And, to repeat my promise more clearly and to [350] guard the individuality of those who make this agreement in writing, behold, 1, Bohemund, the son of Robert Guiscard, make an agreement with your Empire, and I wish to keep this pact inviolate with your Majesties, that is with thee, the Emperor of the Romans, the Lord Alexius and the Emperor, thy son the Porphyrogenitus, to be thy true and genuine liege as long as I breathe and am counted among the living. And I will take arms against the enemies that may arise in the future against you and your Majesties of the ever-venerable august Emperors of the Roman hegemony.
The immortal angels and invulnerable
And wherever I shall be ordered by you to go, I shall unhesitatingly serve you with the whole army under me according to your instant need. And all such as may be inimical to your Empire, provided only they be not like the immortal angels and invulnerable by our spears or endowed with adamantine bodies, against all such I shall make war on behalf of your Majesties. And as long as I am in good bodily health and not occupied with any barbarian or Turkish war, I myself in person with the army that follows me will undertake any war on your behalf.
But if I am hindered by any severe illness, many of which befall us mortals, or an imminent war requires my presence, then of a surety I promise to send as large reinforcements as I possibly can from the brave men around me so that they may make up for my absence. For my genuine pledge which I give to-day to your Majesties is that either by my own arm or by that of others, as just said, I will preserve the terms of this pact unmutilated.
And I swear I will keep this genuine pledge both generally and in particular on behalf of your Empire and your life, I mean your life here below on this earth.
For on behalf of this temporal life of yours I shall stand under arms like a statue of iron, wrought by the hammer. But I also extend my oath to the protection of your honour and your imperial limbs and if any guilty enemy plots mischief against them, I will do my best to destroy them and check them in their evil design. But I will also fight on behalf of every country of yours, or town, small or great, and of the islands themselves or, in general, of every land and sea that is under your sway, namely, from this Adriatic sea to the farthest East and throughout the length of great Asia, wherever the Roman boundaries are.
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