The Anonymous Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum ("The Deeds of the Franks and the other pilgrims to Jerusalem") is one of the most important histories for the First Crusade, and probably the oldest that survives. It appears to be a firsthand account of the events described, and may even have been written as a kind of intermittent diary. The text falls into ten sections, each with its own conclusion, and it has been suggested that each section represents an individual section of the author’s memoirs. Moreover the author never writes as though he knew how his story was going to turn out, and sometimes writes as though the events had occurred very recently.
Scholars differ as to whether our author was a knight, a cleric, or a cleric working closely with a knight.1 He seems to have joined the First Crusade as a follower of Bohemond of Taranto, and his vernacular language may thus have been some form of French, or a South Italian dialect. Our author joined Bohemond at Amalfi, and stayed with him for the events at Nicaea, Dorylaeum, and Antioch. In November of 1098 he seems to have joined the Provençal army of Raymond of Toulouse, following him to Jerusalem and Ascalon, with which he ends his story (August 1099).
The text may have been published in Jerusalem by the winter of 1101–2. Ekkehard of Aura refers to a “little book” on the First Crusade that he read in Jerusalem in 1101, and Ekkehard borrows from the Gesta Francorum.2
Select Bibliography
Some recent editions and translations of the Latin text.
Dass, Nirmal. 2011. The Deeds of the Franks and other Jerusalem-bound Pilgrims. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. [English only, with helpful notes.]
Hill, Rosalind. 1962. The Deeds of the Franks and the other Pilgrims to Jerusalem. London, New York: Thomas Nelson. [Latin text with English translation.] The Oxford University Press edition (1967, reprinted 1972, 1979) is available at Internet Archive.
Russo, Luigi. 2003. Le Gesta dei Franchi e degli altri Pellegrini Gerosolimitani. Alexandria: Edizioni dell'Orso. [Latin text with Italian translation and detailed notes.]
On the Gesta Francorum
France, John. 1998. “The Use of the Anonymous Gesta Francorum in the Early Twelfth-Century Sources for the First Crusade.” In From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and Crusader Societies, 1095–1500: Selected proceedings of the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 10–13 July 1995, International Medieval Research 3, edited by Alan V. Murray, 29–42. Turnhout: Brepols.
Gavignan, John Joseph. 1943. “The Syntax of the Gesta Francorum.” Language 19 (3): 10–102. [A detailed study of the Latin of the Gesta Francorum and its differences from Classical Latin; its references are to the text of Lees, on which see in the abbreviations section below.]
Harari, Yuval Noah. 2004. “Eyewitnessing in Accounts of the First Crusade: The Gesta Francorum and Other Contemporary Narratives.” Crusades 3: 77–99. [Questions how much of the narrative is really an authentic first-person report.]
Jamison, Evelyn. 1939. “Some Notes on the Anonymi Gesta Francorum, with Special Reference to the Norman Contingent from South Italy and Sicily in the First Crusade.” In Studies in French Language and Mediæval Literature Presented to Professor Mildred K. Pope, edited by Mildred K. Pope, 183–208. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Morris, Colin. 1993. “The Gesta Francorum as Narrative History.” Reading Medieval Studies 19: 55–71.
Rubenstein, Jay. 2005. “What is the Gesta Francorum and Who is Peter Tudebode?” Revue Mabillon 16: 179-204.
On the First Crusade
Asbridge, Thomas. 2004. The First Cusade: A New History. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. [Highly readable; perhaps the best introduction.]
France, John. 1994. Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge Univeristy Press.
Frankopan, Peter. 2012. The First Crusade: The Call from the East. London: Bodley Head. [Also very readable; a consideration of the Byzantine perspective.]
Kostick, Conor. 2008. The Social Structure of the First Crusade. The Medieval Mediterranean 76. Leiden; Boston: Brill. [Contains a good chapter on the Gesta Francorum.]
Lapina, Elizabeth. 2015. Warfare and the Miraculous in the Chronicles of the First Crusade. University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Riley-Smith, Jonathan. 1986. The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Rubenstein, Jay. 2005. “What is the Gesta Francorum and Who is Peter Tudebode?” Revue Mabillon 16: 179–204.
Rubenstein, Jay. 2011. Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse. New York: Basic Books. [Available as audio book from Audible.com, etc. Also highly readable, with a particular interest in the mentality of the crusaders.]
Runciman, Stephen. 1951–1954. The History of the Crusades. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [The classic narrative; volume 1 is on the First Crusade.]
On medieval Latin in general.
Dinkova Bruun, Greti. 2011. “Medieval Latin.” In A Companion to the Latin Language, Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World, edited by James Clackson, 284–302. Chichester: Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Stotz, Peter. 1996–2004. Handbuch Zur Lateinischen Sprache Des Mittelalters. Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, 2. Abt., 5. T. Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck.
Strecker, Karl. 1957. Introduction to Medieval Latin. translated and revised by Rombert B. Palmer. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung.
Footnotes
1. Morris 66: “The acceptance of single authorship makes it virtually certain that Anon. was a clerk.”
2. Morris disagrees about this.