A Latin source for the Second Crusade (1147-1149) written by an eyewitness to the capture of Lisbon in October 1147. Its author has been identified as Raol, an Anglo-Norman priest who wrote about the campaign to a fellow cleric, Osbert of Bawdsey (from Suffolk, England).
Lisbon was captured from the Muslims by King Afonso I Henriques of Portugal, with the assistance of a combined fleet of crusaders drawn from England, Flanders, and the Rhineland, in the course of a campaign conceived as an integral part of the Second Crusade; in the event, the capture of Lisbon was the crusade’s only unequivocal success. There is much of interest in Raol’s descriptions of the voyage and the siege, including details of siege warfare and diplomacy. Raol later added passages of sophisticated theological commentary, perhaps to explain why the Iberian expedition succeeded while the enterprise in the East failed.
-Susan B. Edgington
Bibliography
The Conquest of Lisbon, trans. Charles W. David, 2d ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).
Livermore, Harold, “The Conquest of Lisbon and Its Author,” Portuguese Studies 6 (1990), 1-16.
Phillips, Jonathan, “Ideas of Crusade and Holy War in De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi (The Conquest of Lisbon),” Studies in Church History 36 (2000), 123-141.
The Second Crusade: Scope and Consequences, ed. Martin Hoch and Jonathan Phillips (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001).
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