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CHAPTER 2

The Gesta Francorum

Given the potential advantages the forms and conventions of the chansons offered for propagandizing the Crusade to Western audiences, it is not surprising that they began to be used almost immediately after the conquest of Jerusalem. The first known work to advocate for continued Latin commitment to the Crusade, the Gesta Francorum et aliorum 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 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 brought a great number of men. So Karbuqa collected an immense force of pagans—Turks, Arabs, Saracens, Paulicians, Azymites, Kurds, Persians, Agulani and many other people who could not be counted. The Agulani numbered three thousand; they fear neither spears nor arrows nor any other weapon, for they and their horses are covered all over with plates of iron. They will not use any weapons except swords when they are fighting.]

The enemy the Crusaders meet in battle is therefore not one people but many—varied, distinct, and if not imaginary then historically out of place. The Anonymous’s inaccuracy here is remarkable. It is possible to consider it hyperbole aimed at making the victories seem even more impressive; however, for this one really needs only numbers, not diversity.²⁶ One can, as Hill does, ascribe it to the Crusaders’ ignorance of their enemies,²⁷ but the Anonymous is otherwise knowledgeable about the peoples of the East, and other eyewitness accounts of the battles display a correct understanding of those against whom the Crusaders were fighting.²⁸ Rather, the intent with which the Anonymous chose to portray the Muslims as such a varied lot can be seen in the strong resemblance of his descriptions to those of the pagan enemies in the chansons de geste. Note, for instance, how the Anonymous’s words compare to the following lines from the Chanson de Roland:

Dis escheles establisent après.

La premere est des Canelius les laiz:

De Val Fuit sun venuz en traver;

L’altre est de Turcs e la terce de Pers,

E la quarte est de Pinceneis e de Pers,

E la quinte est de Solteras e d’Avers,

E la siste est d’Ormaleus e d’Eugiez,

E la sedme est de la gent Samuel,

L’oidme est de Bruise e la noefme de Clavers,

E la disme est d’Occian le desert:

Ço est une gent ki Damnedeu ne sert;

De plus feluns n’orrez parler jamais;

Durs unt les quirs ensement cume fer;

Pur ço n’unt soign d’elme ne d’osberc;

En la bataille sunt felun e engrès.

[CR ll. 3237–51: Then they draw up ten more divisions. / The first is of ugly Canaanites; / They came across from Val Fuit. / The next is of Turks and the third of Persians, / The fourth of the fiery Petchenegs [sic], / the fifth of Soltras and Avars, / the sixth of Ormaleus and Eugies, / The seventh of the people of Samuel, / The eighth of Bruise, the ninth of Clavers / And the tenth of people from Occian the Desert; / They are a race which does not serve the Lord God. / You could never hear of more villainous men, / Their skins are hard as iron. / For this reason they scorn helmets and hauberks; / In battle they are treacherous and fiery.]

As indicated above, the chansons too embraced the historically incorrect and the imagined in their depiction of the pagan enemy, an enemy portrayed as diverse and disparate, creating a frenzy of whatever “others” their authors could imagine.²⁹ The Anonymous is less imaginative than the jongleurs, but he retains hints of the marvelous: his Agulani, covered head to toe in iron, are perhaps as remarkable as the Chanson de Roland’s warriors of Occian, whose very skin is as hard as metal. In their variety and wondrousness, the Muslims of the Gesta Francorum are direct descendants of the Saracens of the chansons.

Within the Gesta’s invocation of the chansons in its depiction of the enemy we find a first indication of the Anonymous’s goal for the work—to apply to the First Crusade an older, literary image of the conflict between Christian and Muslim. Further characterization of the Muslim in the Gesta, in descriptions of Muslim martial qualities, social habits, and religious practice, echoes what we find in the chansons. For example, the clichéd chanson description of the Muslim as only a baptism away from being among the finest knights in the world, equal if not superior to the Westerner, is reflected in the Anonymous’s account of the Turks:

Quis unquam tam sapiens aut doctus audebit describere prudentiam militiamque et fortitudinem Turcorum? … Verumtamen dicunt se esse de Francorum generatione, et quia nullus homo naturaliter debet esse miles nisi Franci et illi. Veritatem dicam quam nemo audebit prohibere. Certe si in fide Christi et Christianitate sancta semper firmi fuissent, et unum Deum in trinitate confiteri uoluissent Deique Filium natum de Virgine matre, passum, et resurrexisse a mortuis et in caelum ascendisse suis cernentibus discipulis, consolationemque Sancti Spiritus perfecte misisse; et eum in caelo et in terra regnantem recta mente et fide credidissent, ipsis potentiores uel fortiores uel bellorum ingeniosissimos nullus inuenire potuisset.

[GF 21: What man, however experienced and learned, would dare to write of the skill and prowess and courage of the Turks? … They have a saying that they are of common stock with the Franks, and that no men, except the Franks and themselves, are naturally born to be knights. This is true, and nobody can deny it, that if only they had stood firm in the faith of Christ and holy Christendom, and had been willing to accept One God in Three Persons, and had believed rightly and faithfully that the Son of God was born of a virgin mother, that he suffered, and rose from the dead and ascended in the sight of his disciples into Heaven, and sent them in full measure the comfort of the Holy Ghost, and that he reigns in Heaven and earth, you could not find stronger or braver or more skilful soldiers.]³⁰

There is therefore an essential similarity between Frank and Turk in the Gesta: both are outstanding fighters, which, in the eyes of the Turks, is a result of a shared heritage. Nevertheless, this similarity goes hand in hand with an essential difference: the Turks do not believe in the “One God in Three Persons.” Although some of the Anonymous’s fellow travelers show a relatively sophisticated understanding of the monotheism at the heart of Islam,³¹ he himself describes the Muslim as a polytheist. Kerbogha swears “per Machomet et per omnia deorum nomina” [GF 52: “by Mohammed and by all the names of our gods”] and his mother “per omnium deorum nomina” [GF 53: “by the names of all the Gods”]. The Egyptians are no different from the Turks, and after the Battle of Ascalon the Fatimid emir exclaims: “O deorum spiritus, quis unquam uidit uel audiuit talia? … Iuro per Machumet et per omnia deorum numina, quod ulterius non retinebo milites conuentione aliqua” [GF 96: “O spirits of the gods! Who has ever seen or heard such things as these? … I swear by Mohammed and by the glory of all the gods that I will never raise another army”]. The Anonymous therefore continues to ascribe to Muslims the polytheism that characterizes them in the chansons. He also echoes the jongleurs’ suggestion of what happens to those who believe in this multiplicity of gods after death. Just as lines 1265–68 of the Chanson de Roland have Gerin strike the Saracen Malpramis, and “L’osberc li rumpt entresque a la charn, / Sun bon espiet enz el cors li enbat; / Li paiens chet cuntreval a un quat. / L’anme de lui en portet Sathanas” [“He rends his hauberk right down to his flesh / And plunges his fine spear deep into his body. / The pagan falls to the ground in a heap; / His soul is carried off by Satan”], so the Anonymous shows the downward trajectory reserved for the Muslim dead: “Illi qui uiui nequiuerunt transire pontem pre nimia multitudine gentium et caballorum, ibi receperunt sempiternum interitum cum diabolo et angelis suis” [GF 41: “Those who did not succeed in crossing the bridge alive, because of the great press of men and horses, suffered there everlasting death with the devil and his imps”].

In the eyes of the Anonymous, even though their polytheist religion can lead only to an eternity in hell, the pagans of the Gesta are nevertheless quite keen to convert the Christians, and here as in the chansons the rewards for changing sides are impressive (if of course never acted upon). When, before the Battle of Antioch, Peter the Hermit is sent to Kerbogha to negotiate, the Turkish commander sends him back to the Christian army with the following words:

Vultis namque scire quid uobis dicimus? Reuertimini ergo quantocius, et dicite uestris senioribus, quia si per omnia cupiunt effici Turci, et deum uestrum quem uos inclini colitis abnegare uolunt et leges uestras spernere, nos illis hanc et satis plus dabimus de terra, et ciuitates et castella adhuc autem quod nemo uestrorum remanebit pedes, sed erunt omnes milites sicut et nos sumus; et habebimus semper eos in summa amicitia.

[GF 67: Do you want to know our answer? Then go back as fast as you can, and tell your leaders that if they will all become Turks, and renounce the god whom you worship on bended knee, and cast off your laws, we will give them this land and more besides, with cities and castles, so that none of you shall remain a foot-soldier, but you shall all be knights as we are: and tell them that we will count them always among our dearest friends.]³²

The pagans’ apparent generosity, promising to turn every poor foot soldier rich, is rooted in an assumption of Eastern affluence. Throughout the Gesta, the armies of the enemy are said to travel with a wealth of provisions that become the Christians’ through conquest. As Hill has pointed out, there is something strongly formulaic in the description of the plunder the Crusaders find after every battle. After the Battle of Antioch, for instance, “Illi uero dimiserunt ibi papiliones suos, et aurum, et argentum, multaque ornamenta; oues quoque et boues, equos et mulos, camelos et asinos, frumentum et uinum, farinam et alia multa quae nobis erant necessaria” [GF 70: “The enemy left his pavilions, with gold and silver and many furnishings, as well as sheep, oxen, horses, mules, camels and asses, corn, wine, flour and many other things of which we were badly in need”]. Similarly, after the Battle of Ascalon, “Reuersi sunt nostri ad tentoria eorum, acceperuntque innumera spolia auri, argenti, omniumque bonorum; omniumque animalium genera, ac omnium armorum instrumenta” [GF 97: “Our men went back to the enemy camp and found innumerable spoils of gold and silver, piles of riches, and all kinds of animals, weapons and tools”]. What here echoes the chansons, however, is not just the repetitive wording, the structuring of the spoils from precious metals to valuables to animals and necessary goods, but also the emphasis on the Easterner as opulent. Everywhere the value of the Muslims’ trappings is shown, such as Yaghi-Siyan’s (“Balteum quoque eius et uaginam appretiauerunt sexaginta bizanteis” [GF 48: “His belt and scabbard were worth sixty bezants”]) and the Egyptian emir’s (“Ensem uero emit quidam sexaginta bisanteis” [GF 97: “The amir’s sword was bought for sixty bezants”]); even the dead are buried with “pallia, bisanteos aureos, arcus, sagittas, et alia plurima instrumenta, quae nominare nequimus” [GF 42: “cloaks, gold bezants, bows and arrows, and other tools the names of which we do not know”].

Furthermore, Muslims in the Gesta are not just religiously misguided and opulent, they are also morally decadent: luxurious, promiscuous, and at the same time to a certain extent emasculated. These characteristics are introduced into the Gesta by and through Kerbogha, the best-described Muslim in the work. Shortly after arriving at Antioch with an enormous army, he finds the Franks in dreadful shape. Buoyed by this, the Anonymous says, he sends a letter to his coreligionists in Khorasan. In this wholly imaginary missive the atabeg of Mosul elevates entertainment and lust almost to patriotic duty:

Caliphae nostro apostolico, ac nostri regi domino Soldano militi fortissimo, atque omnibus prudentissimis Corrozanae militibus, salus et immensus honor. Satis sint leti et gauisi iocunda concordia, et satisfaciant uentribus, imperent et sermocinent per uniuersam regionem illam, ut omnino dent sese ad petulantiam et luxuriam, multosque filios patrare congaudeant, qui contra Christianos fortiter pugnare preualeant.

[GF 52: To the khalif our pope and the lord sultan our king, that most valiant warrior, and to all the most gallant knights of Khorasan, greeting and boundless honour! Enjoy yourselves, rejoicing with one accord, and fill your bellies, and let commands and injunctions be sent throughout the whole country that all men shall give themselves up to wantonness and lust, and take their pleasure in getting many sons who shall fight bravely against the Christians and defeat them.]

What better way to oppose the isolated, starving Franks than to eat, drink, and rampantly procreate? Interestingly, this passage, which shows Kerbogha at his most ebullient, confidently urging the Muslims on to debauchery, is followed immediately by another that shows him in a very different light. The passage in which Kerbogha’s mother approaches her son and advises him not to fight the Franks has garnered some critical attention; while some have discussed the veracity of the episode and its possible origin as “camp gossip,” others, notably Natasha Hodgson, have focused on the remarkable qualities ascribed to Kerbogha’s mother and on the implications of her words, which suggest the superiority of the Christian religion.³³ However, even though the episode presents Kerbogha’s mother as caring and learned, the Anonymous’s intent is not so much to describe Muslim women as it is to cast a shadow over Kerbogha. Although he is depicted as the apex of Turkish power in the text, the one to whom the unfortunate Sensadolus cannot but subject himself and who confidently urges his coreligionists on to enjoy themselves in the expectation of victory, the passage shows Kerbogha struggling to get out from under his mother’s wings. It presents him as not only debauched but also immature and perhaps weak—an unheroic foil to the Franks, whose women are mostly limited to serving refreshments to the men on the battlefield.³⁴

KNIGHTS OF CHRIST

The Muslim opponents as we find them in the Gesta therefore closely resemble the Saracens in the chansons de geste. They are ethnically diverse, wealthy, and polytheist, which makes them less worthy as knights than the Christians. As suggested by the depictions of Kerbogha, the best-described Muslim in the work, we also find them to be both morally dissolute and unduly influenced by women. Confronting the Muslims on the battlefield are the Christians, who are very much the opposite: united, morally just, and of course relentlessly poor and miserable. The Anonymous’s description of the Christian army, too, is deeply rooted in the chansons: he relies on them to define the Crusaders’ reasons for taking the cross and their relation to the divine, their military qualities and accomplishments, as well as their ethnic makeup. Furthermore, as he bases his definition of Crusade and what it entails to a large extent on his portrayal of the motivations and achievements of the Christians, this also markedly affects his Crusade ideology.

At the very beginning of his work the Anonymous outlines what led so many Christians, among whom he includes himself, to take up arms and set out for the East:

Cum iam appropinquasset ille terminus 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,” facta est igitur motio ualida per uniuersas Galliarum regiones, ut si aliquis Deum studiose puroque corde et mente sequi desideraret, atque post ipsum crucem fideliter baiulare uellet, non pigritaretur Sancti Sepulchri uiam celerius arripere.

[GF 1: When that time had already come, 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,” there was a great stirring of heart throughout all the Frankish lands, so that if any man, with all his heart and all his mind, really wanted to follow God and faithfully to bear the cross after him, he could make no delay in taking the road to the Holy Sepulchre as quickly as possible.]

The above, with its heavy reliance on Matthew 16:24, has led Kenneth Baxter Wolf to argue that the Anonymous considered and consequently described the Crusade as nothing more than a pilgrimage: “The language is exclusively that of a pilgrimage, where the whole point is to walk in Christ’s footsteps and to experience the sufferings of his passion … it is the pilgrimage aspect of the crusade, not the conquests per se, that dominate the account.”³⁵ This, however, is only half of the explanation offered in the early pages of the Gesta of why Christians set out, and were obligated to set out, for Jerusalem. Immediately after the Anonymous speaks of the need for the faithful to take up their crosses, he adds the following:

Ait namque domnus apostolicus “Fratres, uos oportet multa pati pro nomine Christi, uidelicet miserias, paupertates, nuditates, persecutiones, egestates, infirmitates, fames, sites et alia huiusmodi, sicuti Dominus ait suis discipulis: ‘Oportet uos pati multa pro nomine meo.’”

[GF 1–2: The lord pope said also, “Brothers, you must suffer for the name of Christ many things, wretchedness, poverty, nakedness, persecution, need, sickness, hunger, thirst and other such troubles, for the Lord says to his disciples, ‘You must suffer many things for my name.’”]

The Anonymous’s quotation of Acts 9:16 here (“I will show him how much he must suffer for my name”) is inaccurate, and Hill has found in this yet more evidence that he was a layman, if a devout one.³⁶ What is remarkable here is, however, not the inaccuracy—the Anonymous quoted the rather longer passage from Matthew correctly—but the fact that with this modification the passage echoes the famous words of Roland: “Pur sun seignor deit hom susfrir destreiz / E endurer e granz chalz e grans freiz, / Sin deit hom perdre e del quir e del peil” [CR ll. 1010–12: “For his lord a vassal must suffer hardships / And endure great heat and great cold; / And he must lose both hair and hide”]. The Christian duty to take up one’s cross and follow Christ is therefore closely followed by a reference to a very lay notion found in the chansons, that of a contract of mutual obligation between the Crusaders and God. The Christians must suffer for God and fight the “inimici Dei” [GF 40: “God’s enemies”];³⁷ by doing so they become “Christi militia” [GF 14: “Christ’s army”], “fortissimi milites Christi” [GF 18: “most valiant soldiers of Christ”], and “milites … ueri Dei” [GF 40: “knights of the True God”]. In turn, God’s commitment to the Crusaders as defined in the Gesta is three-fold: he will assist them in the struggle against his enemies and will give them earthly as well as heavenly rewards, thereby combining the duties of secular and spiritual lord.

God in the Gesta often helps the Christians, and much agency in the success of the Crusade is ascribed to him. He acts almost as a field commander at Dorylaeum: “Et nisi Dominus fuisset nobiscum in bello, et aliam cito nobis misisset aciem, nullus nostrorum euasisset.… Sed omnipotens Deus pius et misericors qui non permisit suos milites perire, nec in manibus inimicorum incidere, festine nobis adiutorium misit” [GF 20–21: “If God had not been with us in this battle and sent us the other army quickly, none of us would have escaped … but Almighty God, who is gracious and merciful, delivered his knights from death and from falling into the hands of the enemy and sent us help speedily”]. He outflanks the Saracens at Antioch, when “Stabant uero inimici Dei et nostri undique iam stupefacti et uehementer perterriti, putantes nostros se deuincere et occidere.… Sed Deus omnipotens hoc illis non permisit” [GF 40: “God’s enemies and ours were standing about, amazed and terrified, for they thought that they could defeat and kill us … but Almighty God did not allow them to do so”].³⁸ Finally, at Ascalon, he is with the Christians in the front lines: “Bella uero erant immensa; sed uirtus divina comitabatur nobiscum tam magna, tam fortis, quod statim superauimus illos” [GF 96: “The battle was terrible, but the power of God was with us, so mighty and so strong that we gained the victory at once”]. God here is not a distant judge of the moral perfection of his followers but an active participant who aids the Christians in their war against his enemies.

Furthermore, he rewards them for their efforts. This is made clear from the very beginning of the work: the Anonymous follows up on the Christians’ obligation to suffer with “ac deinceps: ‘Persequetur uos larga retributio’” [GF 2: “and afterwards ‘Great will be your reward’”]. This reward, intriguingly, is both spiritual and material. For one, if death meant an eternity with the devil to the Muslim, to die in the service of God gave the Christian access to heaven. This applies even to those who did not die in battle; to die while fulfilling one’s duty to suffer is sufficient. As the Anonymous says about the very first action of the army of the princes, the siege of Nicaea:

Fuimusque in obsidione illa per septem ebdomadas et tres dies, et multi ex nostris illic receperunt martyrium, et letantes gaudentesque reddiderunt felices animas Deo; et ex pauperrima gente multi mortui sunt fame pro Christi nomine. Qui in caelum triumphantes portarunt stolam recepti martyrii, una uoce dicentes: “Vindica Domine sanguinem nostrum, qui pro te effusus est.”

[GF 17: We besieged this city for seven weeks and three days, and many of our men suffered martyrdom there and gave up their blessed souls to God with joy and gladness, and many of the poor starved to death for the Name of Christ. All these entered Heaven in triumph, wearing the robe of martyrdom which they have received, saying with one voice, “Avenge, O Lord, our blood which was shed for thee.”]³⁹

Bypassing the absolution of sin, the Christians’ suffering “in the Name of Christ” means that God will welcome them to heaven. Furthermore, their death serves as a call for God to avenge them upon the Muslims, as it was Charlemagne’s obligation to avenge Roland, Oliver, and the other douzepeers.

God’s obligation to the Christian, however, is not only one of spiritual salvation; importantly, he grants earthly riches as well. That service to the divine will yield possessions is highlighted on the first page of the Gesta: “Si quis animam suam saluam facere uellet, non dubitaret humiliter uiam incipere Domini, ac si denariorum ei deesset copia, diuina ei satis daret misericordia” [GF 1: “If any man wants to save his soul, let him have no hesitation in taking the way of the Lord in humility, and if he lacks money, the divine mercy will give him enough”]. God’s reward for services rendered is given in plunder and conquest. After God has helped the Crusaders overcome the enemy, the reward is there for the taking: “Superati sunt itaque, Deo annuente, in illo die inimici nostri. Satis uero recuperati sunt nostri de equis et de aliis multis quae erant illis ualde necessaria” [GF 37: “Thus, by God’s will, on that day our enemies were overcome. Our men captured plenty of horses and other things of which they were badly in need”]. This remarkable juxtaposition of holy war and earthly reward, of service to the divine and the expectation of profit, is best expressed in the words uttered by the Crusaders before the Battle of Dorylaeum: “Factus est itaque sermo secretus inter nos laudantes et consulentes atque dicentes: ‘Estote omnimodo unanimes in fide Christi et Sanctae Crucis uictoria, quia hodie omnes diuites si Deo placet effecti eritis’” [GF 19–20: “For our part we passed a secret message along our line, praising God and saying, ‘Stand fast all together, trusting in Christ and in the victory of the Holy Cross. Today, please God, you will all gain much booty’”].⁴⁰

At the heart of the Christian army therefore lie contracts of mutual obligation similar to those upon which the ethical universe of the chansons de geste rests. Such contracts exist between the Christians themselves—for example, between Bohemond and Alexius Comnenus, to whom “si ille fideliter teneret illud sacramentum, iste suum nunquam preteriret” [GF 12: “if Bohemond kept his oath faithfully he would never break his own”]. Failure to uphold one’s side of the bargain is met with extreme censure, and Alexius’s abandonment of the Crusaders at Antioch turns him, in the eyes of the Anonymous, into an “iniquus imperator” [GF 6: “that wretch of an emperor”] or “infelix imperator” [GF 10: “the wretched emperor”], while his general Tatikios No-Nose becomes “ille inimicus … in periurio manet et manebit” [GF 35: “that enemy of ours … he is a liar, and always will be”]. More important, however, is that this “sacramentum” exists between God and the Christians—they will fight his war for him, and suffer in the process; he will reward that suffering both on earth and in heaven. Crucially, even though the beginning of the work invokes the language of pilgrimage, the Gesta conceptualizes Crusade as service owed to the divine: the crucesignatus keeps his part of a bargain that casts God as both his spiritual and his secular overlord. The Crusader, on the one hand, is a Christian fighting a spiritual war for the supremacy of his faith over the unbeliever, and he is rewarded with paradise;⁴¹ on the other hand, he confronts his Lord’s earthly enemies, reconquers his earthly possessions, and finds a secular reward of plunder strewn across the battlefield. Essentially, the Crusader’s duty is to God: the secular lords of the First Crusade may spend almost as much time fighting each other as they do the Saracen, or abandon the army altogether, and the spiritual lords such as Adhemar of Le Puy may go the way of the flesh, but this obligation remains undiminished by the dissent, betrayal, or death of merely human powers.⁴²

Like the knights of the chansons, the Crusaders serve one divinity, who rewards them with heaven, and one monarch, who provides them with earthly goods: the Christian God is both of these in the Gesta. They serve him on battlefields that echo those of the jongleurs. Even though the Anonymous might often have found himself in the heat of battle, he nevertheless evokes the sights and sounds of warfare with a number of stock phrases, reminiscent of those of the chansons, rather than relying on his own experience: “Iunctis igitur prospere nostris, unus comminus percutiebat alium. Clamor uero resonabat ad celum. Omnes preliabantur insimul. Imbres telorum obnubilabant aerem” [GF 36: “Our army joined battle successfully and fought hand-to-hand; the din arose to heaven, for all were fighting at once and the storm of missiles darkened the sky”]; “Rumor quoque et clamor nostrorum et illorum resonabat ad caelum. Pluuiae telorum et sagittarum tegebant polum, et claritatem diei” [GF 41: “The din and the shouts of our men and the enemy echoed to heaven, and the shower of missiles and arrows covered the sky and hid the daylight”]. Upon these loud and dark places, where one can hear the Saracens “stridere et garrire ac clamare uehementissimo clamore” [GF 40: “gnash their teeth and gabble and howl with very loud cries”], knights roam looking for their prey. As Conor Kostick has pointed out, “The attention of the author of the Gesta Francorum was almost entirely fixed on the activities of those he terms seniores and milites.”⁴³ This is especially so in describing battles: the Anonymous portrays the Crusade almost completely as a sequence of confrontations between mounted warriors, even when horses had become scarce and many knights were reduced to fighting on foot. At Antioch, when hunger and disease had already taken a dreadful toll, and “In tota namque hoste non ualebat aliquis inuenire mille milites, qui equos haberent optimos” [GF 34: “In the whole camp you could not find a thousand knights who had managed to keep their horses in really good condition”], the Christians counter the Turkish assaults with cavalry charge upon cavalry charge:

Fuit itaque ille, undique signo crucis munitus, qualiter leo perpessus famem per tres aut quatuor dies, qui exiens a suis cauernis, rugiens ac sitiens sanguinem pecudum sicut improuide ruit inter agmina gregum, dilanians oues fugientes huc et illuc; ita agebat iste inter agmina Turcorum. Tam uehementer instabat illis, ut linguae uexilli uolitarent super Turcorum capita.

[GF 37: So Bohemond, protected on all sides by the sign of the Cross, charged the Turkish forces, like a lion which has been starving for three or four days, which comes roaring out of its cave thirsting for the blood of cattle, and falls upon the flocks careless of its own safety, tearing the sheep as they flee hither and thither. His attack was so fierce that the points of his banner were flying right over the heads of the Turks.]

This relentless focus on chivalric combat continues throughout the work. Knights drive all before them: “Egregius itaque comes Flandrensis … occurrit illis una cum Boamundo. Irrueruntque nostri unanimiter super illos. Qui statim arripuerunt fugam, et festinanter uerterunt retro scapulas, ac mortui sunt ex illis plurimi” [GF 31: “But the noble count of Flanders … made straight for the enemy with Bohemond at his side, and our men charged them in one line. The enemy straightaway took to flight, turning tail in a hurry; many of them were killed”]. Even within the melee they are shown victorious in individual combat: “Paganorum uero gens uidens Christi milites, diuisit se; et fecerunt duo agmina. Nostri autem inuocato Christi nomine, tam acriter inuaserunt illos incredulos, ut quisque miles prosterneret suum” [GF 89: “When the pagans saw the Christian knights they split up into two bands, but our men called upon the Name of Christ and charged these misbelievers so fiercely that every knight overthrew his opponent”]. The Crusade is presented as fought above all by knights in the manner familiar to them; the achievements of nonaristocratic infantry is minimalized if not ignored, and we usually hear of them only when they perish.⁴⁴ More than indicating the Anonymous’s social rank,⁴⁵ the primacy of chivalric warfare in the Gesta shows him eager to present the Crusade from the very beginning of the movement as a uniquely chivalric affair. The Christians on their way to Jerusalem, at least the ones that matter, are knights, and they wage war against the Saracens in the fashion to which they are accustomed. By reducing the complex military history of the First Crusade to a war of knights against Saracens, the Anonymous makes it contiguous with the chivalric campaigns of the chansons de geste. William of Orange, Roland, Oliver, and the douzepeers are knights above all, their fight against the Saracens waged on horseback, with lance and sword. The Crusaders, the Gesta states from the very beginning, tread in the footsteps of Charlemagne: “Isti potentissimi milites et alii plures quos ignoro uenerunt per uiam quam iamdudum Karolus Magnus mirificus rex Franciae aptari fecit usque Constantinopolim” [GF 2: “These most valiant knights and many others (whose names I do not know) travelled by the road which Charlemagne, the heroic king of the Franks, had formerly caused to be built to Constantinople”].⁴⁶ They do this literally as well as figuratively—they too are Christian knights on their way to fight the pagans. The battlefields of Roncesvalles and Antioch are separate in time and place, but those who walked upon them are very much alike.

The similarity between the heroes of the chansons and the First Crusaders is highlighted by a further act of identification. Not only are the Crusaders Christians who loyally serve God as well as knights who rule the battlefield, they are also Franks.⁴⁷ As much as the Anonymous pluralizes the enemy, adding Azymites, Paulicians, Agulani, Kurds, and Persians to the ranks of the Turks and Arabs, so he reduces the Christians to a single ethnic denomination. The Anonymous hardly ever acknowledges the remarkable internationalism of the First Crusade, which brought together Flemings, Provençals, Normans, French, Germans, and Italians under common purpose.⁴⁸ He acknowledges this multiethnicity only at the very beginning of the Gesta, in the context of the failed Popular Crusade, when “Petrus uero supradictus primus uenit Constantinopolim in kalendis Augusti et cum eo maxima gens Alamannorum. Illic inuenit Lombardos et Longobardos et alios plures congregatos” [GF 2: “The aforesaid Peter [the Hermit] was the first to reach Constantinople on 1 August, and many Germans came with him. There they found men from northern and southern Italy and many others gathered together”]. These Germans and Italians choose their own leaders at Nicomedia and march into Asia Minor; there they are decimated at Xerigordon and disappear from the pages of the Gesta and of history. These diverse commoners done away with, the chivalric armies that cross the Bosporus shortly afterward are referred to almost exclusively as Franci and, less frequently, Francigenae [lit. “of Frankish origin”].⁴⁹ The use of this terminology to describe the ethnically very diverse second wave of Crusaders is remarkable. The Anonymous certainly knew in great detail the backgrounds of many of those he saw around him and must have known that most were not Franks or even had Frankish origins.⁵⁰ He does not, as does Raymond of Aguilers, explain his use of nomenclature.⁵¹ The Anonymous most likely was not a Frank, and as far as we know he never allied himself to any lord who could justifiably be called Frankish, having served the Italian Norman Bohemond and the Provençal Raymond of Toulouse.

To call the Crusaders Franks was not a simple act of reducing the multitudes gathered under the banner of the cross to the dominant ethnic group, for the sake of convenience, to highlight their prominence among the Crusaders, or to hide discord between the many groups who were party to the Crusade enterprise.⁵² That the Anonymous abandoned the use of the more geographically definite term “Galli” by the beginning of book 2, where he also abandoned “Alemanni” and “Longobardi,” indicates that he was not interested in the primacy of the French as such. Rather, it was an act of identification of the Crusaders with the very Franks of whom the chansons de geste spoke. If Charlemagne’s Franks had built the road to Constantinople, the Anonymous’s Franks once again trod upon it on their way east. Like the Franks of the chansons, the Crusaders were Christian knights dedicated to and united in service, fighting their lord’s disparate pagan enemies to avenge the wrongs done to him and in defense of his earthly possessions. They were therefore the true heirs to these earlier Franks, and their story truly Gesta Francorum.⁵³ Indeed, this identification of the Crusaders with Charlemagne’s Franks may be the true purpose of the work’s use of the conventions of the chansons de geste.

THE CHANSONS DE GESTE AND THE GESTA FRANCORUM

The Anonymous’s use of chanson de geste commonplaces in the Gesta Francorum is unremitting. Full of lexical, syntactic, and thematic echoes, the work recasts the Crusaders as the successors to the heroes of the chansons, fighting similar enemies, in a similar way, and for similar reasons. This, of course, immediately raises the question why the author of the Gesta would go to such lengths to bring to mind the West’s mostly imaginary ancestors when describing the deeds of the Crusaders in the East. The Anonymous may have had several reasons for this. To imagine the new Crusade enterprise as an extension of the wars of the chansons associated it with a fashionable genre increasingly popular with Western chivalry. On the most elementary level, this could make the Anonymous’s story of the Crusade more appealing; by putting it in line with contemporary narrative trends, the luster of the jongleurs’ works would be reflected on it. More important, however, was that it could undoubtedly also help boost the appeal of the still-novel concept of Crusade to a Western audience, and this at a crucial time. The conquest of Jerusalem did not mean the end of the need for Christian manpower in the Levant; rather, it increased it, as Crusaders returning home left the newly conquered areas dangerously exposed. It did, however, rob the Crusade movement of an important teleology. If God had wanted the liberation of the Holy Places, what could serve as a rallying cry now that it had been accomplished? To describe, as the Anonymous did, the First Crusaders as new Franks, and the Crusade as a continuation of the (supposed) earlier wars of the Franks against their Saracen opponents, was to imagine this new movement as part of a long list of confrontations within a far older, ongoing conflict between Christians and the non-Christian others on their borders. If the First Crusade had as its goal Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, this war of “Frank” against “Saracen” was essentially unending.

The continuing wars in the new Crusader states therefore gave the audience of the chansons a chance to take their place in (imagined) history and emulate Charlemagne, the douzepeers, or William of Orange on the shores of Palestine. Morris has suggested that the Anonymous aimed his work especially at an Italian audience, for whom it would have been easy to understand Latin.⁵⁴ However, the fact that the Anonymous chose to write the work in Latin may indicate that he imagined a wider audience for the work—wherever Latin was understood, wherever the tale of the First Crusade could be told, and wherever new Crusaders could be recruited. That Bohemond of Taranto chose to distribute copies of the Gesta far and wide during his European recruitment campaign of 1104–1106 shows that he considered it useful far outside Italy.

Turning the First Crusade into a chanson de geste of new Franks, however, did more than offer Western chivalry a reason to continue the war against the Saracen beyond the conquest of Jerusalem. Perhaps more important, it allowed the Western Christians to explain and justify their ownership of the newly subjugated lands, especially of those tracts that were not traditionally understood to be part of the inheritance of Christ. The Gesta intriguingly discusses the ownership of the land the Christians conquer on their way to Jerusalem. From the moment of their arrival at Constantinople, the First Crusaders were famously compelled to sign an oath of fealty to the Byzantine emperor, in which they swore to surrender any lands conquered to his control. Some echoes of this oath—emphatically decried in the Gesta⁵⁵—are found in the beginning of the work, such as when the knight Peter of Aups swears to hold a city “in fidelitate Dei et Sancti Sepulchri, et seniorum atque imperatoris” [GF 26: “in fealty to God and the Holy Sepulchre, and to our leaders and the emperor”].⁵⁶ However, the primacy of others here, to whom the emperor is but an after-thought, already heralds a significant shift to come. At Antioch, the Crusaders themselves are firmly established as the rightful owners of the newly occupied regions. This is done in perhaps the most chansonlike passage of the Gesta—the remarkable speech Kerbogha’s mother addresses to her son. Having arrived at his camp before Antioch, his mother admonishes Kerbogha regarding the folly of attempting battle with the Christians trapped within its walls. Speaking of the Crusaders, she says:

Hoc autem, karissime, in rei ueritate scias, quoniam isti Christiani filii Christi uocati sunt; et prophetarum ore filii adoptionis et promissionis, et secundum apostolum heredes Christi sunt, quibus Christus hereditates repromissas iam donauit, dicendo per prophetas: “A solis ortu usque ad occasum erunt termini uestri, et nemo stabit contra uos.” Et quis potest hic dictis contradicere uel obstare?

[GF 54: Beloved, know also the truth of this, that those Christians are called “sons of Christ” and, by the mouth of the prophets, “sons of adoption and promise” and the apostle says that they are “heirs of Christ,” to whom Christ has even now given the promised inheritance, saying by the prophets, “From the rising of the sun to the going down thereof shall be your bounds, and no man shall stand against you.” Who can contradict these words or resist them?]

The wording of the passage establishes the Crusaders as the rightful and irresistible owners of the land, which Christ himself has given to them to keep as their own. The emperor, whose troops—as the Anonymous is at pains to remind his audience⁵⁷—abandoned the Crusaders at Antioch, is all but forgotten; the Crusaders will be beholden to nobody in establishing their dominion in the East.⁵⁸

Intriguingly, the use of the conventions of the chansons de geste and the concomitant identification of the Crusaders with the Franks of legend support this emancipation of the Crusader host from the shadow of the emperor and their claim to the ownership of the land. From the very beginning of the work, which shows the Crusaders on the road to Constantinople that Charlemagne built, the audience is reminded of the extent of the Frankish king’s lands, which, in memory and imagination, came to include most of the known world, as well as Constantinople and the Near East.⁵⁹ Before the emperor’s oath of fealty is even brought up, the Anonymous calls attention to the fact that the empire and all the lands the Crusaders are about to conquer were once subject to the king of the Franks. The continuous identification of the Crusaders with the Franks that had once supposedly ruled the Levant therefore gives them a right of ownership certainly as valid or even more so than that of the emperor, whose claim to the lands the Crusaders conquered was also based on previous tenure. If the Crusaders are the heirs of Christ, and are given the land by him to rule, they in a more secular legal sense can also claim it as new Franks, the heirs of Charlemagne, its erstwhile overlord. The Eastern emperor’s rights are therefore nullified, superseded by his empire’s ancient subjection to the Franks, and the Byzantines reduced to upstart interlopers at best or traitors at worst; indeed, it is as the latter that they are consistently represented in the Gesta.⁶⁰ Therefore, when Kerbogha approaches Antioch, the Crusade leaders send out emissaries to him not just to discuss the details of the upcoming battle but also to indignantly ask why he had intruded upon Christian land and had attacked its population:

Porro statuerunt omnes maiores nostri concilium, quatinus nuntium mitterent ad inimicos Christi Turcos, qui per aliquem interpretem interrogaret eos secure eloquio dicens quamobrem superbissime in Christianorum introissent terram, et cur castrametati sint, et quare Christi seruos occidant et conquassent. Cumque iam finis esset dictis, inuenerunt quosdam uiros, Petrum scilicet Heremitam et Herluinum, illisque dixerunt haec omnia: “Ite ad execratum Turcorum exercitum, et diligenter narrate eis haec omnia, interrogantes eos, cur audacter et superbissime introierint terram Christianorum et nostram.”

[GF 65–66: All our leaders forthwith held a council and arranged to send a messenger to Christ’s enemies the Turks, so that he might question them through an interpreter, asking confidently why they had been so vainglorious as to enter into the Christians’ land and encamp there, and why they were killing and bullying the servants of Christ. When they had ended their council they found certain men, Peter the Hermit and Herluin, and said to them, “Go to the accursed army of the Turks and give them this whole message in full, asking them why they have been so rash and vainglorious as to enter the land which belongs to the Christians and to us.”]

There is no dispute about to whom the newly conquered territories truly belong: the Crusaders are not invaders but the rightful owners of the land, and Kerbogha’s army is not a relief force but reduced 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