Gesta Francorum

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The Gesta Francorum et aliorum hierosolimitanorum (Latin for "The deeds of the Franks and others who went to Jerusalem "), Gesta Francorum for short , are a report on the First Crusade (1095-1099) penned by an anonymous eyewitness. The text was completed shortly after the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 , with the exception of the last book, which should have been written by the beginning of 1101 at the latest. The Gesta Francorum are one of the most important and fascinating sources about the First Crusade.

The anonymous author was probably a henchman of the southern Italian Norman prince Bohemond , one of the leaders of the crusade. From this and based on critical text analysis it can be concluded that the author himself was a southern Italian Norman . In addition, the author could have been a monk or a cleric of low rank, since the text shows that he did not take part in combat operations. The author probably left his master Bohemond during the crusade in 1099 and joined the contingent of Raymond IV of Toulouse , when the former stayed in the conquered Antioch to build up his own territory there, and instead no longer joined the next train involved. Bohemond probably took the Gesta Francorum with him to Italy in 1106 in order to obtain support for a new crusade from Pope Paschal II and thereby consolidate his position in Antioch.

Recent research has shown that the Gesta Francorum is not an eyewitness account, but rather a kind of epic in the style of the Roland song . This explains several stylistic elements of the work and can invalidate the older research, which partly assumed that the text was originally written by a layman and that spiritual content was added by a cleric. The importance of the Gesta Francorum results not least from its secondary use: with a few exceptions, every further report from the First Crusade is based on it or uses it as a template or corrective. In particular, the three Benedictine monks Robert von Reims , Balderich von Bourgueil and Guibert von Nogent wrote their own well-known crusade chronicles on the Gesta Francorum - according to their own statement, because they were written in too simple a Latin that was too insignificant for the meaning of the crusade. Jordan von Osnabrück later gave a related representation .

The Gesta are divided into 10 chapters and 49 paragraphs. The most famous passages are the reports on Pope Urban II's speech at Clermont , the crusaders' march to Constantinople , the negotiations between the crusaders and the Byzantine emperor Alexios Komnenus , the capture of Nicaea , the battle of Dorylaeum (1097) , the siege of Antioch and the conquest of Jerusalem . Numerous anecdotes provide an insight into the everyday life of the common crusader as well as the balance of power among the leaders of the crusade, but each from the perspective of the Norman-southern Italian author who had no access to the leadership of the train.

Editions

  • Rosalind Hill (ed. And transl.): Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum - The deeds of the Franks and the other pilgrims to Jerusalem (= Medieval Texts. ). Nelson, London 1962.
  • Louis Bréhier (ed. And transl.): Histoire Anonyme de la première Croisade (= Classiques de l'Histoire de France. Vol. 4). Paris 1924.
  • Heinrich Hagenmeyer (Ed.): Anonymi Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolymitanorum. Heidelberg 1890 ( digitized ).
  • Philippe Le Bas (ed.): Recueil des Historiens des Croisades . Historiens occidentaux (RHC Occ.). Vol. 3, Paris 1866, pp. 121-163 ( digitized version ).

Translations

  • Rosalind Hill (ed. And transl.): Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum - The deeds of the Franks and the other pilgrims to Jerusalem. (Medieval Texts), Nelson, London 1962.
  • Aude Matignon (transl.): La Geste des Francs: Chronique anonyme de la Première Croisade. Paris 1992.
  • Louis Bréhier (ed. And transl.): Histoire Anonyme de la première Croisade (= Classiques de l'Histoire de France. Vol. 4). Paris 1924.

literature

  • Hans Oehler: Studies on the Gesta Francorum. In: Middle Latin Yearbook. Vol. 6, 1970, pp. 58-97.
  • Rosalind Hill: Crusading Warfare: A camp-follower's view, 1097–1120. In: R. Allen Brown: Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies. Vol. 1, Ipswich 1979, pp. 75-83, pp. 209-211.
  • Kenneth Baxter Wolf: Crusade as Narrative: Bohemund and the Gesta. In: Journal of Medieval History. Vol. 17, 1991, pp. 207-216.
  • Colin Morris: The Gesta Francorum as Narrative Story. In: Reading Medieval Studies. Vol. 19, 1993, pp. 55-71.
  • Susan B. Edgington: The First Crusade: Reviewing the Evidence. In: Jonathan Phillips (ed.): The First Crusade. Origins and Impact. Manchester 1997, pp. 57-77.
  • John France: The Use of the Anonymous Gesta Francorum in the Early Twelth-Century Sources for the First Crusade. In: From Clermont to Jerusalem. The Crusades and Crusader Societies 1095-1500. In: Alan V. Murray (Ed.): Selected Proceedings of the International Medieval Congress University of Leeds 10-13 July 1995 (= International Medieval Research. Vol. 3). Turnhout 1998, pp. 29-42.
  • John France: The Anonymous Gesta Francorum and the Historia qui ceperunt Iherusalem of Raymond of Aguilers and the Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere of Peter Tudebode: An Analysis of the Textual Relationship between Primary Sources of the First Crusade. In: John France (Ed.): The Crusades and their Sources. Essays presented to Bernard Hamilton. William Zajac, Aldershot 1998, pp. 39-69.
  • Yuval Noah Harari : Eyewitnessing in Accounts of the First Crusade. In: Crusades. Vol. 3, 2004, pp. 77-99.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hugo Hungerbühler : From the origin of the Schwyzer. A retrieved font from the XV. Century. Zollikofer, St. Gallen 1871, p. 43.