The fifteen essays collected in this volume together present one of the most exciting directions in crusade scholarship. Twentieth-century historians took great strides toward establishing a reliable account of the actual events of the Crusades and of the religious doctrines that gave them shape. More recent research, while not abandoning these fundamental topics, has focused more on crusade sources themselves as objects of historical inquiry. The work on narratology in the Middle Ages by historian Marcus Bull has been fundamental to this project. Even though Bull’s work does not appear in the volume, he is often cited and is arguably the collection’s most valuable contributor. Rather than seek the earliest and hence the most reliable witnesses to events, scholars here attempt to isolate authorial and narrative programs to gain insight into the ideologies of crusading and from there to develop new understanding of the events themselves.
The essays here are arranged chronologically based, more or less, on when sources were written. The first four focus on what might be termed “pre-crusade crusade history” – how contemporaries thought about the crusade before the crusade narrative itself had become fixed. Thomas W. Smith’s opening article examines what are traditionally viewed as the earliest First Crusade sources: letters composed during the campaign itself. Although these texts seem to open windows directly onto the immediate experience of crusaders, Smith suggests that they were in fact products of a formalized epistolary culture. Letters functioned less like news reports from the front lines and more as artifacts of remembrance, evolving narratives subject to revision according to the needs of the communities that received them. James H. Kane next presents what may in fact be the earliest historical references to the crusade: brief entries into the vernacular Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. Although they amount to only three or four laconic sentences, they nonetheless allow us to see both the excitement created by news from the Continent and the Middle East and the complexity of the English court’s response to it. The next two papers investigate particular crusading practices. Edward J. Caddy discusses that most central of these institutions, the vow, and concludes that it was not, in fact, as central as later crusading texts would have us believe. The notion of crusade as a pilgrimage defined by an oath instead developed in the process of retelling and rewriting crusade history. Connor C. Wilson then discusses the taking of spoils on the battlefield, a practice whose potential moral ambiguity occupied chroniclers and presumably soldiers, too.
The next six essays consider two of the most important figures in crusade historiography, Fulcher of Chartres, a chronicler who was a participant in the First Crusade, and William of Tyre, who completed his history of the Holy Land on the eve of the battle of Hattin in 1187, which led to the near total collapse of the crusader states. Fulcher, as Katy Mortimer argues, used his narrative to create a foundation story for the Kingdom of Jerusalem, presenting the initial expedition as a collective endeavor in which individual soldiers and wills were subsumed, and then using the reigns of the first two kings, Baldwin I and Baldwin II, to provide lessons in leadership and survival. Susan B. Edgington in the next chapter demonstrates the evolution and malleability of Fulcher’s narrative, finding evidence for the earliest stages of his thought by placing his book into dialogue with the chronicle attributed to an elusive figure called Bartolf of Nangis. Stephen Spencer then reminds us that not everyone read Fulcher as we or as Fulcher might have expected. The cleric Peter of Cornwall, for instance, found Fulcher’s book to be a source of miracle stories, particularly of heavenly, visionary interventions during the siege of Antioch. Andrew D. Buck shifts the discussion to William of Tyre, but in doing so he continues the discussion of authorial intention. William is traditionally seen as a level-headed, nearly proto-modern observer of his world. In Buck’s reading, he is much more engaged with the vernacular storytelling methods of his age, drawing on epic traditions and chansons all in an effort to capture something of the campfire culture in which these tales would have been born. Ivo Wolsing further develops William’s authorial circumstances, focusing on how the fortunes of William’s patron, Raymond III of Tripoli might have shaped the book’s structure. Katherine J. Lewis then returns to more explicitly narratological questions, showing how ideas about masculinity affected both the politics of the crusader states and William’s presentation of those political practices. It is a particularly engaging question because of the surprising number of powerful women in twelfth-century Jerusalem, Antioch, and Tripoli. These six central essays are tightly focused and engage especially well with one another. Any future work on either Fulcher or William will need to take them into account.
The volumes remaining chapters develop similar themes about crusade history after Hattin, when the capital of the kingdom shifted to Acre. Katrine Funding Højgaard discusses how the literary tradition of the “city lament” (dating back to ancient Mesopotamia if mediated through biblical and classical literature) shaped rhetorical responses to the loss of Jerusalem to Saladin. Helen J. Nicholson argues that the authorial program of the earliest version of the Itinerarium Perigrinorum, written in the immediate aftermath of Saladin’s victories, served as an anxious reminder to Richard I of England and Philip II of France to hurry on their journey to reinforce the Franks at the siege of Acre. In a similar manner, Beth C. Spacey analyzes how naturalistic descriptions in crusade chronicles helped serve to catalyze a Frankish program of reconquest. Mark McCabe returns to the topic of masculinity, now in connection with the memoirs of Jean of Joinville, companion to Louis IX on the Seventh Crusade (1248–1254). To conclude the volume, Peter W. Edbury reconstructs manuscript circulation in thirteenth-century Acre. The scribal communities he recreates show that the city was a more intellectually vibrant place than one might expect, given its constant war footing and political instability.
The essay collection is stimulating and suggestive of new paths to take in crusade studies. Of course, specialist readers will not accept all the methodological suggestions proffered here. Masculinity, for example, might be a more helpful category of analysis if combined with the more traditional topic of chivalry. The fact that Baldwin III does not attain full maturity may be connected to concepts of masculinity, as in Lewis’s model, but also probably relates to associations of knighthood and youth mapped out long ago by Georges Duby. Similarly, the number of occasions when Joinville chooses, in McCabe’s formulation, to emasculate himself is perhaps best understood when read alongside Chrétien de Troye’s romance of Lancelot. The chronological balance of the book is somewhat off-kilter as well. The entire thirteenth century is dealt with in only three chapters. Such quibbles aside, this essay collection does exactly what it should: demonstrate the excitement in crusade historiography characteristic of the twelfth century and today.
