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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 compelled to write his work “per obedientiam” [HI 3; HFC 75: “by my vow of obedience”] 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 “frater Philippi regis Francorum, qui ipso tempore Franciam suo subiugabat imperio” [HI 13; HFC 89: “brother of King Philip I [of the Franks] who at this time [subjected Francia to his authority]”]. Whereas the Anonymous defined Frankishness in the broadest possible terms to incorporate most of Western Christianity, Robert therefore identifies the Franks more specifically as the inhabitants of the France of his day.¹⁴ This more limited definition illustrates the target audience of the work: Robert’s message—as was that of Urban II at Clermont—is directed above all to Frenchmen like himself, not to the whole of the Latin West.

While far fewer than those of the Anonymous, Robert’s Franks play a role of paramount importance. They, above all others, are called upon to answer the crimes perpetrated by an enemy immediately defined through scripture.¹⁵ The Franks are especially suited for this struggle because of their remarkable military achievements and their excellent pedigree in warfare, seen in the successes of Charlemagne and Louis, which a secular audience must have known primarily through the popular chansons. The importance of both sacred and profane writings in Robert’s concept of and exhortation to Crusade is therefore made clear from the very beginning of his work. In Urban’s speech, the scriptural is joined to the secular in Crusade as revenge, not defined as in the Gesta as vengeance for the wrongs inflicted on God by his enemies but defined as a moral need of caritas for other Christians brutalized by the Gentiles.

Throughout the remainder of the Historia, Robert expands upon the basic premise of this speech to describe the deeds of the Franks—as in the Gesta, almost no reference is made to others partaking in the holy war¹⁶—on the road to Jerusalem as the continuation and reiteration of two historico-literary traditions. On the one hand, scripture confirms the status of the Crusade as a reflection and continuation of exemplary biblical struggles; it defines the nature of the Crusade as a new Exodus, and the Crusaders as the fulfillment of age-old prophecy. On the other hand, secular martial history gleaned from the chansons de geste demonstrates that the past has proven the Franks chosen for victory; this indicates the suitability of his audience for the struggle at hand and their obligation to continue the wars of their ancestors—“A vobis quidem precipue exigit subsidium, quoniam a Deo vobis collatum est pre cunctis nationibus … insigne decus armorum” [HI 7; HFC 81: “Indeed it is your help [Jerusalem] particularly seeks because God has granted you outstanding glory in war above all other nations”]. Both combine to forge a new chosen people, unparalleled in war and supported by God, an irresistible force that has the power to right the wrongs of the world and take whatever it wants in the process.¹⁷

THE WONDERS OF GOD AT WORK

Writing in his northern cloister, far from the battlefields of the First Crusade, it was clear to Robert of Reims that the events of 1096–1099 had long been prophesied. Prophecy, or its pagan counterpart soothsaying, had already informed the calculations of Kerbogha’s mother in the Gesta Francorum;¹⁸ in the Historia Iherosolimitana, too, she sees the eventual destruction of her son’s mighty army as long established:

A centum annis et infra invenerunt patres nostri in sacris deorum responsis, et in sortibus et divinationibus suis et animalium extis, quod Christiana gens super nos esset ventura nosque victura. Concordant igitur super hos aruspices, magi et arioli, et numinum nostrorum responsa, et prophetarum dicta, in quibus dicitur: A solis ortu et occasu, ab aquilone et mari, erunt termini vestri, et nullus stabit contra vos.

[HI 63; HFC 156: Our forefathers discovered a hundred years and more ago through the sacred oracles of the Gods, in their casting of lots and their divinations and the entrails of animals, that the Christian race would come upon us and defeat us. The soothsayers, mages and diviners, the oracles of our divine powers and the words of the prophets (in which it is said: from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south shall your coast be. There shall no man be able to stand before you) all agree.]

Robert’s interpolation of echoes from the books of Psalms and Deuteronomy into the words of Kerbogha’s mother indicates, however, that he sees the Crusade prophesied beyond the arcane dealings of augurs and diviners.¹⁹ He emphasizes that scripture, in its sensus plenior, anticipated the events of 1096–1099. For instance, when describing the Battle of Dorylaeum, he refers to the Gospel of Luke (“Esurientes etenim suos replevit bonis, divites vero non suos dimisit inanes; deposuit potentes, exaltavit humiles” [HI 28; HFC 113: “For He hath filled his own with good things and those not his own he hath sent empty away; he hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree”])²⁰ and the book of Isaiah (“Hoc est quod per Ysaiam prophetam spopondit sue dilecte Iherusalem: Ponam te in superbiam seculorum, gaudium in generationem et generationem, et suges lac gentium, et mamilla regum lactaberis” [HI 28; HFC 113: “This is what he promised to his beloved Jerusalem through the Prophet Isaiah: I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations. Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breast of kings”])²¹ to put the great victory over the Turks into its proper historical and religious context. Concluding his narrative in book 9 of the Historia Iherosolimitana, Robert reiterates that the Frankish triumph he has just recounted was prefigured in divine revelation:

Cum autem ipsi Domino placuit, adduxit Francigenam gentem ab extremis terre, et per eam ab immundis gentilibus liberare voluit. Hoc a longe per Isaiam prophetam predixerat, cum ait: Adducam filios tuos de longe, argentum eorum et aurum eorum cum eis, in nomine Domini Dei tui, et sancto Israheli, quia glorificavit te. Edificabunt filii peregrinorum muros tuos, et reges eorum ministrabunt tibi. Hec et multa alia invenimus in propheticis libris, que congruunt huic liberationi facte etatibus nostris.

[HI 110; HFC 213–14: But when it so pleased God, he led the Frankish race from the ends of the earth with the intention that they should free [Jerusalem] from the filthy Gentiles. He had long ago foretold this through the prophet Isaiah when he said: “I shall bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the Lord thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee. And the sons of pilgrims shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee.” We have found this and many other things in the books of the prophets which fit exactly the context of the liberation of the city in our era.]

Far from being an isolated event in history, the Crusade fulfilled ancient portents and reiterated biblical history. The first lines of the quotation above, however, also indicate the implications of this: scriptural omens serve to show the hand of God active in the present. There is no accident, coincidence, or fortune of war in the Historia; rather, all occurrences show the will of God. At the very beginning of his work, Robert highlights that the Crusade armies set out for the East because God wanted them to. The remarkable enthusiasm that greeted Urban’s address at Clermont could only have been the work of God:

Et ut cunctis clarescat fidelibus quod hec via a Deo non ab homine sit constituta, sicut a multis postea comperimus, ipso die quo hec facta et dicta sunt, fama preconans tante constitutionis totum commovit orbem, ita ut etiam in maritimis Oceani insulis divulgatum esset, quod Iherosolimitanum iter in concilio sic stabilitum fuisset.

[HI 8; HFC 82: And, to make it quite clear to all believers that this pilgrimage had been set in train by God rather than men—as we have since established from many sources—on the very day these speeches and deeds took place, the news announcing such an undertaking set the whole world astir so that even in the islands of the sea it was common knowledge that a pilgrimage to Jerusalem had been launched at the Council.]

When the armies gather at Constantinople, Bohemond, who had earlier realized “omnia hec non tantum esse hominum” [HI 14; HFC 92: “that this could not be the work of men alone”], emphasizes that all are there as a result of divine agency: “O bellatores Dei et indeficientes peregrini sancti Sepulchri, quis ad hec peregrina loca vos adduxit, nisi ille qui filios Israel ex Egypto per mare Rubrum sicco vestigio transduxit?” [HI 19; HFC 98: “O soldiers of the Lord and tireless pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre, who was it that led you to these foreign lands if not He who led the sons of Israel from Egypt 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 eyes.]²⁹

Suffering therefore does not have the same meaning in the Historia as it does in the Gesta. In the Anonymous’s work, suffering is understood in a fashion that effectively looks backward—it serves to repay a debt to God, resulting either from the Crusader’s past behavior or from God’s agency on his behalf. It is redemptory at the level of the individual—each after all will carry his own cross. In the Historia suffering, much reduced, looks forward resolutely. It does not redeem but admonishes, serves not as penance for the individual but as an indication for the Crusader army to correct its behavior as it continues toward Jerusalem.³⁰

Robert therefore moves away from the narrative arc that the Anonymous had included in his work, which led through penitential suffering toward redemption and salvation with the conquest of Jerusalem. Robert’s Crusaders thunder on to their unavoidable, divinely ordained destiny, occasionally reminded not to indulge in problematic behavior by the pangs of hunger or the dearth of horses. To a certain degree Robert therefore also moves away from the Anonymous’s rudimentary approach to the Crusade as imitatio Christi.³¹ It is noteworthy that in a work so earnestly concerned with finding scriptural parallels Robert should choose to minimize the elementary typological parallel his source had identified. This process of negotiation, foregrounding some parallels while letting others fade into the distance, shows Robert’s very different conceptualization of the Crusade. As a cleric confronted by successful but violent Christian expansion into the East, he chose to find precedents not in the New Testament but in the Old, not with the meritorious suffering on Calvary but with the travails and territorial appropriations of the biblical people of Israel.³²

Robert’s work therefore emphasizes that the Crusade is the long-foretold work of God and that the Franks are his chosen people and instruments of agency—after all, “quis regum aut principum posset subigere tot civitates et castella, natura, arte, seu humano ingenio premunita, nisi Francorum beata gens, cuius est Dominus Deus eius, populus quem elegit in hereditatem sibi?” [HI 4; HFC 77: “what king or prince could subjugate so many towns and castles, fortified by nature, design or human ingenuity, if not the blessed nation of the Franks whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance?”].³³ The Crusade of the Historia is not as much a story of Christ-like suffering as it is one of the fulfillment of destiny, less a pilgrimage for the redemption of individual sin than a campaign of acquisition of what God had decided should belong to the Franks. It is here that the effect (and the purpose) of Robert’s interpretation of the Crusade becomes clear. The justification of Frankish conquest is the fact that they are singled out by God to do his will, and the proof that they are so singled out is conquest. Accordingly, conquest becomes its own justification. On a practical level, this divine mandate confers upon the Franks an a priori license to attack and conquer anyone with the full knowledge that they are doing the Lord’s bidding.

MACCABEES OF THE WEST