the 10th century. It is particularly valuable for the light it sheds on nobility and family in
the 11th and 12th centuries. Baudouin d’Avesnes, grandson of Baudouin IX of Flanders,
commissioned the major French prose omnibus in the 13th century that bears his name.
Jean d’Outremeuse (d. ca. 1400), author of a historical poem, the Geste de Liège, and a
prose history, the Myreur des histors, was an official of the count-bishop of Liège.
Michel de Bernis wrote a chronicle of the counts of Foix (first edition 1429), as the
introduction to his inventory of their archives.
It would be a mistake to see all histories of the later Middle Ages as being created
totally by patronage. A more cultivated society meant more room for individual
expression. The process really begins with Joinville, who began his memoirs of Louis IX
before he was commissioned to write. His writing expresses aristocratic values in an age
when these seemed increasingly threatened. Jean le Bel’s Vrayes chroniques (ca. 1357–
70), which concentrate on chivalric deeds far from his native Liège, and Froissart’s
Chroniques (1369–1400), inspired by Jean le Bel, similarly illustrate aristocratic ideals—
heroism, the glory of war, valor, courtesy—rather than political truths, The Livre des faits
du bon messire Jean le Meingre, dit Bouciquaut (ca. 1408) and Cuvelier’s Chronique de
Bertrand du Guesclin (ca. 1385) are both moral exemplars, accounts of men widely
considered by their contemporaries to have been perfect knights.
The fitting end to this process was the rise of memoirs, the most personal historical
works. Memoirs, particularly those of Philippe de Commynes, exemplify the new turn
history was taking in the 15th century. Commynes was not the first to write memoirs: he
was preceded by Jean de Joinville, Jacques du Clercq (1448–67), Pierre le Fruitier, and
Olivier de La Marche, but his memoirs represent something new in France. To
Commynes, history was as much moral instruction as a record of the past, an object
lesson for the ruler and the citizen. For precisely those reasons, the humanists were
urging the teaching and study of history. Commynes’s work thus marks the transition
from the medieval to the Renaissance view of history.
Leah Shopkow
[See also: ABBO OF FLEURY; ADÉMAR DE CHABANNES; AIMOIN DE
FLEURY; ANGLO-NORMAN LITERATURE; BENOÎT DE SAINTE-MAURE;
BIOGRAPHY; BURGUNDIAN CHRONICLERS; CHRISTINE DE PIZAN;
COMMYNES, PHILIPPE DE; CUVELIER; FROISSART, JEAN; GRANDES
CHRONIQUES DE FRANCE; GREGORY OF TOURS; GUIBERT DE NOGENT;
GUILLAUME DE SAINT-PAIR; HISTORY PLAYS; JEAN LE BEL; JOINVILLE,
JEAN DE; LA MARCHE, OLIVIER DE; ORDERIC VITALIS; OUTREMEUSE, JEAN
D’; PETER COMESTOR; RIGORD; ROBERT DE CLARI; ROBERT DE TORIGNY;
VILLEHARDOUIN, GEOFFROI DE; VINCENT DE BEAUVAIS; WACE]
Archambault, Paul. Seven French Chroniclers: Witnesses to History. Syracuse: Syracuse
University Press, 1974.
Bautier, Robert-Henri. “L’historiographie en France aux Xe et XIe siècles (France du Nord et de
l’Est)” and Ganshof, François L. “L’historiographie franque sous les Mérovingiens et les
Carolingiens.” In La storiografia altomedievale. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto
Medioevo, 1970, pp. 631–85, 793–850.
Grundmann, Herbert. Geschichtsschreibung im Mittelalter. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht,
1965.
Guenée, Bernard. Histoire et culture historique dans l’occident médiéval. Paris: Aubier Montagne,
1980.
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