Anna, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Alexius Komnenos, was sixty five in 1148 when she wrote her history of her father's reign.1 Her description of Bohemond comes from the memory of her first encounter with the Count roughly fifty one years earlier, when she was a girl of fourteen. Bohemond, the son of the famous Norman adventurer and general Robert Guiscard, traveled to Constantinople in response to Urban II's call for the First Crusade. Alexius must have been surprised by the visit due to the nature of the two men's past history. Bohemond and his father Robert Guiscard had waged war against the Byzantine Empire in both Italy and the Balkans. He now comes with an offer of peace as well as his service against the Turkish raids on the holy lands. .
The meeting between the Emperor Alexius and Count Bohemond is pertinent to understanding the complexity of their relationship, which spanned nearly thirty years. Given the historical importance of these men in the history of the First Crusade, it is odd that historians have paid so little attention to their relationship. Historians have often tried to link the origins of the First Crusade to the West, or to struggles presented to the Byzantine Empire by the military conquests of the Seljuk Turks. The struggle between Alexius and the Normans of southern Italy is often overlooked when reasoning Alexius' plea for aid in the East from the Pope Urban II, which came to be the spark for the First Crusade. It is my goal in this paper to explain the motivations of Bohemond's participation in the First Crusade as well as his ongoing relationship with Alexius Komnenos during both the years of struggle between the Normans and Alexius, and during the times of peace and friendship between the two men.
In order for historians to answer these questions they must first start by evaluating the ways in which previous historians have addressed them, thus determining either holes in their argument that need to be filled, or where their analysis is correct.
