Language:
English
Year of publication:
2022
Titel der Quelle:
Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale
Angaben zur Quelle:
65 (2022) 259-274
Keywords:
Josephus, Flavius Appreciation
;
History
;
Foucher de Chartres,
;
Crusades Historiography First, 1096-1099
;
Jerusalem (Israel) History 1099-1244, Latin Kingdom, Crusaders
;
Caesarea (Israel) Church history
Abstract:
The article focuses on two descriptions by Fulcher of Chartres, the author of the Historia Hierosolymitana, which concern the capture of the cities of Jerusalem (15 July 1099) and Caesarea (17 May 1101), and which have not been compared in detail in contemporary historiography and can complement the considerations on Fulcher’s work and his intellectual formation. The research supports the view that Fulcher of Chartres used, on the one hand, a motif from the Bellum Iudaicum of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, and on the other hand, his own experiences and observations based on his participation in the capture of Caesarea (17 May 1101) and the reading of other sources, such as Gesta Francorum. This is indicated by the fact that Fulcher did not participate in the capture of Jerusalem, so he must have relied on other sources ; moreover, the author’s representation coincides with the work of Flavius Josephus with regard to the place and content of the action, as well as terms of the vocabulary used, such as the rare verb transglutire, which still appears in the Historia Hierosolymitana only in the descriptions of the capture of Jerusalem and Caesarea. Thus, the classical formation of the chronicler plays an important role in the creation of the account of the capture of Jerusalem, by the virtue of which he repeatedly embellishes the accounts in the other pages of the work. From this perspective, the description of, among other things, the disembowelling of fallen enemies in the search of riches in captured Jerusalem by the Franks could be a literary invention of Fulcher’s, rather than an actual record of the Crusaders’ deed, although this cannot be ruled out with certainty.
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