In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

c h a p t e r 3 TheComfortofHistory Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement. —Romans 13.2 How hidden are your judgements, O God, and with what wondrous order do you hide what you are going to do and reveal what you have hidden. —The Life of the Emperor Henry IV1 The judgement of God .l.l. is never unjust, even if it is sometimes hard to understand. —Gerald of Wales, The Journey through Wales2 As we have seen in the preceding chapter, Galbert’s intention during the spring of 1127 was to write a descriptionem obsidionis secundum rerum eventum, a chronologically organized description of selected events related to the siege of the traitors in Bruges and their eventual punishment . He seems, initially at least, to have thought that this sequence of events ended when “on May 22, the holy Sunday of Pentecost, the [new] count [William Clito] and the castellan Gervaise and Walter of Vladslo and the knights of Flanders who were present swore that they would preserve the peace to the best of their ability throughout the whole land of Flanders” ([85], 31/34; trans., 258). He did not make another entry until September 10, 1127, after a hiatus of almost four months. When he looked over what must have been a crowded and difficultto -read parchment record in late spring or early summer 1127, Galbert may at first have had no greater ambition than to make a fair copy of it, incorporating the various marginalia, interlinear additions, and appendices in their proper places. He may in fact have begun to make this fair copy, but at some point between May and, probably, early Septem65 50 ber, he seems to have decided to expand and reorient his chronicle, changing it from a description of the siege and the punishment of the traitors to a passio Karoli, a description of Charles’s life and death and the punishment of his assassins. There is a brief statement of this new intention at the beginning of the substantial introduction (the Prologue and chapters 1–14) he added to his chronicle when he reworked it, where he writes that his purpose is “to describe the death of such a great prince” ([Prol.], 14; trans., 79), but its fullest expression is found at the end of the new introduction: And so we, the inhabitants of the land of Flanders, who mourn the death of such a great count and prince, ever mindful of his life, beg, admonish, and beseech you, after hearing the true and reliable account of his life and death [vera et certa descriptione et vitae et mortis ipsius] (that is, whoever shall have heard it), to pray earnestly for the eternal glory of the life of his soul and his everlasting blessedness with the saints. In this account of his passion [hac passionis subscriptione ],3 the reader will find the subject divided by days and the events of those days, up to the vengeance, related at the end of this little work, which God alone wrought against those barons of the land whom he has exterminated from this world by the punishment of death, those by whose aid and counsel the treachery was begun and carried through to the end [usque ad vindictam subnotatam in fine opusculi, quam solus Deus exercuit in principes terrae quos ab hoc seculo mortis districtione exterminavit, quorum consilio et auxilio traditio incepta est et ad finem usque producta]. ([14], 14/25; trans., 117–18) The last sentence of this passage also tells us that the Passio, as I will call the intended product of this revision, ended with God’s execution of “those barons of the land .l.l. by whose aid and counsel the treachery was begun and carried through to the end.” This seems to refer to chapters 89 and 91, the first of which begins with a reference to “the severe and horrible judgement of God” (Dei districto et horribili examine ) ([89], 1; trans., 262) and relates the “accidental” death of Walter of Vladslo, whom Galbert had come to consider an accessory to the murder, and the second of which relates the “accidental” death of a second baron, Baldwin of Aalst, whom Galbert likewise considered an accessory , on October 24, 1127. Chapter 91 also ends with a valedictorysounding passage beginning with a sentence whose terms are reminiscent of those Galbert uses in chapter 14.4 Chapter 92 relates...

Share