Robert the Monk and the Council of Clermont

Robert of Reims, also known as Robert the Monk, was one of the Benedictine brethren at the monastery of St-Rémi in Reims. He was the author of an influential history of the First Crusade. Robert's narrative, which Christopher Tyerman judges 'heavily Francocentric' was based on the Gesta Francorum, and seems to have been the most widely read of the various accounts of the crusade that circulated in the decades following the capture of Jerusalem. The section most often quoted from Robert's account is the rendition of the speech of Urban II at Clermont, which officially set the expedition in motion.

Few biographical details are known concerning Robert. Tyerman calls him a 'failed abbot and popular historian', writing some time before 1108. In his preamble to his history, Robert stated that Bernard, his abbot, had called him to set down his account of the campaign. Bernard had obtained a history of the crusade, which was deemed unsatisfactory on various levels. This manuscript was evidently the Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, an Latin account written in around 1101 by an unnamed crusader close to Bohemond of Taranto. It seems Robert's superior considered the Gesta Francorum to be flawed in its composition and incomplete in its scope, failing, for example, to fully cover the Council of Clermont, which (from an ecclesiastical perspective) was a defining moment. Robert stated that he was personally present at the famous council.

Robert considered the capture of the Jerusalem to be the most marvellous happening since the resurrection of Christ. Part of his purpose in writing seems to have been to show the significance of the Council of Clermont as the launch pad for the venture. He began his account with the council. He did not mention how Jerusalem was lost to the Muslims in the first place, but reported Pope Urban's stories of Turkish outrages- their slaughtering and torturing Eastern Christians and (what seemed even more offensive against the sensibilities of the day) profaning altars. Robert's account of Urban's speech is the most inflammatory of the versions that survive, and may be a distortion. However it is easy to imagine how these wild allegations of Turkish crimes instilled in the audience a sense of collective injury as Christians and a desire for vengeance.

Robert had Urban appealing to the pride of the Frankish warrior caste, portraying them as a new chosen people, and praising their glory in arms and greatness of spirit. He also had the Pope painting an enticing picture of the Holy Land, full of riches, flowing with milk and honey, and ripe for the taking. Another part of Robert's account of the address concentrates on the allure of Jerusalem, the Holy City. Jerusalem is personified almost as a damsel in distress, who 'begs and craves to be fee, and prays endlessly for you to come to her aid'. The message thus appealed to the audience on a number of levels- to their vengefulness, piety, vanity, covetousness, chivalrous impulses and sense of racial manifest destiny. No wonder, as Robert reported, they were moved to shouts of 'God wills it!'