Kostick Conor. The Social Structure of the First Crusade

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18 chapter one

the author, despite the phrase maiores et minores being something of a

commonplace.

The issue of supplying the crusading army as it gathered, ﬁ rst at

Constantinople and then at the siege of Nicea, April 1097 to its sur-

render 19 June 1097, prompted the author of the Gesta Francorum to

write more observantly about the poor. He recorded the promise of

Alexios I Comnenus, the Byzantine emperor, to give alms to the pauperes

in the contingent of Duke Godfrey to keep them alive after they had

departed Constantinople, 4 April 1097.

In summing up the siege of

Nicea and the sense of frustration that the sacriﬁ ces of the expedition

had not been properly rewarded, the anonymous author pointed out that

many of the pauperrima gens had in fact starved to death.

Immediately

afterwards he nevertheless acknowledged that, exceedingly pleased with

the fall of the city, Alexios ordered alms to be distributed bountifully

to nostri pauperes.

After this cluster of usages in writing about the siege of Nicea and

its aftermath, the term pauper appears only three times more in the

entire work. Two of these instances were cases where the term pauperes

was used as an adjective that seems to have been used to describe poor

combatants rather than ‘the poor’. The author described a scene where

the chief enemy of the Christian army, Kerbogha, the atabeg of Mosul,

was brought a rusty sword, a bad bow and a useless spear, recently sto-

len from the pauperes peregrini.

The purpose of depicting this incident

was to show Kerbogha as gloating hubristically and prematurely over

the superiority of his forces to those of the Christians and the term

pauperes peregrini here is being used very loosely.

Similarly, when the castellan Achard of Montmerle left the siege of

Jerusalem to contact six Christian vessels that had arrived at Jaffa on

17 June 1099, he was intercepted by some Arab soldiers and killed.

According to the report of the Gesta Francorum Achard died along with

the pauperes homines pedites.

In this case, the only such formulation,

the most likely meaning is that these were footsoldiers who were dis-

tinguished, perhaps, by poverty relative to the condition of better-off

I Chronicles 24:31: tam maiores quam minores.

GF 7.

GF 17.

GF 18.

GF 51.

GF 89. For Achard of Montmerle see J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131

(Cambridge, 1997), p. 197.

the eyewitnesses 19

footsoldiers in the main body of the Christian forces for whom the

author consistently used the term pedites without qualiﬁ cation.

The

point here is that the author of the Gesta Francorum, even when employ-

ing terms that make it seem as though he was attentive to the lower

social grouping, was as often making a distinction between rich and

poor warriors as that between those who fought and the non-combat-

ant poor. In this regard, as will be seen, his vocabulary is signiﬁ cantly

different to the clerical authors.

There is one instance in which the term pauperes probably was being

used by the author of the Gesta Francorum for non-combatants. This was

in the epitaph to Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy discussed above. Karl

Leyser has noted that Adhémar’s speech reﬂ ected the contemporary

orthodoxy of the tripartite division of society into those who worked,

those who fought and those who prayed.

This is a valuable observa-

tion, but it applies with even greater force to the preceding description

of the legate as: sustentamentum pauperum, consilium divitum, ipseque ordinabat

clericos (helper of the pauperes, the counsel of the divites, and he regulated

the clergy).

The division of rich and poor here is hierarchical rather

than functional but nevertheless this passage provides evidence that the

author of the Gesta Francorum did indeed see the expedition in tripartite

terms and, by loose analogy with the orthodox understanding of the

three orders, it seems that in this case at least pauperes is being used for

non-combatants.

If the author of the Gesta Francorum had little insight to offer with

regard to the lower social orders, his language did become more

nuanced with regard to the more senior social groupings of the Crusade.

He employed the term, servientes in an interesting way, not in its com-

mon sense of ‘servant’ but rather for warriors of some sort, perhaps

serjeants, or perhaps for those whom other sources describe as iuvenes,

that is, knights yet to establish their own families and careers, who

therefore attached themselves as followers to a prince.

Also J. G. Gavigan, ‘The Syntax of the Gesta Francorum,’ p. 37.

K. Leyser, ‘Money and Supplies’, p. 82 n. 25. For the tripartite division of society

the best discussion still remains, G. Duby, The three orders, feudal society imagined (Chicago,

1978).

GF 74.

See below pp. 187–212.

20 chapter one

With nearly a hundred usages, milites was by far and away the most

common term for a group of persons in the Gesta Francorum. This should

provide sufﬁ cient material to yield a precise interpretation of the social

grouping referred to by the term. Yet milites was such a ubiquitous

a term for the anonymous author that it was used to cover a broad

variation of person, ranging from unnamed soldiers ﬁ ghting in their

thousands to the senior princes. Chapter Five contains a full discus-

sion of this term, but it is worth noting here the common phrase in

the Gesta Francorum: milites Christi.

Although the frequency with which

the phrase appears tells us something about the theological framework

through which the author viewed the expedition, it sheds little light on

social status. For example, Bishop Adhémar was included in a grouping

with Count Raymond, Godfrey of Lotharingia, and Hugh the Great

that together were termed milites Christi.

It was not, therefore, a term

speciﬁ cally reserved for warriors of the First Crusade.

The phrase miles Christi derives from a letter of the apostle Paul,

a passage much exploited by Pope Gregory VII and by the authors

of investiture polemics.

Other examples of the appearance of miles

Christi in the Gesta Francorum include it being adopted for the young

Norman prince Tancred

and collectively for Bohemond, Godfrey

of Lotharingina and Count Raymond of Toulouse, who together are

termed Christi milites.

One of Bohemond’s speeches to his colleagues

began: Seniores et fortissimi milites Christi.

These examples indicate that

the author of the Gesta Francorum considered the leadership of the First

Crusade to be devoted to the idea of a Holy War, at least as they are

depicted in the ﬁ rst nine books. For the battle with Kerbogha the entire

army are described as milites Christi. Thereafter the term is never applied

to individual knights but only for the general army of the expedition,

suggesting both a certain disillusionment with the leaders and also

GF 6, 11, 18, 19, 23, 24, 70, 73, 88, 89, 96.

GF 19.

Paul, to Tim 2:3. For Gregory VII and miles Christi see C. Erdmann, The Origin

of the Idea of Crusade, trans. M. W. Baldwin and W. Goffart (Princeton, 1977), pp.

202–3, 340–2.

GF 24. For Tancred see R. L. Nicholson. Tancred: a study of his career and work in

their relation to the First Crusade and the Establishment of the Latin States in Syria and Palestine

(Chicago, 1940).

GF 11.

GF 18.

the eyewitnesses 21

providing further evidence that the work probably was written at two

distinct stages.

One interesting variation was the phrase, Christi milites peregrini, for

Raymond Pilet’s expedition of July 1098.

As this contingent of the

Christian army was made up from previously unattached footsoldiers

and knights, including the gens minuta discussed above, it might well be

the case that the author of the Gesta Francorum adapted his conventional

phrase to match the less princely nature of that force.

The other

variation on milites Christi that appeared in the Gesta Francorum was the

phrase, ‘milites veri Dei.’

This was used to describe a Christian force

in battle with the garrison of Antioch, 6 March 1098. The Christians

suffered heavy losses due to an ambush on an expedition returning

from St Symeon’s Port. When they had regrouped, together with rein-

forcements from the camp, they turned the battle around and won a

major victory. The phrase, ‘knights of the true God,’ appeared here,

not as any kind of point concerning knighthood, but to underscore

the comforting thought that the author of the Gesta Francorum had just

made, which was that those killed must surely have earned the reward

of Heaven.

One passage concerning milites deserves more detailed attention here

as it makes an important point about the knightly class. When news

of the crusade reached Bohemond, in the summer of 1096, he was

engaged in the siege of Amalﬁ alongside his uncle, Count Roger I of

Sicily.

The Gesta Francorum reported that when Bohemond declared he

was joining the crusade, so many milites joined him that Count Roger

remained behind almost alone, lamenting the loss of his forces.

The interesting aspect of this passage is that milites who were once

evidently vassals of Count Roger are described as transferring their

allegiance to Bohemond. The same movement of milites from prince

to prince can be seen during the course of the First Crusade and was

a feature of the struggle of the magnates to exert leadership over the

GF 70 (against Kerbogha), 88, 89, 96.

GF 73.

GF 73. For a discussion of the term peregrini for in early crusading sources see

C. Tyerman, The Invention of the Crusades (London, 1998), pp. 20–22.

GF 40.

For Count Roger I Sicily (d. 1101) see G. A. Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard

(Harlow, 2000) chs. 4 and 5.

GF 7.

22 chapter one

expedition.

In the view of the Gesta Francorum it was not inappropri-

ate for a vassal to transfer his allegiance in the context of the crusade.

The author of the Gesta Francorum himself, if it is accepted that he was

a miles, might be an example of this, as, having travelled to Antioch

in the contingent of Bohemond, he then joined that part of the expe-

dition that pushed on to Jerusalem. Furthermore, the author of the

Gesta Francorum seems to describe Raymond Pilet, a miles and vassal

of Count Raymond of Toulouse, as having made a bid for a more

senior status by retaining (retinere) many milites and pedites from those

who did not want to wait ﬁ ve months after the fall of Antioch for the

expedition to continue.

The author of the Gesta Francorum may have

been among those who set out with Raymond Pilet.

With the failure

of his expedition the next appearance of Raymond Pilet in the Gesta

Francorum showed him to be once again a member of the contingent

of Count Raymond.

The association of the verb retinere with the enlistment of milites

appeared again in the Gesta Francorum in al-Afdal’s lament that having

been defeated by a poor Christian force (at the battle of Ascalon) he

would never again retain (retinere) milites by compact (conventione).

Even

though the statement was made by the vizier of Egypt concerning his

own forces, it allows us to see the type of terminology that the author

of the Gesta thought suitable for the recruitment of milites by a lord.

There are several terms for the senior nobility in the Gesta Francorum,

the most common of which was nostri maiores.

In marked contrast to

the other crusading sources, especially those northern French writers

basing their work on the Gesta Francorum, the author used the term seniores

a great deal to indicate the leading ﬁ gures of the First Crusade.

The

author was displaying what is probably an Italian bias that contrasts with

the vocabulary of the French sources.

The term principes, so common

See K. Leyser, ‘Money and Supplies’, pp. 89–92; and W. G. Zajac, ‘Captured

property on the First Crusade’, The First Crusade, ed. J. Phillips (Manchester 1997),

pp. 153–180, p. 169. See also below pp. xx–yy.

GF 73.

GF 73 n. 1.

GF 83.

GF 96.

GF 12, 16, 30, 39, 40, 45, 57, 59, 63, 65, 66, 72, 75, 87.

GF 25, 29, 30, 33, 37, 44, 67, 72, 75, 76, 78, 80, 81, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90.

J. G. Gavigan, ‘The Syntax of the Gesta Francorum,’ p. 11.

the eyewitnesses 23

in those other sources, seems to have been used in the Gesta Francorum

only to indicate the very uppermost ﬁ gures of the expedition.

In general, the author of the Gesta Francorum clearly had a much

more limited social vocabulary than any of the other early crusading

historians. His attention to the condition of the milites does, however,

provide particularly valuable material for a discussion of the meaning

of that term as it was applied to participants of the First Crusade.

The Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere of Peter Tudebode

There has been a centuries long controversy over the status of the

Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere of the Poitevin priest, Peter Tudebode.

The work is very similar indeed to the anonymous Gesta Francorum

and the debate has been conducted about the relationship between

the two. In 1641 Jean Besly produced an edition of the Historia De

Hierosolymitano Itinere that challenged the version of the Gesta Francorum

in Jacques Bongars’s famous 1611 collection of crusading sources.

From the internal evidence presented in the manuscript from which

he was working (now Paris, B. N. MS. latin 4892), Besly argued for

the primacy of the version in which the author gave his name as Petrus

Tudebodus a sacerdos of Civray, approximately 50 km from Poitiers.

Henri

Wallon and Adolphe Régnier adopted this perspective for the Recueil

des Historiens des Croisades version edited in 1866.

With the appearance

of Heinrich Hagenmeyer’s scholarly edition of the Gesta Francorum in

1880 the argument was made that the relationship of the two works

should be reversed and that the Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere should

be considered the derivative work.

The consensus of historians since 1880 was to follow Hagenmeyer,

until, in 1977, John and Laurita Hill produced an edition of Peter

Peter Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere, ed. J. Besly Historiae Francorum

Scriptores, IV, ed. A. Duchesne (Paris, 1841); J. Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos (Hanover,

1611); see Peter Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere trans. J. H. Hill and L. L. Hill

(Philadelphia, 1974), pp. 1–2.

Petrus Tudebodus, Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere, eds. J. H. Hill and L. L. Hill

(Paris, 1977), hereafter PT, p. 138 n. b; see Peter Tudebode trans. J. H. Hill and L. L.

Hill, pp. 1–2.

RHC Oc. 3, 3–117.

Anonymi Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg,

1890).

24 chapter one

Tudebode’s text. The Hills performed valuable work in examining the

key manuscripts and, largely on stylistic grounds, separating the two

traditions. This allowed them to publish the modern edition of Historia

de Hierosolymitano Itinere, which is used here. On the issue of the rela-

tionship between the Gesta Francorum and the Historia de Hierosolymitano

Itinere, they argued in the introduction both to the Latin edition and the

separately published English translation, that the Gesta Francorum, the

Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere and the Historia Francorum of Raymond

of Aguilers shared a now lost common source.

The difﬁ culty with this position is that the Historia de Hierosolymitano

Itinere seems indisputably to be adopting passages wholesale from the

Gesta Francorum, unconsciously importing the perspective of the anony-

mous author in many instances. As John France has pointed out, the

main problem with the ‘missing source’ theory is that it does not explain

how a French priest came to adopt the term nos for events that are

describing the viewpoint of the Italian contingent.

By and large, there is much more material in Peter Tudebode’s work

that appears to come from the Gesta Francorum than the other way

around. The issue is not a neat one, however, because, as Jay Rubenstein

has shown, there are some very distinct passages which strongly suggest

Peter Tudebode had the fuller version of events than that given in the

Gesta Francorum.

The solution to this puzzle offered by Jay Rubenstein

is the very plausible suggestion that at least one, and, based on a study

of the Monte Cassino chronicle, possibly two, early versions of the Gesta

Francorum were in circulation when Peter Tudebode wrote his history.

In other words, Peter Tudebode was not amending the Gesta Francorum

as we have it now, but a very similar, earlier, draft.

This is not to dispute the importance of Peter Tudebode as a source

for the First Crusade in those matters where he does offer new material.

It is clear that he was present on the First Crusade. He wrote several

passages that offer new information, or slight revisions of the version

of events that are described in the Gesta Francorum, consistent with

his putting forward his own name as a participant. Indeed, he listed

PT 21–24; Peter Tudebode, trans. J. H. Hill and L. L. Hill (Philadelphia, 1974),

pp. 10–13.

J. France, ‘The Use of the Anonymous Gesta Francorum in the Early Twelfth-Century

Sources for the First Crusade’, From Clermont to Jerusalem. The Crusades and Crusader Societies

1095–1500, ed. A. V. Murray (Turnhout, 1998), pp. 29–42.

J. Rubenstein, ‘What is the Gesta Francorum’, pp. 190–201.

Ibid., p. 201.

the eyewitnesses 25

several other individuals who were not mentioned in other sources,

including two knights also with the name Tudebode.

All in all, as

Susan Edgington puts it, ‘his work is . . . chieﬂ y of ancillary value, add-

ing convincing and circumstantial detail particularly about the sieges

of Antioch and Jerusalem.’

It is hard to distinguish Peter Tudebode as a social observer from

the anonymous author of the Gesta Francorum. Since they both had a

great amount of material in common they necessarily had the same

social language. Peter Tudebode’s work did, however, have some small

variations worth noting and he put a different perspective on some of

the passages discussed with regard to the Gesta Francorum. Furthermore,

he used two terms that are not to be found in the Gesta: clientes and

familiares. His revisions and additions show a slightly greater aware-

ness of social division within the First Crusade than does the Gesta

Francorum itself.

Peter Tudebode retained the two usages of the expression gens minuta

from the Gesta Francorum, a term so unusual that it is not found anywhere

else in the Patrologia Latina. The author of the Gesta Francorum used

minores as a broad term for the lower social order on three occasions.

Peter Tudebode added two more examples.

These additions, although

relatively unimportant, begin to demonstrate a greater awareness of

the presence of the lower social orders in Peter Tudebode’s work than

in the Gesta Francorum. This distinction between the two texts is more

clearly evident in their respective use of the term pauperes.

In describing the vision of Christ by a priest, Stephen of Valence,

at Antioch, 10 June 1098, Peter Tudebode added an extra line of

oratio recta, reporting that Christ ordered everyone to make penance,

undertake a procession with bare feet through the churches and ‘give

alms to the pauperes.’

This is useful additional information that the

visions of Stephen were giving expression to the needs of the poor.

Peter Tudebode made it clear that this advice was acted upon, when he

altered the Gesta Francorum’s report that just before battle with Kerbogha

‘they gave alms’ to read ‘they gave alms to the pauperes.’

In the month

PT 97 and 116.

S. B. Edgington, ‘The First Crusade: Reviewing the Evidence’, The First Crusade,

origins and impact, ed. J. Phillips (Manchester, 1997), pp. 55–77, p. 56.

PT 108 and 109 referring to GF 67.

PT 100: . . . pauperibus dent eleemosinas.

PT 110: Et dederunt eleemosynam pauperibus. Referring to GF 67–8.

26 chapter one

after the fall of Ma’arra, 11 December 1098, the pauperes engaged in

a form of behaviour that, in the version of events reported by Peter

Tudebode, brought forth a response from the seniores. The pauperes pere-

grini cut open the bodies of the dead to look for coins hidden in the

stomachs. They then cooked and ate scraps of ﬂ esh from the bodies.

As a result, reported Peter, the seniores dragged the bodies outside the

gates of the city, where they formed large piles that were burnt.

The

version in the Gesta Franorum was blander, not distinguishing the pauperes

as those responsible for cannibalism nor reporting the response of the

seniores.

As noted above, there is a slight but interesting change to the critical

passage in the Gesta Francorum on the death of Bishop Adhémar of Le

Puy at Antioch, which alters the meaning of the passage to one where

it is through the prayers of the clergy and not their own meritorious

deeds that the knights will be saved.

Peter Tudebode wrote a description of an appearance of St Andrew

to the lowly Provençal visionary Peter Bartholomew that is not in

the Gesta Francorum.

The phrasing was drawn from the account of

Raymond of Aguilers although Peter Tudebode placed it in his account

of the storming of Ma’arra, while Raymond was referring to the

events of March 1099. From this and the other passages that mention

the lower social order it is evident that Peter Tudebode had a greater

awareness of the activities and needs of the pauperes than did the author

of the Gesta Francorum.

Several times Peter Tudebode added the term seniores where the

Gesta might have a more vague term like alii. None of these examples

introduce new information or clarify the role of the seniores, other than

the example under pauperes above, of the seniores being spurred to action

to prevent acts of cannibalism by the poor.

Since the Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere of Peter Tudebode was so

heavily dependent on the Gesta Francorum it added only a few new pas-

sages containing extra information that distinguishes between the various

social orders of the First Crusade. Although the quantity is limited, the

additional material is in fact relatively rich in social information and

there is sufﬁ cient to discern a difference in outlook between the two

PT 124–5.

GF 80.

For references to Peter Bartholomew see J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders

(Cambridge, 1997) p. 216. See also below pp. 121–147.

the eyewitnesses 27

authors, in particular through Peter Tudebode having shown a greater

interest in the presence of the poor.

Raymond of Aguilers’s Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem

The Historia Francorum of Raymond of Aguilers is a critical text for

the history of the First Crusade, yet it is a relatively neglected work in

comparison to the other eyewitness sources. Ten manuscripts of the

history have survived from the medieval period. It was ﬁ rst published

by Jacques Bongars in the collection Gesta Dei per Francos (1611) and

edited by various authors for the version that was published in the

Recueil series (1866). A very important modern edition with consider-

able critical apparatus was prepared by John France for his PhD. thesis

(1967); surprisingly this thesis has not been published, perhaps because

of the publication of an edition in 1969 by J. H. Hill and L. L. Hill.

Nevertheless France’s is used here as easily the most reliable edition.

The edition of 1969 is based on one manuscript, Paris, B. N. MS Latin

14378. The editors seem to have been unaware of France’s work, which

has established that among the surviving manuscripts, MS 14378 is

relatively far removed from the archetype.

France’s edition used all

ten manuscripts in a sophisticated reconstruction of the archetype.

The biographical information available concerning Raymond of

Aguilers derives entirely from the text. The author was a canon of the

cathedral church of St Mary of Le Puy, in the Auvergne region of

France.

He participated on the expedition with the Provençal con-

tingent, probably that of Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy, the papal legate,

to judge by the bias of his detail.

Having earlier been raised to the

priesthood during the course of the expedition,

Raymond of Aguilers

subsequently joined the chaplaincy of Count Raymond IV of Toulouse.

J. Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos (Hanover, 1611); RHC Oc. 3, 235–309; J. France, A

Critical Edition of the Historia Francorum of Raymond of Aguilers (unpublished PhD. thesis:

University of Nottingham, 1967), hereafter RA; Le ‘Liber’ de Raymond d’Aguilers, eds.

J. H. Hill and L. L. Hill (Paris, 1969). I am grateful to J. France for permission to quote

from his thesis. References to the more easily accessible RHC edition are in brackets.

RA clxiv–ccv.

RA 5 (235).

RA 11–12, 17 (237, 238).

RA 202 (276).