dry-shod across the Red Sea?”]. Beyond the Bosporus, the Crusaders are wholly guided by and subject to divine will, and they suffer and triumph at God’s bidding. The will of God therefore forcefully made manifest that which had been long foretold.22
Beyond revealing divine agency on earth, Bohemond’s words also indicate that, to Robert the Monk, the Latin journey to and conquest of the Holy Land typologically constituted the Exodus of a new chosen people. References to the books of Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are frequent throughout the Historia, drawing a strong parallel between the efforts of the Crusaders and those of the biblical people of Israel. For instance, after Urban’s speech, Adhemar of Le Puy “licet invitus, suscepit quasi alter Moyses ducatum ac regimen dominici populi” [HI 8; HFC 83: “agreed, albeit unwillingly, to lead and organise the people of God like a second Moses”]; he leads them to “terra … que lacte et melle fluit” [HI 6; HFC 81: “a land flowing with milk and honey”].23 On their difficult journey God assists the Crusaders in their hour of need, providing them at Antioch with food and drink captured from the Turks: “Sic quoque filiis Israel olim faciebat, cum per terram gentilium regum transire cupiebant, et illi publicum vie regie incessum eis denegabant” [HI 38; HFC 125: “Just so did He once act for the people of Israel when they wanted to cross the lands of pagan kings who refused to allow them to travel the main road”]. This parallel between the Crusaders and the biblical people of Israel is well understood by Kerbogha’s mother, Robert’s voice of typological insight, when speaking to her son:
Fili, Pharaonem regem Egypti quis submersit in mari Rubro cum omni exercitu suo? … Ipse idem Deus ostendit quanto amore diligat populum suum, quantaque tutela circumvallet eum, cum dicit: Ecce ego mittam angelum meum, qui precedat te, et custodiat semper. Observa et audi vocem meam, et inimicus ero inimicis tuis, et odientes te affligam, et precedet te angelus meus. Genti nostre iratus est Deus ille, quia nec audimus vocem eius, nec facimus voluntatem, et iccirco de remotis partibus occidentis excitavit in nos gentem suam, deditque ei universam terram hanc in possessionem.
[HI 62; HFC 155: Who, my son, sank Pharaoh, King of Egypt, into the Red Sea with his whole army? … The same God shows how much he loves his people and how assiduously he surrounds them with his protection when he says: Behold, I send an angel before thee, [who will precede thee and guard thee always. Observe and listen to my voice,] then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. For mine angel shall go before thee. That is the God who is angry with our race because we have not listened to his words or done his will; that is why he has stirred up his people against us from the far-flung lands of the West, and has given all of this land into their possession.]24
On their march to Jerusalem, the Crusaders are therefore God’s chosen people, their progress paved with lines from scripture, their conquest of Jerusalem certain. Against them stand those who, in the words of Kerbogha’s mother, have turned away from the word of God, an enemy defined as much through God’s disfavor as the Franks are by his favor—truly “filii diaboli” [HI 43; HFC 130: “the sons of the Devil”]. Their defeat is inevitable, and each Christian victory, every blow against the Saracen, confirms the Franks as the new Israel: “Dux et protector fuisti in misericordia populo tuo quem redemisti. Nunc, Domine, cognoscimus, quia portas nos in fortitudine tua, ad habitaculum sanctum tuum” [HI 28; HFC 112: “Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed. Now we realise, God, that Thou art guiding us in Thy strength unto Thy holy habitation”].25
Over the course of this impressive expansion of the theological context of the Crusade, it is remarkable that Robert the Monk also subtly alters or reduces the rudimentary theological underpinnings of the Crusade in the Gesta, especially with regard to the role of suffering. The Anonymous considered the suffering of the Crusaders on the journey to Jerusalem as a double form of repayment. On the one hand, the Christians of the Gesta suffered to fulfill their side of an agreement of mutual obligation with God, in which they repaid him for earthly and heavenly rewards with blood, sweat, and tears. On the other hand, there is also in the Gesta a second notion that sees suffering as penitential, as repayment for sins committed. We therefore have the description of the siege of Nicaea, where “ex pauperrima gente multi mortui sunt fame pro Christi nomine” [GF 17: “many of the poor starved to death for the Name of Christ”], alongside that of the siege of Antioch, where “Hanc paupertatem et miseriam pro nostris delictis concessit nos habere Deus. In tota namque hoste non ualebat aliquis inuenire mille milites, qui equos haberent optimos” [GF 34: “God granted that we should suffer this poverty and wretchedness because of our sins. In the whole camp you could not find a thousand knights who had managed to keep their horses in really good condition”]. The Anonymous therefore combines lay devotion with traditional penance; throughout, he maintains an approach to suffering that considers it essentially redemptory, the payment of a debt owed for the beneficia one has received or the maleficia one has committed. Insofar as Christian suffering repays a debt owed, it is imitatio Christi; this the Anonymous intimates when, at the beginning of his work, he speaks of the time “quem dominus Iesus cotidie suis demonstrat fidelibus, specialiter in euangelio dicens: ‘Si quis uult post me uenire, abneget semetipsum et tollat crucem suam et sequatur me’” [GF 1: “of which the Lord Jesus warns his faithful people every day, especially in the Gospel where he says, ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me’”].
Robert’s approach to suffering and to its purpose within the Crusade is strikingly different. At the most basic level, it is remarkable that Robert limits his descriptions of suffering. Where its source expands upon the anguish of the Crusaders, the Historia sometimes remains silent,26 and more often minimizes the distress of those involved.27 In the rare occurrences in which his work offers a roughly equivalent description of Christian suffering, Robert is careful not to interpret suffering as penance. In the passage corresponding to the Anonymous’s description of the siege of Antioch above, Robert argues that famine and the lack of horses were rather meant to help the Crusaders on their way than to punish them for the sins they had committed:
Ne illi insolescerent tot victoriis bellorum, opprimebat eos gravi inedia ieiuniorum. In toto namque exercitu mille equi inveniri non poterant ad pugnandum idonei, ut per hoc innotesceret quod in fortitudine equi non haberent fiduciam, sed in se, per quem et quomodo volebat et quando volebat superabant.
[HI 41; HFC 128: It was to ensure that they did not get complacent from so many victories that he made them suffer serious pangs of hunger. In the whole army it was impossible to find 1,000 horses in a condition to fight, and by this God wanted to make them realise that they should trust not in their horses but in Him through Whom they were victorious how and when He wanted.]28
Suffering is to a large extent admonitory in Robert’s work, the divine way of showing displeasure with a current course of action as opposed to rectifying past trespasses. This is reiterated in one of the very few passages in which Robert is more expansive in conveying the teleology of suffering than his source had been. At Antioch, God explains, through the mouth of Stephen Valence, the suffering the Crusaders have undergone as follows:
Nonne tibi videtur quod bene adiuverim eos huc usque, quia illis et Niceam tradidi civitatem, et omnia que eis supervenere bella vincere feci? In obsidione Antiochie eorum miserie condolui; nunc vero ad extremum civitatis ingressum tribui. Omnes tribulationes et impedimenta que passi sunt ideo evenire permisi, quoniam multa nefanda operati sunt cum Christianis mulieribus et paganis, que valde displicent in oculis meis.
[HI 67; HFC 161: Is it not obvious to you that I have been helping them all along? I gave them the city of Nicaea and helped them win every battle there was. I looked with pity on their sufferings at the siege of Antioch; eventually I granted them entrance to the city. I allowed them to suffer all these tribulations and difficulties because they have committed many sins with Christian women—and pagan women—which found grave displeasure in my
