It was not the deliverance of the tomb of Christ which fired his zeal or decided him upon taking up the cross; but, as he had vowed eternal enmity to the Greek emperors, he smiled at the idea of traversing their empire at the head of an army, and, full of confidence in his fortunes, he hoped to make for himself a kingdom before arriving at Jerusalem." Bohemond had as friend and faithful comrade his cousin Tancred de Hauteville, great-grandson, through his mother, Emma, of Robert Guiscard, and, according to all his contemporaries, the type of a perfect Christian knight, neither more nor less.

"From his boyhood," says Raoul of Caen, his servitor before becoming his biographer, "he surpassed the young by his skill in the management of arms, and the old by the strictness of his morals.

He disdained to speak ill of whoever it might be, even when ill had been spoken of himself.

About himself he would say nought, but he had an insatiable desire to give cause for talking thereof.

Glory was the only passion that moved that young soul; yet was it disquieted within him, and he suffered great anxiety from thinking that his knightly combats seemed contrary to the precepts of the Lord.