The Deeds of God Through the FranksGuibert, Abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy
History
The Deeds of God Through the Franks
Guibert, Abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy
Crusades -- First, 1096-1099
As we were about to put an end to the body of the present history, we
discovered, with the aid of the author of the world, that a certain
Fulker, a priest of Chartres, who had for a long time been the
chaplain for Baldwin at Edessa, had spread word, in a manner
different from ours, about a few other things that were unknown to us,
and these were erroneous and in rough language. We decided to
include some, though certainly not all, of this material in these
pages. Since this same man produces swollen, foot-and-a-half-long
words,[255] and pours forth the blaring colors of vapid rhetorical
schemes, I prefer to snatch the bare limbs of the deeds themselves,
with whatever sack-cloth of eloquence I have, rather than cover them
with learned weavings. Unless I am in error, at the beginning of his
little work he says that some of those who set out on the journey to
Jerusalem arranged for boats and sailed across the sea that separates
Apulia and Epirus, and, whether because they committed themselves to
a sea that was unknown to them, or because the ships sank because
overloaded, it is reported that the ship carrying nearly 600 men was
dashed to pieces. After they were drowned in the roaring sea during
storm, and quickly washed up on shore by the force of the waves,
signs of the cross which they all wore on their cloaks, tunics, and
mantles were found on the skin of their shoulders. No one, that is,
of the faithful, doubted that the sacred stigma could have been
imprinted on their skin by God, to make their faith manifest, but the
man who wrote it, if he is still alive, had to think carefully about
whether it actually happened. For when the beginning of this journey
was announced everywhere among the Christian people, and it was
proclaimed throughout the Roman Empire in accordance with God's will,
men of the lowest social class, and even worthless women, laid claim
to this miracle in every way, in every part of their bodies. One man
scratched his cheeks, drew a cross with the flowing blood, and showed
it to everyone. Another showed the spot in his eye, by means of
which he had been blinded, as a sign that a heavenly announcement had
urged him to undertake the journey. Another, either by using the
juices of fresh fruits, or some other kind of dye, painted on some
little piece of his body the shape of a cross. As they used to paint
the area below the eyes with antimony, so they now painted themselves
green or red, so that, by means of this fraudulent and deceitful
exhibition, they might claim that God had showed himself in them.
The reader will remember the abbot of whom I spoke above, who cut his
forehead with iron, and who I said was made the bishop of Caesarea in
Palestine. I swear by God that I saw, when I was living in Beauvais,
in the middle of the day, clouds approach each other somewhat
obliquely, so that they scarcely seemed to form anything other then
the shape of a crane or a stork, when suddenly many voices from
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