Historia belli sacri

"Historia de via Hierosolymis" redirects here. Not to be confused with Historia de via Hierosolymitana.

The Historia belli sacri,[a] also called the Historia de via Hierosolymis[b][1] or Historia peregrinorum,[c][2] is a chronicle of the First Crusade and the early years of the Crusader states written by an anonymous monk of the Abbey of Montecassino. It covers the years 1095–1131 and must have been mostly compiled around 1130.[1][3] It is sometimes called the "Monte Cassino Chronicle" for simplicity.[4]

The Historia belli sacri is based in large part on the equally anonymous Gesta Francorum and also incorporating fragments from the Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, the Gesta Tancredi and other unknown texts.[5] Although heavily reliant on the Gesta Francorum, it is an important source for the Italo-Norman crusaders.[6] Like the histories of Robert the Monk and Guibert of Nogent's Dei gesta per Francos, both of which were used as sources by its anonymous author, the Historia belli sacri is "a serious and careful effort to rework the Gesta story and add to it significant information which is not found in any other source."[7] It was, after all, "written in an age when there were still survivors of the First Crusade."[8]

There is a complete English translation.[9]


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  1. ^ a b Jerzy Kaliszuk, "Historia de via Hierosolymis", in Graeme Dunphy and Cristian Bratu (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (Brill, online 2016), retrieved 12 January 2020.
  2. ^ More fully, Historia peregrinorum euntium Jerusolymam ad liberandum Sanctum Sepulcrum de potestate ethnicorum, as published in the Recueil des historiens des croisades, Occ. 3:165–229 (1866), which means "History of the pilgrims going to Jerusalem to liberate the Holy Sepulchre from the power of the pagans".
  3. ^ Or "towards the year 1130", as in John France, "The Use of the Anonymous Gesta Francorum in the Early Twelfth-Century Sources for the First Crusade," in Alan V. Murray, ed., From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and Crusader Societies, 1095–1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 29–42.
  4. ^ Nirmal Dass (ed.), The Deeds of the Franks and Other Jerusalem-Bound Pilgrims: The Earliest Chronicle of the First Crusades (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), p. 119.
  5. ^ John France, "Note sur le manuscrit 6041 A du fonds latin de la Bibliothèque nationale: un nouveau fragment d'un manuscrit de l'Historia Belli Sacri", Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes 126:2 (1968), 413–16.
  6. ^ John France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge: 1994), 379; see also pp. 163, 166, 244–45.
  7. ^ France (1998), 37.
  8. ^ France (1998), 38–39.
  9. ^ The Road to Antioch and Jerusalem: The Crusader Pilgrimage of the Monte Cassino Chronicle, translated by Francesca Petrizzo (Routledge, 2024).