GUIBERT DE NOGENT
(ca. 1064–ca. 1125)
Perhaps best known for his autobiography, De vita
sua sive monodiarum suarum libri tres, and a treatise
concerning the veneration of relics, De pignoribus
sanctorum, this Benedictine monk also wrote a popular
history of the First Crusade (Gesta Dei per Francos), a
moral commentary on Genesis, a handbook for preach-
ers (Liber quo ordine sermo fi eri debeat), and lesser
works.
Born at Clermont-en-Beauvaisis in northern France,
Guibert was dedicated by his parents to the monastic life.
His father died soon after his birth, and he was raised
by his mother, who isolated him from other children.
As a young adolescent, he entered the monastery of
Saint-Germer-de-Fly, where he studied not only the
Bible and theology but also classical authors, especially
Ovid and Virgil. In 1104, he became abbot of a small
Benedictine house at Nogent-sous-Coucy. There, he
wrote his history of the First Crusade and, in 1115, his
autobiography. Guibert’s attitudes toward his mother,
sexuality and sexual sins, cleanliness, and his (and oth-
ers’) visionary experiences are important aspects of the
autobiography, which also offers numerous insights into
daily life, education, and social and political history.
Guibert’s treatise on relics attacks the veneration of a
supposed tooth of Christ at the abbey of Saint-Médard,
Soissons, but it is not a total rejection of either the cult
of the saints or the veneration of relics.
Further Reading
Guibert de Nogent. Opera. PL 166.
——. Autobiographie, ed. and trans. Edmond-René Labande.
Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1981.
——. How to Make a Sermon, trans. George E. McCracken. In
Early Medieval Theology, ed. George E. McCracken with
Allen Cabaniss. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957.
——. Gesta Dei per Francos, ed. M. Thurot. In Recueil des
historiens des croisades. 16 vols. Paris: Imprimerie Royale,
1879, Vol. 4: Historiens occidentaux, pp. 115–263.
——. Self and Society in Medieval France: The Memoirs of
Abbot Guibert of Nogent, trans. John F. Benton. New York:
Harper Torchbooks, 1970. [Excellent introduction and bib-
liography.]
——. De vita sua sive monodiarum suarum libri tres, ed. Georges
Bourgin as Histoire de sa vie. Paris: Picard, 1907.
Grover A. Zinn
GUIDO D’AREZZO (c. 991–1050)
Guido d’Arezzo (Guido Aretinus) was an important
Italian music theorist. The circumstances Guido de-
scribes in the prefaces to his treatises place his activity
in Arezzo, Pomposa, and Rome c. 1025–1032. Four
treatises can be attributed to him: Micrologus (between
1023 and 1032, perhaps 1025–1026); Prologus in an-
tiphonarium (later than Micrologus); Regule rhythmice
(later than Micrologus); and Epistola de ignoto cantu
(later than Prologus and Regulae rhythmicae).
In Micrologus, Guido surveyed, principally, the mu-
sic theory that would be of use to a practicing musician.
He described a scale extending from G at the bottom
of the modern bass-clef staff to C in the third space of
the treble, including all natural notes plus B-fl at below
middle C, and presented them in a tuning with all perfect
fi fths pure. With the addition of B-fl at above middle C
and of the high D and E, this scale and this tuning (the
latter since called Pythagorean) became the standard
of the Middle Ages. Guido enumerated and described
the six intervals most typically used in plainchant and
early medieval polyphony (major and minor seconds
and thirds, perfect fourths and fi fths). He presented the
basics of the theory of melodic modes, fi rst explaining
the classifi cation of four modal types on the basis of the
location of a central tone within the context of a series of
major and minor seconds above and below that central
tone, and then describing the division of each into a pair
differentiated by relatively high or low register. Similar
classifi cations and differentiations persisted in theories
of mode throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. He
described a procedure for composing a melody by deriv-
ing its pitches from the vowels of the text to be sung.
He described the traditional practice of polyphonic
composition with parallel fourths and fi fths as “harsh”
(durus) and appended a set of rudimentary counterpoint
rules for using other intervals, particularly at the ends
of phrases, which produce a result he characterized as
“soft” (mollis). To all this he added a speculative chapter
recounting how Pythagoras discovered the nature of
musical harmony by studying the weights of hammers
striking an anvil; this story, in one version or another,
has since been recounted in dozens of music treatises.
Micrologus became one of the most widely copied music
treatises of the Middle Ages (almost eighty manuscript
sources survive), and one of the most infl uential.
Two of Guido’s innovations, however, must be reck-
oned even more infl uential than anything he described
in Micrologus. He seems to have been the fi rst (in Pro-
logus) to describe the use of the staff in music notation:
the placement, that is, of notes on or between any of a
set of parallel lines, with the positions of C’s and F’s
indicated fi rst by the placement of these letters in the
appropriate positions at the beginning of the staff (like
modern clef signs); and second by the use of the colors
yellow and red, respectively, to highlight the positions of
the two letters (much as the C and F strings of a harp are
colored today). He also seems to have been the fi rst (in
Epistola) to name the ascending degrees of the C scale
ut re mi fa sol la, syllables derived from the openings of
lines of the hymn Ut queant laxis/Resonare fi bris....GUIBERT DE NOGENT