HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

CONTEMPORARY AND ‘EYEWITNESS’ HISTORY 273The Prologue to the ‘first redaction revised’ recension of Book I(Luce’s ‘B’ manuscripts version), invokes the age-old topos of theThree Orders, but in so doing replaces the oratores (those whose dutyit was to pray for the welfare of those who bore arms: at first thebishops, later the clergy in general) with those whose function it isto record in chronicles or histories (‘cronisier’) the exploits of theknightly caste:Li vaillant homme traveillent leurs membres en armes, pour avancierleurs corps et acroistre leur honneur. Li peuples parolle, recorde etdevise de leurs estas, et de leur fortunes. Li aucun clerch escrisent etregistrent leurs avenues et baceleries. 64The Prologue to the final redaction of Book I (the Rome MS versioncomposed ca. 1399–1404) places still greater emphasis upon theeminently honorable role fulfilled by the chronicler as recorder andmemorialist:Or se debrise et disfere li mondes en pluisseurs manieres. Premierement,li vaillant honme travellent lors corps en armes pour conquerir la gloreet renonmee de che monde; li peuples parole[,] recorde, et devise delors estas; auquns clers escripsent et registrent lors oevres et baceleries,par quoi elles soient mises et couchies en memores perpetueles. Car parles escriptures puet on avoir la congnissance de toutes coses, et sontregistré li bien et li mal, les prosperités et les fortunes des anciiens. 65From this perspective, Froissart’s Chroniques can be likened to theEnglish chantry chapels of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,endowed by bishops, princes, and knights to preserve the memoryof their passage here on earth and to guarantee that masses for theirsouls are said in perpetuity. The best examples of these can still beseen today at Winchester, Tewkesbury, Hereford, Ely, and Warwick.In the final analysis, Froissart’s major preoccupation remains thatof representing and, so to speak, consecrating the spectacle of the apertisesd’armes of the knights whom he admired with so much passion.He even casts himself as their clerical disciple in so far as he coulddeclare himself to be their secretary and celebrant. Seen from thispoint of view, the Chroniques are in themselves a great heroic emprise,for it is in this work that the clerk finally comes to associate his destinywith that of the knight (princes, barons, knights, and squires)64Prologue to Book I, ‘B’ MSS; see Froissart, Chroniques, ed. Luce, Raynaud,Mirot, and Mirot, 1: 5.65Chroniques, ed. Diller, 37; cf. Marchello-Nizia (1984).