The Deeds of God through the Franks
by Guibert of Nogent
translated by Robert Levine
(notes are at the end of chapter 7)
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 God 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 document, 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 assumed to have occurred
by 1125, has survived.
In spite of the lack of exactitude 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
sexuality, 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 title is
designed to correct the title 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 God, 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
assure every reader that God looked favorably upon the Crusade. The
warning given to Kherboga by his mother, for example,[8] indicates
that even pagans were aware that God 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 anticipated 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 God 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 virtuosité du
styliste,"[14] and declares that Guibert's various uses of literary
devices "mériteraient une étude attentive." Acknowledging the fact
that Guibert's language is somewhat "alambique" and "tarbiscoté,"
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 complexité" 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 passion and energy had been
focused only on providing a performance worthy of Martianus 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 title indicates, alters the focus of the
material. The results of Guibert's efforts certainly provide
unusually rich material for those interested in medieval mentalité.
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 hardships
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
competitive 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
snatch 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 assumption passed 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
competitive 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
institutions 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 God, 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]
Partisan outbreaks like this fill the Gesta Dei per Francos, perhaps
more clearly distinguishing it from the earlier accounts of the First
Crusade than Guibert's more elaborate syntax, and self-conscious
diction.
His hatred of poor people also penetrates the text, often to bring
into higher relief the behavior of aristocrats. In Book Two, for
example, he offers a comic portrayal of poor, ignorant pilgrims:
There you would have seen remarkable, even comical things: poor men,
their cattle pulling two-wheeled carts, armed as though they were
horses, carrying their few possessions together with their small
children in the wagon. The small childrne, whenever they came upon a
castle or town on the way, asked whether this was the Jerusalem they
were seeking.
In the seventh and last book, Guibert tells the story of the woman
and the goose, again to ridicule the foolishness of the poor:
A poor woman set out on the journey, when a goose, filled with I do
not know what instructions, clearly exceeding the laws of her own
dull nature, followed her. Lo, rumor, flying on Pegasean wings,
filled the castles and cities with the news that even geese had been
sent by God to liberate Jerusalem. Not only did they deny that this
wretched woman was leading the goose, but they said that the goose
led her. At Cambrai they assert that, with people standing on all
sides, the woman walked through the middle of the church to the altar,
and the goose followed behind, in her footsteps, with no one urging
it on. Soon after, we have learned, the goose died in Lorraine; she
certainly would have gone more directly to Jerusalem if, the day
before she set out, she had made of herself a holiday meal for her
mistress.
Poor people, however, are not merely comic, but dangerous, to
themselves, as Guibert's version of the story of Peter the Hermit
indicates, and to others, as Guibert's version of the death of Peter
Bartholomew emphasizes.[33]
The story of the goose, however, is a comic reflection of a
persistently urgent problem on the First Crusade; Guibert addresses
the problem of famine often, and expresses particularly warm sympathy
towards aristocratic hunger:
How many jaws and throats of noble men were eaten away by the
roughness of this bread. How terribly were their fine stomachs
revolted by the bitterness of the putrid liquid. Good God, we think
that they must have suffered so, these men who remembered their high
social position in their native land, where they had been accustomed
to great ease and pleasure, and now could find no hope or solace in
any external comfort, as they burned in the terrible heat. Here is
what I and I alone think: never had so many noble men exposed their
own bodies to so much suffering for a purely spiritual benefit.
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 (if, however, it should be
called a flight, since the count was certainly ill), 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,[34] 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."[35] 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,[36] 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.