The So-Called Ansbert, his ‘Historia de expeditione’ and Related Sources as a Research Problem *

Rediscovery of the ‘Historia’

The ‘Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris’ entered the historiographical consciousness of 19^th century scholarship and modern research in 1826. A codex preserved today with the signature DF III 1 at the Royal Premonstratensian Monastery of Strahov in Prague resurfaced in that year. It contained Bede the Venerable’s ‘Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum’, annals of the Prague canon Vincent, with their continuation penned by Abbot Gerlach of Mühlhausen ( today’s Milevsko in the Czech Republic ), and, crucially, one of the two earliest copies of the ‘Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris’ ^[2]. Appearing almost out of nowhere, the manuscript was gifted by a chaplain of Postoloprty in present-day Czech Republic to renowned scholar Josef Dobrovský.

For historians, this was a stroke of luck bordering on sensation, as the codex had been deemed lost since 1763, when the rector of Prague Piarist College, Gelasius Dobner, had frantically looked for it in the chapter library of St Vitus Cathedral in Prague. The scholar’s search had been in vain, but at least he had been able to get his hands on two late copies ( unfortunately, flooded with scribes’ mistakes ) that had been commissioned by Josef Bonaventura Piter – an abbot successively at the monasteries of Brewnov ( Břevnov ) and Raigern ( Rajhrad ) – in the middle of the 18^th century ^[3].

It is assumed today that the codex may have been kept at home by the secretary of the archepiscopal consistory Václav Prokop Duchovský. He probably carried it out of the library without the librarians’ knowledge and, for unknown reasons, never returned it. After his death, the precious manuscript seems to have gone through the hands of Jewish middlemen into the possession of a barber in Postoloprty. This man unscrupulously cut out 36 folios and several illuminated initials and probably used the material for his own work, thus maiming the codex substantially, with the ‘Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris’ being seriously afflicted as well. Having already damaged the manuscript in this way, the barber agreed to sell it to the chaplain of Postoloprty Josef Dietrich, who handed it over to the aforementioned Dobrovský. In 1828, the scholar in turn gifted it to the Royal Premonstratensian Monastery of Strahov in Prague ^[4].

Before doing so, however, Dobrovský had prepared an edition of a part of this codex, the ‘Historia de expeditione’, opening the text ( otherwise accessible only with difficulties ) to a broader audience and bringing it to the attention of historians and archivists. Josef Dobrovský thus had the first say in the long history of research on this topic. In his edition of 1827 ^[5], or more precisely in his Latin introduction to the narrative, he above all described the complicated way the source had come down to his times, addressed the appearance of the manuscript and its place within the Annals ( or Chronicle ) of Mühlhausen, and highlighted that the Annals of Mühlhausen were the undertaking of three mutually independent authors ^[6].

The ‘Tageno-Ansbert-Frage’

Dobrovský’s work, the discovery, and the edition of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ were recognised for the first time in the form of a scientific study appraisingly by Max Büdinger, who in 1859 was the first to compare the narrative to two others which had previously been believed to be the main sources about Barbarossa’s crusade before the reappearance of the so-called Ansbert’s ‘Historia’. The first of the two, a diary by the dean of Passau Tageno, as extant in the Chronicle of Magnus of Reichersberg from before 1195 ^[7], is another strictly contemporary account of the German crusade written by its direct participant, Dean Tageno, in this case from a circle of followers of Bishop Diepold of Passau, which largely took shape of a day-by-day travel journal. The other source which Büdinger drew in for comparison is the anonymous ‘Historia peregrinorum’ ^[8]. This work also seems contemporary, although not an eyewitness narrative, and may have been composed around 1194 ( though opinions on this differ ) based mostly on some earlier recension of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ and oral eyewitness reports. The author is anonymous, but as the single extant manuscript has been preserved in the Salem monastery in the vicinity of Lake Constance, its authorship has usually been ascribed to one of the local Cistercian monks.

To return to the historiographical overview: Max Büdinger was the first to address the question of the relation between the ‘Historia de expeditione’ and Tageno’s diary, as the texts of these two sources overlap substantially from the crusade’s crossing of the Bosporus onward. In doing so, Büdinger opened the so-called ‘Tageno-Ansbert-Frage’, a research problem concerning the interconnectedness and relation of these two sources that has formed the historiographical debate for almost two centuries, and to a large extent overshadowed or even hindered research on any other aspect of the sources under discussion. For a start, Büdinger thought that both authors had been interdependent and that they might have been comparing notes in Asia Minor from which the similarities could have originated. According to the German-Austrian historian, Ansbert may have collected Tageno’s notes in Tripoli, after Tageno had died there, and possibly even brought them back to the Roman-German Empire ^[9].

This hypothesis, slightly alternated by a claim that the so-called Ansbert revised his notes by also using Tageno’s diary in addition to his own experience, but only after having come back home from the crusade, was also voiced in the introduction to the first edition of the Strahov-Codex ( including the chronicles of Vincent of Prague, Ansbert, and Gerlach ) by Matthias Pangerl and Hippolyt Tauschinski from 1863 ^[10]. The editors were the first to note that the ‘Historia’ consists of two distinct parts, the first covering the years 1187–1190 and the other 1190–1196, without yet realising that the latter section was in fact a later appendix composed most likely by somebody else, and that even the former part probably contained several specific sections. Nevertheless, they made one valid observation: the notes taken during the crusade must have been rewritten at least to some extent after the event, either by the participant and observer himself, or by someone else, as there are elements that suggest the author’s anticipation of future events and knowledge of what was to come ^[11].

In 1870, two other historians entered the debate. Almost simultaneously, two monographs on Barbarossa’s crusade were published, one by Sigmund Riezler and the other by Karl Fischer, voicing opinions on both the so-called Ansbert and the ‘Tageno-Ansbert-Frage’. Riezler did not challenge the opinion that one and the same author might have written the core of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ and also the appendix, but contested Büdinger’s stance that Ansbert wrote his introduction only after coming back home. Riezler believed him to have already started drafting it before the crusade with a different aim and subject matter, namely the disastrous defeat of the Jerusalemite army at Hattin in the Holy Land in 1187. Riezler was joined in this opinion by Fischer, who, however, was not able to discern what had changed the so-called Ansbert’s aim, for some reason overlooking that it must have been the call for a new crusade. Fischer, in tandem with Riezler, dedicated substantial effort to answering the ‘Tageno-Ansbert-Frage’; in direct opposition to Büdinger, both historians rejected the opinion that Ansbert and Tageno could have drawn from each other and highlighted Ansbert’s dependence on Tageno in even larger parts of the text than just in those sections describing the expedition’s progress through Asia Minor. In the research up to that point, scholarship had been unanimous at least in the opinion that the reworking of the notes and experiences collected during the expedition might have been done by the same person, i. e., by the crusade-participant himself. According to Riezler, the death of the narrative’s author, probably in the second half of 1190, must have prevented its rewriting from a more careful and thorough conclusion ^[12]. Rather than analysing the functions and intentions of the text itself and its interpretation of the crusade more closely, both Riezler’s and Fischer’s books were, like previous studies, focused on another question, one that to a large degree symbolised German historiographical research of the time: namely, Leopold von Ranke’s influential “wie es eigentlich gewesen” ( “how it actually was” or “what exactly happened” ) ^[13].

Anton Chroust enters the scene

Research on this topic came into another phase and won a most dedicated scholar with the entry of Austrian-German historian Anton Chroust. Chroust, based in Würzburg for most of his academic career ^[14], was to influence the debate revolving around the so-called Ansbert for almost 40 years. In 1928, Chroust would publish the edition of the ‘Historia de expeditione’, which has been in use until today. In 1891, though, he entered the discussion with a smaller, even if almost equally important contribution. In his native town of Graz, he discovered another manuscript of the ‘Historia’ ^[15], which had been unknowingly kept in the local university library and, according to Chroust, was probably written in St Lamprecht Abbey in Styria at the end of the 12^th century. Making this discovery public, he expressed his ambition to get to an edition of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ one day and problematised its textual genesis and authorship even further. Although the Graz manuscript is only a fragment when compared to the Strahov codex, they both seem to have been copied from the original account independently, the Graz one more carefully so and in contrast to the Strahov manuscript with the enrichment of chapter divisions. When comparing the texts, Chroust also noticed that in comparison to the Strahov manuscript, the Graz one was missing five of the letters included in the former. As also the prologue extant in the Strahov manuscript, seemingly aiming to provide information about the defeat of the Jerusalemites in 1187 rather than about the coming crusade, was absent from the newly found Graz fragment, Chroust concluded that both the letters and the prologue could have possibly been only included in, or composed for, the Strahov version of the text. Less controversially, Chroust also showed that already the main part of the work, covering the years 1187–1190, consisted of three distinct sections – the ‘prehistory’ of the expedition until the departure from Regensburg, the fates of the pilgrims in Europe, and the campaign in Asia Minor until the emperor’s death ^[16].

Driven by the discovery of the Graz manuscript, Chroust soon delved into the ‘Tageno-Ansbert-Frage’ as well, trying to discern whether Ansbert’s narrative had been based on his own observations, as a kind of diary, or whether it had been based purely on the observations of others. When trying to disentangle the problem of interconnectedness of Tageno’s and Ansbert’s accounts and of the supposed dependence of the ‘Historia peregrinorum’ on the ‘Historia de expeditione’, Chroust complicated the question even further, however. When dealing with all three sources ( with Tageno’s diary extant not only in the Chronicle of Magnus of Reichersberg, but also in a copy made by the Bavarian humanist historian Aventin in 1522 ), Chroust flooded the historiographical riddle with numerous confusing abbreviations for the extant as well as supposedly inextant and earlier recensions of the texts, coming to results which even he was evidently not sure of. He believed Ansbert to have been taking over from a certain point of the narrative from the Chronicle of Magnus of Reichersberg, who in turn had claimed to have faithfully rewritten Tageno’s notes, but, according to Chroust, should have in fact stylistically reworked a lost earlier recension on which Aventin’s version was supposed to have been based on. Chroust thus rejected Büdinger’s thesis that Ansbert had taken over parts of Tageno’s diary directly in Asia Minor. Moreover, Chroust claimed that since Magnus’s chronicle could have taken its form in 1191 at the earliest, then Ansbert’s account – according to the historian drawing partly from this chronicle – also could not have been drafted before 1191. As Ansbert’s narrative had impacted the ‘Historia peregrinorum’, Chroust saw its composition as the terminus ante quem for the so-called Ansbert’s account and dated it to 1194 at the latest. Analysing forward references in the ‘Historia de expeditione’, Chroust came to the conclusion that the chronicle must have been written on the basis of eyewitness notes only after the crusade, and not during it, with the introduction having been written in 1189, though. Finally, Chroust entangled the topic even more when he considered the so-called Ansbert to have been the author of the third section of the narrative only, covering the years 1187–1190 ^[17].

Karl Zimmert disagrees

Chroust’s initial findings and claims made the research subject even less transparent. As such, they were met with opposition. This came in the form of the work of Karl Zimmert, directly reacting to Chroust’s latest study. Zimmert, a student of Max Büdinger, vigorously defended the opinions of his teacher, demonstrating that Chroust’s results were by no means clear and did not help to untangle the problem, presenting his own findings instead. Zimmert rejected Chroust’s claim of Ansbert being dependent on Tageno’s account from the Chronicle of Magnus of Reichersberg as “totally unthinkable” ( “ganz undenkbar” ) ^[18]. Instead, he saw the so-called Ansbert as having used some of Tageno’s notes during the journey and partly rewriting his own account while still on the crusade. As such, with Zimmert opposing Chroust’s thesis, Magnus’s chronicle was supposed to have drawn not only from Tageno ( from the supposed version copied by Aventin ), but also from Ansbert, who, as Zimmert expressed later in another study, might have personally delivered both his own and Tageno’s accounts to Reichersberg ^[19].

Zimmert further defended the unity of the ‘Historia de expeditione’, claiming in opposition to Chroust that the so-called Ansbert had not only been the author of the part starting with the death of Frederick Barbarossa and ending with the death of the bishop of Passau as well, but also of the part today known as the ‘Appendix’ ( covering the years 1190–1196 ), and was certain that it had been the eyewitness himself who had undertaken all the rewriting, starting in the summer of 1190 at the earliest. Zimmert also recounted the so-called Ansbert’s mysterious personality, believing him to have belonged to the contingent of the Bishop of Passau, but stemming not directly from Passau, rather from some of the Bishop’s Austrian domains. Despite being a member of the Passau contingent, the so-called Ansbert might have been employed in the imperial chancery, which would explain his proximity to and intimate knowledge of official documents and affairs. Interestingly, Zimmert believed the so-called Ansbert to have also followed a literary and intellectual tradition set by bishop and chronicler Otto of Freising; not only had he used several sections of the bishop’s text as inspiration for his own wordings, he had supposedly also imitated Otto’s aim to write a tragedy ^[20].

Similarly to Anton Chroust, Karl Zimmert likewise saw the need to make his theses more precise. Striving to do so and while still delivering otherwise plausible results, he delved into increasingly adventurous and speculative territories ( again, not dissimilarly to Chroust ). For yet another study on the sources surrounding Frederick Barbarossa’s crusade, Zimmert was able to directly investigate the Strahov manuscript of the ‘Historia de expeditione’, in addition to the copy commissioned by Piter that substituted the lost folios. With his self-confidence boosted by this achievement, Zimmert formulated his theses even more strongly, and once again in opposition to Chroust. He emphasised his opinion that the ‘Historia’ was a unified and coherent account, reworked by the eyewitness himself, who may also have penned the ‘Appendix’. Primarily, however, Zimmert suggested the existence of a no longer extant original Ansbert-account and original Tageno-account before their reworkings. Consequently, the diary of Tageno as extant in the Chronicle of Magnus of Reichersberg and the account supposedly copied by Aventin in the 16^th century were thought to be, according to Zimmert, independent from each other, only having the original Tageno-account as their common source. With the no longer existent original Ansbert-account, before its reworking, Zimmert explained why the ‘Historia peregrinorum’, reliant on Ansbert, sometimes even contradicts its source – the differences were supposed to have arisen from the fact that the author of the ‘Historia peregrinorum’ must have used the not-yet-reworked version of Ansbert which has been lost to us. However, Zimmert was treading on thin ice when trying to explain the interrelatedness of Ansbert with Tageno: in a convoluted hypothesis, he proposed that Tageno had been influenced by Ansbert’s better informed notes while still in the Levant. When Ansbert later rewrote his notes, however, he may have, according to Zimmert, also used Tageno’s notes, which he may even have taken back to the Roman-German Empire, thus utilising the notes he himself had influenced ^[21].

While this is certainly a wild theory, it also very accurately reflects the complexity of the problem and the efforts of historians – highly qualified in Rankean critical method – concentrating on a question bordering on the unsolvable and simultaneously neglecting most other research avenues that could have been pursued instead. In a way, this conundrum can be understood as one of the manifestations of the crisis of German positivism that hit German historiography at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries ^[22].

Towards the modern edition

The progress, or rather stalemate, of research on the so-called Ansbert and his work can be traced with ease thanks to the correspondence of Anton Chroust with his fellow academics and members of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica ( MGH ), for which Chroust intended to edit the sources about Barbarossa’s crusade ( above all the ‘Historia de expeditione’ ) anew with an introduction clarifying the inconsistencies and contradictions, and in whose archive the correspondence has been preserved until today. Shortly before Christmas 1923, Chroust announced his aim to return to his work on the edition, asking Harry Bresslau if he could mediate the loan of the manuscript of the ‘Historia peregrinorum’, the Graz manuscript of the ‘Historia de expeditione’, and most importantly of the Strahov manuscript, anticipating difficulties in obtaining it. As he wrote a month later to Paul Kehr, long-time MGH director and capable research organiser, in whose newly established edition-series Chroust’s edition would later appear ^[23], the foreseen obstacle lay in the fact that the codex was a treasured source of Bohemian history as it contained the chronicle of Vincent of Prague, and therefore, its protectors were expected to be very unwilling to lend it. Otherwise, Chroust was optimistic; his student Maximilian Kaufmann was about to publish a study that was supposed to bring more clarity to the ‘Tageno-Ansbert-Frage’ – clarity which neither Chroust’s nor Zimmert’s research had entailed so far ^[24].

Maximilian Kaufmann’s study did indeed provide some clarity, in the sense that it removed Aventin’s version of Tageno’s account from the equation. Kaufmann proved that Aventin’s version was in fact only a humanist reworking of a lost recension of the chronicle of Reichersberg and therefore not relevant to the ‘Tageno-Ansbert-Frage’. Kaufmann also inverted Chroust’s scheme of interdependence of the sources – instead of Ansbert’s dependence on Magnus of Reichersberg and his dependence on Tageno, Kaufmann suggested that the opposite direction was more plausible: Ansbert as the original source from which both Tageno and Magnus of Reichersberg had drawn. Kaufmann believed that these narratives, together with the ‘Historia peregrinorum’, must have relied on an earlier version of Ansbert’s narrative, maybe directly on the notes of ‘Ansbert the eyewitness’, which was supposed to explain the discrepancies between the texts ^[25].

Kaufmann’s findings and theses were highly appraised by Harold Steinacker, who even picked up the threads of Kaufmann’s research and explored the ways in which Aventin could have endowed his humanist version with additions to the chronicle of Magnus of Reichersberg which he had used ^[26], but they were also accepted by Kaufmann’s teacher Anton Chroust, who even admitted that his views on Ansbert and interrelated questions had changed over time ^[27].

Karl Zimmert, the main opponent of Anton Chroust in the debate, was not so easily won over by Kaufmann’s stance, however. In a difficult-to-follow discussion of Kaufmann’s and Steinacker’s findings, he rejected them in their majority and tried to reassert his own opinions – Tageno’s report was, according to Zimmert, used twice by Ansbert, once in the not-yet-rewritten form of Ansbert’s narrative while still on the crusade, and for the second time during the process of rewriting, which was supposed to also have been undertaken by the so-called Ansbert himself. This rewritten recension should have served as a template for the chronicle of Magnus of Reichersberg; however, the main source for it must still have been, so Zimmert believed in opposition to Kaufmann, Tageno’s diary ^[28].

In the meantime, the often heated and not always productive scholarly discussion notwithstanding, Chroust was steadfast in his effort to finish the preparatory works for his intended edition. Two thematic circles prevail in his correspondence from the years 1926 to 1927, illuminating his determined endeavour to finally be loaned the Strahov manuscript, and new ideas connected with the sources under discussion. In four letters dated from 1926, Chroust repeatedly and almost desperately pleaded with Paul Kehr for his assistance in obtaining the manuscript from the Strahov Premonstratensians, the difficulty of which he ascribed to the fact that the codex also contained “ein Hauptheiligtum der böhmischen Geschichte”, i. e., the most sacred object of Bohemian history, the chronicle written by Vincent of Prague ^[29]. Interestingly, Chroust asked Paul Kehr for help as he deemed him to be on good terms with the difficult-to-handle-with Church dignitaries ^[30], in whose hands the manuscripts lay. At the time when Chroust had to part ways with Carl Erdmann, later so renowned for his study on the idea of crusading ^[31], and whose ideas Chroust found already then inspiring, Chroust even pondered journeying to Prague to ask for the Strahov manuscript personally ^[32], although he could not very well afford it financially on his own ^[33].

By the end of 1926, the manuscript had finally been sent to him and Chroust could start work on the edition. New ideas came to him, which, however, he later had to let go. For instance, at the time, Chroust was firmly convinced that the so-called Ansbert had in fact been Rupert of Heiligenkreuz, whom he believed to be, however, merely an editor and continuator rather than the eyewitness reporter himself. The text of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ was supposedly compiled in order to connect semi-official accounts from the vicinity of the emperor, recorded by a notary from the emperor’s chancery. Chroust believed that these three partial accounts may also have served the compiler of the ‘Historia peregrinorum’ and may have been enriched for the ‘Historia peregrinorum’ with an eyewitness’ testimony, possibly that of Abbot Eberhard of Salem ^[34]. The uncertain and evolving nature of all these findings, though at times represented by Chroust as almost undoubtable facts, is well demonstrated by Chroust’s previous opinions, when, for example, he identified the above-mentioned Eberhard as the most probable compiler of the ‘Historia peregrinorum’ and as the very same Eberhard whom Barbarossa had sent on several smaller diplomatic missions ^[35].

In 1927, Chroust informed MGH-director Paul Kehr that the texts for the edition of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ and ‘Historia peregrinorum’ were ready for print. Chroust was not so successful with the introduction to the edition, which was supposed to collect and assemble the findings about the authorship and genesis of the sources to be published, while also presenting the most viable solution to the ‘Tageno-Ansbert-Frage’. Chroust’s own letter bears testimony to the intricacy of the problem which had hindered its research ( and continues to do so ) from advancing: Chroust complained to Kehr how difficult it was to group the individual findings so that one could understand the matter at hand, and so that one would not be, having read the introduction, “viel dümmer [ … ] als zuvor” ( “much dumber than before” ) ^[36].

The edition

It went on for another year, during which, among others, Chroust explored the use of Latin in the ‘Historia de expeditione’ only to dismiss it as uninteresting and saying nothing about the authorship of the source. However, in 1928, the new edition was finally published as the fifth volume in the MGH edition project Scriptores rerum Germanicarum Nova series ^[37], containing, apart from the ‘Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris’ ^[38] and ‘Historia peregrinorum’ ^[39], two other, unrelated contemporary sources about the Third Crusade from the Roman-German perspective: ‘Epistola de morte Friderici imperatoris’ ^[40] and ‘Narratio itineris navalis ad Terram sanctam’ ^[41]. Chroust himself was aware in the introduction to the edition that he was only reflecting on the results of medieval studies that were as yet unfinished and unresolved ^[42]. As such, Chroust’s claims and results must also be taken as inconclusive. Nevertheless, his edition has served until today and his findings have largely been accepted as authoritative. Their more thorough inclusion here, although these results should not be taken at face value, provides a summary of what can be said about ‘Historia de expeditione’ as a starting point for further historiographical discussion.

Chroust began with a discussion about the survival of the ‘Historia de expeditione’. He determined the Graz fragment, which he had found in the local university library, to be the older of the two extant manuscripts, ascertaining the Austrian Benedictine monastery of St Lamprecht in Styria as its place of origin and its date of composition closely before or after 1200. Consisting of just 18 chapters, however, the fragment contains only about a third of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ as known from the Strahov codex. Because of this, Chroust had to rely much more on the Strahov manuscript ( together with the copies commissioned by Piter ), the troubled history of which has already been described above. Despite this, several of Chroust’s observations are worth noting. He believed the crusading history to have been copied in Milevsko ( Mühlhausen ) sometime between 1197 ( or 1202 ) and 1221. Furthermore, he pointed out that the Abbot of Milevsko Gerlach also included sidenotes in his own hand and constituted on the margin of the copy’s first page the title of the narrative with a reference to an Austrian clerical participant of the crusade who supposedly composed the source: Ystoria de expeditione Friderici imperatoris edita a quodam Austriense clerico qui eidem interfuit. Later in the 13^th century and in a different hand, nomine Ansberte ( “called Ansbert” ) was added, giving the ‘Historia’ its vague supposed authorship ^[43].

Chroust’s recapitulation of the later fate of the manuscript ^[44] has already been introduced above. Now, with the help of Chroust’s conclusions, the structure, manner, and time of composition of the ‘Historia’ shall be outlined. In agreement with other researchers, Karl Zimmert being an exception, Chroust distinguished two chief parts of the crusading narrative: the main body of the text, the ‘Historia de expeditione’ itself, covering the years from the prelude to the crusade in 1187 until its disintegration in 1190; and the appendix covering the years 1190–1197, focusing on the crusade of Richard the Lionheart, on duke Leopold V of Austria’s capture of the English king when returning through the Austrian principality, and the deeds of emperor Henry VI in the Kingdom of Sicily and his plans for a new expedition to the Holy Land. In addition to this, Chroust considered even the core of the ‘Historia’, the narrative covering 1187–1190, as consisting of three parts, which may have been sent back, one by one, as eyewitness accounts to the Roman-German Empire by messengers, who were indeed dispatched home at corresponding points in time. If we give credence to Chroust’s observations, these three sections can be distinguished as follows: from the departure of the expedition in May 1189 until the middle of November 1189, from the arrival of the crusaders to Adrianople on 22 November 1189 until the crossing of the Bosporus at the end of March 1190, and from the arrival in Asia Minor until the death of the emperor on 10 June 1190 ( or possibly even later ). As Chroust suggested, a certain change in tone can be observed just before the depiction of Barbarossa’s death, from which he quite plausibly inferred that the eyewitness might have been alongside other messengers urgently sent home to report on this disaster, and the concluding section of the main body of the ‘Historia’ depicting Frederick’s death and the disintegration of the crusade could thus have been written by him only based on some very concise notes or the testimony of others. Having returned home, probably the eyewitness himself had taken to unifying his three accounts ( which bear signs of some level of hindsight ), reworking them, and enriching them with an introduction, conclusion, forward references, and insertions from his own memory and from literature. This editing process must have been carried out no sooner than after the end of 1190, and as the chronicler was still unaware of the arrival of Richard the Lionheart to the Holy Land in June 1191, the rewriting could not have occurred too long after that either, or, for some reason, had been done hastily or had been interrupted ^[45].

Anton Chroust delved once more into the ‘Tageno-Ansbert-Frage’ as well, explaining the similarities and dissimilarities of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ in the version known today and Tageno’s account as extant in the Chronicle of Magnus of Reichersberg by the existence of a common source ^[46]. However, pertinent to the illustration of the so-called Ansbert as a research problem are his deductions as to the supposed authorship of the ‘Historia’, through which a possible context of the narrative’s genesis might be demonstrated here. As Chroust rightly claimed, there is no need to contradict what Gerlach had inscribed on the margin of the ‘Historia de expeditione’, even if the later addition of the name “Ansbert” may be of no importance and is used also here purely for convenience. The anonymous author seems to have been a direct participant indeed, as his close knowledge of the depicted events and his use of the collective “we” ( nos ) indicate, and there need not be any doubt concerning his clerical status. Moreover, the so-called Ansbert may have not only been an eyewitness, but one extremely close to the centre of events and to the circle of the main protagonists of the crusade. His intimate knowledge of field regulations, treaties, titles, dating forms, historiography, legal matters, participants, whom he lists minutely, and official letters ( one of which, from Barbarossa to Henry VI dated to 18 November 1189, might have been, according to Chroust, directly drafted by the author of the ‘Historia’ ) points to his affiliation with the imperial chancery, or, more specifically, to Barbarossa’s secretariat. A positive picture of the crusade’s leaders and a negative depiction of its opponents in the ‘Historia’ makes it plausible that the narrative may have had a quasi-official status and intentions, or, at least, that its author may have advocated the interests of the Staufer dynasty. If it were indeed so, then choosing him to report back to the Roman-German Empire about the progress of the expedition and finally, possibly even personally, about the death of the emperor, would have made perfect sense. It is uncertain whether Gerlach had meant by the phrase edita a quodam Austriense clerico an individual who had only edited some of the later recensions of the ‘Historia’ ( and maybe also included the Appendix ), or, as Chroust suggested, the eyewitness himself who had written the individual accounts and later reworked them. Either way, the Austrian origin of the crusading participant and anonymous eyewitness author of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ is credible. The frequent highlighting of deeds and actors connected with the Austrian or neighbouring Bavarian and Bohemian regions, for example of the advocate of the church of Passau Frederick of Berg, Bishop of Passau Diepold or Abbot Isenrich of Admont from the same diocese, suggests that the so-called Ansbert may have come from the Passau region. It is worth noting, though, that Chroust dismissed the possibility that the so-called Ansbert could in fact have been identical with the Dean of Passau Tageno, or that the ‘Historia de expeditione’ could simply have been based on his diary. Furthermore, he suggested that there must have been several other, lost, unified recensions between the three individual reports and the version extant in the Strahov manuscript, claiming that the letters present in the Strahov manuscript ( but absent in the Graz one ) may have been included together with the Appendix only in the Strahov manuscript or in the recension directly preceding it. He justified this by suggesting that the original author had no use for including them as he knew their content, recapitulating them in the text of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ itself ^[47].

To conclude this summary of the widely accepted view on the so-called Ansbert and related sources, Anton Chroust also hypothesised about the Appendix to the ‘Historia’, trying to connect it to an Austrian monk of the Heiligenkreuz monastery ( which had enjoyed close connections to the House of Babenberg ). This monk could have edited a manuscript of the ‘Historia’ after 1202 and with a close focus on duke Leopold also added the Appendix. Both these texts might have been copied later by Gerlach and his scriptorium ^[48]. Moreover, Chroust also expressed his beliefs about the ‘Historia peregrinorum’. Having survived only in a single manuscript from the Cistercian abbey of Salem near Lake Constance, the anonymous text indicates at least partisanship to the Staufer of its author or of a vir venerabilis who had ordered it, but in contrast to the ‘Historia de expeditione’, it is not wholly uncritical. The compiler might have been a monk of Salem Abbey, although Chroust was uncertain of this, and while he had not been a participant of the crusade and had had to rely on the ‘Historia de expeditione’ and other unknown sources ( possibly an eyewitness report of Eberhard of Salem, perhaps the vir venerabilis ), Chroust thought him to be at least a contemporary writer still before 1200, with an aim to pay homage to the memory of Frederick Barbarossa, his son, and other crusaders ^[49].

Although Chroust’s introduction to the edition still utilised today serves as a reliable foundation for further study of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ and related sources, one cannot agree with the editor on all his conclusions. To name just one weak area, the editor believed that the author of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ had written all his partial accounts while still on the crusade and without knowledge of Barbarossa’s death ^[50], but forgot to consider the obvious fact that when the so-called Ansbert had been unifying and rewriting the narrative after he returned from the armed pilgrimage, he must have already been very well aware of the emperor’s passing and could have included this knowledge in the text had he wanted to. This omission by the so-called Ansbert to do so could thus be interpreted as a narrative choice serving a specific authorial intent, and not just as a simple fact relating to the time of the source’s genesis.

Reactions and aftermath

Due to several other similar weak points in Chroust’s argumentation, the debate on the authorship and genesis of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ continued even after his work had been published, and, unfortunately, has not proceeded beyond these already long and tediously researched questions of almost unresolvable character. Shortly before the publication of the new edition, Chroust expressed his anticipation of a harsh critique ^[51], which was fulfilled soon after 1928, indeed. The first to oppose Chroust the most vigorously was his long-standing intellectual opponent Karl Zimmert. The only result of Chroust’s answer to the ‘Tageno-Ansbert-Frage’ which Zimmert fully accepted was the exclusion of Aventin’s Tageno. In a complicated argumentation, Zimmert on the one hand proclaimed the ‘Historia de expeditione’ as the only source for the ‘Historia peregrinorum’, but, on the other hand, highlighted the importance of Tageno both for the so-called Ansbert and Magnus of Reichersberg, intertwining the sources in an extremely complicated way. When defending his stance that the ‘Historia de expeditione’ had been composed as a cohesive work, and not ( as Chroust believed ) from three separate accounts, Zimmert even labelled Chroust’s argumentation as “willkürlich” ( arbitrary ), proving the irreconcilability of the opposing opinions and the uncertain character of any results in this thorny research problem ^[52].

Harold Steinacker, reviewer of the work, was more accepting towards Chroust’s edition and introduction, defending Chroust’s results against Zimmert’s critique, which he found artificial and over-complicated, although he simultaneously criticised several other Chroust’s findings himself. While Steinacker only noticed that Chroust had simplified his earlier thesis about the interrelation and origin of the connected sources, he was much more critical towards Chroust’s claim that the conclusion of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ from the death of Emperor Barbarossa till the death of the Bishop of Passau was not an unquestionable part of the third section of the narrative. Furthermore, he questioned Chroust’s certainty that the original partial accounts had been sent back home to the Roman-German Empire one by one, and followed with an argumentation that the so-called Ansbert must have also used some early recension of the chronicle of Magnus of Reichersberg. Even Steinacker accused Chroust of inconsistencies and contradictions, while he himself, treading on thin ice, repeated his earlier arguments in favour of his own thesis that the ‘Historia peregrinorum’ had in fact been written only in the wake of Frederick II’s crusading plans after 1212 and was supposed to serve as a piece of crusade propaganda for this monarch’s planned expedition ^[53].

This at times heated discussion went silent for ten years, only to be summarised and added to by Ferdinand Güterbock in 1941. Having surveyed the budding but not yet resolved historical dispute about the interrelated sources, this time with a focus on Tageno, he accurately drew the conclusion that the scholarly opinions were still in direct opposition, almost exactly as they had been at the beginning of the controversy. However, instead of trying to choose another, more rewarding research question or approach, he only expanded the still growing corpus of diverging opinions. Trying to distinguish passage by passage what is Ansbert’s and what is Tageno’s work in Magnus’s chronicle, he came to the conclusion that the so-called Ansbert had also reworked Magnus’s text, while Magnus of Reichersberg had in turn looked at an earlier recension of Ansbert’s ‘Historia’ which is lost to us. Güterbock believed Ansbert to have been copying Tageno’s notes ( from the spring of 1190 onwards ), supplementing them with his own observations, while he saw no indication of Tageno having also drawn from Ansbert, vice versa. If this were the case, Magnus of Reichersberg would have drawn from both Tageno and an older version of Ansbert’s work, which, however, had supposedly already taken shape on the basis of Tageno’s notes ^[54].

Two more decades would pass before the complex topic was taken up again, first by Alphons Lhotsky ^[55], then another 14 years later by Ekkehard Eickhoff ^[56]. In both cases, however, the research problem reviewed here was discussed only marginally, mainly recapitulating Chroust’s conclusions, adding only little or nothing to the debate and bringing only a few fresh impetuses or approaches. However, Eickhoff’s remark is worth mentioning that it would be a “Hyperkritik” not to trust the inscription in the Strahov manuscript of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ that the author bore the name ‘Ansbert’ or even to speak just about “the so-called Ansbert” ( “sogenannten Ansbert” ) ^[57]. Eickhoff thus implicitly pointed to how much the debate had only been centred on the unresolvable question of authorship. However, he also stopped short of suggesting a more fruitful approach.

Since the 1980s, the research problem has also been reflected in dictionary entries, which, however, have not succeeded in significantly furthering the debate. Apart from a single exception trying to rebuff the exclusion of the Aventin’s Tageno from the circle of genuine sources ^[58], all these short contributions simply took over Anton Chroust’s observations from his edition, strengthening its validity ^[59].

The so-called Ansbert in crusading studies and Barbarossa’s biographies?

In the meantime, the so-called Ansbert, his work and the ideological and historiographical level of Frederick Barbarossa’s crusade have had a chance to be approached as a research problem also in the area of crusading studies or in the modern biographies of Frederick Barbarossa. However, the attention devoted to this research question has so far been rather marginal. If we were to begin with the relevant part of Steven Runciman’s influential book series on crusading history, we would look in vain for any mention of the so-called Ansbert. Moreover, the minimal amount said about the ideological level of Barbarossa’s armed pilgrimage in Runciman’s work is largely cliché-ridden ^[60]. Runciman’s German counterpart in terms of impact exerted on future scholarship, Hans Eberhard Mayer, surprisingly did not fare much better in this aspect, only mentioning the so-called Ansbert in passing ^[61], and a similar approach was also adopted by the Wisconsin project of the history of crusades, which dedicated a whole chapter to Barbarossa’s and Henry VI’s crusades without offering much more than a simple retelling of sources ^[62].

New hope came in the form of a monograph by Ekkehard Eickhoff appearing in 1977, which was fully devoted to Barbarossa’s crusade; however, the book proved to be a predominantly topographical study of the crusade, with the ideological level being largely omitted and the sources merely sketched in a brief appendix to the work ^[63]. Eickhoff’s topographical and chronological approach was also adopted by other German scholars researching Frederick I’s crusade ^[64], with slight exceptions being studies by Arnold Bühler ^[65], Rudolf Hiestand ^[66] or Nikolas Jaspert ^[67], which implemented a more multilateral approach instead. Even so, they only touched upon the topic under discussion, which remained barely unchanged despite an anthology dedicated solely to the crusading movement in the Roman-German Empire ^[68]. Robert-Tarek Fischer’s more recent depiction of the Third Crusade from the Austrian point of view did not avoid the historiographical level, but despite the so-called Ansbert often being ascribed Austrian provenance, the questions connected with him were mentioned only superficially by this historian ^[69].

Nor has adequate attention to the historiographical and ideological levels of Barbarossa’s crusade, or specifically to the so-called Ansbert, been granted in Anglophone crusading studies, despite a long-standing tradition of research on the idea of crusading since the pioneering work of Jonathan Riley-Smith ^[70]. In the impressive row of general monographs and studies on the crusades, with Jonathan Riley-Smith being no exception ^[71], the crusade of Frederick Barbarossa only gained minimal attention, with the so-called Ansbert as a research problem or the ideological and historiographical levels in general being reflected even less. This claim is evinced by the limited space dedicated to the crusade by such crusade historians as Christopher Tyerman ( though in his case at least Barbarossa’s ‘refighting’ of the Second and First Crusade and some other ideas circulating during the expedition are mentioned ) ^[72], Jonathan Phillips ^[73], or Thomas Asbridge ^[74]. The latter two historians are emblematic of the research desideratum in their depicting Barbarossa’s crusade only as a prelude and background to Richard the Lionheart’s expedition – a neglection that has already been thematised by Anglophone scholarship itself as well ^[75].

Even though the so-called Ansbert is the best source for the final phase of Emperor Barbarossa’s life, this narrative has not garnered any particular attention, not even in the emperor’s modern biographies. Peter Munz, otherwise eager to delve into the ideological level of Frederick’s rule and the influence of historiography on it, mentions the ‘Historia de expeditione’ only among sources about the crusade, missing the opportunity for a closer analysis ^[76], which is even more true of the long-authoritative biography by Ferdinand Opll ^[77] and valid also for the otherwise inspiring biography by Johannes Laudage ^[78]. A step in a more fruitful direction has been made in this respect by Knut Görich, who in his biography of Frederick Barbarossa from 2011 not only dedicated much more substantial space to Frederick’s crusade, but also pondered the function the ‘Historia de expeditione’ might have played in presenting the crusade and its leader: by depicting the crusading emperor in the context of Christian virtues, the so-called Ansbert ruled out the possibility that the failed expedition and tragic death of the emperor in the river Salef could have been retribution for the ruler’s lack of virtues ^[79]. Görich thus concisely demonstrated how the crusade and its main narrative could be approached more fruitfully ^[80] – a way that was unfortunately not followed in the most recent biography of Emperor Frederick penned by John Freed ^[81], and thus falling on deaf ears.

‘Historia de expeditione’ and its modern translations

To return several years back in time and back to the ‘Ansbert-specific’ research, new opportunities came in the new millennium with translations of the narrative into modern languages and with their introductions. The first to do so, in German, was Arnold Bühler ^[82]. In a short section dealing with the authorship and genesis of the ‘Historia’, he admitted that reliable answers about the author or authors of the narrative had not been found and are almost impossible. Building his claims mostly on those of Chroust, he suggested that the ‘Historia’ had been further reworked after 1197 with the addition of the Appendix, but also with the introductory letters and a part of the introduction. In another aspect, Bühler voiced an opinion if not in direct contrast to Chroust, then at least extending it – where Chroust had seen the blurred boundary between the ‘Historia’ itself and the Appendix shortly before the depiction of Barbarossa’s death, Bühler sided with Chroust’s alternative theory that the boundary should be set only after the emperor’s demise, and possibly even after the catastrophe at Acre, where many other crusaders from the Roman-German Empire had met their end. Avoiding the complicated relation of the so-called Ansbert with Tageno and mentioning the latter only as another close eyewitness-writer, Bühler could have explored other aspects of the ‘Historia’, such as its functions, which he stopped short of, however ^[83]. In his more recent study, Bühler at least expressed his opinion about the conclusion of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ more directly when he claimed that during the bloody siege of Acre, Ansbert had given up on continuing his account, although there is no definitive way of knowing whether he also died there or not ^[84].

Graham Loud, the translator of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ and related sources into English ^[85], took a different approach in 2010, forming a different opinion on the genesis of the narrative, although he did not venture further beyond the questions already asked for almost two centuries, either. Loud followed Chroust and many others in distinguishing the main body of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ from the Appendix and, based on stylistic peculiarities, also pointed to the different nature of the introduction to the ‘Historia’ and the passage starting with the emperor’s death. According to Loud, if the reference to ‘Ansbert’ merits any credence at all, the so-called Ansbert would have been rather the author of the Appendix. This had previously been considered as a possibility by Chroust, but Loud went further. While Chroust and the majority of researchers have assumed the eyewitness reporter and the compiler to have been the same person, taking notes and writing during the crusade before rewriting and editing them into a unified account shortly after, Loud separated this hypothetical author/compiler into at least two different persons; only the compiler could with some certainty be assumed to have come from the Passau region, having been familiar with and having access to the imperial chancery. Loud even questioned the notion that the ‘Historia de expeditione’ is an original eyewitness account – while previous research had attributed some of the inconsistencies mainly to the limited and imperfect reworking of eyewitness notes after the crusade by the crusade-participant himself, Loud claimed that it “can be attributed to the composite nature of the text, stitched together after the event from a number of disparate sources.” Thus, according to Loud, the ‘Historia de expeditione’ would not be a reworking of a single account, partial accounts or eyewitness notes stemming from a single eyewitness observer, but rather a compilation of multiple eyewitness sources, the diary of Tageno being just one of them ^[86]. While this opinion has often been adopted by Anglophone scholars ^[87] – among whom particularly Stephen Spencer and Beth Spacey have contributed valuable observations regarding certain aspects of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ ^[88] –, German historiography has neither accepted nor reflected this view ^[89], and the question has so far not been satisfactorily resolved.

Interest in the ‘Historia de expeditione’ and related sources then shifted back to its traditional Central-European research territory again, first to Germany. Egon Boshof, while concentrating mostly on Tageno and the crusade with a focus on the Bishop of Passau and his followers, addressed the ‘Historia de expeditione’ and the so-called Ansbert as well. According to him, the anonymous author was indeed a direct participant of the crusade and could have written his work on official commission. Boshof also addressed the problem of the interconnectedness between Tageno and the so-called Ansbert, simply referring to the complicated scholarly discussion and retelling what Tageno had written about the crusade as extant in the Chronicle of Magnus of Reichersberg, without venturing into an analysis of the functions of the text or its intentions and mentioning only several aspects of the crusading idea present in the source ^[90].

The first to publish an edition of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ in the 19^th century was the Czech scholar Josef Dobrovský; how the narrative has been treated in the Czech Republic in the 21^st century can thus form a suitable conclusion to this research overview. Shortly after the ‘Historia’ had been translated into a modern language for the first time ( by Arnold Bühler to German ), the first Czech translation appeared, having been undertaken in 2003 by Pavel Soukup ^[91]. In his introduction, Soukup outlined Frederick I’s ( and also Conrad III’s ) reign leading up to the Third Crusade, the conception of his imperial rule and the situation in the Roman-German Empire and the neighbouring lands in the 12^th century. He introduced the notion of holy war both from the Christian and the Muslim points of view, describing the situation in Outremer preceding the crusade, and depicting Barbarossa’s diplomatic preparations for the armed pilgrimage, as well as the journey itself. Soukup dedicated a mere three pages to the problem-laden question of the so-called Ansbert and the circumstances of the genesis of his crusading history, but even his few remarks demonstrate the diversity of scholarly opinions and the impossibility to arrive at widely accepted answers on such long-investigated research questions. The translator deemed the ‘Historia’ to have been written for remembrance and its author to have been appointed by the emperor and charged to write a diary of the crusade, as suggested by his possible affiliation to the emperor’s secretariat. The eyewitness author gave his chronicle an official form and probably intended to inform the king and princes who had stayed at home about the progress of the journey. Here, Soukup expressly leaned on Chroust’s theory of three partial accounts and similarly did so when showing that the author of the chronicle had probably been identical with the author of Barbarossa’s letter to his son Henry from November 1189. Soukup also partly relied on Chroust when recapitulating the manner in which the ‘Historia de expeditione’ might have taken shape: soon after the crusade, once back home, the author of the partial accounts united them into the first recension of the work, partly reformulating the text, interpolating from other literature and enriching it with an introduction and conclusion. Referring to the Graz manuscript, Soukup also claimed that in this first recension the crusading history might have been added to some other work about the Holy Land which could be inferred from the recapitulatory sentence beginning Terra itaque repromissionis ^[92] in the introduction to the ‘Historia’. The second redaction should have, according to Soukup, originated approximately ten years after the crusade, at which time the letters from the pope and his legate and Barbarossa’s letter to his son were added to the text, as well as an excursus about the Propontis ( Sea of Marmara ), a new introduction necessitated by the inclusion of introductory letters, and the so-called Appendix. This second redaction would then have been written down in the annals of Mühlhausen, in which it has survived to our time. To conclude Soukup’s line of thought, ‘Ansbert’ need not necessarily have been the name of the eyewitness author, but possibly of one of the compilers of the chronicle ^[93].

Since then, the ‘Historia’ has been understood and researched by Czech historians much more as an inseparable part of Abbot Gerlach’s chronicle ( or annals ) of Mühlhausen, in which it is extant. Anna Kernbach ( Smékalová ) has been the most prominent in representing this approach among Czech historians. In a preliminary study for her later book, she dealt with the place the so-called Ansbert’s ‘Historia’ occupies in the chronicle of Abbot Gerlach of Mühlhausen, leaning on Anton Chroust when introducing this particular section of the Strahov manuscript. She above all stressed the need to approach Gerlach’s chronicle as on the one hand consisting of multiple parts, but on the other hand as a work where all the constituent parts play a role in the abbot’s authorial intent and should be thus approached together and within this context ^[94]. Later, Kernbach also adopted this attitude in a monograph on Vincent’s and Gerlach’s chronicles in the context of their genesis. Regarding the ‘Historia de expeditione’, she described the narrative’s place in Gerlach’s compilation first from a codicological standpoint, and then from the angle of its role in Gerlach’s authorial intention, also mirrored in additions to the manuscript’s margins in the abbot’s own hand. In the case of the chronicle of Vincent of Prague, Anna Kernbach tried to pierce the veil of time and analyse what this text might have originally aimed for in its own 12^th century context, and not just in the context of Gerlach’s chronicle, who used it for his own purposes and for a different audience several decades later. A similar attempt to analyse the ‘Historia de expeditione’ in the context of its original genesis has not found its way into Kernbach’s book, though ^[95].

As a single work consisting of multiple parts ( the accounts of Vincent, Gerlach, and of the so-called Ansbert ) but united by Gerlach’s literary conception and narrative aims, the annals of Mühlhausen have been translated, also by Kernbach, into Czech ^[96] and introduced along the same lines by Martin Wihoda, who, when writing about the so-called Ansbert, followed Chroust’s results ^[97]. The same two authors also published together a joint study, presenting Gerlach’s multi-layered work as an effort to remind the Premonstratensians in Bohemia of their original identity at a time of struggle between the king of Bohemia, Přemysl Otakar I, and Bishop Andrew II of Prague. However, the ‘Historia de expeditione’ gained only limited attention in the context of the study ^[98]. More space devoted to the so-called Ansbert could be expected from an upcoming edition of the annals or chronicle of Mühlhausen ( by the same two editors ) ^[99], which will, however, probably focus again on the function of Gerlach’s three-part work in the 13^th century context, rather than on the authorial intentions, thought-worlds, narrative functions and strategies of its constituent parts at the time of their original creation.

New horizons?

Let us conclude with a question: what has this research overview shown? To summarise, mostly the fact that the research dealing with the ‘Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris’ has devoted an enormous amount of energy to determining who the author of the narrative might have been and what the exact manner of composition might have looked like. These are legitimate questions, of course, and the efforts of mostly German historiography of the later 19^th century and the first quarter of the 20^th century to subject the source to the closest scrutiny in order to answer these questions is both logical and valuable. It also reflects the beliefs and approach of the historiography of that time: in the spirit of historical positivism, critical methods applied to sources were supposed to inevitably yield objective and final results. Neither the edition from 1928 nor the scientific discussion that followed and has lasted until today have, however, brought these conclusive answers. The 200-year-long debate has led up a blind alley. Moreover, this one-sided focus on the authorship and exact manner of the source’s genesis has hindered much more fruitful questions regarding the ‘Historia de expeditione’ from being asked, thus almost doing the so-called Ansbert as a research problem a disservice in this aspect.

This is unfortunate, as there is definitely a more stimulating approach to be employed and more engaging research questions to be asked. Even if the specific genesis of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ and related sources will probably never fully be satisfyingly resolved, the narratives with the so-called Ansbert’s ‘Historia’ at the forefront can be approached from another perspective, namely a function-based one: the crusading narratives may be researched through the lens of functions and aims the sources might have followed, and the role the idea of crusading could have played in such authorial intentions. In 2020, the importance of the crusading idea for interpretation of crusade-related sources was highlighted ( similarly to the previously mentioned Knut Görich ^[100] ) by Manuel Kamenzin, who analysed the reception of Barbarossa’s death. According to him, some medieval authors tried to level the unfortunate circumstances of his tragic and controversial demise by means of the crusading ideology to prove that his death had actually been a good one ^[101], which Kamenzin paraphrased even more aptly when he suggested that when interpreting the sources about the emperor’s death, the crusading motif cannot be appraised highly enough ^[102].

When we apply such thinking specifically to the ‘Historia de expeditione’ and not only in relation to Barbarossa’s tragic death, at least three thematic threads offer themselves for closer analysis. Firstly, what was the causa scribendi of the so-called Ansbert’s ‘Historia’, the impetus to write the crusading chronicle? What may have inspired it, and who was the narrative’s intended audience? Secondly, what might have been the authorial intent of the so-called Ansbert, what aims could he have pursued, what functions might his ‘Historia’ have been supposed to achieve, and what role did the crusading ideology play in this ( i. e., what function did it have and to what end was it used in the narrative )? And, thirdly, what was the ‘second life’ of the ‘Historia de expeditione’? What gave the so-called Ansbert’s ‘Historia’ the form we know today, as included in the annals of Mühlhausen, followed by the Appendix, and amended by a series of 13^th century notes? What motivated Abbot Gerlach of Mühlhausen to include the ‘Historia de expeditione’ into his narrative and how, why and to what end did the functions of the so-called Ansbert’s ‘Historia’ change in this new, 13^th century context?

These are some of the questions which could expand the horizon of our knowledge of the ‘Historia de expeditione’ and related sources beyond the unresolvable question of authorship and the exact manner of composition. Answers to these fresh questions could not only further our understanding of the crusading idea and its role as perceived by medieval historiographical observers, but also shed further light on the functions of high-medieval historiography in the Roman-German Empire in general. Furthermore, this approach could extricate the research of the so-called Ansbert’s ‘Historia de expeditione’ from the blind alley it has been sent down over the past 200 years, and thus move research towards a new, hopefully more fruitful direction – a task that is already being undertaken ^[103].