In Their Own Words: Practices of Quotation in Early Medieval History-Writing by Jeanette Beer (review)

Given current interest in the crusades and chronicles, this book will have a wide readership. Jeanette Beer has here pursued her scholarly work in the field of medieval history-writing through the formative period between the ninth and the thirteenth centuries, from the Strasbourg oaths to the compilation/translation of Li Fet des Romains. She sets out from Isidore of Seville’s definition of history as the narration of events that deserve to be remembered and which constitute the truth. Hence the importance of eyewitness accounts, ipsissima verba (‘words actually spoken’) and the use of direct and indirect speech in this examination of five landmark texts, three of which are chronicles by Crusade participants.

The Strasbourg oaths in Nithard’s Historiae contain the earliest words of French recorded. Building on her analysis in an earlier essay, Beer explains the chancery process and the function of the oaths in the Historiae, where they are preceded by a speech in Latin. She speculates on the understanding of the vernacular by the respective French- and German-speaking armies and on what they reflect of Nithard’s anxiety for the empire.

The anonymous Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, a straightforward narrative in Latin, is an eyewitness account of the First Crusade from a soldier’s viewpoint. It has been recognised as the expedition’s unofficial history. The author believed that events in which he participated were of epic importance and frequently used direct speech to endorse the veracity and immediacy of his story. He presented, for example, the pope’s call to the Crusade as though he had been present and heard the very words.

Villehardouin, a leader and negotiator in the Fourth Crusade, presented in La Conquête de Constantinople a different viewpoint and experience for an audience interested in diplomacy as well as military activity. He referred to himself and his participation in the third person, speaking also as author and eyewitness in the first person, and sometimes shifting responsibility somewhat ambiguously to li livres, ‘the book’. His use of direct speech is concentrated in the first half of the chronicle, for example, in the account of negotiations with the doge of Venice and the pope.

In contrast, Robert de Clari’s account of the Fourth Crusade is that of a poor knight following his overlord and returning home before the eventual débâcle. His lively narrative of ‘le dreite verité’ (p. 58), everything he could remember, as he likes to repeat, using the first person as self-referencing and direct speech, sometimes for dramatic effect, verges on the fabliau style, it is suggested, for he is pre-eminently a storyteller.

Two chapters are devoted to Li Fet des Romains, which Beer studied in A Medieval Caesar (Droz, 1976). It is an anonymous compilation translated into the French vernacular from all the known works concerning Julius Caesar, first and foremost from his Commentaries on the Gallic wars and Lucan’s Bellum Civile, with debts and attributions to other classical historians. Interesting points discussed include: Caesar’s dictum, the compiler’s tactical shifting of responsibility when he disagreed with his source material, adaptation of Lucan’s verse epic and its pagan mythology, supplementation, and interpolation. The compiler/translator astutely employed quotation, sometimes appropriating it, at other times distancing himself from ancient historians and speaking in his own voice to complete the truth.

Analysis of the stylistic practice of quotation and self-referencing shows how the five specimen texts significantly contributed to the evolution of medieval history-writing. An Afterword sketches their diffusion and later role as sources, in turn, for quotation.

Notes, Works Cited, a Name Index, and a Subject Index complete the work. All French and Latin passages cited are carefully translated into English. Oversights are rare, but in two instances a word was inadvertently repeated: ‘are’ (p. 33, translation l.1), ‘abundantly’ (p...