Walter The Chancellor
Walter the Chancellor is known for his two part book Bella Antiochena ("Wars of Antioch" or "The Antiochene Wars").
Translators Asbridge and Edgington (2019:10)
opine that Walter provided by far the most detailed narrative account of the [Crusader] principality [of Antioch's] history in 1115 and 1119with a
wealth of information, much of it from an eye-witness perspective. Walter is only known through the "The Antiochene Wars" and he reveals little of himself in this book. By calling himself Walter the Chancellor, one can surmise that he was a Chancellor and had a close relationship with Roger of Salerno who was regent of the Principality of Antioch from 1112-1119 CE (wikipedia). Asbridge and Edgington (2019:5-6) suggest that
it is probably safe to assume that Walter came from a clerical backgroundand his writing
is filled with references to divine will, contains
an obvious fascination with piety, and has
a number of scriptural allusions. Asbridge and Edgington (2019:6-7) note that Walter dated most of the
important events within his account, primarily in relation to religious festivals.
Asbridge and Edgington (2019:10) write that
it seems likely that Walter wrote The Antiochene Wars in three stagescomposing Book One
between late 1115 and mid-1119and Book Two in two stages. Asbridge and Edgington (2019:10)
tentatively suggestthat the earlier section of Book Two was composed
relatively soon after 1119and final Chapters 13-16
at a later date. Asbridge and Edgington (2019:5-6) note that
it is almost certain that Walter was present at the [June 1119 CE] Field of Blood [aka the Battle of Ager Sanguinis] and was taken prisoner by Il-ghazi’s forces in the aftermath of the battle. They add that one can
probably assume that Walter was absent from the principality for at least the remainder of 1119. Guidoboni and Comastri (2005) suggest that his captivity (in Aleppo) lasted from 1119-1122.
Walter, the chancellor of Antioch, is know to us only through The Antiochene Wars. He named himself as ‘the author Walter’ at the start of Book One and then ‘I myself, Walter the chancellor’ in the Prologue to his second book.1 He made only one explicit reference to his own actions throughout the account, noting that the chancellor was ‘secretly called’ by Roger for consultation on the eve of the battle of the Field of Blood.2 He probably held this office from at least c.1114 to c.1122, the period which he covered in his account, but outside his narrative no evidence exists for the office, or links a name to it, before 1127, when Ralph the chancellor appeared as the third witness to a charter issued by Bohemond II.3 Although the chancellor’s basic role was to head the chancery and oversee the production of documents, Walter did not appear in any charters.4
As chancellor we can expect Walter to have had a close relationship with Roger of Salerno, to have been privy at some points to the process of decision making and to have been an eye-witness to many of the events in the principality. He probably accompanied Roger to Apamea, Rugia and Tall Danith in 1115, and at the start of Book Two he noted that he had personally ‘experienced’ the principality’s successes and failures.5 It is almost certain that Walter was present at the Field of Blood and was taken prisoner by Il-ghazi’s forces in the aftermath of the battle.6 On a number of occasions he mentioned the fact that he had himself been held captive in Aleppo in 1119, noting at one point that his memory might be ‘dulled by the experience of the prison cell’ and later commenting that he would describe the prisoners’ ‘wretched fate ... just as I saw and heard with my own eyes’.7 We should, therefore, probably assume that Walter was absent from the principality for at least the remainder of 1119 and thus treat his account of Baldwin II’s actions in this period with some caution.
It is probably safe to assume that Walter came from a clerical background. Chancellors were often drawn from this pool of experience, Walter’s writing is filled with references to divine will and he has an obvious fascination with piety, and, as we shall see, his account contains a number of scriptural allusions.
1 Walter the Chancellor, I.Prologue, p. 77; II.Prologue, p. 109.
2 Walter the Chancellor, II.3, p. 120.
3 ‘Liber Jurium republicae Genuensis, I’, Monumenta Historiae Patriae, vol. 7 (Augustae
Taurinorum, 1853), pp. 30-31, no. 20.
4 This does not mean that we should doubt that Walter was chancellor of Antioch. In this
period only two chancery staff appear in charters, the notaries Amico de Foro and Peter the
subdeacon. H.E. Mayer, Varia Antiochena: Studien zum Kreuzfahreifurstentum Antiochia im
12. und fruhen 13. Jahrhundert (Hannover, 1993), pp. 75ff.
5 Walter the Chancellor, Il.Prologue, p. 109.
6 Walter the Chancellor, II.2, p. 114. He noted that prior to the battle ‘we ... forced our
way to pitch camp at the Field of Blood’.
7 Walter the Chancellor, II.Prologue, p. 110; II.7, p. 136; 11.15, p. 166
Walter seems to have made a conscious attempt to write a historical record of events in northern Syria which would be of use to future generations. At the start of Book One he wrote that God had ‘deigned to instil in me from heaven the power of writing’ and, as we shall see, he did try to convey specific messages about divine sanction and human behaviour throughout his work.8 He also had a fairly keen sense that he was writing a work of historical significance. In Book One he noted that he ‘wished to put in writing the sequence of events and commend them to the memory of posterity’ in order to preserve a record of the period which ‘no previous history has ever told’.9 In Book Two he reflected on the fact that ‘in earlier times ... some historian’ would surely have chronicled the events of 1119, but as it was, he noted, ‘we are compelled necessarily to speak, since there is no history-writer who can describe the succession of events in full’. He did not wish it to ‘seem entirely to slip the memory’ and thus he wrote his ‘treatise, commending it to the memory of posterity’.10
This historical imperative seems to have given Walter a strong awareness of the need for narrative continuity. On a number of occasions in Book Two he commented upon the fact that he must not forget ‘the order of events’ or indulge ‘in too great a digression’.11 Like many medieval writers Walter, of course, made this sort of comment precisely when he was engaged in an aside. He also showed some desire to establish the credibility of his sources, commenting on his own eye-witness status and on one occasion noting that he received his knowledge from ‘reliable intermediaries’.10
In line with this ‘historical’ approach, Walter did date most important events within his account, primarily in relation to religious festivals. We learn, for example, that the first battle of Tall Danith took place on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, 14 September, and the second battle on that site on the eve of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, 14 August.13 Walter’s detailed account of day-to-day events also enables us to place other incidents in relation to these specific dates. Thus it is possible to calculate that the town of Zardana fell to Il-ghazi on 13 August.14 H. Hagenmeyer did assert that Walter dated events by the Pisan calendar, in which the year begins on 25 March, but this appears to have been an erroneous suggestion.15 Perhaps Walter’s most surprising failure is in providing no specific date for the battle of the Field of Blood, the key event of Book Two.16 This omission is difficult to explain.
8 Walter the Chancellor, I.Prologue, p. 77. See: Walter’s purpose in writing The
Antiochene Wars, pp. 11-12.
9 Walter the Chancellor, I.Prologue, p. 77; p. 80.
10 Walter the Chancellor, Il.Prologue, pp. 109-10.
11 Walter the Chancellor, II.2, p. 115; II.6, p. 130; II.8, p. 136; 11.13, p. 156.
12 Walter the Chancellor, II.8, p. 140.
13 Walter the Chancellor, 1.5, p. 98; 11.12, p. 155. Walter also dated the earthquake
which affected Antioch to 29 November, the assembly of Latin forces at Rugia to 12
September and the general meeting in Antioch after the first battle of Tall Danith to 1
November. Walter the Chancellor, 1.1, p. 80; 1.4, p. 96; 1.4, p. 97.
14 Walter the Chancellor, II. 11, p. 151. Walter also noted that earthquakes continued to
affect northern Syria for five months, that is from November 1114 to March 1115. He
specified that Antiochene forces waited two months at Apamea, between mid-June and mid-
August 1115. He may also have implied that Robert fitz-Fulk the Leper died on 19 August
1119. Walter the Chancellor, 1.1, p. 84; 1.3, p. 90; 11.14, p. 159.
15 See: Walter the Chancellor, 1.1, p. 80, n. 24.
16 The specific date of 28 June 1119 is supplied by Ibn al-Qalanisi, p. 160; Kemal ed-
Din, p. 617; Matthew of Edessa, III.79, p. 224.
The assumption that Walter was a cleric is borne out by a study of his citations and allusions. Most of his references are to the Bible, and most of these are from the Psalms and the Epistles, the books of the Old and New Testaments which play a prominent part in the liturgy of the Church. There are, additionally, several quotations from collects and prayers. Walter also used phrases from classical authors, notably Vergil and Ovid. Many of these are the sort of hackneyed expressions which would have been current in educated society, and it is not possible to claim on this basis that Walter had read the entire works from which these cliches were drawn.17
17 We acknowledge with thanks the assistance of Dr Neil Wright, Cambridge University, in the matter of Walter’s classical borrowings. H. Hagenmeyer listed many more classical references in his exhaustive annotation of the Bella Antiochena, but we have omitted those which appeared to strain resemblances too far.
It seems likely that Walter wrote The Antiochene Wars in three stages. Book One appears to have been composed before the summer of 1119 because there are no forward references to the disaster at the Field of Blood and, more importantly, because Il-ghazi is styled neutrally as ‘emir of the Turcomans’, whereas in Book Two he is consistently demonized, from his first appearance being characterized as the ‘prince of delusion and dissent’.18 This would date the composition of Book One between late 1115 and mid-1119.
Book Two may well have been composed in two sections. The text from the Prologue to the end of chapter twelve appears to form a distinct entity, contrasting the defeat at the Field of Blood with the success at the second battle of Tall Danith. Walter also chose to conclude this section with a religious exhortation.19 The remaining chapters of Book Two, describing the fate of Latin captives, Il-ghazi’s defeat by David of Georgia and his eventual death, lack the narrative focus of Walter’s earlier work and sit rather uncomfortably with the rest of the text. One might, therefore, tentatively suggest that Walter composed the earlier section of his second book relatively soon after 1119 and then added chapters thirteen to sixteen at a later date. We can, however, suggest no precise dates given that we know neither the date of Walter’s release from Aleppo nor the time of his death.
18 Walter the Chancellor, 1.2, p. 87; II. 1, p. 110.
19 Walter the Chancellor, 11.12, p. 156.
H. Hagenmeyer described seven extant manuscripts of Walter’s account. He concluded, no doubt correctly the oldest and best of them (A) was the exemplar of the other six.20 This codex, now BN. 14378, was prepared by William of Grassegals as a gift for Louis VII of France and comprises the works of Fulcher of Chartres, Walter and Raymond of Aguilers. Hagenmeyer conjectured for this collection a date soon after Louis’ accession in 1137, or immediately before his departure for the Near East in 1146. In any event, its exemplar - possibly Walter’s autograph copy - is lost. In five of the six other codices precisely the same order of contents is preserved; only in the sixth, a fourteenth-century manuscript, is Walter separated from the other two authors. Therefore we might conclude that in manuscript form Walter was probably read in combination with Fulcher and Raymond.
The work was edited by J. Bongars in 1611, using a Bern codex still extant, and this same edition was used in the Patrologia Latina of J. Migne (vol. 155) in 1853. In 1876 H. Prutz published a new edition using three manuscripts, and in 1895 P. Riant used all the manuscripts to establish a much better text for the Recueil des Historiens des Croisades (Occidentaux, vol. 5).21 The edition used as a basis for this translation is that of H. Hagenmeyer which was published, with exhaustive notes in German, in 1896.22
20 Galterii Cancellarii, Bella Antiochena, ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Innsbruck, 1896), pp. 52-5.
21 Cesta Dei per Francos, vol. 1, ed. J. Bongars (Hannover, 1611), pp. 441-67;
Patrologia Latina, vol. 155, ed. J.P. Migne (Paris, 1853), pp. 995-1038; Quellenbeitrage
zur Geschichte d. Kreuzzuge, vol. 1, ed. H. Prutz (Danzit, 1876), pp. 1-55; Recueil des
Historiens des Croisades, Historiens Occidentaux, vol. 5, ed. R. Riant (Paris, 1895), pp. 75-
132.
22 Galterii Cancellarii, Bella Antiochena, ed. H. Hagenmeyer, pp. 61-115
- from wikipedia
Walter the Chancellor (also known as Galterius cancellarius, the Latinized form of his French name, Gautier) was a French or Norman crusader and author of the twelfth century.
He served as Chancellor of the Principality of Antioch and wrote Bella Antiochena ("Wars of Antioch" or "The Antiochene Wars") about the history of the principality from 1114–1122, mostly during the reign of Roger of Salerno. He was certainly present at the Battle of Ager Sanguinis in 1119, in which Roger was defeated and killed by Ilghazi, and Walter was probably taken into captivity for a brief time in Aleppo. Nothing more is known about him. Even his place of origin is uncertain, as the editorial introduction of Recueil des Historiens des Croisades points out. Some authors claim on the basis of "gallicisms" in his Latin that he is of French origin, while others cite the fact that he is in the party, and writing a history, of the Norman Roger of Salerno. The text itself gives no indication.
The Bella Antiochena was written in two parts, the first sometime before Ager Sanguinis in 1119, and the second probably around 1122, or in stages from 1119 to 1122. The work was published in Jacques Paul Migne's Patrologia Latina in 1853, the Recueil des Historiens des Croisades in 1895, and by H. Hagenmeyer in 1896. Walter was used as a source by the later 12th-century chronicler William of Tyre.
Walter the Chancellor (active in the first quarter of the 12th c.) [Lat.] He was in the service of two leaders of the crusades: Bohemond (d. 1111) and Tancred of Hauteville (d. 1112), who was in charge of the principality of Antioch from 1098. When Tancred's cousin Roger of Salerno governed the principality (1112-1119), Walter was an administrator there for three years. His worked entitled Bella Antiochena, is in two parts: the first part narrates the prince's victories in 1115, and is based on eye witness accounts; the second tells of the defeats of 1119 (when Roger was defeated and killed in battle near Aleppo). The first part was written in 1119, and the second between 1122 and 1124. Between 1119 and 1122, after Roger's defeat, he was held prisoner.