Reading Charlemagne in Outremer Laura K. Morreale (Affiliated Scholar, Harvard University, Department of History & Fordham University, Center for Medieval Studies) [email protected] Who will dare to preach and speak of God any more in square or cloister, and announce benefits and indulgences, [when no-one is disposed to perform] anything which can assist Our Lord to conquer and win back the land where He paid our ransom with His blood? Lord prelates, it is neither good nor just that you so delay helping Him: you, this can certainly be said, have made Roland of God and Ganelon of yourselves. From “Jerusalem se plaint et li païs” by Huon de Saint-Quentin, 13th century.1 As the lyrics of Huon de Saint-Quentin suggest, Charlemagne’s name and those of his household, including Roland and Ganelon, were easily recognized among Latin Christians living in the lands of the Levant during the crusading period, from the early twelfth until the late fifteenth century. Previous studies of Outremer literary culture have pieced together circumstantial evidence to claim that works from the matière de France and the Charlemagne-centered Cycle du Roi formed the basis for a cohesive cultural identity for Western Christians living in the East.2 However, at the same moment works belonging to the matière de France were flourishing in the West, scant evidence remains that these same texts were produced, copied, or circulated in Outremer.3 The near absence of these works or of the Frankish king in the eastern repertoire more generally highlights how writing and reading in Outremer followed a trajectory independent from these same activities in the West. 1 Huon de Saint-Quentin, “Jerusalem se plaint et li païs,” trans. Linda Paterson, with Ruth Harvey, available at Troubadours, Trouvères and the Crusades, https://warwick.ac.uk/ fac/arts/modernlanguages/research/french/crusades/texts/of/rs1576#page1 (accessed 25 June 2018). 2 David 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, 29 août–4 septembre 1982 (Modena: Mucchi, 1984), 617–46. 3 Krijnie Ciggaar, “Manuscripts as Intermediaries: The Crusader States and Literary Cross- Fertilization,” in East and West in the Crusader States: Context, Contacts, Confrontations: Acta of the Congress Held at Hernen Castle in May 1993, ed. Krijnie Ciggaar, Adelbert Davids and Herman Teule (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters, 1996), 131–51. 2 The purpose of this essay is to offer a preliminary survey of extant written evidence for the tradition of reading Charlemagne in Outremer during the crusading period. It is based on an examination of three separate yet inter- related repertoires, including the corpus of writings created by authors living in Outremer during the crusader era,4 the body of texts produced outside of the Holy Land but found in manuscripts copied or circulated in the East,5 and the extended manuscript tradition of a selected number of foundational texts for the Charlemagne story, which will be examined especially for evidence of reception or circulation in the crusader settlements of the Levant.6 I hope then to draw some early conclusions about the role the Frankish king, or the memory of the emperor, fulfilled in the written traditions of the Latin East. Texts Created in the Latin East Charlemagne was most visible to readers in the East via the well-known historical narratives written by authors in Outremer who recounted the crusading efforts of the late twelfth through early fourteenth centuries. However, as others have noted, crusader historians who composed their histories in the Latin East and made allusion to Charlemagne referred to the emperor only infrequently and never featured him or his followers as characters central to their writings.7 The first wave of crusade historians 4 A list of texts that form part of this corpus comes from Peter Edbury, “Crusader Sources from the Near East,” in Byzantines and Crusaders in Non-Greek Sources, 1025–1204, ed. Mary Whitby (Oxford and New York: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2007), 23–38; See also the index of from the French of Outremer site: https://frenchofoutremer.ace.fordham.edu/index-of-sources/ (accessed 25 June 2018). 5 For the corpus of manuscripts from the Latin East, see Hugo Buchtal, Miniature Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957); Jaroslav Folda, Crusader Illumination at Saint-Jean d'Acre, 1275–1291 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976); idem, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); idem, “manoscritti miniati negli stati crociati,” in Le crociate. L'Oriente e I'Occidente da Urbano II a San Luigi, 1096–1270, ed. M. Rey-Delque (Milan: Electa, 1997), 299–305; Cristina Dondi, The Liturgy of the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. A Study and a Catalogue of the Manuscript Sources (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004); Online Inventory of the Manuscripts Owned by the Custody of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, http://www.bibliothecaterraesanctae.org/descrizione-inventario-manoscritti.ht ml (accessed 25 June 2018). 6 For a list of foundational texts, see Thomas F. X. Noble, “Greatness Contested and Confirmed: The Raw Materials of the Charlemagne Legend,” in The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages: Power, Faith, and Crusade, ed. Matthew Gabriele and Jace Stuckey (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 3–21. 7 Matthew Gabriele has noted that “there are no extended meditations on Charlemagne in any crusade chronicle and his name is mentioned, briefly, in only a few contemporary sources.” An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem before the First Crusade (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 140. See also Jace Stuckey, “Charlemagne as Crusader? Memory, Propaganda, and the Many Uses of Charlemagne’s Legendary Expedition to Spain,” in Legend of Charlemagne, 137–52, at 139. 3 who did mention Charlemagne most often characterized the emperor as a precursor to those who travelled east on crusade, or as a progenitor of these same warriors whose actions then reappeared in the main part of the narrative, even though the Emperor never made such a journey. The author of the Gesta Fracorum, for example, explained that Charlemagne paved the way for the crusader armies who, centuries afterwards, followed “the route which Charles the Great, the wondrous king of France, had prepared towards Constantinople.” 8 William of Tyre, relying on Eckhard’s Vita Karoli as a source, noted that Charlemagne established a precedent and even a preference for western rule in the lands of the East among local inhabitants, due to the peace treaty he concluded with Harun al-Rashid, King of Persia. William noted that the relationship between Charlemagne and the inhabitants of Jerusalem was so fruitful that “the gracious favor of that potentate [Charlemagne] was a source of much comfort to the faithful, so that they seemed to be living under the rule of the Emperor Charles rather than under that of Harun.”9 Along with citing Charlemagne’s fictional deeds as rationale for western settlers’ actions in the East, First Crusade authors writing in Outremer further defended the newly-arrived westerners by casting Charlemagne as a biological ancestor of those chosen to rule in these new territories. Ralph of Caen, in his Gesta Tancredi in expeditione Hierosolymitana, mentioned that the bearing of Baldwin of Boulogne “showed with ease his descent from Charlemagne and that fact that he was born divinely as one who was to take his seat on David’s throne.”10 Similarly, Bartolf of Nangis concluded his Gesta Francorum Iherusalem expugnantium with a set of verses claiming Carolingian parentage for Godfrey of Bouillon and his brother Baldwin through their mother, Ida of Lorraine: a noble lineage produced both kings, that is Godfrey and Baldwin. The mother Ida, to the father Eustace 8 Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed. and trans. Rosalind Hill (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons LTD, 1962), 2: “Isti potentissimi milites et alii plures quos ignoro uenerunt per uiam quam iamdudum Karolus Magnus mirificus rex Franciae aptari fecit usque Constantinopolim.” Questions remain whether this text was created in the East or the West. See Jay Rubenstein, “What is the Gesta Francorum and who was Peter Tudebode?” Revue Mabillon 16 (2005): 179–204. 9 William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Beyond the Sea, ed. and trans. Emily Atwater Babcock and August C. Krey (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), 64; Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger, Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 25 (Hannover: Hahn, 1911), 19. 10 Ralph of Caen, The Gesta Tancredi of Ralph of Caen: A History of the Normans on the First Crusade, trans. Bernard S. Bachrach and David S. Bachrach (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 61. 4 Bore these noble princes ruling Jerusalem. Let Baldwin, his brother, leader, king of Jerusalem Father of the king, king Philip and Robert of Flanders, Become after the death of Godfrey, the most unconquered king. They were born equally of regal seed. The mother Ida descends from the lineage of Charlemagne, The sister of the leader Godfrey of renowned Lotharia…11 In many of these twelfth-century eastern texts, Charlemagne served as a carrier of the collective will of the newly arrived Westerners and a justification for their newfound authority in the East. The writer of the mid- twelfth century Historia Nicaena vel Antiochena also reiterated the stance of previous eastern authors who had cast Charlemagne as the western Christian subjugator of pagan rule and, by recalling his imagined voyage to Constantinople, the forerunner of western travelers to the East.12 As the twelfth century progressed, writers and readers in the East placed more distance between Charlemagne and the lands where Latin Christians had settled.