Poetry and History: Baudry of Bourgueil, the Architecture of Chivalry, and the First Crusade

The possible connections between crusade thought and the invention of chivalry have been often discussed but are far from settled. A definitive interpretation remains elusive, not least because the precise definition, the chronological development, the social impact, and the very existence of chivalry all remain vexed problems. At its most basic, chivalry was an ideology intended to limit and channel the violent behavior of the warrior class in the High Middle Ages, appealing to concepts of generosity, friendship, and romantic love. Evidence for its existence, if not its precise formulation, begins to appear in the historical record in the early twelfth century, which is to say shortly after the First Crusade (1096-99). One of the earliest theorists of chivalry was an eleventh/twelfth-century French poet named Baudry of Bourgueil. He also was one of the first chroniclers of the First Crusade. His crusade narrative, however, has received little attention because its information depends largely on an eyewitness source called the Gesta Francorum. But Baudry’s revisions to his source are as substantive as they are stylistic. This essay will examine the interplay of his poetic and historical thought in order to show how he used the story of the First Crusade to craft a sophisticated identity for warriors, one that lays the groundwork not only for later chivalric literature but also, through its advocacy of Classical ideals of social organization and hierarchy, for twelfth-century French state-building.