The ‘Via de Hispania’ and the ‘via Jerusalem’

The triumphant First Crusade spawned many narratives, Latin and vernacular. But romance lyric responses to the crusading movement emerge only in the 1130s, in the context not of the Holy Land but Iberia. The first troubadour, Duke William IX of Aquitaine, fought in both places. Despite the enormous contingent of southerners following Raymond of Saint-Gilles to Jerusalem, William did not take part in the main expedition to the Holy Land. In 1101 he led his own. It was a disaster. His army was ambushed and wiped out in Anatolia, though he himself managed to escape and make his way to Jerusalem, where he fulfilled his vows. The chronicler Orderic Vitalis relates that on his return with some of his companions he often recited the miseries of his captivity in the presence of kings and magnates and groups of Christians, using rhythmical verses with elegant modulations. The hypothesis that his song Pos de chantar m'es pres talenz might be one of them, and refer to his departure on crusade, has not met with acceptance; rather, the duke was anticipating his departure from the world through death.

William also fought against the Muslims in Spain, at the battle of Cutanda in June 1120. Jane Martindale observes that the Chronique de St-Maixent gives the impression that the Via de Hispania and the via Jerusalem were regarded in Poitou as being of similar or even or equal importance, so that Christian victories in Spain match those ‘in Jerusalem’, and the disaster of the Ager Sanguinis (Field of Blood) in 1119 is counterbalanced not only by King Baldwin's great victory of the following year but also by the Christian success at Cutanda. In the St-Maixent annals this appears as a great victory: ‘Count William, duke of the Aquitanians, and the king of Aragon fought with Abraham (Ibrahim) and four other Spanish kings on the field of Cutanda; and they conquered and killed 15,000 Moabites and made innumerable prisoners. They captured 2000 camels and other beasts without number, and they subjugated many castles.’