Searching for Goswin, a Brabantine Cistercian in Lisbon? – the Song of the Conquest of Alcácer (1217) and its Author “Goswin’s Song of the Conquest of Alcácer” (Gosuini de Expugnatione Salaciae Carmen) exists in a unique exemplar in a codex dating to the latter half of the thirteenth century belonging to the library of the great Portuguese Cistercian monastery of Alcobaça. It recounts the Portuguese conquest in 1217 of the strategically vital Muslim fortress Alcácer-do-Sal, in combination with maritime Northern European crusaders during the formative years of the autonomous kingdom of Portugal. Beyond his name, the identity of Goswin has until now remained a mystery. Against the background of the Fifth Crusade and through an exploration of a maze of connections, political, religious and literary, both in Portugal and in the Southern Low Countries, this paper presents the case that the Goswin of the Song is in fact Goswin of Bossut (fl. 1231-1238) cantor of the important Cistercian monastery of Villers in Brabant and known author of at least three Lives; Ida the Compassionate of Nivelles, Arnulf lay brother of Villers and Abundus, Monk of Villers, and several other works both poetical and musical. 

Biographical note 
Jonathan Wilson (PhD, Liverpool) is a researcher in Hispanic Medieval History in the Institute for Medieval Studies at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. His investigations probe matters including ecclesiastical history, canon law, monasticism (particularly Cistercians and Canons Regular), the medieval Roman liturgy, perceptions of medieval Iberian Islam in its various forms, interfaith relations, and relations between Portugal and the wider Latin West and Latin East. Recently his work has focused upon Portugal’s relationship with Northern maritime crusaders and with crusading ideology. More generally his work involves analysis of Western Iberian literary/historiographical production during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and ancillary projects involve substantial elements of palaeography, codicology and manuscript studies as well as occasional forays into the archaeology of the medieval Iberian West. His most recent publication is “Enigma of the De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi”, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies (2017) vol. 9, Nº. 1, 99-129. He is currently preparing editions and translations with attendant studies of two important manuscripts from the Cistercian Abbey of Alcobaça, the De Expugnatione Scalabis and the Gosnuini De Expugnatione Salaciae Carmen, respectively recounting the conquests of Santarém in 1147 and Alcácer do Sal in 1217, for the series Dallas Medieval Tests and Translations (Peeters Publishers, Leuven).