Sorry, yesterday's post was supposed to be about Raymond of Toulouse, but I got sidetracked explaining the background. Remember all that stuff I said about second sons? Yeah, Raymond was the odd one of the bunch because he wasn't. He had already established himself as a count and duke in southern France and was by this point middle-aged. Although later on it would be acceptable in 1095 it was odd for someone in his position to leave for the Holy Land; second sons were willing to go because they had nothing to lose. If you do suddenly leave for years at a time, you have to appoint a deputy who may or may not keep your domain in line. Although the wife could be relied often for administrative purposes, she wasn't effective when it came to waging war. The king's power wasn't really that great yet, and if two neighboring barons wanted to war with each other, there was really little the "central" authority could do stop them. When crusading became a common enterprise, the church tried to lay down rules that you couldn't just invade some land whose lord was off fighting infidel, but that often was ignored. Remember the story of Robin Hood who fought bad King John and tried to save King Richard? That's because Richard was captured on his way back home from the Third Crusade and was held prisoner until England paid a ransom.

So you have to wonder what was going on in Raymond's head. Perhaps he did experience the religious fervor of the time and felt his duty to bring Jerusalem back to Christendom. Being from southern France, he was heavily involved in Spain's Reconquista and was one of the few leaders who had actually laid eyes on a Muslim before. Or maybe he was thinking of greater glory in the Levant; Raymond never returned to France and carved out a principality for himself there.

I was talking with my medieval professor about the differences between medieval and modern history, and there's just simply too much information the closer you get to us now for obvious reasons. But that means for a historian it's harder to see the big picture because you're inundated with this deluge of information. People become experts on just one battle or one conference because there's only so much the human brain can sort through.

Conversely though in the Middle Ages it's harder to get a sense of the individuals due to a paucity of sources, which usually are just one monk who probably has never let his monastery since his parents put him in there at age eight. Thankfully in the First Crusade we have a lot of first-hand accounts, but many of them were from a lord's "personal historians," who would just write great deeds their patron did instead of giving a balanced view. Raymond's unusual because he didn't do that, so everything about him is from people who may be hostile because he rubbed up against the other big figures in the story.

Consequently you have to read between the lines to get a grip on his personality, motivations, etc. The fact that the Muslims and Jews of Jerusalem fled to hide under his banner is telling; the impression people got from his reputation is that he would be honorable, was not a religious zealot, and was able to keep his men in line; Tancred of Toranto promised to protect people as well, but was incapable of preventing his own men from killing them all. It's kinda what historians live off of because this is just my own personal interpretation and I can't prove any of that shit. And of course some other person will say something else, and we'll spend the next forty years debating about it.