HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

DYNASTIC HISTORY 243Why the history of Flanders took this biographic form is a moredifficult question. In the case of Witger’s genealogy, the genealogyprovides the kinship link that might encourage the continued patronageof a foundation outside the territory the counts of Flanders mighthope to control. However, Witger’s genealogy was not that influential,for the genealogy that supplanted it in the eleventh century tracedthe family’s descent from the legendary Lideric of Harlebec, notJudith, 119 and represents a claim not to Carolingian descent but toa jurisdiction in Flanders that predated Judith. These new and deeperroots were set down even as political upheaval seemed to create abreak, if not a complete one. In other words, history was producedat a node of crisis. 120 The familial form the history took may evenbe reinforced, in this case, by the familial nature of the crisis, a battlebetween uncle and nephew.Once Flemish history had taken a dynastic form, however, it isrelatively easy to explain its continued tendency to do so. An existinghistory created a template for later histories that it might bemore difficult to break with than to utilize. In the Norman case,Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s example was so powerful that it took Normanhistorians more than a century to break away from it. And, as Ihave suggested above, the mode in which Flemish history was castalso influenced local writers, such Lambert of Saint-Omer, Lambertof Wattrelos, and Lambert of Ardres, to write history in this fashion.The last of these histories is particularly interesting to think aboutin terms of dynastic history, because it was through interpreting itthat Duby arrived at many of his theories on noble marriage andnoble attitudes toward family. The emphasis on family and lineageis indeed much clearer in the History of the Counts of Guines than it isin the comital histories, although lineage is much more broadly interpreted.Not only are the legitimate children of a particular count ofGuines or lord of Ardres enumerated but also their spouses arenamed, and often their descendants for three or four generations.When scholars think about dynastic history, this history is one thatthey immediately think of.However, it would be a mistake to see even this history as simplyarising from the pride of the family in its lineage and its concern119Genealogiae comitum Flandriae, ed. Bethmann, 305 and n. 6; also van Caenegem(1973), 73, 81–82.120On this genesis of history, see Althoff-Coué (1992).