Kostick Conor. The Social Structure of the First Crusade

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ABBREVIATIONS

AA Albert of Aachen, Historia Iherosolimitana, ed. S. B. Edging ton

(Oxford, 2007).

AC Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, trans. E. R. A. Sewter (Middle-

sex, 1979).

BD Baldric of Dol, Historia Hierosolymitana, RHC Oc. 4, 1–111.

CA La Chanson d’Antioche, ed. S. Duparc-Quioc, 2 (Paris, 1977).

CC Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis.

EA Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Chronica’, Frutolfs und Ekkehards Chroni ken

und die Anonyme Kaiserchronik, ed. F.-J. Schmale and I. Schmale-

Ott (Darmstadt, 1972).

FC Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana (1095–1127),

ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1913).

GF Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed. R. Hill

(London, 1962).

GN Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, ed. R. B. C.

Huygens, CC LXXVIIa, (Turnhout, 1996).

GP Gilo of Paris and a second, anonymous author, Historia Vie

Hierosolimitane, ed. C. W. Grocock and J. E. Siberry (Oxford,

1997).

MC Monte Cassino Chronicle (Historia Peregrinorum euntium Jerusolymam),

RHC Oc. 3, 167–229.

MGH SS Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores, Scriptores in Folio, 32

(1826–1934).

OV Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans.

M. Chibnall, 6 (Oxford, 1969–79).

PL J. P. Migne ed., Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina

(1844–66).

PT Peter Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere, ed. J. H.

Hill and L. L. Hill (Paris, 1977).

RA Raymond of Aguilers, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem,

ed. John France (unpublished PhD. thesis: University of

Nottingham, 1967).

RC Ralf of Caen, Gesta Tancredi, RHC Oc. 3, 587–716.

RHC Oc. Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens occidentaux 1–5

(Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres: Paris 1841–95).

RM Robert the Monk, Historia Iherosolimitana, RHC Oc. 3, 717–

882.

WT William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CC 63

(Turnhout, 1986).

xii abbreviations

INTRODUCTION

In 1096, tens of thousands of people of all backgrounds left their

homes in Europe to march to Jerusalem and capture it for Christianity.

Among them were many thousands of knights. These professional

warriors lived for the chase; if they were not at war they were at the

hunt and the horse that they rode not only gave them military prow-

ess but a social status that was signiﬁ cantly more prestigious than the

lowly footsoldiers who were marching in great bands, stave in hand,

unstrung bows over their shoulder.

Even greater throngs of more lowly non-combatants tried to keep

pace with those trained for war. Farmers sold their lands and tools,

except for a plough and a few animals. Hitching a cart to their oxen,

they placed their remaining possessions in the vehicle, put their chil-

dren on top and set out determinedly for the Holy Land. Serfs too,

with little more than a few coins, dependent upon charity, the bounty

of God, ran from the prospect of lifelong toil for their social superiors

and, arming themselves with crude weapons, obtained freedom in

the ranks of the army of God. Among the crowds were women, also

present in their thousands. The presence of so many women dismayed

the senior clergy, but popular preachers distributed alms to them, so

that they could ﬁ nd husbands and protectors. Some women, though,

had the temerity to dress as men and cast off the role that had been

assigned them from birth.

As the great armies snaked their way along the old Roman roads,

elderly men, monks, nuns, artisans and peasants joined the expedition.

The poor escorted the princes and the glittering knights, who in turn

felt some responsibility for the protection of the defenceless. And they

died in great numbers. Ships full of pilgrims sank in the Adriatic.

Stragglers left trails of dead across hundreds of miles, especially once

the pilgrim armies were south-east of the Alps and could no longer

count on the sympathy of Latin Christian towns. Once in Muslim ter-

ritory, enormous numbers of non-combatants died, both by the sword

and from the hardship of desert, mountain and disease.

It was an extraordinary, unprecedented, moment in human history;

one whose repercussions are still with us, like the distant ripples of a

once powerful tidal wave. What did they think they were doing? Is it

2 introduction

possible to draw close enough to these people that we can have some

understanding of their actions, their motives, their hopes? Was it all,

like Edward Gibbon believed, a monumental act of folly? Did their

shared goal mean that they had a common understanding of what they

were doing: the lord of four castles from France, with the servant from

Germany? The aristocratic lady, a descendent of Charlemagne, with

her cook? How did they organise themselves? Did the expedition always

follow a course set by the princes? What happened when people of

that era were thrown together in the face of annihilation, but with the

prospect of eternal salvation in their grasp? Did they maintain the social

norms they were accustomed to? Or did propriety break down?

These are hard questions to answer for an enterprise that took place

nearly a thousand years ago. Thus, even though the extraordinary nature

of the First Crusade has attracted an immense amount of investigation

and attention, both of a popular and academic nature, there is still

much to be said, and much that will never be known. Even to approach

tentative answers to such issues requires that a more fundamental set of

questions be examined. When, for example, the sources talk of ‘knights’,

what do they mean? When they refer to the ‘poor’, who, exactly, are

they talking about? Like an astronomer who ﬁ nds they need to master

particle physics to explain celestial phenomena, the historian who wishes

to discuss social dynamics has to involve themselves in the minutiae of

contemporary language.

The contemporary accounts of the First Crusade, by eyewitnesses

and those alive at the time, provide answers to the questions above,

providing it is understood what they mean when they employ terms like

milites, pauperes, minores or iuvenes. What such terms meant at the time

of the First Crusade is not, however, particularly well understood. In

part this is because of the intrinsic obscurity of the subject, but it is

also because none of the great social historians of the medieval period

devoted a major study to the crusades. Instead, ﬁ gures like Georges

Duby, Rodney Hilton, Abram Leon, and Perry Anderson have left

fragments of analysis: throwaway remarks, often rich in potential,

but not elaborated. This has been a loss not just to those interested

in questions concerning social structure, but also to the study of the

crusades in general.

Even very basic features of the First Crusade, such as its social

composition, have yet to be rigorously analysed. It is surprising to ﬁ nd

very eminent crusading historians, sure-footed on their own terrain,

stumbling as soon as they discuss the social structure of the movement.

introduction 3

Jonathan Riley-Smith, for example, when he turned to the subject,

argued that the Christian forces of the First Crusade ‘can be divided

into three classes, the principes or maiores, the minores or mediocres and the

plebs or populus.’

He deﬁ ned minores as the ‘great lords, castellans and

petty knights’ beneath the ranks of the senior princes and repeatedly

utilised the term minores for a sustained investigation of those of the

nobility on the First Crusade who were just below the level of the

senior princes.

This portrayal of the social structure of the First Crusade is rather

eccentric in its deﬁ nitions. In particular, none of the crusading sources

uses minores in the manner described by Riley-Smith. In fact, in the early

crusading sources the term minores is typically used to indicate common-

ers, often by coupling the term with maiores to indicate the entirety of

society, the great and the small.

Nor do the other terms used to dissect

the social structure of the First Crusade by Riley-Smith ﬁ t his purpose.

Mediocres has a limited and specialised use in the sources, not for those

knights below the rank of the senior princes but, depending on context,

for either footsoldiers or for the lowest social orders.

Principes and maiores

very often were not synonymous, with the former usually a very narrow

elite within the broader grouping of nobles encompassed by maiores.

Furthermore, plebs and populus were used, in the main, to indicate the

entire body of Christian forces, not a subgroup unless qualiﬁ ed by an

appropriate adjective. If Riley-Smith’s intention was to indicate the

lower social orders by these terms, then more appropriate would have

been vulgus, pauperes, egeni, or minores, to mention only the more frequently

used contemporary terms. Again, the extremely prominent historian of

medieval Germany, Karl Leyser, in discussing the question of supplies

and the First Crusade, conﬂ ated the pauperes, the poor, with the very

different social group, the pedites, the footsoldiers.

A detailed analysis of the structure of First Crusade from a social

perspective has, therefore, something of value to offer those studying

Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (Philadelphia, 1986), p. 74.

For example GF 35, 74, 44, 53, 75; FC I.v.11 (152), I.xvi.1 (225), I.xxv.3 (267);

AA 226, 268 503–4; BD 42.

For example RM 742; GN 102, 153, 201, 262, 313.

See below pp. 219–241.

Karl Leyser, ‘Money and Supplies on the First Crusade,’ in T. Reuter ed., Com-

munications and Power in Medieval Europe: the Gregorian Revolution and beyond

(London, 1994), pp. 77–96, here p. 93.

4 introduction

the subject from a variety of points of view, as well as to those readers

simply interested in deepening their understanding of the crusade. The

ambition of this book is to supply the groundwork that in so many

other areas of history is taken for granted, even by those who would

not focus their work on social dynamics. In other words, to achieve as

much clarity as possible as to which social groupings were present on

the Crusade, in what proportions, and with what structural tensions

between them.

This book has not been written to address the question of ‘motivation’

of the crusaders. But as a secondary consequence of striving to achieve

clarity on the issue of social structure, it does have something to offer

on that issue and the matter is discussed further in the conclusion.

A certain methodology arises from the nature of the subject matter.

Once the question has been posed, ‘what was the social structure of

the First Crusade?’, the basic approach suggests itself. The sources for

the First Crusade have to be dissected and the material poured over

with respect to their evidence concerning the full range of the social

orders present on the crusade. The accumulated evidence then has to

be reassembled, prosopographically, to provide as coherent and accurate

account as possible of the social groupings under examination. While

it is possible to gather a fairly wide annalistic body of evidence for the

extent of plagues and famines around the time of the preaching of

the First Crusade and use this to supplement the discussion, especially

with regard to pauperes,

the foundations of the study therefore have to

rest on a close reading and understanding of the sociological outlook

of the longer sources.

With regard to sources, something of a constraint is forced upon

the historian who wishes to examine the social dynamics of the First

Crusade. There needs to be sufﬁ cient material in the source to provide

an understand the sociological perspective of the author. In what man-

ner are the key terms being used? How ﬁ xed are they? Do they echo

classical or biblical language? To what extent can they be trusted as

labels for speciﬁ c social classes? Shorter chronicles, letters and char-

ters are unsuited to an analysis of their philosophical and theological

standpoint. Verse sources present the problem that their vocabulary is

constantly subordinated to metre. Therefore the more substantial early

See below pp. 100–105.

introduction 5

narrative histories of the First Crusade form the core subject matter

of this study.

The ﬁ rst two chapters of this book examine the work of eight

medieval historians, either participants on the First Crusade, or near

contemporaries. For the reader wishing to rush ahead to the narrative

of events or the discoveries here with regard to the social status of those

present on the crusade, these opening chapters will seem rather slow.

But quite apart from the indispensability of treating the sources with

respect, there is something intrinsically interesting about deepening our

understanding of the outlook of those who provided the accounts from

which we gain an insight into the past. This book is as much a study

of the sociology of these eight medieval writers as it is an account of

the social structure of the expedition itself.

The accounts studied in depth here are ﬁ rst of all those of the four

eyewitness: the anonymously authored Gesta Francorum; Peter Tudebode’s

variant of the same; Raymond of Aguilers’s Historia Francorum and

Fulcher of Chartres’s Historia Hierosolymitana. In Chapter Two, four more

histories are examined, all written in the decade following the capture

of Jerusalem. There exist three histories written around 1108 that are

similar to one another, in that they are all the work of northern French

monks and are all reworkings of the Gesta Francorum. Distinctly differ-

ent from these works is Albert of Aachen’s extremely well informed

Historia Iherosolimitana, a history rich in social content and unique in

perspective.

Modern historians have tended to neglect the three French works:

the Historia Hierosolymitana of Baldric of Dol; the Historia Iherosolimitana

of Robert the Monk; and (to a lesser extent) the Gesta Dei per Francos

of Guibert of Nogent. This is because the texts of the eyewitnesses

have to be preferred over the later works, especially given that as they

rewrote the story of the First Crusade, these monks sometimes distorted

historical information in order to provide edifying examples for their

readers. But for the social historian such reworkings are something

of a treasure trove, for, at the very least, they indicate how a French

monk of the time understood the Gesta Francorum. To take one of very

many examples, the crusading army at Antioch won a victory against a

sortie from the city, 6 March 1098, soon after which the Gesta Francorum

reported that ‘our men’ went to where the citizens had buried their

dead, dug them up and cut their heads off.

Robert the Monk’s version

GF 42.

6 introduction

of this incident, instead of using the vague term nostri, speciﬁ ed it was

the iuvenes of the Christian army who did this.

When these monastic

historians enriched their text with such details, it cannot necessarily

be invoked as evidence for what actually happened, especially if the

amendments disagree with the eyewitness, but such alterations do pro-

vide powerful evidence for how near contemporaries understood the

social content of their fons formalis.

These eight works provide, therefore, the bulk of the material for

this study.

In weighing up the social perspective of these authors, particularly in

placing their thought into context, the possibilities available to the his-

torian have undergone something of a minor revolution since research

for this book began. At the start of the new millennium, in order to

understand the context for a distinctive phrase, for example, Guibert of

Nogent’s homines extremae vulgaritatis, scholars would either rely on deﬁ ni-

tions provided by earlier generations who devoted a lifetime of study

to Latin, such as those in Du Cange’s monumental Glossarium mediae et

inﬁ mae Latinitatis, or would be obliged root around among microﬁ ches

and indexes without ever being fully satisﬁ ed that perhaps a key tome

had been left unturned. Today, an enormous amount of classical and

medieval material has been digitised and put on to databases, allowing

searches to take place in minutes that would previously have taken years.

In Dublin, for example, in 2006 Dr. Katherine Simms made available

her database that catalogues the themes of Gaelic bardic poetry. This

allows researchers not only to search by opening lines, geographical

area, key names, meter and period, but the poems have all been cat-

egorised as to whether they are petitions, elegies, apologies etc.

This

particular database is freely available as are several other important

ones, especially for the classical era.

The two databases used most heavily in this study are the online

versions of the Patrologia Latina and the scriptores series of the Monumenta

Germaniae Historica. These are immensely useful resources, invaluable

for this kind of study. Additionally, the French Government has rather

generously made the important crusading collection Recueil des Historiens

des Croisades accessible for free.

With the assistance of these huge

RM 788.

At http://bardic.celt.dias.ie/main.html.

At http://gallica.bnf.fr/.

introduction 7

resources and databases it has proved possible to say something about

each of the author’s distinct sociological perspectives.

The main body of this book consists of a discussion of the material

gleaned from these sources, assembled around the signiﬁ cant social

groupings. Insofar as this book offers an original interpretation of the

narrative of the Crusade, this appears mainly in Chapters Three and

Four. In particular, although the case has previously been made that

as the expedition stalled from July 1098 to May 1099, it was popular

pressure that provided the impetus to drive the movement towards

Jerusalem,

up until now, this has only been asserted in outline, in

Chapter Four the role of the poor of the Crusade is examined in great

detail and it is demonstrated that their self-conscious activity played a

signiﬁ cant part in the subsequent outcome of the expedition.

Issues concerning knighthood and chivalry have proved to be a major

interest right across the medieval era. By the time of the First Crusade

the term milites was beginning to be applied not simply to the common

soldier, but more and more to that distinct social group, the warrior

members of the nobility. This is not to say that a knightly class emerged

around the time of the Crusade. Analysis of charters, especially that done

by Georges Duby for the Mâconnais, suggests that in parts of France, at

least, they were a distinct social grouping from around the year 1000.

Chapter Five demonstrates, albeit with important qualiﬁ cations, that

by the time that the early historians of the First Crusade were writing

(c. 1100–1110) the term miles was often being used to indicate a knight,

someone with a distinctly noble status, and not simply a soldier. The

more interesting material concerning the class below that of the knights,

the pedites, footsoldiers, namely their juxtaposition with the milites, has

not warranted a separate chapter, but is included in Chapter Five.

In sifting the information about social groupings it becomes clear

that an entirely unrecognised strata of person was present on the First

Crusade, not only present, but playing a key role as the ‘shock troops’

of the movement: ﬁ rst into battle, ﬁ rst on to the walls of a besieged

city, rash, impetuous and thirsty for fame. This stratum, in essence

senior nobles who had yet to establish families or careers, were termed

by the sources iuvenes and they have been invisible for centuries due to

Perhaps best by J. France, Victory in the East (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 297–324.

G. Duby, La Société aux XI

et XII

siècles dans la région mâconnaise (Paris, 1953).