The Deeds of God Through the Franks Part 1

The Deeds of the G.o.ds through the Franks.

by Guibert of Nogent.

The four-year period (1095-1099) between the call for crusade by Pope Urban II at the Council of Claremont and the capture of Jerusalem produced a remarkable amount of historiography, both in Western Europe and in Asia Minor. Three accounts by western European eye-witnesses--an anonymous soldier or priest in Bohemund's army, Fulker of Chartres, and Raymond of Aguilers--provoked later twelfth-century Latin writers from various parts of what are now France, Germany, England, Italy, and the Near East, to take up the task of providing more accurate, more thorough, more interpretive, and better written versions of the events.

Very little is known about most of the earliest rewriters; Albert of Aix, Robert the Monk, and Raoul of Caen are little more than names, while Baldric of Dole is known to have occupied a significant ecclesiastical position, and to have composed other literary works.

Guibert of Nogent, on the other hand, is better known than any other historian of the First Crusade, in spite of the fact that The Deeds of G.o.d Through the Franks, composed in the first decade of the twelfth century (1106-1109), did not circulate widely in the middle ages, and no writer of his own time mentions him. Guibert himself, in the course of the autobiographical work he composed in the second decade of the twelfth century (1114-1117), never mentions the Deeds, and it has never been translated into English.[1] What measure of fame he currently has is based mostly on his autobiography, the Monodiae, or Memoirs, an apparently more personal doc.u.ment, which has been translated into both French and English.[2]

Although the Memoirs contain a strong historical component--the third book, in particular, if used with discretion, offers rich material for a study of the civil disorder that took place in Laon 1112-111-- the first book has attracted the attention of most recent scholars and critics because it offers more autobiographical elements.

However, Guibert did not include among those elements the exact date and place of his birth.[3] Scholarly discussion has narrowed the possible dates to 1053-1065, although the latest editor of the Memoirs, Edmonde Labande, categorically chooses 1055. Among the candidates for his birthplace are Clermont-en-Beauvaisis, Agnetz, Catenoy, Bourgin, and Autreville, all within a short distance of Beauvais. No record of his death, generally a.s.sumed to have occurred by 1125, has survived.

In spite of the lack of exact.i.tude about places and dates, the Memoirs provide an extensive account of some of the ways religious, psychological, and spiritual problems combined in the mind of an aristocratic oblate, who became an aggressive Benedictine monk, fervently attached to his pious mother, fascinated and horrified by s.e.xuality, enraged at the extent of contemporary ecclesiastical corruption, intensely alert to possible heresies, and generally impatient with all opinions not his own.[4] The personality that dominates the Monodiae had already permeated the earlier, historical text. As cantankerous as Carlyle, Guibert reveals in the Deeds the same qualities that Jonathan Kantor detected in the Memoirs:

The tone of the memoirs is consistently condemning and not confiding; they were written not by one searching for the true faith but by one determined to condemn the faithless.[5]

Such a tone is clearly reflected in the Deeds, whose very t.i.tle is designed to correct the t.i.tle of the anonymous Gesta Francorum, generally considered to be the earliest chronicle, and possibly eye-witness account (in spite of the evidence that a "monkish scribe"

had a hand in producing the text), of the First Crusade.[6]

Throughout his rewriting (for the most part, amplifying) of the Gesta Francorum, Guibert insists upon the providential nature of the accomplishment; by replacing the genitive plural of Franks with the genitive singular of G.o.d, Guibert lays the credit and responsibility for the deeds done--though, not by the French--where they properly belong.[7]

Guibert also sees to it that his characters explicitly articulate their awareness of providential responsibility; in Book IV, one of the major leaders of the Crusade, Bohemund, addresses his men:

Bohemund said: "O finest knights, your frequent victories provide an explanation for your great boldness. Thus far you have fought for the faith against the infidel, and have emerged triumphant from every danger. Having already felt the abundant evidence of Christ's strength should give you pleasure, and should convince you beyond all doubt that in the most severe battles it is not you, but Christ, who has fought.

The Gesta Francorum, however, the text that Guibert sets out to correct, did not neglect the providential aspect of the First Crusade, although the surviving text contains no prologue making such an agenda blatantly explicit. Nevertheless, the anonymous author provides more than enough characters, direct discourse, and action to a.s.sure every reader that G.o.d looked favorably upon the Crusade. The warning given to Kherboga by his mother, for example,[8] indicates that even pagans were aware that G.o.d was on the side of the Christians; the appearance of the divine army,--led by three long-dead saints,[9] is another example of divine support. Perhaps the most vivid example is the series of visits Saint Andrew pays to Peter Bartholomew,[10] urging him to dig up the Lance that pierced Christ's side.

Redirecting, or redistributing the credit for victory, then, was not a radical contribution by Guibert. A far more noticeable correction, however, was the result of Guibert's determination to correct the style of his source:

A version of this same history, but woven out of excessively simple words, often violating grammatical rules, exists, and it may often bore the reader with the stale, flat quality of its language.

The result of his attempt to improve the quality of the Gesta's language, however, is what has distressed some of the modern readers who have tried to deal with Guibert's strenuously elaborate diction, [11] itself a part of his general delight, perhaps obsession, with difficulty. The utter lack of references to Guibert by his contemporaries may indicate that earlier readers shared R.B.C.

Huygens' recent judgement that it is marred by an "affected style and pretentious vocabulary."[12]

Guibert seems to have antic.i.p.ated such a response; at the beginning of Book Five of the Gesta he claims to be utterly unconcerned with his audiences' interests and abilities:

In addition to the spiritual reward this little work of mine may bring, my purpose in writing is to speak as I would wish someone else, writing the same story, would speak to me. For my mind loves what is somewhat obscure, and detests a raw, unpolished style. I savor those things which are able to exercise my mind more than those things which, too easily understood, are incapable of inscribing themselves upon a mind always avid for novelty. In everything that I have written and am writing, I have driven everyone from my mind, instead thinking only of what is good for myself, with no concern for pleasing anyone else. Beyond worrying about the opinions of others, calm or unconcerned about my own, I await the blows of whatever words may fall upon me.[13]

However, anyone who reads the conventionally obsequious opening of the dedicatory epistle to Bishop Lysiard would have difficulty accepting the claim that Guibert has no concern for pleasing anyone else:

Some of my friends have often asked me why I do not sign this little work with my own name; until now I have refused, out of fear of sullying pious history with the name of a hateful person. However, thinking that the story, splendid in itself, might become even more splendid if attached to the name of a famous man, I have decided to attach it to you. Thus I have placed most pleasing lamp in front of the work of an obscure author. For, since your ancient lineage is accompanied by a knowledge of literature, an unusual serenity and moral probity, one may justly believe that G.o.d in his foresight wanted the dignity of the bishop's office to honor the gift of such reverence. By embracing your name, the little work that follows may flourish: crude in itself, it may be made agreeable by the love of the one to whom it is written, and made stronger by the authority of the office by which you stand above others.

We do not know whether Lysiard shared Guibert's fascination with what is difficult, but the failure of any other medieval writer to mention Guibert implies a negative reception in general for the Gesta Dei.

Not every modern reader, however, has been alienated by Guibert's posture. Labande expresses some enthusiasm for "la virtuosite du styliste,"[14] and declares that Guibert's various uses of literary devices "meriteraient une etude attentive." Acknowledging the fact that Guibert's language is somewhat "alambique" and "tarbiscote,"

Labande had argued in an earlier article, although only on the basis of the historical material in the Monodiae, that Guibert deserved to be appreciated as an historian, with some "modern" qualities.[15]

Going even further than Labande, Eitan Burstein admires "la richesse et l complexite" of Guibert's diction.[16] One might also point out that Guibert was not the first to compose a text of an historical nature in a self-consciously elaborate, difficult style. A century earlier Dudo of Saint Quentin had used such a style for his history of the Normans;[17] Saxo Grammaticus' History of the Danes indicates that the acrobatic style did not die out with Guibert.[18]

Translating into English the work of a deliberately difficult writer, whose declared aspiration is to be as hermetic as possible, might become a quixotic task, if Guibert's pa.s.sion and energy had been focused only on providing a performance worthy of Martia.n.u.s Capella.

[19] The abbot of Nogent, however, also provides additional material, excises or corrects stories that he considers inaccurate, or worse, and, as his corrective t.i.tle indicates, alters the focus of the material. The results of Guibert's efforts certainly provide unusually rich material for those interested in medieval mentalite.

In addition, since history was a branch of rhetoric during the middle-ages (i.e., it was a part of literature),[20] those interested in intertextual aspects of medieval literature will find a treasure trove, particularly since Guibert eventually sets about correcting and improving two earlier texts.[21]

A clear example of what Guibert means by improvement occurs in his amplification of the Crusaders' arrival at Jerusalem. Where the Gesta Francorum had provided:

We, however, joyful and exultant, came to the city of Jerusalem...

Guibert composes a veritable cadenza on the arrival:

Finally they reached the place which had provoked so many hards.h.i.+ps for them, which had brought upon them so much thirst and hunger for such a long time, which had stripped them, kept them sleepless, cold, and ceaselessly frightened, the most intensely pleasurable place, which had been the goal of the wretchedness they had undergone, and which had lured them to seek death and wounds. To this place, I say, desired by so many thousands of thousands, which they had greeted with such sadness and in jubilation, they finally came, to Jerusalem.

Amplifications like this, magnifying the internal, psychological significance of the events, while simultaneously insisting upon the religious nature of the expedition, characterize Guibert's response to the Gest Francorum. His desire to correct is complicated by the compet.i.tive urges that emerge when he faces the other apparently eye-witness account of the First Crusade that became available to him, Fulcher of Chartres' Histori Hierosolymitana.[22] Where he had offered gently corrective remarks about the crudeness of the Gest Francorum, Guibert mounts a vitriolic attack on Fulker's pretentiousness:

Since this same man produces swollen, foot-and-a-half words, pours forth the blaring colors of vapid rhetorical schemes,[23] I prefer to s.n.a.t.c.h the bare limbs of the deeds themselves, with whatever sack-cloth of eloquence I have, rather than cover them with learned weavings.[24]

However, to convince readers of his superiority Guibert knew that stylistic competence was necessary but not sufficient, particularly because both Fulker and the author of the Gesta Francorum had convinced most readers, including Guibert himself, that they were eye-witnesses of most of the events in their texts.[25] Guibert then had to deal with the commonplace a.s.sumption pa.s.sed on by Isidore of Seville:

Apud veteres enim nemo conscribebat historiam, nisi is qui interfuisset, et ea quae conscribend essent vidisset.[26]

Among the ancients no one wrote history unless he had been present and had seen the things he was writing about.

To overcome his apparent disadvantage, Guibert offers defense of his second-hand perspective several times in the course of his performance.

In the fifth book, immediately after acknowledging the fascination of what is difficult, Guibert provides two paragraphs on the difficulties of determining exactly what happened at Antioch. These paragraphs offer another opportunity to watch Guibert rework material from an earlier text. The author of the Gesta Francorum had invoked variation of the topos of humility,[27] just before giving his account of how Antioch was betrayed by someone inside the city:

I am unable to narrate everything that we did before the city was captured, because no one who was in these parts, neither cleric nor laity, could write or narrate entirely what happened. But I shall tell a little.[28]

When Guibert takes his turn at the topos, he is clearly determined to outdo the author of the Gesta Francorum, both stylistically and in terms of the theory of historiography:

We judge that what happened at the siege of Antioch cannot possibly be told by anyone, because, among those who were there, no one can be found who could have observed everything that took place throughout the city, or who could understand the entire event in a way that would enable him to represent the sequence of actions as they took place.

At the beginning of the fourth book of the Gest Dei, Guibert's defense of his absence is again intertextual, but openly polemic as well, as he declares the battle between modern Christian writing (saints lives and John III.32) and ancient pagan authority (Horace, Ars Poetica 180-181) no contest:

If anyone objects that I did not see, he cannot object on the grounds that I did not hear, because I believe that, in a way, hearing is almost as good as seeing. For although:

Less vividly is the mind stirred by what finds entrance through the ears than by what is brought before the trusty eyes.[29]

Yet who is unaware that historians and those who wrote the lives of the saints wrote down not only what they had seen, but also those things they had drawn from what others had told them? If the truthful man, as it is written, reports "what he has seen and heard,"

then his tale may be accepted as true when he describes what he has not seen, but has been told by reliable speakers.

Guibert then goes on to challenge those who object to do the job better.

Correcting the Gesta Francorum, castigating Fulker, and challenging his other contemporaries, however, do not absorb all of Guibert's compet.i.tive urges. He also attacks both the Graeco-Roman and Jewish texts upon which he also heavily depends.[30] His use of moderns to castigate the ancients begins in Book One:

We wonder at Chaldean pride, Greek bitterness, the sordidness of the Egyptians, the instability of the Asiatics, as described by Trogus Pompeius and other fine writers. We judge that the early Roman inst.i.tutions usefully served the common good and the spread of their power. And yet, if the essence of these things were laid bare, not only would the relentless madness of fighting without good reason, only for the sake of ruling, would obviously deserve reproach. Let us look carefully, indeed let us come to our senses about the remains, I might have said dregs, of this time which we disdain, and we may find, as that foolish king said,[31] that our little finger is greater than the backs of our fathers, whom we praise excessively.

If we look carefully at the wars of the pagans and the kingdoms they traveled through by great military effort, we shall conclude that none of their strength, their armies, by the grace of G.o.d, is comparable to ours.

Throughout the text Guibert relentlessly insists that the Crusaders outdo the ancient Jews; in the last book he attempts to strip them of every accomplishment:

The Lord saves the tents of Judah in the beginning, since He, after having accomplished miracles for our fathers, also granted glory to our own times, so that modern men seem to have undergone pain and suffering greater than that of the Jews of old, who, in the company of their wives and sons, and with full bellies, were led by angels who made themselves visible to them.[32]