Renowned historian Jean Flori presents in this biography a historical figure whose role has been underestimated in the history of the Crusades.

Born in the middle of the eleventh century, Bohémond was the exiled and disinherited son of the Norman nobleman Robert Guiscard. Named “the terror of the world” after his victorious battles against two emperors, Bohémond’s father even claimed part of Italy as his own. In 1096, Bohémond set out to make a name for himself. He understood that a crusade would be the only way to forge his own destiny and match his father’s accomplishments. So he became one of the leaders of the First Crusade and was celebrated for his innate sense of military strategy and political ingenuity—qualities that would prove instrumental in the capture of Antioch.

Bohémond’s attributes have been much praised in Gesta Francorum, a chronicle of the crusade as seen by one of his followers. Flori aims to go beyond what is already known about the First Crusade and to shed light on how this erstwhile unknown knight went down in history as the heroic Bohémond of Antioch.