Raymond of Aguilers

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Raymond of Aguilers (Raimundus de Aguilers or de Agiles) was a chronicler of the First Crusade (1096-1099). He followed the Provençal army of crusaders, guided by count Raymond IV of Toulouse, to Jerusalem.

He was educated as a clerk in a monastery of Vézelay and all traces of him are lost after the capture of Jerusalem. As an eyewitness of the events of the First Crusade, he is one of the most important chroniclers of the crusade, even though he was mostly describing some visions and miracles of the crusaders - for example the discovering of the Holy Lance of Peter Bartholomew. For this reason some modern historians do not take his work very seriously, but his description of the capture of Antioch (from 1097-1098) may be the only authentic explanation of this event.

His work is entitled Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem and was translated from Latin into modern French in the beginning of the 19th century by French erudite François Guizot, in "Memoires sur l'histoire de France" (1824), XXI, 227-397. It was first published by Jacques Bongars (Gesta Dei per Francos, I, 139-183), and again in the "Recueil des historiens occidentaux des croisades" (1866), 235-309.