The Deeds of God | Page 8

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