1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fulcher of Chartres

FULCHER (or Foucher) OF CHARTRES (1058–c. 1130), French chronicler, was a priest who was present at the council of Clermont in 1095, and accompanied Robert II., duke of Normandy, on the first crusade in 1096. Having spent some time in Italy and taken part in the fighting on the way to the Holy Land, he became chaplain to Baldwin, who was chosen king of Jerusalem in 1100, and lived with Baldwin at Edessa and then at Jerusalem. He accompanied this king on several warlike expeditions, but won more lasting fame by writing his Historia Hierosolymitana or Gesta Francorum Jerusalem expugnantium, one of the most trustworthy sources for the history of the first crusade. In its final form it is divided into three books, and covers the period between the council of Clermont and 1127, and the author only gives details of events which he himself had witnessed. It was used by William of Tyre. Fulcher died after 1127, probably at Jerusalem. He has been confused with Foucher of Mongervillier (d. 1171), abbot of St-Père-en-Vallée at Chartres, and also with another person of the same name who distinguished himself at the siege of Antioch in 1098.

The Historia, but in an incomplete form, was first published by J. Bongars in the Gesta Dei per Francos (Hanover, 1611). The best edition is in tome iii. of the Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens occidentaux (Paris, 1866); and there is a French translation in tome xxiv. of Guizot’s Collection des mémoires relatifs à l’histoire de France (Paris, 1823–1835).

See H. von Sybel, Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges (Leipzig, 1881); and A. Molinier, Les Sources de l’histoire de France, tome ii. (Paris, 1902).