Heinrich Hagenmeyer (1834-1915)
Contribution to Crusader Studies
Hagenmeyer’s main legacy is to be found in the critical editions he published of key sources for the First Crusade, such as the Historia Hierosolymitana of Fulcher of Chartres and the collection of letters composed by first crusaders. Many of Hagenmeyer’s editions are yet to be surpassed and are still used by crusade historians to this day. As Tyerman put it, Hagenmeyer should be regarded amongst a group of nineteenth-century crusading historians who ‘set new scholarly standards in the discovery, appraisal and editing of old and new sources, thereby transforming both content and interpretation of the subject’ (Tyerman: p 120).
However, that is not to say that Hagenmeyer’s other research output should be overlooked; his Chronologie de la première croisade remains of considerable empirical value and, in the words of one scholar, his study of Peter the Hermit ‘established an orthodoxy on the origins and course of the First Crusade [that was] not seriously challenged until the 1980s’ (Tyerman: p 119).
Select Publications
Das Verhältniss der Gesta Francorum zu dem Hierosolymita Ekkehards von Aura (Göttingen, 1875).
Ekkehardi Uraugiensis Abbatio Hierosolymita (Tübingen, 1877).
Peter der Eremite: ein kritischer Beitrag zur Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges (Leipzig, 1879).
Anonymi Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolymitanorum (Heidelberg, 1890).
Galterii Cancellarii Bella Antiochena (Innsbruck, 1896).
Epistulae et chartae ad historiam primi Belli Sacri spectantes quae supersunt aevo aequales ac genuinae. Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100 (Innsbruck, 1901).
Chronologie de la première croisade (1094–1100) (Paris, 1902).
Fulcheri Carnotensis Historia Hierosolymitana, 1095–1127 (Heidelberg, 1913).
Sources
C Tyerman, The Invention of the Crusades (Basingstoke, 1998).
Written by: Dr William Purkis