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First Crusade Letters and Medieval Monastic Scribal Cultures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2019

THOMAS W. SMITH
THOMAS W. SMITH*
Affiliation:
History Department, Rugby School, Lawrence Sheriff Street, RugbyCV22 5EH
*
E-mail: TWS@rugbyschool.net
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Abstract

The letters of the First Crusade have traditionally been read as authentic and trustworthy eyewitness accounts of the expedition and they contribute greatly to scholarly understanding of the campaign. But new research on them demonstrates that many of the documents are in fact twelfth-century confections produced in the monastic communities of the West as a means of supporting, participating in and engaging with the crusading movement. This article develops new approaches to the letters and new research questions which account for and accept the problematic authenticity of the corpus, pivoting away from traditional methodologies to explore the monastic scribal cultures that produced and consumed First Crusade letters.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 71 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 484 - 501
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

The research upon which this article is based was generously supported by the award of a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Leeds (2017–20). I am grateful to the anonymous peer reviewer for helpful and encouraging comments upon this article, as well as to audiences at Aberystwyth, Chapel Hill, NC, Dublin, Exeter and Reading and the many colleagues who have commented upon aspects of this work, especially Julie Barrau, Helen Birkett, Karl Borchardt, Peter Crooks, James Doherty, Susan Edgington, Sarah Hamilton, Graham Loud, Fraser McNair, Alan Murray, Simon Parsons, Nicholas Paul, William Purkis, Levi Roach and Georg Strack.

References

1 For an overview see Murray, A. V., ‘The siege and capture of Jerusalem in western narrative sources of the First Crusade’, in Edgington, S. B. and García-Guijarro, L. (eds), Jerusalem the golden: the origins and impact of the First Crusade, Turnhout 2014, 191–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar at pp. 192–9.

2 For a small sample of this work see, most recently, Parsons, S. T., ‘The letters of Stephen of Blois reconsidered’, Crusades xvii (2018), 1–29Google Scholar; Symes, C., ‘Popular literacies and the first historians of the First Crusade’, Past & Present no. 235 (May 2017), 37–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roach, D., ‘Orderic Vitalis and the First Crusade’, Journal of Medieval History xlii (2016), 177–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John, S., ‘Historical truth and the miraculous past: the use of oral evidence in twelfth-century Latin historical writing on the First Crusade’, EHR cxxx (2015), 263–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bull, M. and Kempf, D. (eds), Writing the early crusades: text, transmission and memory, Woodbridge 2014Google Scholar; The Historia Iherosolimitana of Robert the Monk, ed. D. Kempf and M. G. Bull, Woodbridge 2013; Bull, M., ‘The historiographical construction of a northern French First Crusade’, Haskins Society Journal xxv (2013), 35–56Google Scholar, and ‘The western narratives of the First Crusade’, in D. Thomas and A. Mallett (eds), Christian-Muslim relations: a bibliographical history, III: (1050–1200), Leiden 2011, 15–25; Paul, N. L., ‘A warlord's wisdom: literacy and propaganda at the time of the First Crusade’, Speculum lxxxv (2010), 534–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Flori, J., Chroniquers et propagandistes: introduction critique aux sources de la première croisade, Geneva 2010Google Scholar; Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana: history of the journey to Jerusalem, ed. and trans. Edgington, S. B., Oxford 2007Google Scholar; Lapina, E., ‘“Nec signis nec testibus creditur…”: the problem of eyewitnesses in the chronicles of the First Crusade’, Viator xxxviii (2007), 117–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rubenstein, J., ‘What is the Gesta Francorum, and who was Peter Tudebode?’, Revue Mabillon n.s. xvi/77 (2005), 179–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Robert the Monk's history of the First Crusade: Historia Iherosolimitana, trans. C. Sweetenham, Aldershot 2005.

3 Bull, M., ‘The eyewitness accounts of the First Crusade as political scripts’, Reading Medieval Studies xxxvi (2010), 23–37Google Scholar at p. 24. Since Bull wrote, see now Smith, T. W., ‘Framing the narrative of the First Crusade: the letter given at Laodicea in September 1099’, in Buck, A. D. and Smith, T. W. (eds), Remembering the crusades in medieval texts and songs [special issue of the Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture], Cardiff 2019Google Scholar; Parsons, ‘Letters of Stephen of Blois’; Smith, T. W., ‘Scribal crusading: three new manuscript witnesses to the regional reception and transmission of First Crusade letters’, Traditio lxxii (2017), 133–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘The First Crusade letter written at Laodicea: two previously unpublished versions from Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 23390 and 28195’, Crusades xv (2016), 1–25; Strack, G., ‘Pope Urban ii and Jerusalem: a re-examination of his letters on the First Crusade’, Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture ii (2016), 51–70Google Scholar; and L. García-Guijarro, ‘Some considerations on the crusaders’ letter to Urban ii (September 1098)’, in Edgington and García-Guijarro, Jerusalem the golden, 151–71. Aspects of particular letters are illuminated in Kedar, B. Z., ‘Ein Hilferuf aus Jerusalem vom September 1187’, Deutsches Archiv xxxviii (1982), 112–22Google Scholar at pp. 113–14, and Paul, ‘Warlord's wisdom’, 539–41, 544, 547–50, 554–6.

4 Most of the letters were published in the Epistulae et chartae ad historiam primi belli sacri spectantes quae supersunt aevo aequales et genuinae / Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100: eine Quellensammlung zur Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges, ed. H. Hagenmeyer, Innsbruck 1901. See also the critical inventory in Riant, P., ‘Inventaire critique des lettres historiques des croisades’, Archives de l'Orient latin i (1880), 1–224Google Scholar, which underpinned Hagenmeyer's work. For Hagenmeyer's acknowledgement of Riant's influence see Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. vi–vii. Two letters issued by Urban ii unknown to Hagenmeyer, and therefore not included in his edition, are Papsturkunden für Kirchen im Heiligen Land, ed. R. Hiestand, Göttingen 1985, no. 2 at pp. 88–9, and Papsturkunden in Spanien, Vorarbeiten zur Hispania Pontificia, I: Katalanien, ed. P. Kehr, Berlin 1928, no. 23 at pp. 287–8.

5 Parsons, ‘Letters of Stephen of Blois’, 4.

6 For this view see, for example, Letters from the East: crusaders, pilgrims and settlers in the 12th–13th centuries, ed. and trans. M. Barber and K. Bate, Farnham 2010, 1–2. On the Jerusalem history and the Gesta Francorum see Rubenstein, ‘What is the Gesta Francorum?’, 202–3.

7 Parsons, ‘Letters of Stephen of Blois’.

8 Ibid. 21.

9 Constable, G., ‘Forged letters in the Middle Ages’, in Fälschungen im Mittelalter: Internationaler Kongreß der Monumenta Germaniae Historica München, 16.–19. September 1986, V: Fingierte Briefe, Frömmigkeit und Fälschung, Realienfälschungen, Hanover 1988, 11–37Google Scholar at p. 21.

10 von Sybel, H., Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzugs, 1st edn, Dusseldorf 1841, 2nd edn, Leipzig 1881Google Scholar. Von Sybel explained in the prologue (pp. iii–iv) how Leopold von Ranke's seminar course on the sources of the First Crusade in 1837 inspired him to undertake a critical evaluation of the corpus.

11 Historia Iherosolimitana, pp. xliii–xlvii; Bull and Kempf, Writing the early crusades, introduction 1–8 at pp. 5–6; Smith, ‘Scribal crusading’, and ‘First Crusade letter’; Parsons, ‘Letters of Stephen of Blois’.

12 Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. vi–vii.

13 For an example of a new manuscript witness in a codex used by Hagenmeyer see Smith, ‘Scribal crusading’, 140. By way of example of an error of citation, he locates a copy of letter xii to fo. 150 in Bibliothèque municipale, Angers, ms 171, when, in fact, it is (and was at the time that Hagenmeyer was writing, too) on fo. 271v; cf. Kreuzzugsbriefe, 83 and Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France: départements, xxxi, Angers–Paris 1898, 245, <http://ccfr.bnf.fr/portailccfr/jsp/index_view_direct_anonymous.jsp?record=eadcgm:EADC:D34100503> [accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

14 I am currently writing a monograph on The letters of the First Crusade which will appear in the Crusading in Context series published by The Boydell Press.

15 G. Constable, Letters and letter-collections, Turnhout 1976, 52.

16 I follow here the terminology proposed by Constable in ‘Forged letters’, 20.

17 See Smith, ‘Scribal crusading’.

18 Ibid., ‘First Crusade letter’ and ‘New manuscripts of the Gesta francorum, Albert of Aachen, and Fulcher of Chartres’, in A. D. Buck and T. W. Smith (eds), Chronicle, crusade, and the Latin East: essays in honour of Susan B. Edgington, Turnhout forthcoming.

19 Kreuzzugsbriefe, 79–84 [introduction], 153–5 [edition], 298–308 [commentary]; trans. in Letters from the East, 25–6. See also Riant, ‘Inventaire critique’, 175–6.

20 They are the letter of Symeon, patriarch of Jerusalem and Adhemar, papal legate and bishop of Le Puy, to the people of the ‘north’, from October 1097 (Hagenmeyer no. vi), Kreuzzugsbriefe, 141–2; the letter of Symeon and the other bishops, with the army, addressed to the people of the West, from January 1098 (Hagenmeyer no. ix), ibid. 146–9; and the letter of the crusade leaders to Pope Urban ii, from 11 September 1098 (Hagenmeyer no. xvi), ibid. 161–5.

21 Ibid. 153; trans. in Letters from the East, 25.

22 See Constable, G., ‘The structure of medieval society according to the Dictatores of the twelfth century’, in Pennington, K. and Somerville, R. (eds), Law, Church, and society: essays in honor of Stephan Kuttner, Philadelphia, Pa 1977, 253–67Google Scholar.

23 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City, reg. lat. 1283, pt A, fo. 73v.

24 Letters from the East, 25; ‘Ut notum sit omnibus, qualiter inter nos et imperatorem facta sit pax et quomodo in terra Saracenorum nobis, postquam illuc uenimus, euenit, dirigimus ad uos hunc nostrum legatum, qui omnia, quae apud nos facta sunt, uobis per ordinem diligenter edisserat’: Kreuzzugsbriefe, 154.

25 Parsons, ‘Letters of Stephen of Blois’, 23.

26 Kreuzzugsbriefe, 154; Letters from the East, 26.

27 Constable, ‘Forged letters’, 34. On the common use of oral messages to supplement, or even replace, written letters since ancient times see Chaplais, P., English diplomatic practice in the Middle Ages, London 2003, 6–20Google Scholar.

28 Published in a new, critical edition in Smith, ‘Scribal crusading’, 168–9.

29 Kreuzzugsbriefe, 82.

30 Letters from the East, 26; ‘Ego Gratianopolitanus episcopus has litteras mihi adlatas Gratianopolim uobis sanctae Turonensis ecclesiae archiepiscopo et canonicis mitto, ut per uos omnibus, qui ad festum conuenerint, innotescant et per eos diuersis partibus orbis, ad quas redituri sunt, alii eorum iustis petitionibus, orationibus et eleemosynis subueniant, alii uero cum armis accurrere festinent’: Kreuzzugsbriefe, 155.

31 Kreuzzugsbriefe, 83–4.

32 Bibliothèque municipal, Reims, ms 1405, fo. 64v. This manuscript also transmits letter vi (see n. 20), which is also a confection.

33 ms 171, fo. 271v. See Catalogue général, 245, <http://ccfr.bnf.fr/portailccfr/jsp/index_view_direct_anonymous.jsp?record=eadcgm:EADC:D34100503> [accessed 2 Dec. 2018]; Reg. lat. 1283 pt A, fo. 73v, digitised at <https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Reg.lat.1283.pt.A/0156> [accessed 2 Dec. 2018]. It also preserves on the same leaf the first letter of Stephen of Blois: Parsons, ‘Letters of Stephen of Blois’.

34 Constable, ‘Forged letters’, 12.

35 See the contemporary example furnished by Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury in a letter of 1109, for example English episcopal acta, ed. D. M. Smith and others, London 1980– , xxviii, no. 14 at pp. 14–15.

36 See also Parsons, ‘Letters of Stephen of Blois’.

37 See Smith, ‘First Crusade letter’ and also letter no. xvi (see n. 20 above).

38 Letters from the East, 26; ‘Specialiter autem tertium diem ante festum, qui est dies Veneris, in quo triumphante Christo proelium potenter commissuri sumus’: Kreuzzugsbriefe, 155.

39 For the variant wording see ibid. 154 n. w.

40 Ibid. 82.

41 Ibid. 82–3, 307–8.

42 See Maier, C. T., ‘Crisis, liturgy and the crusade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, this Journal xlviii (1997), 628–57Google Scholar at p. 630. However the analysis therein needs to be reoriented if it is accepted that the letter is an imposture.

43 Letters nos vi, and xviii: Kreuzzugsbriefe, 142, 173–4.

44 Paul, ‘Warlord's wisdom’, 565.

45 Ibid.

46 Constable, Letters, 50.

47 Rubenstein, ‘What is the Gesta Francorum?’, 179 and n. 1; Symes, ‘Popular literacies’, 40–50; Bull and Kempf, Writing the early crusades.

48 See, respectively, Dzon, M., The quest for the Christ child in the later Middle Ages, Philadelphia, Pa 2017, 3–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Houts, E. van, ‘The writing of history at Le Bec’, in Pohl, B. and Gathagan, L. L. (eds), A companion to the abbey of Le Bec in the central Middle Ages (11th–13th centuries), Leiden 2018, 125–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 143.

49 Sunday observance and the Sunday letter in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. and trans. D. Haines, Cambridge 2010, 36–7.

50 Kreuzzugsbriefe, 27, 38, 39, 81, 83, 100, 111, 120, 209.

51 Paul, ‘Warlord's wisdom’, 544 n. 59.

52 Kedar, ‘Ein Hilferuf’.

53 Smith, ‘Scribal crusading’, 157–61.

54 For example the text discovered by Kedar and published in his ‘Ein Hilferuf’, which can be dated on art historical grounds to the second quarter of the thirteenth century: Klemm, E., Die illuminierten Handschriften des 13. Jahrhunderts deutscher Herkunft in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, Wiesbaden 1998, 151Google Scholar. See Smith, ‘First Crusade letter’, 12–13.

55 Historia Iherosolimitana, p. xxxv.

56 See Smith, ‘Scribal crusading’, 157–61.

57 Colk, T., ‘Twelfth-century East Anglian canons: a monastic life?’, in Harper-Bill, C. (ed.), Medieval East Anglia, Woodbridge 2005, 209–24Google Scholar at p. 220.

58 Kienzle, B. M., Cistercians, heresy and crusade in Occitania, 1145–1229: preaching in the Lord's vineyard, Woodbridge 2001, 7Google Scholar.

59 Burton, J. and Kerr, J., The Cistercians in the Middle Ages, Woodbridge 2011, 190Google Scholar. See also Smith, K. A., War and the making of medieval monastic culture, Woodbridge 2011, 3–4Google Scholar; Paul, N. L., To follow in their footsteps: the crusades and family memory in the high Middle Ages, Ithaca, NY 2012, 69–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lester, A. E., ‘A shared imitation: Cistercian convents and crusader families in thirteenth-century Champagne’, Journal of Medieval History xxxv (2009), 353–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 367.

60 Riley-Smith, J., The First Crusade and the idea of crusading, 2nd edn, London 2003, 36, 45–6Google Scholar. See also Bull, M., Knightly piety and the lay response to the First Crusade: the Limousin and Gascony, c. 970–c. 1130, Oxford 1993Google Scholar.

61 Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana, pp. xxvi–xxvii.

62 John, ‘Historical truth’, 265–9.

63 Riley-Smith, J., The First Crusaders, 1095–1131, Cambridge 1997, 150Google Scholar, and First Crusade, 122–3; Paul, To follow in their footsteps, 99–103, 111–23; Purkis, W. J., ‘Crusading and crusade memory in Caesarius of Heisterbach's Dialogus miraculorum’, Journal of Medieval History xxxix (2013), 100–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 122; Lester, ‘Shared imitation’, 367, and ‘What remains: women, relics and remembrance in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade’, Journal of Medieval History xl (2014), 311–28.

64 Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, 154–5.

65 Smith, K. A., ‘Monastic memories of the early crusading movement’, in Cassidy-Welch, M. (ed.), Remembering the crusades and crusading, Abingdon 2017, 131–44Google Scholar; Cassidy-Welch, M., ‘The monastery of São Vicente de Fora in Lisbon as a site of crusading memory’, Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies iii (2014), 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 See Smith, ‘Scribal crusading’; Lester, ‘Shared imitation’, 357, 366; Gaposchkin, M. C., Invisible weapons: liturgy and the making of crusade ideology, Ithaca, NY 2017, 130–64Google Scholar; Maier, ‘Crisis’; R. D. G. Allington, ‘Prayer warriors: crusading piety in Rome and the papal states (1187–1291)’, unpubl. PhD diss. Saint Louis University 2017.

67 ‘Hec qui scire sitis lege de Iherosolimitis | Multiplicant laudes rem si gestam bene gaudes’: Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg, M. p. th. q. 17, fo. 90r. See also Smith, ‘Scribal crusading’, 133.

68 On Lectio divina see Matter, E. A., ‘Lectio divina’, in Hollywood, A. and Beckman, P. Z. (eds), The Cambridge companion to Christian mysticism, Cambridge 2012, 147–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotation at p. 147.

69 Smith, War and the making of medieval monastic culture, quotation at pp. 53, 71–111. See also Purkis, ‘Crusading and crusade memory’, 119.

70 Lester, ‘Shared imitation’, 356–7, 364–5, 366.

71 Smith, ‘Monastic memories’, 135, and War and the making of medieval monastic culture, 52–63, 166–76. See also Purkis, ‘Crusading and crusade memory’, 120–1.

72 Purkis, ‘Crusading and crusade memory’, 119, and ‘Memories of the preaching for the Fifth Crusade in Caesarius of Heisterbach's Dialogus miraculorum’, Journal of Medieval History xl (2014), 329–45 at pp. 331, 333, 341, 344.