CHAPTER ONE THE EYEWITNESSES The major Latin eyewitness accounts of the First Crusade consist of the anonymously written Gesta Francorum, a near identical version of the same text by Peter Tudebode, Raymond of Aguilers’s Historia Francorum and Fulcher of Chartres’s Historia Hierosolymitana. Each of the eyewitnesses had a distinct perspective on the events they wrote about and, although sharing a similar social vocabulary, reveal a consider- able difference in emphasis in their writing about the social structure of the expedition. The Gesta Francorum The Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum is the most studied and inÁ uential account of the First Crusade. It was the version of events that had the greatest impact in its day and it formed the basis of most of the subsequent twelfth century histories of the First Crusade. Although a new edition by Marcus Bull is in preparation, the most recent modern edition is that of Rosalind Hill (1962), which was issued with an accompanying English translation. It is Hill’s edition that is used for this discussion.1 The author of the Gesta Francorum is unknown, leading to considerable discussion over the centuries as to his background. There is no doubting that the emphasis of the author was slanted towards the activities of the South-Italian Norman prince Bohemond I of Taranto and a strong consensus has been reached that the author travelled from Italy as far as Antioch in the contingent of Bohemond.2 There is far more colour 1 Editions of the Gesta Francorum: J. Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos (Hanover, 1611); RHC Oc. 3, 121–63; Anonymi Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed. H. Hagen- meyer (Heidelberg, 1890); Anonymi Gesta Francorum, ed. B. A. Lees (Oxford, 1924); Histoire Anonyme de la première Croisade ed. L. Bréhier (Paris, 1924); Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum ed. R. Hill (Oxford, 1962), hereafter GF. 2 For Bohemond I of Taranto see R. B. Yewdale, Bohemond I, Prince of Antioch (New York, 1924). This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC License. C. Kostick - 9789047445029 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 11:31:06PM via free access 10 chapter one in the description of how Bohemond’s contingent was formed and its subsequent journey than for the equivalent, cursory, accounts of the armies of the expedition led by Hugh the Great, count of Vermandois, Count Raymond IV of Toulouse or Duke Godfrey IV of Bouillon.3 As Rosalind Hill pointed out, the author knew the names of many of the individual knights of Bohemond’s following, but not even the correct titles of the other senior princes, let alone their followers.4 There is also a consensus among scholars that the Gesta Francorum was completed shortly after the last event that it described, the victory of the Christian forces near Ascalon against al-Afdal, vizier of Egypt, 12 August 1099. Louis Bréhier thought that two passages in the work indicated that the expedition was not complete at the time that they were written, indicating that the text as we have it is the result of more than one redaction.5 Hill further suggested that the À rst nine of its ten books were composed before the author left Antioch in November 1099.6 There is no explicit evidence in the work to support this insight, which Hill leaves unsupported in her introduction, but the structure of the work makes it plausible. The À rst nine books have roughly even amounts of material and À nish coherently with the surrender of the citadel of Antioch, following the Christian victory over Kerbogha, atabeg of Mosul, 28 June 1098, that makes for the highpoint of the work. The tenth book is considerably longer and can be seen as a large addendum, written at a later date, that brings the story up to the battle of Ascalon. Colin Morris has noted that the way the Gesta Francorum deals with the matter of the discovery of the Holy Lance becomes more comprehensible if it is considered to be a work of two sections. Otherwise the passages of unqualiÀ ed praise and acceptance of the 3 For these princes see M. Bull, ‘The Capetian monarchy and the early crusade movement: Hugh of Vermandois and Louis VII’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 50 (1996), pp. 25–46; J. Hill and L. Hill, Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse (Syracuse, 1962); J. C. Andressohn, The Ancestry and Life of Godfrey of Bouillon (Bloomington, 1947) and A. V. Murray, The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, A Dynastic History 1099–1125 (Oxford, 2000), passim. 4 GF xi–xii. Although titles at this time had considerable Á uidity, see I. S. Robinson, ‘Eine unbekannte Streitschrift über die Salevamento von Exkommuniziesten im Münchener Kodex lat. 618’, Studi Gregoriani 11 (1978), p. 311 n. 30. 5 Histoire Anonyme de la première Croisade, ed. L. Bréhier, p. ix, referring to GF 21 and 35. 6 GF ix. C. Kostick - 9789047445029 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 11:31:06PM via free access the eyewitnesses 11 legitimacy of the lance do not À t well with the relic’s later loss of favour.7 Another pertinent observation by Morris with regard to the bipartite structure of the work is that the epithet dominus is applied regularly to Bohemond in the À rst nine books but not at all in the tenth.8 One common argument for a terminus ad quem by which the existence of the Gesta Francorum had to have existed has arisen from the testimony of the chronicler, Ekkehard, later abbot of Aura, who in 1101 made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem where he came across a libellus.9 This has often been taken as a reference to the Gesta Francorum and thus as giving a date by which the work must have been completed.10 But this is not an entirely safe assumption; Raymond of Aguilers’s Historia Francorum was available at around the same time11 and Peter Knoch’s detective work has raised the possibility that at least one other earlier crusad- ing history was available in the region.12 There is no reason to doubt that the version of the Gesta Francorum as we have it today had been written by 1101 but hard evidence is lacking. The earliest manuscript is Vaticanus Reginensis latinus 572, written and punctuated ‘in a bold round hand of the early twelfth century.’13 Two historical events can be used to suggest a very early date for the completion of the Gesta Francorum, albeit with the risk that always attends an argument based on an absence of material rather than on more positive evidence. On 18 July 1100, Duke Godfrey of Lotharingia, Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre, died, yet nowhere does the author of the Gesta Francorum show any awareness of his death. In particu- lar, the description of the election of Godfrey as ruler of Jerusalem, 23 July 1099, was written towards the very end of the text at which point it would have been conventional to have written an epitaph on his praiseworthy character or offer a blessing, should the writer have possessed knowledge of his death less than a year later.14 Similarly, as 7 C. Morris, ‘Policy and Visions’, p. 37, n. 14, referring to GF 59–60. For a full discussion of the Holy Lance see below pp. 121–5. 8 C. Morris, ‘The Gesta Francorum’, p. 66. 9 EA 148. 10 For example, Histoire Anonyme de la première Croisade, ed. L. Bréhier, viii; GF ix and xvi; RHC Oc. 5 (Paris, 1895), p. 21 n. b and ix; S. Runciman, A History of the Crusades p. 329; Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem 1095–1127, F. R. Ryan trans. (Knoxville, 1969), p. 19. 11 RA ccxxvi. See below p. 28. 12 P. Knoch, Studien zu Albert von Aachen (Stuttgart, 1966), pp. 36–59. 13 GF xxxviii. 14 GF 92–3. C. Kostick - 9789047445029 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 11:31:06PM via free access 12 chapter one Morris has observed, the author wrote of the election of Arnulf of Chocques, chaplain to Duke Robert of Normandy, to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, 1 August 1099, without any indication that this election would be considered uncanonical and Arnulf deposed in favour of Daimbert of Pisa shortly after Christmas 1099.15 The exact social status of the anonymous author has proved to be difÀ cult to determine. Bréhier initially proposed seeing the author as a cleric taking down the story from a knight. Heinrich Hagenmeyer argued in favour of seeing the author as a literate knight, which is a view that has found favour with subsequent historians, including Hill. But Colin Morris sounded a note of caution in regard to the characterisation of the author as a simple knight, with an analysis that went further than that of Bréhier in drawing attention to the clerical elements of the work.16 In resolving this issue there are inevitably great difÀ culties. What would be the difference in language between a knight dictating to a cleric who helped shape the material17 and a literate knight with a ‘half-conscious’ memory of the phrases he had heard in church?18 Do the rare moments when the author reveals a sophisticated grammar deÀ nitely indicate he was a cleric,19 or someone who had once trained for the clergy but subsequently become a knight?20 The question of the authorship of the Gesta Francorum is an important one for historians of the crusades generally and social historians in par- ticular. If it is considered the work of a knight, the text can be utilised in a slightly different manner than if, like all the other sources for the First Crusade, it is thought to be the work of a cleric.