The Knight, the Cross, and the Song. Stefan Vander Elst
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Hierosolimitanorum, depends heavily on the stylistic and thematic tropes of the chansons to make its case. Rather than relying on his own experiences or observations, its anonymous author consistently turns to literary commonplaces to describe the Crusaders, their Muslim opponents, and their interactions on and off the battlefield, turning the First Crusade into the continuation of a far older conflict and giving Western Christians additional justification to appropriate much of the Middle East.
Among the first group of narratives of the First Crusade, those written by eyewitnesses and participants, the Gesta Francorum stands out not only as the oldest but also as the most popular and influential.1 Completed no later than the beginning of 1101 by a south Italian Norman who traveled to the East in the contingent of Bohemond of Taranto,2 its ten books tell the story of the Crusade from the crossing of the Balkans by the Crusader armies in 1096 to the conclusion of the campaign three years later. The first nine books, which discuss the Crusaders’ progress until the Battle of Antioch on 28 June 1098, show the author, who is commonly known as “the Anonymous,” to have been strongly partisan toward Bohemond, to whom he repeatedly refers as “dominus” [“lord”]3 and describes with such grandiose epithets as “bellipotens Boamundus” [GF 7: “Bohemond, that great warrior”], “sapiens uir Boamundus” [GF 18: “the valiant Bohemond”], and “uir uenerabilis Boamundus” [GF 61: “the honoured Bohemond”]. The Anonymous clearly supports Bohemond’s ambitions and shares his antagonism toward the Byzantine Empire.4 After the fall of Antioch and Bohemond’s defection from the Crusader army, the Anonymous left his service for that of Raymond of Toulouse, and the relatively short tenth book discusses the march to Jerusalem, its investment and conquest, and the defeat of the Egyptian army at Ascalon.
Very little is known of the Anonymous beyond what he reveals of himself in his writings, and even that has been the subject of some dispute. That he was an Italian Norman with a close association with Bohemond of Taranto is not doubted, but the capacity in which he served Bohemond, and in which he traveled to the East, is unclear. Ever since Hagenmeyer first edited the Gesta Francorum in 1890,5 the Anonymous has been thought to have been a fighter: his extensive descriptions of battle—especially when compared with those of a cleric such as Raymond of Aguilers, for whom a battle is never worth more than an offhand remark6—suggests he was repeatedly in the thick of it.7 Furthermore, his knowledge of Bohemond’s military contingent and his clear interest in the concerns of the milites as opposed to those of the pauperes on Crusade may also indicate that the Anonymous was a knight,8 perhaps one of Bohemond’s Apulian vassals, whose family therefore may have had a longstanding allegiance to the house of Hauteville.9 However, the Anonymous’s learning, the quality of his Latin, and the skill with which he includes alliteration, assonance, and rhyme in his work all suggest that he had a clerical education, and Colin Morris argues that he may even have been a clerk and not a fighter at all.10
Whether written by an educated knight or by a clerk with an overpowering interest in the clash of arms, the Gesta Francorum is a sophisticated work, and the thought the Anonymous put into its composition elevates it above the simple “war diary” that Hagenmeyer saw in it.11 Although the Anonymous most likely died shortly after completing his work, the Gesta had an extraordinarily long afterlife. Its impact on the historiography of the First Crusade was immediate and far-reaching. Within a few years another eyewitness to the Crusade, the Poitevin priest Peter Tudebode, wrote an account of the campaign, Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere, that drew so closely on the Gesta as to render problematic for more than a century the question of which came first.12 Within a decade, copies of the Gesta circulated widely in the West, and writers who had not participated in the Crusade based their own histories on the work of the Anonymous: especially noteworthy here are the three French Benedictines, Baldric of Bourgueil (Historia Ierosolimitana, ca. 1107–1108), Robert of Reims (Historia Iherosolimitana, ca. 1106–1107), and Guibert of Nogent (Gesta Dei per Francos, ca. 1108–1109). The dissemination of the Gesta Francorum into Europe was helped by Bohemond of Taranto himself, who took copies of the work with him when in late 1104 he set out to recruit for his unsuccessful campaign against Byzantium of 1106–1108.13
That Bohemond would like the Gesta, and would use it as a tool to convince fresh forces to side with him, is understandable—the Anonymous was one of his followers, perhaps even a vassal, and the first nine books read very much like a paean extolling the virtues of the prince of Antioch. However, the wide and enduring popularity of the Gesta among those not directly associated with Bohemond is less obvious. That it was an eyewitness report, and an early one, undoubtedly contributed to its appeal, but the relative lack of success of other early eyewitness testimonies, such as that of Raymond of Aguilers, shows that this was hardly enough.14 Its style, which modern critics have grown to appreciate as subtle and sometimes even playful, was vilified by the Anonymous’s contemporaries.15 Furthermore, its virulent partisanship would be counterproductive to those whose political aspirations differed from those of Bohemond, and not many in the twelfth century shared Bohemond’s aspirations. To put it in simple terms, the success of the Gesta—among so many different groups, regions, and also generations—was due to its telling the story of the First Crusade in a way that people actually wanted to hear. For all of Raymond of Aguilers’s qualities, his obsession with religious dispute and with the divine revelations at work during the Crusade make his work less interesting to those without an enduring interest in theology. The Gesta, on the other hand, spoke of the events of 1096–1099 in a way that laymen could understand and relate to, and that fired their imaginations.
From the very beginning of his work, the Anonymous set out not merely to tell the story of the First Crusade but to tell it in a way that would appeal to a wide audience. This teleology has, however, rarely been recognized, and much of the Anonymous’s intent has been read as merely indicative of his personality or style. Regarding the Anonymous’s knowledge of religion, for instance, critical opinion has often been contradictory: on the one hand, some praise his extensive knowledge and subtle use of scripture in his work, and see this as evidence of a thorough clerical education;16 others see it as ham-fisted, showing the Anonymous to have been a knight of limited sophistication.17 Both ignore the possibility that the Anonymous, who throughout the Gesta maintains a very simple approach to religion and avoids entangling his account with theological disputes, chose to do so—that he was an educated Latinate writer who did his best to appeal to laymen with little theological knowledge.18 Thus the understanding of the purpose of the Gesta and the reasons for its contemporary success may have fallen victim to the urge to identify its author.
More important, another way by which the Anonymous set out to make the Crusade understandable and appealing to his audience—his extensive use of the conventions and obsessions of the chanson de geste—has also been most often thought to demonstrate little more than the author’s style or personal background. A number of critics have pointed out that the Gesta displays some of the characteristics of the chansons. Rosalind Hill has identified the Gesta’s use of epic epithets—“acerrimus Boamundus” [GF 46: “the hero Bohemond”], “infelix imperator” [GF 10: “the wretched emperor”], “prudens Tancredus” [GF 20: “the gallant Tancred”]—and stock phrases to describe the spoils of war, as well as its use of simple doxologies at the end of each of its ten books, as reminiscent of the chansons.19 Matthew Bennett has noted a number of verbal and thematic parallels between the chansons de geste and the Gesta, especially in their depiction of the Muslim adversary,20 while Morris has suggested that the work’s use of alliteration, rhyme, and assonance, repetitive portrayals of landscapes, predilection for direct speech, description of Bohemond as an epic hero, and structure may have been influenced by the chansons.21 These approaches have on the whole limited the impact of the chansons de geste on the Gesta to its aesthetic properties—although it may serve as an indication of the Anonymous’s literate background, it is thought to reveal little else.22 However, both the extent and intent of the Anonymous’s use of the conventions of the chansons go far farther than this. Beyond poetic artifice, the Anonymous used the chansons throughout