Author of the Gesta Tancredi, a rhetorically sophisticated Latin account of the First Crusade (1096-1099) and the early years of Frankish Outremer, in prose with interspersed sections of verse (Lat. prosimetrum).
The Gesta Tancredi was composed between 1112 and 1118 and dedicated to Radulph’s former teacher, Arnulf of Chocques, then Latin patriarch of Jerusalem (d. 1118). It survived in a single twelfth-century manuscript (MS Bruxelles, Bibliotheque royale Albert ler, 5373) that was hardly known during the Middle Ages. Radulph was probably born around 1080. Since he served in the entourages of Bohemund I of Antioch (1107) and Tancred (1108) in Epiros and Syria and mainly relied on information supplied by them, the Gesta appears to be an appraisal of the Norman part in the events from 1099 to 1108.
The work shows a certain distance to the more popular histories of the First Crusade, of which Radulph may have known the Gesta Francorum as well as a first redaction of the Historia Hierosolymitana of Fulcher of Chartres. The inserted poems concerning the fighting at Dorylaion, Antioch, and Jerusalem introduce the Normans and their ambitious leaders rather like the heroes of classical epic.
-Peter Orth
Bibliography
Boehm, Laetitia, “Die Gesta Tancredi des Radulph von Caen: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichtsschreibung der Normannen um 1100,” Historisches Jahrbuch 75 (1956), 47-72.
Elm, Kaspar, “O Beatas idus acprae ceteris gloriosas!
Darstellung und Deutung der Eroberung Jerusalems 1099
In den Gesta Tancredi des Raoul von Caen,” in Es hatsich viel ereignet, Gutes wie Boses: Lateinische Geschichtsschreibung der Spat - und Nachantike, ed. Gabriele Thome and Jens Holzhausen (Munchen: Saur, 2001), pp. 152-178.
“Gesta Tancredi in expeditione Hierosolymitana... auctore Radulfo Cadomensi,” in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens Occidentaux, 5 vols. (Paris: Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1844-1895), 3:587-716.
The Gesta Tancredi of Ralph of Caen: A History of the
Normans on the First Crusade, trans. Bernard S. Bachrach and David S. Bachrach (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005).
Glaesener, H., “Raoul de Caen, historien et ecrivain,” Revue d’histoire ecclesiastique 46 (1951), 5-21.
Pabst, Bernhard, Prosimetrum: Tradition und Wandel einer Literaturform zwischen Spatantike und Spatmittelalter (Koln: Bohlau, 1994).
Payen, Jean-Charles, “L’image du grec dans la chronique normande: Sur un passage de Raoul de Caen,” in Images etsignes de l’Orient dans l’Occident medieval (Aix-en-Provence: CUERMA, 1982), pp. 267-280.
World History
