1. TheGesta Francorumdescribes his election: “omnes nostri maiores elegerant ut esset ductor”:GF, 63. The account attributed to Peter Tudebode supplements this with “qui erat caput nostrum” to hammer home the point: Peter Tudebode,Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere, ed. John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill, Documents relatifs à l’histoire des croisades 12 (Paris, 1977), 104. Raymond utilizes a similar term,dictator, a word also used by Guibert of Nogent and supplemented there withmagister: Raymond of Aguilers,Le “Liber” de Raymond d’Aguilers, ed. John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill, Documents relatifs à l’histoire des croisades 9 (Paris, 1969), 77; GN, 132. Guibert, at another point, refers to Stephen aspreceptor: ibid., 227. Albert of Aachen also corroborates his status as “caput et primus consilio”: AA, 96.
2. For his history and explorations of his fallibility, see the rehabilitative efforts of both John H. Pryor, "Stephen of Blois: Sensitive New Age Crusader or Victim of History?", Arts: Journal of the Sydney University Arts Association 20 (1998): 26-74
3. and James A. Brundage, "An Errant Crusader: Stephen of Blois," Traditio 16 (1960): 380-95.
4. Kimberly A. LoPrete,Adela of Blois, Countess and Lord (c.1067–1137)(Dublin, 2007).
5. The most popular English translation is inLetters of the Crusaders, ed. and trans. Dana Carleton Munro, Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History Vol. 1, Section 4, 2nd revised ed. (Philadelphia, 1897). I have only been able to consult this bound with the other revisedTranslations and Reprintsfrom the 1894 series, when it was originally published, seemingly as a mail-order bulletin with multiple binding options. The translation of the second letter by Munro is reprinted in bothThe Crusades to the Holy Land: The Essential Reference Guide, ed. Alan V. Murray (Santa Barbara, CA, 2015), 265–67, and, minus the end, inThe First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and Other Source Materials, ed. Edward Peters (Philadelphia, 1971), 225–28, as well as in its expanded second edition (1998), 287–89. A separate, somewhat misleading, translation, is found in August C. Krey,The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eye-Witnesses and Participants(Princeton, 1921), 100–101, 107–9, 131–32, 155–57. The best translation is inLetters from the East: Crusaders, Pilgrims, and Settlers in the 12th–13th Centuries, trans. Malcolm Barber and Keith Bate, Crusade Texts in Translation 18 (Farnham, 2013), 15–17, 22–25 [hereafter cited asLetters from the East].