Queeste. Tijdschrift over middeleeuwse letterkunde in de Nederlanden. Jaargang 2010
(2010)– [tijdschrift] Queeste–
Auteursrechtelijk beschermdNew readings of Galbert's contemporary account of Bruges, a city in crisis
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[pagina 87]
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text makes it an ideal companion for teaching and research purposes. The book is divided into four sections: Galbert at work, Galbert and institutions, Galbert and politics of gender and Galbert and the meaning of history. Together they constitute four ways in which modern scholarship engages with the dramatic narrative of the murder of Charles the Good of Flanders (d. 1127) set against the background of local faction fighting in one Flemish town and the succession crisis following the count's demise. The first two sections are relatively traditional in that they discuss Galbert's historiographical achievement as the first major non clerical author to have written a contemporary history of a highly unusual event, the cold blooded murder of a ruling prince inside a church in northern Europe. If this was not dramatic enough everyone knew that his father King Cnut IV of Demark had been the victim of a similar atrocity in 1085. In an engaging essay (p. 13-35), that constitutes the first section, Jeff Rider sets out in summary what he has done at length elsewhere namely that Galbert wrote his text not in one go but probably as three (unfinished) pieces which were then layered one of top of the other (March-April 1127, May 1127 and then an addendum in the fall of that same year). As any journalist knows rapportage is never an unbiased job so at some stage probably early in the following year the three layers were interwoven and formed the book as we know it today. The story of the text's genesis sets up the next section on institutional Flemish history very well. Three distinguished scholars tackle the rich data Galbert provides about Flanders, its counts, the aristocracy (or ‘peers’) and the cities. Raoul van Caenegemn (p. 39-55) argues strongly for the intertwining of law and politics in medieval Bruges, as politics (the legitimate exercise of law and order in a society that agrees to accept the counts as ultimate judge and ‘policeman’) always involves the need for the ruler to find support amongst the wealthy Flemish for the policing aspect, while those who are the subject of ‘doing justice’ and ‘being policed’ disagree. It is at this juncture of disagreement that things can go horribly wrong and both parties resort to violence, as when the Erchembalds (a clan of serfs) risen to the highest social echelons took revenge on a count who was perceived to have failed in his duty as ruler and lord. One of the problems in any medieval society, but especially a highly urbanised one as Flanders, is that social relations amongst the landholding aristocracy (or ‘peers’) cut across groups in towns who wielded power based on trade and industry (rather than land). In a stimulating chapter Dirk Heirbaut underlines the peculiarly Flemish characteristic of feudal relations between the count as lord and the various social groups of landholders and urban citizens, especially with regard to the text's unparalleled information about this relationship. One question in particular stands out in the text, namely how justified were sanctions taken out by a ruler's subjects against a lord who acted wrongly by breaking the obligations of having accepted someone's homage. Since medieval narratives are usually written by people in authority, these very people represent lordship from the top down so most texts deal with the opposite problem: vassals who break their homage to their lords. Here we have a narrative that reveals the flipside in great detail: what happens if vassals who feel wronged apply feudal custom (the renunciation of homage) to punish their lord? Heirbaut is right in arguing that too often Galbert's text has been used as a blueprint for western European feudalism; one should not extrapolate from this very local history feudal lessons that might apply across the European canvas. In the third essay of the second section on institutions, Steven Isaac (p. 80-108) dissects the narrative for its details on siege warfare, an important topic once again in an urbanised environment, where military action often was highly localised within the towns. Individual houses, ranging from castles and fortified homes to more modest hovels each required different techniques of assault in order to drive its people out, depending on local situations. Galbert's narrative is a hugely important source for besieging and flushing out opponents in cramped urban centres that would become increasingly common in the twelfth century. The chapters in the final two sections are less traditional in their subject matter. The third section on the politics of gender pays equal attention to men and women and their social relations. First comes the hidden story of women in Bruges (and Flanders) in a thoughtful article by Nancy Partner (p. 109-125), who points out the scarcity of references to women. Why is it that the social presence of women is known and can be reconstructed on the basis of rich source material (saints' lives, charters, material culture) yet Galbert's narrative hardly mentions women at all? Her interesting exploration of | |
[pagina 88]
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the shadowy role of women would have benefitted from acknowledgment that a similar article, also based on Galbert, was written a decade ago by Renée Nip.Ga naar voetnoot1 This is, in fact, fortunately used to great effect by Martina Häcker (p. 126-44) in the next chapter devoted to the language of misogyny in Galbert aimed in particular at Dedda or Duva, matriarch of the Erchembald clan. Hers is a very important contribution to the study of ‘built in’ misogyny in Latin discourse by well educated male authors, a theme that recurs in Bert Demyttenaere's essay (p. 145-82) that also stresses the virtual absence of women as ‘actors’ in the Bruges drama. He, however, gives the analysis a further previously unsuspected dimension of a homoerotic relationship between the count, Charles the Good, and his closest ally and adviser Fromold the Younger (who had married into the Erchembald family). He notes Galbert's specific record that on the night before his murder Charles had not slept with his (young) wife Margaret and considers this significant in the light of Galbert's frequent descriptions of Fromold as the count's bosom friend. He stresses what he believes was the unusual attempt by Fromold to glimpse the count's body after his death in his tomb, a gesture that is more often related in the Middle Ages as an act by a dead person's female relatives (mothers, sisters or daughters). It is a highly original take on Galbert's story that is worth taken seriously in a society where the military demands of the aristocracy caused its men to spent a lot of time together. The fourth and final section is devoted to the more rethorical and literary aspects of Galbert of Bruges' work. It opens with an illuminating chapter by Alan V. Murray (p. 183-199) on Galbert's exegetical expertise in construing the count's enemies as instruments of the devil. Murray rightly warns his readers that an overreliance on Galbert's rethoric risks forgetting that this narrative strategy was meant for us to see them as the enemy or devil incarnate, instead of the probably common sense assumption that the Erchembalds cannot have been that much worse or better than most kin groups of social climbers who wanted to safeguard their position at the top. Cities were rich in symbolism (carrying banners, sounding trumpets or tolling bells) and this is the topic of Robert Stein's stimulating social exploration (p. 200-214) of how the various groups of town factions alert each other to come together for negotiations, fighting or just gossip. Two essays delve into particular aspects of Galbert's story, Lisa Cooper and Mary Agnes Edsall (p. 215-39), compare its tale of the substituted child of a cobbler (another Erchembald ‘crime’) with various fabliaux texts based on similar themes. However, I would argue that the historicity of this story should not be doubted as there is plenty of evidence elsewhere in northern Europe from the same period that childless landowners were desperate for heirs and never seem to hesitate buying or renting children from lower born parents. A famous case from Normandy in the 1060s concerned just such a substitution that came to light when after the death of both adopted parents the birthmother complained to the duke that the rent for the child she had handed over had stopped. The early thirteenth-century Life of Bishop Hugh of Lincoln (d. 1200) contains a similar case of a bride child who was a substituted baby. It seems more likely to me that the fabliaux were inspired by real life cases rather than that Galbert would have used a literary fabliau topos. The last essay by Godfried Croenen (p. 240-60) compares Galbert with his fourteenth-century colleague Froissart whose own eyewitness account of part of the Hundred Years war is an invaluable source for our knowledge of life in north western Europe in times of war and military campaigns. I thoroughly enjoyed reading these essays that will help students and scholars alike when they try to make sense of Galbert's fascinating history of Bruges in the early twelfth century. It is a sobering thought to think how little we would know of the city and the country if all we had was only Walter of Thérouanne's Life of Charles the Good, which must count as one of the more boring biographies ever written in the Middle Ages.
Address of the author: Emmanuel College, Cambridge cb2 3ap, United Kingdom; emcv2@cam.ac.uk |
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