Susan B. Edgington and Steven J. Biddlecombe
Baldric of Bourgueil, “History of the Jerusalemites”: A Translation of the Historia Ierosolimitana
(Boydell & Brewer, 2020) 224 pp. $99.00
Baldric of Bourgueil (alternatively, Baldric of Dol, d. 1130) was a writer of humble agrarian origin who nonetheless rose to considerable station in the continental medieval church. Born in 1046, he eventually became the abbot of Saint-Pierre-de-Bourgueil and, in 1107, the bishop of Dol-de-Bretagne. He was an avid writer and poet who corresponded with such figures as Adela, the daughter of William the Conqueror, and his most famous work, Historia Ierosolimitana, is an important western source for the First Crusade. The present translation by Susan Edgington represents the first attempt to render Baldric’s crusade history into the English language. Edgington is an esteemed historian who is well known in crusading history circles; in addition to her impressive record of scholarship, she also translated another major account of the First Crusade, that penned by Albert of Aachen. [1] Her translation here is fluid and eminently readable; these qualities, in combination with Baldric’s assertive storytelling style and flourishes, make this an excellent book for undergraduates and anyone wishing to acquaint themselves with crusading literature.
Baldric’s history sits at around 40,000 words of Latin prose and is organized via a short prologue and four books. The first book begins with the generation of the crusade and ends with the capture of Nicaea in June 1097. Book two covers the Battle of Dorylaeum to the capture of Antioch in June 1098. The third book then picks up with the crusaders caught inside Antioch as Kerbogha arrives, details their successful breakout and resumption of march towards Jerusalem, and ends with infighting among the Christian leaders and the departure of Bohemond of Taranto. Finally, book four narrates events leading up to the siege of Jerusalem in 1099, its capture in July, and ends abruptly after the victory at Ascalon in August, wherein Baldric writes, “And so, with our promise fulfilled, we are at rest” (157). In addition to the main text, Edgington has provided two appendices. The first is a set of interpolations found in one manuscript of Baldric’s history, Paris BNF Latin 513, although the reader is not told its importance. Appendix 2 is a useful list of the people and places mentioned in Baldric’s text. Some of the latter’s entries are extensive. Buttressed with reading suggestions, they can be usefully consulted alongside other similar prosopographical studies. Five helpful black-and-white maps precede the introduction.
Baldric was not a participant in the First Crusade and is therefore not counted among the eyewitness sources so treasured by historians. He did, however, witness Pope Urban II’s 1095 sermon at the Council of Clermont—for which he provides one of the extant versions—and was thus clearly in the know. He openly admits his lack of proximity and chief source in the prologue:
“I did not merit playing a part in this blessed army, nor have I told things that I saw, but some compiler, I do not know who as his name has been suppressed, had published a little book on this topic, excessively rustic; he had woven a true tale, nevertheless, but because of the unsophisticated style of the book his noble material became worthless, and its uneducated and unpolished perusal immediately put more simple readers off it (40).”
His base text was the anonymous Gesta Francorum, which he therefore sought to elucidate with a finer style and finesse, and for the spiritual profit of a Christian audience. Baldric supplemented his source with quotations from ancient, patristic, and Biblical texts and, likely, anecdotes and details garnered from interviews of crusade veterans. His work appears to have had a successful reception: consulted by notable scholars in later centuries, it has survived in 25 extant manuscripts.
One of the distinctive features of Baldric’s history is his periodic insertion of speeches from crusade leaders. The footnotes continually remind the reader that such orations should not be taken literally; nonetheless, the speeches do reveal certain martial sensibilities that accord well with how the campaign progressed. For example, near Adrianople (modern-day Edirne, Turkey), Bohemond warns his soldiers about pillaging and reminds his nobles to match their horses’ rate of speed to that of the infantry (58). Such details naturally beg the question of Baldric’s own military acumen. In the introduction to Edgington’s translation, Steven J. Biddlecombe, a noted expert on Baldric, points to his quotations from ancient texts (including Lucan, Virgil, and Sallust, whose works were available in the Bourgueil abbey library) and argues he was informed and inspired by their marital content (6; 65 n. 69; 154 n. 48). Baldric’s relative expertise might have been pursued further still. Military historians have been actively interrogating the purported reliance of clerics on ancient war narratives and the degree to which contemporary events were filtered through them—with answers not being as simple as once presumed. [2]
This leads us into a subject germane to readers of deremilitari.org: the oft-heard complaint among scholars of medieval warfare that few historians of the Crusades seem interested in the actual fighting during the Crusades. Said fighting often seems incidental in the modern literature, despite its overwhelming presence in the pages of narrative sources. Those sympathetic to this view will find little comfort in either Biddlecombe’s introduction or the footnotes accompanying Edgington’s translation and appendices. There is a striking absence of citations to military studies in the discursive footnotes. Let me qualify this critique in precise terms: on those occasions when Edgington and/or Biddlecombe (see below) themselves identify unique martial aspects of Baldric’s text and feel it necessary to comment, they generally do so without reference to pertinent scholarship.
There are numerous occurrences of this phenomenon. To identify a few: medieval customs for spoilage and the sacking of cities (70 n. 86); the need for horse and foot to advance as one (72 n. 3); “de-knighting” and the symbolic role of arms and mounts for knights (78 n. 13); the nuances of crusader diplomacy (92 n. 42); and tactics for siege cessation (139 n. 10). For Baldric’s entire narration of the sieges of Antioch and Jerusalem there is nary a single citation to John France’s book Victory in the East, despite its inclusion in the bibliography. [3] Similarly, France’s article on Tatikios, the Byzantine commander who deserted the crusaders at Antioch, is only cited in Appendix 2, not in the footnote directly addressing Baldric’s retelling of this event (84 n. 29; 186). [4] At the siege of Jerusalem, it is well known that the crusaders lacked sufficient materiel for their operations. Baldric put a speech into the mouths of the crusaders leaders, in which they complain aloud about the lack of supplies and water, delays in tempo, insufficient numbers, lack of siege equipment, and the stoutness of defenses and defenders. They bandy about solutions as well, including the possibility of taking needed wood for ladders and catapults from the timbers of Christian churches. The accompanying note states that Baldric’s account is unique but offers neither commentary on the myriad tactical and operational problems raised (144 n. 26) nor reference to any standard works on siege warfare.
I did find two counter examples. A note comments on Baldric’s illogical discussion of Greek Fire and cites one of John Haldon’s essays on the subject (130 n. 65), and there is a reference to Edgington’s own article on the use of carrier pigeons (171 n. 45), but these are exceptions to the pattern. [5] Collectively, the lack of recourse to pertinent scholarship seems like a missed opportunity. Comparisons and contrasts between the idyllic notions of medieval clerics with the realities of practiced warfare have been a fertile area of inquiry for military historians, and some guidance would help ambitious readers further interrogate Baldric’s flourishes.
There are other issues that may bedevil advanced readers, and these stem from Biddlecombe’s introduction. In a sense, this is a companion text. In 2014, Biddlecombe produced a critical Latin edition of Baldric’s history (also published by Boydell); Edgington’s translation is based on that edition, for which Biddlecombe himself wrote the introduction. [6] His 2020 introduction occupies the first thirty-six pages of the book and covers a number of relevant topics: in order, “Baldric’s Life and Career,” “The French Historians of the First Crusade,” and “Manuscript Transmission and Reception,” with each subdivided into more discrete areas. It is rather shorter and less satisfying than the introduction to his own 2014 edition, which clocks in at over one hundred pages and covers these and other topics in far more detail. In penning two introductions to the same text, it is perhaps unavoidable that the material overlaps and, in places, is essentially copied from one to the other. For example, he noted the following in 2014 about Baldric’s early biography:
“However, combined with other evidence, it suggests that Baldric’s background was relatively poor, that he came from rural farming and had no significant family connections. [Footnote 34]: He is a member therefore of the vague class of médiocres that the sources occasionally register (ivx).”
Then, in his introduction of Edgington’s translation:
“Combined with other evidence, it suggests that Baldric’s background was relatively poor, that he came from rural farming stock and had no significant noble connections. [Footnote 7]: He is a member therefore of the vague class of médiocres that the sources occasionally register (3).”
In another place, Biddlecombe repeats the same advice given by Peter the Venerable: that those who “cannot take up the plough” should instead “take up the pen” (2014: xi; 2020: 6). And so on. Although the ordering of subheadings in each respective introduction is different, in its broad strokes the content preceding Edgington’s translation is either largely the same or at least quite derivative from the Latin edition. Given a choice, the 2014 introduction is to be preferred by scholars in a general sense, especially for those interested in the manuscript tradition, for which it contains far greater detail than what is found here.
Such difficulties arise, I suspect, from having the editor of a critical text introduce someone else’s translation of it, which I imagine is a rare occurrence indeed. It provokes questions concerning the apparatus as well. Footnotes abound throughout and are exceedingly helpful in places. Some draw contrasts with other first-generation crusade histories, others cross-reference passages from Scripture and other texts, and still more speculate on—with sound reasoning—Baldric’s authorial intent. These notes are new and are not carried over from Biddlecombe’s 2014 edition, whose apparatus is exclusively concerned with the Latin. The problem is that one cannot tell who wrote them: Edgington, Biddlecombe, or both? Such is declared neither in “A Note on the Translation” (ix) nor anywhere else.
There is a final synergy issue that relates to the academic audience. Biddlecombe’s 2014 edition does not include chapter markings, so Edgington has endeavored to instead provide in-text, Arabic numeral references to it in her translation. This seems a sensible solution. But she also includes in-text Roman numerals marking the divisions contained in the older edition of Baldric in volume four of Recueil des historiens des croisades (1879). Again, this is helpful but, I think, may be deleterious to sales. Given the cost of each Boydell volume, some historians may simply utilize Edgington’s translation in tandem with the Recueil (whose full text is freely-available online) and pass on buying Biddlecombe’s edition entirely. This would be a pity, for the Recueil editor only worked from seven manuscripts of Baldric’s text, whereas Biddlecombe’s edition consults far more and is therefore to be preferred (29).
These critiques aside, Edgington’s translation of Baldric’s Historia Ierosolimitana will be a boon to anyone studying the First Crusade. Undergraduates and casual readers will be fully satisfied by it. Readers at the graduate level and above, however, will want to consult two books: Biddlecombe’s 2014 edition for the Latin and its superior introduction to Baldric’s life and work, Edgington’s 2020 translation for its ease of access, and both for their useful appendices. This of course increases the price point (or the InterLibrary Loan wait times) and may give pause to enterprising readers. To solve this conundrum, Boydell might consider either selling the two books together in a discounted package or, perhaps, producing a single-volume, facing-page edition with merged introductions and appendices.
John D. Hosler
Command and General Staff College
[1] Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana: History of the Journey to Jerusalem, ed. and trans. Susan B. Edgington (Oxford, 2007).
[2] See, for example, the debate in two volumes of De Re Militari’s Journal of Medieval Military History (JMMH): Richard Abels and Stephen Morillo, “A Lying Legacy? A Preliminary Discussion of Images of Antiquity and Altered Reality in Medieval Military History,” JMMH 3 (2005): 1-13; and Bernard S. Bachrach, “‘A Lying Legacy’ Revisited: the Abels-Morillo Defense of Discontinuity,” JMMH 5 (2007): 153-93.
[3] John France, Victory in the East: a Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge, 1994).
[4] John France, “The Departure of Tatikios from the Crusader Army,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 44 (1971): 137-47.
[5] John F. Haldon, “‘Greek Fire’ Revisited: Recent and Current Research,” in Byzantine Style, Religion and Civilization: in Honour of Sir Steven Runciman, ed. Elizabeth M. Jeffreys (Cambridge, 2006), 29-325; Susan B. Edgington, “The Doves of War: the Part Played by Carrier Pigeons in the Crusades,” in Autour de la Première Croisade, ed. Michel Balard (Paris, 1996), 167-75.
[6] Steven J. Biddlecombe, The Historia Ierosolimitana of Baldric of Bourgueil (The Boydell Press, 2014).
