ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses whether Thomas de Marle's alleged reign of terror in Northern France from 1100-1130 could be attributed to traumas caused by his experiences in the First Crusade. Thomas de Marle was probably born in 1078. In 1096 Thomas joined with French and German crusaders travelling through Germany where they conducted massacres of the Jews in the Rhineland. In 1103, the local aristocracy led by Thomas' father besieged Thomas in the castle of Montaigu. The chronicler who wrote most extensively on Thomas was Guibert de Nogent, a devoted monk and Biblical moralist. Suger's portrayal of Thomas de Marle was dominated by his role as royal historiographer and promoter of the supremacy of the kings of France. The Anglo-Norman chronicler Orderic Vitalis, writing in the 1130s, called Thomas an excommunicated thief and a seditious robber who terrorised a whole province and was a common enemy of pilgrims and all humble folk.
