The Deeds of God Through the Franks

Produced by Michael Pullen
The Deeds of God through the Franks by Guibert of Nogent
Copyright (C)1997 by Robert Levine
The Deeds of God through the Franks by Guibert of Nogent
translated by Robert Levine
(notes are at the end of chapter 7)
The four-year period (1095-1099) between the call for crusade by Pope Urban II at the Council of Claremont and the capture of Jerusalem produced a remarkable amount of historiography, both in Western Europe and in Asia Minor. Three accounts by western European eye-witnesses—an anonymous soldier or priest in Bohemund's army, Fulker of Chartres, and Raymond of Aguilers—provoked later twelfth-century Latin writers from various parts of what are now France, Germany, England, Italy, and the Near East, to take up the task of providing more accurate, more thorough, more interpretive, and better written versions of the events.
Guibert also sees to it that his characters explicitly articulate their awareness of providential responsibility; in Book IV, one of the major leaders of the Crusade, Bohemund, addresses his men:
Bohemund said: O finest knights, your frequent victories provide an explanation for your great boldness. Thus far you have fought for the faith against the infidel, and have emerged triumphant from every danger. Having already felt the abundant evidence of Christ's strength should give you pleasure, and should convince you beyond all doubt that in the most severe battles it is not you, but Christ, who has fought.
Redirecting, or redistributing the credit for victory, then, was not a radical contribution by Guibert. A far more noticeable correction, however, was the result of Guibert's determination to correct the style of his source:
A version of this same history, but woven out of excessively simple words, often violating grammatical rules, exists, and it may often bore the reader with the stale, flat quality of its language.
Guibert seems to have anticipated such a response; at the beginning of Book Five of the Gesta he claims to be utterly unconcerned with his audiences' interests and abilities: