According to the Hystoria de via et recuperatione Antiochiae atque Ierusolymarum (hereafter Hystoria de via), after the conquest of Jerusalem by the forces of the First Crusade in July 1099, Robert ‘Curthose’, duke of Normandy (c. 1050–1134), declared: ‘So now, since I have fulfilled my vow, if the Lord should grant it, I wish to return to my own [land]’. Though these words cannot be considered Robert's own, given that the Hystoria de via was compiled at the abbey of Monte Cassino at some point between 1130 and 1153, their sentiment would probably have resonated with many in the Latin army. Nearly four long years after participants had sworn vows and committed themselves to the expedition, their remarkable journey had ended: the Holy City of Jerusalem had been returned to Latin Christian control and the crusaders’ votive obligation discharged. As Fulcher of Chartres (c. 1059–c. 1127) remarked: ‘Now that we had visited the city, our long-lasting labour was completed’.

Focusing on a key aspect of this labour, that is the crusade vow, this chapter seeks to reveal some of the challenges faced by medieval authors when constructing their accounts in relation to this new form of ritualised obligation. Oaths were a familiar feature of medieval Christian society for lay and religious alike; accordingly, the crusade vow would have been at once familiar and new to Latin Christians. Indeed, when medieval historical writers sought to relate the extraordinary events of the expedition, they did so according to pre-existing social and religious frameworks. This topic will be explored by first examining the place of the crusade vow at the Council of Clermont (the genesis of the venture) in the three Benedictine reworkings of the anonymous Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum: Baldric of Bourgueil's Historia Ierosolimitana, Robert the Monk's Historia Iherosolimitana and Guibert of Nogent's Dei gesta per Francos. The analysis will then turn to the crusaders’ arrival at the Holy Sepulchre following the conquest of Jerusalem, as detailed by the texts of the Gesta Francorum ‘family’. It will be my contention as a result that modern scholarship has overstated the significance of the crusade vow to the institution of crusading in the era of the First Crusade. During this inchoate period, it seems, there did not exist a clear language for the chroniclers to draw upon when describing this obligation.