Scissors or Sword – a sketch for a paper

Capetian rewritings of Merovingian history show the

extensive rhetorical efforts that went into cooking a past

that was often embarassingly raw. Their performances show

changes in political alignments, in theological concerns, in

sexual stereotypes, and in literary fashion. A vivid

illustration of the process occurs in the reworkings of the

scene in which Gregory of Tours represents the murder of

Clotild's grandchildren by her own sons.

In Gregory's sixth-century text, the widow of king Clovis

(whom she had converted to Christianity) is an ambiguous

figure, both vengeful and pious. The former quality

provokes her to encourage her two sons to avenge the deaths

of her parents (Chilperic and his unnamed wife, murdered by

Chilperic's own brother,(1) In the course of carrying out

his mother's wishes, Chlodomer dies, leaving his children in

their grandmother's care. However, Lothar and Childebert,

two other children produced by Clovis and Clotild after

Chlodomer's birth, and therefore liable to be disinherited

by their older brother's children, proceed, in 526 A.D., to

murder two of their dead brother's three children, in a

scene whose dramatic vividness was great enough for Michelet

to permit his translation of the scene to stand, without

comment, in effect, for the period as a whole,(2)

Gregory's narrative power, as Auerbach suggests, is often

a function of his habit of suppressing his own opinions and

judgments in favor of the action itself. This habit may

partially account for the fact that posterity ignored

Gregory's request not to alter his words in any way; an

anonymous historian of the eighth-century was apparently the

first to reword Gregory, then Aimon, the early

eleventh-century Capetian historian, reinvented both the

eighth-century Liber Historiae Francorum and Gregory's

sixth-century Historia Francorum.

Why the eight-century author undertook the task is not

categorically clear, since no exordium to the Liber

Historiae Francorum survives.(3) According to Kurth,

however, the author of the Liber Historiae Francorum shows a

tendency to support Merovingean "image," suppressing, for

example, an incident narrated by Gregory that testifies to

Clovis' weakness of intellect (p. 34). Therefore when the

author of the LHF, who characteristically abbreviates rather

than amplifies what he found in Gregory, provides a speech

for Clotild not to be found in Gregory's text, he may be

attempting to deal with what Joaquin Martinez Pizzaro

recently and accurately described as the unresolved

contradictions in the scene:

Gregory's description of the queen's state of

mind ... shows the intention to excuse

Chrodechild, whose reputation for sainthood was

quite established by this time, from the charge of

having made a harsh and inhuman choice. The

problem is that her reply to the messenger is much

too resolute and precise for the excuse to be

convincing, and I suspect that an anecdote told

originally to illustrate the feritas and royal

hauteur of the widowed queen has been converted

into a pious account of the 'fatal chain of

circumstances' that led to the killing of the

young princes.(4)

Since the death of Clotild's grandchildren provides a

vivid illustration of the self-destructive tendencies of

Merovingian rulers, the scene had a particular appeal for

the author of the LHF, who, in spite of his "hopelessly

mixed set of political loyalties," regularly expressed fear

of what Franks do to other Franks, as Richard Gerberding has

demonstrated.(5)

By the time Aimon took up the task, in the early eleventh

century, the context in which history was composed had begun

to resemble the situation Gertrude Stein attributes to the

English Renaissance:

They did not care so much about what they said

although they knew that what they said meant a

great deal but they liked the words, and one word

and another word next to the other word was always

being chosen.

The task Aimon sets himself -- ad emendatiorem Latinitatis

revocarem formam -- puts him clearly in a more competitive,

self-conscious position than his two predecessors; in his

prefatory epistle to Abbo, Aimon anticipates a sophisticated

group of readers and writers, who will argue about every

aspect of his work; the aspect of plagiarism is the one to

which he devotes the most attention, admitting of no other

alternative, and claiming significant precedents:

Nec ignoro multos fore, qui solita libidine

omnibus detrahendi huic volumini genuinum insigant

dentum: quod vitare non poterit, nisi qui nihil

omnino scribet. (Bouquet III. p.22)

I know that many, who customarily take pleasure in

finding faults, will sink their teeth into this

volume. Only a man who does not write at all can

avoid them.

Calumniabuntur enim tempora, convertent ordinem,

res arguent, syllabas eventilabunt: et (quod

accidere plerumque solet) negligentiam Librariorum

ad Auctorem referent.

They will find fault with the dates, they will

change the order of events, they will argue about

the subject matter, and (what is often the case)

they will charge the author with ignorance of the

right books.

Dicent etiam: En noster Historiographus, novusque

Auctor, qui aliorum verbis pro suis utitur. Hoc

quidem ne fecisse non nego, neque me id piget: ac

deinde facturum autumno.

Let them say: here is our historian, a new author,

who offers others' words as his own. I do not deny

that I am doing this, nor that I do it willingly.

In fact, I insist that that is what I am doing.

What Aimon did was successful, since his version of

Frankish history eventually found its way into the

Chronicles of Saint-Denis, where, more than two and a half

centuries later, Primat used the Capetian apologist's text

as the basis for part of his translation into late

thirteenth-century French of what we now call Les Grandes

Chroniques. Primat, however, in his preface, declares an

aesthetic positon closer to his sixth than to his

eleventh-century predecessor, promising to treat his

material briefly, au plus briement que il pourra, in

accordance with the tastes of an audience whose patience

with words was far less than that of the audience

anticipated by Aimon:

car longue parole et confuse ples petit a ciaus

qui l'escoutent: mais la bries parole et

apertement dite plest aus entendanz, (Viard, p. 2)

Pleasure, not understanding, is what Primat proposes to

offer in Les Grandes Chroniques, reflecting a courtier's

esthetic values, though an ecclesiastic himself.

Gregory had also promised brevity, clarity, and a text

that can be understood by everyone:

Philosophantem rethorem intellegunt pauci,

loquentem rusticum multi (Krusch, p. 1). (For

Gregory's Latin, see Max Bonnet, Le latin de

Gregoire de Tours, Paris, 1890).

His choice of style led Auerbach to approve:

In all these conversations and exclamations,

brief, spontaneous passages between human beings

are dramatized in a most concrete fashion: eye to

eye, statement answering statement, the actors

face one another breathing and alive. ( Mimesis,

Garden City, 1953, p. 77).

In effect, then, choosing the "rustic" or low style

permitted Gregory to generate the illusion of immediacy, or

of what Genette calls "pure narrative":

Narrative exists nowhere, so to speak, in its

strict form. The slightest general observation,

the slightest adjective that is little more than

descriptive, the most discreet comparison, the

most modest "perhaps," the most inoffensive of

logical articulations introduces into its web a

type of speech that is alien to it, refractory as

it were. (G€rard Genette, Figures of Literary

Discourse, New York, 1982. p. 140)

Gregory's text comes close to satisfying Genette's

requirements for narrative. For example, in his

representation of Clotild's guileless response to the

message that her sons want to raise her grandchildren to the

throne, Gregory fabricates an economically sentimental

scene, in which she feeds her grandchildren before sending

them off, then utters in direct discourse her long nourished

hope that they will replace her dead son:

Ad illa gavisa, nesciens dolum illorum, dato

pueris esu putuque, direxit eos, dicens: 'Non me

puto amisse filium, si vos videam in eius regno

substitui.' Qui abeuntes, adpraehensi sunt statim,

ac separati a pueris et nutritoribus suis,

custodiebantur utrique, seursum pueri et seursum

hi parvoli. (p. 118)

This pleased Clotild very much, for she knew

nothing of their plotting. She fed the boys and

gave them something to drink. "Once I see you

succeed him on the throne," she said, "I shall

forget that I lost my son." Off they set, but they

were immediately seized and separated from their

household and their tutors, for they were all

locked up in different places.

Her speech is simple, non-allusive, without concern for

rhythm or sound, as is the next scene, in which the

murderous brothers send Archadius, a senator from

Clermont-Ferrand, with weapons and words:

Tunc Childebertus atque Chlothacharius miserunt

Archadium, cui supra meminimus, ad reginam cum

forcipe evaginatoque gladio. Qui veniens, ostendit

reginae utraque, dicens: 'Voluntatem tuam, o

gloriosissima regina, fili tui domini nostri

expetunt, quid de pueris agendum censeas, utrum

incisis crinibus eos vivere iubeas, an utrumque

iugulare.'

Then Childebert and Lothar sent Arcadius to the

Queen, the man about whom I have already told you,

with a pair of scissors in one hand and a naked

sword in the other. When he came into the queen's

presence, he held them out to her. "Your two sons,

who are our masters, seek your decision, gracious

Queen, as to what should be done with the princes.

Do you wish to see them live with their hair cut

short? Or would you prefer to see them killed?"

Her response to the rhetorical provocation is bitter and

fatal:

At illa exterrita nuntio et nimium felle commota

praecipue cum gladium cerneret evaginatum ac

forcipem, amaritudinem praeventa, ignorans in ipso

dolore quid diceret, ait simpliciter: 'Satius mihi

enim est, si ad regnum non ereguntur, mortuos eos

videre quam tonsus.' At ille parum admirans

dolorem eius; nec scrutans, quid deinceps plenius

pertractaret, venit cleriter, nuntians et dicens:

'Favente regina opus coeptum perficite; ipsa enim

vult explere consilium vestrum.' (p. 118)

Clotild was terrified by what he had said, and

very angry indeed, especially when she saw the

drawn sword and the scissors. Beside herself with

bitter grief and hardly knowing what she was

saying in her anguish, she answered: "If they are

not to ascend the throne, I would rather see them

dead than with their hair cut short." Arcadius

took no notice of her distress, and he certainly

had no wish to see if on due reflection she would

change her mind. He hurried back to the two Kings.

"You can finish the job," said he, "for the Queen

agrees. It is her wish that you should do what you

have planned."

When the author of the eight-century Liber Historiae

Francorum takes his turn at the scene, he eliminates the

promulgation of the rumor that the children will be elevated

to the crown, as well as Clotild's maternal feeding of the

children, and the brief remarks in direct discourse, in

which she represents her hope that the children will replace

the sons for whose deaths she feels responsible. He does,

however, move further from pure narrative by adding

honorific adjectives to describe Archadius, and a pejorative

adverb to describe the brothers' behavior:

Miserunt autem ad reginam Parisius Archadium

nobilem virum, industrium, dolose dicentes: "Dic

matri nostrae, ut mittat ad nos filios fratris

nostri, nepotes nostros, ut eos reges

constituamus." At illa credens hoc verum esse,

gaudens ipsos eis transmisit.

They sent to the queen in Paris the noble,

energetic man Archadius, saying deceptively: "Tell

our mother to send our brother's sons, our

nephews, to us, so that we may make them kings."

Believing this to be true, she happily sent the

children to them.

When Archadius returns (instead of arriving for the first

time as in Gregory's text), he does not deliver a courtier's

salutation -- o gloriosissima regina -- but instead delivers

a brutally reductive choice, removing all references to the

queen's voluntas, and removing the dramatically ironic

iubeas as well:

At illi statim remiserunt Archadium ad reginam,

dicentes: "Haec sunt forfices, et ecce! gladius.

Sic mandant filii tui, si vis tundere aut gladium

peremere."

Clothild's response, characterized by fear and anger in

Gregory, becomes one of grief and bitterness in LHF; in

addition, the diction of her speech becomes clearly

Biblical, recalling several passages in the Old Testament;

finally, "feeding" replaces "raising". The result is a

significantly different version of the scene, offering a

more emotionally expressive Clotild, who expresses her

feelings not simpliciter, as Gregory had written, but with a

burst of tears, then with a Biblical allusion, and then by

expressing her choice not in a zeugma, but by a simple

parallel clause:

Illa vero pre nimio dolore et amaritudine cordis

cum lacrimis ait: 'Satis undique me angustiae

conpremunt. Si regnare non debent, quid mihi eos

enutrisse fuit? Eis melius est mori quam

tundere.'

Check Deut. 28.53, Ruth 1.13, 2 Kings 1-9, and,

particularly, 1 Para 21.13 -- ex omni parti me angustiae

premunt -- as well as Daniel 13.22, Ait: Angustiae sunt mihi

undique

Aimon's treatment (pp. 52-53 of Bouquet III) offers as

its major alteration an elaborate speech by Clothild, that

seems to be a rhetorical demonstration-piece, from which one

may infer the proper strategy for dealing with royal grief,

anger, humiliation, in a tragic situation, presumably, since

politics, real-estate, and family are congruent. Since

Primat's translation relies heavily on Aimon, let us

consider the eleventh-century Latin and the

thirteenth-century French texts in parallel. The change

would seem to conform to Aimon's intention to do justice to

his royal subject, in this case by giving a Biblical flavor

to the incident, in keeping with Auerbach's remarks about

the change in rhetorical decorum brought about by the humble

style of Jerome's translation of the Bible. To account for

the shift to Biblical diction, see K.F. Werner's remarks, in

"Die literarischen Vorbilder des Aimon von Fleury, Medium

Aevum: Festschrift fur Walter Bulst, Heidelberg, 1960, pp.

69-103, on the portrait of Clothilda: (p.101) "Aus dem

wilden Geist der Konigin wird fromme Berechnung, die Aimon

einer Heiligen, als die er Chlothilde darstellen mochte,

eher zumuten zu konnen glaubt." Consider also the fact that

LHF offers cues for transforming the text by means of

Biblical imagery, and the possibility that Biblical diction

performs here the function that Biblical parallels

(particularly figurae, like the Maccabbees, etc.) perform in

the historical literature of the Crusades (Fulker, etc.).

Aimon also adapts Anon's "nutritional" addition,

elegantly reducing the two verbs to one, accompanied by an

adverbial phrase in which diligeret seems to suggest

diligentia. In addition, Aimon makes Clothilda's love of

her grandchildren not merely an observation of her murderous

son, but a categorical fact as well.

In his version of this passage, Primat continues the

sanctification and gentrification of the Merovingian queen,

first by prefixing to her title an honorific phrase: la

bonne dame. He also retains the radical for nourishment,

removing the elegant adverbial phrase that surrounds it in

Aimon's text, while supplying at the end of the sentence two

adverbial phrases that supply new elements, both feudal and

Christian (though not exclusively and schematically so):

chierte and amor. Primat also retains Aimon's categorical

assertion of her love for her grandchildren, while

Childebert's negative feelings are presented in the form of

tandem phrases (Viard suggests that such constructions are

signs of an oral style) -- moult grant mautalent et moult

grant envie -- that replace the condensed phrase, zelo

ductus; "jealously" in the opening clause of the next

sentence guarantees that even the least attentive listener

would not attribute false motivations to the queen's

progeny:

La bone dame Crotilde, la roine, demoroit a Paris;

la nourissoit ses neveuz, les fiuz le roi

Clodomire, en grant chierte et en grant amor.

Childeberz, qui rois estoit de Paris, avoit moult

grant mautalent et moult grant envie de ce que il

veoit que ele les tenoit dr chiers, car il cuidoit

que l'amor et l'affection que sa mere deust avoir

enverse lui fust amennuisie en ce que ele les

amoit tant. Pour occasion de ceste jalousie apela

son frere Clothaire le roi de Mez...(p. 129)

following LHF, Aimon gives no speech to Clotild, expressing

her hopes to repair the damage she has already done to her

family, at this point, reserving the detail for a more

dramatic use later on. Also following LHF, Aimon does not

portray Clotild feeding her grandchildren before sending

them off, also reserving that gesture for later, more

rhetorical development:

Dolosaque ad invicem captantes consilia, ad matrem

dirigunt, qui memoratos juvenes ab ea susceptos ad

se perduceret, asserentes velle se debitam ipsis

regni reddere portionem. Dolum Regina non

praevidit: mandatoque filiorum paruit eo

studiosius, quo adolescentulis bene esse

gratulabatur consultum.

Aimon also surpresses the public nature of part of the

transaction, by excising the announcement made to the people

of the two brothers' intentions, apparently to permit the

aristocrats to perform their tragic actions on an exclusive

stage.

Following Aimon in this passage, Primat also subtracts

the feeding and the direct discourse, but he replaces some

of the emotion by expanding the implications of Aimon's

gratulabatur:

La roine, qui ne savoit la desloiaute que il les

avoient pourpalle, leur envoia les enfanz. Moult

avoit grant joie de ce que il sembloit que il les

amoient et que il avoient bon conseil vers iaus.

(p. 130)

The Capetian apologist, then, represents the queen's

pleasure not in the power to which she imagines the children

are to be raised, nor in compensating for the loss mourned

in Gregory's text, but in the harmonious family feelings

symptomized by the transaction. In addition, the nature of

the crime has been compounded with feudal values, by adding

desloiaute. The messenger sent to escort the children is

again anonymous, as in Gregory's text, and not Archadius,

who performs the service in LHF. Aimon excises the figure

of Archadius entirely, perhaps to reduce the number of

figures on stage, instead substituting two anonymous

messengers, the second of whom arrives close on the heels of

the first, to deliver, abruptly and without any formal

apostrophe, the painful choice to the queen:

Suscepit legatus juvenes ut eos deduceret ad

Reges. Eo discedente, e vestigio venit alter,

forcipes et gladium deferens: quibus Regina visis,

inquirit quid sibi ista velint. Cui veridarius:

"Sic," inquit, "mandant filii tui, velisne nepotes

tuos tonderi, an gladio percuti? Delibera: unum

enim eorum necesse est fieri."

Primat also excises Archadius, but multiplies the number of

messengers involved in the transaction, giving a name to one

of them:

Livres furent aus messages qui de par les rois i

estoient envoie. Quant cil s'en furent parti et il

ourent les enfanz a leur oncles livrez, autres

messages revindrent maintenant a la roine de par

ses fiuz, que li aporterent une espee et unes

forces. Quant ele vit ce, elle demanda que se

segnefioit. Li uns des messages, qui Veridaires

avoit non, li respondi: "Dame, ce te mandent ti

fil que tu elises et prengnes lequel que tu

vourras de II choses, out ti neveu soient mis en

religion et tondu de ces forces, ou que il soient

ocis de ceste espee, car il covient faire lequel

que soit de ces II choses." (p.130)

Primat's messenger, mistakenly named Veridaires, presumably

because the Latin word veridarius had passed out of

circulation in the intervening two hundred and fifty years,

shows a monosyllable more of courtesy by addressing

Clothilda as dame, although he tutoyers her, and is one of

two assigned the task; multiple messengers suggest that

royal decorum requires more than one. Perhaps the most

significant change, however, is brought about by Clothilda's

asking not what do her sons want, but what do the scissors

and sword mean. Primat, then, imagines the moment more

precisely, concentrating on her intial bafflement, not on

the next moment, when she connects the symbols with her

sons.

In describing Clotild's response to the choice offered by

the messenger, Aimon provides a radical departure from the

previous texts. Gregory's Clotild, terrified and angry, had

expressed her preference in a compressed, emotional

outbreak, misinterpreted by Archadius; LHF's Clotild

amplified her anguish in the language of the Bible. Aimon's

Clotild, however, in keeping with regal decorum, and perhaps

also with the convention for articulate saints (see Jacques

Le Goff: "la saintete se manifeste...dans la parole royale"

p. 97), breaks into an extensive lament, beginning with a

death-wish:

Quo illa audito, alta trahens a pectore suspiria,

ingemuit, et ait: "Nunc mihi bonum est mori cum

filiis meis. Mortua est pietas.

Primat reverses the order of these two sentences, so that

his queen delivers the generalization first, then its

application to herself; he also adds a prefatory

ejaculation, that seems to be designed to imitate speech:

"Ha! pitiez est morte. Bone chose est a moi que je

muire ovec mes enfanz."

That pitiez is an appropriate translation for pietas is

unlikely; its use suggests again that Primat is in some

sense sentimentalizing his matter.

Aimon now provides Clotild with the impossibility-topos,

as well as with what might be called the

invention-of-evil-topos (check Cicero); in addition, the

resonating nasals, supported by plosives at the end of the

second sentence, provide sonic support designed to support

the sense of abomination built up in the passage:

Nunc profecto illud est tempus, quo si omnes sua

dent consilia, huic malo remedium inveniant

nullum. Novum flagitii genus est, quo, patrui

innocentium appetunt vitam nepotum.

Primat loses the plosives, maintains some of the nasals,

and continues to expand the "pitiful" aspect of the

characters, offering nephews not only innocent, but

"simple":

Or est li tens venuz que nus consauz n'a mestier a

trover remede contre cest mal. Ce est une novele

maniere de tormenz que li oncle convoitent la mort

de leur neveuz simples et innocens.

Aimon's now extends the interfamilial perversity further, as

Clotild proclaims her own biological complicity, in another

alliterative burst, consisting of four more p's:

Doleo, fateor, parricidas generasse me filios, qui

non possent parcere parentibus.

Primat substitutes doublets for the alliterating plosives,

in a more direct statement of the horror of the impending

crime; her own sons are murdering their own flesh:

Certes moult ai grant duel, quant je ai enfantez

fiuz homicides et murtriers de leur parenz et de

leur char maismes.

Aimon's Clotild now invokes praeteritio, to make a

quasi-legal distinction between cases in which realtives may

be slain by their own kin, and the present instance, in

which the only possible motivation is envy; her rhetorical

strategy, then, is first to present their motivation as

unfathomable, then as unjustifiable:

Sed de illis taceo quos, justa allegatio maternae

calamitatis exosos fecerat. Verum in istis nullae

reperiuntur causae offensionis, nisi quod in regno

natis, Regisque filiis, debita invidetur portio

paternae haeriditatis.

Primat follows Aimon very closely here, offering a

gloss-like translation of the first sentence (roughly, "But

I remain silent about those whom a just charge of treating

their mother badly has made odious"), which seems to be a

reference to Clotild's own behavior in provoking her sons to

kill their own relatives earlier:

Se il ont autres de leur parenz ocis qui deservi

l'avoient et pour vengier la doleur de leur mere,

de ciaus ne parole je mie, mais de ciaus ou l'en

ne puet trover nule cause de haine ne de

mesprision; il n'ont nule raison de leur mort,

mais pour ce seulement les volent ocire, que il

volent avoir leur heritage et le roiaume de leur

pere.

Once again, Primat insists on the feelings involved (

douleur), and he provides a doublet to describe the material

motivation.

At this point, Aimon introduces the motif of feeding,

suggested perhaps by the earlier scene in Gregory of Tours'

text, in which Clotild feeds the children before sending

them to their uncles. Aimon's Clotild now heaeps abuse upon

herself, in a passage filled with images of misdirected

feeding, and perverted fecundity, castigating herself for

incompetence at what Duby calls the "third function." In

addition, in a passage that reinvents the short speech

Gregory composes to represent her response to the brothers'

initial proposal ("non me puto amisse filium, si vos videam

in eius regno substitui") -- a speech excised both by Aimon

and the author of LHF -- she represents her actions as a

vain attempt to repair as a grandmother the damage she did

as a mother (Primat will underline the desire for

compensation with rhyme):

Pereunt itaque ad dolorem mihi, ad fructum illis.

At quaerat quis, ut quid eos occidere velint?

Cognoscat quia ad praesens ipsis mors eorum

proficiet. Miseram me, quae ad hos fructus

faecunditatis sum reservata, ut infelicia eis

porrigerem ubera, qui mihi chara nepotum auferrent

pignora. Ego, infantuli, vestrae causa sum

perditionis, quae inconsideratis persuasionibus

patrem vestrum objeci periculis mortis. Satis

infelix mater fueram, avia volui esse sollicitior.

Videns mihi aetatem procedere, tentavi consulere

post me nepotibus, atque utinam consulissem! sed

nunc eos mihi quidem eripit intolerabilis aerumna,

quos magis magisque commendaverat natura et

misericordia.

One syllable ("Ha") -- but its initial position gives it

additional force -- more emotional about the prospect of her

grandchildren's deaths than her model in Aimon, Primat's

Clotild is even more ample in her subsequent rhetorical

invention, although, by translating fructus as profit, he

loses the first nutritional reference:

Ha! il perissent; mais leur mort leur est a profit

et a moi a doleur. Lasse, dolente, quel porteure

ai je faite? Pourquoi tendije ainques mes mameles

a ciaus qui me tolent l'amor que je avoie a mes

douz neveuz? Ha! mi enfant, he sui cause de vostre

perdition; qui par mon mauvais amonestement enbati

vostre pere ou peril de mort, dou quel vous

demorastes orphelin. Je avoie este mere mauvaise

et maleureuse; or voloie estre aiole plus

beneureuse; je veoie le terme de ma vie aprochier,

si voloie a mes neveuz conseillier; or les volent

cil occire qui les duessent vers touz homes

garantir et en qui il deussent trover pitie et

misericorde selonc nature.

Aimon's Clotild now resigns herself to the deaths of her

grandchildren, commending their souls to God's protection:

Summe Deus, ne inter greges noxiorum deputes

animas innocentium, nec eas saeva inferorum

crucient supplicia: sed mundo supernum iter

carpentibus vestigio tranquilla aeternae vitae

succedant habitacula."

Primat follows the three clauses exactly, losing the image

and Biblical resonance of "peaceful tents":

Soverains Diex, ne met pas les ames d'aus oveques

les mauvais, ne ne soient pas tormente es paines

d'enfer, ainz vuilles que il soient en pardurable

vie."

To portray the queen's transcendant grief, Aimon now

supplies a significant silence, interpreting the silence as

a symptom of anger and sympathy:

His dictis, indignatione simul et compassione vox

est intercepta loquentis.

Primat, at this point, removes the negative emotion, to

produce a queen who is univocally compassionate,

substituting doleur (the key word in the passage as a whole)

for indignatione:

Quant la roine out ensi faite sa lamentation seur

ses neveuz, la voiz li rompi en parlant par la

grant compassion et la tres grant doleur que ele

sentoit au cuer.

Recovering her equilibrium and her voice, Aimon's queen

delivers a response far more ambiguous than that delivered

by her forerunners:

Verum ubi spiritum resumpsit : "Et quid," ait,

"aliud restat? Conditio mihi offertur, utrum malim

eos tonderi, an gladio percuti. Sed utcunque se

res habeat, nullatenus clericos fieri patiar."

For Gregory's queen, tonsuring meant depriving the children

of royal power, as Gregory's Childebert indicates when he

says of the haircut: utrum incisa caesariae ut reliqua

plebs habeantur (p. 118). (see Averil Cameron, "How did the

Merovingian kings wear their hair," Revue belge de

philologie et d'histoire, XLIII (1965), pp. 1203-1216).

Short hair was a symbol among Merovingians of low social,

political, and economic status, and not necessarily of

Christian humility. Einhard records the tonsorial convention

ironically in the opening of his Life Of Charlemagne, when

he represents the final Merovingian kings sitting

powerlessly on their thrones, their long hair an empty

symbol of the power now in the hands of the mayors of the

palace:

neque regi aliud relinquebatur quam ut, regio

tantum nomine contentus, crine profuso, barba

submissa, solio resideret ac speciem dominantis

effingeret (p. 8, Halphen).

However, LHF drops the gloss on the significance of the

haircut, while Aimon delays revealing its significance until

dramatically appropriate, at this moment, in the midst of

Clothild's lament. Primat drops Clotild's rhetorical

question, but otherwise follows Aimon faithfully: que que

il aviegne d'aus, je ne vuil pas que il soient clerc.

Aimon now attributes her words to a miscalculation:

Haec dixit, putans quod pietate flexi naturae a

tanto desisterent scelere. Quamvis enim ei nota

esset Chlotarii feritas, nunquam tamen credere

potuit, quod usque ad parricidium persevaret.

Primat reminds his listeners that these are the words of a

bone dame, turns "the piety of nature" into "pity and

nature," enlarges "crime" to "betrayal and crime," and

expands "parricide" to the more specific "murder of her

grandchildren":

La bone dame eslut ceste voie, car ele ne cuidast

pour riens que il les occisissent, ainz avoit

esperance que pitiez et nature les flechesist a

faire tel desloiautez et tel felonie; ja soit ce

que ele seust bien la cruaute Clothaire, ele ne

povoit croire que il pardurast en sa felonie

jusques au murtre de ses neveuz.

Here a final paragraph to sharpen the focus, possibly

suggesting that Duby's intuition and objection to the

intrusive magnification of the third function is born out by

the development of Clotild's rhetorical performance,

particularly in the passage in which Clotild highlight's her

reproductive functions; Dudo himself, and Benoit a century

later, had done the same. If Primat had Gregory of Tours,

LHF, and Aimon in front of him, as Viard's notes suggest,

then his translation is also a selection, representing

conscious choices; he claims to be writing according to the

letter, and in the voice, of the Latin chronicles, but also

admits importing incidences from elsewhere. His translation,

however, requires him to speak in many voices, since his

sources are composed in different styles; a clear example is

the Pseudo-Turpin material, whose sentences are far more

elaborate than in the early part of the first book. The

translation as a whole, then, becomes a handbook of possible

French prose styles, with occasional pieces of verse

exercising influence also. Particularly useful for

establishing the notions of decorum prevalent would be to

constrast the translation of Einhard (Notker also?) and that

of the Pseudo-Turpin, since the subject matter ostensibly is

the same, but the modes, genres, postures are significantly

and clearly different.

In the case of "Scissors or Sword," the priviliged text

is Aimon, yet one can demonstrate occassional attempts to

replace Aimon's subtractions. Elsewhere Primat injects

occassional comments of his own, although in this section

such remarks seem limited to the information about the

change of church's name in Paris.

In composing his history of France, Primat perceived

three "lines," and ran two "processes" through them;

Meroveus, Pepin, and Hughes Capet provided the blood lines,

and the processes to which the Merovingian, Carolingian, and

Capetian dynasties were submitted consisted of

gentrification and sanctification. The two processes, Primat

insists, in a variation of what Pickering has described as

the Augustinian perspective on human history, worked

together harmoniously in France:

Glorieus furent en victoires, noble en renommee,

en la foi crestienne fervent et devot. Et ja soit

ce que cele nacion soit fort et fiere et cruel

contre ses anemis, selonc ce que li nons le

senefie, si est ele misericors et debonaire vers

ses sougez et vers ceus que ele souzmet par

bataille. (Viard I, p. 4)

(They were glorious in victory, noble in repute, and fervently devout in

the Christian faith. And although this nation is strong, proud, and cruel to its enemies, as its name indicates, it is also mild and considerate towards its subjects, and towards those who submit to it in battle)

Primat continues to insist on the importance of this

connection, going beyond the passage from Aimon which he is

translating, to provide a vision of Church and State

cooperating steadily from earliest times, even among the

Greeks, down through the conversion of the Franks, and, by

implication, down to Primat's own times, the end of the

thirteenth century (quote here from pp. 5,6, and

translation). Certainly such a pattern was present in the texts from

which Primat was translating, although not as explicitly and

self-consciously, and more as an aspiration than as an

accomplishment. If it was a conspiracy, we may not assume

that it was entirely successful, since few conspiracies are

composed of a group unanimous at all times in its judgements

and interpretations, and factionalism frequently rears its

head, enabling later historian, by a process of

triangulation, to determine more exactly what is likely to

have happened. A clear, brief example: although Aimon (and

Fredegar) testify that adherents, or partisans of Dagobert

murdered Charibert's son (Dagobert's nephew, then), Primat

supresses the information, presumably to reduce the tarnish

on the man who did so much for Saint-Denis. The task was

difficult, since Dagobert seems to have ended his life in a

burst of lechery and greed, which Primat manfully strives to

fit into an overall pattern of sin and redemption (by

generous giving of alms, particularly). Although he

mentions Dagobert's shortcomings, he does not include them

in his final summation, which consists of a long, dull

scene, in which Dagobert utters a series of pious

commonplaces, as he endows Saint-Denis with a spectacular

income, insisting that it be permanent. A vision of his soul

being dragged off to Etna, saved at the last minute by the

three martyrs, borrowed from Gregory, is also added in the

latin texts, to provide, in this case, a pious lecher.

The massive speech provided, again by GD, for Dagobert's

son (Viard II, pp. 190-192), again compounded out of pious

cliches, intended again to provide a document to support the

church's proprietarial claims, also makes for tedious

reading, or recitation.

A major problem arises in trying to determine to what

extent, if any Primat had available texts in addition to the

ones from which he was translating directly; the earliest is

not his model, and presents a text less conspiratorial than

later ones.

Examining the additions, subtractions, and modifications

made in the course of eight hundred years (specifically, at

the end of the sixth century Gregory first writes the story

down; Anon in the eighth century reduces much of it, but

adds a resonance by means of a Biblical allusion; Aimon

inflates the story in the early 11th century, and Primat at

the end of the thirteenth century, translating into "plain"

French, produces a range of styles) helps to demonstrate the

conspiracy to gentrify and sanctify the historical past. To

do so, each writer selected a style whose diction, syntax,

schemes, tropes, sounds and rhythms were congruent with the

audience's sense of what was "authentic," reliable, and

true.

For Gregory, particularly as Auerbach argues, what was

authentic was rough, inartistic, plain, like the style of

the Bible ; mingens ad parietem, for example, seems

indecorous, if the Old Testament had not provided the

phrase, but LHF and Aimon eliminate the phrase, presumably

out of fastidiousness. Speculations about the writer of LHF

are impeded by the lack of a formal preface, although the

text itself provides some clear evidence; again roughness is

almost all. For Aimon (for Guibert, Otto, Orderic, and many

others later; see Guenee et al.) greater formal virtuosity

is a sign of careful attention, and therefore of greater

reliablity, truth, etc. Therefore, when Primat, working for

much of the time with Aimon, proposes brevity and simplicity

while translating a Latin text that proclaims itself if not

high art, at least more sophisticated than its sources, in a

sense part of his job involves subverting his source.

In fact, his task is an amplification, by means of

doublets and repetitions designed both to clarify what he

presumably conceived to be an ambiguously dense,

occassionally opaque text, and to imitate the more relaxed,

redundant aspect of the spoken language. In addition, the

aspect of creative error is a factor; consider angels and

eagles, for example, as well as the tree that originally

grows from the navel to the stars, and in the later versions

only to the roof of the tent.

Gabrielle Spiegel's remarks on the "iconic" figures of

the Grandes Chroniques. Spiegel, Gabrielle, "Geneology:

Form and Function in Medieval Historical Narrative," History

and Theory XXII (1983), pp. 43-53.

To look into a remote period and find what is missing in

one's own time and place. The period must be conceived of as

more exciting, more violent, more ideal, in some way

excessive, yet also recognizable. In the case of

scissors/sword, violence, eloquence, pathos, the lowest

forms of behavior and the most articulate representation of

pain, what Hume demanded of tragedy, "eloquent suffering."

Notions of eloquence changed in the course of the Middle

Ages, while the matter of suffering did not. In this case,

treachery within the family is the subject.

Medieval aristocrats regularly betrayed each other,

generally for real-estate, sometimes out of sexual jealousy.

Brother did in brother, uncle nephew (Ganelon and Roland

mythologizes the transaction most successfully). The

openings of Lucan and Statius with Eteocles and Polyneices,

appeal because historical reality presented constant

parallels.

Patrick J. Geary, Before France and Germany, New York,

Oxford, 1988 DC65 G43 1988 p. 231 Geary concludes that the

function of Rome changed from Merovingian to Carolingian

times: "The barbarian world, that creature of Rome, had

become its creator."

p. 225 Carolingian historiographers created image of the

preceding dynasty as incompetent.

As classical rhetoricians took on the task of composing

speeches for mythological, then for historical characters,

so medieval historians accepted and assigned themselves the

task of composing speeches for the characters they, in

effect, inherited from their predecessors. Their

performances show changes in political alignments, in

theological concerns, in sexual stereotypes, and in literary

fashion; the four categories were not exclusive.

What two writers with aspirations to be considered

historians did with a fictional figure: Martin B.

Schichtman, "Gawain in Wace and Layamon: a Case of

Metahistorical Evolution," in Medieval Texts and

Contemporary Readers, Ithaca, 1987, pp. 103-119.

Janet Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories, Cambridge,

1992, pp. 274-324, on twelfth-century historiography.

By examining the changes wrought by an anonymous abridger

of the eighth century, then those made by Aimon in the

eleventh century, and by Primat, who translated Aimon into

French at the end of the thirteenth-century, we may observe

not only the changes in rhetorical fashion that occurred in

the course of seven centuries, but also the process of

gentrification and sanctification that took place when the

Capetians and the ecclesiastics who wrote for them

determined what kind of ancestors would be most suitable.

In addition, however, Primat says that he will add to what

he finds in the Latin chronicles of St. Denis whatever he

can find at other church libraries, according to a principle

of coherence not very clearly delineated:

selonc la pure verite de la lettree, sanz riens

oster, se ce n'est chose qui face confusion, et

sanz riens ajouster d'autre matiere, se ce ne sont

aucunes incidences. (Viard, p. 2)

Much of what Primat adds, however, comes from various

saints' lives, and offers a considerable dose of doctrine,

in addition to, and sometimes in conflict with the pleasure

proposed by the prologue.

amplification takes different forms: allusion magnifies

intensity, doublets expand the length of sound and in a

sense space, but substitution of the kind that takes place

in LHF implies that diction alone can provide the density

necessary for significance.

(1) Gundobad). According to Zollner, the story of their

murder by Gundobad is unhistorisch, and an example of

Gregory's taste for heroic fiction: Geschichte der

Franken, Munich, 1970 pp. 55-56.

(2) Histoire de France: Moyen Age, Paris, ?, pp. 164-166.

(3) See Godefroid Kurth, Etudes franques, Paris, 1919, 2

vols: vol. 1, pp. 31-65; and Pauline Taylor, The

Latinity of the Liber Historiae Francorum, NY, 1924.

(4) A Rhetoric of the Scene, Toronto, 1990, p. 182.

(5) Richard A. Gerberding, The Rise of the Carolingians and

the Liber Historiae Francorum, Oxford, 1987, p. 171.