The Deeds of God Through the Franks | Page 4

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