to a band of trespassers. The Gesta shows the Crusaders to have a double claim to their conquests: as heirs to Christ, they have a religious and eschatological claim,61 while as heirs to Charlemagne and the Franks they have a secular and historical one.62
Disregarding possible aesthetic benefits, the use of the conventions of the chanson de geste in the Gesta helps to establish the legitimacy of the Crusaders’ possession of the new Crusader states as well as to motivate others to join in their defense. At the heart of this intention, and consequently at the heart of the Gesta, lie nothing less than the needs of emerging frontier communities that, the hard work of conquest done, now need to turn to the harder work of maintaining political and territorial integrity. No mean feat, and the Anonymous clearly thought it required whatever enthusiasm could be mustered. He therefore complements the religious underpinnings of Crusade with a secular rationale: alongside the simple lay devotion that permeates the work, and that finds its culmination in a religious version of the compact of mutual obligation between lord and vassal that sees the Crusaders as God’s warriors, the Anonymous introduces historical concerns and literary representations to motivate the wars in the East. The Crusaders therefore are the heirs of Christ but also heirs of Charlemagne; the Saracens are the enemies of God but also the historical, implacable enemies of the Franks, new or old; and Byzantium is no Christian ally but rather a treacherous Ganelon. Both religious and secular interests are expressed through the chivalric ethos around which the chansons were built: prowess, loyalty, reward, revenge.
Recent study of the Gesta has shown Steven Runciman’s belief that its author was “a simple soldier, honest according to his lights but credulous and prejudiced” to have underestimated him.63 The sophisticated Latin of the Gesta and the learning the Anonymous included in its pages reveal him to have been a refined author who approached his work with thoughtfulness and purpose; his understanding of chanson commonplaces reveals his sensitivity to the particulars of vernacular culture.64 The teleology of the Gesta furthermore shows its author to have been a man who looked forward as well as back. Completing his work after the Battle of Ascalon,65 with the help of material he had written previously, he exhibits a subtle understanding of the need to politically and legally establish—as well as to safeguard militarily—the emerging Crusader states, centrally among which, of course, was that of his erstwhile lord, Bohemond of Taranto. The Gesta never was, nor was meant to be, a simple war diary. Rather, it was an explanation of and tool for nation building designed to appeal to as broad a swath of Western fervor as possible, most especially among knights, written in a language that facilitated wide distribution. In the way it reflects the concerns of the emerging Crusader states, it is perhaps best understood as “settler writing”—in its own way on a par with other great foundational epics.66
It is also within this framework of settler writings, of an appeal from the East to the West for political recognition and military support, that the Gesta’s diffusion and popularity must be seen. Bohemond of Taranto is known to have taken the work with him when he set out on his recruiting tour of Europe in late 1104. This was not simply because the Gesta narrated the remarkable deeds of the Crusaders, Bohemond’s prominent among them—these most likely had already been related by those returning from the East, and were recounted time and again by the man himself.67 Indeed, the Gesta’s great benefit to the cause of Bohemond, as well as to the other states, was that it integrated the details of the campaign and the heroism of the First Crusaders into a narrative framework that drew upon both the secular and the religious concerns of the Western fighting classes. If the Crusade had been at heart a religious affair, the Anonymous realized that the survival of Outremer required any and all support it could get—from those wanting heavenly as well as earthly rewards, settlers, penitents, and culture warriors. In depicting this new Christian frontier as the place where all motivations could and had to exist side by side, the Gesta introduces a pragmatic note at the very beginning of the Crusade enterprise. It was this practical understanding of political and military realities, rather than its recounting of the events of 1096–1099 or its glorification of his actions, that made the Gesta valuable to the prince of Antioch, who by the time of his return to Europe was conscious of the fact that the pursuit of his ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean required more manpower and resources than could be provided by repentant sinners alone.68
CHAPTER 3
Robert of Reims’s Historia Iherosolimitana
Bohemond of Taranto’s first years as prince of Antioch, during which he relentlessly sought to expand his territory, were not very successful. In 1101, Bohemond set out with a small force in support of a local ally threatened by the Danishmend Turks, the Armenian Gabriel of Melitene, and was badly defeated and captured before even reaching Gabriel’s town. Although this left his principality in the capable hands of his nephew Tancred, Bohemond remained a prisoner of the Danishmend emir for three years. His plans were once again foiled shortly after his release, when an eastward advance was checked at the Battle of Harran on 7 May 1104. These defeats put a heavy strain on his already limited resources, and increased pressure from the Byzantines, against whom Bohemond stood in defiance of the oath he had sworn in 1097, convinced him to launch an appeal for aid to the West. In this he was remarkably effective; from his arrival at Bari in 1105 to his return to the East two years later, he was feted at courts throughout Europe and everywhere drew recruits to his cause. Such was his appeal that he was granted the hand in marriage of Constance, the daughter of the French king Philip I, in 1106, and was refused entry into England by Henry I lest too many members of the English nobility join him.
By 1107 Bohemond had a substantial army under his command; nevertheless his invasion of Byzantine Illyria foundered, and in 1108 he was forced to sign the Treaty of Devol, in which he subjected himself and his Eastern territories to the authority of the emperor. Thus Bohemond, during the decade after the First Crusade, experienced a remarkable combination of diplomatic victory and military defeat, of success in rallying the Western nobility to his cause and failure to turn this success into lasting political advantage. Although his fame as one of the First Crusaders undoubtedly contributed to his appeal, it is also clear that he was very careful to address all concerns in his drive to whip up Western support. His acceptance in 1105 of the vexillum Sancti Petri from the hands of Pope Paschal II clothed the upcoming campaign in the guise of holy war if not Crusade. Conversely, Orderic Vitalis also has Bohemond describe to his audience the riches that could be won in the East.1 It is within this approach to recruitment that we must see Bohemond’s introduction of the Gesta Francorum into Western Europe.
Bohemond’s journey to Europe, and the transmission of the Gesta from East to West, also resulted in the production of new histories that drew on the Anonymous’s work in the years after 1105. Robert, a monk of Reims, composed his Historia Iherosolimitana around 1106–1107, a work that was soon followed by the Historia Ierosolimitana of Baldric of Bourgueil, the archbishop of Dol (ca. 1107–1108), and the Gesta Dei per Francos of the abbot Guibert of Nogent-sous-Coucy (ca. 1108–1109).2 The reliance of these works on the Gesta has led many to see them as created to support Bohemond’s recruitment effort.3 The dating of the works roughly between Bohemond’s arrival in France and his humiliation at Devol, their generally sympathetic approach to the prince of Antioch and correspondingly hostile view of his Byzantine adversaries, and the relationship of the authors to the court of France to which Bohemond associated himself through Constance in 1106 add further support for this view.4 A closer look at the most important and certainly the most popular of these, the work of Robert of Reims, or Robert the Monk, shows that not only the purpose of the text but also its use of secular literary material to promote Crusade echo the Gesta.5
Little more is known about the author of the Historia Iherosolimitana than about the anonymous author of its source text. In the sermo apologeticus attached to the work, he indicates that his name was Robert, that he was a monk at the monastery of St. Rémi in the Bishopric of Reims, and that he felt
