The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eye-Witnesses and Participants (Fontes Mediaevalium)

Carefully edited with an updated bibliography and re-touched maps, this new edition of The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eye-Witnesses and Participants also includes an index which was absent from previous editions.

The launch of the First Crusade at Clermont was without question one of the epoch-making moments of history. It is also one of the most misunderstood in modern times, thanks in large part to the efforts of later political and religious movements seeking either to harness the conquering spirit of the Crusades or else to conjure images of ancient grievances to rouse populations to vengeance.

To cut through the contemporary manipulations, it is helpful to delve back into the original source material and examine accounts of deeds both noble and dastardly through the eyes of those who witnessed them first hand, or nearly so. This collection, compiled by August C. Krey in the early 20th century, contains excerpts from histories, chronicles, and personal letters, set in chronological order, to reveal a narrative of the momentous events of the First Crusade. It includes extensive extracts from the anonymous Gesta, the Historia Hierosolymiana by Fulcher of Chartres, the history of Raymond of Aguilers, the Alexiad of Anna Comnena, and many others, including letters by Stephen of Blois and a letter written by Emperor Alexius Comnenus to the abbot of Monte Cassino.

The value of the present collection is the notable effort by the compiler to fuse the whole into a comprehensible narrative of events. This serves to highlight the numerous instances where the original sources disagree or at least where a variety of views of the same event are presented. Perhaps most memorably are included two completely opposing stories of Peter Bartholomew's Trial of the Lance with two radically different outcomes. In addition, the inclusion of excerpts from Anna Comnena's Alexiad provides a learned, perceptive, and occasionally bitter Greek counterpoint to the Western writers.