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c h a p t e r 5 God’sScribe History itself is not to be numbered among human creations because things that have already occurred can not be undone but are held in the order of time [ordinem temporum], whose founder and director is God. —Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana1 The themes Galbert weaves through his chronicle and the careful composition of its descriptions betray a desire to do more than merely expand and revise his notes when he set out to transform them into a Passio Karoli. They suggest that he wanted to compose a polished, sophisticated piece of historiographical art. This desire is also immediately evident in the fourteen-line-long first sentence of the Prologue he added at this time; in the rhythm of the beginning of its second sentence , which led J.-M. De Smet to suggest that Galbert had borrowed it from a poem on Charles’s death;2 in his rhetorical refusal to embellish his work with the ornaments of rhetoric ([Prol.], 14/16; trans., 80); in his deploration of his arid style ([Prol.], 16/17, 35/36; trans., 80); in his request for the reader’s indulgence ([Prol.], 35/38; trans., 80); in his repeated assurances that he is telling the truth ([Prol.], 16, 33; trans., 80); and in his declaration that he has written his execrable little work only in order to pass on to the faithful and posterity a record of the extraordinary events he has witnessed (and thus not out of a desire for personal glory) ([Prol.], 17, 30/31, 34; trans., 80).3 This desire to write highbrow historiography is likewise apparent in his allusions to, or citations of, or reminiscences of, biblical and classical texts: some of these are found in the passages corresponding to the primitive text—and thus may have been in Galbert’s parchment notes4 —but they are relatively more frequent in the long sections he added to his primitive text when he revised it,5 suggesting that he consciously sought to introduce more of them into his chronicle at that time. 65 112 Another element of Latinate historiography that Galbert incorporated in the Passio was a series of discourses, which is one of its most striking and most accomplished features. Influenced by the Passio’s journalistic form and the variety and authentic tone of these discourses, scholars have often taken them to be more-or-less stenographic records of discourses that Galbert actually heard, or at least the product of his best efforts at reconstructing discourses he heard or that were reported to him. A careful study of these passages suggests, however, that they are not in fact stenographic or good-faith reproductions of “real” ones, but that Galbert, like almost every other medieval historian, invented or at least heavily rewrote the discourses he reports.6 If the spoken discourses of the Passio differ from those found in the works of other historians and merit particular attention, it is thus not by virtue of their authenticity but, on the contrary, by virtue of their greater artifice. Galbert had a Shakespearean gift for composing such discourses, which he used both to lend his account an unusual liveliness and realism and to influence the reader’s understanding of the events he relates, and his skill as a writer is nowhere clearer than in his use of them. This aspect of the De multro has been studied recently by Alan Murray , who suggests three general functions for the forty passages of direct speech he identifies in the chronicle. First, Galbert’s “use of direct speech is probably a genuine reflection of the public political processes described by Galbert, many of which, such as oaths, the settlement of disputes and acts of feudal defiance, revolved around the spoken, rather than the written, word.”7 As Murray shows, however, Galbert’s use of direct discourse was not simply a reflection of these processes. He often chooses not to reproduce the direct speech involved in certain crucial events, even though it is clear that he could have done so.8 It is likewise clear that Galbert must have invented, wholly or largely, some of the discourses he records.9 Murray thus concludes that Galbert uses direct speech selectively and deliberately to heighten “the dramatic qualities of his narrative.”10 He also points to a third, thematic, function for direct discourse in the De multro. Charles the Good, remarkably, participates in none of the...

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