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
Footnotes
1. Morris 66: “The acceptance of single authorship makes it virtually certain that Anon. was a clerk.”
2. Morris disagrees about this.