Armies of Heaven (51 page)

Purkis (2008): William J. Purkis,
Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095–c.1187
(Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2008).

RA: Raymond of Aguilers,
Liber
, ed. John Hugh Hill and Laurita Littleton Hill, trans. Philippe Wolff (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1969); trans. John Hugh Hill and Laurita Littleton Hill,
Historia Francorum Qui Ceperunt
Iherusalem
(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1968).

RC: Ralph of Caen,
Gesta Tancredi,
RHC
Oc.
3, 587–710; trans. Bernard S. Bachrach and David S. Bachrach,
The Gesta Tancredi of Ralph of Caen: The Normans on the First Crusade
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005).

RHC
Oc
. :
Recueil des historiens des Croisades, Historiens occidentaux
, 5 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1844–1895).

RHC
Or
. :
Recueil des historiens des Croisades, Historiens orientaux
, 5 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1872–1906).

RHGF:
Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France
, ed. M. Bouquet et al., 24 vols. (Paris: Aux dépens des libraires, 1737–1904).

Riley-Smith (1977): Jonathan Riley-Smith,
What Were the Crusades?
(Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977).

Riley-Smith (1986): Jonathan Riley-Smith,
The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading
(London: Athlone, 1986).

Riley-Smith (1997): Jonathan Riley-Smith,
The First Crusaders (1095–1131)
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

Ripoll Account: John France, ed., “The Text of the Account of the Capture of Jerusalem in the Ripoll Manuscript, Bibliothèque nationale (latin) 5132,”
English Historical Review
103 (1988): 640–657.

Rousset: Paul Rousset,
Les origines, et les caractères de la Première Croisade
(Neuchatel, Switzerland: à la Baconnerie, 1945).

RtM: Robert the Monk (aka Robert of Reims),
Historia Hierosolimitana
, RHC
Oc
. 3, 717–882; trans. Carol Sweetenham,
Robert the Monk's History of the First Crusade: Historia Hierosolimitana
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005).

Rubenstein (2002): Jay Rubenstein,
Guibert of Nogent: Portrait of a Medieval Mind
(New York: Routledge, 2002).

Rubenstein (2004): Jay Rubenstein, “What Is the
Gesta Francorum
and Who Is Peter Tudebode?”
Revue Mabillon
16 (2004): 179–204.

Schein (2005): Sylvia Schein,
Gateway to the Heavenly City: Crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic West (1099–1187)
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005).

Sibyllinische Texte
:
Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen,
ed. Ernst Sackur (Halle, Germany: Max Niermeyer, 1898).

Somerville,
Councils
: Robert Somerville,
The Councils of Urban II
1.
Decreta Claromontensia
(Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1972).

Suger: Suger,
Vita Ludovici Grossi
, ed. H. Waquet (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1964); trans. Richard Cusimano and John Moorhead,
The Deeds of Louis the Fat
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1992).

Tolan (2002): John V. Tolan,
Saracens : Islam in the Medieval European Imagination
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).

WM: William of Malmesbury,
Gesta Regum Anglorum
, ed. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols. (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1998, 1999).

WP: William of Poitiers,
Gesta Guillelmi ducis Normannorum et regis Anglorum
, ed. R. H. C. Davis and M. Chibnall (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998).

WT: William of Tyre,
Chronicon
, ed. R. B. C. Huygens. CCCM 63, 63a (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1986); trans. Emily Atwater Babcock and A. C. Krey,
A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea
, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943).

O
ne of the things that make the First Crusade an exciting and difficult topic for medieval historians is the unusual number of narrative sources it inspired. Within twenty years of the fall of Jerusalem, a dozen different authors composed detailed accounts of what had happened. For comparison, the Norman Conquest, just thirty years before the crusade, inspired only a single narrative history, and it survives in only one incomplete manuscript.

Three of the crusade narratives are especially important and for two reasons: Each was written soon after the events described, and each one appears to have been written independently from the other two. Of these three books, two were written by actual participants and were probably finished in the year 1101 at the latest. One of them, by an anonymous writer, is entitled
Gesta Francorum
, or
Deeds of the Franks
. It is likely a composite text—several stories assembled by a single writer during the course of the campaign. The second eyewitness account was written by a Provençal, or southern French, cleric named Raymond of Aguilers. At first he collaborated with a knight named Pons of Balazun, but Pons died in 1099, just a few months before the army arrived at Jerusalem, leaving Raymond to write the lion's share of the book by himself. The third important book in this category is not by an eyewitness, but its author, an otherwise unknown Lotharingian writer usually identified as Albert of Aachen, probably had access to a now-lost firsthand account of the crusade. He also spoke extensively with veterans of the campaign. The result of his research is a book full of original material and unique observations,
every bit as valuable for the crusade historian as either the
Deeds of the Franks
or the book of Raymond. Part of the art of retelling the crusade story is to strike a balance among these three narratives.
¹

But in this book I have sought to incorporate as well other historical narratives that, at first glance, appear less valuable. These include four rewritten versions of the
Deeds of the Franks
, composed by three monks in the north of France named Guibert, Baudry, and Robert and by one anonymous monk probably working in the Italian monastery of Monte Cassino. All of these writers added new information to their source material, apparently, like Albert, based on the testimony of crusade veterans. This is even more true of the writer Ralph of Caen, who immigrated to the Middle East in 1107 and eventually wrote a biography of the crusading hero Tancred. Although Ralph's book, known as
The Deeds of Tancred
, was written later than most of the others, it was again based on eyewitness testimony, drawn mainly from crusaders who, like Ralph himself, chose to settle in the Middle East.

A few other books fall into a third category. The famous (among crusade scholars) Fulcher of Chartres was, like Raymond and the author of the
Deeds of the Franks,
a participant in the crusade, but he broke away from the main army long before it reached Jerusalem. Another writer, called Bartolph de Nangis (though I have not been able to find out where this name comes from), lightly revised an early draft of Fulcher's chronicle—one that preserves for us stories that either Fulcher did not include or that he eventually cut from later versions of his history. Finally, I ought to mention Peter Tudebode, a cleric from Poitou who accompanied the crusade all the way to Jerusalem and who, like the French and Italian monks just mentioned, revised the
Deeds of the Franks
. His revisions, however, are quite superficial. He adds a handful of facts to his source material, but his book is so close to the original that it barely merits being called a separate text.

What is most impressive about all of these texts (and some other sources that I have not mentioned here) is how close in spirit they are. And that spirit is, to return to the fundamental theme of this book, apocalyptic. That is to say, the war for Jerusalem was not just about an attempt by Europeans to capture a city in the Middle East. Nor was it a war fought solely in the name of personal piety. For those involved it had real implications on earth and in heaven. The crusaders who left for Jerusalem were
fighting on behalf of God's plan for salvation, and in doing so, they fully expected to bring about, or else bring very near, the Last Days and the end of time.

In retelling the military narrative, I have attached the most significance to the first three sources mentioned:
Deeds of the Franks
, Raymond of Aguilers, and Albert of Aachen. When they contradict one another, I try to acknowledge those contradictions dutifully, often in the text, sometimes in endnotes only. Needless to say, in this process I have benefited greatly from recent work by other historians, most notably the brilliantly detailed military history of John France. Whenever I have disagreed with France or with other recent writers, or when I have advanced an entirely new interpretation of the facts, I have tried to acknowledge doing so, while explaining my reasons—sometimes in the text, more often in the endnotes.

In retelling the apocalyptic narrative, I have tended to attribute equal weight to all of the sources, which, as noted, are remarkably uniform in spirit. Eyewitness writers and their immediate twelfth-century successors did not dispute whether the First Crusade had apocalyptic significance. The only real debate was about what sort of Apocalypse the First Crusade had triggered—whether it was a millenarian Apocalypse or whether the Last World Emperor would appear in Jerusalem to inflict rough justice upon Antichrist. Readers who wish to follow up which writer related which sign can reconstruct these fine points from endnotes. I have also attempted to identify points in the endnotes when I have departed significantly from my historical predecessors' arguments. Most readers, I suspect, will have been content to do as the crusaders did—become immersed in an apocalyptic experience that for a time threatened to swallow up all humanity outside Jerusalem's walls.

1
France (1994), pp. 22–42, sets the figure at 80,000, though acknowledging that 100,000 is not unreasonable. Two participants in the crusade estimated the army at 100,000 at the campaign's midpoint, presumably not based on any scientific method of calculation: Hagenmeyer,
Epistulae
9, p. 147; and RA, p. 48. On the terminology for crusading, see Christopher Tyerman, “Were There Any Crusades in the Twelfth Century?”
English Historical Review
110 (1995): 553–577. After some deliberation (and after I considered trying to avoid the terms “crusade” and “First Crusade” altogether), I have decided that the labels are too well attached and that avoiding them would serve no useful purpose. Chroniclers thought of the First Crusade as a unique phenomenon and something more than an ordinary pilgrimage. And by the end of the twelfth century—although the term “crusade” was just being coined—annalists were recognizing that three such movements had occurred, following the numbering conventions used in modern histories.

2
See, for example, the discussion in Riley-Smith (1977), pp. 15–17. On p. 16, after a discussion of just war, he observes, “The crusades, however, were expressions of another concept, that of Holy War, in which force of arms is regarded as being not merely justifiable and condoned by God, but positively sanctioned by him” and as “advanc[ing] his [God's] intentions for mankind.” The observation is crucial and could be carried further, because to advance the intentions of God for mankind is to advance the progress of salvation history, which is by definition an apocalyptic act. Closer to the analysis here are the comments of Flori (1999), pp. 348–349.

1
GF, p. 1. The opening epigraph is BB 1, 1, p. 11.

2
Charles Matson Odahl,
Constantine and the Christian Empire
(New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 211–220; Morris (2005), pp. 16–40.

3
The Jerome passage appears in
Ep
. 58 to Paulinus of Nola, discussed in Morris (2005), pp. 47–49. I have discussed the four meanings of Jerusalem in Rubenstein (2002), pp. 26–27.

4
The bizarre stories of Khosrau and Heraclius can be found in Honorius Au-gustodunensis,
Speculum Ecclesiae
, PL 172, cols. 1004D–1006A. I have consulted a hagiographic account of Heraclius's war for the Cross in Vat. MS Reg. lat. 457, fols. 88r–89v. See also Morris (2005), pp. 90–94.

5
On pilgrimage, see Jonathan Sumption,
Pilgrimage: An Image of Medieaval Religion
(Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975), esp. pp. 114–136. See also Bull (1993), pp. 204–230.

6
The description of al-Hakim's war on Christians comes from the contemporary Muslim historian al-Qalansi, translated in F. E. Peters,
Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims, and Prophets from the Days of Abraham to the Beginning of Modern Times
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 258–260. See also Marina Rustow,
Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), pp. 176–177 ; Morris (2005), pp. 135–139; Anis Obeid,
The Druze and Their Faith in Tawhid
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006), pp. 81–91; and Sadik A. Assad,
The Reign of al-Hakim bi Amr Allah (386/996–411/1021): A Political Study
(Beirut: Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 1974), pp. 182–192.

7
Rodulfus Glaber,
Five Books of Histories
, ed. and trans. John France (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1989) 3, 7, 24, pp. 132–137. Glaber's contemporary Adémar of Chabannes depicts the French Jews as working in tandem with Spanish Muslims: Adémar de Chabannes,
Chronicon
, ed. R. Landes and P. Bourgain,
CCCM
129 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1999) 3, 47, pp. 166–167.