Katherine Allen Smith’s monograph, The Bible and Crusade Narrative in the Twelfth Century, proposes a new approach to an important body of medieval texts: chronicles of the First Crusade as well as epistolary and homiletic sources having to do with the First Crusade. This new approach--augured by a small series of works that came out since 2000, which Smith summarizes in the Introduction--would allow us to read these crucial sources as their authors intended them to be read (or, since this is impossible, to approximate the experience the best we can). For decades, these chronicles have been a source of frustration for historians of crusades: despite being numerous and at times lengthy, they make the task of reconstructing what has actually happened during the First Crusade a Herculean one. This was not because the chroniclers of the First Crusade lacked the ability to compare and evaluate their sources, whether written or oral, but because they cared relatively little with accurately recording what we would designate as key developments and events that led to the establishment of the Crusader States. Smith’s book brings us a (giant) step closer to appreciating what these chroniclers envisaged their task to be. According to Smith, the clue is found in the “staggering amount of biblical material” that these chronicles contain (2). Smith shows that this amount is unprecedented among medieval works of history. However, it was not only the quantity, but the quality that mattered. Chronicles did not just find suitable references, but engaged with--often originally, sometimes even daringly--with centuries of exegetical traditions. They were able to do so, first and foremost, because of the “exegetical revival” of the second half of the eleventh century, in which many of the chroniclers (both before, during and after writing their chronicles) were active participants. In fact, as Smith argues convincingly, they were not chroniclers as such, but “monks, canons, and priests, exegetes, theologians, and hagiographers, scribes and liturgists, pilgrims and comrades-in-arms” (13). As they wrote the chronicles of the First Crusade, they made full use both of their training and of their experiences. Historians of crusades are lucky that Smith, the author of War and the Making of Medieval Monastic Culture (2013), who describes herself in the introduction as a “monastic historian trained by monastic historians” (vii), has turned her attention to these sources.
Chapter 1, “History and Biblical Exegesis in the Latin West,” establishes the importance of biblical exegesis around the time of the First Crusade, which, among other things, led to an increased attention being paid to the historical meaning of sacred texts. Thus, for medieval thinkers of this period, theology, biblical exegesis and history were largely inseparable. However, not all historical events were of equal importance. For example, the chroniclers who wrote about both the Norman Conquest of 1066 and the First Crusade, did not treat the two events in the same way. They chose “a biblical mode” to narrate the First Crusade, but consciously rejected this possibility when it came to the Norman Conquest (44).
Chapter 2, “The Bible in the Chronicles of the First Crusade,” presents the results of Smith’s “quantitative approach” to the sources, which allowed her to identify major trends in the use of biblical references and allusions. The chapter identifies a number of fascinating trends (as well as no less fascinating “exegetical creativity” of individual authors). To cite just one example, the quantitative approach demonstrates that the three second-generation chroniclers of Benedictine background (Guibert of Nogent, Baldric of Bourgueil and Robert of Rheims) had a distinct preference for references to the Old Testament (64%) as compared to the New Testament (36%). The contrasts with the rest of the chroniclers, such as Peter Tudebode, who only referred to the Old Testament 41% of the time. Thus, what Jonathan Riley-Smith had identified as the three Benedictines’ “theological refinement” was actually “an attempt to redirect the exegetical conversation” (57).
Chapter 3, “Into the Promised Land,” deals with the importance of “biblical geography” for the chroniclers of the First Crusade, who often look at “scripturally oriented pilgrimage literature” for inspiration. The chronicles and the itineraries have one important aspect in common: “a similar attitude towards time” (108). On the pages of the chronicles, crusaders become biblical Israelites and Muslims are transformed into biblical polytheists. Simultaneously, the texts engaged in anti-Jewish polemic and argued that the First Crusade furnished “unprecedented proof of the truth of their own faith” (150).
Chapter 4 focuses on the “tale of cities,” Jerusalem and Babylon, which Augustine labelled, respectively, embodiments of “the vision of peace” and of “confusion.” Smith shows how the chronicles of the First Crusade “actualize” this tale (156). The first part of the chapter develops Jonathan Riley-Smith’s argument that the notion of “caritas” (love for God and one’s neighbor) was central within crusader rhetoric. The chroniclers claimed that the “ultimate sign” of crusaders’ “caritas” was their self-imposed exile and relied on the passage from Matthew 29:19 (“every one that hath left houses or brethren or sister or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my name’s sake”...) to elaborate this point (167). The second part of the chapter addresses the fact that the chronicles called Fatimid Egypt “Babylon.” As Smith shows, this is not a mere shorthand, but a conscious decision to present the First Crusade as continuation of an age-old struggle. The third part of the chapter discusses the importance of references to Christ’s cleansing of the Temple in narratives of crusaders’ conquest of Jerusalem. Here and throughout the book, Smith masterfully leads the reader through the history of exegesis of this key biblical passage, so that they can fully appreciate chroniclers’ originality.
This review cannot give justice to the richness of this volume and to its promise as a spring-board for future research. Many of the topics that Smith addresses, which currently get a sub-section in a chapter, deserve individual articles. I am eagerly awaiting the studies that will follow in the wake of this monograph both dealing with the same body of texts (I am sure that many will find the Appendix with a list of biblical references in the sources invaluable), but also with others, having to do both with later crusades and with other theaters of crusading warfare. Until relatively recently, there was a strong temptation for scholars to treat references to the Bible in the chronicles of the First Crusade as “window dressing” (10). This volume will make it impossible for anyone to continue doing so in the future.