Over the last thirty years, the uniquely concentrated and abundant narrative chronicle sources for the First Crusade have been reassessed for their literary and theological content, as didactic art not just as mines for supposed “facts” or descriptions of events. The recent project on the historiography of the First Crusade by Marcus Bull, sponsored by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, has already led to new editions of the texts by Robert of Rheims and Baldric of Bourgueil, with Bull's own long-promised edition of the seminal Gestra Francorum to come, as well as a series of articles on specific aspects of style, purpose, content, manuscript tradition and impact. This volume brings together a dozen papers delivered at a symposium conducted under the project's auspices in 2011. The delay in publication means that some of the ideas discussed are familiar from the project's already published editions (e.g., the papers by Steven Biddlecombe and Damien Kempf).
The editors introduce this collection by emphasizing the need for historians to embrace literary theories to unravel the chronicles' complexities and roles. In fact, only Bull's examination of the relationship between Robert of Rheims and Gilo of Paris really fulfills this objective, with characteristic flourishes of technical jargon. The rest, bar the odd genuflection towards theory (e.g., Carol Sweetenham's lucid definition of the morphology of literary anecdotes) generally remain within the bounds of traditional quellenkritik. Even Laura Ashe, coming from literary rather than historical studies, relies on conventional source analysis and comparisons to produce her stimulating speculations on contrasting Anglo-French understanding of the interaction of crusade and chivalry. The generalizations on cultural history in her suggestive paper come as refreshingly airy after the rather closed world of most of the other papers that overlap in concentrating on certain narratives (most obviously James Naus's paper on the context of Robert of Rheims and those by Kempf and Bull). Exceptions are Luigi Russo's discussion of the historiographical tradition at Monet Cassino and Peter Frankopan's rehearsal of his now well-known rehabilitation of Anna Comnena as a sophisticated and subtle historian of the First Crusade. The theme of variations of material and emphasis within a common pool of references dominates (e.g. Jay Rubinstein's revisiting of Guibert of Nogent), although Léan Ní Chléirigh makes a vigorous nominalist defense of the idea of the First Crusade as having been envisaged and experienced as a pilgrimage. Even where impact is considered, as in Nicholas Paul's excavation of the image of the open gates of Jerusalem, William Purkis's account of the influence of First Crusade narratives on twelfth century historiography more widely, or Kempf's observation of how Robert of Rheims became popular in Germany, the confines of the core objective persist, as could be expected from such a symposium.
In this volume, the editors have usefully gathered many of the leading figures in the current re-evaluation of the First Crusade narratives, many of whom have interesting things to say. Nonetheless, anyone expecting new insights or revelations may be disappointed, itself testament to how far these scholars and others have moved their subject forward in recent years.
