. This group of chansons de geste about the First and Third Crusades dates from the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. It is usually divided into two parts, a First Crusade and a Second Crusade Cycle; the poems of the second cycle are a partly revised, extended version of the first. (A state intermediate between the two cycles also has been preserved.) The texts are all in twelve-syllable rhymed laisses; they vary from about 2,000 lines to 10,000 and more. In its most developed form, the cycle counts some 60,000 lines. It has come under extensive critical scrutiny only recently.
Thirteen separate poems, or branches, are usually counted in the First Crusade Cycle. Their chronological order is roughly as follows: Chanson d’Antioche (late 12th c.); Chanson de Jerusalem, Chétifs, Chevalier au Cygne, Enfances Godefroi de Bouillon, Naissance du chevalier au Cygne (Les Enfants-Cygnes) (all probably early 13th c.); Fin d’Elyas, Retour de Cornumaran (13th c.); and the continuations of the Chanson de Jérusalem: Chrétienté [i.e., conversion of] Corbaran, Prise d’Acre, Mort Godefroi, Chanson des rois Baudouin, and the “Second Continuation,” which has several forms and brings the story of the Crusades down to the time of Saladin; the latter branches are known in varying versions from the late 13th or early 14th century. There are also two abbreviated prose versions of parts of the First Crusade Cycle, one from the late 13th century and one from the 15th. The latter has been published as the Geste du Chevalier au Cygne.
The Second Crusade Cycle, elaborated during the first half of the 14th century, includes a vast reworking of the narrative material of the first cycle (edited as the Chevalier au Cygne et Godefroid de Bouillon, 35,180 lines, two versions) and two loosely attached continuations, Baudouin de Sebourc (25,778 lines) and the Bâtard de Bouillon (6,546 lines).
The development of the First Crusade Cycle followed the usual rules for the extension and reworking of epic material. The oldest poem, Antioche, describes the preparations for the First Crusade, the crusaders’ departure, their stay in Constantinople, and the successful campaign against the city of Antioch. This poem inspired works that stretch both forward and backward in narrative time, treating the subsequent capture of the Holy City (Chanson de Jérusalem) and then evoking both the ancestors and descendants of Godefroi de Bouillon (a sequence observed also in the growth of the Guillaume d’Orange Cycle). Hence, the oldest poems in the cycle as we have it are those that actually recount events of the First Crusade, the capture of Antioch and of Jerusalem. On the other hand, later works in the cycle, the group that tells the Swan Knight story, describe the rise of the house of Bouillon through the adventures of the legendary Elyas and the other Swan Children, victims of an evil stepmother who steals the magical chains that allow them to change in and out of human shape. Elyas, accompanied by a brother in bird form, saves the Countess of Boulogne from death, marries her, and after engendering the lineage of Godefroi and the Latin kings of Jerusalem, himself falls victim to a taboo deriving from folklore: he disappears when his wife is unable to refrain from asking him the fatal question of his origins.
Other prologues to the Antioche-Jérusalem core tell the story of the youthful Godefroi’s exploits, which prefigure his role as first king of Jerusalem (a historically inaccurate title). The most recent poems of the First Crusade Cycle, on the other hand, are the “Jerusalem Continuations,” which carry the Crusade story on beyond the crucial campaigns of the First Crusade. In the earliest continuations, Godefroi captures the city of Acre (Saint-Jean d’Acre, Akka); the great Saracen leader Corbaran (whose name recalls that of the emir Kerbogha) converts to Christianity; and Godefroi is poisoned by a jealous cleric. The later continuations are more closely tied to history, seeming at some points to derive from the text known as the Chronique d’Ernoul. They pay little attention to the Second Crusade but show an early concern with the downfall of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem and its associated states, a concern that was to be developed at some length in the 14th-century Second Crusade Cycle.
The poem of the Chétifs (“captives”), the age and origins of which are debated, is heavily laced with folklore and oriental motifs; although it comes between Antioche and Jérusalem in the cyclical manuscripts, it is probably somewhat later in date. Recounting not the events of the Crusade but rather the adventures of Christian knights taken prisoner at the Battle of Civetot, it shares characteristics of the chansons d’aventures. The Crusade Cycle is thus a patchwork of relatively independent chansons, gathered more or less systematically into a single but far-from-seamless sequence, over several decades starting at the end of the 12th century. Earlier scholarship posited a historically accurate early version of the Chanson d’Antioche attributable to a participant in the Antioch campaign, called “Richard the Pilgrim.” In the absence of any positive evidence for Richard’s existence or that of his poem, it is preferable to consider the Crusade epics as the products of a later period. They reflect not actual experience but a mythical view of the Crusades expressed through techniques typical of the chansons de geste. While the known text of Antioche does contain some passages that are historically correct, thanks probably to the influence of the chronicles, it is clear that much of its narrative, and nearly all of the cyclical poems that derive from it, are based on literary motifs. The Crusade Cycle embodies a legendary view of Christian military and moral superiority, and of Godefroi de Bouillon and his family, that was current in northern Europe some time after the events.
The London and Turin manuscripts of the First Crusade Cycle preserve a lengthy set of continuations, the “Second Jerusalem Continuations,” that date from about the turn of the 14th century. Their content matches that of the earlier continuations in part, with numerous additions. These manuscripts offer a transitional state of the cycle. Much of their matter is preserved, in rewritten form, in the huge Chevalier au cygne et Godefroid de Bouillon, the core of the Second Crusade Cycle, which had attained its fully elaborated state by the middle of the century. It recounts the stories told in the First Crusade Cycle with often fanciful continuations. The independent poems Baudouin de Sebourc and the Bâtard de Bouillon, loosely associated with the Second Crusade Cycle, describe new, and often burlesque, adventures of knights of the lineage of Godefroi. A final “branch,” known only in a 15th-century prose version, is dedicated to a legendary biography of Saladin; there are indications that it continued the Crusade story down to the fall of Jerusalem and the extinction of the house of Bouillon in the East. There are parallels with William of Tyre and “Ernoul,” but most of the Second Crusade Cycle is a combination of common literary motifs.
The Crusade Cycle of chansons de geste embodied and transmitted a coherent myth of crusader character and action in a popular literary form. Its texts were copied, translated (most notably into Middle Dutch), and collected as late as the 16th century, and derivative prose versions were among the more frequently printed early French books. Its manipulations of history are highly revealing of attitudes toward the Crusades from the 12th century onward.
Mickel, Emanuel J., and Jan A.Nelson, eds. The Old French Crusade Cycle. 9 vols. University: University of Alabama Press, 1977–.
Bender, Karl-Heinz, and Hermann Kleber. Le premier cycle de la croisade. De Godefroy à Saladin: entre la chronique et le conte de fées. Heidelberg: Winter, 1986.
Cook, Robert Francis. “Chanson d’Antioche,” chanson de geste: le cycle de la croisade est-il épique? Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1980.
——, and Larry S.Crist. Le deuxième cycle de la croisade. Geneva: Droz, 1972.
Duparc-Quioc, Suzanne. Le cycle de la croisade. Paris: Champion, 1955.
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