The Deeds of God Through the Franks | Page 7

it is written, reports "what he has seen and heard," then his tale may be
accepted as true when he describes what he has not seen, but has been
told by reliable speakers.
Guibert then goes on to challenge those who object to do the job better.
Correcting the Gesta Francorum, castigating Fulker, and challenging
his other contemporaries, however, do not absorb all of Guibert's
competitive urges. He also attacks both the Graeco-Roman and Jewish
texts upon which he also heavily depends.[30] His use of moderns to
castigate the ancients begins in Book One:
We wonder at Chaldean pride, Greek bitterness, the sordidness of the
Egyptians, the instability of the Asiatics, as described by Trogus
Pompeius and other fine writers. We judge that the early Roman
institutions usefully served the common good and the spread of their
power. And yet, if the essence of these things were laid bare, not only

would the relentless madness of fighting without good reason, only for
the sake of ruling, would obviously deserve reproach. Let us look
carefully, indded let us come to our senses about the remains, I might
have said dregs, of this time which we disdain, and we may find, as that
foolish king said,[31] that our little finger is greater than the backs of
our fathers, whom we praise excessively. If we look carefully at the
wars of the pagans and the kingdoms they traveled through by great
military effort, we shall conclude that none of their strength, their
armies, by the grace of God, is comparable to ours.
Throughout the text Guibert relentlessly insists that the Crusaders
outdo the ancient Jews; in the last book he attempts to strip them of
every accomplishment:
The Lord saves the tents of Judah in the beginning, since He, after
having accomplished miracles for our fathers, also granted glory to our
own times, so that modern men seem to have undergone pain and
suffering greater than that of the Jews of old, who, in the company of
their wives and sons, and with full bellies, were led by angels who
made themselves visible to them.[32]
Partisan outbreaks like this fill the Gesta Dei per Francos, perhaps more
clearly distinguishing it from the earlier accounts of the First Crusade
than Guibert's more elaborate syntax, and self-conscious diction.
His hatred of poor people also penetrates the text, often to bring into
higher relief the behavior of aristocrats. In Book Two, for example, he
offers a comic portrayal of poor, ignorant pilgrims:
There you would have seen remarkable, even comical things: poor men,
their cattle pulling two-wheeled cart, armed as though they were horses,
carrying their few possessions together with their small children in the
wagon. The small childrne, whenever they came upon a castle or town
on the way, asked whether this was the Jerusalem they were seeking.
In the seventh and last book, Guibert tells the story of the woman and
the goose, again to ridicule the foolishness of the poor:

A poor woman set out on the journey, when a goose, filled with I do
not know what instructions, clearly exceeding the laws of her own dull
nature, followed her. Lo, rumor, flying on Pegasean wings, filled the
castles and cities with the news that even geese had been sent by God
to liberate Jerusalem. Not only did they deny that this wretched woman
was leading the goose, but they said that the goose led her. At Cambrai
they assert that, with people standing on all sides, the woman walked
through the middle of the church to the altar, and the goose followed
behind, in her footsteps, with no one urging it on. Soon after, we have
learned, the goose died in Lorraine; she certainly would have gone
more directly to Jerusalem if, the day before she set out, she had made
of herself a holiday meal for her mistress.
Poor people, however, are not merely comic, but dangerous, to
themselves, as Guibert's version of the story of Peter the Hermit
indicates, and to others, as Guibert's version of the death of Peter
Bartholomew emphasizes.[33]
The story of the goose, however, is a comic reflection of a persistently
urgent problem on the First Crusade; Guibert addresses the problem of
famine often, and expresses particularly warm sympathy towards
aristocratic hunger:
How many jaws and throats of noble men were eaten away by the
roughness of this bread. How terribly were their fine stomachs revolted
by the bitterness of the putrid liquid. Good God, we think that they
must have suffered so, these men who remembered their high social
position in their native land, where they had been accustomed to great
ease and pleasure, and now could find no hope or solace in any external
comfort, as they burned in the terrible heat. Here is what I