Latin crusader chroniclers retold unobserved deaths as hagiographic martyr legends.

Evidence

Tudebodus, like the anonymous hagiographer of Thiemo, portrays the deaths of crusaders in terms taken from hagiography. This is easiest to do, of course, for the deaths he did not witness: he can imagine them as they should have happened. Rainaldus Porchetus, a crusader taken captive by the Turks of Antioch, Tudebodus says, is taken to the top of the walls and told to urge the crusaders to pay a large ransom for his return. Instead Rainaldus exhorts the crusaders to persist, telling them to value his own life as nothing and that the city’s defenders will be unable to hold out much longer. This advice earns him the praise of his comrades and death at the hands of his captors. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 629

Categorization

• XREF: The pattern of projecting hagiographic tropes onto events the chronicler did not witness parallels how medieval chroniclers reshaped martyrs’ deaths in the passions discussed in chapter 3.