The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum as Archive Some Reflections on the Codex sancti Gisleni (ms Den Haag kb 75 f 15) Theo M. Riches The increasing interdisciplinarity of medieval studies has borne many fruits, not the least of which has been a greater awareness amongst historians of the textuality of their sources. On the one hand, this has had methodological repercussions in denying historians the traditional comfort of simply assessing medieval authors’ different levels of bias then sifting their accounts for facts, instead forcing those historians into a confrontation with epistemology. On the other hand, it has opened up new fields of study and much work has been done in particular on the role of writing, speech and ritual within medieval societies. In particular, medieval studies have contributed significantly to wider literature on literacy and its societal effects.1 The debate – as to what extent, if at all, the acquisition of literacy affects individuals’ thought processes or societal structure – is too long and involved to summarize in any detail here. Suffice it to say, that the ‘strong’ theory of literacy, which held that learning to read and write had a profound impact on the cognitive abilities of the people concerned, is certainly false, based on judging the abilities of others according to categories developed in a literate, educated environment. There is, however, a weaker theory, called the ‘ideological model’, in which it is not writing as such that has an impact, but the way in which writing is used in a given society and culture.2 There remain problems with this idea – how, for example, can we tell the difference between cause and effect given that both are defined as social practice and the concept of ‘literacy’ as an independent variable has been abandoned?3 The ideological model is, however, useful in that it brings our attention not to that people read and wrote but how they did so and in what contexts – what we might call the ‘codes’ of literacy. In that respect, this article should be seen as an addition to the literature of ideological literacy. As regards my interest here, the genre of the gesta episcoporum and specifically the gesta of Cambrai-Arras, or Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium (henceforth GeC), there are two ways in which they are considered to have been read – two ‘codes’. The first, best put forward by Michel Sot, is that the succession of bishops 1 Most notably, Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. 2 Street, Literacy in Theory and Practice, 95-121. 3 A similar problem pervades Brian Stock’s concept of the ‘textual community’ (put forward initially in his The Implications of Literacy. I might interpret a text as creating a ‘textual community’, but how do I identify that community when its existence is, in turn, predicated on the interpretation of a text? The problem here is less acute, however, since dioceses constituted (and contained) legal communities quite separate from the effects of a text. 8 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) is to be interpreted in terms of ‘Heilsgeschichte’.4 In this case, the medieval reader or listener is supposed to have understood events not as connected to one another in a linear chain of causation, but as manifestations of a supratemporal divine will – he would read the text in terms of a religious, providential ‘code’. There is much evidence to commend this interpretation. After all, the very first chapter of the GeC links the work’s two subjects, cities and bishops, in the context of divine Providence. Picking up from Cicero’s De inventione, the author describes how cities were founded when humans learnt to live together under laws, but goes on to explain how divine providence thus created the circumstances in which the church might later flourish.5 The second, more recent, tendency is to look at an author’s intentions and see him as engaged in current political and ideological battles: the text would then be seen as operating within an argumentative, and strictly contemporaneous, code.6 This has the advantage of explaining why a text from a given locality and period looks the way it does, which is something the ‘Heilsgeschichte’interpretation is too general to attempt. The two approaches are not, of course, mutually exclusive – an attempt to write the salvation history of an institution will inevitably be shot through with the concerns of an author during composition, and those concerns are best bolstered when placed in a salvation history context. There are nonetheless aspects to the gesta which are not explained by these mutually reinforcing takes and these aspects are related to questions of narrative and audience. In the first place, the interpretative framework suggested is essentially a narrative one and limits the possible audience to those who could follow the narrative. In order for the GeC to persuade you to see its patron, Bishop Gerard I of Cambrai-Arras (1012-1051), as standing in the direct line of his holy predecessors St Gaugeric or St Vedast, you have to have read the entire work, something it is unlikely a layman would have done, however optimistic our assessments of the laity’s Latin. To think of the message of the GeC as requiring a narrative framework is thus to assume a clerical audience. I do not wish to argue that this was not the case – some clerics undoubtedly did read the whole thing, if only the later copyists – but I think there is more to it than that. In particular, the narrative approach misses one of the most intriguing – and frustrating – aspects of medieval historiography: its chronically episodic nature.7 The ‘Heilsgeschichte’ interpretation is of course taken from ideas prevalent, indeed central, to the self-image of the Christian church. Although ‘Heilsgeschichte’ can be safely assumed to have been part of the world-view of the clergy, and to have been accepted by part of the laity, we must be careful not to 4 Sot, Gesta episcoporum, Gesta abbatum. 5 Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium, ed. Bethmann [henceforth GeC], 402. 6 For this approach applied to Gerard of Cambrai’s neighbour and contemporary Folcuin of Lobbes, see Ugé, ‘Creating a Usable Past’, and Vanderputten, ‘ “Literate memory” and social reassessment’. 7 Even a normally sympathetic observer like Gabrielle Spiegel has expressed frustration with this characteristic: Spiegel, ‘Genealogy: Form and Function’, 100-102. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 9 generalise the world-view of either group, particularly the latter.8 After all, our sources for it are, like almost all our sources for the period, entirely of church provenance. Even conceding that this is less of a problem if we assume a church audience, nonetheless the clergy were not the only ones who liked to have a say in things. If the ideology propagated by the GeC – the authority of the bishop – were to have much practical effect in persuading people to serve the bishop’s interests, then it had to be able to be used outside a purely clerical context. Again, this is not a problem if we assume that the laity was fully implicated in and in agreement with the ideology our clerical sources propagate. This is nevertheless an assumption, and one that collapses the whole value system of the Middle Ages into the view of sources which we know are biased. It is surely very unlikely that the viewpoints of the clergy and laity were identical, and that no translation, conceptual as well as linguistic, was at all necessary to communicate the ideas in our ecclesiastical sources to an audience outside those institutions. The ‘political’ interpretation has a different weakness, in that there is no way it can make its argument in a ‘Heilsgeschichte’ context. Any historical event can, and probably was, interpreted as reflecting God’s will working in human history. It is therefore difficult to see why, say, the Cambrai version of events can thereby claim special authority vis-à-vis other versions. It is difficult to see what persuasive value salvation history might have had, given that persuasion is necessarily grounded on a differentiation of truth claims (‘I am right and the other is wrong’), a differentiation that salvation narrative does not encourage. Folcuin of Lobbes, say, could add a rival account of his monastery’s founding to that already in existence, but there was no logical way to disprove or replace it.9 The only way a writer could demonstrate that his argument was superior to another’s was to gather more evidence and thereby make his account the authoritative one. In this respect the ‘political’ framework of interpretation accounts for the episodic character of the texts better than the ‘Heilsgeschichte’ approach. Yet this ‘argument by accumulation’, by definition, worked best in the long run when future generations would seek knowledge about the past and find it usefully collected in the gesta. In other words, the audience was not the current generation who would be interested in the political points being made, but posterity.10 It is the gesta genre’s inherently cumulative nature, building up episode upon episode, and its consequent open-endedness towards future generations of readers and, as I shall demonstrate on the example of the GeC, writers, that I feel is key to explaining why these texts look the way they do and what their creators were intending. Concentrating solely on Providence as the framework, or code, against which the texts are to be read does not credit their authors with enough understanding of the unfolding of time.11 A political interpretation risks making the text 8 For an excellent consideration of these issues, see Arnold, Belief and Unbelief, 1-15. 9 See the articles of Ugé, ‘Creating a Usable Past’, and Vanderputten, ‘ “Literate memory” and social reassessment’. 10 Indeed, the need to preserve information for posterity is an explicit purpose of much medieval historiography, including gesta. 11 See my critique of Goetz, below. 10 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) seem too restrictively instrumental. Here, I hope to argue that there is an additional way in which the gesta can be read, one not exclusive of the two just delineated: I would like to propose that gesta are not intended to be narratives, but reference works. They are archives, albeit archives of historical anecdote. As archives, each anecdote remained in episode form without needing to be integrated into a larger narrative. In addition, I will argue that this use is encouraged by the nature of the manuscript technology itself, which lent itself to compilation and later revision. Taken a detailed look at one text: the GeC, will help make this point, since although it is often taken as the expression of one man’s viewpoint – its commissioner Gerard I – I will be able to show that it is a composite text, built up from a variety of sources over a number of decades and was expected to be so even at its inception. Because the authors knew that manuscript culture, including the difficulty of writing and the instability of texts, meant that their works would be excerpted, changed and re-arranged, they chose to write in easily replicable elements (the episodes) and strung them together in chronological order to form a history. Nonetheless, writing does not happen in a vacuum. It takes place within institutional and economic constraints. I will, therefore, begin by outlining the history of the major cities of Cambrai-Arras and their main ecclesiastical institutions, showing the long-term conditions to which the composition of the GeC was a response and of which it was, of course, a part. Then, after introducing the GeC itself, I will go on to show how the dating of the manuscript demonstrates its instability, look for varied authorial voices in the manuscript, and finally study how the method of constructing the GeC, both textually and physically, tells us much about the way it was supposed to be read and opens up the possibility of seeing a wide variety of readers. The Diocese of Cambrai-Arras: A Brief History Gerard’s episcopal seat was in Cambrai, which lay in the Empire, and it was the East Frankish king/emperor who had the right to appoint the bishop. Nevertheless, the diocese was ecclesiastically subject to Rheims in West Francia/France and its territory straddled the border between the Empire and France as established by the secession of Lotharingia to Henry I of East Francia in 925. In the East the diocese comprised the archdeaconries of Cambrésis, Hainault, Brabant, Valenciennes and Antwerp, in the West those of Artois and Ostrevant, west and north of the city of Cambrai respectively.12 There were three significant urban centres: Cambrai itself, Arras in the Artois and Douai in Ostrevant. In addition the emperors developed three marcher fortresses along the river Schelde: Valenciennes, Ename and Antwerp. 12 These areas were also sometimes equivalent to counties, but this is not consistently so: the terms pagus and comitatus are not interchangeable, and neither necessarily matches the territorial responsibility of a given comes. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 11 Arras was founded on the Crinchon river and was the oldest of the cities. It took its name after the Atrebates, a Belgian tribe of the area mentioned in Caesar’s De Bello Gallico.13 Arras was also listed by Jerome alongside Mainz, Rheims, Amiens, Tournai, Thérouanne, Speyer, Strasbourg and Narbonne as one of the cities which had suffered under the incoming barbarians. The accuracy of this information is less important than the fact that Jerome saw the fall of Arras as an episode that might mean something to his correspondent, a widow called Geruchia.14 Arras was allegedly refounded as a bishopric by St Vedast in the first half of the sixth century, at the instigation of St Remigius and Clovis.15 Although it did not stay as a bishopric for very much longer, it continued to be an important town largely because of the abbey of St-Vaast. The abbey was founded across the river Crinchon from the old Roman city in the mid-seventh century by Bishop Autbert when he translated the bones of St Vedast out of the old, then-obsolete cathedral. The success of the abbey meant that the centre of the city shifted. Where previously it had been concentrated where the old Roman settlement and the cathedral had been (Arras-Cité), instead the area around the abbey (ArrasVille) gained in importance. Arras-Ville was fortified against the Normans in the ninth century and the abbey ran a market there by 868. It had jurisdiction over the area within the more recent walls, encompassed by the parish of St Peter’s. The other parishes were under episcopal oversight as normal.16 Royal coins were minted in Arras up to the time of Charles Simplex, but after 932 the abbey was effectively in the hands of the counts of Flanders. During this period minting continued, but this time of non-specific Gratia Dei rex coins. The only exception is the period 966-988 when the city and abbey were back in royal control and we find coins of Kings Lothar and Hugh Capet. The abbots of St-Vaast encouraged people to settle next to their castrum,17 and exempted all the men de censu Sancti Vedasti from paying toll.18 The programme seems to have been so successful that by 1024 Abbot Leduin found himself having to restrict that exemption to only those men of St Vedast of the second generation.19 Naturally, the independence of such a powerful and wealthy abbey from the bishop’s control and the frequent success of the counts of Flanders in bringing it under theirs created tensions with the bishop in Cambrai. According to the GeC, these reached a peak in the late 13 C. Julius Caesar, Commentatorium I, Libri VII de Bello Gallico, II:4, 16, 23; IV:21; V:46; VII:75; VIII:7, 47. The story in the GeC, I:2, 403, about Duke Comeus, betrays interesting differences to that in De Bello Gallico IV:21. Whereas the GeC has Comus as defending Arras against Caesar and proving his valour to the extent that Caesar makes him a commander, the original simply has him as the man whom Caesar made king (rex) of the Atrebates. 14 Jerome, Ad Geruchiam de Monogamia, 92. This too was used by the GeC author, who was transmitting it from Flodoard of Rheims, Historia Remensis Ecclesiae, I:6, 77; GeC, I:5, 405. 15 Gregory of Tours, Historiarum X, II:42, 92-93. For further discussion of the early ecclesiastical history of Arras, see Meijns, Aken of Jeruzalem?, 76-89. 16 Lestocquoy, ‘Les étapes du développement urbain d’Arras’, 131. 17 It seems to be these settlements that the forged charter of Vindician is referring to when it tries to exclude the villulae around Arras from the jurisdiction of the bishop; see p. 74, note 123. 18 Vercauteren, Étude sur les civitates, 197-200. 19 Ibidem, 202. 12 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) tenth century under the abbacy of Fulrad. We have some corroborating evidence of this from the so-called Chronicon Vedastinum, a compilation of various historical works with many St-Vaast-related additions including an alleged charter of the seventh-century bishop of Cambrai Vindician guaranteeing the abbey’s immunity.20 Apparently, Bishop Gerard was only able to eject Fulrad from his position with the help of Baldwin IV of Flanders.21 According to the GeC, the ejection of Fulrad was followed by a series of abbots belonging to the circle of Richard of St-Vanne and therefore at least theoretically better-disposed to Gerard. Certainly, Richard was responsible for an enormous expansion in the abbey and city’s industrial capacity, with the construction of no fewer than eleven new mills and the reclamation and improvement of four more.22 Nonetheless, he and the other abbots of St-Vaast acted in such a way first and foremost to benefit their monastery. Thus we know that despite the warm relations between the cathedral in Cambrai and the abbey in Arras after Fulrad’s expulsion, Gerard had conceded the immunity in question by 1031. Gerard may have been more willing to concede such rights when they were to go to friends and allies, but there was probably tension even then. He was, after all, conceding the rights to the institution in perpetuity, not to his allies as such.23 Cambrai, on the upper Schelde, was originally a city of much lesser importance. It is mentioned in the Gesta regum francorum as having been taken by the Frankish leader Clodio.24 After this, the city’s history is dark until Clovis gave the city to his cousin Ragnachar, but the latter rebelled and forced Clovis, so Gregory of Tours wrote, to reconquer the city for himself. It was under Clovis’s patronage that Vedast was sent to Arras and it was not until sometime between 584 and 590 that the diocese was moved to Cambrai. Although it was believed in the eleventh century that Arras and Cambrai had been two separate dioceses, this seems to have been a misunderstanding arising from Hincmar of Reim’s belief that the two cities had been Roman civitates and from the existence of a community of canons in Arras by the tenth century.25 In any case, the GeC tell us that the sixth-century Bishop Vedulf moved the diocese to Cambrai.26 It was Vedulf’s successor, Gaugeric, on the other hand, who 20 The Chronicon Vedastinum is published by Waitz in MGH SS XIII; the pseudo-Vindician is at pp. 697-698, and I have checked the text against the MS Douai BM 795, fol. 67v-69v . For a full discussion of the St-Vaast immunity, see Lemarignier, ‘L’exemption monastique’. Although it should be noted that its dating to the time of Fulrad relies partly on the account of the GeC. The danger of circular argumentation is evident. 21 Brigitte Meijns deals briefly with Baldwin’s monastic policies; see Aken of Jeruzalem?, 462463. See also Van Meter, ‘The Inception of Monastic Reform’, although I disagree with Van Meter on a number of points. 22 Lohrmann, ‘Mühlenbau, Schiffahrt und Flussumleitungen’, 155. 23 For a fuller discussion of this, see below. 24 Liber historiae francorum, Krusch (ed.), 245-246. In retelling this story, the GeC claim the Romans in the city were already Christian: GeC, I:3, 404. 25 Kéry, Die Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 211-225, 261-264. For a good synopsis of Cambrai’s early ecclesiastical history, see Meijns, Aken of Jeruzalem?, 89-95. 26 GeC, I:12, 407. Note however that this may simply be the GeC author’s attempt to reconcile The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 13 was the first significant incumbent of the new episcopal city. Indeed, according to the earliest version of the Acta Gaugerici, written about 900, it was Gaugeric who moved the diocese to Cambrai and destroyed a sacred wood on the nearby Montdes-Bœufs, building a church to St Medard where he was buried and which later became a monastery.27 The church seems to have been replaced by a different one dedicated to St Gaugeric in 863 under Bishop Theoderic (833-63).28 By 878 at the latest it was a community of canons.29 Just as Arras developed around two centres, so did Cambrai: the first in the original city around the cathedral, the second on the Mont-des- Bœufs around St-Géry. The second version of the Vita Gaugerici notes that there were already fairs at St-Géry, presumably every 11th August (the saint’s festival) and 18th November (his translation).30 St-Géry had been fortified, probably in the time of Charles the Bald, but although the GeC claims that it needed rebuilding after the Hungarian attacks of 953, there is no archaeological trace of the tenth-century effort, which must therefore have restricted itself to repairing the Carolingian defences.31 By 1025, the canons numbered 50, and Gerard had made them eat communally.32 In that respect he seems to have been following the example of his relative Archbishop Adalbero of Rheims’s reforms of his cathedral chapter – the chapter in which Gerard himself had been educated.33 The most important religious institution in the city was of course the cathedral with its chapter. This was the home institution of the author of the GeC. We know nothing whatsoever of the Merovingian cathedral. It was presumably wooden, or largely so, and thus probably fell victim to the Danish attack of 881. Still, the destruction cannot have been complete since in 894, Bishop Dodilo (887901x911) had been able to get a renewal of the cathedral’s immunity from King Arnulf when he ‘put before [the king’s] eyes the privileges conceded by our predecessors of glorious memory, namely King Pippin and the Emperors Charles the Elder and Louis’.34 In any case, the GeC attribute a major rebuilding programme to Dodilo, including expanding the walls and ‘having built the community of the fact that the oldest Acta of Gaugeric has the saint being patronised by Vedulf already as bishop of Cambrai: see Acta s. Gaugerici epsicopi confessoris, II, I:6, 673B. 27 Ibidem, II:14, 675A. 28 GeC, I:49, 418. 29 Pace Hirschmann, Stadtplanung, Bauprojekte, und Grossbaustellen, 130, note 830. 30 Acta Gaugerici, II:14, 675A. 31 GeC, I:75, 428-429; Florin, ‘Les fouilles sur le Mont des Boeufs’, 380. It is nonetheless unclear whether the Carolingian fortifications date from the rebuilding of the church in 863 or its reconstruction after the Norse raid of 881. 32 GeC, II:4, 456. 33 GeC, III:1, 465. For a discussion of Adalbero’s reforms, see Glenn, Politics and History, 2549, although, in my opinion, Glenn overestimates the particular influence of Chrodegang of Metz. The reforms described by Richer of Rheims and The Chronicle of Mouzon are equally in the tradition of the Aachen institutes of 816. For a discussion of these institutes and their effects on canonries in Flanders, including Cambrai, see Meijns, Aken of Jeruzalem?, 155-96, 199-200. 34 Vir venerabilis Dodilo, Cameracensis urbis episcopus, obtulit obtutibus nostris immunitates beatae memoriae antecessorum nostrorum, regis videlicet Pipini ac imperatorum Karoli Magni seu Ludowici: GeC, I:64, 423. 14 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) Mary Mother of God’, and although Dodilo did consecrate his rebuilt cathedral, he died while work was still underway.35 We may assume that Dodilo had completed the eastern end of the church, where the altar would have been, since later Bishop Engrann (962/963-965) is said to have expanded the monasterium to the West, an effort said to be completed by Rothard (980-995). Gerard seems to have rebuilt the cathedral extensively, apparently because the initial, more cautious demolition of older parts of the building had damaged the fabric as a whole. In any case, Gerard began the work in the 1020s, thus shortly before commissioning the GeC, and consecrated the new cathedral in 1030.36 Coins of a succession of Carolingian rulers from Pippin the Short to Charles the Bald and probably also Zwentibold were minted at Cambrai. There are none after this until the late eleventh century.37 This is in marked contrast to Arras, where, as we have seen, the minting of coins continued throughout the tenth century. The bishops claimed the right to mint and to levy tolls by the 940s.38 In 1003, Henry II not only reconfirmed these rights but also granted them at Câteau-Cambrésis, south-east of Cambrai.39 The failure of the bishops of Cambrai to capitalise on their rights to mint their own coinage may well be indicative of Cambrai’s loss of economic stature vis-à-vis Arras, but this does not mean that Cambrai somehow missed out on the more generalised urbanisation of the tenth century. The fire that devastated the city in 1020 spread from the civitas as far as the Mont-des- Bœufs, demonstrating that the intervening space was fully built up.40 What the absence of coins does perhaps reveal is the inability of the bishops to capitalise on their increasing legal claims to power in and around their city. Otto I gave the community of canons of St-Géry to the bishops of Cambrai in 948, as well as control of the city which had until then been shared with the local count. In 1007, the bishop was given the entire county of Cambrésis as part of an attempted settlement between the bishop (at this point, Gerard’s predecessor, Erluin), Henry II and Count Baldwin IV of Flanders.41 None of this prevented conflicts between the bishops and castellans or Flemish counts. Douai was the youngest of the three major urban centres, only developing from 35 Monasterium etiam Dei genitricis Mariae aedificatum Kalendis Augusti sollemniter consecravit: GeC, I:65, 424. 36 GeC, I:57, 421; see also Chronicon s. Andreae Castri Cameracesii I:8, 528. 37 Lafaurie, ‘Les monnaies émises à Cambrai’, 402-403. One discovered coin of Otto I thought to be from Cambrai almost certainly is not; my thanks to Peter Ilisch, curator of coins at the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, for discussing this with me. 38 Diploma of Otto I (941), no. 39, 124-126. Although the editor of this particular diploma, Foltz, raises the possibility that the grant of mint rights was not in the original diploma, he is of the opinion that is probably was: pp. 124-125. There is a confirmation of this grant by Otto II dating to 977, but this only survives in a thirteenth-century cartulary: Otto II, Diplomata, no.146, 164-165. The undoubtedly genuine confirmation by Otto III is, in the edition of Sickel, Diplomata, no. 72, 479-480. 39 Henry II, Diplomata, no. 49, 57-59. 40 The fire is described in GeC, II:7, 458. For the date, which is often placed in 1027, see Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 320. 41 Ganshof, ‘Les origines de la Flandre Impériale’, 109-112. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 15 the status of village in the ninth century. The archaeology indicates a regular groundplan already at that period, but following the seizure of the city by the counts of Flanders from the 940s part of that organization was destroyed to make way for what was apparently a farming complex. Douai at this period never acquired stone walls but did have a castellan who seems to have exercised governmental functions on behalf of the Flemish count. Whereas the farming complex (and later comital residence) was on high ground, the castellan’s tower was in the marshy area next to the river and it was there that tolls were collected. It was, however, the West Frankish king Lothar, after he took back Artois and the Ostrevant in 967, who destroyed the farming complex and in a series of phases developed it into a defensible residence.42 Count Arnulf II, who reacquired the city from Hugh Capet, then converted this residence into a wooden keep. By c. 1000, the high ground, including the keep and the church (and by then community of canons) of St-Amé, was surrounded by a stone wall. The primary church of Douai had been dedicated to Mary, but Count Arnulf I seems to have translated relics of St Amatus from Soissons to Douai and rededicated the church. In this he would have been imitating his own actions in the early 940s when he translated relics from Boulogne-sur-Mer to Ghent and sending a signal legitimising his rule as a pious overlord. There was at least one pair of mills in Douai by 988, and three pairs in total by 1038.43 While the natural flow of water would have been enough to support the one set, three required the diversion of the ‘Sate’ river to create the modern Scarpe.44 The development of the waterways around Douai had a direct impact on Cambrai cathedral. The bishops had been granted (or at least claimed to have been granted) the former royal fisc of Lambres by Charles Simplex. This was the highest point on what would become the Scarpe which boats could reach and the bishops were able to charge a toll for transhipment onto land. The creation of the modern Scarpe and its fortification downstream at Douai meant that the counts now controlled the transhipment point. The GeC author, at the point at Book II when he is supposed to be discussing the community of canons of St-Amé, spends most of the chapter bemoaning the fact that the cathedral’s income from Lambres has fallen by a half.45 The bishops of Cambrai had the same ambivalent relations with the counts of Flanders as they did with the abbots of St-Vaast, and in both cases economic rights contributed to the tensions. There is, of course, much else that can be said about the diocese, in particular in relation to the bishops’ rivalry with the castellans of Cambrai, Walter of Lens and his similarly-named son, and to the position of the bishop regarding the various reform movements of the late-tenth and early eleventh centuries. Much of this in42 Demolon, ‘Douai vers l’an Mil’, 175. 43 Lohrmann, ‘Mühlenbau’, 171. 44 Douai had lain on a small river of unknown name which flowed into the medieval Scarpe north of the city. The linking of the ‘Sate’, this river and the flemish Scarpe created the modern Scarpe. The upper reaches of the original Scarpe still exist as the Escrebieu. See Lohrmann, ‘Mühlenbau’, 167-182. 45 GeC, II:21, 460. 16 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) formation would, however, of necessity be drawn from the GeC itself and as such any reading of the text based on that background courts circularity.46 Suffice it to say here that the predominantly numismatic, charter and archaeological evidence I have cited here indicates that the diocese was the centre of an at least three-cornered struggle for influence between the bishops, the abbots of St-Vaast and the counts of Flanders, with other powers, notably the kings of France and the emperors, intervening less frequently. The Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium Traditionally, while the whole gesta of Cambrai-Arras including the continuators, have collectively been called the Gesta pontificum Cameracensium, the first three books up to and including the episcopacy of Gerard I have been distinguished by the title Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium.47 It is largely these three books with which we will be concerned here, and, unless otherwise specified, future references to the GeC will be to these books alone. The first book deals with the history of the diocese of Cambrai and Arras48 up to the death of Gerard I’s predecessor, Erluin.49 The second is an extended catalogue of the religious foundations under the authority of the bishop.50 The third is an account of the deeds of the patron of the work, Gerard I himself.51 It is clear that this schema was intended from the start.52 The author was a canon of the cathedral church of St Mary’s, Cambrai,53 who had grown up in the area, even if he was not born there,54 and who knew Bishop Gerard I.55 He wrote the GeC in Cambrai, as various references to ‘this/our city’ make clear,56 at the bishop’s request.57 He had already completed a version of the Vita Gaugerici, also at Gerard’s insistence.58 It is this other work that explains Gaugeric’s virtual absence from the GeC.59 46 Two recent studies relate other local texts, the Saint-Vaast Bible and the Vita Autberti, to these issues: Reilly, The Art of Reform, and Stein, Reality Fictions. Still, these are interpretative works in the traditions of art history and literary criticism respectively and themselves rely on certain historical assumptions based on a reading of the GeC; see especially Reilly, The Art of Reform, 8-12 and Stein, Reality Fictions, 14-17. Referring to them thus would not solve the methodological problem of circularity. 47 Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 282, note 3. 48 ... de antiquitate nostrarum urbium, Camerici videlicet atque Atrebati, sed et de earum quoque pastoribus memoriae commendavimus: GeC, I:P, 402. 49 GeC, I:122, 454. 50 ... de monasteriis quae infra ditionem episcopii sunt: GeC, II:Pref., 454-445. 51 GeC, I:122, 454, III:52, 485. 52 GeC, I:122, 454; II:Pref., 454-455. 53 GeC, I:85, 432; II:11, 458-459; II:23, 460. For this and following, cf MGH SS VII, 393. 54 GeC, II:5, 457: ... pauca ex his quae vel ipse iuvenculus moderno tempore vidi. 55 GeC, III:12, 469; III:22, 472. 56 GeC, I:4, 404; I:23, 410; I:103, 443; I:114, 451; II:29, 461. But note the author also expresses ‘ownership’ of Arras: I:P, 402; I:7, 406. 57 GeC, I:P, 402: Precipiente domino nostro episcopo Gerardo. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 17 Dating The MGH editor Bethmann believed the GeC to have been written 1041-1043, but Erik van Mingroot has convincingly shown that it in fact dates predominantly to 1024-1025.60 Van Mingroot’s argument is nevertheless very complex, and while his dating for Books I and II is secure, the third book features a number of later interpolations whose chronology and dating are by no means fully clarified. So here I will first recapitulate Van Mingroot’s arguments for dating the first two books, then discuss the problems of the third.61 At this point, I am concerned simply to detail the basis on which the dating rests and to point up a few open issues. Van Mingroot’s work was based entirely on content, and my own suggestions and modifications, growing from my manuscript study, will be left for the section on codicology. The First Two Books: Books I and II are securely dated. Bethmann dated Book II to after 1040 because the community of Hénin-Liétard (mentioned in II:23) was founded by ‘Robert of Arras’ in that year.62 But this argument has been dismissed by Van Mingroot since the date is itself based on an assumption about the dating of the GeC and ‘Robert of Arras’ need not refer to Robert II of Béthune (1033-1067) as traditionally assumed, but possibly Robert I Fasciculus (1012-1037) or to a Robert who was one of the vicedomini representing the bishop of Cambrai in Arras.63 Another, more certain terminus post quem is provided for the first two books in II:29, which deals with an event datable to the 28th year of the reign of Robert the Pious, most likely the year beginning 24th October 1023, but possibly just referring to 1023.64 Book II, the catalogue of monasteries, makes no mention of the abbey of St Andrew in Câteau-Cambrésis, which was consecrated in September 1025, so this must form a terminus ante quem.65 These findings are confirmed by information elsewhere in Book II. In II:2 the construction work on Cambrai cathedral 58 For discussion, see P. van den Bosch, Acta altera S. Gaugerici episcopi confessori, AASS Aug II, 668-670. 59 GeC I:12, 407. 60 Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, passim. 61 It is not immediately obvious why Van Mingroot’s arguments need to be recapitulated, but given that at least two respected historians have expressed uncertainty about his conclusions, as a result almost certainly of the complexity of his argument as well as difficulty with the language, it seems to me useful to repeat some of those arguments in a different form so as to allow critical scrutiny even where I agree with Van Mingroot’s conclusions. See Barthélemy, L’an mil et la paix de Dieu, 440, note 1 and Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung, 273. 62 Bethmann, MGH SS VII, 393, note 9. 63 Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 325-330. 64 Ibidem, 321-322. Yet regnal years could also be dated from the beginning of the year in which the king was crowned, cf. the comments of Prou, ‘Une charte de Garin’, 384. The diploma of Otto I copied into the GeC and granting St-Géry to Cambrai cathedral is dated in this manner. 65 Ibidem, 320. 18 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) (1021/1023) is described as recent (nuper).66 In the next chapter Gerard I’s brother Eilbert is described as a monk: since he was abbot by 1025, Book II must have been finished by then at the earliest.67 Indeed, a comparison with another text makes it probable that the GeC were first started in 1024. The author of the GeC had also written the Acta S. Gaugerici which he describes there as his first work, and to which the GeC make reference.68 The date of the Acta must therefore necessarily give us a terminus post quem for the GeC. The reference in the first book of the Acta to the meeting of Henry II and Robert the Pious gives the Acta a terminus post quem of 11th August 1023.69 In the prologue of the Acta’s third book, the author then refers to a fever that stopped him from writing for ‘almost two months.’70 Given that chapters I:13 and 15 of the Gesta are reliant on respectively paragraphs 65-66 and 69 later in that same book, the Acta must have been complete to this point before the GeC were begun.71 It is therefore difficult to see how the latter can have been started before 1024. We can therefore conclude that the GeC were begun in 1024 and Book II was finished by September 1025. Book Three: The dating of the third book poses much greater problems because sections have clearly been interpolated. Any narrative and chronological consistency of the first two books disintegrates towards the middle of the third. Bethmann wrote here of the author gathering material for later reworking,72 but Van Mingroot has persuasively argued, on the basis of dating inconsistencies between sections of the third book and the rest of the GeC, that the confusion concerns a number of later interpolations. The problems divide into a number of categories, which we will deal with here in turn. First we will look at two chapters, III:21 and 23, in the earlier, still narratively consistent section of the book, then with the series of letters forming the block of chapters III:28-34, and finally the explanation for the narrative confusion that is a feature of the last part of Book III. 66 GeC, II:2, 455. 67 Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 316. 68 For the identification of the author with that of the GeC, see the comments of the Acta Sanctorum editor, P. van den Bosch, Acta altera S. Gaugerici II, 668F-669A. For it being the author’s first work, see ibidem, 676A; for the GeC’s cross-reference: I:12, 407 and II:4, 456. 69 Acta Gaugerici, I:1:8, 677D. 70 De cujus [i.e. his task] sane infirmitate recenti adeo totus et dolore contabui et timore obrigui, ut in his duobus fere mensibus mei etiam pene immemor, et stylum et tabulas abhorrerem, nullique studio, praeter luctum et lacrymas, indulgerem: III:P, c. 62, 688F. 71 See Acta altera S. Gaugerici II, 669B. After the completion of at least the first two books of the GeC, the author returned to the Acta and added an appendix. Thus while chapters I:13, 408 and I:15, 408 of the GeC are reliant on the Acta, the reverse is true for the latter’s appendix: see Acta Gaugerici, 669F-670A. 72 Bethmann, MGH SS, VII, 393: ... capita 35-60 autem nec temporum ordinem servant, ut priora, nec bene digesta sunt, sed adnotata tantum et in chartam conjecta quasi ad usum futuri libri. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 19 Chapters III:21 and III:23 can be dated to 1025-1043. The Abbot Herbrand mentioned as in office in III:21 was abbot of St-Ghislain from 1024/1029 to 1045/1046 or possibly 1051/1052. Waleran, abbot of Homblières and Count Odo of Vermandois, both mentioned in III:23, held these titles respectively from 1025 to the end of 1043 and from before 1010 to 25th May 1045.73 Assuming that each chapter was written near its earliest possible date, there is thus no necessary contradiction up to this point between the dating of the first two books and that of the third. Most of the letters and the closing chapters of Book III (specifically from III:48) are however not so easy to reconcile with the dates of Books I and II. Some of the episcopal letters which make up the block III:28-34 can be given rough dates. I will deal first with the more securely datable ones, III:28 and 32-34, and then with letters III:29-31, which are all different versions of the same letter regarding alleged irregularities on the part of Adalbero of Laon. Letters, of course, like charters or any other ‘external’ document, only provide us with a terminus post quem for when they were included in the GeC. The first letter (III:28) is addressed to the archdeacon John of Liège. John became archdeacon under Bishop Wolboldo in 1018, then provost of St Lambert in 1021. Thus, although we can date this letter fairly precisely, it contributes nothing towards dating the GeC that we did not already know.74 Letters III:32-34 are a different proposition, however. Letter III:32 concerns a fire in the community of St Mary in Arras that is datable to 1029/1030. Presumably the letter is from not much later.75 Letter III:33 is addressed to an Abbot G., who is probably Gonzo of Florennes, and would therefore be from after 1028/1029.76 In letter III:34, addressed to a Bishop Fulk of Amiens about Drogo of Thérouanne, Drogo is referred to as having been Fulk’s cleric. The addressee must, in that case, be Fulk I, not Fulk II, and the letter is thus datable to 1030 x 1036.77 Thus, all three of these letters, comprising III:32-34, date from several years after Books I and II. The other letters are even more problematic since their dating is unclear. Van Mingroot places the three letters (III:29-31) campaigning against Adalbero of Laon’s attempt to designate his own successor in 1022/1023. However, he does this only by assuming that the references to the sale of offices in the letter mean that Adalbero was trying to extort money for the succession and that with death approaching he would not have had the leverage to succeed. 78 It is, however, questionable both how literally we are to take Gerard’s admonitions about simony and whether age would have necessarily dulled Adalbero’s influence. Indeed, Van Mingroot’s calculation of 1022/1023 as being safely distant from the bishop’s imminent death is based on P. Gams’s 1873 Series Episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholi73 74 75 76 77 78 Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 323. Ibidem, 303. Ibidem, 304. Ibidem, 304-305. Ibidem, 305. Ibidem, 304. 20 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) cae where Adalbero is pronounced dead in 1030.79 In fact, while he is last attested in 1030/1031, at which point he was about 80 years old, his successor does not appear in the sources until 1043.80 The dating of these letters must therefore remain vague: sometime during the episcopate of Ebalus of Rheims (1021-1033). These letters, therefore, may or may not be contemporaneous with the first two books of the GeC. It is impossible to say with any certainty. There are then a number of subsequent chapters which cannot be fitted into the earlier dating established for the first two books and much of the first half of the third. Firstly, chapter III:48, which consists largely of a semilatinus sermon of Gerard’s, mentions Bishop Hugh of Tournai (1030-1044) and Count Baldwin IV of Flanders (988-1035). Thus this chapter can only date from 1030-1035.81 By far the most complex dating problem in Book III is in c. 49. The chapter mentions the foundation of St Andrew’s, which provides a terminus post quem of September 102582 and includes a list of lands given to the abbey. Van Mingroot shows, however, that the author cannot have used any of the three extant charters for the abbey, neither that of Conrad II (1033), nor Gerard I’s episcopal charter, nor that of Henry III, both from 1046. Indeed, all three charters were kept in St Andrew’s, not in Cambrai. In fact, the author mentions one allod, Ham, which according to our 1046 sources had already been granted out, and four other properties which appear in none of the charters and which therefore must have come to the abbey only after 1046.83 Van Mingroot’s ingenious explanation for these inconsistencies is that the Cambrai-based author was working from (a faulty) memory, some time after 1046.84 In any case, we can be sure it was written after Gerard I’s death in 1051, since it is said here that the bishop cared for the abbey ‘as long as he lived’.85 This is the latest securely dated section of the GeC. We are therefore faced with an apparent inconsistency. We know that the GeC were, from the start, intended to cover the history of the diocese up to and including the episcopate of Gerard I.86 Yet the first two books can be firmly dated to 1024-1025, whereas the third, on Gerard, seems to come from the 1030s at the 79 Ibidem, 303, note 139. 80 Coolidge, ‘Adalbero, Bishop of Laon’, 92-93. Coolidge dates the controversy to 1029 on the basis of the chronology of the subsequent letters in the GeC. If Van Mingroot is correct however in identifying these as interpolations, then this chronology no longer carries any special weight: ibidem, 90, note 119. 81 Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 306. The text refers to comitis quoque Balduini et filii eius. According to Van Mingroot, this must refer to Baldwins IV and V since the next latest date for the events, the death of Walter II of Lens in 1041, is too early for a son of Baldwin V, who married in 1028, to be full-grown: ibidem, 306, note 161. 82 Ibidem, 284. 83 Ibidem, 285. 84 Ibidem, 285-286. But note that elsewhere the author is careful to use extant charters: compare e.g. GeC, I:77, 429-430 with MGH DD I, no. 39, 124-126 and I:108, 447-448 with MGH DD II.2, vol. 2.2, no. 72, 479-480. 85 quam pia sollicitudine fovit quamdiu vixit: GeC, III:49, 484; Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 288. 86 See above. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 21 earliest, and at one point from after the bishop’s death. The gap demands explanation, in particular given that on another occasion when the author had to interrupt his task, for illness, we are told of it.87 Secondly, if Book III was written much after the first two, the absence of any account of the famous 1025 synod of Arras, one of our earliest cases of the prosecution of popular heresy in the High Middle Ages, becomes very striking.88 Indeed, the gaps in the narrative between 1025 and 1036 (III:50-51), and the lack of any closure to the account of Gerard’s life, are all the more mysterious if the book were written later than if they were simply notes toward a future book, as Bethmann had suggested.89 Van Mingroot begins to find a solution in similarities between the closing section of Book III and the first 15 chapters of the Gesta Lietberti (henceforth GL), the account of the deeds of Gerard’s successor and the next section of the Gesta pontificum Cameracensium. He notes that c. 16 of the GL follows exactly on from c. 15 although it does not mention Lietbert’s 1054 to late 1056 abortive pilgrimage to the Holy Land. For Van Mingroot, this indicates a double authorship.90 Another clue that at least the earlier part of the GL might have been written before the rest was completed up to Lietbert’s death in 1076 is the comment in c13 that the author writes of ‘the remaining deeds of the bishop’.91 This, as Van Mingroot says, would be an odd formulation if it were referring to the full 22 years worth of deeds Lietbert had ahead of him at this point.92 Additionally, two independent sources, the Chronicon S. Andreae and Sigebert of Gembloux’s Chronicon, cease to use the GL as a source only after 1054.93 More interesting from our point of view are the stylistic connections Van Mingroot draws between the GL and the closing sections of the GeC.94 Bethmann had argued that the GeC must have been written during Gerard’s lifetime because the author refers to him as domnus episcopus, whereas the GL were written after 1076 because the same title was rarely given to Lietbert.95 Nevertheless, this is no strict rule. Gerard is not always given the full title, but does receive it in III:49, written after his death in 1051. Fulbert, bishop of Cambrai from 933/934-956, sports the title too.96 Lietbert, in the supposedly post-1076 GL, is also referred to as Lord Bishop.97 This latter phenomenon only occurs in the first fifteen chapters of the GL, in other words it was used by what Van Mingroot considers the first author. Additionally, both Book III of the GeC and cc. 1-15 of the GL frequently call the respective bishops by name, 87 GeC, II:8, 458. 88 For the account of the council, see: Acta synodi Atretabensis in Manichaeos, cols. 1269-1312. 89 Bethmann’s explanation for the chronological confusion after III, 34: MGH SS VII, 393. 90 Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 295-296. 91 Gesta Lietberti [henceforth GL], c.13, 494: gesta pontificis quae restant. 92 Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 296-297. 93 Ibidem, 299. 94 For the following and other comments on stylistic similarities, including the first author’s ‘exotic style’, see ibidem, 308-311. 95 Bethmann MGH SS VII, 393, note 10 for Gerard I, and 396, note 31 for Lietbert. 96 GeC, I:71-73, 426-427 and I:76, 429. In I:122, 454, Gerard’s predecessor Erluin is titled domnus. 97 Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 297. 22 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) whereas the later author of the GL does so only once – where he picks up the story in c. 16.98 The same author would, therefore, seem to be responsible for the first section of the GL and at least some of the GeC. We cannot be talking about one author for all the GeC and these 15 chapters since there is no mention of Lietbert at the end of Book I of the GeC, where only work on Gerard is projected.99 We are therefore looking at three authors for the GeC and GL – one (A), having written the Acta S. Gaugerici in 1023-1024, who went on in 1024-1025 to write Books I and II and at least intended to write Book III, a second (B) who ‘finished’ Book III as we have it now, and then began the GL, writing between 1051 and 1055, before Lietbert went on pilgrimage, and a third (C) writing after 1076, and completing the GL from c. 16. Van Mingroot has shown, then, that the GeC must, therefore, have had two authors: one working in 1024-1025 and one between 1051 and 1055. This begs the question of where author B, writing after Gerard’s death, came in, or, rather, which elements of Book III are to be attributed to which author, for there are clear signs of interpolation. Thus III:49, whose ending, listing lands given to St Andrew’s between 1025 and 1051, can certainly be ascribed to B,100 noticeably fails to dovetail with the opening of the subsequent III:50, Diebus posthae’, referring to 1024. Indeed III:49 begins with the words Ex quo and goes on to relate events beginning in 1023, whereas the preceding III:48 can, as we have seen, be dated to 1030-1035.101 Letter III:34 is from 1030-1035, yet III:35, recounting the activities of Henry II around July 1023, opens with sub hiis diebus. These features, alongside the fact that letters III:32-35 are given, unlike those in III:28-31, no authorial introduction, seem to indicate that they are interpolations. 102 We see the implications of this in the wider chronological structure of the latter part of Book III. Here we have letters III:28-31, interrupted by letters III:32-34, followed by two blocks of narrative about the Emperor (III:35-38) and Gerard’s negotiations with the troublesome castellan of Cambrai, Walter (III:39-47) respectively. After this the structure is broken again by III:48-49 dealing with after 1030, before returning to the political narrative of 1024-1025 for III:50.103 Van Mingroot therefore ascribes the interpolations, as well as chapters III:51-60 to the second author, and the original narrative to the author of Books I and II. Given the dates of the interpolated letters, this gives us a terminus ante quem for A of 1029/1030. In fact, as Van Mingroot points out, given the speed with which A completed Books I and II, a 1025 date is most likely.104 This would also be suggested by Duby’s observation that the focus of the narrative tightens considerably towards the end, with all the original chapters from III:27 dealing with the years 1023-1024/1025.105 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 Ibidem, 298. Ibidem, 299. Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 306. Ibidem, 307. Ibidem, 305. Ibidem, 324. Ibidem, 325. Duby, ‘Gérard de Cambrai, la paix et les trois fonctions sociales’, 139. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 23 There remains the oddity of III:49 which, according to Van Mingroot, would have originally followed on from III:47 with the words Ex quo but then goes on to describe the rebuilding of the cathedral church of St Mary in Cambrai as lasting until 1030, and whose list of donations to St Andrew’s must have been written after 1051. Van Mingroot argues that, while the opening of the chapter is by A, the rest is an interpolation by B who wished to close the account of Gerard I’s life with a list of benefactions, as was traditional.106 For obvious reasons, Van Mingroot puts the break between the sixth and seventh sentences, after laetatur: Nec solum ibi, sed etiam propius, in villa videlicet Nigella fodiens, aliud genus bonorum lapidum se reperisse laetatur. Unde Deo gratias reddens, totum se studio pii laboris accinxit; ac ne amplius demorer, operante divina misericordia, opus immensum septennio, anno videlicet dominicae incarnationis 1030 reddidit cosummatum.107 However, as can be seen, there is no natural break in the text, and while the manuscript tradition of this chapter is confused, the editorial problems only begin after the key entry of the date 1030.108 At this point, it becomes significant that Van Mingroot’s study is entirely based on content. An examination of the autograph of the first two books will both reveal a second redaction of these earlier pieces, not taken into account by either Bethmann or Van Mingroot, and open up alternative explanations for the construction of the third. MS Transmission The first two books of the GeC still exist in an eleventh-century manuscript, the Codex S. Gisleni, which is the manuscript from which all the others derive:109 in fact, the MGH editor Bethmann was almost certainly right in considering it the autograph. 110 The manuscript once contained Book III up to the middle of c. 49, and still did so in 1615 when Colveneere prepared the first printed edition.111 While the rest of Book III, to c. 60, had already become detached by the fourteenth century, Colveneere was able to consult the now-lost twelfth-century Codex S. Mariae Atrebatensis into which they had been copied.112 The clear chronological break that exists between III, 50 (dealing with 1025) and III, 51-60 (1036-1037, c. 60 is an undated (1043?) letter to Henry III) already existed in this latter codex. Bethmann, and Van Mingroot follows him in this, believed that the 106 Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 305-306. 107 Ibidem, 306, note 156. 108 Bethmann, MGH SS VII, 398-399, 483 nn:a-c, 484 n:a. The fact that Colveneere, who saw the autograph of this chapter, did not record any changes in hand makes no difference: he does not record other changes either. 109 Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 292, note 67, 297, 299; ibidem, 309. 110 Bethmann, MGH SS VII, 398-399. 111 Colveneere, Chronicon Cameracense. Colveneere’s work is commented upon favourably by both Bethmann and Van Mingroot: Bethmann, MGH SS VII, 309, Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 300. I have been able to confirm the accuracy of Colveneere’s readings in my own examination of the Codex sancti Gisleni. 112 Bethmann, MGH SS VII, 309; Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 300. 24 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) erasure of the last lines of III, 60 was done by the scribe of the subsequent GL removing a reference to the end of the GeC. Thus the lost section would be short.113 However Van Mingroot points out that the GL assume that Gerard’s death-date is known and the 1133 Chronicon S. Andreae, which relies on the GeC for its information about Gerard I, records details of his burial.114 It is therefore probable that the Book III was completed up to Gerard’s death.115 Codex Sancti Gisleni Why this is the Autograph: The Codex Sancti Gisleni has often been taken to be the autograph manuscript. An unknown nineteenth-century librarian of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague suspected as much, as did Bethmann and most recently Van Mingroot.116 The reasoning for this has generally been the fact that this is the ‘Urtext’ from which every other manuscript springs, combined with the fact that the script is datable to the eleventh century. Van Mingroot has gone so far as to imply that the marginalia in the codex are from Gerard I himself.117 I would like here to add a number of arguments to the case for considering this codex the autograph. Firstly, even ignoring the corrections undertaken by Gerard(?), the manuscript is something of a mess. The original scribe has at a number of points erased and rewritten sections, at one point an entire page.118 This would militate against considering the manuscript a copy of a complete work. At most, it is probably a second fair(ish) copy of an earlier working draft. Secondly, two parchment knots tied into the outer edge of folia 38 and 66 allow the rapid consultation of diplomata granting Cambrai cathedral rights over the abbey of St-Géry (I:73 (72)) and confirming the bishopric’s immunity respectively (I:108). While it is of course impossible to date the knots, their function does strongly imply that the manuscript originates from Cambrai cathedral, where the author of the GeC himself was a canon. Thirdly, a space has been left on folio 68v where a copy of a papal bull was supposed to be included, but never was, included. This would indicate that the manuscript was a work in progress. Such a view is supported by the failure of the rubricator to fit the chapter titles into the spaces left for him by the scribe.119 While each of these points constitutes only circumstantial evidence, and each is open to an alternative interpretation, I would still contend that, taken together, 113 Den Haag KB 75 F 15. Bethmann, MGH SS VII, 396, note 28; Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 288. 114 Chronicon S. Andreae II:12, 533. 115 Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 288-289. 116 MS Den Haag KB 75 F 15, front flyleaf; Bethmann, MGH SS VII, 398-399. 117 Van Mingroot, ‘Gerard I’, col. 744. The man Van Mingroot identifies as the original author, Gerard’s chancellor Fulbert, is not active after c.1031/36: Van Mingroot, Les chartes, 12 118 MS Den Haag KB 75 F 15, fol. 73v. 119 E.g., ibidem, fol. 1v, 5v. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 25 the simplest explanation is that the Codex Sancti Gisleni is, indeed, the autograph of the GeC. Codicology The surviving part of the Codex Sancti Gisleni is now to be found in The Hague, as Koninklijke Bibliotheek 75 F 15. The depth of the binding, 36mm, indicates that it was intended to contain only the current folia, so the third book must have been either lost or bound separately by the time of the current volume’s binding. Given that the third book seems to have been begun on a new quire from the second, separating the third book to create a kind of independent Vita Gerardi primi would have been an easy, perhaps even obvious, thing to do.120 There is evidence of trimming visible in folia 59, 65 and 82, but it is impossible to tell definitely whether the size of the binding, 279mm x 192mm, was made to fit the contemporary size of the folia, or if this trimming was done to fit the binding. It is therefore possible that the codex had already been rebound at least once, and therefore perhaps lost its third book before it reached its current state. A hypothesis as to when the codex reached its current state and to when the third book was removed can nevertheless be advanced on the basis of the watermark in the paper flyleaf protecting the parchment from the front cover. Although difficult to make out, it seems to depict the coat of arms of the Netherlands as in the second half of the seventeenth century: a lion rampant within a double circle decorated at top with stylised foliage. The relative sophistication of the watermark relates it to examples from the last third or quarter of the century, perhaps the 1680s or 1690s,121 although the Koninklijke Bibliotheek card catalogue dates the binding to the early eighteenth century. Since the eighteenth-century watermarks tend to depict the Dutch lion within a shield and not a circle or double circle, we might well conjecture a binding in the last couple of decades of the seventeenth century or even the very early years of the eighteenth. We know that when Colveneere published his first edition in 1615, the Codex S. Gisleni contained most of the third book as well, although it already lacked a quire.122 Sander’s Bibliotheca Belgica manuscripta of 1641 contains an entry, Baldericus sive Chron. Cameracense et Atrebatense under Codices MSS Bibliothecae Monasterii S. Gisleni in Cella ordinis S. Benedicti in Hannonia, which most likely indicates a single codex, and so means that at this point it was still in the state in which Colveneere had found it.123 Given the relatively short time-span be120 The second book ends half way down fol. 87r, leaving 1 1/2 blank folios. It may thus be that the third book was always meant to be detachable. For the instability of manuscript technology, see below. 121 See for example Heawood, Watermarks, nos. 3139-3145 (dated variously 1676, ‘shortly after 1685’, c. 1689 and 1699. 122 Colveneere, Chronicon Cameracense, 7r-f. 123 Sanderus, Bibliotheca Belgica manuscripta, 246. It of course remains possible that the third book had already been separated and sold or lost by 1641, and that the first two were then given their new, present binding only later. 26 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) tween this reference and the date of the watermark in the flyleaf, it is likely, although as mentioned before, impossible to prove, that the trimming of the folia and the current binding were made on the occasion of the removal of the third book. St-Ghislain was seriously affected by the troubles of the seventeenth century, yet the precise reason why the books were separated, and what might have happened to the latter section, cannot be identified.124 Foliation, Pagination and Organisation: The codex contains 88 parchment folia, organised in eleven gatherings of four bifolia each (11IV), two paper flyleaves, and 7 parchment inserts. There are no missing folia. When the scribe reached the end of the first book, on folio 74v, he did not begin the second on a new folio but instead continued directly on. The same policy was not, however, repeated when he reached the end of Book II, since it ends in the middle of 87r, leaving the rest of the eleventh quire blank.125 The third book must therefore have been started on an entirely new quire. Although the text therefore says that all three books of the GeC were planned from the start, the way the book was constructed indicates that the third book, on Gerard I himself, was meant to be treated somehow separately. The parchment is paginated in the middle of the top margin of each verso in ink with arabic numerals of, perhaps, the fifteenth century. In some places the numbering seems to have been written off to the side to avoid writing over marginalia, which were then erased later still.126 None of these marginalia were incorporated into later manuscripts and so must have been comparatively late. More interestingly, the first five chapters of Book I have the remnants of what seem to be original rubricated Roman chapter numerals. There are no quire marks, almost certainly because only one scribe was responsible for the original form of the manuscript. The number of lines pricked and scored vary from the beginning to end of the manuscript. In the first four quires, the text is written 28 lines to the page, although the text extends to an extra ruled line on 8v; in quires 6 to 9 and quire 11 there are only 27 lines to the page. The outer and inmost bifolia of the fifth quire carry 27 lines, the middle two bifolia on the other hand 28. The tenth quire features predominantly 27 lines, as would be expected, yet folio 75v is an anomaly: here the scribe began to ignore the ruled lines towards the end of the page, resulting in a 29-line text. The later corrector in contrast obeys the ruled lines, even where his additions exceed the space available – in these cases he continues onto an insert or into the margins. This difference in habit between the original scribe and the author of the marginal additions is an additional reason for believing that we are dealing with two different authors. 124 Van Overstraeten, ‘Ghislenghien’, col. 1184. 125 This space was later filled with an extract from a pseudo-decretal of Pope Gregory the Great: Episcopus debet missam celebrare... 126 Den Haag KB 75 F 15, fol. 71, 80, 81, 85. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum Plate of MS Den Haag KB 75 F 15, fol. 80. 27 28 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) The text is always written in one column, except for parts of the description on folios 48r-49r of the rules of a dice game, allegedly designed by Bishop Wibold to teach dice-obsessed canons the virtues. This may be a sign that it was set out like this in the source manuscript.127 The verses on folios 25r-v and 52v-53r are not indented, but each verse is written on its own line. The Second Redaction: There are at least two and possibly three eleventh-century hands at work in the manuscript, each using the same, or very similar script. We can identify the hand of the main, original text (a) with the first author (A), working on commission from Gerard I in 1024/1025. All the eleventh-century additions bar perhaps one are, pace Bethmann, in a different eleventh-century hand (a), responsible for both the other inserts and for many marginal notes.128 They were clearly all done at roughly the same time. The nature of the hand in the first insert (g) is more problematic – it seems to be somewhere between the other two, and thus could be either one of them or a third scribe entirely. It is impossible to say for sure. In any case, the fact that there has been at least one new redaction means that a number of sections of the work may not be by the original author.129 The key question is what relation, if any, does the second redaction, which these additions represent, have to that dated to 1051x1055, which Van Mingroot identified in the third book. It ought to be noted that Colveneere, who is our only witness to the autograph of Book III, did not record the changes of hand we can observe in the surviving first two books, nor are the additions betrayed by the same sort of incoherence that allowed Van Mingroot to postulate interpolations in Book III, Given the authorial problems of these additions to the main text, it may be fruitful to analyse them all as a group to see if they set any peculiar accents. The first insert is bound between folios 3v and 4r, and contains the last section of I:4, immediately following the story of Ragnachar’s betrayal to and execution by Clovis from Gregory of Tours’s Ten Books of History: Legimus autem in gestis Remorum pontificum, quod rege praefato Clodoveo, ut posterius liquet, a sancto Remigio ac sancto Vedasto baptizato cum sororibus simul et cum magno Francorum exercitu, pars quidem magna Francorum, adhuc incredula necdum conversa, cum isto Ragnachario principe in locis trans Somnam fluvium, id est in urbe Cameraco, in infidelitate aliquandiu morabatur, donec superna gratia disponente, sed Clodoveo triumphante, idem Regnacharius, flagitiorum sectator ac turpitudinum, vinctus a Francis et a 127 Here Bethmann imitates the manuscript layout in his edition, MGH SS VII, 434-437. 128 See the Plate for a folio with both hands. Note, most obviously, the differences in capitals M and E. For Bethmann’s remarks, see ibidem, 393. The later hand is certainly pre-1094, since one of the marginal notes refers to the bishoprics of Arras and Cambrai being united: ‘Nota quod olim Cameracensis et Atrebatensis duae fuerant quae modo uniuntur.’ Den Haag KB MS 75 F 15, fol. 4r. My thanks to Prof. David Ganz for help with the palaeography. 129 See below. It is presumably this hand that Van Mingroot identifies with Gerard I himself: Van Mingroot, ‘Gerard I’, col. 744. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 29 suis, ut modo diximus, traditus est et interemptus, omnisque Francorum populus ad Christi fidem per beatum Remigium convertitur et baptizatur, sicut inibi legimus. Sed potius per beatum Vedastum credimus; numquam enim sanctum Remigium in nostris partibus verbum Dei populo predicasse audivimus, sed ab illo et a rege noviter baptizato huic nostrae urbi ad convertendam gentem directum beatum Vedastum cognovimus; quare illum hujus negotii auctorem credimus.130 The reference to the later conversion of Clovis is to I:7. This is the only insert whose palaeography resembles that of the original author. What is particularly noteworthy here is, of course, the critical use of Flodoard, and the emphasis on the importance of the local Arras saint Vedast over the provincial patron Remigius. This, and the next insert, also allow us to elaborate Thomas Bauer’s observation that the GeC authors do not make the possible appeal to an apostolic foundation of Cambrai via Remigius.131 It is not just that the author maintains the authority of Vedast vis-à-vis Remigius, and thus Cambrai/Arras vis-à-vis Rheims, but that he does so by appealing to the royal authority of Clovis. Another hand, g, is responsible for several items of marginalia. In the outer margin of 4r, where the original author cites Pope Dionysius and Hincmar of Rheims to the effect that Cambrai and Arras were once two dioceses (I:5), he writes: Nota quod olim Cameracensis et Atrebatensis duae fuerant quae modo uniuntur. In the margin of folio 5r, next to where the original author later in the same chapter has cited Jerome’s description of the barbarian invasions of Gaul (I:5), this hand has added: Nota quod Hieronimus cum aliis urbibus destructionem quoque Atrebatis plangit. On folio 7r, the later scribe has erased a word in I:7 which once gave the name of the city that Vedast was supposed to have evangelized and replaced it by a reference to Arras and Cambrai. Given that the correction is squashed into the remaining space, the original reading is likely to have mentioned only Arras. Later in the same chapter, on folio 7v, where the original author apparently referred to Dionysius describing only the boundaries of Arras,132 the later hand has corrected to, has quoque urbes, Cameracum atque Atrebatum, ascriptas et cum suis parochiis eque distinctas. In the margin at the same place he has written: Nota quod Dyonisius papa inter caeteras sedes pontificales Cameracum et Atrebatum descripserit. The second insert is sewn into the bottom of 7r, and adds a section to I:7, imme130 GeC, I:4, 404. See note b. 131 Bauer, Lothringien als historischer Raum, 395-396. Bauer sees this as ‘einzigartig’ and reads it as the GeC author trying to establish a Cambrai tradition independent of West Frankish traditions, especially that of Rheims. Kaiser, ‘Gesta episcoporum als Genus der Geschichtsschreibung’, 477-478, in contrast, interprets this phenomenon in terms of Flodoard’s and the Cambrai author’s inclusion of pre-Christian history of their respective cities, arguing that the GeC are ‘auf dem Wege, eine Stadt- und Bistumsgeschichte zu werden wie die Gesta Treverorum’ (p. 477). In other words, the audience may be, like that of the late eleventh-century Gesta Trevorum, the lay familia of the cathedral chapter. But see below. While the two arguments are complementary, Kaiser’s is fundamentally teleological, relying on a later developmental narrative of the genre to explain earlier features. 132 Bethmann reconstructed: hanc quoque urbem ascriptam: MGH SS VII, 406, note d. 30 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) diately after Clovis’s conversion, Vedast’s ordination as bishop and his being sent to the cities of Cambrai and Arras (Cameraco et Atrebato...urbibus): Liquet ergo, quod rex iste, quanto impensius paternas sedes amaverat, tanto probatioris vitae pastorem eo loci delegaverat. Ibi enim preter ceteras sedes, ut paulo superius dictum est, specialius versabatur; ideoque majori gratia ductus, pastorali regimine parochiam ditare conabatur; quippe nullum meliorem quam beatum Vedastum et ad ferocem populum edomandum et ad gratiam fidei excitandam arbitratus, per quem ipse fidem catholicam fuerat adeptus. Notandum vero, quod ut supra tetigimus, hae duae parochiae antea gemina episcopali administratione gaudebant; nunc autem, quia ab hoc sancto pontifice vastatae repertae sunt, uno regimine colliguntur.133 The reference to the previous mention of the unification of Cambrai and Arras is to the marginal note on folio 4r, done in the same hand.134 The author of this section continues the previous insert’s association with Clovis, and links that authority, in turn, with the re-establishment of the two bishoprics as one. The third insert is bound between 8v and 9r, containing I:10 on the recto side, and I:11 on the verso, and relates two miracles of Saint Vedast. The first story is entitled, ‘How a man was supported in single combat by the advocacy of Saint Vedast’, where a member of the familia of St-Vaast was provoked into challenging unnamed rapinatores to single combat. After travelling, bag and staff in hand (sumpta pera cum baculo), to the abbey to seek help, he found the abbot unwilling to do so because of the difficulty of the long journey and was instead told to rely on divine aid, which was, however, forthcoming. The second section, entitled, ‘About a man also freed by Saint Vedast’, tells the story of a man in the diocese of Liège who escaped kidnapping with the help of the saint.135 Again we see the authority of St Vedast buttressed by g. A naïve interpretation would argue that this was connected to an emphasis on the importance of StVaast, Arras. Yet in the first miracle, the abbot of St-Vaast is depicted as remarkably passive, leaving one of his familia ‘utterly abandoned’, and the credit for the miracle is attributed entirely to God, the saint and the faith of the man in question. After all, the man is said to have travelled the distance to Arras, presumably walking, if the reference to the staff is not merely meant figuratively, so the abbot’s excuse is at least of doubtful validity. Indeed, in his taking up of a pera and baculum, there is an echo of David’s battle against Goliath in I Samuel 17:40, et [David] tulit baculum suum quem semper habebat in manibus et elegit sibi quinque limpidissimos lapides de torrente et misit eos in peram pastoralem quam habebat secum et fundam manu tulit et processit adversum Philistheum [emphases mine]. The parallel with the combat is of course obvious, but criticism of the abbot may also be intended. The second miracle has no connection with St Vedast’s main cult site at all, and indeed takes place in an entirely different diocese. If we see this in connection with 133 GeC, I:7, 406. See notes b-c. 134 See above. 135 GeC, I:10-11, 407. The exact place that the man was from, Derniensis, has not been securely identified. See Bethmann, MGH SS VII, 407, note a. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 31 the previous concentration on Vedast’s role as unifier of the two bishoprics of Cambrai and Arras, we may suspect the corrector is trying minimize the importance of Cambrai cathedral’s main ecclesiastical rival within the diocese, the abbey of St-Vaast, Arras, by emphasising the saint’s extra-local powers. On folio 8v, in I:12, a reference to Dionysius’s description of the diocesan boundaries has been expanded with ut superius expresse ostensum est. At the end of I:22, on folio 12v, g has completed the description of Bishop Vinditian having been buried in the villa of Sercin, which is within the borders of Cameracensis episcopii et Morinensis. The fourth parchment insert, between 15v and 16r, contains a charter of St Humbert granting lands to Maroilles.136 Its authenticity has been secured by JeanMarie Duvosquel.137 Interestingly, the scribe claims to have found the charter in the archive of the church of St-Humbert, and makes a point that the donation was made in the presence and with the approval of Bishop Vinditian.138 This is not only consistent with the general concern of the GeC, including its main author, to buttress episcopal authority, but also indicates that g, it not the other authors, seems to have travelled and collected, at least in passing, information to add to the GeC account.139 In chapter I:39 (37), g adds that the silver tables that Bishop Hildward ordered to be made during Charlemagne’s reign survived until the time of Louis the Pious.140 The fifth insert is bound between 33v and 34r, and adds information to I:65, which had just described Dodilo’s participation in the consecration of Archbishop Herivaeus of Rheims. It describes how Dodilo built walls around the city to include the community of St-Autbert, consecrated the community of St-Mary (i.e. the cathedral) and endowed it with valuable objects, some of which were still visible in the author’s day, consecrated the church of the community of Lobbes alongside Bishop Stephen of Liège and how, after his death, he was buried in the northern part of the cathedral.141 If, as I suspect, this is a later insertion, it is especially interesting, since it means the original scribe neglected to describe Dodilo’s building feats and burial, as was usual in the GeC, and ultimately Liber pontificalis tradition. Both in content and in codicological context, the section betrays a certain amount of confusion on the part of its author. Regarding the content, the subject fits so poorly into the rest of the chapter (entitled ‘He [i.e. Dodilo] participated in the consecration of Archbishop Heriveus of Rheims’142), that Colveneere 136 Numbered as I: (27) in the MGH edition. See 412, note a*. 137 Duvosquel, ‘La charte de donation de saint Humbert’. 138 Veterem vero kartulam in archivo aecclesiae sancti Huntberti repperimus, quam sub praesentia et favore hujus sancti pontificis ipse vir sanctus tunc temporis abbas, de villa Maceriis scripsit, ita se habentem:... : GeC, I:(27), 412. 139 See below for Folcuin of Lobbes gathering information for his Gesta while on a visit to Rheims. 140 MS Den Haag KB 75 F 15, fol. 18v: Hic autem usque ad tempus Luduvici Pii superfuit. 141 GeC, I:65, 424. See pp. 423-424, note e. 142 Consecrationi Herivei Remorum archiepiscopi interfuit: ibidem, 424. 32 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) made it into a separate chapter.143 Bethmann’s observation that the insert does not, as the third does, make any mention of beginning a new chapter is valid, yet does not make the addition any less of an after-thought.144 Additionally, and uniquely in the codex, this addition was placed by its writer in the wrong place. All the inserts have unique symbols written on the insert and then again in the manuscript proper, next to where the text is supposed to be added to the narrative. In this case, the relevant symbol was placed at the end of I:64. Then, noticing that the text continued to discuss Dodilo in the next chapter after he was supposedly dead and buried, the same scribe drew a line showing that it was supposed to be added to I:65.145 This change of plan and confusion as to where the addition should go is further evidence of multiple authorship and against the idea of any one single authorial intent, whether Gerard I’s or anyone else’s. The sixth insert is sewn into the inside margin of 62r, and follows the account of Otto II’s defeat at the hands of the Saracens in 982. The original author blames this defeat on Otto’s youthful impetuosity, and simply goes on to say that Otto then began to take counsel, and was waiting to collect more forces when he was prevented from doing so by death.146 The corrector, g, has on the other hand deleted the account of Otto’s new preparations and replaced it with the adventure story, familiar from the accounts of Thietmar and Alpert of Metz, of Otto’s flight by sea and deception of the sailors.147 What seem to have happened here is that the original author’s by-the-numbers morality tale was replaced with something more exciting, perhaps after the same bout of additional research that unearthed the StHumbert charter. Chapter I:116 is extended by g. The original chapter, after describing how Baldwin IV was brought round to help eject Abbot Fulrad from St-Vaast, ended with the successful transferral of the abbey to Richard of St-Vanne. The second version returns to Fulrad to describe how he stole money from the abbey and went to Rheims to bribe Archbishop Arnulf into helping him. But Arnulf, who is described as ‘degenerate in spirit’, takes the money but does nothing to help Fulrad, who ends his days in disgrace, trafficking with Jews.148 Unfortunately, this account does nothing to help us date the second redaction, since nothing is known of Fulrad outside of the GeC and Arnulf, who is referred to here in the past tense, died in 1021. The seventh and final parchment insert, bound between 79v and 80r, concerns II:11, on the villa of Baralle. The chapter was originally considerably shorter, running to only seven lines. After the initial phrase, ‘And in a village which has been given the name Baralle by its inhabitants...’,149 g has erased the final six lines, written over the erasure and continued onto the insert. There is of course no way of 143 Colveneere, Chronicon Cameracense, 446-447. 144 Bethmann, MGH SS VII, 424. 145 MS Den Haag KB 75 F 15, fol. 33v. 146 GeC, I:104, 444, and note a. 147 Ibidem, I:104 (103), 444. Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, 124-127 and Alpert of Metz, Fragmentum de Deoderico primo episcopo Mettensi, 112-114. 148 GeC, I:116, 452-453; MS Den Haag KB 75 F 15, fol. 72r. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 33 telling what was originally written – all the other manuscripts were copied from this one after the corrections and extensions had been done. The new text concerns a community of canons that had been founded by Clovis, ‘as they say’, and consecrated by Vedast to St George. During Dodilo’s episcopate the canons took the arm of St George into ‘our [the author’s] church’ for safekeeping from the Northmen. After a while they wanted to return, but Dodilo told them it still was not safe. They waited a few days and asked again, claiming the Normans had gone, but Dodilo warned them again, and promised them their ‘customs’ would be respected. The canons insisted, and Dodilo let them go but kept the relic in Cambrai for safe-keeping. Of course, the canons were killed, and the community destroyed, although marble columns and beautiful old buildings there attested to its age and fineness in the author’s day. At the time of writing, the arm was still kept in Cambrai.150 The same scribe has also extended the subsequent chapter, II:12, but this time in the margin. The text concerns St Saturnina, from ‘Germania’, who had devoted her virginity to God, and fled her household when her parents decided to marry her off. She was pursued by her fiancé, who beheaded her. Allegedly, she picked up her head and walked into the local church, which was dedicated to St Remigius, and which was then turned into the puellarum basilica which existed in the author’s day. The account closes with the comment, ‘There is moreover an old story that after a long time the Saxons came to this area for some unknown reason, and on their way through this village they heard the sacred tale and took away part of the body of the sacred virgin.’151 There were once two other inserts bound or sewn into the Codex Sancti Gisleni. One has never been recorded and is visible only in the holes made by the sewing in the parchment, and another was still visible to Colveneere.152 The latter concerns a diploma of Otto III granting a forest to Cambrai cathedral. Colveneere does not record that it was in any other hand, but he never does, so we cannot make any assumptions about the author of this one. It remains to be seen if we can perceive anything such as another authorial voice in the later scribal additions. Undoubtedly, g is also from Cambrai cathedral, just like a. In the description (in the seventh insert) of how the canons of St-George, Baralle, fled the Northmen to Cambrai, g has Bishop Dodilo tell them that while they remained there, ‘nothing would be lacking from what they were accustomed to.’153 The scribe clearly understands that his audience might sympathise with canons wishing to return as quickly as possible to their own community, and that they might well fear loss of their own identity and customs if under too close epis149 ‘De villa Barala’. In vico etiam qui Barala ab incolis nomen accepit: GeC, II:11, 458; MS Den Haag KB 75 F 15, fol. 80r. See the Plate of fol. 80. 150 Ibidem, 458-459. See Bethmann, MGH SS VII, 458, note c. 151 Est autem antiqua relatio quod longo post tempore Saxones, incertum qua causa, ad hanc viciniam devenerunt, et per ipsum vicum transeuntes, audita quidem sacra opinione, partem corporis sacrae virginis asportarunt: Ibidem, II:12, 459. See the Plate of fol. 80. 152 Ibidem, I:108, 448; Bethmann, MGH SS VII, 448, note d; Colveneere, Chronicon, 484. 153 manete adhuc, moneo, state, nihil apud me vestris usibus interim defuerit: GeC, II:11, 458. 34 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) copal oversight. Nonetheless, the author depicts this fear as unwarranted, and implies it led to the outright destruction of the community. The troublesome canons and their community were replaced by a single priest and church. The moral is clearly that peripheral communities around the diocese should heed their shepherd in Cambrai. There also seems to be an increased hostility towards St-Vaast and a greater emphasis on Cambrai’s equal stature with Arras. The abbot of StVaast is depicted as failing to help one of his familia in a single combat. The account of the conflict with Fulrad is expanded to relate his untimely death. Such hostility would make sense if we were to identify hand g with author B working in 1051-1055, who also wrote the first fifteen chapters of the GL,154 since it was at this time that Bishop Lietbert was having particular problems with John of Arras pursuing the claims of Walter II of Cambrai’s son. The GeC as we have it now, then, do not represent any single point of view, but multiple ones layered upon one another. This is not accidental – we know that the original author, A, intended others to expand his work. It is now time to look at how the authors structured the text of the GeC and what that structure and the expected audience (including future audience) say about medieval reading as a whole. The Textual Structure of the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium Michel Sot has surveyed the phenomenon of Gesta episcoporum and Gesta abbatum in detail.155 Although nowhere in contemporary sources is there an explicit definition of gesta as a separate genre – in fact the terms gesta and historia are sometimes interchangeable156 the gesta have enough peculiarities to make a modern classification legitimate. The most defining characteristic of the gesta is their emphasis on place – either the episcopal city or the abbey, alongside any outlying and dependent ecclesiastical communities – as opposed to, say, a particular royal or princely family.157 Gesta are the history of either a bishopric or abbey, which uses the succession of bishops or abbots and their careers as their organising principle. In this they are like a bishops’ or abbots’ list, but their longer narratives allow the author to make a wide variety of claims about the past and, to make these claims, the author drew on many other kinds of texts. Gesta were by definition somewhere between a bishops’ list and a historia; vitae are drawn on to relate the careers of earlier bishops; the interpolation of charters and diplomata can even 154 As mentioned above, Van Mingroot seems to believe this was Gerard himself, but gives no reasoning. 155 Sot, Gesta episcoporum, passim. See also Schlochtermeyer, Bistumschroniken, 11-24. 156 Both the original GeC author and the later redactor refer to Flodoard’s history of the church of Rheims as gesta: I:4, 404, I:14, 408, I:63, 422. This despite the fact that in his preface Flodoard calls his work an, ecclesiae Remensis historiarum liber: Historia, Pref., 57. See Sot, Un historien et son Église, 103-104. 157 Sot, Gesta episcoporum, 21. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 35 make the text resemble a cartulary.158 Indeed, one literary connection not brought out by Sot is that between the gesta and miracula: the latter could also be called libri gestorum.159 Miracula were sampled by the authors of gesta to give biographical details of earlier saintly bishops whom the present incumbent was supposed to honour and imitate, and, indeed, gesta could then provide material for new collections of miracles.160 The temporal deeds of more recent figures were thus implicitly comparable to the supratemporal ones of the saints. Instead of miracles testifying to the continuing power of the ‘very special dead’, land acquisitions, religious foundations and reformations testified and extended the renown of the more mundane bishop. It is clear that the authors of the various gesta took their inspiration from each other. There is, as it were, a genealogy of gesta, of which Sot was able to suggest a reconstruction.161 The Cambrai author relies on Flodoard’s Historia Remensis ecclesiae for information but only loosely imitates that work’s structure. Whereas normally gesta simply proceed from episcopate to episcopate, Flodoard’s model is divided into four books, the first two of which unfold ‘conventionally’. The third, on the other hand, is entirely devoted to Hincmar of Rheims and, rather than being so much a history of his episcopate, is constructed as a sort of catalogue of his correspondence and writings. Finally, the last book deals with the episcopates of bishops up to the synod of Ingelheim (948) and is rounded off with some miracle accounts.162 The GeC resemble this structure in being divided into three qualitatively different books. The first, which draws heavily on the text of Flodoard’s Historia for the earlier sections, relates the history of Cambrai-Arras from earliest times to the death of Gerard’s predecessor, Erluin. In this it very closely resembles Flodoard, especially in its heavy inclusion of charters inside the text. One unusual characteristic which the GeC share with Flodoard’s Historia is that not every episcopate is dealt with in one chapter – often a given bishop will be given several chapters’ space.163 Nonetheless, the accounts of each episcopate generally follow the standard gesta structure, modelled on that of the Liber pontificalis: description of the bishop’s family and origin, the circumstances of his ordination, history of the episcopate, his works (in writing, building or ritual, such as translations) and the circumstances of his death.164 Book II of the GeC lists the various religious communities of the diocese, giving their location, dedication, number of members, and occasionally brief histories or accounts of miracles. Whereas Flodoard used the enumeration of works to 158 Ibidem, 15, 18, 21. 159 Mentioning the translation of St Vedast by Bishops Autbert and Audomar, he writes: sicut in libro vitae ejus, et plenius in gestis beati Autberti legitur. I:9, 407. See also I:12. 160 For an example of the GeC doing this, see below. 161 Sot, Gesta episcoporum, 33-36. See also idem, Un historien et son Église, 104-105. 162 Sot, Un historien et son Église, 106. 163 Pace Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung, 122 and 343. 164 A pattern also followed in the Gesta sanctorum patrum Autissiodorensium. See, for example, the chapter on Bishop Wibold (879-887): ed. Duru), c. 40, 358. 36 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) build his subject’s authority, the Cambrai author enumerates houses to describe the sacred space within which Gerard will be described as working. By the time Flodoard was writing, of course, Hincmar was dead and already had a reputation, whereas the original Cambrai author, A, was trying to create one for the still active Gerard. Thus Gerard draws his authority initially from where he is – his episcopal ‘inheritance’ – rather than what he has not yet done, at least as far as the narrative is concerned. The narrative sections of the GeC had been interspersed with copies of charters and diplomata, but there are none to be seen in the second book. This may suggest that the documents were best authenticated in their chronological context, relating to the circumstances of their issue, which would imply that the gesta were used as part of an extended argument requiring wider contextualisation. Alternatively (or additionally), the placing arrogates the identity of the individual communities to the authority of the bishopric as a whole and its history. A number of these documents are imperial diplomata, won by the bishops and applicable to more than one community. Of course, none of these suggestions as to the function of their placing is exclusive of another. Any or all may be in operation in each case or towards each reader. One of the central arguments of this article is the flexibility the gesta genre allowed to its readers and in this example’s use of documents we may be seeing precisely that pragmatism. It is in the subsequent and final book, which likewise resembles Flodoard’s Book III in being devoted to one bishop, that the Cambrai author describes how Gerard fulfils the position given him. Although the structure of this book had to differ somewhat from the accounts of earlier episcopates, since it was written while Gerard was still alive, and although its current form is a later creation, it does seem to have been intended to follow the earlier structure.165 It opens with a brief account of Gerard’s background (III:1), followed by the circumstances of his appointment and ordination (III:2). We then have the story of Gerard’s various troubles, and his depiction as defender of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. Finally there are accounts of his building work, and there also seems to have been added a description of his death and burial before the commencement of the Gesta Lietberti.166 Yet, as we have seen, this is neither the original construction of the third book, nor is the emphasis in the final book evenly distributed – the focus of the story narrows, with an unusual amount of attention lavished on the years 10231025, in other words the period immediately leading up to the first redaction.167 The original author’s conception of the text therefore concentrated on the present – in line with ‘political’ interpretations of the gesta genre168 – but it is important to note that it simultaneously left his work open for the future in the expectation that 165 See above. 166 Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 288. 167 Duby, ‘Gérard de Cambrai’, 139. 168 But closer attention to very recent events was a common characteristic of medieval historiography and may just have reflected a better source base. See Schmale, Funktion und Formen, 120-121. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 37 it would be continued either annalistically as events unfolded or after Gerard’s death, which in fact seems to have happened. Like miracle collections, gesta were therefore known to be potentially openended. In this they betrayed their roots in the liber pontificalis and in the compilation of bishops’ lists. Thus Sot is mistaken, in my opinion, when he argues that the continuations of gesta should be seen as operating differently from their original redactions.169 On the contrary, the original must also be understood as presupposing its continuation. If, therefore, any given version of the gesta is incomplete, it must be possible to interpret it at any given point. The author has abdicated any control over the end-point of the story and, arguably, over the beginning as well. The narrative no longer has a pre-set end, or beginning, but only one chosen by the reader. As I hope to argue, it is in this radical instability that we can find an explanation for the episodic nature of medieval historiography. In the meantime, I would like to look at how the unstable nature of the gesta as a genre and of the Gesta epsicoporum Cameracensium shows up in the manuscript tradition. Method and Audience Precisely who might have been the intended audience of the GeC is difficult to guess. Heinz Thomas has identified a lay audience for the late elventh-century Gesta Treverorum.170 But his argument is based on the prominence vis-à-vis the bishop of the principes civitatis in the work itself, which he is able to identify with the lay vassals and ministerials of the bishop, and on the simple Latin style in which the text is written. Neither of these conditions is present in the GeC, but Thomas’s conclusions remind us that the gesta are an essentially local genre and we should first look for a local audience. The manuscript tradition bears out this suggestion, as it is restricted entirely to ecclesiastical institutions of the region – the dioceses of Cambrai, Arras and Liège, and other textual witnesses, such as the chronicle of St-Andrew’s in Cateau-Cambrésis and Sigebert of Gembloux’s Chronicon, also use the GeC as a source for local history. In one manuscript from Saint-Sépulchre, Cambrai, extracts describing St Gaugeric’s posthumous miracles crop up as an extension of his Vita, and are followed by an episcopal list, again indicating the permeability of this latter genre with those of the vitae, miracula and gesta in all directions.171 Such excerpting can be seen throughout the manuscript tradition of the GeC and it is this method, rather than any telltale hints from the content, that gives us our clues as to the possible audiences of the GeC and how its authors constructed 169 Sot, Gesta episcoporum, 52, but see idem, ‘Local and Institutional History’, 109: ‘Let us note that, for the author, the history only stops there momentarily. He knows that his work is going to be continued’. 170 Thomas, Studien zu den Gesta Treverorum, 143-151. 171 MS Cambrai BM 864, from St-Sepulchre, dated to the episcopate of Gerard II (1076-1093), fol. 110r-125v. 38 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) their authority. We do have full copies of the text, but extracts also survive in other manuscripts attached to other texts, and while their copyists indeed had to have read the entire text, the subsequent audience would not necessarily have had any idea of the original context.172 Of course this strictly proves nothing about the intended audience, only about the use the text was eventually given by those under whose care it was most likely to survive into the modern period. Nevertheless, the use of the GeC as a source for further historiographical works matches its own exploitation of other texts, such as the vitae. In the prologue of the GeC, the original author, A, admits that his information has been taken from ‘common talk’, and that the age of the material might lead to doubts on the part of a reader, but he assures us that ‘nothing doubtful or fictitious has been included, not even anything that is true, unless we found it in the annals and histories of the Fathers, or in the deeds of the kings, or alternatively in the charters, which are still in the archive of this church, or unless we accept that it was both seen and heard by reliable sources. In any case, it is better to be silent than to spread falsehoods.’173 And this is, in fact, the procedure the author adopts, excerpting and paraphrasing from a variety of saints’ vitae, charters, and from other historiographical works such as Gregory of Tours’s Ten Books and most noticeably Flodoard’s Historia Remensis ecclesiae. Only from roughly the 970s, in other words within living memory, does he start to write in a manner usually, and misleadingly, called ‘independently’. The author of the Gesta abbatum Lobbiensium, Folcuin of Lobbes, tells us how the method that the original GeC author describes in his Prologue was supposed to have worked in practice. Although he does not state this explicitly, Folcuin seems to have visited Rheims and made enquiries of Archbishop Adalbero in order to research the history of Lobbes. Lobbes, although at the time under the temporal authority of the bishop of Liège, was in the diocese of Cambrai and thus part of the province of Rheims. Folcuin says he went to Adalbero because the archbishop was the ‘most erudite’ man of those parts, but part of this erudition seems to have been his access to and ability to use Flodoard’s work. What follows is particularly interesting: the traditions of Rheims promise to bolster those of Lobbes. In the previous chapter, Folcuin had described how the Irish ascetic Abel became abbot of his monastery. Folcuin and Adalbero discover that Flodoard also lists an Abel, but as an archbishop of Rheims, and fails to indicate when he reigned. Un172 MS Brussels BR 5468 (971), fol. 186v contains only an edited version of GeC, I:94-98, 439441, followed by I:104, 444. MS Cambrai BM 864, fol. 124v-5r contains GeC, II:5-7, 457-458, followed by I:80-84, 431-432. MS Douai BM 851 contains an edited version of the second book (fol. 83r-93v), which follows a copy of the Vita Lietberti: (fol. 50r-78v); the intervening folia are a paper insert, containing inter alia, some of GeC, II:3-8, 455-458. The manuscripts MSS Brussels BR 7675-7682 constitute a full version of the GeC. 173 Quae quamlibet rustico sermone edita, satis tamen apparent liquida. Nec tamen eo lector temere moveatur, quod tam antiqua modernis reddidimus; quia nihil dubium, nihil fictum positum est, nihil etiam revera preter quod aut in annalibus atque historiis Patrum, seu et in gestis regum, sed et in kartis quoque, quae adhuc in archivo ipsius aecclesiae sunt, repperimus, aut a certis relatoribus et visa et audita accepimus. Alioquin melius est tacere, quam falsa proferre: GeC, Pref., 402. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 39 derstandably, Folcuin was eager to associate ‘our Irishman’, as he calls Abel, with the alleged archbishop of the same name, and claims he can calculate that Flodoard is referring to the period Abel was abbot of Lobbes. Yet Adalbero brings up a problem: he mentions a Rheims custom of commemorating the dead whereby the names of all the previous bishops are recited from writing to the priest during the consecration of the host. Here we have yet another example of the multiple functions of a given text – ceremonial and documentary. Unfortunately, Abel is not on the list. Folcuin solves the problem by claiming that Abel was already a bishop,174 only took over Rheims temporarily under orders, and then withdrew from the world, refusing to be entered in the bishops’ list out of love of God. Folcuin then feels the need to defend Abel against charges of heresy, presumably for abandoning his see (although the reason is never made explicit). He does this by using Abel’s asceticism as proof of his holiness, and by claiming that Abel worked against heretics, and had to be tested so as to be received by his predecessors Ursmar and Ermin in heaven after his death. Finally, Folcuin mentions that nothing is known about Abel’s successor in Lobbes, Bishop Vulgisus either, but he is mentioned in the monastery’s oldest martyrologies and his mausoleum could apparently still be seen in Folcuin’s time.175 I have dwelt on this one passage from the Gesta abbatum Lobbiensium because it reveals not only the possible work strategies of our author, but also how authority and credibility were constructed at all. We see here a mix of personal authority (Adalbero), writing (Flodoard, the bishops’ list, the martyrologies) and material culture (the mausoleum) used to prove the historicity of Folcuin’s arguments. On one level the weighing of different pieces of evidence, and the making of connections between them, do not differ in any essential way from the actions of a modern historian. On another, and in keeping with the statements in his own preface, Folcuin’s test of veracity is compatibility with the ‘Heilsgeschichte’ in which Lobbes plays its part.176 Thus the ‘modern’ and the ‘medieval’ do not so much mix in as make up one and the same argumentation. Yet, as we have seen, ‘Heilsgeschichte’ alone does not account for authority, and we can find an additional explanation in the GeC. Folcuin is sympathetic to modern observers precisely because he seems to lay his working methods so bare. He demonstrates the authority of his account by exposing his working methods and demonstrating his gathering and reconciliation of a number of sources, written, oral and material. His uncertainty about the eighth century fits ours about the tenth. The author of the GeC has been similarly well regarded, both because we know he recopied imperial charters faithfully, 174 In c.3, Folcuin had tried to explain why Ursmar was called ‘bishop’ in ‘the charters made out at that time and on ancient pieces of parchment’ [in cartis sub eius tempore factis ac perantiquis membranarum peciolis]. He gave two possible explanations given by seniores nostri, that Ursmar had been ordained bishop to help convert the pagans, or that Lobbes’s then position next to a royal palace meant only a bishop was deemed worthy to head it. He leaves it to the reader to decide. See Folcuin, Gesta abbatum Lobbiensium, c.3, 57. 175 Ibidem, c.7, 58-59. 176 Ibidem, 54-55. See also Schmale, Funktion, 88. 40 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) and because he occasionally reveals a (for us) healthy unwillingness to speculate.177 Thus, in speaking of the origins of Cambrai and Arras, he compares the little known about their foundation with the varying stories of Rome’s, arguing that if the passage of time can make the authorities differ on the history of such a great city, it is hardly surprising that nothing is known about Cambrai and Arras. The only information he has he cites explicitly from Caesar, and he backs it up with a reference to still-existing earthworks, which supposedly mark where the Roman camp had been. Again, we see the same sort of methods modern scholars such as archaeologists use – speculation is avoided; sources are explicitly cited; a landmark is found to match a sequence in a written text. Note nonetheless that the arrow of proof points in the other direction – the landmark proves the truth of the written text and not vice versa. This textual conceit of constantly referring outside itself for authority is a familiar one in medieval historiography, but the implications need to be taken seriously. The authority of the text does not, in the first place, rely on its construction of a narrative, a coherent argument or an interpretative framework, but on its ability to gather information from elsewhere. In this sense it differs from modern historical argument, which gains persuasiveness not just through the knowledge of sources but through cohesion and consistency. In contrast, the GeC refer constantly outside themselves to other sources, written, material and, although this is, of course, harder to pinpoint, oral. What the sources of the GeC have in common is that they are already accepted as authorities, such as Gregory of Tours or Flodoard, or, as in the cases of charters or eye-witnesses, they were closer to the events in question. Given that these sources are in themselves authoritative, there is little value added in integrating them into a narrative whole. None of this is to say that the author was actually as much a slave to his sources as he claims to be. As we have seen, the author of the second redaction of the GeC has expanded the original extract from Gregory of Tours on Clovis’s conquest of Ragnachar and his pagan Franks by excerpting from Flodoard’s Historia Remensis ecclesiae. There, Flodoard had written about how Ragnachar’s men were converted by St Remigius. The second Cambrai author repeats the story, but rather sniffily adds: ‘But we believe it was in fact done by the blessed Vedast, for we have never heard of St Remigius having preached the word of God to the people in our parts, but we know that the blessed Vedast was sent by him and the newly baptized king [i.e. Clovis] to this our city to convert the natives. For this reason we believe [Vedast] to have been responsible for this achievement.’178 The incident is unusual in that the author here directly contradicts his source, rather than trying to reconcile it as Folcuin had done. This may be because Flodoard’s work was too well known, whereas otherwise the author would simply have omitted the story on the principle that it was better to be silent than to spread falsehoods. In a world in which book production and reproduction was difficult, you could perhaps more effectively guarantee that an opposing argu177 GeC, I:2, 403. See Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung, 152-153, 217. 178 See above. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 41 ment would be forgotten if you simply did not copy it, rather than if you argued against and thereby necessarily reproduced it. After all, the Cambrai author may disagree with Flodoard’s reading of the conversion of the Cambrai Franks, but to do so he needs to repeat it first, thereby helping to preserve it. (This differs from modern book production, where copies are so readily available that a single author’s neglect of a source is unlikely to have much effect on that source’s chance of being read. Today, if you want to stop people believing a falsehood, it is best to tackle it head-on because they are going to be able to read it elsewhere anyway). Given that these historians not just worked by paraphrasing and excerpting, but were perfectly aware that they did so, indeed used the fact as proof of their sincerity, I would suggest they expected the same to be done to their own works. In fact, Gregory of Tours, the very man so brutally sampled by so many later writers including that of the Cambrai GeC, had concluded his Ten Books with an appeal to keep it always whole.179 The appeal was in vain, but clearly demonstrates that Gregory knew how his colleagues in the historiographical task worked. We should assume our subjects were aware of the limits and possibilities of their media, and structured their texts accordingly. If it was known that texts were going to be sampled and excerpted, there was little point in constructing an elaborate narrative. There would have been more chance for an author to communicate his ideological point if it were made again and again in each individual segment or episode, thereby surviving even reuse in later works, as Flodoard’s point about Remigius survived its reuse in the GeC, and allowing future authors to insert further commentary, like the implied criticism of St-Vaast in the episode of the single combat, without disrupting the larger work. Just as modern politicians have abandoned the public oration for the soundbite, since the nature of television means that longer speeches would not be communicated anyway, so perhaps did medieval historians build their histories out of repetitive segments, since given the realities of medieval book production these segments had a higher chance of reproduction than the whole. This is emphatically compatible with the ‘Heilsgeschichte’ hypothesis. HansWerner Goetz, in particular, has detailed how medieval authors demonstrated little idea that the past was different as ‘the past’: their ‘Geschichtsbewußtsein’ was ahistorical – they understood the march of time, even ideas of general progress or decline, but not that past times might be qualitatively different.180 Yet where I 179 Gregory of Tours, Libri historiarum X , 536. 180 Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung, 210-226, especially 211: ‘Man respektierte einen politischen Herrscherwechsel, auch unter räumlicher Verlagerung des Herrschaftsraums, sowie eine religiöse Entwicklung von heidnischer und jüdischer zu christlicher Geschichte, nicht aber einen Wandel der gesamten Zeitanschauungen oder gar der historischen Bedingungen, man erkannte – dank der linearen Zeitauffassung – eine Unwiederholbarkeit der Geschichte, nicht aber eine tiefgreifende Andersartigkeit neuer Epochen an. Es fehlte mit anderen Worten jeglicher Sinn sowohl für ,,alternative Vergangenheiten“ wie für die historische Eigenständigkeit jeder einzelnen Epoche, die sich gerade nicht durch ihre Eigenart von anderen unterschied, aber dennoch nicht – im Sinne Rankes – als jeweils gleich ,,unmittelbar zu Gott“ gelten konnte, da das einer Aufwärtsentwicklung widersprochen hätte. ... Das mittelalterliche Vergangenheitsverständnis war demnach durch 42 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) would disagree with Goetz is that this implies a constant ‘presentism’, or at least that it implies that the author’s present should take precedence in our understanding of a given text. These authors wrote for posterity as well as for their own audiences, and while their concerns were shot through their writings, ultimately the episodic nature of their narrative is best explained by the manner of argumentation in a manuscript culture where the accretion of historical exempla rather than narrative consistency conveyed authority.181 If this is indeed the case, then this also multiplies the ways in which the ideological point of works such as the GeC might have reached the laity. We no longer have to assume that the text worked only by being read in full, or even extensively, and so being only available to clerics. Instead, we can assume that it was excerpted, and used in contexts completely different to the literate and learned one of the cathedral library. And precisely because the contexts were perhaps more malleable than a narrative interpretation would have us believe, we no longer have to assume a homogeneous historical discourse in terms of salvation history, and can allow room for a plurality of interpretations, even for medieval people. In short, medieval historians such as the Cambrai author knew that medieval book production and reproduction meant that their texts would never be stable. Indeed, they expected their works to be continued by future generations who would thereby entirely recontextualise what had gone before. The authors therefore insured against the loss of ideological meaning by dividing their histories into self-sufficient episodes, each of whose points would still be valid even if taken out of the context of the original work. They ordered these episodes chronologically, leaving open the possibility of reading them as a historical narrative in the salvation-history mould, but avoided binding the individual segments into an interpretative framework outside of which they might then become meaningless. They wrote their histories, in other words, not only as narratives, but also as reference works – as archives of anecdote and episode from which they expected future writers to draw, just as they had drawn selectively from their sources in turn. The flexibility of medieval historiography resulting from these mechanics of literacy also suggests ways in which a specific diocesan ideology, such as that expressed in the GeC, might have reached the laity without needing us to assume a homogeneous, undebated religious faith in salvation history and the ability of a single bishop to manifest it. eine höchst eigenartige und ambivalente Mischung aus Fortschrittsdenken und Unbewegtheit, aus zeitlichem Wandel und Gleichförmigkeit der historischen Zustände und Epochen charakterisiert. Ihm fehlte damit letzlich der Sinn für das eigentlich Historische an der Vergangenheit, die dank der chronologischen Einordnung zwar nicht wirklich als zeitlos (da stets dem Zeitablauf unterworfen), aber in vielerlei Hinsicht dock als entzeitlicht, als eine in ihrem Wesen gleichbleibende, dem saeculum, der irdischen Weltzeit, entsprechende Entwicklung verstanden wurde: Der strikten chronologischen ,,Verzeitlichung“ der Ereignisse stand eine ,,Entzeitlichung“ ihrer Inhalte gegenüber. ... So wichtig es den Chronisten war, das Geschchen als Faktum jeweils zeitlich zuzuordnen, inhaltlich konnten sie dieses doch jederzeit wider aus seinem Zusammenhang lösen und als Aussage auf die Gegenwart oder eine zeitunabhängige Ebene übertragen.’ 181 Goetz includes an excellent discussion of how such historical argumentation worked: ibidem, 311-319. The Function of the Gesta Episcoporum 43 Summary The genre of gesta episcoporum has typically been viewed from two, mutually compatible angles. Firstly, its episodic structure has been explained as a symptom of ‘Heilsgeschichte’, whereby each event is a further revelation of God’s purpose. Secondly, specific gesta texts have been examined for the political arguments an author might be making in the context of the work’s composition. This article argues for a third way of understanding the gesta, one based on taking account of the work’s intended future audience. It is contended that the gesta are not just narratives, but reference works, written episodically so that future readers could extract elements from the whole without damaging their significance. The centrepiece of the article is a description and analysis of the autograph manuscript of the eleventh-century Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium, in which the process of historical reinterpretation can be physically seen. The autograph betrays two eleventh-century hands, the original author’s, working in 1024-1025, and a subsequent editor’s, probably working in the early 1050’s. It is the contention of this article that the instability to which this manuscript was subjected was not just typical of the genre as a whole, but known to be so by the authors. They therefore wrote their texts in a way that avoided longer narrative, which would not survive copying or editing, and instead composed their texts as a chain of episodes from which they expected future generations to draw. Gesta were left deliberately open-ended in a way that would allow them to be used in many different contexts, not just those of salvation history or political priorities at the moment of authorship. Sources and Literature Manuscripts MS Brussels BR 5468 (971); MSS Brussels BR 7675-7682; MS Cambrai BM 864; MS Den Haag KB 75 F 15; MS Douai BM 795; MS Douai BM 851. Printed Sources Acta altera S. Gaugerici episcopi confessori, Acta Sanctorum August II, 675-690. Acta S. Gaugerici epsicopi confessoris, Acta Sanctorum, August II, 672-675. Acta synodi Atretabensis in Manichaeos, J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae Cursus Completus CXLII, cols.1269-1312. Alpert of Metz, ‘Fragmentum de Deoderico primo episcopo Mettensi’, in: H. van Rij and A. Sapir Abulafia (ed. & transl.), Alpertus van Metz. Gebeurtenissen van deze tijd en Een fragment over bisschop Diederik I van Metz (Amsterdam 1980) 108-120. C. Julius Caesar, Commentatorium I, Libri VII de Bello Gallico, R. L. du Pontet (ed.), (Oxford 1900). Chronicon Cameracense et Atrebatense, George Colveneere (ed.) (Douai 1615). Chronicon s. Andreae Castri Cameracesii, L. Bethmann (ed.), MGH SS VII (Hannover 1846) 526-550. Chronicon Vedastinum, G. Waitz (ed.), MGH SS XIII (Hannover 1881) 674-709. 44 Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 10 (2007) Flodoard of Rheims, Historia Remensis Ecclesiae, Martina Stratmann (ed.), MGH SS XXXVI (Hannover 1998). Folcuin of Lobbes, Gesta abbatum Lobbiensium, G. Waitz (ed.), MGH SS IV (Hannover 1841) 52-74. Gesta epsicoporum Cameracensium, ed. L. Bethmann, MGH SS VII (Hannover 1846) 393489. Gesta Lietberti, L. Bethmann (ed.), MGH SS VII (Hannover 1846) 489-497. Gesta sanctorum patrum Autissiodorensium, L. M. Duru (ed.), in Bibliothèque Historique de l’Yonne, vol.1 (Auxerre 1850) 309-509. Gregory of Tours, Historiarum Libri X, Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison (ed.), MGH SS I.1 (Hannover 1837). Jerome, Ad Geruchiam de Monogamia, Isidor Hilberg (ed.), Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, vol.56 (Vienna 1996), no.123, 72-95. Henry II, Diplomata, H. Bresslau (ed.), MGH DD III, (Hannover 1900-1903). Liber historiae francorum, Bruno Krusch (ed.), MGH SRG II (Hannover 1888) 215-328. 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