The Chanson d'Antioche is a chanson de geste in 9000 lines of poetry in stanzas called laisses, now known in a version composed about 1180 for a courtly French audience and embedded in a quasi-historical cycle of epic poems inspired by the events of 1097 – 1099, the climax of the First Crusade: the conquest of Antioch and of Jerusalem and the origins of the Crusader states.


The subject is the preaching of the First Crusade, the preparations for departure, the tearful goodbyes, the arrival at Constantinople and the siege and taking of Antioch.

The lost original poem was said to have been composed by an eye-witness, Richard le Pèlerin, ("Richard the Pilgrim"), a North French or Flemish jongleur, who began it partly on the spot, during the eight month siege of Antioch. The oldest version now known was recast by Graindor de Douai, a contemporary of Louis VII of France.


The Chanson d'Antioche was forgotten, until it was printed and published in 1848 by Alexis Paulin Paris, at the height of the Romantic Gothic Revival. The most recent edition is La Chanson d'Antioche edited by Suzanne Duparc-Quioc, Paris 1977.