Robert Levine
English Department
Boston University
"The Pious Traitor: the Man who Betrayed Antioch," Mittellateinisches
Jahrbuch XXXIII (1998), pp. 59-80.
No more convincing body of evidence can be found to
support the contention that history was a branch of rhetoric
during the middle ages (i.e., it was a part of
literature)[1], than the texts provided by the Latin
historians of the First Crusade. The elaborate, intertextual
exercises produced by writers like Fulker of Chartres,
Robert the Monk, Guibert of Nogent, Albert of Aix, Baldric
of Dole, Raoul of Caen, William of Tyre, and others, offer
characters and events at least as complex as any to be found
in the popular genres and $ mati<res with which they were,
often consciously, competing[2]. In addition, they reflect
the anxiety of influence that regularly resulted from
medieval efforts to harmonize Graeco-Roman and
Judaeo-Christian authorities.
The capture of Antioch, for example, provides a clear
illustration of the literary, competitive, intertextual
nature of historical representations of the First Crusade.
Antioch was captured by the Crusaders June 3, 1098, at the
end of a long siege, with the help of someone -- a Greek, a
Turk, an Armenian -- or some group from inside the city[3].
Historians of the First Crusade gradually developed the
incident, usually to amplify the paradoxical possibilities
of a virtuous traitor. In the process of accounting for his
behavior, they provided dream visions, child hostages,
fratricide, adultery, muliericide, theological
disquisitions, conversion experiences, and more. Eventually
the rhetorical challenge involved making treachery,
fratricide, and muliericide not merely understandable
behavior, but acts of Christian piety as well.
To accomplish such a task, the Latin historians used, in
addition to the standard repertory of schemes and tropes,
narrative strategies that show many of the features of what
in the twentieth-century is called "prose fiction." Two of
the three kinds of narrative Isidore of Seville recognized
were explicitly fictional, that is, in some sense, made up:
Nam historiae sunt res verae quae factae sunt;
argumenta sunt quae etsi facta non sunt, fieri
tamen possunt; fabulae vero sunt quae nec factae
sunt nec fieri possunt; quia contra naturam sunt
(I.XLIV.5)[4].
Distinguishing between things that were in fact done and
things that were not done, but might have been done, is no
easy task nine hundred years after the fact. Things that
were not done and could not have been done because they were
against the laws of nature would seem to be easier to
determine, although the miraculous events that regularly
occur in any number of medieval texts of an historical
nature, and at crucial moments in the literature of the
First Crusade, suggest that the distinctions among these
terms had themselves a rhetorical potential. That is, a $
fabula inserted into a text purporting to be an eyewitness
account would partake of the illusion of truth, of $ res
verae quae factae sunt.
Such an illusion was also a function of the style used
for the narrative. Although medieval rhetoricians claimed to
be following classical precedents by recommending that style
reflect the subject matter, the low or plain style was not
confined exclusively to low subject matter, particularly in
the case of historical texts, whose eye-witnesses did not
invariably possess literary training. In addition, as
Auerbach demonstrated in his examination of Augustine's
attitudes towards language, the humble style of the Bible,
an analogue for Christ's humility as expressed in the
Incarnation, represented a revolution against the precepts
of classical rhetoric[5]. Writers of historical texts,
then, could have consciously adopted the low style to
provide the texture of Biblical authority, as well as to
perform the function Gregory of Tours explicitly claimed
more than five hundred years earlier: to provide a speaker
who can be understood by all, $ Philosophantem rethorem
intellegunt pauci, loquentem rusticum multi $ multi[6].
In addition to clarity and authority, the plain style can
provide an illusion that recent narratologists have
addressed by proposing a distinction between narrative and
discourse:
In discourse, someone speaks, and his situation in
the very act of speaking is the focus of the most
important significations; in narrative ... $ no
one speaks, in the sense that at no moment do we
ask ourselves $ who is speaking, where, when, and
so forth, in order to receive the full
signification of the text... Narrative exists
nowhere, so to speak, in its strict form. The
slightest general observation, the slightest
adjective that is little more than descriptive,
the most discreet comparison, the most modest
"perhaps," the most inoffensive of logical
articulations introduces into its web a type of
speech that is alien to it, refractory as it were.
[7](
Minimal "discourse" often characterizes the plain style,
as it does in the earliest surviving account of the First
Crusade, whose factual reliability has, not incidentally,
been least questioned by modern historians. The anonymous $
Gesta Francorum, probably composed by 1101 (also known,
misleadingly, as $ Tudebodus abbreviatus) and often
considered the testimony of an eye-witness, offers a
comparatively raw Latinity, characters whose motivations are
relatively simple, speeches that are brief and artless, and
enough ellipses to provoke later writers to greater
rhetorical heights. Whether the $ Gesta is a set of notes
taken in the heat of battle or a conscious, literary use of
the simple style by a monkish scribe, or some combination of
the two, is a problem that can be described more easily than
solved[8], at least partly because, as Jeanette Beer and
others have demonstrated, for medieval writers the
eye-witness, as well as truth and sincerity, were rhetorical
topoi[9].
Editors of the $ Gesta Francorum have usually found in it
the voice of a reliable eye-witness, in spite of the
evidence that a "monkish scribe" had a hand in producing the
text. To simulate the voice of an objective analyst, for
example, the anonymous author begins his version of the
taking of Antioch by showing some awareness of rhetorical
topoi, in this case combining the impossibility-topos and
what one might call a universalised version of the
humility-topos:
Omnis quae egimus antequam urbs esset capta nequeo
enarrare, quia nemo est in his partibus sive
clericus sive laicus qui omnino possit scribere
vel narrare, sicut res gesta est. Tamen
aliquantulum dicam.
I cannot tell you all the things which we did
before the city fell, for there is in this land
neither clerk nor layman who could write down the
whole story or describe it as it happened, but I
will tell you a little of it[10].
He then modulates into relatively pure "narative" for
several pages, attributing the fall of Antioch to the fact
that a high-ranking Turk named Pirus[11] became friendly
with Bohemund, one of the leaders of the First Crusade, who
convinced the infidel, by means of Mammon and of Christ, to
betray the city:
Erat quidam ammiratus de genere Turcorum, cui
nomen Pirus, qui maximam amicitiam receperat cum
Boamundo. Hunc saepe Boamundus pulsabat nuntiis
adinvicem missis, quo eum infra civitatem
amicissime reciperet, eique christianitatem
liberius promittebat et eum se divitem facturum
cum multo honore mandabat[12].
A certain Turkish emir, whose name was Pirus,
established a firm friendship with Bohemund.
Bohemund relentlessly sent emissaries to him,
urging him to receive him in a friendly fashion
outside the city, and he offered him the
opportunity to become a Christian, and he said
that he would make him a rich, much honored man.
Pirus shows no hesitation in accepting the offer, promising
to deliver the three towers in his command, $ quacunque hora
voluerit, to Bohemund, who then proceeds to use the offer as
a hidden trump in his dealings with the other crusaders.
After their initial resistance to Bohemund's proposal
that whoever manages to capture the city, $ ingenio...vel
ingeniare (an example of the rhetorical scheme, $
annominatio), be given the city to rule, the other Crusaders
yield when they hear the news that countless troops are on
the way to reinforce the besieged town.
Bohemund now sends daily messages to Pirus, who sends
back to the Crusader both his son as a pledge of faith, and
a plan of action: the Crusaders are to pretend to depart on
a raiding expedition, then to double back during the night,
while Pirus lets the others into the three towers under his
control. Everything goes exactly according to plan, although
Pirus at one point during the night becomes anxious at what
he perceives to be Bohemund's tardiness, breaking into Greek
that is given and translated by the author:
Micro Francos echome (hoc est: paucos Francos
habemus). Ubi est acerrimus Boamundus? ubi est
ille miles invictus[13]?
There are few French here. Where is the fierce
Bohemund? Where is the unconquered soldier?
In response to the outcry, an anonymous Lombard servant, $
quidam serviens Longobardus, descends the wall and relays
Pirus' anxiety to Bohemund, in effect upbraiding the
Crusader, in spite of their evident disparity in rank:
Quid hic stas, vir prudens? Quamobrem huc venisti.
Ecce nos iam tres turres habemus (p. 106).
Why do you stand here, wise man? This is the
reason you came here. Now we have the three
towers.
Bohemund and the others now race to the wall and climb
the ladder, in some manuscripts breaking into French:
Videntes itaque illi, qui tamen erant in turribus,
coeperunt iocunda voce clamare: $ Deus le volt!
Nos vero idem clamabamus. (p. 106)
Those who were in the towers cried out happily,
"God wishes it," and we cried out the same.
In the course of the Crusaders' victory, the death of Pirus'
brother is reported $ en passant, and unemotionally; the
ladder then breaks, but the Crusaders find a convenient gate
in the wall, and they enter the city. The text of the $
Gesta Francorum, then, implicitly offers itself as an
eye-witness account, whose occassional, mild rhetorical
flourishes, including momentary polyglossia, do not
seriously dilute the impression that the reader is perusing
a relatively pure "narrative" of the series of events by
means of which Bohemund, an effective warrior and a crafty
politician, Pirus, a Turk of no particular character, and a
faithful, brave Lombard soldier from the lower ranks,
brought about the fall of Antioch. Except for the crusaders
shouting, $ Deus le volt, the passage has no particular
religious qualities.
$ Deus le volt is the explicit agenda of Fulker of
Chartres's $ Historia Hierosolymitana, the first part of
which was composed sometime before 1105[14]. In his
prologue Fulker provides no motivation for writing beyond,
"the repeated requests of some of my comrades." He does,
however, unlike the author of the $ Gesta Francorum,
insistently claim to have been an eye-witness, in the
prologue, and several times throughout the body of his text
(for example, Book One, Chapter Five). At one point he
describes himself tasting the waters of the Dead Sea, and
finding them, "more bitter than hellebore" (II.v).
Like Gregory of Tours, he claims to have chosen a low
style deliberately, but not for Gregory's ostensible motive
-- clarity; instead, he asserts that his sublime subject
matter will come in a humble, and therefore, more reliable
prose, $ stilo rusticano tamen veraci[15]. $ He seems very
close to asserting that his choice of style matches the
transcendant quality of his subject matter, when he
immediately suggests that the Crusaders suffering for Christ
are analogous to those who fought for the God of the Old
Testament:
Licet autem nec Israeliticae plebis nec
Machabaeorum aut aliorum plurium praerogativae,
quos Deus tam crebris et magnificis miraculis
inlustravit, hoc opus praelibatum aequiparare non
audeam, tamen haut longe ab illis gestis inferius
aestimatum, quoniam Dei miracula in eo noscuntur
multipliciter perpetrata, scriptis commendare
curavi; quin immo in quo disparantur his postremi
ab illis primis vel Israeliticis vel Machabaeis,
quos quidem vidimus in regionibus eorum saepe apud
nos aut audivimus longe a nobis positos, pro amore
Christi emembrari, crucifigi, excoriari,
sagitarii, secari et diverso martyrii genere
consummari..(p. 117).
Although I dare not compare the above-mentioned
labor of the Franks with the great achievements of
the Israelites or Maccabees or of many other
privliged people whom God had honored by frequent
and wonderful miracles, still I consider the deeds
of the Franks scarcely less inferior since God's
miracles often occured among them. These I have
taken care to commemorate in writing. In what way
do the Franks differ from the Israelites or
Maccabees? Indeed we have seen these Franks in the
same regions, often right with us, or we have
heard about them in places distant from us,
suffering dismemberment, crucifixion, flaying,
death by arrows or by being rent apart, or other
kinds of martyrdom, all for the love of
Christ[16].
Fulker's intentions become even more explicit in the lines
that follow; sacred ends justify questionable means,
paradoxically producing non-fraudulent fraud:
Cum autem placuit Deo laborem sui consummari,
forsitan precibus eorum placatus, qui cotidie
preces inde supplices et fundebant, concessit
pietate sua per eorundem Turcorum fraudem,
traditione clandestina urbem Christianis reddi.
Audite fraudem et non fraudem. (pp. 230-231)
When, however, God, appeased no doubt[17] by their
prayers, was pleased to end the labor of His
people who had daily poured forth beseeching
supplications to Him, in His love he granted that
through the treachery of these same Turks the city
should be secretly delivered up and restored to
the Christians. Hear therefore of a treachery, and
yet not a treachery.
When Fulker reaches the siege of Antioch, he provides a
narrative that Hagenmeyer[18] describes accurately as $
etwas phantastisch, but which is clearly in keeping with his
announced agenda. Relying apparently on Raymond of Aguiler's
$ Historia Francorum qui Ceperunt Iherusalem, a text that
was completed before the end of 1101[19], as well as on the
$ Gesta Francorum, Fulker goes beyond both previous texts by
weaving a $ fabula into the fabric of the $ historia, which
may have been perceived as $ argumentum by the less
skeptical members of his audience[20]. Providential grace,
in the form of God himself, descends from heaven, to address
the traitor, who was anonymous in the earlier texts:
Apparuit enim Dominus noster cuidam Turco, gratia
sua praeelecto, et dixit ei: Expergiscere qui
dormis! impero tibi ut reddas civitatem
Christianis.
Our Lord appeared to a certain Turk predestined by
His grace and said to him: "Arise, you who sleep!
I command you to return the city to the
Christians."
The Turk, however, is astonished and temporarily inert; God
therefore redescends to issue his orders once again, this
time also identifying himself as Christ:
Miratus autem ille visionem illam silentio texit.
iterum autem apparuit et Dominus: redde urbem
Christianis! inquit, sum etenim Christus, qui hoc
tibi impero. (pp. 231-232)
Although wondering about it the man kept the
vision a secret. Again the Lord again appeared to
him. "Return the city to the Christians," He said,
"for I who command this am Christ indeed."
Still the Turk resists, going, like a loyal subject, to the
prince of Antioch to describe his vision:
Meditatus ergo ille quid faceret, abiit ad dominum
suum, Antiochae principem, et visionem illam
innotuit ei. cui respondit ille: numquid non
phantasmati, brute, vis obocdire? reversus autem
ille, postmodum siluit.
Wondering therefore what he should do the man went
to his master, the prince of Antioch, and made
known the vision to him. The latter replied, "Do
you wish, stupid man, to obey a ghost?" The man
returned and remained silent.
Reduced to silence again, this time by Yagi Siyan's brutal
response, the Turk receives a third visit from God:
Cui Dominus rursum apparuit, inquiens: cur non
explesti quod tibi iussi? non est tibi
haesitandum, nam qui hoc impero Dominus omnium
sum.
Again the Lord appeared unto him, saying: Why have
you not done what I have commanded? it is not for
you to hesitate, for I who command this am the
Lord of all."
This time the Turk acts immediately, giving his son as
hostage to Bohemund, without any mention of a previously
established friendship, and without the motivations of
Mammon or Christ provided by the author of the $ Gesta
Francorum.
Like Raymond, Fulker also abbreviates the $ Gesta's
description of the nocturnal attack, leaving out Pirus'
remarks about the paucity of Franks present, the humble
Lombard servant, and the slaughtered brother of Pirus.
The humble, pious voice fabricated by the composer of the
$ Gesta Francorum and the somewhat more elaborate voices of
Fulker provided a perverse kind of stimulation for several
of the later Latin historians of the First Crusade, among
whom Robert the Monk, to judge by the more than 80
manuscripts of the $ Historia Hierosolimitana that have
survived, was particularly successful. Writing before 1107,
he claims that Abb> Bernard, displeased at the lack of a
proper beginning and a proper style for the $ Gesta
Francorum, demanded that an account of the Council of
Clermont be added[21], to make the writing "more accurate,"
-- i.e., the words should correspond to the "beauty" of the
matter:
quidem etenim abbas nomine Bernardus, litterarum
scientia et morum probitate praeditus, ostendit
mihi unam historiam secundum hanc materiam, sed ei
admodum displicebat, partim quia series tam
pulchrae materiei inculta jacebat, et litterarium
compositio dictionum inculta vacillabat.
Praecepit igitur mihi ut, qui Clari Montis
concilio interfui, acephelae materiei caput
praeponerem et lecturis eam accuratiori stilo
componerem[22].
A certain abbot named Bernard, preminently
virtuous and learned, showed me a history of this
material, but it was displeasing to him, partly
because the narrative of this lovely material was
rough, and its literary composition and diction
uncultivated. Therefore he commanded me, who was
at the council of Clermont, to put a head on the
material, and reorganize it with a more accurate
style.
Robert, then, is committed to classical rather than
Augustinian rhetorical decorum. He also promises to narrate
no lies and no trifles, only the truth, but his standards
for the truth are characteristically medieval; in a kind of
second preface, he offers as his models Moses, Joshua,
Samuel, and David, preparing his readers for an atmosphere
like that created by Fulker of Chartres, provoking his
modern editor to describe the work as, "ce t>moinage plus
sinc<re que vrai."[23] In the course of replacing the
story's head, Robert testifies that the members of the
Council of Clermont were carried away by the Pope's appeal,
crying out, $ Deus vult! Deus vult! which was, of course,
the Crusader's cry, as they climbed the walls of Antioch,
according to the author of the $ Gesta Francorum. Robert,
however, neglects or misses the opportunity to establish the
connection word-for-word, reporting instead that the
Crusaders cried out: $ Kyrieieleison (p. 805), and not $
Deus vult, as they climbed the wall at Antioch.
Where Fulker, however, offered a direct, personal
appearance on the part of God, Robert the Monk provides a
vision requiring interpretation, borrowing perhaps from a
passage in the $ Gesta Francorum, where the Crusaders in
Antioch, three weeks after climbing the wall, besieged by
the Turks, see (p. 154) saints George, Mercurius, and
Demetrius bringing them help[24]. During one of several
private conversations between Bohemund and Pirus, the Turk
asks the crusader where the brilliant[25] army he sees
before him on the plain is quartered; such an army, he says,
could not be resisted by the forces within Antioch.
Partially usurping the function of priest, Bohemund explains
to Pirus that the army he sees shining so brightly is not on
the plain before him, but is in heaven:
"Per Mathomum, praeceptorem meum, juro, quoniam
si hic adessent, tota haec planities illos non
caperet. Omnes habent equos albos, mirae
celeritas, et vestimenta, et scuta, et vexilla
ejusdem coloris. Sed forsitan ideo absconduntur,
ne virtus vestra nobis manifestetur. Sed per fidem
quam habes in Jesum, ubi castra eorum locata
sunt?" Boamundus itaque, spiritu Dei illustratus,
ilico sensit visionem hanc quam viderat Dei esse;
nec quod quaerebat ex tentatione, sed ex bona
voluntate procedere; et respondans inquit: "Licet
sis extraneus a lege nostra, quia video te bona
erga nos voluntate bonoque spiritu animatum,
aperiam tibi aliquod nostrae fidei sacramentum.
(p. 796)
"By Mahomet, my teacher, I swear, since they are
present here, this entire plain is not large
enough to contain them. They all have white
horses, of remarkable speed, and clothing and
shields and standards of the same color. But
perhaps they were hidden, to conceal your power
from us. By the faith you hold in Jesus, where
are their tents located?" Bohemund then, filled
with the spirit of God, understood that the vision
he had seen had come from God, nor did the Turk
ask by way of testing him, but in the spirit of
good will. Bohemund replied: "Although you stand
outside of our law, I see that you are animated by
a spirit of good will towards us, and therefore I
shall reveal something of the sacrament of our
faith to you.
Robert's Bohemund now explicates the vision, but only
partially:
Si tantum profundi intellectus haberes, gratias
Creatori omnium referre deberes, qui tibi ostendit
exercitum candidatorum; et scias quia in terra non
conversantur, sed in supernis mansionibus regni
coelorum. Hi sunt qui pro fide Christi martyrium
sustinuerunt, et in omnem terram contra incredulos
dimicaverunt. Horum praecipui sunt signiferi
Georgius, Demetrius, Mauricius, qui in hac
temporali vita et militaria arma gestaverunt.
If your understanding were sufficient, you would
give thanks to the creator of all things, who
shows you the shining army. You would understand
that they are not present on earth, but in the
lofty mansions of the kingdom of heaven. They are
those who endured martyrdom for their faith in
Christ, and who have fought against unbelievers in
every land. Among their leaders are George,
Demetrius, Mauritius, who wielded military arms in
this temporal life.
Pirus, then, has seen a vision of the warrior-saints, the
models and implied providential justification for the
Crusaders' own behavior[26].
Now Robert provides a dramatic exchange by means of which
he incorporates in the transaction a properly accredited
ecclesiastic, thus preventing the representative of the
first function from taking over the duties assigned to the
representative of the second function[27]. When Pirus asks
why the saints have so many white horses, so many shields,
and so many standards, Bohemund cannot supply an answer:
Cui respondit Pirus..."Et si de coelo veniunt, ubi
tot albos equos, tot scuta, tot vexilla
inveniunt?" Cui Boamundus: "Tu magna, et super
sensum meum requiris. Propterea si vis, accedat
capellanus meus, qui tibi super his respondebit."
(p. 797)
Pirus said to him: "If they came from heaven,
where did they get so many white horses, shields,
and standards?" Bohemund replied to him: "You are
asking about great things, things beyond my
understanding. Therefore, if you wish, my chaplain
may come to give you an answer in this matter."
The chaplain arrives instantly, and proceeds to explain
briefly the manner in which noumenal phenomena participate
in the phenomenal world, concluding with a conventional
admonition:
Nec mireris si omnipotens factor omnium transmutat
materiam a se factam in quamlibet speciem, qui
universa de nihilo adduxit in essentiam.
You should not be surprised that the all-powerful
maker of all things changes matter that he himself
has made into whatever shape he wishes; he brought
the universe into being out of nothing.
God's ability to make something out of nothing inspires
Bohemund and Pirus to discuss the paradoxical fact that the
Crusaders, though outnumbered, have done well militarily;
they reach the roughly Augustinian conclusion that God, in
the case of the siege of Antioch, has made something if not
out of nothing, at least out of very little.
Fulker had offered a similar perception as part of the
exposition in his $ exordium:
Quis potest non mirari quomodo nos, exiguus
populus inter tot hostium nostrorum regna, non
solum resistere, sed etiam vivere poteramus.
Who would not marvel that we, so small a group
among so many kingdoms of our enemies, were able
not only to resist, but to survive?
Material for this posture also exists in two of the
Crusader-letters; in the first, Adhemar of Le Puy and the
Greek patriarch of Jerusalem say:
"Pauci enim sumus ad comparationem paganorum,
verum et vere pro nobis pugnat Deus.
"We are few in comparison with the pagans. Truly
God fights for us."[28]
In the second, the patriarch of Jerusalem and other bishops
add rhetorical flowers to the idea:
Quid unus in mille? ubi nos habemus comitem,
hostes XL reges, ubi nos turmam, hostes legionem,
ubi nos militem, ipsi ducem, ubi nos peditem, ipsi
comitem, ubi nos castrum, ipsi regum. Nos autem
non confisi in multitudine nec viribus nec
praesumptione aliqua, sed clipeo Christi et
iustitia protecti Georgio et Theodoro et Demetrio
et beato Blasio, militibus Christi nos vere
comitantibus[29].
How one against a thousand? Where we have a count
the enemy has forty kings; where we have a
regiment the enemy has a legion; where we have a
knight they have a duke; where we have a
footsoldier they have a count; where we have a
castle they have a kingdom. We do not trust in any
multitude nor in power nor in any presumption, but
in the shield of Christ and justice, under the
protection of George and Theodore and Demetrius
and St Blaise, soldiers of Christ truly
accompanying us[30].
Robert's intertextual contribution, then, is to reinvent
this material in the form of a dramatic dialogue.
His Pirus then proceeds to behave as he had in the
previous texts, offering to turn over the three towers in
his control to Bohemund, to open a gate as well, and to
pledge his only son as a hostage. Robert's Bohemund has two
responses at this point: first he weeps with gratitude
towards God, then he tricks the other Crusaders into
granting him Antioch. As in the other texts, they resist at
first, and then capitulate, in Robert's version without the
threat of impending Turkish reinforcements (p. 799).
As they do in the $ Gesta, the Crusaders pretend to go on
a raiding expedition, then return quietly at night. Faced
with the wall, they hesitate, out of unclear motivations,
either fear of death or fear of being considered
presumptuous; at this point the dilemna is overcome for them
when a knight named Fulker of Chartres (not the writer --
there were four men named Fulker of Chartres on the First
Crusade) provides the necessary heroic gestures, including a
pious prologue to his climb in which he envisions, invoking
the rhetoric of heroic alternatives, either martyrdom or
victory:
quumque omnes haesitarent, tunc unus miles, nomine
Fulcherius Carnotensis natione, ceteris audacior,
ait: "Ego in nomine Jesu Christi primus ascendam
ad quodcumque me Deus vocaverit suscipiendum, sive
ad martyrium, seu obtinendum victoriae bravium."
(p. 800)
While they were all hesitating, a soldier named
Fulker of Chartres, braver than the others, said:
"In the name of Jesus Christ I shall be the first
to go up, to whatever end God may determine,
either to martyrdom, or to obtaining the sword of
victory.
The others follow, although Robert does not give the
exact number; Pirus again expresses anxiety at not seeing
Bohemund among them, but this time he does not break out
into his native Greek. Instead, he delivers a military $
aubade, in properly composed Latin elegiacs:
"Quid facit ille piger? quid tardat, quidve moratur?
Mittite qui dicat quod citius veniat.
Mittite qui dicat quia lux hodierna propinquat.
Et creber cantus praesignat adesse serenum."
Nuntius eligitur qui nuntiet Boamundo. (p. 800)
"What is the slothful one doing? Why is he late,
why is he delaying? Send someone to tell him to
come more quickly. Send someone to tell him that
the light of day is approaching. Many a (bird-)
song signals that it is present." A messenger was
chosen to bring the message to Bohemund[31].
Not content with providing a pious traitor able to
compose Latin verses in emergencies, and to see divine
visions, Robert proceeds to greater heights of out-doing by
geminating the Turk's brother, presumably in an attempt to
magnify Pirus' ability to suppress his natural feelings of
kinship for the larger purpose of the Crusade. Emitting a
Virgilian groan when notified of his brothers' deaths,
Pirrus proceeds to betray Antioch. His major solace would
seem to be the gracefully offered consolation of Bohemund:
Interea Fulcherius, qui cum LX juvenibus armatis
asdcenderat, exceptis turribus Pirri, tres alias
bellica virtute occupaverat, et in eis duo fratres
Pirri occiderat. Quod licet Pirus non ignoraret,
a promisso fidei pacto non retardavit; sed, ut
audivit quia scala confracta erat, venienti
Boamundo et omni Francorum multitudini portas
aperuit. Et quum graves gemitus ab imo pectore
traheret longaque suspiria, nulla eum tamen a
promissa fide illata removit injuria. Quem
Boamundus in ipso portae introitu summisso capite
salutavit, eique de collato beneficio gratias
egit. Sed, quum causam suae lamentationis
didicisset, admodum indoluit; et de militibus
suis, qui eum custodirent resque suas tuerentur,
fidelem custodiam dereliquit. (pp. 800-801)
Meanwhile Fulker, who, together with 60 armed
young men, had climbed the wall and stormed three
other towers before turning to the ones under
Pirus' command, and had killed two of Pirus'
brothers who were in them. Not unaware of this,
Pirus did not delay keeping his word, but, when he
heard that the ladder had broken, opened the gates
for Bohemund and the entire multitude of Franks to
enter. When he had drawn a deep groan and profound
sighs from the depths of his heart, no sense of
injury prevented him from carrying out his word.
Bohemund greeted him at the entrance to the gate
with bowed head, as a sign of gratitude for the
favor done for him. However, when he had learned
the reason for (Pirus') lamentation, he grieved
with him; then Bohemund left him and his goods in
the care of his soldiers.
Not only does this pious traitor outdo any previous
Pirus, but nature herself offers an unmatchable performance,
as Robert reports the appearance of a comet, and of a red
fire in the northeastern night sky. Finally, the language
with which Robert describes the Crusaders entering Antioch
conjures up last things, the Apocalypse and the Harrowing of
Hell:
His evidentibus signis in coelo radiantibus, et
aurora terris lucem referente, exercitus Dei
portas Antiochiae intravit, in virtute illius qui
inferni $ portas aereas contrivit et vectes
ferreos confregit, cui cum Patre et Spiritu Sancto
subjicitur omne regnum et imperium, cujus $
potestas permanet. $ In saecula saeculorum.
Amen. (p. 801)
As these signs shone clearly in the sky, and the
dawn brought light to the earth, the army of God
entered the gates of Antioch, by virtue of the
power of him who shattered the brass gates and
iron bolts of hell, to whom, together with the
Father and the Holy Spirit, every kingdom and
every empire is subject, whose power is forever
and forever. Amen[32].
The taking of Antioch, then, concludes with images of light
that reflect the rhetoricians' reliance on antitheses,
exercised earlier by Robert by means of a geographical
paradox, in which the West brings the sun to the East:
Revera Dominus nunc ascendit super occasum,
quoniam requiescit in animabus occidentalium. Nunc
occidens illustrare parat Orientem, et, novis
sideribus suis excitatis, qua premebatur depellere
caecitatem. (p. 740)
Indeed the Lord now ascends over the west, since
he rests in the souls of the Westerners. Now
setting he prepares to illuminate the East, and
with his newly kindled stars, with which it is
urged to dispel blindness.
Pirus has one more function in Robert's text; at the
opening of the next book of the $ Historia Hierosolimitana
Robert exhorts his readers to profit by this extreme
paradigm of keeping faith, offering as a further paradox a
Biblical analogue:
Universi fideles, hujus Pirri fidem attendite, et
attendentes, si quid ex fide per fidem
promittitis, absque ulla contradictione perficite.
Nulla hunc memoria fraternae mortis, nulla vis
doloris, nulla instigatio moeroris avertere potuit
a promissae fidei stabilitate, magisque valuit
apud ipsum fidei pacto, quam duorum germanorum
diri cruciatus interemptio. Et si illud antiquum
problema Sansonis in medium volumus adducere, huic
aequipollens possumus proponere. Sanson ait: $ De
comedente exivit cibus, et de forti dulcedo. Nunc
vero de vero de infideli processit fides, et de
extraneo familiaris et integra dilectio. (p. 805
and $ Judges xiv.14)
All you faithful people, take heed of the faith of
this Pirrus, see to it that if you promise
faithfully to do something, you carry out your
promise unhesitatingly. No thought of his
brother's death, no power of grief, no sting of
sorrow could shake the stability of his resolve to
carry out what he had promised to do, though he
was tortured by the death of his two brothers. And
if we wish to adduce the ancient predicament of
Samson, we may justly equate it with this. Samson
said: "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out
of the strong came forth sweetness." Now truly
faith came forth out of a lack of the unfaithful,
and out of the foreigner came complete and
intimate love.
Like Robert the Monk, Baldric, Bishop of Dole, shortly
after 1107, composed his $ Historia Jerosolimitana, partly
out of distaste for earlier, less sophisticated texts.
Where Fulker offered a text composed $ stilo rusticano tamen
veraci, the learned Bishop of Dole condemned a style $ nimis
rusticanum, as no match for the nobility of the characters
and action[33]. As part of his improvements, Baldric
supplies rhythmic, rhyming prose, oratory, drama, more
partisan elements, and a heightened sense of time and
timing. In addition, his eagerness to gentrify the behavior
of the Crusaders leads him to $ excuse, not merely to
report, their canibalism[34]. He also professes, in spite
of his Christian abhorrence of pagans, to be an objective
historian, offering, as evidence, his unwillingness to
detract from the pagans' fortitude, although stronger
pagans, as he points out, make Christian accomplishments
more significant[35].
Baldric proceeds to gentrify the Turk by giving him not
only a lofty title, as the author of the $ Gesta Francorum
had done, but also a resounding phrase to identify him
ethnically: $ Turcorum prosapia oriundus. His friendship
for Bohemund comes from nothing so vulgar as a direct
encounter, but is based on the Crusader's heroic reputation:
Non quia, ut reor, Boamundum aliquando viderit,
sed quoniam de eo fama volans ad eum multa bona
detulerat, et de prudentia ipsius neutiquam
ambigebat (RHCHO IV, p. 53).
Not because, as I think, he had seen Bohemund, but
because swift rumor had brought him much that was
good (about Bohemund), and he had no doubts about
his wisdom.
In one sentence, then, Baldric delivers implied praise for
Pirus' imaginative responsiveness, and for Bohemund's
accomplishments.
At this point in his narrative, Baldric, in his search
for a more elegantly spiritual traitor, reduces the need for
credulousness. When the two meet, Bohemund immediately
proceeds to the task of converting the Turk, with the
assistance of God, who, however, does not participate as
directly in the action as he did in Fulker's text:
jam etenim Deus ei aspiraverat quid agere deberet;
et ut Boamundo pro voluntate responderet, in aura
cordis ejus stillaverat. (p. 53)
For God inspired him to do what he should do, and
instilled in the ear of his heart the desire to
say yes to Bohemund.
Like Fulker, then, Baldric assures his audience of the
Providential nature of his narrative, but he provides no
visions, in a clear attempt, as he had indicated in his
preface, to develop a sense of inner spirituality missing
from the earlier texts,
Baldric also is interested in the sense of urgency that
informs the action; when Baldric's Pirus gives a son as
hostage to the Crusader, he quotes one of the passages most
often borrowed by medieval historians from Lucan, $ nocuit
differe paratis, "delay does damage for those already
prepared," as part of an extensive, rhetorically elaborate
speech. Clearly Baldric's sense of decorum demands that the
Turk speak in the style a skilled rhetorician would deem
appropriate for a Western king or prince, but the allusion
also supports the general sense of dramatic, temporal
urgency woven into the text, partly by classical allusion;
phrases like $ ora resolvit, (Georgics IV.452) for example,
combined with $ animo cupienti nihil satis festinatur
(Sallust, $ Jug. C.LVIX), in an attempt to describe
Bohemund's state of mind, contribute to the motif of $
tempus fugit that shapes the episode as a whole.
The first to climb the wall at Antioch, no concern of the
author of the $ Gesta Francorum or Fulcher, but identified
by Robert the Monk as Fulcher of Chartres, in Baldric's text
becomes Paganus the Lombard, perhaps a reinvention of the $
serviens Longobardus who descended from the wall to upbraid
Bohemund in the $ Gesta Francorum. Pirus' has only one
brother in this text, to whom Baldric applies a vividly
intense adjective, that suggestively echos the first
sentence of Urban II's address[36] to the Council of
Clermont:
Audivimus, $ fratres dilectissime, et auditis,
quod sine profundis singultibus tractans nequaquam
possumus, quantis calamitatibus, quantis
incommoditatibus, quam diris contritionibus in
Jerusalem et in Antiochia et in caeteris
orientalis plagae civitatibus Christiani nostri, $
fratres nostri, membra Christi flagellantur,
opprimuntur, injuriantur germani $ fratres nostri,
contubernales vestri, $ couterni vestri[37].
The word $ couternus, without Classical precedent, in
conjunction with $ fratres is only slight evidence of an
attempt, made more explicitly and self-consciously by Robert
the Monk, to provide some kind of emotional, literary
continuum between the Pope's words and the Crusade
itself[38]. Baldric, at this point, continues to establish
the significance of Pirus' loss, with an expression of
authorial sympathy, set within an apostrophe to the blind
and stormy night:
tunc etiam fortuitu mactatus est Pirri $ couternus
frater; tales sunt, caeca et intempestata nox, tui
eventus: tales sunt, horae caliginosae, vestrae
tumultuationes. (p. 56)
Then by chance the uterine brother of Pirus was
killed; that is what your disturbances produce
during the murky time, blind and stormy night.
Baldric's variations, then, are primarily aesthetic, with
little concern for character and action.
Perhaps six years after the fall of Antioch, Guibert of
Nogent, the most formidable personality of all the Latin
historians of the early 12th century, but probably the least
read, offered his own version of the First Crusade, in a
style deliberately antithetic to that of the anonymous $
Gesta, together with a corrective title. His posture is
characteristically agressive, as his remarks in the preface
to the $ Gesta Dei per Francos demonstrate.
Among the debates in which he engages is the battle of
the books, categorically pronouncing the moderns superior to
the ancients, not because of any particular stylistic
superiority, but because of superior subject matter, and
superior "presence," in effect. Invoking the providential
defense of writing history, Guibert insists that his subject
matter is God's power working $ through men; the deeds,
then, of God, not the Francs and not Tancredi, are the
substance of his text.
Guibert now modulates from defending the moderns against
the ancients to defending $ sermo sublimis. To treat such a
lofty topic, Guibert proposes to obey a classical rather
than an "Augustinian" rhetorical decorum, insisting on the
necessity for a lofty style[39].
Guibert's choice of the lofty style may also be part of
his more general appreciation, surprising in a man whose
personality is usually described as harsh and severe, of
aesthetic beauty, if Meyer Schapiro's interpretation of a
passage in the Autobiography[40] may be extended to the $
Deeds of God through the Franks. Guibert claims to have
decided, against the advice of his friends, but perhaps
provoked by Fulker's occassional forays into verse. to mix
prose and verse in an historical text.
In spite of the high style, however, Guibert insists that
there is nothing in his work that an educated man cannot
understand -- an indication that he wishes to distinguish
himself from those who are deliberately and pretentiously
obscure. He then dismisses his achievements with a
rhetorical flourish in which he claims to have composed the
entire work as a first draft:
Parcat quoque lector meus sermonis incuriae;
indubie sciens, quia quae habuerim scribendi,
eadem mihi fuerint momenta dictandi; nec ceris
emendanda diligenter excepi, sed uti praesto est,
foede delatrata membranis apposui.
May my reader, knowing that I certainly had no
more time for writing than those moments during
which I dictated the words themselves, forgive the
stylistic infelicities; I did not take care to
correct my writing-tablets, but I placed them on
the parchment, exactly as they are, with all their
faults.
However, at the beginning of Book Five (p. 185), Guibert
acknowledges that his dense text makes for difficult
reading, revealing his personal fascination with what is
difficult:
Talis namque animo meo voluntas adjacet ut sit
magis subobscurorum appetens, rudium vero et
impolite dictorum fugitans. Ea quippe quae meum
exercere queant animum pluris appretior, quam ea
quae, captu facilia, nihil memorabile avido semper
novitatis largiuntur ingenio.
In my soul lies the desire to prefer the most
recondite material, and it flees from rough,
unpolished speaking. I adore those things that
provide my mind with violent exercise, rather than
those things which provide nothing memorable for a
mind always eager for fresh material.
At the beginning of the fourth book of the $ Gesta Dei,
Guibert makes his contribution to yet another debate; in an
attempt to handle the problem of not being an eye-witness of
the events he narrates, he fabricates an intertextual
polemic that permits modern Christian writing (saints lives
and John III.32) to triumph over ancient pagan authority
(Horace, $ Ars Poetica 180-181):
Si mihi plane id objicitur, quia non viderim, id
objici non potest quod non audieram, cum visui
auditum supparem quodammodo profecto crediderim.
Quamvis enim
Segnius irritent animos demissa per aurem,
Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus,
tamen quis historiographos, quis eos qui sanctorum
vitas edidere ambigat, non solum quae obtutibus,
sed ea scripisse quae aliorum hauserant intellecta
relatibus? Si namque verax, ut legitur, quidam, et
quod vidit et audivit, hoc testatur, autentica
procul dubio vera dicentium narratio, ubi videre
non suppetit, comprobatur.
If any objection is raised because I did not see,
no objection may be raised that I did not hear,
since I believe that hearing is as good as seeing.
For although:
Less vividly is the mind stirred by what
finds entrance through the ears than by
what is brought before the trusty
eyes[41].
yet who is unaware that historians and those who
wrote the lives of the saints wrote down not only
what they had seen, but also those things they had
drawn from what others had told them? If the
truthful man, as it is written, reports "what he
has seen and heard," then his tale may be accepted
as true when he describes what he has not seen,
but has been told by reliable speakers.
Guibert then goes on to challenge those who object to do the
job better (p. 167).
Like Robert the Monk and Baldric of Dole, Guibert is
driven to this competition at least partly by his extreme
dissatisfaction with earlier narratives of the First
Crusade, and particularly with their representations of the
fall of Antioch. In his fifth book, immediately after
acknowledging the fascination of what is difficult, Guibert
provides two paragraphs on the difficulties of determining
exactly what happened at Antioch, arguing, as the author of
the $ Gesta Francorum had before him, that the task, in a
sense, is impossible; Guibert, however, seems to be
attempting to out-do the author of the $ Gesta Francorum by
relying not on rhetorical commonplaces, but on common sense
and plausibility.
Quae facta sunt in Antiochena obsidione nemini
relatu possibilia existimamus, quia, inter eos
ibidem interfuerunt, nullus profecto potuit
repperiri qui cuncta quae circa eamdem urbem agi
potuerunt valuisset pervidere, vel ita
comprehendere ad integrum sicut se habet ordo
gestae rei. (p. 185)
We judge that what happened at the siege of
Antioch cannot possibly be told by anyone,
because, among those who were there, no one can be
found who could have observed everything that took
place throughout the city, or who could understand
the entire event in a way that would enable him to
represent the sequence of actions as they took
place.
The story of Pirus is particularly annoying to Guibert,
who handles the details of the incident abruptly and
dyspeptically. The friendship with Bohemund is not generated
by the crusader's $ fama, but, according to Guibert, they
got together $ quo nescio pacto, and Bohemund persuaded the
Turk both verbally, and $ lenocinante emolumento (p. 186).
At Bohemund's suggestion, without any visit by Christ, or
vision of divine armies, the Turk converted to Christianity,
but only temporarily, perhaps demonstrating, as Norman
Daniel has remarked, that "conversions rarely have reasons,
but they always have a motive "[42] Many of the details of
earlier versions remain unchanged in Guibert: Bohemund again
uses Pirus as a secret weapon in his negotiations with the
other Crusaders, with no assistance from the Bishop of Puy,
or any other ecclesiastic for that matter; the report of an
approaching pagan army cancels all resistance to Bohemund's
proposal that Antioch be given to whoever contrives an
effective strategy; Guibert avoids what may have seemed to
him a cheap play on words, substituting three possibilities,
$ seu vi, seu clam, seu precario, for $ ingenio...vel
ingeniare, the two offered in the $ Gesta Francorum.
However, like Fulker and the author of the $ Gesta
Francorum, Guibert singles no one out as the first up the
ladder; he reports Pirus' remark about, "few Franks," but in
Latin, not in Greek; and his account of the death of the
Turk's brother is telegraphic: $ inter quos etiam occiditur
frater Pyrri (p. 187). Shortly before this event, the
Crusaders cry $ Deus id vult, and Pirus is not mentioned for
the remainder of the taking of Antioch.
Guibert, however, is not yet through with him; twice in
later sections, first after the fall of Jerusalem, and then
during a discussion of the Lance that pierced Christ's side,
the man who betrayed Antioch reappears. As part of his
attack on the character of Pirus, and his defense of the
authenticity of the Lance[43], Guibert cites Anselm de
Ribourgement's testimony, in agreement with the $ Damascus
Chronicle, that $ three citizens had delivered the city (p.
251). As part of his general destruction of the character
of Pirus, he makes him, like the medieval Ulysses, a
red-head, and a man who, at the fall of Jerusalem, returned
to Antioch and to paganism:
Ibi prorsus christianite deserta, veteris luxuria
et gentilitatis inquinamenta resumpsit. Nec id
injuria. Si enim Pyrrus graece, rufus est latine,
et infidelitatis nota rufus inuritur, isdem ergo a
sua minime linea exorbitasse probatur. (p. 212)
There Pyrrus deserted Christianity and returned to
the lechery and filth of his former paganism. Nor
was this unfitting. For the name Pyrrus in Greek
is Rufus in Latin, and the name of Rufus burns
with the mark of treachery; he is shown by no
means to have been deprived of his lineage.
But the attack on Pirus is in support of an attack on
Fulker, whom he spends some time discrediting (pp. 250-251),
not only for his credulity, but for his style:
Quum enim vir isdem ampullas et sesquipedalia
verba projiciat, et luridos inanium schematum
colores exporrigat, nuda rerum mihi gestarum
exinde libuit membra corripere, meique
qualiscumque eloquii sacco, potius quam praetexta
contegere.
Since this same man produces swollen,
foot-and-a-half words, pours forth the blaring
colors of vapid rhetorical schemes, I prefer to
snatch the bare limbs of the deeds themselves,
with whatever sack-cloth of eloquence I have,
rather than cover them with learned weavings.
Thus Guibert insists on having it both ways, offering "the
bare limbs of the deeds themselves," without "learned
weavings," but also interested in exercising his intellect
to the utmost.
Raoul of Caen spends no time disguising his interest in
displaying rhetorical skill, particularly in panegyric, in
his $ Gesta Tancredi in Expeditione Hierosolymitana, a text
produced after 1112. His variation on the humility-topos,
for example, indicates the degree to which a rhetorical
scheme, in this case $ annominatio, engrosses his
imagination:
Mihi ergo relictum sucepi laborem, non utique
suscepto dignus, sed quia digni dedignantur
indignatus.
Therefore I have undertaken the labor left for me,
not because I am worthy of the undertaking, but
because I am angry that those who are worthy have
not deigned to do it.
In the few lines of his prologue not devoted to praising
Tancredi and Arnulf, and not devoted to producing
pyrotechnical variations on the humility-topos, Raoul offers
to divert his contemporaries from fiction to truth; in
addition, like Guibert, he uses the shortcomings of the
ancients to praise the moderns:
et illi quidem adinventiones fabulosas ordiuntur;
militiae Christi victorias tacent hodierni[44].
They (the poets of antiquity) have composed wild
fictions, but today's men are silent about the
victories of Christ's army.
For Raoul, the fall of Antioch satisfies a larger,
comprehensive, antithetical pattern, involving trickery
versus heroism, and, as in Robert the Monk's version, day
versus night: $ Antiocham noctu dolis, Iherusalem die armis
(p. 603). His Pirus-figure remains anonymous, identified as
a rich Armenian and apostate Christian: $ vir dives
Armenus, qui, abrenuntiato Christi dogmate, errores
gentilium sequebatur $ (p. 651), whose major motivation for
betraying Antioch is his feeling for his children, and whose
rhetorical competence seems to equal that of Raoul himself.
Fulker had also provided an insensitive leader for Pirus to
betray, but Raoul's is not as rhetorically brutal, perhaps
partly because the pious traitor brings him no account of a
vision. When the eloquent complaint he composes in the face
of famine fails to move Cassianus, the prince of Antioch (p.
652) -- and when his
brother also rejects his pleas, he climbs down a ladder,
with his twin sons, and makes his way to Bohemund.
Raoul takes this opportunity to justify the selection of
Bohemund, developing the motif of $ fama, given briefly by
Baldric, into a more elaborate encomium:
Eum inter ceteros quasi principem orientalis ille
populus arbitrabatur, quod olim Wiscardo Graeciam
debellante, Boamundi fama terruerat gentes,
plurimo certamine gloriosa: extunc factus Asiae
celebris, nunc quoque omnium dominus putabatur.
(p. 652)
The people of the East thought of him as a prince
among the others; since Guiscard had once
conquered Greece, Bohemund's reputation, the
result of many a success in battle, frightened the
heathens. Known throughout the East, he was
thought to be the leader of them all.
Although Raoul is interested in correcting his predecessors'
styles[45], he also is interested in redistributing power
and rhetorical competence among his cast of characters.
That Raoul's eagerness to attribute to Bohemund
competence in the area of the first function is partly
derived from his eagerness to deprive the Crusader of the
powers of the second function (bestowed upon him earlier by
Robert the Monk) becomes clear a few lines later. When the
Pirus-figure has left his sons as hostages, and returned, by
rope, to his tower in Antioch, Bohemund does not address the
crusaders directly, as he had in the previous texts, but
instead confides his secret weapon to Pope Urban's delegate,
the bishop of Puy, who proceeds to address the troops
himself, in words that resemble those used by Bohemund in
the other texts.
The task of composing a speech for an ecclesiastic,
combining Christian learning and practical politics, clearly
interests Raoul. His bishop offers the example of Saul, who
offered his daughter and liberty to the man who would fight
Goliath, providing a Biblical analogy that reinforces the
Crusaders' own position, geographically and figuratively.
The bishop then rhetorically questions the substantive
significance of Antioch, granting it only positional
significance, and finally suggests offering the city as a
reward to the man who can capture it. His plan meets
universal approval, thus obviating the need for practical
motivation, like the hords of impending pagans of earlier
texts, to overcome the other crusaders' territorial
passions.
At this point Bohemund enters the rhetorical transaction,
calling for a more binding $ serement. Also a master
rhetorician, Raoul's Crusader reminds his audience that
words are not always spoken sincerely, quoting from Ovid's $
Ars Amatoria to provide a worldly allusion to reinforce, and
ironically suggest, a possible contradiction, to the
bishop's idealistic, spiritualized rhetoric. In addition,
Raoul weaves into the speech a play upon the concept of
time, thus providing a variation on a motif that had
intrigued the earlier historians of the First Crusade:
Tunc Boamundus: "Promissum, inquit, quod
jurejurando obstringitur jam quasi datum est, ut
transeat quodammodo futurum in praesens, spes in
gaudium: quod si soluta ab hoc vinculo tantum sunt
verba, quid confert autem?
Pollicitis dives quilibet esse potest (I.44)
Quare si cupitis ratum fieri, fixumque stare quod
promittitis, conjuretis.
A promise, he said, which is confirmed by an oath
is almost a thing done, as though the future
becomes the present, and hope turns into joy. But
if words are not tied to something, what good are
they? Anyone can be prodigal with promises. If
you want something to be confirmed, if you want
what you promise to stand firm, swear to it.
After everyone has given his oath, Bohemund reveals his plan
to the other Crusader leaders, and the betrayal of Antioch
proceeds apace.
The Armenian traitor arranges to signal the crusaders by
dropping stones, and a ladder of unspecified material; the
crusaders, more unhesitatingly courageous and well-born than
those described by Robert the Monk, then race honorably and
eagerly to be the first up the ladder. The honor is won by
Gouel (not by Paganus, nor by Fulker) of Chartres this time,
a member of the nobility, whom Raoul compares to the eagle
in $ Deuteronomy xxxii.11:
Quumque satis firmos struxisset nexus, juventus
volucris, pennata corpora, accincti gladiis, per
funes volant: Gouel Carnotensis primus, $ sicut
aquila provocans pullos suos ad volandum; et super
eos volitans: $ vir ille nobilis, et a puero
nihil esuriens ut laudem neque sitiens, non
propter vitam laudari, sed propter laudem vivere
cupiebat (pp. 654-655)
When the ladder had been tied very firmly, the
swift young men, the winged bodies, swords girded
to their sides, flew up the rope. In the lead was
Gouel of Chartres, flying above them like an eagle
urging its chicks into the air; he flew ahead of
them, this noble man, who from the time that he
was a boy had thirsted only for praise, desiring
not to be praised for his life, but to live for
praise.
The heroic antithesis involving life and praise, intended to
clarify, or at least to magnify Gouel's act, is followed by
yet another antithesis, this one to describe the psychology
of the other crusaders as they mount the wall and wait for
reinforcements:
Primo tacitum est, dum paucitas multitudinem
formidavit; at ubi multitudo introducta formidinem
exclusit, jam in leones vertit animus quos aquilis
similaverat ascensus. (p. 655)
First there was quiet, while the few feared the
many; but when many had entered fear was shut out.
Now the souls of those who had been stirred by the
eagle were turned into lions.
Raoul elegantly abbreviates the destruction that follows,
combining his penchant for $ annominatio with a taste for
battle irony like that associated often with $ chanson de
geste. The towers, for example, guard the bodies of those
who formerly had guarded $ them: sepultos servant a quibus
modo servabantur. $ No description of the death of the
traitor's brother is included at this point; instead, Raoul
describes the dawn, offering another variation on the
conventions of the $ aubade, not as elaborate as Robert the
Monk's $ aubade in elegiacs, nor as chaste as Baldric's $
dies illuxit. Envious of the night's pleasures, hideous as
they were, day hurries to Antioch:
Nox hactenus Christianis obsecuta est: aurora
rutilat, dies accelerans tantum nocti gaudium,
invidet. (p. 655)
If Robert's Pirus is motivated only by the highest ideal
of trustworthiness, and Anon's by a combination of Mammon
and Christ, Albert of Aix's Turk has more clearly practical
motivations[46]. Concerned primarily with producing an
encomium of Godfrey and Robert, Albert reduces the
complexity of Pirus, who is introduced suddenly and
dramatically, as a secret ally to whom Bohemund has given
significant amounts of money, as well as a pledge to marry
his nephew Tancredi to the traitor's daughter. The Turk's
name in Albert's text is not Pirus, but Boemundus, referred
to by the Crusader Bohemund as $ aequivocus meus. The
change of name may indicate both conversion to Christianity
and the agent of conversion.
Additional motivation appears, this time supplied by an
anonymous report of a story involving the capture of the
Turk's son:
Aiunt etiam quidam quod, in assultu et conflictu
hinc et adhinc dimicantium, adolescens filius
ejusdem Turci captus, in manus Boemundi forte
pervenerit, cujus redemptionis causa, pater pueri
Boemundo coepit privatus fieri. Et ad ultimum
malens vitam filii, quam omnium inhabitantium
salutem, perfidiam adversus regem Darianum
assumpsit, et fidem in restitutione filii cum
Boemundo iniit, et sic in civitatem fideles
Christi milites intromisit. (p. 400)
They say that in the assault and battle, while the
forces were struggling here and there, the young
son of the Turk was captured, and by chance came
into the hands of Bohemund, who was involved in
releasing him; as a result, the boy's father
became friendly with Bohemund. Finally, choosing
to preserve the life of his son rather than to
protect the safety of all the inhabitants of
Antioch, he betrayed king Darianus, entered into a
pact with Bohemund to free his son, and permitted
the faithful soldiers of Christ to enter the city.
Albert clearly has more sympathy for practical matters, as
his description of the transactions themselves indicates;
for example (p. 401), his Boemundus sends a Lombard
domestic, proficient in Greek, to speak to the traitor (as
Albert regularly calls him), presumably because pagans
cannot be expected to speak Latin, or Western vernaculars,
much less compose, as Robert the Monk's Turk did, elaborate
$ aubades in Latin elegiacs. In addition, Albert arranges
for a windy night, to prevent the sounds of the Crusaders
climbing the rope from being heard by the hostile Turks.
Uninterested, however, in the possible drama of the
traitor's position, Albert does not provide even one brother
to be killed in the attack on the tower.
He does, however, devote much more attention than the
previous writers to the moments before ascending the wall,
imagining the soldiers' apprehension $ (metu et nimia
dubietate corda eorum concussa sunt), and providing a
Christian exhortation by Godfrey and Robert (pp. 401-402),
designed to stir them to literal and figurative heights of
Christian heroism. No single crusader receives credit for
being first up the wall, since Albert's primary attention is
given to representing Godfrey and Robert as paradigmatic
Christian leaders. The details he gives about the ladder
they scale -- it is made of bull hide, it breaks, and is
repaired -- will provoke later writers to more extensive
routines.
In the first half of the twelfth century, sometime after
1118, Orderic Vitalis reworked Baldric of Bourgueil's text.
Working in the non-miraculous, non-judgemental tradition,
focusing on the practical and political aspects of the
story, which often seem merely so much material to be ground
up into elegant $ clausulae. Baldric of Dole, (upon whose
text Orderic was entirely dependent)[47], Raoul of Caen, and
Guibert, of course, also conceived of themselves as "fine"
writers, but Orderic's text reflects an even greater concern
with the "music" of rhetoric. For example, three parallel,
rhyming clauses describe how Bohemund motivates Pirus
Datianus; Christ is the primary motivation, with Mammon and
other strategies left deliberately vague:
Hunc aliquando Buamundus ad Christianitatem $
incitabat, aliquando ad reddendam civitatem
multimodis pollicitationibus $ suadebat, et ut vir
callens nichil intemptatum $ relinquebat.
Bohemond sometimes urged him to be converted to
Christianity, sometimes tempted him with all kinds
of promises to surrender the city and, being a
practical man, left nothing untried. (Chibnall V,
pp. 86-87)
The next sentence continues to describe Bohemund's strategy,
using rhyme to underline the antithesis between the
phenomenal and noumenal results possible:
Nunc eum pro infortuniis civitati imminentibus
deterrebat, nunc eum pro praemis copiosis quae a
Deo gloriose destinantur Christianitati
alliciebat.
At one moment he played on his fears of the
disasters threatening the city, at another he
wooed him by telling him of the abundant rewards
which are so gloriously ordained by God for
Christians (pp. 88-89).
When Pirus yields, Orderic produces a sentence with $ four
rhyming clauses:
Tandem Pirus famoso amico assensum $ prebuit, et
tres ei turres suas $ optulit, filiumque suum
obsidem daturum se $ spopondit, et ut inceptum
maturarent negocium summopere $ admonuit.
Finally Firuz yielded to his renowned friend and
offered him his three towers, promising to give
his son as a hostage, and urging him to bring the
enterprise to a conclusion at the earliest
opportunity. (pp. 88-89)
As his variation on the motif of $ fama, Orderic offers a
Vergilian locution, $ fama presage mali, to account for the
change in the other Crusaders' resistance to Bohemund's
proposal for giving Antioch to whoever could win it, $
precio seu vi vel amicicia seu quolibet ingenio (p. 88).
Paganus the Lombard, who was first up the ladder in
Baldric's text, performs the same function in Orderic's,
although now filled with trepidation, a feeling that was
more generally distributed in Baldric's version. Orderic
also indicates that Fulker was second. Pirus again calls
out, "Heu heu michro Francos echome," as he had in Baudri's
text and in the $ Gesta Francorum, and the Lombard returns
to stir up Bohemond (pp. 90-91), who responds promptly by
taking the tower and seven others as well. The number seven
occurs only in Orderic, perhaps again because of his taste
for resonating nasals. Pirus' brother is slain in the
battle, with no judgements or emotions expressed by Orderic,
who incorporates the phrase originally provided by Urban II
primarily to support a sonic pattern of t's, c's, and
nasals:
Ubicumque igitur obviabantur tanquam oves
procumbebant et obtruncabantur. Tunc etiam
couterinus Pirri frater mactatus est.
Wherever the Christians met them they cut them
down and slew them like sheep. Even the uterine
brother of Firuz was killed in that slaughter. pp.
92-93.
Less theatrically rhetorical than Orderic or Baldric,
less cantankerous than Guibert, William of Tyre retains a
complex role for the man who betrayed Antioch, in the work
known until recently as $ Historia rerum in partibus
transmarinis gestarum, but now as $ Historia Ierosolymitana
(composed 1167-1184):
This incident of the betrayal of Antioch seems to
have appealed strongly to William's fancy. He not
only drew upon all his Latin sources, but upon
Arabic sources as well for information, and then
allowed his imagination to carry his pen well
beyond all of them[48].
William's Latin style is equal, perhaps superior to the
earlier historians of the First Crusade, but his penchant
for narrative, and particularly $ argumentum, found free
play in this material: "Only in the story of the First
Crusade did his narrative achieve a genuine
homogeneity."[49]
According to William, most of the population of Antioch,
including Firouz, at the time of the siege was already
Christian, although disenfranchised:
pene omnes civitatis habitatores fideles erant,
sed nullum in civitate habentes potestatem..[50].
Nearly the entire population were true believers,
but they were without power in the city[51].
In attributing positive characteristics to Emirfeirus,
William concentrates on his political, rather than his
economic pre-eminence:
vir potens plurimum et urbis domino multa
familiaritate coniunctus, ita ut in eius palatio
notarii fungeretur officio et plurima esset
insignis dignitate (p. 286).
He was on terms of intimate friendship with the
lord of Antioch, who distinguished him by many
honors. He held the position of secretary in the
palace and enjoyed many other dignities (p. 243).
His friendship with Bohemundus is produced, as it was in
Baldric, by the Crusader's fame, but William, a trained
lawyer, tells us that both men wisely conceal their
relationship from those around them. William emphasizes
Emirfirouz' relatively spontaneous offer to betray Antioch,
by giving, as the first extended rhetorical exercise in the
section, an elaborate speech to him, justifying the betrayal
of Antioch on Christian grounds.
William provides additional motivation by making Firouz'
wife an adulteress[52], who betrays her husband with a
prominent Turk; the son discovers her behavior, and tells
his father.
William also offers a solution to practical problems that
might have occurred to readers of earlier versions. His
Emirfeirus clears himself of suspicion by recommending
frequent changing of those in charge of the towers to the
leader of Antioch, Axcianus (he and his brother are in
charge of the towers known as the Two Sisters). Such a
problem might have occurred to a reader of Fulker, whose
Pirus recounted to his ruler a dream recommending betrayal.
William of Tyr also transfers the general fear of
climbing the wall to one man, Paganus, as two previous
writers did. The testing of his brother is also
significantly different, with the pious traitor killing his
own brother, instead of setting him up for the crusaders.
Like Fulker $ (Audite fraudem non fraudem), he emphasizes
the paradoxical nature of the murder:
Interea ille vir praedictus turrim eamdem
ingressus, fratrem reperit somno gravatum, cujus
quia mentem noverat alienam a suo proposito,
timens ne per eum rei jam pene consummatae
ministraretur impedimentum, gladio transverberat,
$ facto pius et sceleratus eodem (p. 299).
During that short interval, Firuz had entered the
tower and found his brother heavy with sleep.
Since he had ascertained that the latter's
sentiments were against the project on which he
himself was bent, he feared lest through his means
some impediment might be offered to its execution,
which was now to be completed. Accordingly he gave
him a fatal thrust with the sword -- an act at
once pious and wicked (p. 256).
In William's text, Bohemund is first up the ladder, and
he and Firuz embrace over the corpse of the latter's
brother, to whom the phrase used by Baldric, possibly
suggested by Urban II, minus the prefix (co-), is applied:
Et ut ejus et omnium fidelium sibi majorem
conciliaret gratiam, eo quod $ fratrem uterinum,
in opere tam sancto non consentientem,
transverberaverat, inducit eum in turrim, et
fratrem ostendit exanimem, proprio sanguine
cruentatum. Deosculatus igitur dominus Boamundus
viri constantiam et fidei sinceritatem (pp.
299-300).
In order to win more favor in the eyes of Bohemond
and the other Christians, because he had murdered
his own brother who would not join him in a work
so holy, he led the chief into the tower and
showed him the dead body of his brother lying in
its own gore. Lord Bohemond embraced that man of
true and steadfast loyalty with heart-felt emotion
(p. 256).
William's additions to the story of Pirus may have come
from "oral tradition," but they may also have resulted from
his taste for fiction, and from his "Vorliebe ... f~r
erotische Begebenheiten." In addition, none of his
predecessors had done the job well enough to gain the status
of exclusive authority[53]. In his handling of the fall of
Antioch, then, William drew upon a tradition of rhetorical
amplification, including schemes, tropes, $ historia,
argumentum, and $ fabula, that had been perpetuated by Latin
historians, as well as vernacular poets[54], earlier in the
twelfth century. Each writer chose among the voices offered
by his culture -- honest soldier, pious exegete, wrathful
ecclesiastic, aesthetic conoisseur, humble client -- to
represent $ res verae quae factae sunt. The results are
congruent with the elegant epigram with which Paul Zumthor
momentarily obliterates the distinction between fiction and
history:
"Historiographie ni roman n'avaient pour fonction
de prouver une v>rit>, mais de cr>er."[55]
[1] For a densely compacted discussion of this hypothesis,
see Herbert Grundmann, $ Geschichtsschreibung im
Mittelalters, G%ttingen, 1965. For a more extensive,
lavishly detailed discussion, see Bernard Guen>e, $
Histoire et culture historique dans l'occident m>di>val,
Paris, 1980. In English, the argument was popularized by
R.G. Collingwood, $ The Idea of History, Oxford, 1946;
p. 258 gives a useful formulation.
[2] A phenomenon that Edward A. Heineman describes as, "the
reciprocal interference of history and epic," in his
review of Regis Boyer, et. al., $ L'epopee, (Typologie
des sources du moyen age occidental, 49) Turnhout, 1988,
in $ Speculum 65 (1990), p. 127.
[3] The $ Damascus Chronicle says, "certain of the men of
Antioch among the armourers of the amir Yaghi Siyan"; $
Damascus Chronicle transl. A.R. Gibbs, London, 1932, p.
42.
[4] For further discussion of these terms, see Heinrich
Lausberg, $ Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik, 2
vols., Munich, 1960, I.146-240 on structure. For some
useful applications of the terms, see Michael Lapidge,
"Gildas' Education and the Latin Culture of Sub-Roman
Britain," pp. 41ff., in $ Gildas: New Approaches, ed.
Michael Lapidge and David Dumville, Woodbridge, 1984.
Marius Victorinus earlier definition of these terms
provides an additional element:
Fabulam dicit esse quae nihil veri nec veri simile
continet ... Deinde historia est, inquit, quae
res veras continet, sed a nostra memoria
remotas...Argumentum est, quod quidem non est
factum, sed fiere potuisse creditur. ( $ Rhetores
Latini minores ed. C. Halm, Leipzig, 1863, p.
202).
[5] Auerbach, Erich, $ Literary language and its public in
late antiquity and in the Middle Ages, $ translated by
Ralph Mannheim, New York, 1965.
[6] B. Krusch, MGH, $ Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, vol.
II, Hanover, 1888, p. 1. For more on Gregory's Latin,
see Max Bonnet, $ Le latin de Gregoire de Tours, Paris,
1890.
[7] G>rard Genette, $ Figures of Literary Discourse, New
York, 1982, p. 140.
[8] See Louis Br>hier's edition and translation, $ Histoire
anonyme de la premi<re croisade, Paris, 1924, pp.
xxi-xxii. For a later edition, see Rosalind Hill, $
Gesta Francorum, London, New York, 1962.
[9] Jeanette Beer, $ Narrative Conventions of Truth in the
Middle Ages, Geneva, 1981. See also Bernard Guen>e on
the topos of the eye-witness, in $ Histoire et culture
historique dans l'occident m>di>val, Paris, 1980.
According to Isidore of Seville, among the ancients,
histories were composed exclusively by eye-witnesses:
Apud veteres enim nemo conscribebat historiam,
nisi is qui interfuisset, et ea quae conscribenda
essent vidisset. $ Etymologies, I, XLI, ed. W.M
Lindsay, Oxford, 1911).
For a paradigmatic example of the difficulties generated by
trying to determine whether a medieval text of an historical
nature is the product of an eyewitness, see Stubbs' argument
(RS 38.1) that the $ Itinerarium Regis Ricardi is the
product of an eyewitness of the Third Crusade, then Gaston
Paris' argument that $ L'Estoire de la guerre sainte, Paris,
1897 is the eye-witness account that the author of the $
Itinerarium was translating, and then Hans Eberhard Mayer, $
Das Itinerarium peregrinorum, Stuttgart, 1962, for the
argument that neither is an eye-witness account; see also
the discussion in M.R. Morgan, $ The Chronicle of Ernoul and
the Continuations of William of Tyre, Oxford, 1973, pp. 61
ff..
[10] $ Gesta Francorum, edited and translated by Rosalind
Hill, London, 1962, p. 44.
[11] According to Br>hier (pp. xxi, and 100-101, n. 3) a
version of 'Firouz', a symptom of the general
deformation of Turkish names among the historians of
the First Crusade.
[12] Br>hier, p. 100.
[13] Br>hier, p. 106.
[14] Two editions are available: $ Recueil des Historiens
des Croisades, Historiens Occidentaux $ III, Paris,
1866, pp. 319-585; $ Fulcheri Carnotensis Historia
Hierosolymitana, ed. Heinrich Hagenmayer. Heidelberg,
1913.
[15] $ Fulcheri Carnotensis Historia Hierosolymitana, ed.
Heinrich Hagenmeyer, Heidelberg, 1913. He does,
however, violate his program from time to time to
insert verse, sometimes apparently of his own
composition.
[16] Translation by Frances Rita Ryan, $ A History of the
Expedition to Jerusalem, ed. by Harold S. Fink,
Knoxville, 1969, p. 58.
[17] "Perhaps" is a more accurate translation of $ forsitan,
as Edward Peters indicates in $ The First Crusade,
Philadelphia, 1971.
[18] P. 230, n. 1.
[19] Raymond describes Pirus merely as $ quidam de turcatis,
qui erat in civitate, per Boamundum principibus
mandavit nostris quod civitatem nobis redderet $
(RHC.Occ. III.251), offers Fulker of Chartres as the
first to scale the wall, and relates that the ladder
broke.
[20] The scene resembles the one in the $ Gesta Francorum
(Brehier 133-135), in which Saint Andrew appears more
than once in his effort to get Peter Bartholomew to dig
up the Lance that pierced Christ's side.
[21] For an excellent account of the reinventions of the
Council of Clermont produced by the historians of the
first Crusade, see John O. Ward, "Some Principles of
Rhetorical Historiography in the 12th Century," in $
Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography, edited
by Ernest Breisach, Kalamazoo, 1985, pp. 127-148.
[22] HC III, p. 721.
[23] $ Op. cit., p. XLVI.
[24] Such a vision may ultimately have been derived from
Nazarius' panegyric of Constantine; see E. Galletier, $
Pan>gyriques latins, Paris, 1949-54, 3 volumes, v.2 pp.
177 ff. (For a later edition of the text, see C.E.V.
Nixon and Barbara Saylor Rodgers, $ In Praise of Later
Roman Emperors, Berkeley, 1994, pp. 358, 615), where
Constantius and a divine army, recruited from heaven,
come to the aid of his son Constantine:
Sed quaenam ille fuisse dicitur species? qui
vigor corporum? quae amplitudo membrorum?
quae alacritas voluntatum? Flagrabant verundum
nescio quid umbones corusci et caelestium
armorum lux terribilis ardebat; tales enim
venerant ut tui crederentur.
In addition, a letter from the clergy and people of Lucca (
$ Epistulae et chartae ad historiam primi belli sacri
spectantes, ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer, Innsbruck, 1901, p.
167) mentions such a vision.
[25] Robert may here also be recalling and reinventing the
joke, reported in the $ Gesta Francorum (Br>hier pp.
116-118), made by the Turkish leader Curbaram, who
sardonically applies the phrase $ arma bellica et
nitida to a $ vilissimum ensem rubigine tectum captured
from a Crusader.
[26] For a useful discussion of providential history, see
F.P. Pickering, $ Augustinus oder Boethius, Berlin,
1967, vol. I. As Pickering represents the problem, a
medieval writer had to determine whether his sympathies
lay with a Boethian rejection of the possibility that
events in the sublunary world had any permanent
significance (in which case he could scarcely compose a
line on events in his own time), or with the
Augustinian affirmation that God's will is worked out
in human history. A secular figure, then, could safely
command Christian attention only by working out God's
will through providentially pious acts; only the most
naive reader, then, would be surprised to find that
medieval historians bestow the words and deeds of a
devout athlete of God upon figures and groups in whom
they have emotional, material, and sometimes
intellectual investments.
[27] For the standard discussion of the three functions, see
Georges Duby, $ The Three Orders: Feudal Society
Imagined Chicago, 1980 (original, Paris, 1978).
[28] $ Epistulae et chartae ad historiam primi belli sacri
spectantes, $ ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer, Hildesheim, 1973
(reprint of 1901 edition).
[29] Ibid, p. 147.
[30] Translation by Jonathan Riley-Smith, $ The First
Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, Philadelphia, 1986,
p. 91.
[31] For a useful survey of the genre of the $ aubade, see
Philipp Augustus Becker, "Vom Morgenhymnus zum
Tagelied," $ Zur Romanischen Literaturgeschichte,
Munich, 1967, pp. 149-173, although he does not include
the earliest Provencal poem, which is also, in a
military sense, an $ aubade, or $ tageliet ).
[32] For this strategy used to describe the entrance of the
Crusaders into Jerusalem, see Hill's edition of
Raymond, p. 15.
[33] $ Historia Hierosolymitana, RHC.HO IV. pp. 1-111; see
pp. 10-11.
[34] RHC p. 86F.
[35] Hagenmeyer (pp. 206-207) remarks, however, that this
strategy was implicit in the praise of the Turks to be
found in the $ Gesta Francorum.
[36] For an analysis of the various representations of
Urban's performance at Clermont, see D.C. Munro, "The
Speech of Pope Urban II at Clermont," $ American
Historical Review XI (1906), pp. 231-242. For
objections to Munro's technique, see Paul Rousset, $
Les origines et les caract<res de ka premi<re croisade,
Geneva, 1945, p. 58.
[37] MPL 151.565.
[38] However, as Jonathan Riley-Smith points out, "All
reports of Urban's address at the end of the Council of
Clermont were written after the success of the crusade,
and the words put into the Pope's mouth reflected these
subsequent events." $ op. cit., p. 40.
[39] See M.D. Coupe, "The personality of Guibert de Nogent
reconsidered," $ Journal of Medieval History IX, no. 4
[Dec. '83], pp. 317-329 for a summary and judgement of
the work of J. Kantor, Benton, and others. See Charaud,
Jacques, "La conception de l'histoire de Guibert de
Nogent," $ Cahiers de civilisation m>di>vale VIII
(1965), pp. 381-395, Schreiner, Klaus, "Discrimen veri
ac falsi," $ Archive fur Kulturgeschicht XLVIII (1966),
pp. 1-51. Both are concerned to demonstrate the degree
to which Guibert's vision of history is ruled by
theology, and tropology in particular; both articles
can be read as respectful corrections of Bernard Monod,
"De la m>thode historique chez Guibert de Nogent," $
R>vue historique 84 (1904), pp. 51-70. For remarks
about Guibert's rhetorical habits, see Robert Levine,
"Satiric Vulgarity in Guibert de Nogent's $ Gesta Dei
per Francos," Rhetorica 7 (1989), pp. 261-273.
[40] Meyer Schapiro, "On the Aesthetic Attitude in
Romanesque Art," in $ Art and Thought: Festschrift for
A.K. Coomaraswamy, ed. K.B. Iyer, London, 1947, pp.
130-150.
[41] Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough, $ Horace, London,
1966, p. 465.
[42] $ Heroes and Saracens, Edinburgh, 1984, pp. 179-180.
[43] Raoul of Caen, however, in the course of his general
attack on Provencals, attacks the authenticity of the
lance, composing a speech in which Bohemund offers a
series of substantive historical objections. See Henri
Glaesener, "Raoul de Caen; historien et >crivain," $
R>vue d'Histoire Eccl>siastique XLVI (1951), pp. 12-14.
[44] HC III, p. 603D.
[45] For useful remarks on his style and topoi, see
Jean-Charles Payen, "Une L>gende >pique en gestation:
Les $ Gesta Tancredi de Raoul de Caen," in $ M>langes
Ren> Louis, pp. 1051-1062.
[46] No precise date for his 12 books, the first six of
which deal with the First Crusade, and the second six
with the Latin kingdom, 1101-1120, has been determined.
[47] $ The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, edited
and translated by Marjorie Chibnall, volume five,
Oxford, 1975, p. xiv. See also Baldwin, $ Crusades, p.
354, n. 19, for "curious and garbled affinity" between
Orderic and Albert of Aix.
[48] E.A. Babcock and A.C. Krey, $ A History of Deeds Done
Beyond the Sea, New York, 1943, I. p. 241.
[49] Peter Edbury and John Gordon Rowe, $ William of Tyre,
Cambridge, 1988, p. 167.
[50] $ Guillaume de Tyre Chronique, ed. R.B.C. Huygens,
Turnholt, 1986, p. 286.
[51] Babcock and Krey, p. 241.
[52] An aspect of William's imagination which Peter Knoch
calls "eine gewisse Vorliebe ... f~r erotische
Begebenheiten." ( $ Studien zur Albert von Aachen,
Stuttgart, 1966, p. 207, n. 26). Both William and the
author of the $ Chanson d'Antioche, increase the role
of the third function in the story. In the vernacular
poem, Datien, the Pirus-figure, piously hurls his wife
from a tower in order to prevent her from revealing his
treacherous intentions (see note 52).
[53] As Edbury and Rowe point out, although he used an
Arabic work for his Oriental History, "When he wrote
the $ Historia he not only used no Greek or Arabic
text, he lacked any work he could treat as an
authority." ( $ op. cit., Cambridge, 1988, p. 45).
[54] For the most elaborate vernacular reinvention of the
fall of Antioch, relying primarily upon Albert of Aix
and Robert the Monk, see the $ Chanson d'Antioche, ed.
Suzanne Duparc-Quioc, Paris, 1977-78.
[55] $ (Langue, texte, >nigme, Paris, 1975, p. 245.