History of the Expedition to Jerusalem
A history of the First Crusade and of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem to 1127 by a priest who went east with the army and stayed. It opens with the council of Clermont and gives one of the versions of Urban II’s sermon.
Read the text at sourcebooks.fordham.edu ↗Latin text: Fulcheri Carnotensis Historia Hierosolymitana, edited by H. Hagenmeyer, 1913 (Internet Archive) ↗A. C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eye-Witnesses and Participants, 1921 (Internet Archive) ↗
Fulcher was a priest from Chartres who set out with the army in 1096 and says that he stored what he witnessed in his memory for the benefit of those who came after. A. C. Krey, introducing his translation, notes that Fulcher became chaplain to Baldwin of Boulogne in 1097 and was at Edessa during the sieges of Antioch and of Jerusalem, so that his account of the capture of the city in 1099 rests on what others told him; he came to Jerusalem later that year and afterwards lived there.
His account of Clermont was written after the crusade had succeeded. His version of the pope’s sermon is plain beside the other three: reform of the clergy, the Truce of God, and then aid for the Christians of the East, with no mention of Jerusalem in the words he gives the pope.
Cited in
- 1095 to 1099, firm date