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 the Gesta to create—or recreate—a wholly recognizable image of the conflict between Christian and Muslim, within which he defined the enemy, the Crusaders themselves, the reasons for Crusade, and the justifications for conquest in terms that his audience could understand and embrace, and upon which they could act with full confidence in the historical justice of their deeds.
ENEMIES OF GOD
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Gesta Francorum is the way in which the Anonymous describes the peoples the Crusaders encountered in the East. When in early 1097 the armies of the princes left Constantinople and crossed the Bosporus, they entered the territories of the Seljuq Turks, who in the immediately preceding decades had subjected most of the Anatolian plateau and the Levant to their rule. As they moved south toward the Holy Places, the Crusaders fought the Seljuq of Rum at Nicaea and Dorylaeum, captured Antioch from its Turkish governor Yaghi-Siyan despite the efforts of Ridwan of Aleppo and Duqaq of Damascus, and defeated a Seljuq relief army under Kerbogha, the atabeg of Mosul. Yet when the Crusaders reached Jerusalem in June 1099 they were met not by the Seljuq but by the Fatimid Egyptians, who had recaptured the city in the previous year, and it was the Egyptians whom the Crusaders routed at Ascalon in August of that year. Interspersed with these populations, the Crusaders also found Christian Syrians, Greeks, and Armenians.
The Anonymous displays a certain degree of perceptiveness regarding the differences between the peoples of the East. When describing those on the European side of the Bosporus, he differentiates Greeks, Byzantine Turcopoles, and Pecheneg mercenaries.23 On the Asian side, he separates Syrian and Armenian Christians from Muslim Turks and Arabs, and seems sensitive to the political developments of the recent past.24 He knows the names of individual army commanders, such as Kilij Arslan I, the sultan of Rum and son of Suleiman (“Solimanus … filius Solimani ueteris” [GF 22: “Suleiman … son of old Suleiman”]), Yaghi-Siyan (“Cassianus” on GF 47) and his son Shams ad-Daula (“Sensadolus” on GF 50), and Kerbogha (“Curbaram” on GF 49);25 he furthermore refers to others by their cities of provenance, as in “Hierosolimitanus ammiralius” [GF 49: “the amir of Jerusalem,” Soqman ibn Ortoq] and “Rex Damasci” [GF 49: “the king of Damascus,” Abu Nasr Shams al-Muluk Duqaq]. Given his subtlety in describing Easterners even through the fog of war, it is all the more remarkable that the Anonymous should be so wildly inaccurate when describing the enemies the Crusaders faced in battle. Although he appears very much aware in books 1–9 that the Crusaders’ antagonists are Turks and in book 10 that they are Arabs or Saracens, he is surprisingly imaginative when describing the ranks of the enemy. At the Battle of Dorylaeum, the Crusaders are fighting not only the Seljuq Turks but a wide variety of peoples:
Mirabantur ergo nostri ualde unde esset extorta tanta multitudo Turcorum, et Arabum et Saracenorum, et aliorum quos enumerare ignoro; quia pene omnes montes et colles et ualles et omnia plana loca intus et extra undique erant cooperta de illa excommunicata generatione.… Statim autem uenientibus militibus nostris, Turci et Arabes, et Saraceni et Agulani omnesque barbarae nationes dederunt uelociter fugam, per compendia montium et per plana loca. Erat autem numerus Turcorum, Persarum, Publicanorum, Saracenorum, Agulanorum, aliorumque paganorum trecenta sexaginta milia extra Arabes, quorum numerum nemo scit nisi solus Deus.
[GF 19–20: Our men could not understand whence could have come such a great multitude of Turks, Arabs, Saracens and other peoples whose names I do not know, for nearly all the mountains and hills and valleys, and all the flat country within and without the hills, were covered with this accursed folk.… As soon as our knights charged, the Turks, Arabs, Saracens, Agulani and all the rest of the barbarians took to their heels and fled through the mountain passes and across the plains. There were three hundred and sixty thousand Turks, Persians, Paulicians, Saracens and Agulani, with other pagans, not counting the Arabs, for God alone knows how many there were of them.]
The Christians’ victory at Dorylaeum is therefore one over a great many Eastern peoples, some real, some imagined, some as yet unknown. Similarly, the army that confronts the Crusaders at Antioch is a very diverse one:
Non multo post audiuimus nuntios de exercitu hostium nostrorum, Turcorum, Publicanorum, Agulanorum, Azimitarum, et aliarum plurimarum nationum.
[GF 45: Not long afterwards we heard news of an army of our enemies, drawn from the Turks, Paulicians, Agulani, Azymites and many other peoples.]
Hierosolimitanus ammiralius in adiutorum cum suo exercitu uenit. Rex Damasci illuc uenit, cum maxima gente. Idem uero Curbaram congregauit innumeras gentes paganorum, uidelicet Turcos, Arabas, Saracenos, Publicanos, Azimitas, Curtos, Persas, Agulanos, et alias multas gentes innumerabiles. Et Agulani fuerunt numero tria milia; qui neque lanceas neque sagittas neque ulla arma timebant, quia omnes erant undique cooperti ferro et equi eorum, ipsique nolebant in bellum ferre arma nisi solummodo gladios.
[GF 49: The amir of Jerusalem came to his help with an army, and the king of Damascus
