HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

CONTEMPORARY AND ‘EYEWITNESS’ HISTORY 265gathering information for the historical inquiries that he intended topursue. In particular he interviewed the French hostages held underhouse arrest in London to meet with the requirements of the Treatyof Brétigny (1360), four years after the battle of Poitiers and the captureof John the Good of France. It was in this way that Froissartobtained the supplementary information on the Anglo-French conflictthat he would later incorporate into the first recension of his Chroniques,complemented by additional accounts collected during research tripsundertaken with the permission and, presumably, encouragement ofQueen Philippa. These journeys were ambitious. The chronicler’stravels took him to King David Bruce in Scotland in 1365, to EdwardDespenser’s castle at Berkeley in Gloucestershire in 1366, to theBrussels court of the Duchess Jeanne and Duke Wenceslas of Brabant,again in 1366, and in 1366–67 to the court of the Black Prince inAquitaine at Bordeaux. On his return from a journey he had madeto Italy in 1368, where he had attended the marriage of Lionel ofClarence to Violante Visconti in Milan, Froissart learned of the deathof his benefactress Queen Philippa, who had passed away on 15August 1369. He once again set out for his native Hainault, wherehe was shortly to begin the first prose version of Book I of the Chroniquesfor Robert de Namur, brother-in-law to Jeanne and Wenceslas ofBrabant and to Edward III of England. This version, Siméon Luce’s“first redaction proper”, was finished around 1373. 48If Froissart abandoned verse, at least for history writing, it wasalmost certainly because he had been influenced by the ideas of JeanLe Bel, whose Chronique, finished in 1361, had, as we have seen,denounced certain historical works written in verse containing “anover-abundance of often redundant words, chosen and contrived soas to embellish the rhyme”. In order to lend more authority to hisown account of events between 1325 and 1350, Froissart went tothe lengths of transcribing practically word for word whole tracts ofJean le Bel’s original text, a form of ‘plagiarism’ that, for the time,was seen as far from reprehensible since citation, generally practisedwithout reference to sources, was a commonplace procedure heighteningthe prestige of a work whilst at the same time guaranteeing itsauthenticity. From 1373, Froissart took up residence in the presbytery48Jean Froissart, Chroniques, ed. S. Luce, G. Raynaud, L. and A. Mirot, 15 vols.(Paris, 1869–), vol. 1 et seq.