There are quite a few literary and cinematic works about the First Crusade, and in most of them, beginning with the anonymous Gesta Francorum or Torquato Tasso’s famous epic poem The liberated Jerusalem (La Gerusalemme liberata), we find a curious figure who was one of its main leaders, the Norman Bohemond of Taranto. He was the most experienced military commander of that venture, so much so that he managed to be named Prince of Antioch and led a turbulent life that saw him marry the daughter of the King of France and attempt to overthrow the Byzantine emperor.
Tasso’s text, published in 1581 and inspired by the classics of Homer and Virgil as well as Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, tells the story of the campaign called by Pope Urban II in 1096 to free the Holy Places from Muslim rule, taking advantage of the call for help from Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, who was facing the Seljuk Turks. As is well known, a French clergyman named Peter of Amiens, also known as Peter the Hermit, failed in the first attempt at this, and an organized European army had to be mobilized to ultimately capture Jerusalem in 1099 and establish the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
In fact, Tasso does not reflect historical events but instead focuses on the romantic subplots of his protagonists, most of whom are fictional. However, there are exceptions, such as Godfrey of Bouillon, Tancred of Galilee, and Robert Guiscard. The latter, grandfather of the former, was also the father of Bohemond of Taranto, his firstborn, who was born in San Marco Argentano (a Calabrian town) in 1054, to Alberada of Buonalbergo, Duchess of Apulia. When Robert married her in 1051, he was a baron of Calabria.
A Norman knight (the Normans had allied with the Lombards a few decades earlier to seize the Byzantine provinces of southern Italy) who had worked as a mercenary with a small host, he succeeded his brother Humphrey as Count of Apulia. In 1058, he took advantage of his consanguinity with Alberada to repudiate her and marry his sister-in-law Sichelgaita, daughter of Guaimar IV, Prince of Salerno and Capua, as well as Duke of Gaeta and Amalfi, in what was a more advantageous marriage for him. But by then he already had two children: Emma (future mother of the aforementioned Tancred of Galilee) and Bohemond.
In reality, Bohemond was not his real name; it was Marco, after the place of his birth. His father gave him this nickname in reference to Behemoth, a gigantic beast mentioned in the Old Testament (specifically the Book of Job) and the Book of Enoch, because the child was very large. In his Historia Ecclesiastica, the English chronicler and monk Orderic Vitalis explains it as follows: “Marco was certainly named at baptism; but his father, having heard at a banquet the amusing story of the giant Buamundus, gave it to him in jest.” In fact, his own son once referred to him as magnus Boamundus, and Princess Anna Komnene, daughter of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I, who met him personally, highlighted his height in the description she left of him in her work The Alexiad:
Bohemond was, frankly, a being the likes of which had never been seen before, either in our land or in that of the barbarians, for he was a marvel to look at, and at the same time, he had a fearsome reputation. Allow me to detail the appearance of this barbarian. He was so tall that he stood about a cubit higher than the tallest man, narrow in the waist and hips, broad in the shoulders, with a deep chest and powerful arms. His body overall could not be described as too thin nor as fat; rather, it was perfectly proportioned, built according to the canons of Polykleitos.
As we were saying, Anna knew him because he was in Constantinople… as he had tried before in his youth, by force of arms: in 1080 Bohemond accompanied his father leading the Norman army that attacked the Byzantine Empire through Thessaly, defeated the Varangian Guard at Dyrrachium, and reached Larissa, although he ultimately had to retreat before the defense organized by Alexios I. Bohemond returned to Italy in search of financial support, but during his absence, the Norman generals switched sides, and Dyrrachium and Corfu were lost to a Venetian fleet. In 1084, father and son launched a new campaign and reclaimed the Greek island; however, an epidemic decimated the Norman ranks, and Bohemond, sick, was forced to leave.
Robert Guiscard was left in charge of the operations, but he died in Cephalonia in the summer of 1085, raising the issue of his succession: since he now had children with his other wife—no less than eight—the honor fell to the second son, Roger Borsa (the eldest, Matilda, could not inherit due to her gender and was married to the Count of Barcelona, Ramón Berenguer II), leaving Bohemond marginalized; especially since the Adriatic territories that would have been his were lost. What’s more, Sichelgaita tried to poison him to secure Roger’s inheritance—rumors said she had done the same with her husband—although in the end, they reached an agreement.
But there had been problems earlier. Although the army and the assembly of Norman barons confirmed Roger, Bohemond was not satisfied, allying himself with Jordan of Capua to take Oria and Otranto. To avoid a fratricidal war, the two half-brothers met at their father’s tomb and made a pact, with Bohemond keeping these conquests as well as Taranto (though he never took this title, added posthumously), Brindisi, and Gallipoli in exchange for recognizing Roger. The peace lasted only two years, after which they clashed again. This allowed his uncle Roger I of Sicily to increase his power, and worse still, it meant Bohemond could not attend Pope Urban II’s call for the First Crusade.
Finally, the Pope’s mediation ended the dispute, giving Bohemund Taranto in exchange for renouncing Apulia, though he never truly resigned himself; not in vain did the chronicler Romualdo Guarna, archbishop of Salerno, say that he always sought the impossible. War continued to be part of his daily life, and in 1097, while repressing the Amalfi rebellion alongside his uncle, he came into contact with a group of Crusaders traveling to Constantinople. Whether because the cause resonated deeply with him or because he saw an opportunity to gain a principality in the Middle East (he took the Cross solely to conquer and pillage Byzantine lands, wrote the Norman monk and historian Godfrey Malaterra), he decided to join the Crusade.
It’s also possible he wanted to sack Constantinople; after all, he proposed it to Godfrey of Bouillon, who refused the offer. Be that as it may, Bohemund gathered what is considered the best force of the entire Crusading army: though he only contributed half a thousand Norman knights and about two thousand five hundred to three thousand infantry (plus another two thousand brought by his nephew Tancred) out of the total thirty-five thousand men, they were veterans who had fought as mercenaries for the Byzantine Empire and were better equipped than the rest. They embarked at Trani, crossed the Adriatic, and landed in Durazzo, following the route to Constantinople from his previous campaign against Alexios I.
To avoid issues with the Pechenegs sent by the emperor, Bohemund tried to restrain the plundering impulses of his troops, and upon reaching the capital, he paid Alexios the required homage. After all, the best option for Bohemund to obtain anything from him was to show respect and loyalty, possibly hoping to receive Antioch. He headed there while Tancred and Baldwin of Boulogne went toward the County of Edessa. It was autumn 1087, and Antioch came under siege, but its strong defenses—four hundred towers—allowed it to hold out all winter, while the besiegers suffered great hardships, eating their horses or, according to legend, resorting to cannibalism.
Finally, Bohemund, who had already positioned himself as the true leader of the siege to the detriment of Stephen of Blois, thanks to his effective provisioning efforts in collaboration with the Genoese fleet and his relentless blockade preventing the Muslims from doing the same, bribed one of the defenders, Firouz, a converted Christian, to open the gates for them, and the Crusaders burst in, causing a massacre… until the arrival of an army from Mosul besieged them in turn. It was a difficult situation because they were alone; the Byzantines, who were preparing a relief force, ultimately did not come to their aid, believing it was already too late and that Antioch had been lost.
This was not the case, as the morale of the Crusaders was maintained thanks to one of those providential episodes that often arise in desperate situations. A French monk named Peter Bartholomew announced that the apostle Andrew had told him where the Spear of Longinus was located (the Roman legionary who, in the Gospel of John, pierced Christ’s side, assimilated to the centurion who, upon witnessing the death of the crucified, declared, Truly this was the Son of God, and in Christian tradition converted to that faith). An excavation at the indicated spot, beneath the cathedral, revealed the precious relic, and although many concluded that it was a setup to boost the troops’ spirits, it certainly served that purpose.
Emboldened by the renewed spirits, Bohemund, who knew he could not hold out long without supplies, decided to go out and fight in open field, bearing the spear as an emblem. He won a resounding victory, which was duly adorned with the miraculous appearance of a host of knights dressed in white, led by saints. The crisis averted, the debate reopened among the Crusaders over who would keep Antioch; while they had previously agreed to alternate command, with the chosen one being the one under whose turn the city fell, Bohemund’s candidacy prevailed this time—after all, he was the one who had contacted Firouz.
Thus, Bohemund imposed himself over the candidacy of Raymond IV of Toulouse, who was Alexios I’s favorite and demanded his rights, though in vain, as the others believed that not having received help from the emperor released them from any obligations to him. Bohemund was proclaimed Prince of Antioch in January 1099. He then rebuilt the city’s defenses, and at the end of the year, he joined his companions, who had meanwhile taken Jerusalem, succeeding in having Dagobert of Pisa chosen as Patriarch to counterbalance the power held there by Godfrey of Bouillon and the nobles of Lorraine. His intent was for the Antiochene principality to be large and strong, hence his attempt—unsuccessful—to incorporate the Syrian city of Latakia.
The problem was that both Byzantines and Muslims were unwilling to allow the rise of another significant state in the region, and they opposed him. This complex geopolitical game turned against him in 1100, when he personally went to aid Gabriel of Melitene at the head of a force that would prove too small. Melitene was a city in eastern Cappadocia, vital for controlling access to Anatolia, and its Armenian governor, the aforementioned Gabriel, received information that Gazi Gümüshtigin, a Turkoman emir of the Danishmendid dynasty, was planning its conquest, hence his call for help, which came with an offer of his daughter’s hand in marriage.
An intriguing alliance that presented a great opportunity to strengthen Antioch’s position and one that Bohemund, who was still single, did not want to miss. But, obliged to leave part of his forces to protect his own city, he only took three hundred knights and an infantry force, which was ambushed by the Turks en route to Melitene. Captured and taken to Neocesarea (now Niksar in northern Turkey), he remained imprisoned until 1103 while his nephew Tancred acted as regent. Raymond of Toulouse, with Alexios I’s approval, took advantage of that situation to create a principality in Tripoli, thus preventing any future expansion of Antioch southward.
The emperor thus took his revenge on Bohemund, whom he considered a traitor for breaking his oath of loyalty. In fact, he offered only two hundred sixty thousand dinars for his ransom and that with the condition that the captive be handed over to him. However, the negotiation failed because Gümüshtigin demanded half in advance, probably with the idea of keeping it, and Bohemund made a counteroffer: one hundred thirty thousand dinars immediately and exclusively, raised and delivered by the Armenian prince Kogh Vasil, who also made the prisoner his adopted son. He returned to Antioch to find that Tancred had expanded the principality by conquering the Cilician cities of Tarsus, Adana, and Massissa.
This seemed to put him in a better position, and in 1104 he decided to confirm it by subduing the Muslims in the surrounding regions, who were always an obstacle for supply routes. The target was Harran, located between Damascus, Carchemish, and Nineveh, but, despite the alliance with Baldwin of Edessa, his army was defeated on the Balikh River (a tributary of the Euphrates flowing entirely through Syria), near Raqqa; this was capped by a Byzantine attack on Cilicia that completely and definitively ruined his expansion plans. Desperate, at the end of the year, Bohemund set sail for Europe seeking reinforcements.
He first arrived in Rome, where he convinced Pope Paschal II of the perfidia Graecorum, and it is possible that the pontiff assigned him the legate Bruno di Segni to accompany him to France, preaching the holy war against the Byzantine Empire. King Philip I received him kindly and was charmed both by the holy relics from the Holy Land that he received from him and by the fascinating stories he told of his battles against the infidels. This magnetic personality was attested by the aforementioned Anna Komnene in her Alexiad:
His blue eyes were indicators of his high spirit and dignity; his nose breathed calmly, perfectly corresponding to the breath of his chest. His breathing was a faithful indicator of the high spirit that boiled in his heart. This man emanated a certain charm, a charm that was somewhat marred by a certain horrific air (…) When speaking with him, he proved well-informed, with irrefutable answers.
Bohemund did not leave France empty-handed, for he won the hand of Constance, the daughter of Philip and his first wife, Bertha of Holland. The princess had recently had her marriage annulled with Hugh I of Champagne for unknown reasons. The marriage not only allowed him to climb a step on the social ladder but also guaranteed him troops and alliances. The wedding was celebrated in 1106 in the Cathedral of Chartres (not the Gothic one we still see today but the earlier Romanesque version). The abbot Suger of Saint-Denis said of it:
Bohemund came to France with the sole idea of obtaining at all costs the hand of Constance, the sister of Our Lord Louis, a young woman of noble lineage, of impeccable appearance, and very beautiful. The reputation of the bravery of the French king and his son Louis was so great that even the Saracens were terrified by the marriage (…) The prince of Antioch was a person of expertise and wealth, both in qualities and promises; he truly deserved this marriage…
His new and comfortable position allowed Bohemund two things. On one hand, to arrange the marriage of his nephew Tancred to Cecilia of France, half-sister of Constance (the daughter Philip I had with his second wife, Bertrada of Montfort), which took place that same year. On the other, to recruit, with royal authorization, a vast army of thirty-four thousand men, to which much of the Frankish nobility joined and which could have been larger if Henry I, King of England, had not forbidden his entry into the country, alarmed by the enthusiasm he had also aroused among English nobles.
Everyone was enthusiastic about the adventure of finally liberating the Holy Land. However, that was the theory; in practice, things were very different because, seeing that he had such a powerful force, Bohemund changed his target and set it on the hated Byzantine Empire. He himself made known his denunciation against Alexios I in a speech he gave at the sanctuary of Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, where he offered, in front of the tomb of Saint Leonard, silver chains in memory of the three years of captivity he suffered (Saint Leonard was a 5th-century Frankish saint who visited and converted prisoners, to whom is attributed the miracle of breaking shackles by mere invocation):
He has oppressed many thousands of Christians with vile treachery, some sent to shipwreck, many to poison, more still to exile, and many others he handed over to the pagans. This emperor is not a Christian but a mad heretic, Julian the Apostate, another Judas feigning peace while inciting war, a butcher of his brothers, a bloodthirsty Herod against Christ!
Unfortunately for Bohemund, Alexios I had strengthened his empire, which at that time was once again one of the major Mediterranean powers, rivaled only by the Seljuks. The Franks disembarked at Avlona (Epirus) on October 9, 1107, and four days later besieged Dyrrhachium, but the Venetian fleet, allied with the Byzantines, cut off their supply lines while the imperial troops blocked the mountain passes, avoiding direct confrontation and opting for a war of attrition, recalling their experience years earlier against Robert Guiscard. Completely isolated and with hunger spreading among their ranks, some of Bohemund’s barons accepted Alexios’s bribes to retreat, which effectively ended the campaign and forced him to negotiate.
In September 1108, he signed the Treaty of Devol, which imposed such harsh conditions that it practically ended his prestige. In fact, he returned to Italy with the idea of undertaking a new recruitment that would allow him to resume his war in the Holy Land, but no one wanted to finance or listen to him. He died six months later, in March 1111, in the town of Bari; he never even saw Antioch again (which remained under Tancred’s regency since the son he had with Constance, Bohemund II, was only an infant), and was buried in Canosa di Puglia (Apulia).
As an epilogue, let us explain the Treaty of Devol. It dictated that Bohemund I would become a vassal of the emperor in exchange for being named sebastos (an honorary title originally equivalent to Augustus but which diversified into several ranks by the time of Alexios I), renounced the territories he claimed in Greece, and accepted an Orthodox patriarch in Antioch, having to seek the emperor’s permission to make alliances and assist him militarily against any adversary. Cilicia would be returned to the empire, and Bohemund would retain only his principality plus the port of Saint-Simeon; but only while he lived, for he would also have to surrender it afterward, and if Tancred refused, he would be declared an enemy.
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on November 8, 2024: Bohemundo de Tarento, el siniestro normando que conquistó Antioquía y odiaba al Imperio Bizantino
SOURCES
Torcuato Tasso, La Jerusalén libertada
Ana Comneno, La Alexiada
Amin Maalouf, Las cruzadas vistas por los árabes
Georg Ostrogorsky, Historia del Estado Bizantino
Georgios Theotokis, Bohemond of Taranto: Crusader and Conqueror
Jacques Heers, La Primera Cruzada
Thomas S. Asbridge, The Creation of the Principality of Antioch, 1098–1130
Frank N. Magill, The Middle Ages. Dictionary of world biography
Jonathan Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades
Wikipedia, Bohemundo de Tarento
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