to an abbot, Bernard. It has been suggested that he was the Robert who was briefly abbot of St. Rémi at the end of the eleventh century, who was excommunicated in 1097 and only reinstated through the help of Baldric of Bourgueil and Bishop Lambert of Arras in 1100, and who then was prior of Sénuc until his death in 1122. This, however, would render it rather unlikely that he wrote the work because of a vow of obedience to an abbot.6 Beyond this, evidence of the identity of Robert of Reims is scarce.7 Even what little we know, however, suggests that Robert wrote from a position that was almost the polar opposite of that of the Anonymous, and the Historia shows that this informed how he approached his task of reworking the Gesta. If the Anonymous was a southern Italian fighting man who took part in the Crusade with people who intended to settle in the newly conquered territories, Robert was a northern French cleric who most likely never set foot in the East, and whose approach to the holy war was informed by a strong sense of French exceptionalism.
Although Robert uses the Gesta extensively in his own work, he makes it clear that he considered his source defective. Above all he thought it incomplete and artistically clumsy; his abbot, he says, had requested that he rework it because “ei admodum displicebat, partim quia initium suum, quod in Clari Montis concilio constitutum fuit, non habebat, partim quia series tam pulcre materiei inculta iacebat, et litteralium compositio dictionum inculta vacillabat” [HI 3; HFC 75: “he was not happy with it: partly because it did not include the beginning [of the Crusade] which was launched at the Council of Clermont; partly because it did not make the best of the sequence of wonderful events it contained and the composition was uncertain and unsophisticated in its style and expression”].8 To counter the Gesta’s “uncertainness and unsophistication” Robert rewrote the work in an unadorned and heavily paratactic prose that emphasized clarity over erudition, and that he himself admits was likely to irritate the better educated because of its plainness.9 Beyond the form, the content also needed revision, and it is here that Robert’s greatest innovation may be found. He, as well as Baldric of Bourgueil and Guibert of Nogent, the other clerics to rework the Gesta in the decade after the conquest of Jerusalem, introduced a theological framework. Recasting the Crusade in a spiritual light, he identifies scriptural parallels and typological precursors to the events of 1096–1099, placing them within universal Christian history and thereby giving spiritual meaning to the recent past. Thus with the Historia “the crusading idea … passed back into the province of theologians,” a reorientation that has been thought to be the most important aspect of Robert’s work.10 However, for all the attention that this introduction of a theological context to the Gesta has received, what is often forgotten is that Robert increased the use of chanson de geste commonplaces compared with his source text. This has most often been dismissed as a fallacy of the text or its narrator, and where it has been recognized as intentional it has been rejected as meaningless. Robert’s most recent translator, Carol Sweetenham, after describing some of the chanson de geste characteristics of the Historia, argues that these were meant only to bring color to the work, and that “they prove nothing more than that Robert knew and echoed chansons de geste in his work.”11
This dismissive attitude is unwarranted. If we accept that Robert’s introduction of a theological framework was intended to influence his audience’s understanding of the Crusade, then we must do so for his extensive use of the chansons as well. Robert’s status as a clergyman makes it is easy to assume that his use of scripture was important, and his use of other writings spurious, but we must not forget that he was, after all, trying to sell a war to a wide audience, not merely interpreting the events of the previous decade in a way that would appeal to his fellow monks. Rather, both the new theological framework of the Crusade and the use of secular literary conventions are integral to Robert’s message, because both are used to confer upon his audience a special status as divinely and historically chosen, the very basis for his exhortation to Crusade.
One of the reasons Robert says his abbot picked him to rework the Gesta was that he was present at the Council of Clermont, and was therefore able to fill an important lacuna in the Anonymous’s work. Robert is one of a very few chroniclers to have reported on Urban II’s speech, and much of our understanding of the events that set the First Crusade in motion therefore relies on his rendition of the pope’s words. It is, however, unlikely that his recollection, put into words more than ten years after the fact, is entirely accurate, and indeed it differs markedly from versions related by other eyewitnesses, in length as well as detail, which might be fairly termed excessive. It is therefore likely that Robert’s memory of the event was rather creative—especially because in Urban’s great speech Robert already outlines the reasons for and obligation to Crusade that he will expand upon in the rest of his work:
Gens Francorum, gens transmontana, gens, sicuti in pluribus vestris elucet operibus, a Deo electa et dilecta, tam situ terrarum quam fide catholica, quam honore sancte ecclesie ab universis nationibus segregata: ad vos sermo noster dirigitur.… A Iherosolimorum finibus et urbe Constantinopolitana relatio gravis emersit, et sepissime iam ad aures nostras pervenit, quod vindelicet gens regni Persarum, gens extranea, gens prorsus a Deo aliena, generatio scilicet que non direxit cor suum et non est creditus cum Deo spiritus eius, terras illorum Christianorum invaserit, ferro, rapinis, incendio depopulaverit, ipsosque captivos partim in terram suam abduxerit, partimque nece miserabili prostraverit, ecclesiasque Dei aut funditus everterit, aut suorum ritui sacrorum mancipaverit.… Quibus igitur ad hoc ulciscendum, ad hoc eripiendum labor incumbit, nisi vobis, quibus pre ceteris gentibus contulit Deus insigne decus armorum, magnitudinem animorum, agilitatem corporum, virtutem humiliandi verticem capilli vobis resistentium? Moveant vos et incitent animos vestros ad virilitatem gesta predecessorum vestrorum, probitas et magnitudo Karoli Magni regis et Ludovici filii eius aliorumque regum vestrorum, qui regna paganorum destruxerunt, et in eis fines sancte ecclesie dilataverunt.… O fortissimi milites et invictorum propago parentum, nolite degenerari, sed virtutis priorum vestrorum reminiscimini.
[HI 5–6; HFC 79–80: Frenchmen and men from across the mountains; men chosen by and beloved of God as is clear from your many achievements; men set apart from all other nations as much by geography as by the Catholic faith and by the honour of the Holy Church—it is to you that we address our sermon, to you that we appeal.… Disturbing news has emerged from Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople and is now constantly at the forefront of our mind: namely that the race of Persians, a foreign people and a people rejected by God, indeed a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with God, has invaded the lands of those Christians, depopulated them by slaughter and plunder and arson, kidnapped some of the Christians and carried them off to their own lands and put others to a wretched death, and has either overthrown the churches of God or turned them over to the rituals of their own religion.… So to whom should the task fall of taking vengeance and wresting their conquests from them if not to you—you to whom God has given above other nations outstanding glory in arms, greatness of spirit, fitness of body and the strength to humiliate the hairy scalp of those who resist you? May the deeds of your ancestors move you and spur your souls to manly courage—the worth and greatness of Charlemagne, his son Louis and your other kings who destroyed the pagan kingdoms and brought them within the bounds of Christendom.… Oh most valiant soldiers and descendants of victorious ancestors, do not fall short of, but be inspired by, the courage of your forefathers.]
The opening lines of the Historia are careful to identify the “gens Francorum” [lit. “Frankish people”] as the target of Urban’s Crusade appeal. Robert’s understanding of who qualifies as Frankish, however, differs markedly from that of the Anonymous.12 When Bohemond, urging his men to join the Crusade by invoking their ties to the Franks, asks them “Nonne et nos Francigene sumus? Nonne parentes nostri de Francia venerunt, et terram hanc militaribus armis sibi mancipaverunt?” [HI 15; HFC 92: “After all, are we not [of Frankish origin]? Didn’t our parents come from [Francia] and take this land for themselves by force of arms?”],13 he grounds Frankishness in particular geographical origins. The Franks, and the Francia from which they come, are further identified when Robert introduces the French prince Hugh of Vermandois as
