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3 - “The Arts of Guiscard”: Trickery and Deceit in the Norman Conquests of Southern Italy and Outremer, 1000–1120

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2020

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Summary

The title of this chapter is taken from Ralph of Caen's spurious account of how Tancred, nephew of Bohemond of Taranto, evicted Raymond of Saint-Gilles's men from the citadel of Antioch after the capture of the city from the Turks during the First Crusade in 1098:

So when these things were being done, discord stirred up the servants of Tancred and Raymond; soon it rose from the servants to their lords. Tancred barely, oh barely, restrained his passions, so that he would not appease his anger with the slaughter of the Provençals. But reason came to him, that he should forbid any Christian blood to be spilled: better, he advised himself, to have recourse to the arts of Guiscard, by which that glorious man became known to the whole world.

Wearing swords under their cloaks, Tancred and his men entered the citadel under a pretence of peace (the guards being unaware of the hostility that had arisen between them and their lord) and drove the guards out.

This story is almost certainly an invention. At best, it is a confused version of events recorded by other chroniclers of the First Crusade. The anonymous author of the Gesta Francorum said that the Turkish commander of the citadel received Raymond's banner as a token of surrender following the crusaders’ victory over Karbughā, the Turkish ruler of Mosul, on 28 June 1098, only to exchange it for Bohemond's when he returned to the city that same day. Raymond of Aguilers, whom one would have expected to have recorded such an outrage against his patron, Raymond of Saint-Gilles, simply said:

[Bohemond] violently expelled the duke's [Godfrey of Bouillon] men, as well as those of the count of Flanders and the count of Saint-Gilles, saying that he had sworn to the Turk who handed over the city that he alone would possess it.

Alternatively, Ralph of Caen may have invented the whole story in order to give Tancred, the subject of his chronicle, a more prominent role in the narrative. Yet the very fact that he chose to invent a story that emphasised Tancred's cunning and mastery of deceit, what he termed artes Wiscardi, illustrates the high regard in which the Norman aristocracy held these quali-ties. Such seemingly underhand behaviour was worthy of memorialisation, even if it never actually happened.

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Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2020

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