Fulcher of Chartres
FULCHER OF CHARTRES
Crusade chronicler; b. c. 1059; d. c. 1127. Fulcher was raised at Chartres and was ordained before 1096. In 1095 he was present at the Council of Clermont when Pope urban ii proclaimed the First Crusade (see crusades). Fulcher's description of the Council and of the Pope's proclamation of the Crusade is an important eyewitness account. Fulcher joined the Crusade as chaplain to Count Stephen of Blois and Chartres. In 1097 Fulcher joined the retinue of another crusading prince, baldwin i, who later became Count of Edessa and King of Jerusalem. He accompanied Baldwin to Jerusalem when he assumed the throne of the Latin Kingdom on Nov. 9, 1100 (see crusaders' states) and later appears as a royal chaplain and canon of the Holy Sepulcher. He may also have been appointed prior of Mt. Olivet. After the death of Baldwin I, Fulcher was also close to his successor, Baldwin II. Late in 1101 Fulcher began writing his Historia Hierosolymitana, on which he worked intermittently for more than a quarter of a century. Fulcher's account remains a major and unusually reliable source for the history of the First Crusade and of the Latin settlements in the Holy Land.
Bibliography: fulcher of chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, ed. h. hagenmeyer (Heidelberg 1913); Chronicle of the First Crusade, tr. m. e. mcginty (Philadelphia 1941), Bk. I of the Historia. d. c. munro, "A Crusader," Speculum 7 (1932) 321–335.
[j. a. brundage]