Raymond of Aguilers

Also known as Raimundus de Aguilers, Raimond d'Aguilers

Provençal chaplain to Raymond IV of Toulouse and the principal eyewitness for the southern French contingent on the First Crusade — chiefly remembered as the believer-in-chief of the Holy Lance found at Antioch.

Raymond was a canon of Le Puy who joined the crusade in the entourage of his namesake count Raymond IV of Toulouse, and served on the road as chaplain to both the count and the papal legate Adhémar of Le Puy. With the death of Adhémar at Antioch in 1098 he became one of the senior Provençal clerics on the expedition and a participant at every major decision of the southern leadership.

His Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, written in the East and finished shortly after the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, is the chief source for the southern French part of the crusade — the long march down the Syrian coast under Raymond IV, the trial-by-fire of Peter Bartholomew, and above all the discovery of the Holy Lance buried in the cathedral of St Peter at Antioch, of which Raymond was a true believer and most insistent witness.

The text is partial, devout, and often visionary, and modern historians read it precisely for its un-edited Provençal perspective: Raymond saw the crusade as a pilgrimage led by miracles, and his Historia is the freshest record of how that view was held by the men who lived through it.

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