Read Ebook: The Deeds of God Through the Franks by Guibert Abbot Of Nogent Sous Coucy Levine Robert Translator

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Ebook has 519 lines and 91682 words, and 11 pages

Furthermore, he bends over backwards to defend aristocrats towards whom other historians of the First Crusade were far less sympathetic. Guibert's description of the count of Normandy, for example, shows remarkable moral flexibility:

It would hardly be right to remain silent about Robert, Count of Normandy, whose bodily indulgences, weakness of will, prodigality with money, gourmandising, indolence, and lechery were expiated by the perseverance and heroism that he vigorously displayed in the army of the Lord. His inborn compassion was naturally so great that he did not permit vengeance to be taken against those who had plotted to betray him and had been sentenced to death, and if something did happen to them, he wept for their misfortune. He was bold in battle, although adeptness at foul trickery, with which we know many men befouled themselves, should not be praised, unless provoked by unspeakable acts. For these and for similar things he should now be forgiven, since God has punished him in this world, where he now languishes in jail, deprived of all his honors.

His defense of Stephen of Blois also shows a remarkably complex tolerance and sensitivity towards aristocratic failure:

At that time, Count Stephen of Blois, formerly man of great discretion and wisdom, who had been chosen as leader by the entire army, said that he was suffering from a painful illness, and, before the army had broken into Antioch, Stephen made his way to a certain small town, which was called Alexandriola. When the city had been captured and was again under siege, and he learned that the Christian leaders were in dire straits, Stephen, either unable or unwilling, delayed sending them aid, although they were awaiting his help. When he heard that an army of Turks had set up camp before the city walls, he rode shrewdly to the mountains and observed the amount the enemy had brought. When he saw the fields covered with innumerable tents, in understandably human fashion he retreated, judging that no mortal power could help those shut up in the city. A man of the utmost probity, energetic, pre-eminent in his love of truth, thinking himself unable to bring help to them, certain that they would die, as all the evidence indicated, he decided to protect himself, thinking that he would incur no shame by saving himself for a opportune moment.

Guibert concludes his defense of Stephen's questionable behavior with a skillful use of counter-attack:

And I certainly think that his flight , after which the dishonorable act was rectified by martyrdom, was superior to the return of those who, persevering in their pursuit of foul pleasure, descended into the depths of criminal behavior. Who could claim that count Stephen and Hugh the Great, who had always been honorable, because they had seemed to retreat for this reason, were comparable to those who had steadfastly behaved badly?

One of the functions of the panegyric he composes for martyred Crusader is to make Guibert's own rank clear, present, and significant:

We have heard of many who, captured by the pagans and ordered to deny the sacraments of faith, preferred to expose their heads to the sword than to betray the Christian faith in which they had been instructed. Among them I shall select one, knight and an aristocrat, but more illustrious for his character than all others of his family or social class I have ever known. From the time he was a child I knew him, and I watched his fine disposition develop. Moreover, he and I came from the same region, and his parents held benefices from my parents, and owed them homage, and we grew up together, and his whole life and development were an open book to me.

He is a spokesman not only for aristocrats, but for the French, in spite of his emphasis on per Deum in his title, regularly emphasizing, throughout his text, the significance and superiority of the French contribution. At the end of Book One, Guibert insists that Bohemund, the major military figure in his history, was really French:

Since his family was from Normandy, a part of France, and since he had obtained the hand of the daughter of the king of the French, he might be very well be considered a Frank.

In Book Three, when the Franks win a significant victory, Guibert insists that the defeated Turks and the victorious Franks have not merely common but noble ancestors, thereby melding his two political commitments:

But perhaps someone may object, arguing that the enemy forces were merely peasants, scum herded together from everywhere. Certainly the Franks themselves, who had undergone such great danger, testified that they could have known of no race comparable to the Turks, either in liveliness of spirit, or energy in battle. When the Turks initiated a battle, our men were almost reduced to despair by the novelty of their tactics in battle; they were not accustomed to their speed on horseback, not to their ability to avoid our frontal assaults. We had particular difficulty with the fact that they fired their arrows only when fleeing from the battle. It was the Turk's opinion, however, that they shared an ancestry with the Franks, and that the highest military prowess belonged particularly to the Turks and Franks, above all other people.

Having praised the West at the expense of the East in the first book, in the second he praises the French at the expense of the Teutons, recounting a conversation he recently held with a German ecclesiastic, to show himself an ardent defender of ethnicity:

Last year while I was speaking with a certain archdeacon of Mainz about a rebellion of his people, I heard him vilify our king and our people, merely because the king had given gracious welcome everywhere in his kingdom to his Highness Pope Paschalis and his princes; he called them not merely Franks, but, derisively, "Francones." I said to him, "If you think them so weak and languid that you can denigrate a name known and admired as far away as the Indian Ocean, then tell me upon whom did Pope Urban call for aid against the Turks? Wasn't it the French? Had they not been present, attacking the barbarians everywhere, pouring their sturdy energy and fearless strength into the battle, there would have been no help for your Germans, whose reputation there amounted to nothing." That is what I said to him.

Guibert then turns to his reader, and provides a more extensive panegyric for his people, recalling pre-Merovingian accomplishments:

I say truly, and everyone should believe it, that God reserved this nation for such a task. For we know certainly that, from the time that they received the sign of faith that blessed Remigius brought to them, they succumbed to none of the diseases of false faith from which other nations have remained uncontaminated either with great difficulty or not at all. They are the ones who, while still laboring under the pagan error, when they triumphed on the battlefield over the Gauls, who were Christians, did not punish or kill any of them, because they believed in Christ. Instead, those whom Roman severity had punished with sword and fire, French native generosity covered with gems and amber. They strove to welcome with honor not only those who lived within their own borders, but they also affectionately cared for people who came from Spain, Italy, or anywhere else, so that love for the martyrs and confessors, whom they constantly served and honored, made them famous, finally driving them to the glorious victory at Jerusalem. Because it has carried the yoke since the days of its youth, it will sit in isolation, a nation noble, wise, war-like, generous, brilliant above all kinds of nations. Every nation borrows the name as an honorific title; do we not see the Bretons, the English, the Ligurians call men "Frank" if they behave well? But now let us return to the subject.

"Let us return to the subject," like the earlier injunction, "let us continue in the direction in which we set out," indicates Guibert's awareness of his tendency to perform "sorties." At times he turns from the narrative to deliver a sermon, or to offer a biography of Mahomet, and, more than once, to lecture on ecclesiastical history. The apparent looseness of structure which results, a quality Misch attributed to the Memoirs as well, may be symptom of Guibert's Shandy-like temperament, or may be evidence that the remarks he made about his style in an early aside to the reader apply equally well to his structure:

Please, my reader, knowing without a doubt that I certainly had no more time for writing than those moments during which I dictated the words themselves, forgive the stylistic infelicities; I did first write on writing-tablets to be corrected diligently later, but I wrote them directly on the parchment, exactly as it is, harshly barked out.

Such a cavalier attitude towards the finished product was not characteristic of Guibert, and seems to be in keeping neither with his declared penchant for difficulty, nor with his declared intention to raise the level of his style to match the significance of his subject:

No one should be surprised that I make use of style very much different from that of the Commentaries on Genesis, or the other little treatises; for it is proper and permissible to ornament a history with the crafted elegance of words; however, the mysteries of sacred eloquence should be treated not with poetic loquacity, but with ecclesiastical plainness. Therefore I ask you to accept this graciously, and to keep it as perpetual monument to your name.

The seriousness of purpose and the apparent looseness of structure may perhaps be reconciled by considering that the literal level of events was a less urgent concern for Guibert than the significance of those events. In addition, he imagined himself not so much as a recorder of events, but as a competitor in a rhetorical agon, as the implied metaphor that he uses in describing his activity as writer, in hujus stadio operis excurrisse debueram, "racing in a stadium," implies.

In fact, in the course of composing his explicitly corrective version of the First Crusade, Guibert participates in several contests simultaneously; he "mollifies" the style and corrects the substance of previous writers on the Crusades; he argues for some miracles and against others; he utilizes and attempts to transcend both the Graeco-Roman and the Judaeo part of the Judaeo-Christian past. As a rhetorical performance, in both prose and verse, the results are impressive, since the Gesta Dei per Francos simultaneously reflects historical reality, and provides some insight into the workings of the mind of gifted, early twelfth-century French cleric and aristocrat.

Summary of the Gesta Dei per Francos

Characteristically, Guibert opens the Gesta defensively, justifying his choice of a modern topic by insisting upon the exceptional nature of the Crusade, as well as the exceptional nature of the French. The entire first book is devoted to a selective history of the Eastern Church and a denunciation of heresies, concluding with an extensive invective against Mahomet, compounding sex, excrement, and disease. Guibert then moves forward in time, to the generation before the First Crusade, to describe a complaint about Muslim lust made by the Greek Emperor to the elder Count Robert of Flanders. Guibert also complains about the Greek Emperor's own excessive interest in erotic motivation for warriors.

Book Two begins with an account that amounts to little more than a panegyric of Pope Urban II, admired by Guibert at least partially because he is French. Guibert then compliments the French for their long-standing loyalty to the Popes, and for their generally Christian behavior. Guibert then proceeds to describe the rise of Peter the Hermit as leader of the poor people who misguidedly set out on the Crusade, a group whose lack of control outrages Guibert throughout the Gesta. However, he quickly returns to giving an account of the aristocrats who took the cross, composing panegyrics for Godfrey, Baldwin, and Eustace of Bouillon, complimenting Godfrey in particular for his military victories in skirmishes with the Greek emperor. The second book ends with a description of some of the other leaders and their qualities.

In Book Three Guibert introduces Bohemund, describes the siege of Nicea, the battle of Dorylea, and adds the story about Baldwin's adoption by the ruler of Edessa .

In Book Four the Crusaders arrive at Antioch and take up the lengthy siege. Guibert again adds material not to be found in the Gesta Francorum: one story involves the false stigmata of an abbot, another the martyrdom of a man know personally by Guibert.

In Book Five Guibert describes the taking of Antioch, the capture of Cassian and his decapitation by Armenians and Syrians, the prediction of eventual Christian victory by Kherboga's mother, the Crusaders' themselves besieged in Antioch, the initial resistance to Peter's vision about the location of the Lance, and the desertion of the Crusade by Stephen of Blois, whom Guibert defends with his characteristic loyalty to aristocrats.

Book Six offers the discovery of the Lance, a futile meeting between Peter the Hermit and Kherboga, the reported appearance of a celestial army, the Crusaders' defeat of Kherboga, and the lifting of the siege of Antioch. In addition, Ademar of Puy dies, the Crusaders attack Marrah, and Bohemund and Raymond of St. Gilles disagree about to whom Antioch belongs. The trial by fire of Peter Bartholomew differs significantly and with clear polemical intentions from the scene in Fulcher; Guibert attributes the skepticism about the authenticity of the Lance to the death of Ademar. The book ends with the martyrdom of Anselm of Ribemont, and mention of his letters, which Guibert will use later.

Book Seven is more than twice the length of any of the earlier books; in it the Crusaders reach Tripoli, negotiate successfully with its king, continue on through Palestine, reach Jerusalem, and begin the siege. As part of his extended panegyric of both brothers, Guibert now inserts the story of Godfrey cutting a man in half and wrestling with bear , which permits him, by association, to modulate to the story of Baldwin refusing to be saved by having a soldier killed and examined for similar wound, instead agreeing to substitute a bear. As he approaches the end of his task, Guibert loosens the structure of his narrative even more, providing a discussion of Near Eastern ecclesiastical politics, a description of some of the battles in which the Crusaders consolidated their control over Palestine, and a cadenza, dense with Biblical quotations and some allegorical exegesis, on the significance of the Crusade itself. After providing an anecdote about the way in which children's combat inspired the soldiers, Guibert provides a brief discussion of the Tafurs, and describes the betrayal by the emperor that led to the death of Hugh Magnus. Next Guibert describes Stephen's disastrous expedition to Paphligonia, offers conflicting versions of Godfrey's death, mentions his replacement by Baldwin, and provides a flashback to Robert of Flanders' visit to Jerusalem twelve years before the Crusade . Guibert now tells a story about a man who defeated the Devil, then attacks Fulker of Chartres for his style, for his story about Pirrus betraying Antioch, and for his rejection of the authenticity of the Lance.

Guibert's Other Works

None of the salacious verse Guibert confesses to have written in his youth has survived. Instead, in addition to the Gesta Dei and the Monodiae, the following writings, entirely on religious topics, have survived, and have been published in vol 156 of Migne's Patrologia Latina:

Quo ordine sermo fieri debeat . Moralium Geneseos libri decem .

Tropologiae in prophetas Osee, Amos ac Lamentationes Jeremiae .

Tractatus de Incarnatione contra Judaeos .

Epistola de buccella Judae data et de veritate dominici Corporis .

De laude sanctae Mariae liber .

De virginitate opusculum .

De pignoribus sanctorum libri quatuor .

The Translation

In diction, syntax, word order, and complexity of expression, Guibert's Latin is more difficult than that of any other Latin historian of the First Crusade. I have tried to preserve as much of the complexity of the syntax as is tolerable in comprehensible English sentences. Guibert's penchant for alliteration, rhyming clausulae, and pithiness must usually be sacrificed. A characteristic example of the sonic loss occurs in my attempt to translate the sardonic description of Arnulf's elevation to patriarch:

...dum vox magis quam vita curatur, ad hoc ut Iherosolimitanus fieret patriarcha vocatur.

and since a man's voice is of more concern than the life he has led, he was called to the patriarchy of Jerusalem.

I have followed the paragraphs of the latest edition, often longer than those to which twentieth-century readers are accustomed, to allow readers to check the original more easily. Passages which Guibert composed in verse are translated into prose and indented. Guizot's early nineteenth-century French translation, although at times erroneous or misleading, was very helpful.

Notes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Jessica Weiss for reading through the entire translation and making useful corrections and suggestions, to Mark Stansbury for reading through parts of the translation and making useful corrections and suggestions, and to the staff of The Boston University Office of Information Technology for help in solving problems involving word-processing.

Bibliography

Albert of Aix, Historia Hierosolymitana, Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Historiens Occidentaux IV, Paris, 1879, pp. 265-713.

Auerbach, Erich, Literary language and its public in late antiquity and in the Middle Ages, translated by Ralph Mannheim, New York, 1965.

Benton, John, Self and Society in Medieval France, New York, 1970.

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