacques, Fulcher does not reflect on why they contain dust. Cf. FC, p. 379. 57 HOr, p. 224: ‘Dominus enim ignem et sulphur pluit super Sodomam et Gomorram et alias tres civitates’. Cf. Gen. 19:24. 53

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Beth C. Spacey history of Jewish-Roman conflict in the Levant in the first century CE.58 As part of Jacques’ narrative, the explanation of the fruit’s character provides yet another example of how the landscapes of the Holy Land have been shaped by historical patterns of human sin and divine punishment; these fruits are tangible proof of God’s wrath at work in that land, a wrath that – so Jacques argues – is roused yet again in the present by the degradations of the Pullani. Jacques points to the landscape as proof of past punishments in other parts of his narrative, describing how, for example, when God punished the Samaritans, ‘he condemned this cursed and reprobate land to eternal fires such that it was reduced to drought and barrenness’.59 The Holy Land’s vitality is both a metaphorical and literal indication of God’s disposition towards its inhabitants, both in the present and reaching back into sacred history.

Contemplating God’s Wonders in the East The sections of the Historia orientalis that deal with such diverse themes as climate and weather, riverscapes, flora, fauna, spices, resins, precious stones, other ‘inanimate objects’ and ‘barbarian and monstrous people’ are arguably the most derivative and the most overlooked in modern scholarship.60 Chapters 84–93, however, bookended as they are by reflections on the travails of the Holy Land, were clearly considered a no less integral aspect of the work by its author. In chapter 83, Jacques provides a brief rationale for his change of narrative direction, from extended exposition of the religious and devotional landscape to a consideration of the divine works as manifest in nature in the region. He explains that ‘the Lord has done many wonderful things in those parts’, and that he will include some examples of the many that are ‘worthy of the present work … that will perhaps benefit both diligent and studious readers’.61 p. 102; Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, trans. W. Whiston (Auburn and Buffalo, NY, 1895), IV.viii.4: ‘[Sodom] was of old a most happy land, both for the fruits it bore and the riches of its cities, although it be now all burnt up. It is related how, for the impiety of its inhabitants, it was burnt by lightning; in consequence of which there are still the remainders of that Divine fire, … as well as the ashes growing in their fruits; which fruits have a color as if they were fit to be eaten, but if you pluck them with your hands, they dissolve into smoke and ashes’. Josephus’ Jewish Wars circulated in medieval Europe in a five-book abbreviated Latin translation, and as a fuller seven-book Latin translation. R. M. Pollard, ‘Flavius Josephus: The Most Influential Classical Historian of the Early Middle Ages’, in Writing the Early Medieval West, ed. E. Screen and C. West (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 15–32 (at 27). 59 HOr, p. 326: ‘in tantum terram maledictam et reprobam eternis incendiis deputatam ariditate et sterilitate condemnavit’. 60 HOr, p. 416: ‘rerum inanimarum’; and p. 384: ‘barbaris et monstruosis populis’. 61 HOr, p. 336: ‘Multa enim in partibus illis mirabiliter operatus est Dominus … Ex quibus pauca de multis, presenti operi dignum duximus, adnectenda diligentibus et studiosis 58 HOr,

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Landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Orientalis Donnadieu has identified several knowledge traditions that appear to have influenced this portion of Jacques’ work. The first concerns the attributes and symbolic significance of various animals derived from the Greek Physiologus (second century CE) and later bestiaries. While Donnadieu points to De bestiis et aliis rebus as another of Jacques’ sources, this collection has actually been found to be an assemblage of the sixteenth century.62 Further, any similarities between Jacques’ text and one of the assemblage’s component parts, the Aviarium of the twelfth-century Augustinian prior Hugh of Fouilloy, can likely be attributed to the reliance of both on the Etymologiae (Etymologies) of Isidore of Seville, though Jacques also appears to have drawn on Pliny the Elder’s works for his descriptions of birds.63 Also folded into these sections, Donnadieu suggests, are references to romantic literature, chansons de geste, folklore and didactic material.64 As the above discussion suggests, a second set of influences pertains to knowledge about natural history such as is contained in the works of Pliny, Solinus and Isidore. Benjamin Kedar has also identified a further likely source in the anonymous Tractatus de locus et statu sancte terre ierosolimitane (A Treatise on the Place and State of the Holy Land of Jerusalem), believed to have been written in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem in the two decades prior to 1187.65 The Tractatus is considerably shorter than the Historia orientalis, though it does provide succinct surveys of many of the same themes as Jacques, including places, peoples, flora and fauna. While Jacques appears to have vastly expanded on many of the themes of the Tractatus, it is possible to identify where the former’s word choice has been influenced by the latter.66 The third undercurrent identified by Donnadieu constitutes an Augustinian desire to highlight God’s works in the world through Creation, though this is no less the underlying function of bestiaries or works of early medieval natural history. Indeed, this entire section of Jacques’ Historia lectoribus forsitan profutura’. W. B. Clarke, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-Family Bestiary: Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Woodbridge, 2006), p. 13. 63 Compare, for example, descriptions of the phoenix across these texts: HOr, p. 372; Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. S. A. Barney, W. J. Lewis et al. (Cambridge, 2006), p. 265 (XII.vii.22); Pliny the Elder, Natural History, III, 432–5 (X.2); Hugh of Fouilloy, The Medieval Book of Birds: Hugh of Fouilloy’s Aviarium. Edition, Translation and Commentary, ed. and trans. W. B. Clark (Binghamton, NY, 1992), pp. 230–4. 64 HOr, pp. 509–10 n. 6. 65 B. Z. Kedar, ‘The Tractatus de locis et statu sancte terre ierosolimintane’, in The Crusades and their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton, ed. J. France and W. G. Zajac (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 111–33; for discussion of the treatise’s date, see p. 119. 66 Compare, for example, the discussion of trees and their fruits in HOr, pp. 342–8 with Kedar, ‘The Tractatus’, pp. 128–9, or the discussion of animals in HOr, p. 352 with Kedar, ‘The Tractatus’, p. 128. 62

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Beth C. Spacey orientalis is predicated on providing evidence of God’s works in ‘the East’ in a way that bolsters the broader agenda of the narrative by pointing to the imperative of Latin Christian reconquest. Consequently, by overlooking these ostensibly extraneous, derivative or fanciful sections of the work, modern scholars have ignored a key narratorial mechanism that Jacques drew upon as part of his project. Donnadieu has suggested that the passages in chapter 88 constitute a stripping away of explanatory notes about the symbolism and significance of the animals described, such as one might find in a typical bestiary.67 However, this does not mean that this section fails to further Jacques’ reasoning behind providing this material: that the works of God as manifest in the Holy Land are innumerable, rich and indicative of the importance of renewed Latin Christian efforts. Indeed, at the beginning of chapter 88, before his description of lions, Jacques states that: ‘In the Promised Land and in the other parts of the East there are certain animals which are not found in other parts of the world’.68 Having discussed lions, Jacques goes on in this single chapter to describe lion-like lanzani, wild dogs known as papions, the panther, elephant, rhinoceros, monoceros, lynx, tiger, beaver, bear, horse, camel, manticore, cencrocota, eale, hyena, onocentaur, parandre, crocodile, hippopotamus, chimera, red bull, tricorn ox, myrmicoleon, leontophone, rats bigger than foxes, cynocephali and other unnamed beasts.69 In this survey, Jacques observes a rather capacious definition of the Holy Land and ‘other parts of the East’; while he does not always provide specific geographical information, he does refer in this chapter alone to creatures from Anatolia (Cappadocian horse), ‘Babylonia’ (chimera), Palestine (crocodile) and ‘Hyrcania’, or present-day Iran and Turkmenistan (tiger). After his discussion of monstrous peoples, perhaps in anticipation of scepticism from his intended audience, Jacques interrupts his narrative to reflect on the nature of the wondrous. First, he points to the auctoritas of his sources, stating that they are partially from ‘the histories of the East and the mappa mundi, and partly from the writings of blessed Augustine and Isidore, and from the books of Pliny and Solinus’.70 He then advises his audience to come to their own conclusions about the wondrous things he has described, stating: We compel no one to believe; let everyone abound in their own sense [Romans 14.5]. We judge that there is no danger in believing those things which are not contrary to faith or good conduct. For we know that all the works of God are

p. 512 n. 1. p. 352: ‘In terra Promissionis et in aliis partibus orientis quedam sunt animalia que in aliis partibus mundi non habentur’. 69 HOr, pp. 352–64. 70 HOr, p. 406: ‘Hec predicta que partim ex historiis orientalium et mappa mundi, partim ex scriptis beati Augustini et Isidori, ex libris etiam Plini et Solini’. 67 HOr, 68 HOr,

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Landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Orientalis wonders, although those who look upon them frequently by custom and practice are not moved to amazement.71

This way of viewing God’s wonders – as inspiring amazement only insofar as they are unfamiliar to the witness – is Augustinian in origin, and was being repeated by Jacques’ contemporaries, including Gervase of Tilbury (d. 1220).72 It is part of a broader, sacralised cosmology whereby all of Creation is indicative of the divine work and, by extension, deserving of wonder, though only that which is beyond a person’s typical experience is considered wonderful. So, Jacques continues, by the same token it may be that a cyclops would be no less amazed to see a person with two eyes than ‘we ourselves’ (‘nos ipsos’) might be to see someone with one or three eyes.73 According to this Augustinian view of the created order, miracles can only be explained with recourse to divine intervention in natural processes – a distinction Jacques points to elsewhere in the Historia orientalis when he describes a certain hot spring. Its waters, Jacques explains, can blind a perjurer and enhance the vision of the truthful, which is ‘more attributable to miracle than nature’.74 Certainly, this perspective on nature as God’s Creation and miracles as God’s intervention supports a narrative agenda that seeks to demonstrate the particular extent of God’s work in the Holy Land through the exposition of natural phenomena. Jacques later guides his narrative back to historical events in the Holy Land, namely the rise of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn and the events of the Third Crusade. It is not an abrupt change of topic; Jacques makes the transition smoothly at the beginning of chapter 94 by meditating on the works of God, including the punishment of sin, of which the events of the later twelfth century were an example. Jacques reasons that God was satisfied with all of his Creation; only sin displeases him.75 That is why, Jacques concludes, God was provoked by those who defiled the Holy Land with their sinful ways to become ‘cruel’ (‘crudelem’).76

p. 406: ‘nos neminem compellimus ad credendum, unusquisque in suo sensu abundet. Ea tamen credere que contra fidem non sunt vel bonos mores, nullum periculum estimamus. Scimus enim quod omnia Dei opera mirabilia sunt, licet per usum et consuetudinem hi qui frequenter ea intuentur nulla admiratione moveantur’. 72 For an overview of the Augustinian tradition of miracles and marvels, see B. C. Spacey, The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 17–20. Cf. Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia; Recreation for an Emperor, ed. and trans. S. E. Banks and J. W. Binns (Oxford, 2002), p. 559. 73 HOr, p. 406. 74 HOr, p. 342: ‘Hoc autem magis miraculo ascribendum est quam nature’. 75 HOr, p. 418. 76 HOr, p. 418. 71 HOr,

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Conclusion Underpinning the lengthy discussions of the landscapes and waterscapes of the Holy Land in the Historia orientalis is a desire to convey the implications of the loss of that territory – which is rationalised as yet another act of divine retribution against an undeserving people in a series reaching back into sacred history – and the urgency of its reconquest by Latin Christians. These places and spaces are employed in the service of this agenda in a variety of ways, all of which Jacques presumably anticipated his western European audience would consider compelling aspects of his call to action. First, the sanctity of those sites is emphasised, indicating how past biblical events, including episodes of divine judgement, are evidenced in the landscape. Descriptions of the Holy Land in the Historia orientalis frequently look back in time, but also prompt reflection on the future and the promise of redemption. In addition, these are landscapes that, in their fecundity and wonders, are portrayed as desirable in very practical terms; they abound with flora, fauna, minerals and bucolic spaces – at least when governed correctly, or rather piously. According to Jacques, these are landscapes that most perfectly manifest an earthly paradise wealthy in God’s works, a contention that is furthered through lengthy elaborations on the natural history and wonders of the East. Examining the landscapes and waterscapes of Jacques’ Historia orientalis, moreover, reveals the methodological dangers of applying anachronistic value-judgements about what constitutes fruitful evidence in medieval texts; in overlooking these themes, scholars have overlooked an important aspect of the author’s narrative project. Indeed, as this chapter has demonstrated, even seemingly innocuous or tangential descriptions of flora, fauna and water in the Historia orientalis could be loaded with meaning for thirteenth-century audiences in the Latin West, especially when coupled to discussions of military and political events in Frankish Outremer. For those writing the history of the Latin East, then, particularly Jacques, who did so in the hope of summoning further support in the wake of defeats suffered by both local and western crusading forces, there was a need to incorporate framings and details that could entice audiences in novel ways – a fact that again speaks to how crusading offered writers a fertile ground for written experimentation. It is only by interrogating such scenes, moreover, that we can fully appreciate the complex ways in which Jacques, like other crusade authors, set about achieving his wider narrative goals.

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The Masculine Experience and the Experience of Masculinity on the Seventh Crusade in John of Joinville’s Vie de Saint Louis Mark McCabe

John of Joinville’s Vie de Saint Louis is one of the key historical accounts of the career of the saint-king Louis IX of France (d. 1270).1 Most scholarship on this text has, therefore, concerned itself primarily with Louis.2 However, Joinville’s narrative offers far more than just a hagiography of the Capetian saint, as the passages in which Joinville recalls his own experiences and reactions to events, particularly in a crusading context, are highly significant – for example, in relation to the recent scholarly emphasis on investigating the expression of emotions in medieval narratives.3 Building on this work, the following chapter considers how ideals of masculinity found in Joinville’s text were embodied and enacted on the Seventh Crusade (1248–54) – an expedition led by Louis, which, despite swiftly capturing Damietta on 6 June 1249 and achieving a pyrrhic victory in the battle of Manṣūra (8–11 February 1250), failed to wrest Jerusalem from Ayyūbid control.4 Importantly, Joinville’s account of this enterprise offers the first, or at least the This chapter uses Caroline Smith’s translation of Joinville’s text: John of Joinville and Geoffrey of Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. C. Smith (London, 2008) (henceforth Smith). For reference, the edition by Jacques Monfrin is also cited: John of Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. and trans. J. Monfrin (Paris, 2002) (henceforth Joinville). 2 For Louis’ career and posthumous reputation, see W. C. Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership (Princeton, NJ, 1979); J. Richard, Saint Louis, Crusader King of France (Cambridge, 1992); J. Le Goff, Saint Louis, trans. G. E. Gollrad (Notre Dame, IN, 2009); M. C. Gaposchkin, ‘Boniface VIII, Philip the Fair, and the Sanctity of Louis IX’, Journal of Medieval History 29 (2003), 1–26; M. C. Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity, and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2010); The Sanctity of Louis IX: Early Lives of Saint Louis by Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres, trans. L. F. Field, ed. M. C. Gaposchkin and S. L. Field (Ithaca, NY, 2014). 3 S. J. Spencer, Emotions in a Crusading Context, 1095–1291 (Oxford, 2019). 4 For historians’ reconstructions of the crusade, see C. Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (London, 2006), pp. 770–802; T. Asbridge, The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land (London, 2010), pp. 577–608. 1

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Mark McCabe most detailed, attempt by a crusade participant to offer first-person insights into the crusading mindset, more particularly that of an elite male crusader.5 Although participant crusade texts date back to the First Crusade (1096–99), such as the anonymous Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, and were composed for each of the major crusading expeditions thereafter, including Geoffrey of Villehardouin’s and Robert of Clari’s accounts of the Fourth Crusade (1202–04), all of these works were written, at least for the most part, in the third person.6 Earlier crusade authors, therefore, did not look to place the focus upon themselves, nor could they be termed homodiegetic.7 Part of Joinville’s significance rests on the fact that the inclusion of his own perspective was intended to lend authority to the events described. This chapter also adds to the recent spate of fruitful studies of crusading masculinity, exemplified by the 2019 essay collection Crusading and Masculinities.8 Despite this work, Joinville’s Vie has hitherto not been subjected to a detailed gendered reading, with the notable exception of Joanna Phillips’ consideration of Louis’ illness and its implications for his masculinity.9 In this, Phillips concluded that masculine ideals were intrinsically linked to embodiment, and that illness negatively affected both the leadership capacity and masculine reputation of crusade leaders.10 However, it is the gendered nature of Joinville’s own experience, not that of Louis, that is the chief concern here, as notions of what it meant to be an elite man permeate the text. Within the Vie, many men are judged by whether they conformed to these standards, but Joinville also critiques himself 5

6

7

8

9

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C. Smith, Crusading in the Age of Joinville (Aldershot, 2006), p. 43. S. Marnette, ‘The Experiencing Self and the Narrating Self in Medieval French Chronicles’, in The Medieval Author in Medieval French Literature, ed. V. Greene (New York, 2006), pp. 115–34 (at 118). On the term ‘homodiegetic’ and its use in crusade narratives, see M. Bull, Eyewitness and Crusade Narrative: Perception and Narration in Accounts of the Second, Third and Fourth Crusades (Woodbridge, 2018), p. 306. Crusading and Masculinities, ed. N. R. Hodgson, K. J. Lewis and M. M. Mesley (Abingdon, 2019). See also A. Holt, ‘Between Warrior and Priest: The Creation of a New Masculine Identity during the Crusades’, in Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Thibodeaux (Basingstoke, 2010), pp. 185–203; N. R. Hodgson, ‘Normans and Competing Masculinities on Crusade’, in Crusading and Pilgrimage in the Norman World, ed. K. Hurlock and P. Oldfield (Woodbridge, 2015), pp. 195–213; M. M. Mesley, ‘Episcopal Authority and Gender in the Narratives of the First Crusade’, in Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. P. H. Cullum and K. J. Lewis (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 94–111; N. R. Hodgson, ‘Reputation, Authority and Masculine Identities in the Political Culture of the First Crusaders: The Career of Arnulf of Chocques’, History 102 (2017), 889–913. J. Phillips, ‘Crusader Masculinities in Bodily Crises: Incapacity and the Crusader Leader, 1095–1274’, in Crusading and Masculinities, ed. Hodgson, Lewis and Mesley, pp. 149–64. Phillips, ‘Crusader Masculinities in Bodily Crises’, pp. 158–9.

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The Masculine Experience and the Experience of Masculinity by admitting to suffering a deterioration of manhood through self-confessed cowardice and the experience of fear. Joinville, then, wrote and described the masculinity that he himself lived, or at least tried to live. Taking inspiration from John Tosh’s belief that ‘questions of behaviour and agency have for too long been side-tracked by a historical practice dominated by questions of meaning and representation’, and borrowing three key concepts from sociological research on masculinity (autonomy, honour and homosociality), this chapter will demonstrate that historical crusade narratives, like Joinville’s, offer an invaluable window onto the expected behaviour and agency of elite men in thirteenth-century western Europe.11

John of Joinville and His Vie de Saint Louis Born in 1225, Joinville inherited the titles of lord of Joinville and seneschal of Champagne on his father’s death in 1239. Educated at the court of Count Thibault IV of Champagne, Joinville became squire to the count at the age of sixteen. When Louis’ crusade departed in 1248, John would have been twenty-three – though, as he tells us, he was already married with two children.12 Like many men of his era, crusading was integral to Joinville’s identity as an elite aristocratic male – his grandfather had died on the Third Crusade, two uncles were involved in the Fourth Crusade and his father had fought on both the Albigensian and Fifth Crusades.13 Joinville’s participation in the Seventh Crusade thus aligns with Nicholas Paul’s argument that crusading was an act performed in remembrance of one’s ancestors and an expected duty for the nobility.14 It was undoubtedly also a defining characteristic of their elite masculinity. Turning to Joinville’s Vie de Saint Louis, the text was commissioned by Joan of Navarre, queen to Louis IX’s grandson, Philip IV of France, with the intention of producing a record of the late king’s words and deeds.15 It was completed in 1309 and dedicated to her son, the future Louis X.16 However, Joinville’s text is no mere mirror for princes. Caroline Smith has demonstrated that, of the 769 11

12 13

14 15 16

J. Tosh, ‘The History of Masculinity: An Outdated Concept?’, in What is Masculinity? Historical Dynamics from Antiquity to the Contemporary World, ed. J. H. Arnold and S. Brady (Basingstoke, 2011), pp. 17–35 (at 18); D. Crouch, The Birth of Nobility: Constructing Aristocracy in England and France, 900–1300 (Harlow, 2005); R. M. Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia, PA, 2003). Smith, Crusading in the Age of Joinville, p. 47; Gaposchkin, Making of Saint Louis, p. 181. Smith, Crusading in the Age of Joinville, pp. 172–4. N. L. Paul, To Follow in their Footsteps: The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2012), p. 27. Smith, p. 141; Joinville, p. 144. Smith, Crusading in the Age of Joinville, p. 47.

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Mark McCabe numbered paragraphs that make up the Vie, over 550 are devoted to Louis’ first crusade.17 Joinville placed the crusade, and by extension himself, at the centre of the work – an unusual decision given that the genre of the mirror for princes usually took the form of third-person accounts of kings or great men deemed worthy of emulation. Surrounding the crusade narrative is the so-called ‘framing’, which includes the opening of the work, where Joinville described Louis’ kingship and qualities, as well as the post-crusade material detailing Louis’ return to France and his moral reform.18 Historians largely agree that the Vie is a composite text, comprising various parts written at different times, though the ordering of their creation is disputed.19 It appears that both of the framing sections were written for Louis’ canonisation process in 1297, but although Jacques Le Goff suggested that the crusade section was written shortly after Joinville returned to France in 1254, Cecilia Gaposchkin has contended that it was written later, shortly after Louis’ death in 1270.20 It is beyond the remit of this chapter to offer a definitive composition date, but it is accepted here that the crusade section was produced first, and only later incorporated into the final version of the text created for Louis’ canonisation.21 Yet, the composition date should not be viewed as the point at which Joinville first recalled the stories he disseminated. On numerous occasions, he tells the reader that certain episodes, especially those concerning war, would have been recounted in front of other knights or aristocratic ladies. For example, during the battle of Manṣūra, the count of Soissons allegedly said to Joinville: ‘we’ll talk of this day again you and I, in the ladies’ chamber’.22 This is important to establish because the idea of someone setting down their memoir is often viewed as a lone recollection of events that transpired long ago. This was not the case with Joinville’s Vie: these stories were retold, perhaps on numerous occasions and to differing audiences, as part of a process of collective and transactional memorialisation that Marcus Bull has recently highlighted was crucial to the construction of historical record – even that which we define as eyewitness.23 The very fact that Joinville was requested to produce his book, moreover, suggests that he was already known to possess and regale audiences with stories of the crusade. Joinville’s text should consequently be viewed as reification of his memory, not a hazy recollection. While Joinville’s text has inspired numerous studies, Smith notes that the ‘full potential of Joinville’s Vie as a source for the 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Smith, Crusading in the Age of Joinville, p. 52. Smith, pp. 147–72, 300–36; Joinville, pp. 152–210, 542–82. Smith, Crusading in the Age of Joinville, pp. 61–2; Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 379. Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 379; Gaposchkin, Making of Saint Louis, pp. 182–3. This argument challenges Jacques Monfrin’s contention that the text was written in a single stint. See Joinville, pp. 69–79. Smith, p. 206; Joinville, p. 290. See also Smith, p. 201; Joinville, pp. 278–80. Bull, Eyewitness and Crusade Narrative, especially pp. 1–125.

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The Masculine Experience and the Experience of Masculinity motivation and experiences of crusaders in the thirteenth century has not yet been fully exploited’.24 The following analysis aims to address this lacuna, focusing in particular on Joinville’s self-presentation of masculinity.

Autonomy Joinville’s social milieu and his position vis-à-vis the homosocial group of elite males to which he belonged are established early in his work with an account of how the plan to crusade came to fruition. This exemplifies the masculine quality of autonomy – a concept that David Gilmore has shown to be key in his study of various cultures’ construction of masculinity.25 To have autonomy – or terms synonymous with it, like agency and control – is to be free from domination and instead to have dominion over others.26 To have these, then, is to be a man; to be deprived of them is unmanly. Historians have shown that autonomy and similar attributes were historically integral to hegemonic masculinity.27 Louis’ decision to go on crusade was, therefore, an expression of autonomy; William Chester Jordan argues that he took the cross to assert his independence from his mother, Blanche of Castile.28 Those who joined Louis were likewise expressing this masculine trait. Once Louis joined the crusade after his recovery from serious illness, his brothers also pledged themselves to the expedition, followed by the leading French nobles, Duke Hugh IV of Burgundy and Count William of Flanders.29 These men took the cross because Louis had done so; they were not inspired by a papal bull or a unique response to events in the Holy Land. This is a classic example of Raewyn Connell’s hegemonic masculinity in action, with the conduct of the apex male setting standards of emulation for the others.30 Moreover, taking the cross offered the chance to discharge the duty they felt as nobles to go on crusade, while it gave Louis the opportunity to unite the French barons and to reforge the bonds broken with those who had taken part in a rebellion against him between 1241 and 1242.31 Joinville does not provide the reason for his own decision to participate in the crusade. After naming many of the country’s leading barons who took the cross, 24 25 26

27

28 29

30

31

Smith, Crusading in the Age of Joinville, p. 11. D. Gilmore, Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (New Haven, CT, 1990), pp. 48–51, 199–200. Gilmore, Manhood in the Making, p. 129. J. Tosh, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity and the History of Gender’, in Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History, ed. S. Dudink, K. Hagemann and J. Tosh (Manchester, 2004), pp. 41–58 (at 42). Jordan, Louis IX, p. 13. Smith, p. 173; Joinville, p. 212. R. W. Connell and J. W. Messerschmidt, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’, Gender and Society 19 (2005), 829–59; R. W. Connell, Masculinities, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2005). Jordan, Louis IX, pp. 14–35.

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Mark McCabe he simply tells us that he did so as well.32 This suggests that he pledged himself to the expedition because many other men of his status had done so, and that his position in this homosocial circle determined his actions. Joinville further expresses self-agency when detailing his departure, describing his feelings and concerns in the following terms: And then I left Joinville, not to enter my castle again until my return. I was on foot, barelegged and wearing a hairshirt. I went thus on pilgrimage to Blécourt, Saint-Urbain and other shrines thereabouts. As I made my way to Blécourt and Saint-Urbain, I did not want to cast my eyes back towards Joinville at all, fearful that my heart would melt for the fine castle and two children I was leaving behind.33

Numerous aspects of masculinity can be unpicked here. Smith argues convincingly that Joinville presents a motif of sacrifice in referencing the abandonment of his children and castle.34 This passage can also be interpreted as evidence that he sacrificed his identity as a knight, since he departed more overtly as a penitential pilgrim. He was surrendering two symbols of his manhood: first, his children, who demonstrated his virility; and second, his castle, which symbolised his family’s status and honour, as well as his own strength and power. This tallies with Christoph Maier’s observation that ‘men were encouraged to embrace and endure the emotional hardships of crusading caused by physical suffering and separation from families with a view to the spiritual rewards gained from the crusade’.35 For Maier, this was integral to their masculine identity.36 Moreover, while departure scenes in medieval texts have often been viewed as a trope, Joinville was relating a real event. He exposes his vulnerability early in the narrative in a situation that other noble crusaders would have experienced, and it seems probable that he expected his audience to find the scene relatable. There was no obvious narrative need for Joinville to offer this emotional scene, since it goes against the image of the courageous warrior rendered fearless by placing their faith in God and welcoming martyrdom.37 Revealing his insecurities about 32 33 34

35

36 37

Smith, p. 173; Joinville, p. 212. Smith, p. 176; Joinville, pp. 218–20. Smith, Crusading in the Age of Joinville, p. 65. C. T. Maier, ‘Propaganda and Masculinity: Gendering the Crusades in ThirteenthCentury Sermons’, in Crusading and Masculinities, ed. Hodgson, Lewis and Mesley, pp. 21–35 (at 26). Maier, ‘Propaganda and Masculinity’, p. 29. For the crusades and martyrdom, see J. Riley-Smith, ‘Death on the First Crusade’, in The End of Strife, ed. D. Loades (Edinburgh, 1984), pp. 14–31; C. Morris, ‘Martyrs on the Field of Battle before and during the First Crusade’, Studies in Church History 30 (1993), 93–104; C. Smith, ‘Martyrdom and Crusading in the Thirteenth Century: Remembering the Dead of Louis IX’s Crusades’, Al-Masāq 15 (2003), 189–96; H. J.

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The Masculine Experience and the Experience of Masculinity the forthcoming campaign provides his audience with the confidence to believe in Joinville as narrator and that the hardship he suffered on crusade was genuine. Autonomy is further established in two other ways. First, Joinville’s wife is not mentioned, suggesting he neither needed her permission to go on crusade nor consulted her about his participation.38 His silence about consulting his wife is important, because he seemingly did not wish to reveal to his audience that his wife supported or opposed his wishes, thereby making this decision appear to be entirely his own. The second feature that enhances Joinville’s autonomy is the fact that he is presented as a lone pilgrim. As seneschal of Champagne, Joinville would have been accompanied by a retinue of knights and numerous others in his service, but this is not how he presents the departure. Instead, we are provided with a scene more befitting a romance and, given his links to Thibault IV of Champagne, a known lyrical composer, perhaps informed by the chanson de départie genre.39 Here is a single knight leaving on a quest, never knowing if he will return. Autonomy and agency were evidently central to Joinville’s conception and demonstration of his manhood – a theme to which we shall return below when discussing his loss of autonomy during his captivity at the hands of his Muslim enemy.

Masculinity Determining Actions Some of the most intriguing expressions of behaviour determined by appropriate masculine conduct occurred at the battle of Manṣūra. According to Christopher Tyerman, Joinville’s account of the battle ‘provides one of the most vivid pictures of the experience of medieval fighting, the chaos, camaraderie, improvisation, horror and sheer bravery of the battlefield’.40 This is significant because earlier crusade narratives presented battles from a third-person perspective and usually focused on heroic actions and general bravado.41 While Joinville recalls others’ heroics, his own actions are not presented in such a light. For example, when describing intense fighting at Manṣūra, he relates how he was pinned to his horse

38

39 40

41

Nicholson, ‘“Martyrium collegio sociandus haberet”: Depictions of the Military Orders’ Martyrs in the Holy Land, 1187–1291’, in Crusading and Warfare in the Middle Ages: Realities and Representations. Essays in Honour of John France, ed. S. John and N. Morton (Farnham, 2014), pp. 101–18; Spencer, Emotions in a Crusading Context, pp. 27–70. Originally crusaders needed spousal permission to go on crusade, but Pope Innocent III had changed this requirement in 1201: N. R. Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (Woodbridge, 2007), p. 238. See L. M. Paterson, Singing the Crusades: French and Occitan Lyric Responses to the Crusading Movements, 1137–1336 (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 167–78. Tyerman, God’s War, p. 793. For example, see Robert of Clari, La conquête de Constantinople, ed. and trans. P. Noble (Edinburgh, 2005), p. 90.

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Mark McCabe by his opponent’s lance and only released by drawing the sword strapped to his horse.42 After being unhorsed and forced to fight on foot, Joinville states that his fellow knight and comrade, Erart of Sivry, suggested they should move to a ruined house nearby and await the king. Joinville reported: ‘As we went there, on foot and on horse, a great horde of Turks rushed at us. They brought me to the ground, rode over me and sent the shield flying from my neck’.43 Upon entering the house, the crusaders were forced into a corner, while their enemies on the upper floors stabbed at them with lances. The crusaders defended themselves so vigorously, we are told, that ‘they received the praises of all the preudommes in the army and from those who were witness to the deed and those who heard tell of it’.44 The experience of war was no doubt retold in this way to celebrate such performances and to gain honour from other members of elite society. This sharing of experience was, in other words, a form of homosocial bonding. However, for Joinville and his comrades, their autonomy and lives in this instance hung in the balance, and it was only through personal prowess that both were successfully preserved. Here, Joinville described the horrific injuries sustained by those knights being attacked: There my lord Hugh of Ecot was wounded by three lance blows in the face, as was my lord Ralph, and my lord Frederick of Louppy by a lance between the shoulders; the wound was so large that blood came from his body as from the bunghole of a barrel. My lord Erart of Sivry received a sword blow full in the face, so that his nose was hanging down over his lip.45

The graphic description of these wounds indicates that this was an especially memorable event – this is not a generic description of wounds like those found in other chronicles, but rather a further demonstration of the vividness, and perhaps also authenticity, of Joinville’s account. Such serious injuries had the potential to compromise masculinity, for anything that prevented a knight from enacting his role as a warrior was tantamount to a loss of manhood. Yet, it could also be a marker of masculine strength, skill and bravery to receive and survive a blow of such devastation, as Erart had done at Manṣūra – the prominent scarring left by such a wound would have signalled his warrior status, despite the disability it may have caused.46

Smith, p. 200; Joinville, pp. 276–8. Smith, p. 201; Joinville, p. 278. 44 Smith, p. 201; Joinville, pp. 278–80. 45 Smith, p. 201; Joinville, p. 280. 46 I. A. MacInnes, ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes: Injury and Death in Anglo-Scottish Combat, c. 1296–c. 1403’, in Wounds and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture, ed. L. Tracy and K. DeVries (Leiden, 2015), pp. 102–27 (at 108, 117–18). 42 43

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The Masculine Experience and the Experience of Masculinity Whereas Erart’s wound demonstrated his manliness, Joinville spent this scene praying to St James, and was seemingly uninvolved in the fighting.47 Despite this, Erart then asked Joinville and the others if he should request aid from the king’s brother, Charles, count of Anjou, whom they could see outside. This was not a simple request from Erart, for Joinville records that it was inflected by notions of honour and shame. Thus, Erart is quoted as saying: ‘My lord, if you thought that neither I nor my heirs would be reproved for it, I would go and seek help for you from the count of Anjou’.48 Joinville reassured Erart that such an act would be honourable, as it would save their lives, and that Erart was in mortal danger if he did not get help. Charles of Anjou was duly brought to aid them, causing the Ayyūbids to flee.49 What is important here is that it was thanks to Erart that Joinville and the others were rescued, albeit Erart subsequently died from his wounds.50 Erart’s actions were courageous, a fact not tempered by his horrific injury; rather, his battle scar likely added to his reputation, not least because it could be perceived as evidence of the sacrifice he had made to rescue his companions. Perhaps not coincidentally, this scene is reminiscent of the Chanson de Roland, in which the eponymous hero finally sounds the horn for help after being struck by a fatal blow.51 This suggests Joinville sought to show that the ideals of masculinity encountered in epic (or later chivalric) literature could be found mirrored in the lived masculinity of the martial class. Joinville’s recollection of this conversation also reveals that standards of manhood were at the forefront of how men perceived their ability to act. Erart’s concern for his, and future generations of his family’s, honour – that leaving the battlefield to seek help might be perceived as an admission of weakness, or even as cowardice – prevented him from acting without the consensus of other men.52 After all, honour was a key aspect of the type of elite masculinity which Joinville, along with other near-contemporary crusade writers, such as Geoffrey of Villehardouin and Robert of Clari, used to frame his narrative and to understand events.53 Rather than acting independently, Erart consulted his companions to avoid the impression that they were unable to help themselves as a group and needed the assistance of a stronger man, which effectively rendered them unmanly.

47 48 49 50 51

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Smith, p. 201; Joinville, p. 280. Smith, p. 201; Joinville, p. 280. Smith, pp. 201–2; Joinville, p. 280. Smith, p. 201; Joinville, p. 280. The Song of Roland: An Analytical Edition, ed. and trans. G. J. Brault, 2 vols (University Park, PA, 1978), II, 108–11. This mirrors the suggestion by certain chroniclers of the First Crusade that those who had fled Antioch during that initial venture had shamed not only themselves, but also their families and successors. See, for example, BB, p. 66. Crouch, The Birth of Nobility, p. 79; N. R. Hodgson, ‘Honour, Shame and the Fourth Crusade’, Journal of Medieval History 39 (2013), 220–39.

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Mark McCabe The presentation of this scene poses important questions regarding how masculinity informed individual and collective decision-making in battle. It is certainly possible that some chose to die rather than ask for help, believing the latter would compromise their manhood. For instance, such dynamics are discernible in Joinville’s account of the death of Louis’ younger brother, Robert of Artois, while pursuing his enemies into Manṣūra at the start of the battle. Joinville tells us that Robert had argued with the Templars over who should be in the vanguard, remarking that: as soon as the count of Artois had crossed the river, he and all his men threw themselves on the Turks, who fled before them. The Templars let him know that he had done them a great dishonour by going on ahead, when he should have gone after them. They asked him to let them go ahead, as the king had decided they should.54

Robert did not respond, however, and so Joinville continues: When the Templars saw what was happening, they believed they would be dishonoured if they were to allow the count of Artois to stay ahead of them. And so they all set spur, as and when each saw his chance, and gave chase to the Turks who were fleeing before them.55

This ended in disaster for all involved: Robert, his men and the Templars were massacred. Other accounts provide additional details, but for Joinville it was clear that the Templars were motivated by honour, to their detriment.56 Though Robert’s rashness and youthful folly were to blame for his demise, this reasoning did not apply to the Templars, who were concerned with being deemed cowardly because it was their duty to protect the king’s brother. Consequently, they had to follow him even though he was acting recklessly and putting their lives at risk. It also appears that Robert had robbed the Templars of the honour associated with being the first to enter the fray. While Robert’s demise can be pinned on his failure to act prudently, which constituted a failure of manliness, the Templars died attempting to preserve their honour and, by extension, their masculinity. Honour and shame therefore affected the agency and autonomy of these men, as it was integral to their decision-making: they may not have wanted to engage in certain behaviour, knowing that it was dangerous, but, as Joinville presents it, they were compelled to do so by honour.

Smith, pp. 199–200; Joinville, pp. 274–6. Smith, p. 200; Joinville, p. 276. 56 For a longer version of events, see ‘Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, de 1229 à 1261, dite du manuscrit de Rothelin’, in RHC Occ, II, 602–6. 54 55

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The Masculine Experience and the Experience of Masculinity Significantly, Joinville concluded his account of the battle by admitting that there were those who had either brought shame upon themselves or acted honourably, writing: ‘in this battle there were many supposedly worthy men who shamefully fled … They took flight in panic, and we could not get any of them to stay with us. I could name several of them, but I will refrain from doing so because they are dead’.57 Joinville praised some at Manṣūra by name, singling out Guy of Mauvoisin for his honourable conduct, but the omission of names almost certainly reflects an awareness that his reporting of the deserters’ actions could damage the reputation of their offspring.58 It was enough for Joinville’s authorial purposes, then, to construct a scene in which dishonourable behaviour occurred – a salutary lesson for all knights, not just for the relatives of real-life cowards.

Captivity After Manṣūra, the deterioration of the crusaders’ situation caused them to retreat to Damietta on 5 April 1250. It was during this withdrawal that many crusaders were captured and imprisoned by their Muslim adversaries. Joinville’s vivid descriptions of his captivity provide some of the most evocative moments in the narrative, especially regarding issues of autonomy and honour. This is one of only two works from the crusading era in which a captive provides a first-hand insight into their experience, the other being Walter the Chancellor’s account of the captivity endured by Antiochene forces, himself included, following defeat at the battle of the Field of Blood in 1119.59 Joinville’s imprisonment was short, lasting from 8 April to 6 May 1250. However, although it has rarely been discussed in detail by crusade historians, seemingly because it marks an end to the military aspect of the campaign and fails to offer insights into the crusade itself, or has been mined only for information on Louis, it nevertheless sheds light on Joinville’s conception of masculinity.60 As a prisoner, Joinville was at the mercy of his captors; he could be executed at any time, as he recorded happening to others. His captivity was an emasculating experience, primarily because it resulted in a loss of autonomy. When the Ayyūbids boarded Joinville’s retreating vessel, capturing him and others, it appears his elite status saved him from the immediate death dealt to those

Smith, p. 207; Joinville, p. 292. Smith, p. 207; Joinville, p. 292. 59 N. Morton, ‘Walter the Chancellor on Ilghazi and Tughtakin: A Prisoner’s Perspective’, Journal of Medieval History 44 (2018), pp. 170–86; Y. Friedman, Encounter between Enemies: Captivity and Ransom in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Leiden, 2002), p. 105. 60 M. C. Gaposchkin, ‘The Captivity of Louis IX’, Quaestiones medii aevi novae 18 (2013), 5–114; M. Cassidy-Welch, Imprisonment in the Medieval Religious Imagination, c. 1150–1400 (Basingstoke, 2011), pp. 101–23. 57 58

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Mark McCabe of a lower status, who had no ransom value. He was taken into the hold of their ship, where he confessed that ‘because I was afraid and unwell, I began to shake violently’.61 This admission of fear and physical frailty is surprising, especially for a high-status man whose role required him to be strong and courageous. It is certainly unusual for such an admission of anxiety to be found in medieval writing, with Iain Macdonald noting that examples of nobles being afraid were usually omitted from chronicles.62 While Stephen Spencer thinks it is questionable as to whether personal anecdotes ‘can be accepted as prima facie reflections of the author’s emotional experience’, Joinville’s recollection of his emotional response nevertheless denotes that he wanted to stress his emasculated status to his audience.63 This vulnerability is further emphasised when Joinville explains that he believed he was suffering from an incurable ailment, an abscess in his throat. His followers were convinced that he was about to die and began crying; however, their Muslim captors offered reassurance and provided the medicine that cured him.64 In doing so, the Ayyūbids are shown to have had absolute control over Joinville’s life: they could have killed him or left him to die, but he was saved on both occasions, albeit not by his own efforts. Joinville’s passivity comes to the fore in this passage: he was not acting, he was being acted upon, and was entirely dependent on the mercy of his captors. Other elite comrades are likewise described being emasculated by these circumstances. For example, after having his hamstrings cut in battle, the knight Ralph of Vanault could not stand and had to be carried to the latrines on the back of an elderly Muslim knight.65 This would have been a humiliating experience; not only was Ralph incapacitated by injury, but he was reliant on an old man to help him perform a basic bodily function. There is an element of infantilisation here, which further underlines the debasement of Ralph’s masculinity. Joinville’s record of his captivity was also punctuated by instances of fellow prisoners being killed in front of him. As powerful men, he and his companions were used to making decisions and having power of life and death over others, but they were now entirely at the mercy of their enemies, trusting that their own status would make them valuable enough to be spared. Joinville recalled an example of this with a personal connection. When the prisoners were being moved from ship to shore, Joinville’s priest fainted and was summarily thrown into the river by his captors. This occurred to numerous infirm prisoners, shocking Joinville, who told his translator:

Smith, p. 226; Joinville, pp. 334–6. A. Macdonald, ‘Courage, Fear and the Experience of the Later Medieval Scottish Soldier’, Scottish Historical Review 92 (2013), 179–206 (at 205–6). 63 Spencer, Emotions in a Crusading Context, p. 81. 64 Smith, p. 226; Joinville, p. 336. 65 Smith, p. 226; Joinville, p. 336. 61

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The Masculine Experience and the Experience of Masculinity this struck me as a wicked thing to do since it was contrary to the teachings of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, who said that one must not kill any man once one had given him one’s bread and salt to eat. In reply I was told that these men were worth nothing since their illness rendered them helpless.66

The illness of the prisoners meant they had no value, while Joinville’s helplessness further signals his emasculated status. Despite his best efforts, he could not perform his knightly role as a protector of the weak and the infirm (and of the Church); he could only watch them die. His only hope was to invoke the chivalric values of the former sultan of Egypt and Syria, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, who had recaptured Jerusalem from the Latins in 1187 and was subsequently transformed into a paragon of chivalry in western Europe.67 Subsequently, Joinville recorded his joy at being reunited with other high-status prisoners, even though it was short-lived: We had hardly been there any time when one of the most high-ranking men there made us all get up, and he led us into another pavilion. The Saracens were holding many knights and other people prisoner in a yard surrounded by an earthen wall. These men were led out from the enclosure in which they had been held, one by one, and the Saracens asked them, ‘Do you want to renounce your faith?’ Those who refused to do so were taken to one side and beheaded, while those who reneged were taken to the other.68

This was performed in front of the high-status Christians as an act of hypermasculinity – the demonstration of extreme violence to project power, to convince the captives to agree to the demand that the Latin-held castles of Outremer be surrendered.69 It is likely that these executions presented no real threat to Joinville himself, or to the other high-status men, owing to their ransom value, and so he did not express fear. However, this changed when he reported how, while being transported back to Damietta following their liberation, a group of Muslim soldiers boarded his ship, intent on beheading the crusaders.70 Some men accepted their fate and began to make their final confessions, but Joinville records that: for my part I could not recall any sins I had committed. Instead, I was thinking that the more I tried to defend myself and the more I tried to escape, the worse Smith, p. 227; Joinville, p. 338. M. Jubb, The Legend of Saladin in Western Literature and Historiography (Lewiston, NY, 2000). 68 Smith, p. 228; Joinville, p. 340. 69 Smith, p. 228; Joinville, p. 342. For more on hypermasculinity, see E. Wood, ‘Hypermasculinity as a Scenario of Power: Vladimir Putin’s Iconic Rule, 1999–2008’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 18 (2016), 329–50. 70 Smith, p. 233; Joinville, p. 352. 66 67

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Mark McCabe it would be for me. And then I signed myself with the cross and knelt at the feet of one of the Saracens, who held a carpenter’s Danish axe, and said, ‘Thus died Saint Agnes’.71

Seemingly believing that it was his time to face the executioner, Joinville described Guy of Ibelin kneeling beside him and confessing his sins. Joinville, as makeshift confessor, absolved him, but admitted that ‘when I got up from that spot, I could not remember anything that he had said or told me’.72 This lapse of memory could be ascribed to the fear of his imminent death, albeit Joinville then reported that: They made us get up from where we were and imprisoned us in the galley’s hold; many of our people thought they had done this because they did not want to attack us all together, but rather to kill us one by one. We stayed there in a miserable condition all that night; we were lying so close together that my feet were touching the good Count Peter of Brittany and his were right next to my face.73

This was evidently a demeaning experience for Joinville and the other highstatus men, and only added to the emasculation of captivity. Joinville and his fellow captives were eventually released, but his account of this experience conveyed a loss of what defined him and others as elite men. They were stripped of autonomy, agency and control over themselves and others. They were vulnerable and at the mercy of their captors, who used their leverage and dominance to torture the crusaders, both mentally and physically. While the crusade was a form of penitential warfare, and so Joinville’s suffering was of spiritual value, to be imprisoned in this way remained a shameful experience. The descriptions given by Joinville form a counterpoint to the crusade-related stories retold in chansons de geste – even the Chanson des Chétifs, which centres on the heroic exploits of a group of captive crusaders during the First Crusade – through which many secular men would have learned about the crusading past.74 The chansons emphasised glory and death in battle; emasculation like Joinville’s was rare, if it occurred at all. There was occasional suffering through injury or starvation, Smith, p. 233; Joinville, p. 352. For thirteenth-century perceptions of St Agnes, see Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. W. G. Ryan, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ, 1993), I, 101–4. 72 Smith, p. 233; Joinville, p. 352. 73 Smith, p. 233; Joinville, p. 354. 74 S. T. Parsons, ‘Making Heroes Out of Crusaders: The Literary Afterlife of Crusade Participants in the Chanson d’Antioche’, in Jerusalem the Golden: The Origins and Impact of the First Crusade, ed. S. B. Edgington and L. García-Guijarro (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 291–305. On the Chétifs, see The Chanson des Chétifs and Chanson de Jérusalem: Completing the Central Trilogy of the Old French Crusade Cycle, trans. C. Sweetenham (Farnham, 2016), pp. 7–22. 71

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The Masculine Experience and the Experience of Masculinity but these facets were part of the penitential experience of crusading. Joinville’s emasculation, and his recollection of it, makes his work unique among the extant crusade narratives.

Homosociality on the Crusade Homosociality, the recognition that masculine identity is ‘constructed and socially performed primarily in relation to other men rather than in opposition to women and the feminine’, has recently been employed by Rachel Moss and Amanda McVitty, among others, to demonstrate its value for analysing masculinity in the context of medieval knighthood.75 Significantly, Joinville provides several examples of homosocial behaviour during the Seventh Crusade, usually when providing exemplars of good conduct. For example, he had to maintain his own household of knights on crusade, while these homosocial bonds were crucial to upholding his honour, particularly through his demonstration of largesse, or generosity. As Christopher Fletcher asserts, the purpose of largesse was to show proper decorum while also demonstrating correct behaviour between men of noble status.76 It was, in short, a key marker of masculinity. The performance of largesse was an integral means by which an apex or hegemonic male, like a king or a nobleman, supported and preserved a loyal band of followers.77 It was also important because it displayed a lack of concern for personal material wealth, thereby linking it to the virtue of temperance. Joinville appreciated this, noting how he ensured that his men were treated with courtesy when they dined with him. Regarding drinking, he claimed to have supplied his men with plenty of fine wine: I bought at least a hundred barrels of wine, and I always had the best one drunk first. I diluted the valets’ wine with water and that of the squires with less water. At my own table my knights were provided with a large flask of water, and they diluted the wine as they pleased.78

Significantly, difference in social standing was demarcated here by the strength of the wine. This established both that Joinville was the hegemonic male within this sub-group of knights and that drinking was an important form of social

R. E. Moss, ‘“And much more I am soryat for my good knyghts”: Fainting, Homosociality, and Elite Male Culture in Middle English Romance’, Historical Reflections 42 (2016), 101–13; R. E. Moss, ‘Ready to Disport with You: Homosocial Culture among the Wool Merchants of Fifteenth-Century Calais’, History Workshop Journal 86 (2018), 1–21; E. A. McVitty, ‘False Knights and True Men: Contesting Chivalric Masculinity in English Treason Trials, 1388–1415’, Journal of Medieval History 40 (2014), 458–77. 76 C. Fletcher, Richard II: Manhood, Youth, and Politics, 1377–99 (Oxford, 2008), p. 48. 77 Fletcher, Richard II, pp. 50–5. 78 Smith, p. 270; Joinville, p. 444. 75

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Mark McCabe interaction necessary to maintaining his position.79 It is noteworthy that there was still a strict hierarchy being presented, as the knights were allowed to dilute their wine as they wished, likely because they had attained full manhood; they had the status and physique that allowed them to drink it neat, if they so desired. Those of lesser rank, who lacked a choice in their dilution, had not attained full manhood and were managed by those above them. For Joinville, wine was a useful vehicle for outlining the proper male martial hierarchies.80 The homosocial act of communal eating also recurs throughout Joinville’s narrative. He described seeing Louis IX, possibly for the first time, in June 1241, after the king had knighted a group of men, including Prince Alphonse, his younger brother. In a feast held in the great hall at Saumur in Anjou, Joinville recalled serving other elite men in Louis’ presence, notably telling us that he carved meat for the king of Navarre.81 Knights serving each other at table both fostered strong homosocial bonds and demonstrated superiority over others.82 Honourable men served other honourable men because, as Katherine Lewis explains, there was honour in serving a great man and being subordinate to him.83 A king’s personal servants were themselves high-status men, making it an honourable position to hold. Furthermore, as Alan Murray has discussed, drinking and feasting became a component of crusading masculinity in the Baltic crusades, serving to reinforce homosocial values.84 The fact that Joinville included an account of the feast at Saumur implies that it was important to a man of his status to perform this act, but also that he was such a man. This undoubtedly contributed further to his credentials as a narrator of great deeds. Other homosocial acts described by Joinville encompass comic behaviour used to pass the time in a warzone, as well as touching stories of elite men supporting fellow members of the knighthood. While these episodes were possibly inserted with the intention of breaking up the narrative, they nonetheless centred on the behaviours of elite males. First, the count of Eu was described playing pranks on his comrades, with Joinville noting that:

79 80 81 82

83 84

Karras, From Boys to Men, pp. 95–7, 143. For wider discussions on the social functions of alcohol, see A. Lynn Martin, Alcohol, Violence, and Disorder in Traditional Europe (University Park, PA, 2009). Smith, p. 169; Joinville, p. 202. M. Bennett, ‘Military Masculinity in England and Northern France c. 1050–c. 1225’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. D. M. Hadley (London, 1999), pp. 71–88 (at 73–4). K. J. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity in Later Medieval England (Abingdon, 2013), p. 121. A. V. Murray, ‘Contrasting Masculinities in the Baltic Crusades: Teutonic Knights and Secular Crusaders at War and Peace in Late Medieval Prussia’, in Crusading and Masculinities, ed. Hodgson, Lewis and Mesley, pp. 113–28.

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The Masculine Experience and the Experience of Masculinity I am not sure who had given the count a young bear, but once, after I had acquired a number of hens and capons, he let it loose among them; it had killed a dozen of them before anyone arrived. The woman who looked after the birds beat the bear off with her stick.85

It seems the count of Eu was a serial prankster, for he would also fire his ‘little catapult’ at the dining table, breaking pots and glasses.86 Joinville offers an approving picture of this behaviour, and doubtless the count’s actions and humour were viewed positively in an otherwise uncertain period, such as while in a military camp or idling time before campaigning. Joinville recorded a story of kindness that further attests to the mutually supportive bonds between knights. It involved a feast Joinville himself hosted at Sidon on All Saints’ Day, 1253. When a poor knight arrived with his wife and four sons, Joinville called the rich men together and said: ‘Let’s do a really good deed and remove the burden of his children from this man. If each of you will take one, so will I’.87 The poor knight could not afford to raise these children and so the richer knights intervened, prompting the poor knight and his wife to weep with joy.88 This incident was an act of charity and largesse, both of which were vital for how Joinville maintained social bonds with other knights. Moreover, it demonstrated his own leadership abilities, while also enabling him to articulate, through his text, the ideals of knighthood and what made knights superior to those of lower status. In the case of the ‘adopted’ boy, there is a sense that Joinville and his comrades acknowledged their social exclusivity; although the man with too many children to raise was a knight, his financial situation restricted his ability to ensure his children would maintain this status. Consequently, Joinville and his associates upheld these young boys’ position, recognising and preserving their social distinction from others. Indeed, Joinville followed up the story by highlighting that, when they reunited years later, he discovered that the child he selected had become a knight: ‘the young man could barely tear himself away from me. He said to me, “My lord, may God reward you, for it was you who placed me in this honourable position”’.89 Joinville reported that he knew nothing of the other three brothers’ fate, which may imply that he alone had carried out his responsibility fully. Perhaps more important is the likelihood that, as Smith argues, this vignette was included to celebrate knightly values that Joinville thought were lacking at the point when his account was finished.90 This adds further weight to

85 86 87 88 89 90

Smith, p. 291; Joinville, p. 492. Smith, p. 291; Joinville, p. 492. Smith, p. 294; Joinville, p. 500. Smith, p. 294; Joinville, p. 500. Smith, p. 294; Joinville, p. 500. Smith, Crusading in the Age of Joinville, p. 54.

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Mark McCabe the notion that images of masculinity found in Joinville’s text were intended to serve as a guide for elite men in the ideals of manliness.

Conclusion John of Joinville’s Vie de Saint Louis is a unique witness to the practice of elite masculinity in a crusading context. It is not just a hagiographical account of St Louis, it is direct evidence of how a high-status lay crusader perceived himself, or at least how he wished for himself to be perceived, in relation to established gender norms. Within Joinville’s text, ideal masculinity was integral to crusading success and forms part of the didactic message he sought to present to the future Louis X. The Vie represents Joinville’s, and others’, lived masculinity, to which notions of autonomy, honour and homosociality were integral: autonomy being demonstrated through Joinville’s decision to crusade, but then stripped away during his captivity; honour and shame being intrinsic to Joinville’s actions, starting with his departure from Champagne and proving crucial during the chaos of Manṣūra; and homosocial acts, like administering the correct amount of wine to his men and ensuring the sons of a poor knight were raised according to their status, reinforcing Joinville’s social standing. It should be noted that these same hallmarks of masculinity are present in other thirteenth-century crusade narratives, most of which were written by churchmen. This, in turn, is suggestive of a connection between clerical writers’ representations of what occurred and the lived experience of secular elites, which furthers Richard Kaeuper’s argument that chivalry was not simply a clerical construct, but rather one co-authored with warriors who practised this coded behaviour.91 Nevertheless, Joinville’s account offers new avenues for exploration vis-à-vis the masculinity performed by thirteenth- and fourteenth-century elites. His own candid admission of emasculation requires further interrogation, along with how imprisonment affected notions of masculinity and whether these negative discussions also impacted upon lived behaviours in the contexts of crusading and medieval warfare. Indeed, the image of masculinity found in the Vie is not only valuable to our understanding of the reality of crusading, but also further proof of the role played by historical writing in the construction, transmission and, ultimately, performance of elite male behaviours in medieval Europe.

91

R. W. Kaeuper, Medieval Chivalry (Cambridge, 2016), p. 23.

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15

Writing and Copying History at Acre, c. 1230–91 Peter W. Edbury

With the exception of Jacques de Vitry’s Historia orientalis and such pièces d’occasion as the De constructione castri Saphet, it was the French langue d’oïl that emerged clearly as the language of choice for history-writing in the Latin East in the thirteenth century. Jacques, who composed his history while bishop of Acre in the early 1220s, evidently had a copy of the Latin text of William of Tyre’s celebrated Chronicon to hand while writing, and he may also have had the latter’s lost Gesta orientalium principum. However, after Jacques’ departure for the Latin West in 1225, there is no clear evidence for anyone in Acre making use of William’s Latin works or, indeed, of Jacques’ Historia orientalis.1 Later in the century the latter was translated into French, but it would seem that the translation was made in northern France and that it had limited circulation; there is no evidence for it finding its way to Latin Syria, although in the sixteenth century it does seem to have been used by the compiler of the history known as the Chronique d’Amadi, who was working in Cyprus.2 The list of works on historical or pseudo-historical topics that can be shown to have circulated in Acre in the thirteenth century is not long. Apparently writing in Cyprus in the 1240s, Philip of Novara indicated that as early as the 1220s there was a taste for Arthurian romance in the Latin East, and he himself was evidently familiar with the Guillaume d’Orange cycle.3 Much later, the festivities to mark the coronation of King Henry II of Cyprus as king of Jerusalem in 1286 included a re-enactment of scenes from the prose Roman de Tristan, and it has been suggested that what appears to be the earliest extant manuscript of that text J. Rubin, Learning in a Crusader City: Intellectual Activity and Intercultural Exchanges in Acre, 1191–1291 (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 121, 177; J. L. Bird, ‘The Historia orientalis of Jacques de Vitry: Visual and Written Commentaries as Evidence of a Text’s Audience, Reception, and Utilization’, Essays in Medieval Studies 20 (2003), 56–74. Bird (p. 57) notes that a copy was brought to England from the Latin East in 1231. 2 La traduction de l’Historia orientalis de Jacques de Vitry, ed. C. Buridant (Paris, 1986), pp. 25, 31; The Chronicle of Amadi, trans. N. Coureas and P. Edbury (Nicosia, 2015), pp. xxi, 29–30. 3 Philip of Novara (Filippo da Novara), Guerra di Federico II in Oriente (1223–1242), ed. and trans. [into Italian] S. Melani (Naples, 1994), pp. 16, 64. Cf. Philip of Novara, Le livre de forme de plait, ed. and trans. P. W. Edbury (Nicosia, 2009), p. 122. 1

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Peter W. Edbury may have been copied in Acre.4 Philip has the distinction of being the only thirteenth-century writer of vernacular history in the Latin East to be known by name, but his narrative of the conflict between the Ibelins and the Hohenstaufen in Syria and Cyprus in the second quarter of the thirteenth century seems not to have been widely read; it is not echoed in any subsequent history before the sixteenth century, and it only survives in a single fourteenth-century manuscript in what is self-evidently an edited form. When in about 1520 his history was translated into Italian and incorporated into the Chronique d’Amadi, the translator made use of a different recension and one that seems to have been closer to Philip’s original text.5 While most of the histories that were written or that circulated in the Latin East retold the story of the crusades, one notable exception was the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, otherwise known as the Histoire universelle. This text was composed in Flanders in the second decade of the thirteenth century, and it seems that originally it was intended to be continued to the time of writing and to extol the importance of Flanders as the culmination of world history. However, in the form in which it is transmitted to posterity it breaks off, as its title suggests, with the end of the Roman Republic. It is a huge compilation of biblical and ancient pagan history. Four of the extant manuscripts are believed to have been copied in Acre; they all belong to the period c. 1260–90 and are among the earliest and the most lavishly illustrated to have survived. (Only the Old French William of Tyre has more extant French-language manuscripts from the Latin East.) There are various possible reasons for its appeal to a readership there. Perhaps people wanted a history that set the biblical history of the lands conquered by the crusaders in the context of the history of the ancient world and vice versa. Perhaps in the latter part of the thirteenth century people in Acre would have found resonances with their own precarious and often violent circumstances in the tales of ancient empires and their rulers.6 4

Cronaca del Templare di Tiro (1243–1314): La caduta degli Stati Crociati nel racconto di un testimone oculare, ed. and trans. [into Italian] L. Minervini (Naples, 2000), p. 170; J. Gilbert, S. Gaunt and W. Burgwinkle, Medieval French Literary Culture Abroad (Oxford, 2020), pp. 125–6, 162, 204. More generally on the knowledge of French romance in the Latin East in the thirteenth century, see D. Jacoby, ‘La littérature française dans les états latins de la Méditerranée orientale à l’époque des croisades: diffusion et création’, in Essor et fortune de la chanson de geste dans l’Europe et l’Orient latin: Actes du IXe Congrès international de la Société Rencesvals pour l’étude des épopées romanes (Padoue–Venise, 1982) (Modena, 1984), pp. 617–46 (at 625–36); L. Minervini, ‘Outremer’, in Lo spazio letterario del medioevo , II: il medioevo volgare, ed. P. Boitani, M. Manacini and A. Varvaro (Rome, 2001), pp. 611–48. 5 The Chronicle of Amadi, pp. xvi–xix, xxii–xxiii. 6 A. Derbes and M. Sandona, ‘Amazons and Crusaders: The Histoire universelle in Flanders and the Holy Land’, in France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades, ed. D. H. Weiss and L. Mahoney (Baltimore, MD, 2004), pp. 187–229;

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Writing and Copying History at Acre, c. 1230–91 The idea that high-quality, illustrated manuscripts on secular subjects were being produced in Acre in the second half of the thirteenth century has been the subject of some debate. Writing in 1852, Louis de Mas Latrie may well have been the first to suggest that a particular French-language manuscript originated in the Latin East, but it was Hugo Buchthal, in a study that appeared in 1957, who was the first to identify a significant corpus of manuscripts as having come from Acre, and his views have since been developed by Jaroslav Folda. On the basis of art-historical criteria underpinned by a careful study of their codicological and other physical attributes, they established a relative chronology for the manuscripts in question ending with the destruction of Acre in 1291.7 Their views, however, have not gone unchallenged. In particular, Jens Wollesen, building on David Jacoby’s earlier critique, has questioned the Acre attribution and has suggested that some or all of these manuscripts were copied on Cyprus.8 That would of course remove 1291 as the necessary terminal date for the sequence and allow for the chronology to be stretched into the early years of the fourteenth century. The difficulty is that direct evidence linking the manuscripts to Acre is elusive, and critics have pointed to the speculative nature of some of the arguments used. Writing in 1976, Folda admitted to a measure of uncertainty surrounding the Acre attribution of the manuscripts highlighted by Buchthal but was happy to accept his hypotheses.9 David Jacoby adopted an opposing view. For example, Buchthal had proposed that the British Library Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César (London, British Library, MS Additional 15268) was commissioned by barons of the kingdom of Jerusalem as a gift for Henry II on his coronation as their king in 1286. For Jacoby, ‘neither the attribution nor the dating of the manuscript is backed by direct or indirect evidence. They remain entirely in the realm of speculation’.10 Even so, the critics seem prepared to accept that the corpus of material identified by Buchthal and Folda as coming from Acre was produced somewhere in the Latin East. The problem is that the arguments all remain circumstantial: Acre was

7

8

9

10

L. Mahoney, ‘The Histoire ancienne and Dialectical Identity in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem’, Gesta 49 (2010), 31–51; Gilbert, Gaunt and Burgwinkle, Medieval French Literary Culture Abroad, pp. 132–57. There is no complete edition; for those sections that are in print, see Gilbert, Gaunt and Burgwinkle, Medieval French Literary Culture Abroad, p. 134 n. 26. L. de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre sous le règne des princes de la maison de Lusignan, 3 vols (Paris, 1852–61), II, 1 n. 1; H. Buchthal, Miniature Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Oxford, 1957); J. Folda, Crusader Manuscript Illumination at Saint-Jean d’Acre, 1275–1291 (Princeton, NJ, 1976); J. Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land, from the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291 (Cambridge, 2005). D. Jacoby, ‘Society, Culture and the Arts in Crusader Acre’, in France and the Holy Land, ed. Weiss and Mahoney, pp. 97–137 (at 114–20); J. T. Wollesen, Acre or Cyprus? A New Approach to Crusader Painting Around 1300 (Berlin, 2013). Folda, Crusader Manuscript Illumination, pp. 23–6. Jacoby, ‘Society, Culture and the Arts in Crusader Acre’, p. 116.

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Peter W. Edbury the capital and leading commercial centre of what was left of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem; western visitors and merchants as well as local nobles and senior clerics would have provided a wealthy and varied clientele. To Buchthal and Folda, Acre was the obvious place. What was more, the intercultural borrowings that are a feature of the style and iconography of the illustrations in some of the manuscripts would fit well with the multicultural nature of society in thirteenthcentury Acre. On the other hand, all these considerations could, so it is argued, have been equally true of Cyprus. In his review of Folda’s Crusader Manuscript Illumination at Saint-Jean d’Acre, Harvey Stahl tentatively raised the possibility that Cyprus might have been the place of origin of one of the manuscripts, and this suggestion was later taken up with increasing enthusiasm by both Jacoby and Wollesen.11 Moving the ateliers from Acre to Cyprus, however, presents the same problems as before. A good circumstantial case can be made: a range of wealthy patrons, political stability (something that was in short supply in Acre in the years 1250–91), the availability of raw materials for parchment and so on. But here again specific evidence is lacking. Two manuscripts – the Brussels Histoire ancienne (Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS 10175) and the Venice Assises de Jérusalem (Venice, Marciana, MS fr. App. 20) – were certainly kept in Cyprus later in the Middle Ages, but that proves nothing: a manuscript copied in Acre but not taken overseas before its destruction in 1291 is unlikely to have survived, and it is only to be expected that some would have been brought to Cyprus before finding their way to western Europe. In the absence of the sort of conclusive evidence for date and provenance that might elsewhere be found in a manuscript’s colophon or in marginalia, historians have turned instead to questions of language, artistic style and iconography. Modern studies indicating the use of distinctive vocabulary and orthography in texts composed or copied in the Latin East were initiated by Édith Brayer in a now classic article published in 1947.12 Since then, the subject has been further developed by several scholars, notably Laura Minervini.13 Whereas these studies H. Stahl, ‘A Review of Crusader Manuscript Illumination at Saint-Jean d’Acre, 1275–1291, by Jaroslav Folda’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 43 (1980), 416–23 (at 422 n. 28); Jacoby, ‘Society, Culture and the Arts in Crusader Acre’, pp. 118–20; Wollesen, Acre or Cyprus?, pp. 51–71, 159–65. 12 É. Brayer, ‘Un manuel de confession en ancien français conservé dans un manuscrit de Catane (Bibl. Ventimiliana, 42)’, Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 59 (1947), 155–95. 13 In particular, see the various works of Laura Minervini: ‘Le français dans l’Orient latin (XIIe–XIIIe siècles): Éléments pour une caractérisation d’une scripta du Lévant’, Revue de linguistique romane 74 (2010), 119–98; ‘Les emprunts arabes et grecs dans le lexique français d’Orient (XIIIe–XIVe siècles)’, Revue de linguistique romane 76 (2012), 99–197; ‘La variation lexicale en fonction du contact linguistique: Le français dans l’Orient latin’, in La régionalité lexicale du français au Moyen Âge, ed. M. Glessgen and D. Trotter (Strasbourg, 2016), pp. 195–206; ‘What we know and don’t yet know about 11

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Writing and Copying History at Acre, c. 1230–91 undoubtedly demonstrate the eastern provenance of some manuscripts, others do not display the characteristic scripta to an appreciable extent. Part of the explanation for this feature is to be sought in the nature of Frankish society in thirteenthcentury Acre where, as described by David Jacoby, a transient community of scholars, clerics, merchants, artists and craftsmen formed a significant sector of the population.14 A scribe, recently arrived in Acre from the Latin West, might well have been resistant to local graphies that in turn may have reflected local patterns of speech. The problem more generally is that artists do not necessarily stay in the same place, and that makes locating the provenance of illuminated manuscripts, or for that matter any other moveable work of art, difficult, especially when, besides Syria and Cyprus, southern Italy and Frankish Greece are brought into consideration.15 So although, as we shall see, it can be confidently stated that the Annales de Terre Sainte and some versions of the Continuations of William of Tyre were composed in Acre, it need not be assumed that Acre was also where the manuscripts were copied. Even so, the line taken by Buchthal and Folda’s critics is far from persuasive. It is one thing to pick holes in the arguments of other scholars, quite another to replace them with an alternative thesis that is water-tight and compelling. The attribution of manuscripts to Acre as argued by Buchthal and Folda is, on their own admission, reliant on a reasoned series of hypotheses. As hypotheses, they seem to me to provide the best fit for the information at our disposal, and I for one am prepared to go along with them. No doubt the arguments will continue. The Annales de Terre Sainte are anonymous, thirteenth-century compilations.16 There are three manuscripts, each of which has its own unique text. Two, both ending in 1291, and designated by the editors as the ‘A’ and ‘B’ versions, were published in the nineteenth century from fourteenth-century manuscripts, and the third – the only one to appear in an Acre manuscript and ending in 1277 – in 2007.17

14 15 16

17

Outremer French’, in The French of Outremer: Communities and Communication in the Crusading Mediterranean, ed. L. K. Morreale and N. L. Paul (New York, 2018), pp. 15–29. Jacoby, ‘Society, Culture and the Arts in Crusader Acre’, pp. 99–102, 115–20. For a discussion of these issues, see A. Andronikou, ‘Southern Italy, Cyprus, and the Holy Land: A Tale of Parallel Aesthetics?’, Art Bulletin 99 (2017), 6–29. See further P. W. Edbury, ‘Making Sense of the Annales de Terre Sainte: ThirteenthCentury Vernacular Narratives from the Latin East’, in Crusader Landscapes in the Medieval Levant: The Archaeology and History of the Latin East, ed. M. Sinibaldi, K. J. Lewis, B. Major and J. A. Thompson (Cardiff, 2016), pp. 403–13. R. Röhricht and G. Raynaud, ‘Annales de Terre Sainte’, Archives de l’Orient latin 2 (1884), documents 427–61; P. W. Edbury, ‘A New Text of the Annales de Terre Sainte’, in In Laudem Hierosolymitani: Studies in Crusades and Medieval Culture in Honour of Benjamin Z. Kedar, ed. I. Shagrir, R. Ellenblum and J. Riley-Smith (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 145–61.

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Peter W. Edbury There is also a translation into Castilian Spanish that breaks off in 1260.18 Material from them found its way into other works, notably the Gestes des Chiprois and the Continuations of William of Tyre. In the fourteenth century, Marino Sanudo included excerpts translated into Latin in his Liber secretorum fidelium crucis, and in the sixteenth the compiler of the Chronique d’Amadi also made use of them.19 An analysis of the three French versions together with the Castilian translation shows that they keep more or less in step with each other as far as the mid-1250s, and it appears that it was then that the compiler was at work producing the version or versions that lie behind the extant forms of the text. After that date the texts diverge in such a way as to suggest that different authors tried to keep their own copies of the text up to date, partly on the basis of their own observations and partly following new material that was then in circulation. Writing the Annales in this manner continued until the 1270s, and there is sufficient overlap between the manuscripts to indicate that the new material continued to be shared; after that the process seems to have faltered, and only the compilers of the ‘A’ text consistently maintained the tradition to 1291. The Acre-centred perspective that all the texts adopt, as well as the large number of entries relating to the appointment and demise of senior clergy, something that is particularly noticeable for the 1250s, point unmistakeably to Acre as the place of composition and to a clerical authorship. It can be assumed that the text (or texts) circulated among the various religious institutions then based in Acre, and that it was in this context that the differing versions emerged. Support for this view is supplied by a brief set of annals written in Latin to be found in the Barletta breviary. This is a thirteenth-century manuscript that probably belonged to the Holy Sepulchre and that certainly reflects the liturgical practices that were observed there in the twelfth century.20 The annals break off with an entry for 1202. All the entries, which begin in 1097 with the capture of Nicaea, appear in French translation in the Annales de Terre Sainte, and it is to be assumed that in the 1250s the compiler had at his disposal either a version of this text, and was able to combine it with other material to flesh out the meagre information it contains on twelfth-century events, or an earlier work that had already incorporated the data from this source. In its turn the Barletta annal incorporated all the material to be found in an extremely brief record of events in the East down to 1124 from

‘Las cruzadas en la historiografía española de la época: traducción castellana de una redacción desconocida de los “Anales de Tierra Santa”’, ed. A. Sánchez Candeira, in Hispania: Revista Española de Historia 20 (1960), 325–67. 19 Marino Sanudo, ‘Liber secretorum fidelium crucis’, in Gesta Dei per Francos, ed. J. Bongars, 2 vols (Hanau, 1611), II, 206–32 and passim. 20 C. Kohler, ‘Un ritual et un brévaire du Saint-Sépulchre de Jérusalem (XIIe–XIIIe siècle)’, Revue de l’Orient latin 8 (1900–01), 383–469 (at 399–401); Rubin, Learning in a Crusader City, p. 190. 18

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Writing and Copying History at Acre, c. 1230–91 a now-lost twelfth-century breviary from Jerusalem.21 What these annals show is that there were earlier examples of annalistic writing from the Holy Sepulchre or some other religious institution, and that this, together with the bias towards material dealing with ecclesiastical events, suggests that the 1250s redaction of the Annales de Terre Sainte was produced in the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre or in one of the other religious institutions then situated in Acre. The most considerable piece of historical writing that can be associated with Acre is the so-called Colbert-Fontainebleau version of the Continuations of William of Tyre, or, as it is often known, Eracles.22 Alongside it should be set another version of this text that is known from the location of the sole manuscript (Lyon, Bibliothèque de la ville, MS 828) as the Lyon Eracles. Because of confusion in the past, a careful distinction between what was done in Acre and what was done in the Latin West will be helpful. The French translation of William of Tyre’s Chronicon was made in France, probably in the Paris region. The translator would almost certainly have been a cleric, possibly an Augustinian canon. The theory that he was a member of the community at the Augustinian abbey of St Victor in Paris is attractive, although evidence is slender.23 Philip Handyside argued on the basis of internal evidence that the translation belongs to the closing years of the reign of Philip II of France, who died in 1223, but more recently it has been pointed out that the initial letters of the books that comprise the translation take the form of an acrostic reading LUDOVICUS REX FRANCORUM, and that would indicate that the final version of the translation would have been completed slightly later, in the time of his successor.24 Also composed in France, in this case in Picardy and probably at the abbey of Corbie, is the anonymous history known as the Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier.25 In its longest recension it ends with the arrival of John of Brienne in Constantinople in 1231, and it would appear to have reached its final form soon after that date. Within a few years of its completion someone, once again working in the Latin West, hit on the idea of splicing together the William of Tyre translation and the post-1184 section of the 21 22

23 24

25

‘Chronicon breve Hierosolymitanum’, in RHC Occ, V, 370. See also the comments of the text’s editors at p. c. ‘Le estoire de Eracles empereur’, in RHC Occ, II, 1–481. Newly edited in The Chronique d’Ernoul and the Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation of William of Tyre, ed. P. W. Edbury and M. Gaggero, 2 vols (Leiden, 2023), II (where there are references to paragraph numbers below, they are to this new edition). The name derives from the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century locations of the principal manuscripts. P. Handyside, The Old French William of Tyre (Leiden, 2015), pp. 88–93, 193–4. Handyside, The Old French William of Tyre, pp. 114–19; K.-A. Helou, ‘Étude et édition de l’Estoire d’Outremer, d’après le manuscrit Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana Pluteus LX.10, f.274–f.336’ (Thèse de doctorate en études médiévales, Paris IV, 2017), p. 126. Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, ed. L. de Mas Latrie (Paris, 1871). For the new edition, see n. 22.

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Peter W. Edbury Chronique d’Ernoul, about three-quarters of the total, to form the original and most widely copied form of the Continuation.26 Also composed in the Latin West was the history edited in the nineteenth century with the title Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, de 1229 à 1261, dite du manuscrit de Rothelin. This well-informed account of the Barons’ Crusade and the first crusade of King Louis IX of France (otherwise known as the Seventh Crusade) was composed later in the thirteenth century in or near Soissons and is included in several manuscripts at the end of the original Ernoul form of the Continuation. All these manuscripts come from the Île de France, northern France, or Flanders, and there is no evidence that it was known in the Latin East.27 The French translation of William of Tyre had arrived in Acre by the mid-1240s when the Venetian bailo, Marsilio Zorzi, incorporated into his report a substantial extract from it describing the 1124 siege and capture of Tyre.28 Significantly, the manuscript at Marsilio’s disposal was a close relative of the two oldest extant Eracles manuscripts copied in the East: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 9086 and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 2628.29 What then happened was that in the late 1240s someone working in Acre undertook a major revision of the Continuation. The account of the years 1184–98 was extensively rewritten and expanded, while for the period from 1198 until the death of Otto of Brunswick in 1218 the Ernoul text was largely left as it was. However, immediately after recording Otto’s death, the author of this revision jettisoned what remained of the Chronique d’Ernoul and, reverting to the year 1205, produced a wholly new narrative that continued until 1247. The text of this revision is variously known as the Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation or Acre Continuation, and is, as said already, the most considerable piece of French vernacular historical writing from thirteenth-century Acre to have been preserved. It reflects the position of the baronial clique that earlier in the century had first supported John of Brienne, had then shown a willingness to work with Frederick II and finally had thrown in their lot with the Ibelins after the imperial marshal, Riccardo Filangieri, had attempted to wrest Beirut from John of Ibelin in 1231. By the 1240s, they had

P. W. Edbury, ‘New Perspectives on the Old French Continuations of William of Tyre’, Crusades 9 (2010), 107–13. 27 Edited in RHC Occ, II, 483–639. See M. R. Morgan, ‘The Rothelin Continuation of William of Tyre’, in Outremer: Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem Presented to Joshua Prawer, ed. B. Z. Kedar, H. E. Mayer and R. C. Smail (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 244–57 (at 251). 28 Der Bericht des Marsilio Zorzi: Codex Querini Stampalia IV3 (1064), ed. O. Berggötz (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), pp. 102–8, 116–34. 29 P. W. Edbury, ‘The French Translation of William of Tyre’s Historia: The Manuscript Tradition’, Crusades 6 (2007), 69–105 (at 86). 26

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Writing and Copying History at Acre, c. 1230–91 openly come out in opposition to the Hohenstaufen. Prominent members of this group included Balian of Sidon and Odo of Montbéliard.30 Very soon after the completion of the Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation came the reworking of this material that is known as the Lyon Eracles.31 What survives only covers the period 1184–97, but it is possible that this new version extended further, and that material was lost as a result of the copyist of the unique manuscript or its antecedent switching between exemplars. The text can be divided into those paragraphs that closely follow Colbert-Fontainebleau (§§2–40, 82–116 and 120–31 of Margaret Morgan’s edition), and those that are extensively rewritten or are unique (§§40–81, 116–19 and 131–88). An interest in ecclesiastical affairs suggests that, unlike Colbert-Fontainebleau, which appears to have been written by a layman, the Lyon Eracles was the work of a cleric.32 Indications that the heirs of the Ayyūbid Sultan al-‘Ādil Sayf al-Dīn were still ruling in Egypt and that Emperor Frederick II was still alive would argue for a terminus ad quem for the composition of the Lyon Eracles of 1250.33 If that is so, then the ColbertFontainebleau Continuation would belong to the years 1247–50. If both versions therefore are to be dated to these years, then the question arises as to whether their composition was in some way stimulated by the presence of Louis IX and his crusaders in the East at that precise moment. That, by its very nature, allows no certain answer, but what a study of the extant western manuscripts shows is that there is no evidence for returning crusaders bringing these versions of the text to Europe in the 1250s. The sole extant French manuscript with the ColbertFontainebleau Continuation (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 2634) was copied in Paris as late as the 1320s.34 Clearly related to the Lyon Eracles, there was another revision, this time covering the period 1191–97, that is to be found in Florence, Biblioteca MediceaLaurenziana, MS Plu. LXI 10.35 Here again it may be suspected that what survives is a fragment of a larger revision and that the rest of the text was lost thanks to a scribe changing from one exemplar to another. An analysis of the texts found 30

31 32

33 34

35

See P. W. Edbury, ‘The Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation of William of Tyre, 1184–1247: Structure and Composition’, in Chronicle, Crusade, and the Latin East: Essays in Honour of Susan B. Edgington, ed. A. D. Buck and T. W. Smith (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 203–23. La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr (1184–1197), ed. M. R. Morgan (Paris, 1982). See P. W. Edbury, ‘The Lyon Eracles Revisited’, in Crusading and Trading between West and East: Studies in Honour of David Jacoby, ed. S. Menache, B. Z. Kedar and M. Balard (Abingdon, 2019), pp. 40–53 (at 42, 50–1). La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, §§165, 169. A. Stones, ‘The Stylistic Context of the Roman de Fauvel, with a Note on Fauvain’, in Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle. Music, and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque national de France, MS français 146, ed. M. Bent and A. Wathey (Oxford, 1998), pp. 529–67 (at 538 n. 35, 558). Published in La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr.

285

Peter W. Edbury in other Eracles manuscripts from Acre shows other instances of such changes, a feature that would be explicable if scribes working for an Acre atelier made use of in-house copies that were unbound and therefore liable to get muddled.36 The Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation underwent two further developments. Several of the Acre manuscripts have what can be described as a hybrid version of the Continuation comprising the original form as taken from the Chronique d’Ernoul for the years 1184–1231 with the text of the Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation from 1229 onwards added rather clumsily at the end.37 More importantly, in the course of the 1260s and 1270s, further continuations taking the narrative on from 1247 to various later dates, in one instance as far as 1277, were added. These additions, which seem to have been written in three or more stages, take the form of an expanded version of the Annales de Terre Sainte interspersed with papal biographies and material describing the end of Hohenstaufen rule in Italy, the rise of Charles of Anjou, the Second Council of Lyon and other events in western Europe.38 The bias towards ecclesiastical affairs together with the hostility towards the last of the Hohenstaufen would indicate a clerical author. Under the year 1275 the compiler records the arrest of Amaury de Montfort, the youngest son of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, while escorting his sister to marry the prince of Gwynedd, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, and the text states that it was for this reason, and many others, that war broke out between the prince of Wales and the king of England.39 Finally, to return to the Chronique d’Ernoul. This narrative of events from the end of the First Crusade to 1231 survives in eight medieval manuscripts, two of which were copied in Italy.40 It had reached Acre by the 1250s when rather more than half the text was incorporated into one of the manuscripts copied there, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 9086, which has been dated to the period 1255–60.41 What happened in this instance is that a copyist, who hitherto had been using a manuscript of the Colbert-Fontainebleau Eracles, switched See Edbury, ‘The Lyon Eracles Revisited’, pp. 41–2. This ‘hybrid’ form of the Continuation was published from MS Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 9082 in 1729, in Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum historicorum … amplissa Collectio, ed. E. Martène and U. Durand, 9 vols (Paris, 1724–33), V, 581–752. 38 For the structure and composition of the post-1247 section, see P. W. Edbury, ‘Continuing the Continuation: Eracles 1248–1277’, in The Templars, the Hospitallers and the Crusades: Essays in Homage to Alan J. Forey, ed. H. J. Nicholson and J. Burgtorf (Abingdon, 2020), pp. 82–93. 39 Eracles, §344. 40 M. Gaggero, ‘Identification de deux manuscrits italiens de la chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier’, Segno e Testo 16 (2018), 291–314. 41 For the date, see Folda, Crusader Manuscript Illumination, pp. 38, 175. The manuscript contains the text from a point part way through the events of 1187 to the end, starting at §cxliv. 36

37

286

Writing and Copying History at Acre, c. 1230–91 exemplars part way through the account of the year 1187. The Acre version of the Chronique d’Ernoul has a number of unique modifications that indicate that whoever made them was working in the Latin East and was aware of the local situation. This eastern perspective is illustrated by the frequency with which the term Tiere d’Outremer, used to denote the Latin East, is eliminated and is replaced by la Sainte Terre, en Surie, de Jerusalem or something similar; for someone working in Acre, the Latin East is not ‘Outremer’.42 There are also examples of superior information available to people in the East being reflected in the changes. Twice this manuscript speaks of qāḍīs – caadiz – where the other manuscripts anachronistically refer to Muslim clerics as arcevesques et evesques.43 Moreover, in the account of the Fifth Crusade we are given a well-informed explanation of the geography of the Nile Delta that is clearly superior to the version found elsewhere.44 In the context of the build-up to the battle of Ḥaṭṭīn in 1187, the Chronique d’Ernoul lists the Tiberias brothers, Count Raymond III of Tripoli’s step-sons, in order of birth: Hugh, William, Ralph and Ostes. The Acre version, however, is alone in placing them in the correct order – Hugh, William, Ostes and Ralph – thereby agreeing with the information given in both major recensions of the Lignages d’Outremer.45 It appears that the words Otes and Raol, which are clearly in the same hand as the rest of the manuscript, overwrite erasures, and this would suggest that initially this manuscript too followed the order as given elsewhere. In the 1240s, the seniority of Ostes over Ralph was a major factor in the legal debates that determined which of their descendants should inherit the lordship of Tiberias, now returned to Christian control for the first time since 1187.46 It is highly likely that the correction reflects a memory of the arguments used in this debate. A recent study has highlighted the significance of the writing and copying of French langue d’oïl texts in the Latin East, examining them in the wider European context of the use of the French language beyond the borders of France.47 Besides the histories and the romances mentioned here, there were other texts associated with Acre, including the translation into French by John of Antioch of the De inventione and the Rhetorica ad herennium, both attributed to Cicero, and manuscripts of the Florentine Brunetto Latini’s Li Livres dou Trésor, a work that, suitably adapted, is quoted in some of the later manuscripts of John of Ibelin’s legal treatise. French was also the language employed by John of Ibelin and the For examples, see Ernoul, §§ccxi, ccxxxi, cclvii, cclxi, cclxvi, cclxxiv, cclxxv, cclxxxvii, cccxxxvii, cccxxxviii. But not always: see §§cccxiii, cccxxiv. 43 Ernoul, §§cclxx, cccxx. 44 Ernoul, §cccxxvi. 45 Ernoul, §clvii; Lignages d’Outremer, ed. M.-A. Nielen (Paris, 2003), pp. 77, 101. 46 See P. W. Edbury, ‘The Disputed Regency of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1264/66 and 1268’, Camden Miscellany 27 (Camden 4th s. 22) (1979), 1–47 (at 13, 28, 33, 36). 47 Gilbert, Gaunt, and Burgwinkle, Medieval French Literary Culture Abroad. 42

287

Peter W. Edbury other authors whose legal writings together are grouped under the misleading label of the Assises de Jérusalem.48 In the case of the historical texts composed in the Latin East, what is striking is the large proportion that appear to have had clerical authors: the Annales de Terre Sainte, the Lyon Eracles and the post-1247 section of the Continuations. Manuscripts of Eracles continued to be copied in Acre right up to the end, and the writing of history and the copying of historical texts remained a significant element in the literary culture of the Latin East in the last decades before the denouement of 1291. It was of course a literary culture that did not develop in isolation, but reflects instead a continuing exchange between the Latin East and Latin West that went far beyond the narratives relating to the crusades and the Frankish settlements. So, for example, in the 1220s the French translation of William of Tyre’s Latin text was made in France, and at about the same time an anonymous author working in Picardy incorporated material composed in the Latin East into his Chronique d’Ernoul. Then, when these two works were joined to form the Eracles text of William of Tyre with a continuation to 1231, the work was taken to the East, where, towards the end of the 1240s, it was extensively revised. Copies of the Latin Syrian revisions then found their way back to the West, and in the late thirteenth century were translated into Spanish along with the Annales de Terre Sainte. As two fifteenth-century manuscripts attest, one of the Acre versions of Eracles was then in circulation and was being copied in northern France and Flanders.49 In situating the processes of writing and copying history in thirteenth-century Acre within both their local and wider contexts, then, it becomes evident that this city, the cultural heart of the Latin East in this period, was a hub for literary contacts with the West. Its importance should therefore not be underestimated in analysing the underlying networks of literary production and exchange that developed around the crusading movement.

Gilbert, Gaunt and Burgwinkle, Medieval French Literary Culture Abroad, pp. 69–70, 132, 143–4, 151–7. See also Jacoby, ‘La littérature française dans les états latins’, pp. 617–46; Minervini, ‘Outremer’, pp. 611–48. 49 They are Amiens, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 483 and Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS 25, both of which are derived via at least one intermediary from the Acre manuscript: Boulogne-sur-Mer, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 125. 48

288

Index Aaron, biblical prophet ​131 ‘Abbāsid Caliphate ​181 Abū Shāma, author ​182, 188 n.65 Acre, city ​43, 178, 242, 251 council (1148) ​203–4 literary cultures ​22, 32, 43, 277–88 siege (1189–91) ​30–1, 228–41 Adela, countess of Blois ​35–6, 43, 44 Adhémar, bishop of Le Puy ​92–3, 96, 99, 107, 108, 125 n.16, 127, 148, 161 Afghanistan ​87 Agnes, St ​271–2 Akkadian language ​212 al-‘Āḍid, Fāṭimid caliph ​177, 181–3 al-‘Ādil Sayf al-Dīn, sultan of Egypt and Syria ​285 al-Afḍal, vizier of Egypt ​92, 99, 101 Albert of Aachen, chronicler ​2–3, 92–3, 96, 97–8, 99, 124, 125, 127 n.22, 129, 130, 133 n.52, 134, 135, 156, 161, 166, 169 al-Dāwūd, son of Caliph al-‘Āḍid ​182 Aleppo ​118, 251 Alexander, chaplain of Stephen of Blois ​ 36 Alexander, nephew of cardinal Robert ​43 Alexios I Komnenos, Byzantine emperor ​ 40, 73–4, 107–9 Alfred, king of Wessex ​49 Alfonso VI, king of León and Castile ​62 al-Mustaḍī, Abbasid caliph ​181 Alphonse of Poitiers, count of Poitou and Toulouse ​274 al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil, author ​183 al-Ṣāliḥ, son of Nūr al-Dīn ​188 Amalric I, king of Jerusalem ​29, 174–5, 176, 182, 183–6, 188, 191, 233, 235 Egyptian campaigns ​175, 176–7, 182–3, 187 William of Tyre’s description of ​30, 177–8, 180, 183, 186, 188, 200, 201 n.52 Amaury of Montfort ​286 Amaury, patriarch of Jerusalem ​183, 184–5 Annales de Terre Sainte ​32, 281–3, 286, 288

Ambroise ​5, 153, 228–9, 231 Anatolia ​95, 96–7, 256 Andrew, St ​98, 148, 149 Anglo-Norman, chroniclers ​48–67, 74, 137–54 language ​157 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ​48–67 Chronicle C ​61–2 Chronicle /E (Proto-Chronicle E) ​58, 62–4, 65 Chronicle E ​50, 57–66 Chronicle I ​50, 51–7, 58, 61, 64, 66 ‘common stock’ ​49, 64–5 versions (A–I) ​48, 64 animals ​255, 256 Annales Disibodenbergenses ​39 Annales Stederburgenses ​217 Annals of Mouzon ​59 Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury ​25, 49, 51, 52–5, 56–7, 60, 65–7 Anselm of Ribemont, lord of Ostrevant and Valenciennes ​36, 41–3, 44, 98–9, 101 Antioch (city), battle (1098) ​91–2, 95, 96, 97, 98, 110, 123, 145, 149–50, 152–4 siege (1097–8) ​28–9, 101, 104, 109–10, 111, 123, 125 n.16, 142, 144–6, 147, 148, 150–4, 155–73, 267 n.52 Antioch (principality) ​112, 117, 126, 128–9, 178, 196, 238, 258, 269 Apulia ​58–9, 61, 63 Arabia ​131 Arabic language ​176 Armenians ​118, 183 n.43 Arnold I, archbishop of Cologne ​39–40 Arnold of Liège, Dominican preacher, Tractatus de naturis rerum, historia Ierosolimitane, mirabilibus mundi ​243–4 Arnold of Lübeck, chronicler ​30, 215, 216, 217, 219, 222 Arnulf, priest ​39–40 Arnulf of Chocques, patriarch of Jerusalem ​99–100, 124, 127–8, 129, 130

289

Index Arsuf ​115, 251 Arthur I, duke of Brittany ​52 Ascalon, battle (1099) ​3, 27, 91–2, 97, 99–100, 112–13, 122, 123, 124, 135 city ​31, 230, 233–34 Assassins ​183–6, 187, 188–9, 248 Assises de Jérusalem ​280, 287–8 Audita tremendi, see Gregory VIII, pope Augustine, bishop of Hippo ​98, 99, 218, 243, 244, 256 Ayyūbid dynasty ​183, 187, 195, 242, 259, 267, 269–70, 285 Baghrās (Gaston) castle ​237 Bahā’ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād, author ​233–4, 239–40 Bait Jibrīn ​237 Balak, Artuqid emir ​104, 117 Baldric of Bourgueil, chronicler ​6–7, 44, 69, 75, 77–9, 82, 84, 96, 123, 124, 127, 129 n.33, 137, 151 Baldwin I, count of Edessa and king of Jerusalem ​27–8, 104–5, 111–17, 120, 122–7, 129–36, 198 n.40, 200 Baldwin II, count of Edessa and king of Jerusalem ​27, 97, 104, 111–12, 116, 117–19, 120, 199, 200, 231 Baldwin III, king of Jerusalem ​29–30, 191–210, 159, 177, 190 n.74 Baldwin IV, king of Jerusalem ​29, 159, 172, 174, 178, 182, 183–4, 186, 187–8, 189, 190 n.74, 191, 195, 197, 201, 202, 205, 206 n.73, 209–10, 231 Baldwin V, king of Jerusalem ​238 Baldwin of Forde, archbishop of Canterbury ​229, 240 Baldwin of Flanders, count of Ghent ​44 Balian of Ibelin ​31, 230, 234–6, 241 Balian of Sidon ​285–6 Bānyās, battle of (1157) ​196 Barletta breviary ​282–3 ‘Bartolf of Nangis’, see Gesta Francorum Ierusalem expugnantium Belus, river ​251 Belvoir (Kaukab) castle ​237–8 Beirut ​114, 251, 284 Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, ​90–1, 204, 247–8 Liber ad milites temple de laude novae militia ​90–1

Bernold of Constance, chronicler ​71 n.20 Besalú, counts of ​70 Bethlehem ​127, 132–3, 134, 183 Blanche of Castile, queen of France ​263 Blécourt ​264 Bohemond of Taranto, prince of Antioch ​ 3, 28–9, 74, 92–3, 95, 107–8, 109–10, 112–13, 125–9, 130, 131, 151, 157–70 Bohemond III, prince of Antioch ​178, 187 Bologna ​71 Brunetto Latini, author ​287 Buck, Andrew, historian ​138, 179, 196, 196–7 n.32 Bull, Marcus, historian ​8–10, 80, 109 n.38, 143, 262 Bures brothers ​97 Bush, George W., US president ​86 Byzantium (Byzantine Empire) ​19, 71 n.20, 107–8, 195–6, 202 Calabria ​61–2 Caesarea ​251 Cairo ​182, 185–6 Canso d’Antioca ​55, 157 Canterbury, Christ Church (cathedral priory) ​ 25–6, 48–67 historiographical activity at ​48–67, 143–6 St Augustine’s Abbey (Benedictine monastery) ​28, 64, 143–6, 154 Capetians, dynasty ​14, 259 Carolingians, dynasty ​88–9, 221 n.57 Cerdaña (Cerdanya), counts of ​70 Champagne ​276 Chanson d’Antioche ​12, 28–9, 55, 157–67, 170 Chanson de Jérusalem ​12, 55 Chanson de Roland ​267 Chansons de geste ​6, 8, 12–13, 16, 28–9, 157, 158–9, 167, 170–3, 255, 265, 272–3, 277–8 Chanson des Chétifs ​12, 55, 272 Charlemagne, Holy Roman emperor ​107, 133 Charles of Anjou, king of Naples ​267, 286 Chronique d’Amadi ​277–8, 282 Chronique d’Ernoul et Bernard le Trésorier, see William of Tyre

290

Index Church of the Holy Resurrection, see Holy Sepulchre Cicero, Roman author ​171, 287 Cistercian Order ​63 Clarendon, palace ​153 Clement III, antipope ​60, 107 Clermont, council (1095) ​26, 60, 69, 71 n.20, 75–80, 82, 83–4, 90, 107, 111 n.48 Clovis I, king of the Franks ​88 Cologne annals ​39 Conrad III, king of Germany ​43, 203–4 Conrad of Montferrat ​31, 229–30, 237–41 Constantinople ​283, 73, 107, 108, 125, 178 Cremona ​71 Cresson, battle (1187) ​230, 232, 236, 237 Cross, ​94, 133, 217, 237 relic ​16, 94, 115, 116, 148, 214, 218–19 sign of ​70, 76–9, 107, 108, 147, 150, 152, 263–4, 272 Crusades, First (1095–99) ​1–3, 4–5, 6–7, 8–14, 15, 17–18, 19, 20, 22, 24–9, 35–6, 39, 40–2, 42–3, 44–5, 48–113, 115, 119–20, 121–2, 123–4, 125–6, 127, 134, 137–73, 179, 186, 196, 200, 216, 217, 226, 245, 248, 251, 260, 267 n.52, 272, 286 ‘Crusade of 1101’ ​122 Second (1146–9) ​35, 37–8, 39–40, 43, 91, 203–4 Third (1189–93) ​4, 5, 14–15, 17, 25, 30–1, 39, 154, 171, 228–41, 257, 261 Fourth (1202–4) ​260, 261 Fifth (1217–21) ​3, 16, 35, 36–7, 38, 43–5, 242, 261, 287 Barons’ (1239–41) ​284 Seventh (1248–54) ​14, 31–2, 259–76, 284, 285 Albigensian (1209–29) ​71–2 n.21, 247, 261 Cuno, abbot of Disibodenberg ​39 Cyprus ​277–81 Daibert of Pisa, patriarch of Jerusalem ​ 27–8, 122, 124–5, 127–35 Damascus ​183, 230, 233 Damietta ​38, 259, 269, 271–2 Danes ​56

Dānishmendid Turks ​3, 74 Darbsāk (Trapesac) castle ​237 David, king of the Israelites ​115, 133 Dead Sea ​253–4 De bestiis et aliis rebus ​255 De constructione castri Saphet ​277 Deeds of the Abbots of Lobbes ​59 De expugnatione Lyxbonensi ​37–8, 91 Dorylaeum, battle (1097) ​94, 108–9, 112 Dudo of Saint-Quentin, chronicler ​171 Dunlap, Charles, US general ​86 Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury ​52 n.23 Duodechin of Lahnstein, priest ​39 Duqāq, ruler of Damascus ​114 Eadmer, chronicler ​49 Easter table ​51–2, 54–5, Eastern Church ​248–9 Eastern Christians ​243–4, 247 Edessa (city) ​104, 112, 113, 114, 116, 123, 150–1, 251 Edessa (county) ​117, 125, 129–30 Edbury, Peter, historian ​19, 22, 32, 155, 156, 175, 198, 228 Edgington, Susan, historian ​16, 27–8, 39–40, 105, 111, 116, 138, 140 Egypt ​99, 112 n. 49, 175, 176–7, 180–3, 184, 186, 187, 189, 195–6, 221, 230, 242, 271, 285 Elamites ​212 Emotion ​17, 28, 30, 168, 172, 192 n. 6, 209, 211–27, 259, 264–5, 279 Empurias, counts of ​70 England, medieval historical writing ​7–8, 16–17, 48–67, 137–54, 171, 184–6 Enlil, Mesopotamian deity ​220 Eracles, see William of Tyre Eraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem ​178, 186, 217, 222, 223, 232, 235 Erart of Sivry, knight ​266–7 Ernulf, bishop of Rochester ​64 Eschatology ​133, 249 Estoire de la guerre sainte, see Ambroise Euphrates, river ​112 Eusebius, archbishop of Caesarea ​96, 153–4 Eustace III, count of Boulogne ​61, 66 eyewitnessing ​8–10, 12, 34, 78, 102, 109, 130, 228, 259–60, 262

291

Index Fakhr al-Mulk, qāḍī of Tripoli ​114 Fāṭimid Caliphate ​29, 115, 122, 123, 176–7, 180–3, 186, 187, 189, 190 Field of Blood (Ager Sanguinis), battle (1119) ​21, 117, 269 first person, as narratorial device ​31–2, 109 n.38, 113, 131–2, 167, 172, 259–60 Firuz, traitor of Antioch ​28–9, 147, 157–73 Flanders, county of ​27, 70, 78, 122, 278, 284, 288 foundation narratives ​22, 27, 102–20, 157, 160 France ​12, 32, 90, 137–8, 216 n. 26, 262, 263 277, 283–5, 287, 288 France, John, historian ​10 Fredegar, chronicler ​89 Fulcher of Chartres, chronicler ​2, 3, 16, 18, 19–21, 23, 27–8, 40, 42, 68, 102–54, 164, 167, 174, 253 n.56 Fulk of Anjou, king of Jerusalem ​198–9, 200, 203 n.63, 204, 233, 240 Fustat ​181 Frederick I ‘Barbarossa’, emperor of Germany ​220–1 Frederick II, emperor of Germany ​284–5 Frederick, duke of Swabia ​229 Frederick of Louppy ​266 Galilee ​237, 251, 253 Garnier of Rochefort, abbot of Clairvaux ​ 39 Gaston, see Baghrās (Gaston) castle Gauls ​59 Gaza ​237 Geffrei Gaimar, chronicler ​62–3 gender, ​17, 20, 196 femininity ​203–8 masculinity ​17, 29–30, 31–2, 191–210, 259–76 Geoffrey V ‘Plantagenet’, count of Anjou ​ 240 Geoffrey of Villehardouin, chronicler ​ 260, 267 Gerard of Ridefort, Master of the Temple ​ 236–7 Gervase of Bazoches, lord of Tiberias ​ 123 Gervase of Tilbury, chronicler ​257 Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolymitanorum ​5–7, 26,

40, 44, 59, 69, 75–6, 79, 80–2, 84, 91–2, 94–5, 97, 99–100, 104, 105, 107–10, 123, 137–8, 161, 165, 166, 172, 260 Gesta Francorum Ierusalem expugnantium ​16, 21, 27–8, 40, 105, 110–11, 116, 121–36, 138, 140 Gestes des Chiprois ​282 Gilbert of Assailly, Grand Master of the Hospital ​187 Gilo of Paris, author ​161, 166 Godfrey of Bouillon, ruler of Jerusalem ​ 3, 14, 30, 92–3, 97, 107–11, 112–13, 122, 124, 126, 128–30, 132–4, 159, 160, 170, 193–5, 200, 216 n.26 Godfrey of Bures, see Bures brothers Gomorrah ​214 n.13, 253 Graindor of Douai, author ​158 Gran Conquista de Ultramar ​158–9, 164–5, 166 Gregory of Tours, chronicler ​88–9 Gregory VII, pope ​60, 218 Gregory VIII, pope ​218, 224, 225 Guibert of Nogent, chronicler ​6–7, 10–11, 27–8, 69, 75, 77–9, 84, 90, 95–6, 98, 99, 121–31, 133, 134, 135–6, 137, 138, 150–1, 154 Guillaume d’Orange, cycle ​277 Gunther of Pairis, chronicler ​216, 217 Guntram, king of Burgundy ​89 Guy of Bazoches, chronicler ​231 Guy of Ibelin, count of Jaffa and Ascalon ​ 272 Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem ​31, 189, 195, 229–34, 235, 238, 239–41 Guy of les Vaux-de-Cernay, Cistercian abbot ​247 Guy of Mauvoisin ​269 Hagenmeyer, Heinrich, historian ​12, 105, 133 n.58, 138, 140, 142–5 Hamilton, Bernard, historian ​188, 206 n.76, 207 n.79 Ḥārim, siege (1177–78) ​188 Harran, battle (1104) ​117 Hastings, battle (1066) ​48, 89 Ḥaṭṭīn, battle (1187) ​15–16, 39, 211, 214, 219–20, 221, 233, 236, 241, 287 Henry I, count of Champagne ​187 Henry I, king of England ​52, 57, 61 Henry II, king of Cyprus and Jerusalem ​ 277, 279

292

Index Henry II, king of England ​49, 208 n.88, 236, 237 Henry III, king of England ​153 Henry of Huntingdon, chronicler ​49, 50 Henry of Strassburg, see Historia peregrinorum Hervey of Glanville, Anglo-Norman nobleman ​91 Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César ​32, 278–80 Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris ​216–17, 220–1, 222 Historia de profectione Danorum in Hierosolymam ​30, 217, 224 Historia Nicaena vel Antiochena ​151 Historia peregrinorum ​218–19, 221, 223 Hodierna of Jerusalem ​231 Hohenstaufen family ​278, 284–5, 286 Holy Fire ​27, 124–5, 135, 249–50 Holy Land ​3, 25, 27, 31, 35, 61, 69, 71–2, 90, 91, 110, 112, 119, 120, 122, 127, 135, 172, 173, 214, 217, 219, 220, 221, 229, 230, 232, 238–9, 241, 242–58, 263 Holy Lance ​148–52, 154 Holy Sepulchre ​32, 69, 75, 79–83, 99, 126–8, 134, 135, 175–6, 239–40, 250 n.38, 282–3 Holy Trinity, Aldgate ​28, 138–40, 146–7, 152–3, 154 Homosociality ​32, 261, 263–4, 266, 273–7 Honorius III, pope ​44 Hospitallers ​187–8, 230, 232, 234–5, 236–8, 241, 246 Hugh III, duke of Burgundy ​187 Hugh IV, duke of Burgundy ​263 Hugh, count of Vermandois ​108–9, 160 Hugh, lord of Tiberias ​115 Hugh, prince of Galilee ​287 Hugh of Ecot, knight ​266 Hugh of Fouilloy, author ​255 Humbert of Romans, crusade preacher ​ 151 Humphrey III, lord of Toron ​188 Humphrey IV, lord of Toron ​237, 240, 241 Hungary ​58–9, 62–4 Ibelin family ​278, 284–5 Ibn al-Athīr, chronicler ​182, 233–5, 238, 239

Ida of Lorraine, countess of Boulogne ​66 ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Isfahānī, author ​182, 233–4 imitatio Christi ​106 Iraq ​86 Isabel I, queen of Jerusalem ​229–30, 231 n.13, 237, 240, 241 Isidore, bishop of Seville ​243, 255, 256 ISIS ​86 Islam, see Muslims Ismā‘īlīs, see Assasins Itinerarium peregrinorum (IP1) ​30–1, 228–41 Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi (IP2) ​4, 5, 153, 154, 214, 216, 219–20, 221, 223, 229, 231 Jacobites ​247 Jacques de Vitry, bishop of Acre, Historia orientalis ​4, 21, 31, 242–58, 277 letters ​36–7, 42, 43–5, 46 Jaffa ​39, 115, 116, 233 Jakelin of Mailly, Templar ​230, 236 James, St ​267 Janāh al-Dawla, ruler of Homs ​114 Jeremiah, prophet ​214, 215, 226 Jericho ​124 Jerusalem (city), capture (1099) ​15, 20, 25–6, 27, 35, 50, 51, 56–7, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69, 79, 80–3, 90, 94, 99, 104, 110, 111, 113, 123, 124, 126–7, 152, 216 capture (1187) ​4, 30, 31, 211–27, 232, 234–7, 238, 241, 242, 271 Church ​19, 27–8, 40, 99–100, 125, 127–35, 172, 178, 232, 282–3 Descriptions ​123–4, 243–4 destruction (587 BCE) ​211, 226 pilgrimage ​71–2, 112–13, 123, 125, 127 Jerusalem (kingdom), nobility ​29, 97, 115, 117–18, 191, 197, 207–8, 230–1, 234–6, 240, 241, 279–80 royal family ​3, 19, 27, 29–30, 31, 102–36, 159, 178, 191–210, 229–36, 238–41, 277, 279 society ​22–3, 29, 102, 104, 117–18, 126, 129, 130–2, 136, 151, 152–3, 159, 172, 186–7, 189, 192, 193, 196, 209, 255–6, 277–88

293

Index Joan of Navarre ​261 John II, count of Soissons ​262 John II Komnenos, Byzantine emperor ​ 196 John Chrysostom ​204 n.68 John, count of Brienne ​283, 284 John of Antioch ​287 John of Cambrai, cantor of Acre ​43 John of Ibelin, count of Jaffa and Ascalon ​ 284, 287–8 John of Joinville, author ​14, 31–2, 259–76 John of Worcester, chronicler ​49, 50 John, St ​253 John the Baptist, Biblical preacher ​88, 253 John the Younger of Cambrai, nephew of John of Cambrai ​43 Joinville (place) ​261, 24 Jordan, river ​124, 127, 253 Joscelin of Bohon, bishop of Salisbury ​ 184 Joscelin I, count of Edessa ​117, 118 Joscelin III of Courtenay, titular count of Edessa ​232 Joscius, archbishop of Tyre ​239–40 Josephus, author ​253–4 Judas Iscariot, traitor of Jesus Christ ​235 Judas Maccabeus, Biblical hero ​90 Julius Caesar, Roman statesman ​49 Julius Solinus, author ​131–2, 243, 255, 256 Kairouan ​180 Kane, James, historian ​4, 25–6, 39, 228, 245 Karbughā, atabeg of Mosul ​95, 142, 145, 149–50, 152, 160, 161, 163 Kaukab, see Belvoir (Kaukab) castle Kedar, Benjamin, historian ​15, 175–6, 177 n.15, 181, 183, 186, 255 Kerak castle ​237–8, 241 kingship ​14, 105, 111–20, 129–36, 172, 191–210, 262 Kirschberger, Timo, historian ​22–3, 103, 104 landscape ​18, 31, 119, 242–58 langosta / locusta, herb ​253 Laodicea, see Latakia (Laodicea) Latakia (Laodicea) ​3, 35, 39, 45, 125 Lebanon ​251–2 Leonard, St ​74

Leonius, teacher at Acre ​43–4 letters ​3, 12, 25, 34–47, 66, 69–72, 77–8, 79, 82, 142–3, 150, 182, 183, 204, 211, 214, 217, 222, 223, 224, 225, 246 n.20 Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum ​4, 215, 216, 220, 223, 228, 231, 233, 235, 237, 245 Liber revelationum, see Peter of Cornwall Lietbert, bishop of Cambrai ​72 Ligarde of St Trond ​42 Lignages d’Outremer ​287 Limousin ​74 ‘Lisbon letter’ ​39–40 ‘Lisiard of Tours’ ​138 Livy, Roman historian ​179 Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, prince of Gwynedd ​286 ‘Lost Lotharingian Chronicle’ (of the First Crusade) ​156 Louis VII, king of France ​37–8, 203–4 Louis VIII, king of France ​71 n.21 Louis IX, king of France ​14, 31–2, 259–76, 284, 285 Louis X, king of France ​261, 276 Magister Tolosanus, author ​214, 219–20, 222 Malcolm III, king of Scotland ​52, 54 Manasses, archbishop of Reims ​36, 41–2, 44 Manasses of Hierges, constable of Jerusalem ​199, 207–8 Manṣūra, battle (1250) ​259, 262, 265–6, 268, 269, 276 Manuel I Komnenos, Byzantine emperor ​ 202 mappae mundi ​243, 256 Maria Komnene, dowager queen of Jerusalem ​234 Marino Sanudo, author ​282 Marj Ayyun, battle (1179) ​188 Marqab castle ​237 Marsilio Zorzi, Venetian bailo of Acre ​ 284 marvels ​118–19, 257 Masyaf, siege (1175–76) ​188 Maximus, bishop of Turin ​99 Mediterranean Sea ​1, 23, 33, 48, 100, 242 Melisende, queen of Jerusalem ​29–30, 190 n.74, 198–200, 203–8

294

Index Melitene ​74 Mesopotamia ​30, 113, 212–13, 217, 220, 222, 227 Middle English language ​58 Milo, bishop of Thérouanne ​39 miracles ​8, 18, 27, 57, 147, 149, 249, 250, 257 Holy Fire (1101) ​27, 123, 125, 135, 249 Mirebeau ​52 mirrors for princes ​112, 261–2 monstrous peoples ​243, 254, 256 Montgisard, battle (1177) ​187 Montreal (Shaubak) castle ​237, 238, 241, 251 Morphia of Melitene, queen consort of Jerusalem ​231 Mount Horeb ​131 Muḥammad ​180, 248 Naṣr al-Dīn, son of the Fāṭimid vizier, Abbas  ​185–7 Nicaea ​36, 44, 107–9, 110, 282 Nile, river ​31, 287 Nizārīs ​182–9 Noblat ​74 Normandy ​49, 58, 60–1, 63, 65 Nūr al-Dīn, atabeg of Aleppo ​179 n.28, 184, 188, 196, 209 oaths ​68, 71 n.20, 73–5, 77, 93, 129, 169, 189 Odo of Deuil, chronicler ​37–8 Odo of Montbéliard, constable of Jerusalem ​285 Odo of St-Amand, Grand Master of the Hospitallers ​188 Odo, bishop of Bayeux ​55 n.33 Old English language ​56–60, 66 Old French Continuation of William of Tyre, see William of Tyre Old French Crusade Cycle ​12, 55, 173 Oliver of Cologne, see Oliver of Paderborn Oliver, bishop of Paderborn Historia Damiatina ​3, 38 Historia regum terre sancte ​3, 152 letters ​38 oral sources, use of ​13, 28, 92, 105, 123, 157–9, 168, 173, 185 oral storytelling, influence of ​168–72 Orderic Vitalis, chronicler ​49–50, 138, 151, 171, 218

Orosius, chronicler ​96 Osbert, clerk of Bawdsey ​37 Otto II, Holy Roman emperor ​62 Otto IV of Brunswick, Holy Roman emperor ​284 Otto of St Blasien, chronicler ​30, 215–16, 218, 223–4 Outremer ​1–2, 19, 22, 27, 32, 35, 38, 102–4, 106, 111, 114, 116, 118–19, 173, 185, 193, 198, 206, 258, 271, 287 Pagan, lord of Haifa ​241 Parsons, Simon, historian ​12–13, 34, 40, 51, 153, 167 n.68 Paschal II, pope ​127, 143 Paul, Nicholas, historian ​16, 42, 46, 261 Pavia ​89 Peregrinatio Antiochie per Vrbanum papam facta ​80–2 Persia ​113, 126, 142 Peterborough Abbey ​58, 62–4 Peterborough Chronicle, see Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Chronicle E Peter, St ​148–9 Peter Damian, cardinal ​72 Peter Lombard, theologian ​83 Peter of Cornwall, prior of Holy Trinity, Aldgate ​28, 138–42, 144, 146–54 Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, chronicler ​ 247 Peter the Chanter, theologian ​247 Peter the Hermit, crusade preacher ​55, 76 n.57, 107, 149, 152 Peter Tudebode, chronicler ​42, 80–2, 84 Peter I, duke of Brittany ​272 Philip of Novara, author ​277 Philip I, count of Flanders ​187 Philip II, king of France ​283 Philip IV, king of France ​261 Physiologus ​255 Piacenza, council (1095) ​71 n.20 pilgrimage ​6, 48, 69, 71, 74–7, 79, 82, 106, 113, 123, 127, 131, 153, 239–40, 264 Pirrus, see Firuz, traitor of Antioch Pisa ​125, 127–8 Pliny the Elder, Roman author ​243, 253, 255–6 Pullani ​246, 249–50, 254 qāḍī, Islamic judge ​114, 287

295

Index Rainer of Nablus ​235 Ramlah ​115–16 Ralph, bishop of Bethehem ​183 Ralph of Caen, author ​23, 74, 80, 82, 93, 98–9, 123–4, 127–9, 130 n.43, 134, 161, 164–6 Ralph of Coggeshall, chronicler ​4, 214, 219, 233 Ralph of Diceto, chronicler ​235 Ralph of Vanault, knight ​270 Raoul [Ralph] II of Lusignan, count of Eu ​266 Rashīd al-Dīn Sinān, leader of Syrian Assassins ​184, 188 Raymond III, count of Tripoli ​29, 176, 178, 186, 187–90, 229 n.7, 230–1, 287 Raymond IV, count of Toulouse (and Saint-Gilles) ​99, 107–10, 133, 148–9, 160–1, 167 Raymond of Aguilers, chronicler ​40, 80, 82, 98, 101, 105, 108, 123, 133, 148 Raymond of Poitiers, prince of Antioch ​ 196 Reinier, clerk of St Michael’s, Acre ​43 Reynald of Châtillon, lord of Transjordan ​ 231 Reynald, lord of Sidon ​235, 241 Riccardo Filangieri, imperial marshal of Jerusalem ​284 Richard I, king of England ​14, 31, 39, 229–30, 232–3, 240–1 Richard of Saint-Vanne, abbot ​72 Riley-Smith, Jonathan, historian ​6–8, 11, 70, 79, 94 Robert I, count of Flanders ​40 Robert II, count of Flanders ​61, 107, 160, 165–6 Robert II ‘Curthose’, duke of Normandy ​ 55, 58–63, 65, 68, 99–101, 104, 107, 160 Robert of Auxerre, chronicler ​214, 219 Robert of Clari, author ​260, 267 Robert of Mowbray, earl of Northumbria ​ 58 Robert, count of Artois ​268 Robert Guiscard, duke of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily ​100 Robert the Monk, chronicler ​7, 15, 40, 44, 57 n.40, 69, 75–9, 84, 96–7, 99, 123–4, 127, 137, 151, 166 Rochester ​64

Roger of Salerno, regent of Antioch ​117 Roger of Howden, chronicler ​30, 39, 231, 233 Chronica ​216, 219, 232 Gesta ​232 Roger of Moulins, Grand Master of the Hospital ​237 Roman de Tristan ​277 Rome ​52, 58, 60, 63, 135, 175–6, 178, 186, 190 Roussillon ​70 Rubenstein, Jay, historian ​7, 121 n.2, 127, 135, 140 Safed castle ​237–8 Saint Augustine’s, abbey, see Canterbury Saint-Colombe, Sens, abbey annals of ​59 Saint-Remy-de-Reims, abbey ​75 Saint-Urbain ​264 Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, sultan of Egypt and Syria ​ 4, 14–15, 29–30, 177, 181–4, 188–90, 195, 197, 211, 221, 230–9, 241–2, 257, 271 Salisbury ​58, 184 Samaritans ​254 Samuel, Biblical prophet ​133 Saumur ​274 Sea of Galilee ​251, 253 September 11 attacks (2001) ​86 Shaubak, see Montreal (Shaubak) castle Shāwar ​189 Shīrkūh, uncle of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn ​189 Sicily ​55 n.33, 62, 100, 229, 238 Sidon ​184, 235, 251–2, 275 Siège d’Antioche ​153, 165, 167 n.68 Sigebert I, king of Austrasia ​89 Sion, Mount ​131 Skottki, Kristin, historian ​15, 103–4 Solomon ​252 Smith, Caroline, historian ​261–4, 275 Smith, Katherine Allen, historian ​10–12, 46, 245 Smith, Thomas, historian ​12, 25, 66, 140, 143 Sodom ​213, 214 n.13, 248, 253, 254 n.58 Solinus, Roman geographer ​132, 243, 255–6 Spacey, Beth, historian ​18, 31, 114 n.58, 119 n.87, 149, 152 Spain ​70, 130 Spanish language ​281, 288

296

Index Spencer, Stephen, historian ​17, 28, 105, 192 n.6, 229, 270 Staunton, Michael, historian ​17, 171, 214 Stephen, count of Blois ​12, 35, 40, 43–4, 104, 107 Stephanie of Milly ​237–8 Suger, abbot of St Denis ​37 Sumerian language ​212 Sunni Islam ​183 Sweetenham, Carol, historian ​13, 40, 167 n.68, 172 Sybil, queen of Jerusalem ​31, 187, 195, 229–38, 240–1 Symeon, patriarch of Jerusalem ​40 Taliban ​87 Tancred of Hauteville, prince of Galilee ​ 93, 98, 123–4, 129–30, 161, 166 Tancredus, see Ralph of Caen Teichoscopy ​165 Templars ​90, 184–8, 230, 232, 234, 236–7, 241, 246, 268 Temple of Solomon ​213 Terricus, Templar knight ​237 Teutonic Knights ​246 Theoderic, king of the Franks ​89 Theodora Komnene, wife of King Baldwin III ​202, 209 n.93 Third Lateran Council ​175, 178, 185–6 theological refinement ​7, 12, 79, 84, 105, 106, 108, 110, 119 Thibault II/V, king of Navarre and count of Champagne ​274 Thibault IV, count of Champagne ​261, 265 Thomas, chancellor of Noyon ​43 Thomas Patricius, burgess of Jerusalem ​ 235 Toledo ​62 Tortosa ​237 Tosh, John, historian ​192, 194, 261 Tower of London Tractatus de locus et statu sancte terre ierosolimitane ​185 Trapesac, see Darbsāk (Trapesac) castle Tripoli (city) ​114, 184, 240, 251 Tripoli (county) ​187 True Cross ​16, 115–16, 148, 214, 218 Trump, Donald, US president ​86 Turkmenistan ​256 Turks ​21, 36, 56, 59, 74, 95, 108–9, 113, 126, 144, 147, 150, 152, 162–3, 219, 266, 268

type-scenes ​28, 160, 165, 167, 170 Tyerman, Christopher, historian ​65, 70, 92, 265 Tyre ​31, 105, 118–19, 128, 143, 237–9, 241–2, 251–3, 284 Tyrian purple ​252–3 ‘Umāra, poet ​182–3 Ur ​212, 227 Urban II, pope ​6, 26, 58, 60, 63, 65, 69, 70–2, 76–9, 82, 84, 90, 94, 107, 125 n.16, 127 n.24, 130, 142 Urban III, pope ​222–3 Vallombrosa ​71, 78 Vegetius, Roman author ​95 Venice ​280 Visio Taionis episcopi de invention librorum Moralium S. Gregorii ​153 vows ​26–7, 68–85 Wales ​58, 286 Walter the Chancellor, chronicler ​21, 23, 269 Walter of Le Mesnil, Templar ​184, 189 Walter of Tournai, archdeacon of Acre ​43 Walter Map, author ​171, 184–6, 215–16, 218, 221 Walter Sansavoir, crusader ​55 Warmund, patriarch of Jerusalem ​118 Waverley Abbey ​63 Westminster Abbey ​49 n.6, 57 n.41, 64, 153 William, bishop of Durham ​58 William I ‘the Conqueror’, king of England ​89 William II, archbishop of Tyre ​5, 15, 18–20, 23, 28–30, 84, 133–4, 152, 155–210, 243 career ​83, 159, 174–6 Chronicon ​3, 26, 28–30, 83, 155–210, 251–3, 277 Gesta orientalium principum ​277 Latin Continuation of ​39, 232–6 Old French Continuations of ​22, 32, 158, 172, 228, 234–5, 278, 281–5, 288 Colbert-Fontainebleau Eracles ​283–5 Chronique d’Ernoul et Bernard le Trésorier ​22, 234–5, 283–4, 288 Lyon Eracles ​285

297

Index Rothelin Eracles ​284 William II, count of Flanders ​263 William II, king of Sicily ​238 William II ‘Rufus’, king of England ​25, 52, 55, 57–8, 60–1, 63, 65–7 William of Bures, prince of Galilee, see Bures brothers William of Malmesbury, chronicler ​ 49–51, 67, 138, 151 William of Montferrat (‘William Longsword’), count of Jaffa and Ascalon ​238 William of Newburgh, chronicler ​215, 219, 221, 231

William of Poitiers, chronicler ​89 William of Vatteville, abbot of Peterborough ​49 n.6 Winand, priest ​39 Winchester Castle ​153 Windsor ​58 Yaghī Siyān, ruler of Antioch ​150, 161–2, 164, 168, 170 Yahweh ​218–20, 222 Zengid dynasty ​187 Zion ​222

298