HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

232 LEAH SHOPKOWDynastic history also may have run against the twelfth-century historians’growing consensus that history should conform to particularconventions of presentation and style to ensure its “truth”. Simplicityof rhetoric was one desirable feature of that style, in a period whenhistorians sometimes compared more elaborate histories unfavorablywith more straightforward chronicles. 71 Frequently accompanying thisanti-rhetorical stance was an explicit claim to impartiality or to attackthe impartiality of other historians. 72 But dynastic histories implicitlytrespassed upon these claims to impartiality, written as they oftenwere by intimates of the subjects. Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Normanhistory was attacked as being adulatory, partly, no doubt, becauseof the close relationship between the author and the subjects; itsform also may have played a role. 73 If one wished to flatter withoutappearing to do so, a form that did not explicitly focus on the lineagemight be preferable to one that did.Given that the means of establishing one’s truthfulness were conventionaland resided as much in form as in authorial intention, itis not surprising to find dynastic histories replaced with other sortsof works. Robert of Torigni’s decision not to continue writing dynastichistory but instead to write a universal chronicle may partiallyderive from a concern of this kind, as well as the practical difficultiesI have mentioned above. However, Robert also may have intendedhis chronicle to serve a different purpose from his contribution todynastic history. Gislebert of Mons similarly composed different sortsof works for different purposes. He did write a short genealogicalhistory of the counts of Hainaut, but his longest work, which is intimatelyrelated to the counts although not organized regnally, is inchronicle form. 74 In other words, different forms of history wererequired for different circumstances. And even when a work wasdynastically organized, alternative organizations might present them-71Guenée (1980), 203–07, on chronicle. On the truth claim, see Beer (1981).For the conventionality of such claims, see Morse (1991).72See, for example, William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. and trans.R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1998–99),1:424; William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum, in Chronicles of the reigns ofStephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, vol. 1 (London, 1884), 12–16.73In fact, William of Jumièges decided to edit Dudo’s text for that reason (TheGesta Normannorum ducum of William of Jumièges, ed. Van Houts, 1:6).74Gislebert of Mons, La chronique de Gislebert de Mons, ed. L. Vanderkindere(Brussels, 1904). See also n. 37 above and van Houts (1995), 23.