Page:EB1911 - Volume 07.djvu/572

 from the Arabic); the use of powder and of glass mirrors, and also of the rosary itself—all these things came to Europe from the East and as a result of the Crusades. To this day there are many Arabic words in the vocabulary of the languages of western Europe which are a standing witness of the Crusades—words relating to trade and seafaring, like tariff and corvette, or words for musical instruments, like lute or the Elizabethan word “naker.” When all is said, the Crusades remain a wonderful and perpetually astonishing act in the great drama of human life. They touched the summits of daring and devotion, if they also sank into the deep abysms of shame. Motives of self-interest may have lurked in them—otherworldly motives of buying salvation for a little price, or worldly motives of achieving riches and acquiring lands. Yet it would be treason to the majesty of man’s incessant struggle towards an ideal good, if one were to deny that in and through the Crusades men strove for righteousness’ sake to extend the kingdom of God upon earth. Therefore the tears and the blood that were shed were not unavailing; the heroism and the chivalry were not wasted. Humanity is the richer for the memory of those millions of men, who followed the pillar of cloud and fire in the sure and certain hope of an eternal reward. The ages were not dark in which Christianity could gather itself together in a common cause, and carry the flag of its faith to the grave of its Redeemer; nor can we but give thanks for their memory, even if for us religion is of the spirit, and Jerusalem in the heart of every man who believes in Christ.

.—In dealing with the literature of the Crusades, it is perhaps better, though ideally less scientific, to begin with chronicles and narratives rather than with documents. One of the results of the Crusades, as has just been suggested above, was a great increase in the writing of history. Crusaders themselves kept diaries or itineraria; while home-keeping ecclesiastics in the West—monks like Robert of Reims, abbots like Guibert of Nogent, archbishops like Balderich of Dol—found a fertile subject for their pens in the history of the Crusades. The history of a series of actions like the Crusades must primarily be based on these accounts, and more particularly on the former: narratives must precede documents where one is dealing, not with the continuous life of an organized kingdom, but with a number of enterprises—especially when those enterprises have been, as in this case, excellently narrated by contemporary writers.

I. Chronicles and Narratives of the Crusades—(1) Collections. The authorities for the Crusades have been collected in Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos (Hanover, 1611) (incomplete); Michaud, Bibliothèque des croisades (Paris, 1829) (containing translations of select passages in the authorities); the Recueil des historiens des croisades, published by the Académie des Inscriptions (Paris, 1841 onwards) (the best general collection, containing many of the Latin, Greek, Arabic and Armenian authorities, and also the text of the assizes; but sometimes poorly edited and still incomplete); and the publications of the Société de l’Orient Latin (founded in 1875), especially the Archives, of which two volumes were published in 1881 and 1884, and the volumes of the Revue, published yearly from 1893 to 1902, and containing not only new texts, but articles and reviews of books which are of great service. (2) Particular authorities. The Crusades—a movement which engaged all Europe and brought the East into contact with the West—must necessarily be studied not only in the Latin authorities of Europe and of Palestine, but also in Byzantine, Armenian and Arabic writers. There are thus some four or five different points of view to be considered.

The First Crusade, far more than any other, became the theme of a multitude of writings, whose different degrees of value it is all-important to distinguish. Until about 1840 the authority followed for its history was naturally the great work of William of Tyre. For the First Crusade William had followed Albert of Aix; and he had consequently depicted Peter the Hermit as the prime mover in the Crusade. But about 1840 Ranke suggested, and von Sybel in his Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzüges proved, that Albert of Aix was not a good authority, and that consequently William of Tyre must be set aside for the history of the First Crusade, and other and more contemporary authorities used. In writing his account of the First Crusade, von Sybel accordingly based himself on the three contemporary Western authorities—the Gesta Francorum, Raymond of Agiles, and Fulcher. His view of the value of Albert of Aix, and his account of the First Crusade, have been generally followed (Kugler alone having attempted, to some extent, to rehabilitate Albert of Aix); and thus von Sybel’s work may be said to mark a revolution in the history of the First Crusade, when its legendary features were stripped away, and its real progress was first properly discovered.

Taking the Western authorities for the First Crusade separately,

one may divide them, in the light of von Sybel’s work, into four kinds—the accounts of eye-witnesses; later compilations based on these accounts; semi-legendary and legendary narratives; and lastly, in a class by itself, the “History” of William of Tyre, who is rather a scientific historian than a chronicler.

(a) The three chief eye-witnesses are the anonymous author of the Gesta Francorum, Raymund of Agiles, and Fulcher. The anonymous author of the Gesta (see Hagenmeyer’s edition, Heidelberg, 1890) was a Norman of South Italy, who followed Bohemund, and accordingly depicts the progress of the First Crusade from a Norman point of view. He was a layman, marching and fighting in the ranks; and thus he is additionally valuable as representing the opinion of the ordinary crusader. Finally he was an eye-witness throughout, and absolutely contemporary, in the sense that he wrote his account of each great event practically at the time of the event. He is the primary authority for the First Crusade. Raymund of Agiles, a Provençal clerk and a follower of Raymund of Toulouse, writes his Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Jerusalem from the Provençal point of view. He gives an ecclesiastic’s account of the First Crusade, and is specially full on the spiritualistic phenomena which accompanied and followed the finding of the Holy Lance. His book might almost be called the “Visions of Peter Bartholomew and others,” and it is written in the plain matter-of-fact manner of Defoe’s narratives. He too was an eye-witness throughout, and thoroughly honest; and his account ranks second to the Gesta. Fulcher of Chartres originally followed Robert of Normandy, but in October 1097 he joined Baldwin of Lorraine in his expedition to Edessa, and afterwards followed his fortunes. His Historia Hierosolymitana, which extends to 1127, and embraces not only the history of the First Crusade, but also that of the foundation of the kingdom of Jerusalem, is written on the whole from a Lotharingian point of view, and is thus a natural complement to the accounts of the Anonymus and Raymund. His account of the First Crusade itself is poor (he was absent at Edessa during its course), but otherwise he is an excellent authority. A kindly old pedant, Fulcher interlards his history with much discourse on geography, zoology and sacred history. Besides these three chief eye-witnesses we may also mention the Annales Genuenses by the Genoese consul Caffarus, and the Annales Pisani of Bernardus Marago, useful as giving the mercantile and Italian side of the Crusade; the Hierosolymita of Ekkehard, the German abbot of Aura, who first came to Jerusalem about 1101 (partly based on the Gesta, but also of independent value: see Hagenmeyer’s edition, Tübingen, 1877); and Raoul of Caen’s Gesta Tancredi, composed on the basis of information supplied by Tancred himself. The last two works, if not actually the works of eye-witnesses, are at any rate first-hand, and belong to the category of primary writers rather than to that of later compilations. Finally, to contemporary writers we may add contemporary letters, especially those written by Stephen of Blois and Anselm of Ribemont, and the three letters sent to the West by the crusading princes during the First Crusade (see Hagenmeyer, Epistulae et Chartae, &c., Innsbruck, 1901).

(b) The later compilations are chiefly based on the Gesta, whose uncouth style many writers set themselves to mend. In the first place, there is the Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere of Tudebod, which according to Besly, writing in 1641, is the original from which the Gesta was a mere plagiarism—an absolute inversion of the truth, as von Sybel first proved two centuries later. Secondly, besides the plagiarist Tudebod, there are the artistic rédacteurs of the Gesta, who confess their indebtedness, but plead the bad style of their original—Guibert of Nogent, Balderich of Dol, Robert of Reims (all c. 1120–1130), and Fulco, the author of a Virgilian poem on the Crusades, continued by Gilo (ob. c. 1142). Of these, the monk Robert was more popular in the middle ages than either the pompous abbot Guibert or the quiet garden-loving archbishop of Dol.

(c) The growth of a legend, or perhaps better, a saga of the First Crusade began, according to von Sybel, even during the Crusade itself. The basis of this growth is partly the story-telling instinct innate in all men, which loves to heighten an effect, sharpen a point or increase a contrast—the instinct which breathes in Icelandic sagas like that of Burnt Njal; partly the instinct of idolization, if it may be so called, which leads to the perversion into impossible greatness of an approved character, and has created, in this instance, the legendary figures of and  (qq.v.); partly the religious impulse, which counted nothing wonderful in a holy war, and imported miraculous elements even into the sober pages of the Gesta. These instincts and impulses would be at work already among the soldiers during the Crusade, producing a saga all the more readily, as there were poets in the camp; for we know that a certain Richard, who joined the First Crusade, sang its exploits in verse, while still more famous is the princely troubadour, William of Aquitaine, who joined the Crusade of 1100. If we are to follow von Sybel rather than Kugler, this saga of the First Crusade found one of its earliest expressions (c. 1120) in the prose work of Albert of Aix (Historia Hierosolymitana)—genuine saga in its