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8 The Devil in Flanders Galbert of Bruges and the Eschatology of Political Crisis alan v. mUrray The murder of Charles “the Good,” count of Flanders, resulted from a struggle between the count himself and one of the most powerful and well-connected families in Flanders, a kin group at whose head stood Bertulf, provost of the church of Saint Donatian in Bruges and chancellor of the county.1 The actual origins of this clan are difficult to establish with certainty; Galbert of Bruges relates that its members were descended from one Erembald of Veurne, a steward to a castellan of Bruges living at an unspecified time during the second half of the eleventh century. According to Galbert, this Erembald murdered his master and proceeded to marry his widow, thereby establishing the foundations for the future wealth and power of their offspring.2 Irrespective of the accuracy of Galbert’s story, it is certain that by the reign of Count Charles (1119–27), the descendants of Erembald, castellan of Bruges from around 1067 to 1089, had achieved an unrivalled position of power within the county of Flanders. The senior member of the house at this time was Erembald’s son Bertulf, who had effectively become head of the comital administration based at Bruges. Bertulf’s brother Desid183 1. This essay develops ideas originally presented in two papers, “The Divine and the Diabolic in Twelfth-Century Historiography: The Chronicle of Galbert of Bruges” (University of Leeds, Centre for Medieval Studies Research Association, July 1, 1997), and “The Erembalds Revisited: The Political and Literary Destruction of a Twelfth-Century Clan” (International Medieval Congress, Leeds, July 9–12, 2001). I am also grateful for comments from participants of a research seminar on Galbert of Bruges at Wesleyan University (Middletown, Conn.) on March 26, 2003, organized by Prof. Jeff Rider. 2. Galbert, [71]. 184 alan v. mUrray erius Hacket was castellan of Bruges. Their nephew Isaac held the office of chamberlain to the count. Other family members had made important marriage connections within the Flemish nobility, and together they held extensive properties in and around Bruges and along the coast of northwestern Flanders. The immediate cause of the murder of Charles was his attempt at the end of the winter of 1126–27 to prove by judicial means that Bertulf’s family was of servile origin; any legal decision that established that the family were serfs would have swept away the power, wealth, and privileges they had painstakingly built up.3 In order to forestall the completion of the legal process against them, Bertulf and his kinsmen resorted to drastic action: on the morning of March 2, 1127, a group of knights and retainers led by Isaac the Chamberlain and his cousin Borsiard burst into the church of Saint Donatian and murdered Charles along with various advisors, officials, and clerics who were present. The family of the provost Bertulf was thus central to the political crisis that engulfed the county of Flanders in 1127 as well as to the several narrative sources that recorded it, particularly our principal source, Galbert of Bruges. Whether or not the family was of actual servile origin, as claimed by the count, argued by Galbert, and accepted by most modern scholarship , it may well be impossible to establish with any certainty, and this essay will be less concerned with the historical truth of the rise and fall of Erembald and his descendants than with the manner in which these events are depicted by Galbert; its aim is rather to discuss what the portrayal of the provost Bertulf and his kin reveals about the historical understanding and historiographical art of Galbert of Bruges.4 As Galbert originally composed the De multro in the form of a journal and never completed a fully revised version of his work, he was long regarded as a relatively unskilled and unsophisticated writer. The great Belgian historian Henri Pirenne accepted that his account had a certain liveliness and charm, but saw Galbert as someone who was fundamentally naive and disorganized, and who did not reflect upon the significance 3. Jan Dhondt, “Medieval Solidarities: Flemish Society in Transition, 1127–28,” in Lordship and Community in Medieval Europe, ed. Frederic L. Cheyette (New York, 1968), 268–96; James B. Ross, “Rise and Fall of a Twelfth-Century Clan: The Erembalds and the Murder of Count Charles of Flanders, 1127–1128,” Speculum 34 (1959): 367–90; Warlop, 185–95; and van Caenegem , “Galbert of Bruges on Serfdom,” 89...

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