Description

The Gesta Francorum Ierusalem expugnantium is a history of the First Crusade and the first years of Latin rule in the kingdom of Jerusalem (1095-1106) written before 1120, probably in Flanders. The anonymous author acknowledged that he had based his work on that of Fulcher of Chartres who was a participant in the crusade and the events that followed and who despatched an early version of his Historia Ierosolimitana to northern Europe in 1107. This debt to Fulcher, who went on to produce a longer Historia that ended in 1127, has frequently led later historians to undervalue the Gesta Francorum, although it is clear from a closer reading of it that the writer worked intelligently to abridge his source in a way that focused closely on the events and characters that would be of most interest to his local readership. He also augmented his main source where he felt it was lacking by including a much fuller description of the city of Jerusalem and an account of the siege of Jerusalem that was probably written by an eyewitness. The editors' introduction identifies the passages where the writer can be shown to have used Fulcher of Chartres's 1107 text, now lost, and distinguishes between those events where Fulcher was a participant and wrote from first-hand experience and others where he had been absent and so necessarily drew on other writers to describe them.

The nineteenth-century edition of the Gesta Francorum was based on only four manuscripts; the present edition is based on twenty-eight, several of them previously unknown. These are described and their relationships established so that the Latin edition is authoritatively based on the earliest and best. It is complemented by an accurate and engaging English translation--the first in any modern language--and historical notes.