The Deeds of God Through the Franks | Page 6

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