This collection of seven articles, all related to ‘remembering crusades in medieval narratives’, medieval reception and remembrance of crusading, is dedicated to the memory of Bernard Hamilton, a prominent historian of crusading and the Latin East and former president of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, who died last year.
Memory of the crusades is currently an intensively studied topic: several monographs and collections of studies have appeared over past ten years. The present volume is concentrated on the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, i.e. the period when the crusade movement to the East was still active. Thus, the main focus of the collection is how the first crusades were remembered in the time of the later ones in order to serve different purposes, including recruitment of new crusaders and construction of family memories. In other words, most of the papers are aimed at explaining how different authors wanted to ensure that the crusades would be remembered in a way that they wished.
The first article, by Andrew D. Buck, is focused on the memory of the capture and siege of Antioch. The very fact that this event of the First Crusade was relevant for remembering the expedition is evident: one could expect that, as the author demonstrates, very considerable attention would be given by the chroniclers to the sufferings of crusaders during this longest siege of the First Crusade. At the same time – curiously – chroniclers sometimes try to justify the deserters: sometimes they avoid mentioning some names, which was probably done in order not to cast shame on some noble families. The second paper, by Thomas W. Smith, is related to the first, in that, among other things, it also stresses the place of Antioch in the memory of the First Crusade, this time by studying a famous letter from crusaders given at Laodicea in 1099. In this letter the battles of Antioch and Ascalon receive much more attention than the siege of Jerusalem. Smith points out that afterwards, in chronicles, the situation was different, but at the same time he is right to say that the heavy focus on Antioch remained. It should be probably added that the siege of Antioch is always witness to the densest concentration of miracles described in chronicles. Smith also analyses and accurately demonstrates that the key roles in the composition of this letter were played by Archbishop Daibert of Pisa and Raymond of Saint-Gilles. We can see the crucial influence of the first, for example, when we observe that the martial merits or the contribution of individual crusade leaders are never the focus of the narrative. It should be also noted that Smith has recently published two papers on neglected manuscript versions of this letter, and the present paper is a logical continuation of that work.
Two papers are dedicated to an analysis of narrative strategies in the Gesta regum anglorum of William of Malmesbury and the Historia Ierosolymitana of William of Tyre. Stephen J. Spencer argues that William of Malmesbury deliberately downplays the Franks’ fear during the First Crusade by means of a paucity of references to deserters and instances of Latin fear in order to provide good examples for future generations of would-be crusaders. As he says, there were probably also political reasons for downplaying the desertion of Count Stephen of Blois who was related in some degree to the family of the English king Henry i whose wife commissioned the chronicle. Beth A. Spacey argues that the widespread opinion among historians that William of Tyre was a cynic whose chronicle is almost devoid of the miraculous is not really fair: he was more selective and prudent, but he did believe in miracles. Spacey is convincing when demonstrating that the story about the vision of Peter the Hermit was actually embellished by William of Tyre. Furthermore, the author of the chronicle includes two miracle-related passages in his narration of the siege of Jerusalem which cannot be found anywhere else. Probably, as Spacey suggests, this was aimed at emphasising the importance of this event and downplaying the role of the siege of Antioch, the miracles of which William of Tyre mostly omits.
Finally, three papers examine different crusade-related literary sources. The paper by Lauren Mulholland deals with reaction to the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 in Occitan lyrics. The very fact that the fall of the Holy City has many echoes is not surprising in itself, but the second part of the article contains an observation which is very helpful in reconstructing attitudes towards crusading in the second half of the twelfth century: due to the general tendency in Western thought of that time to pay more attention to the human aspects of Christ, troubadour poetry starts to describe the passion and Christ's agony on the cross, and it happens first in poetry which does not seem to be crusade-related. I can add here that it correlates with an important change in crusade preaching at that time: popes and preachers focus much more on the personal involvement of Christ in crusading, who is being insulted by Saracens in his patrimony and personally calling his people to the crusade. The article by Simon John is a continuation of his investigation, contained in the epilogue of his recent book, of the reputation in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of Godfrey of Bouillon, a prominent leader of the First Crusade. John analyses the image of the duke in crusade epics, in the Chanson d'Antioche and the Chanson de Jerusalem. The article places considerable emphasis on the noble character, reputation and lineage, military talents and devotion of the duke. Finally, the paper by Simon Thomas Parsons explores the textual tradition of a little-known thirteenth-century compilation, the Gran Conquista de Ultramar.
