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.