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Truth, plausibility, and the virtues
of narrative at the millennium
Justin C. Lake
a
a
Department of European and Classical Languages and
Cultures, Texas A&M University , 205 Academic Building,
4215 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4215, USA
Published online: 03 Jan 2012.
To cite this article: Justin C. Lake (2009) Truth, plausibility, and the virtues of narrative at
the millennium, Journal of Medieval History, 35:3, 221-238
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmedhist.2009.05.003
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Truth, plausibility, and the virtues of narrative at the
millennium
Justin C. Lake
Department of European and Classical Languages and Cultures, Texas A&M University, 205 Academic Building,
4215 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4215, USA
Keywords:
Richer of Saint-Re´mi
Dudo of Saint-Quentin
Adalbero of Laon
Plausibility
Invention
Rhetoric
Gerbert of Aurillac
Reims
a b s t r a c t
While it is widely understood that medieval historiographers
employed the techniques of rhetorical invention in their work, less
attention has been paid to the way in which the standard of
plausibility, upon which rhetorical invention was premised, could
be reconciled with the historian’s traditional obligation to tell the
truth. This paper examines the ways in which the rhetorical
doctrine of narratio probabilis was understood and put into prac-
tice by three authors active around the turn of the millennium:
Richer of Saint-Re´mi, Dudo of Saint-Quentin, and Adalbero of Laon.
All three had been trained in the schools of northern Francia in the
late tenth century and all reveal a sophisticated understanding of
the doctrines of Ciceronian rhetoric, according to which plausible
inventions were not seen to be incompatible with historical truth.
Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
The boundary between truth and fiction in medieval historiography is notoriously hard to define.
While medieval authors universally accepted the idea that history should recount what was true, what
*
Tel.: þ1 11 832 671 9466; fax: þ1 11 979 845 0823.
E-mail addresses:
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1
This topic has been the subject of a number of important studies in the last three decades. See, for example, Jeanette M.A.
Beer, Narrative conventions of truth in the middle ages (Geneva, 1981); Suzanne Fleischman, ‘On the representation of history and
fiction in the middle ages’, History and Theory, 23 (1983), 278–310; Ruth Morse, Truth and convention in the middle ages. Rhetoric,
representation and reality (Cambridge, 1991); Monica Otter, ‘Inventiones’. Fiction and referentiality in twelfth-century historical
writing (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996); Peter Johanek, ‘Die Wahrheit der mittelalterlichen Historiographen’, in: Historisches und
fiktionales Erza
¨hlen im Mittelalter, ed. Fritz Peter Knapp and Manuela Niesner (Berlin, 2002), 9–25.
Contents lists available at
Journal of Medieval History
j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e /
0304-4181/$ – see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmedhist.2009.05.003
Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 221–238
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exactly was meant by ‘truth’ is not always clear.
In the much-quoted definition of Isidore of Seville,
history consisted of res verae quae factae sunt, ‘true things that actually happened’, in contradistinction
to argumenta d ‘things that could have happened, even if they had not actually happened’ d and
fabulae, things ‘that did not happen, and could not have happened, because they are contrary to
nature’.
Historical truth, for Isidore, was guaranteed by eyewitness testimony, which limited the
purview of the historian, in theory at least, to events that he had personally witnessed.
In reality, however, medieval historians were virtually compelled to deviate from the strict standard of
res verae quae factae sunt.
The difficulty of locating documentary evidence or credible eyewitnesses d if
such sources even existed d might prompt an author to flesh out his narrative through rhetorical
amplification or to pass on unreliable oral traditions and uncorroborated rumours. In the same vein,
a historian who set out to praise or defend a patron or an institution, or to expound a moral lesson to his
readers, could excuse himself for taking liberties with the truth in the service of a greater goal.
A narrow
conception of truth would have been far too restrictive to serve as a practical criterion for deciding what
to include and what to omit in a work of history.
One of the ways in which medieval historians coped with inadequate source material was to fill in
the gaps by employing the tools of rhetorical invention (inventio), the practice of ‘discovering’ material
appropriate to a narrative, and by adopting the standard of plausibility, rather than truth, when
necessary. Roger Ray has argued convincingly that classical rhetorical assumptions about invention and
plausibility underlay the earliest Christian hagiographical texts, as well as the works of some early
medieval historians, such as Bede.
After the Carolingian educational revival of the eighth and ninth
centuries, the doctrines of classical rhetoric became even more widely disseminated, and rhetorical
invention became a defining feature of medieval historical writing.
In spite of their predilection for plausible inventions, however, medieval historians clung resolutely
to the idea that history should recount what was true. Almost without exception they vouched for the
truthfulness of their histories, making the author’s profession of his intention to write the truth one of
the most widespread of medieval historiographical topoi.
This inherent tension between the ideal of
history as a narrative of ‘true things that actually happened’ and the reality of historical composition,
which effectively licensed the use of plausible fictions, poses a question of central importance for our
understanding of medieval historiography: how could the standard of plausibility be reconciled with
the historian’s traditional obligation to tell the truth?
In this paper I will examine the way inwhich historical plausibility was understood by three authors who
lived and wrote in northern France around the turn of the first millennium: Richer of Saint-Re´mi, Dudo of
Saint-Quentin, and Adalbero of Laon. The choice of these particular authors is not arbitrary, for all three of
them d unusually for medieval authors d refer explicitly to narrative plausibility in their work. Thus, they
2
See L. Shopkow’s analysis of the various ways in which historical truth could be construed in the middle ages, with special
attention to the Norman historians of the eleventh and twelfth centuries: History and community. Norman historical writing in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Washington, D.C., 1997), 118–43.
3
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 1.41.5, ed. W. Lindsay, 2 vols (Oxford, 1957–62).
4
See Roger Ray, ‘The triumph of Greco-Roman rhetorical assumptions in pre-Carolingian historiography’, in: The inheritance
of historiography 350–900, ed. Christopher Holdsworth and T.P. Wiseman (Exeter, 1986), 67–81, esp. 71–2.
5
Historians typically claimed that their work served an ethical function by instructing the reader and providing examples of
what to imitate and avoid. See Isidore, Etymologiae 1.43.1; Gertrud Simon, ‘Untersuchungen zur Topik der Widmungsbriefe
mittelalterlicher Geschichtsschreibung bis zum Ende des 12. Jahrhunderts’, parts I–II, Archiv fu
¨r Diplomatik, 4 (1958), 52–119,
and 5/6 (1959/60), 73–153, part II, 101–9, and Gert Melville, ‘Wozu Geschichte schreiben? Stellung und Funktion der Historie im
Mittelalter’, in: Formen der Geschichtsschreibung, ed. R. Koselleck, H. Lutz and J. Ru¨sen (Beitra¨ge zur Historik 4, Munich, 1982),
86–146, at 95. For an illuminating example of the way in which an author could make repeated truth claims while writing
a work of undisguised political partisanship see Beer, Narrative conventions of truth, 13–22. For the political motivations of
medieval historians in general see Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Die Gegenwart der Vergangenheit im fru¨h- und hochmittelalterlichen
Geschichtsbewußtsein’, Historische Zeitschrift, 255:1 (1992), 61–97.
6
Ray, ‘The triumph of Greco-Roman rhetorical assumptions’.
7
See Simon, ‘Untersuchungen zur Topik der Widmungsbriefe’, part II, 89; and Marie Schulz, Die Lehre von der historischen Methode
bei den Geschichtsschreibern des Mittelalters (Abhandlungen zur Mittleren und Neuren Geschichte, Berlin, 1909), 5–14. Schulz notes
of the truth-topos: Es gibt fast kein Geschichtswerk jener Zeit d die allerunperso¨nlichsten Annalen ausgenommen d das nicht eine
Beteuerung oder Versicherung dieser Art enthielte (10).
J.C. Lake / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 221–238
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provide us with an ideal set of texts with which to examine the relationship between plausibility and
historical truth in the middle ages.
Richer of Saint-Re´mi and Flodoard of Reims
Between the years 991 and 998 an otherwise unknown monk named Richer, of the monastery of Saint-
Re´mi at Reims, wrote a four-book history d commonly known as the Historiae d beginning with the
accession of Count Odo of Paris to the throne of West Francia in 888 and ending in a series of annalistic
jottings, the last of which is datable to 998.
The principal subjects of this work are the wars of the west
Frankish kings d their struggles with refractory princes, Norman dukes, Viking raiders, and the kings of
Germany d and the fortunes of the archbishopric of Reims. Richer dedicated his history, which exists
today in a single autograph manuscript, to Gerbert of Aurillac (c.945–1002), who served as scholasticus at
the cathedral school of Reims from 972–82 and again from 983–89 before becoming archbishop in 991.
Richer’s history tends to inspire little confidence among modern readers. While it remains an indis-
pensable source for the political and ecclesiastical history of West Francia in the tenth century, Richer
himself has long been recognised as an author with a decidedly casual relationship to the truth.
To a large
extent, his reputation as a careless historian whose words must be treated with suspicion stems from the
way in which he used his most important source, the Annals of Flodoard of Reims (894–966).
While he also
drew upon Flodoard’s monumental History of the church of Reims for information about Reims and its
bishops, it was Flodoard’s annals, which provided a comprehensive account of events in West Francia
during the years 919–66, that served as the backbone for the first half of Richer’s history.
A comparison of passages from the Historiae to the entries in Flodoard’s annals upon which they are
based provides a clear, and often disquieting, picture of Richer’s historical methodology. He dresses up his
source material with freely invented speeches, dialogue, accounts of battles, and graphic descriptions of
disease and death. On occasion, either out of carelessness or from a desire to create a dramatic effect, he
rearranges the order of events in Flodoard’s annals or adds material of questionable veracity.
He is also
remarkably loose with figures. When numbers for battle casualties or the size of armies are not available, he
invents them. When Flodoard provides numbers, he sometimes changes them anyway.
Richer’s
8
Richeri historiarum libri IIII [hereafter Richer, Historiae], ed. Hartmut Hoffmann (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores
38 [hereafter MGH SS], Hanover, 2000). The most recent studies of Richer’s work are Hoffmann, ‘Die Historien Richers von
Saint-Remi’, Deutsches Archiv fu
¨r Erforschung des Mittelalters, 54 (1998), 445–532 and Jason Glenn, Politics and history in the
tenth century. The work and world of Richer of Reims (Cambridge, 2004). Also of fundamental importance is Hans-Henning
Kortu¨m, Richer von Saint-Remi: Studien zu einem Geschichtsschreiber des 10. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1985). For Richer’s rhetorical
training and literary techniques see J. Lake, ‘Rhetorical and narrative studies on the Historiae of Richer of Saint-Re´mi’,
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 2008). For the dates of composition see Hoffmann, ‘Die Historien’, 446; 453–55.
9
See Pierre Riche´, Gerbert d’Aurillac, le pape de l’an mil (Paris, 1987), esp. 279–88 for the chronology of Gerbert’s life. Richer’s
autograph manuscript is Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, MS Hist. 5, Hoffmann’s edition contains a facsimile.
10
See, for example, Jean Dunbabin, France in the making: 843–1180 (Oxford, 1985), 19. For one editor’s exasperation with Richer’s
methods see Richer. Histoire de France, ed. Robert Latouche, 2 vols (Les Classiques de l’histoire de France au moyen aˆge, Paris,1930–37),
introduction and passim. For representative examples of Latouche’s irritation with Richer see vol. 1, xi: Il est donc dangereux de le
suivre et son te´moinage est toujours suspect; and vol. 1, 133, note 2: Richer n’a pas de scrupules d’historien.
11
Les Annales de Flodoard [hereafter Flodoard, Annales], ed. Philippe Lauer (Collection de textes pour servir a` l’e´tude et a`
l’enseignement de l’histoire, Paris, 1905); there is an English translation by Steven Fanning and Bernard S. Bachrach, The annals
of Flodoard of Reims, 919–966 (Peterborough, Ontario, 2004).
12
Richer, Historiae, 1.15 to 3.21. Richer deals with the entire period from 888 to 920 at Historiae, 1.4 to 1.14. At 3.22, where the
annals can no longer serve as a source, the narrative jumps from 965 to 969. For Flodoard’s History of the church of Reims see
Flodoardus Remensis. Historia Remensis Ecclesiae [hereafter HRE], ed. Martina Stratmann (MGH SS 36, Hanover, 1998). See also
Michel Sot, Un historien et son e´glise au X
e
sie`cle. Flodoard de Reims (Paris, 1993).
13
For Richer’s reworking of his sources see Hoffmann, ‘Historiae,’ 3–8, For an example of a suspicious change to the order of
events in Flodoard compare Richer’s account of the death of Count Erlebald of Me´zie`res at Historiae 1.20 with the 920 entry in
Flodoard’s annals (Annales, sub anno 920, ed. Lauer, 3).
14
Richer’s account of the battle of Soissons (923) at Historiae, 1.44–6 is a particularly good example. While Flodoard gives
neither army sizes nor casualty statistics for the battle, Richer provides both. He numbers the army of Charles the Simple at
10,000 men. However, his autograph manuscript (Bamberg, MS Hist. 5, f. 11r) shows that he originally wrote 5,000, which he
crossed out and replaced with 6,000, before eventually changing this number to 10,000. At 1.46 Richer reports that 11,000 men
died on Robert’s side and 7,118 on Charles’s side. He cites as his source Flodoard, who in fact nowhere provides precise numbers
of dead for this battle. Richer also increases Flodoard’s casualty figures or makes them up entirely at 1.49, 1.51, 2.35, and 2.85.
J.C. Lake / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 221–238
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nonchalance about altering his source material and his fondness for rhetorical ornamentation have made
the Historiae an object of suspicion for anyone attempting to glean accurate historical information from it.
The changes that Richer made to Flodoard, however, were not simply the product of willfulness or
slipshod working habits. They were part of a deliberate attempt to take Flodoard’s bare-bones annalistic
structure and turn it into a true narrative history. Richer is quite explicit about this in the prologue, where
he first admits with feigned reluctance to having used the annals, before going on to make a subtle boast
about the merits of his own work: ‘Now if I am accused of being ignorant of the unknown past, I do not
deny that I took some things from a certain book of Flodoard, a priest of Reims, but the content itself
shows very clearly that I did not employ the same words, but different ones, and in a very different
rhetorical form.’
The tone here is assertive, perhaps verging on proud, but this is actually a milder
version of his original claim. The manuscript shows very clearly that Richer originally wrote prestantiore
orationis scemate. That is to say, the rhetorical form he employed was not merely ‘different’, it was
‘superior’. He subsequently thought the better of this and replaced prestantiore with the less
presumptuous diversissimo (‘very different’), which he then toned down once more, to longe diverso.
Richer is interested in pointing out that he is departing from d and improving upon d Flodoard’s annals.
It is important to note that there are two distinct claims advanced here: first, that Richer is using
words different from Flodoard’s (verba [.] alia pro aliis), and second, that he is arranging his words in
a wholly different rhetorical form (longe diverso orationis scemate). This appears to be a reference to the
two aspects of rhetorical inventio: the choice of correct words (verba) and the addition of suitable
content (res).
Richer’s statement gives us a valuable insight into his historical project. The material for
the first half of his history was already at hand; his principal task was to improve the style and elab-
orate upon the content of Flodoard’s annals.
The first part of his claim is something of an exaggeration. Richer’s sentences are no more complex or
classicising in their syntax than those of the annals, nor is his diction any more refined than Flodoard’s.
Indeed, on many occasions he reproduces Flodoard’s words almost verbatim. In terms of Latin prose style
there is not a great deal of difference between Flodoard’s annals and Richer’s Historiae. There is a significant
difference, however, in the form of the two works. The longe diversum orationis scema to which Richer lays
claim is very real and very noticeable. This ‘very different rhetorical form’ comprises all the techniques of
rhetorical invention that medieval historians used to lend richness and narrative verisimilitude to their
work, including fictional speeches, dialogue, and letters, as well as detailed descriptions of people, places,
and things.
Rhetorical invention is the aspect of Richer’s work that most sets him apart from Flodoard.
It is also what gives the greatest pause to modern scholars. For if Richer’s chief goal in the first half of his
history was to construct a rhetorical edifice over the substratum of hard fact he found in Flodoard’s annals,
and if he felt no compunction about applying the tools of rhetorical inventio to construct this edifice, then we
must treat everything he tells us with a high degree of scepticism. From a modern perspective, it is quite
clear that Richer was fictionalising his source material in order to produce a more compelling narrative. Of
course, there is nothing unusual about a medieval historian modifying and amplifying the work of another
author to suit his own purposes, or in turning to the use of rhetorical invention where necessity dictated.
What distinguishes Richer from his predecessors and contemporaries is not simply that he allowed himself
15
Richer also suffers badly in comparison with Flodoard, who is treated as a model of impartiality and reliability. See, for
example, Stratmann, HRE, 29: Bemu¨hte sich Flodoard jedoch um eine mo¨glichst ausgewogene Darstellung, frei von allzu
deutlicher Polemik oder Parteinahme. For a discussion of his methodology in the HRE see Stratmann, ‘Die Historia Remensis
ecclesiae: Flodoard’s Umgang mit seinen Quellen’, Filologia Mediolatina, 1 (1994), 111–27.
16
Richer, Historiae, prol.: Sed si ignotae antiquitatis ignorantiae arguar, ex quodam Flodoardi presbyteri Remensis libello me
aliqua sumpsisse non abnuo, at non verba quidem eadem, sed alia pro aliis longe diverso orationis scemate disposuisse, res ipsa
evidentissime demonstrat. ‘Sc(h)ema’ in this context could also mean ‘garb’ or ‘clothing,’ but the sense is the same either way. I
am currently preparing a translation of the Historiae for the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series.
17
Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 8, proem. 6, ed. D. Russell, 5 vols (Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA, 2001): orationem
porro omnem contare rebus et verbis.
18
By my count there are some 64 speeches of three sentences or more in direct discourse in the Historiae, not counting the
disputatio between Gerbert and Otric of Magdeburg at Historiae 3.59–65, which is a unique type of dialogue. For fictional letters
see Historiae, 2.77; 3.86; 3.87. Richer’s account of Gislebert of Lotharingia at 1.35, which is adapted from the description of Julian
the Apostate in the Historiae Tripartita (7.2.16), is a classic example of the rhetorical descriptio. Compare also his descriptions of
the construction of siege engines at 2.10, 3.105, and 4.22.
J.C. Lake / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 221–238
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an unusually high degree of fictional licence, but that he seems to admit to his readers that plausibility,
rather than truth, was the standard by which his history should be judged.
Truth and plausibility
In his prologue, immediately after the passage quoted above, Richer states: ‘I think that the reader will be
satisfied if I have treated everything plausibly, clearly, and concisely.’ (Satisque lectori fieri arbitror, si prob-
abiliter atque dilucide breviterque omnia digesserim.) Plausibility, clarity, and brevity were the three ‘virtues
of narrative’ (virtutes narrationis) recommended by the rhetorical handbooks of antiquity.
Richer’s
invocation of the virtues of narrative in his prologue shows that he conceived of his work as a narratio
governed by the rules of classical rhetoric. This claim also carries with it an interesting implication. By
claiming to write ‘in accordance with plausibility’ (probabiliter), Richer seems to be insinuating that his
audience should expect a history that satisfied the rhetorical doctrine of plausibility, but one that was not
necessarily true. This would represent a major departure from the usual procedure of medieval historians.
For while it was common for medieval historians to incorporate plausible fictions into their work, it was
highly unusual to admit to doing so. In fact, while Richer’s invocation of the virtues of narrative in his
prologue may look like a standard prefatory topos, I have been unable to find a single instance of a medieval
historiographer prior to him claiming to write probabiliter. The only contemporary historian who associates
the narrative virtue of plausibility with his work is Dudo of Saint-Quentin, who will be considered below.
Richer’s claim is made all the more intriguing by the fact that at no point in his history does he
explicitly vouch for the truth or accuracy of anything that he writes. Nor, with the exception of two
anecdotes about the exploits of his father, does he ever indicate the origin of any orally transmitted
information or make any statement about the reliability of testimony from witnesses.
Only once does
he claim to have been an eyewitness to an event that appears in his history, and this was a journey that
he took to Chartres to read medical manuscripts.
He never expresses any anxiety that he will be
accused of perpetrating falsehoods, which was a frequent concern of medieval historians.
Rather
than assuring the reader of his concern for the truth, Richer expresses the belief that the reader will be
satisfied if he handles all of his material in accordance with the standard of plausibility.
The idea that a historian would claim to be writing something less than the truth is admittedly
counter-intuitive. In her classic study of the methodology of medieval historians, Marie Schulz
remarked on Richer’s prologue, and expressed doubt that he fully understood the nature of rhetorical
plausibility or that he was really claiming to write what was plausible but untrue.
Schulz seems to
19
Rhetorica ad Herennium, 1.9.14, ed. F. Marx (Leipzig, 1964): tres res convenit habere narrationem, ut brevis, ut dilucida, ut
veri similis sit; Cicero, De inventione, 1.20.28, ed. E. Stroebel (Stuttgart, 1965): oportet igitur eam tres habere res: ut brevis, ut
aperta, ut probabilis sit; Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 4.2.31: eam plerique scriptores, maxime qui sunt ab Isocrate, volunt esse
lucidam, brevem, verisimilem; Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, 5.551, ed. J. Willis (Leipzig, 1983): Narra-
tionis laudes tres sunt, ut lucida sit, ut veri similis, ut brevis. See also Heinrich Lausberg, Handbook of literary rhetoric, ed. David
E. Orton and R. Dean Anderson, trans. Matthew T. Bliss, Annemiek Jansen, and David E. Orton (Leiden, 1998), 141 x295. In the
rhetorical handbooks of antiquity plausibility never comes first in the series of virtues. It is conceivable that Richer meant to
emphasise plausibility by placing it in this position.
20
Schulz, Die Lehre von der historischen Methode, 121–2, discusses two later histories whose authors claim to include plausible or
verisimilar material: the Chronicon S. Michaelis (c.1034), ed. G. Waitz (MGH SS 4, Hanover, 1841), 79: Antiquiora vero a fidelibus viris
narrata vera vel verisimilia idcirco decrevi abbrevianda; and Richard of Poitiers, Chronica, ed. Georg Waitz (MGH SS 26, Hanover,1882),
76: rem de qua lis oritur, prout gesta est aut geri potuit, sub aliqua opinione poni congruum erat. She also cites a third example from the
Annales Pegavienses (c.1148–49), ed. G.H. Pertz (MGH SS 16, Hanover, 1859), 234. However, Schulz here misconstrues the use of the
word probabilis, which in this case means ‘commendable’ or ‘worthy of approval’ rather than ‘plausible’.
21
Richer, Historiae, 2.87–90 and 3.7–9. However, Richer mentions all of his important written sources: Flodoard’s annals (in
the prologue) and History of the church of Reims (1.19), and Gerbert’s Acta of the synods of Saint-Basle (4.73) and Mouzon (4.101).
22
Richer, Historiae, 4.50.
23
See Simon, ‘Untersuchungen zur Topik der Widmungsbriefe’, part I, 96.
24
Schulz, Die Lehre von der historischen Methode, 123: Wir du¨rfen [.] nicht annehmen, dass die Geschichtsschreiber etwa
geglaubt ha¨tten, es genu¨ge, wenn sie nur Wahrscheinliches, nicht immer Wahres erza¨hlten; nie wurde ja ein Zweifel an der
Notwendigkeit der Wahrheit erhoben. Vielmeher werden wir annehmen mu¨ssen, dass die ihnen aus der Rhetorik bekannten
Ausdru¨cke ihnen in die Feder gekommen sind, ohne dass sie sich des Unterschiedes zwischen der Narratio der Rede und der
Geschichtsschreibung bewusst geworden sind. Schulz earlier mentions Richer’s prologue, but erroneously refers to him as
Richer von St. Amand (121).
J.C. Lake / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 221–238
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imply that Richer essentially meant veraciter (‘truthfully’) when he wrote probabiliter (‘plausibly’). This
view has the merit of explaining both his unusual claim about plausibility and the absence of any
claims about the truth in his history. Yet it also implies that Richer did not really understand the
doctrine of narrative plausibility, which is unlikely, given his thorough training in classical rhetoric.
Schulz’s scepticism seems to stem from the quite logical position that the criterion of ‘what is
truthful’ is not really compatible with the criterion of ‘what is plausible’. An author might very well
choose to include plausible fictions in his history, but he could not admit to doing so without under-
mining any possible claim to the standard of truthfulness. If Schulz is correct, then one of two
conclusions must be drawn about Richer’s prologue: either he did not use probabiliter to mean ‘in
accordance with plausibility’, but instead meant something like ‘in accordance with truth’; or else, by
telling the reader that he had adopted the standard of plausibility, he was admitting that his history
was not entirely true. Neither one of these alternatives is wholly satisfactory.
To resolve this dilemma, we have to determine as precisely as possible what Richer meant by the
word probabiliter. I have set about answering this question in two ways: first, by examining the sources
from which Richer took his own mental definition of probabilis and probabiliter, and second, by
comparing that definition to the text of his history to see how far Richer actually put into practice his
own claims. The results of this investigation will show that Richer had a precise understanding of the
meaning of probabiliter, and that, while he deployed this term to lay claim to the Ciceronian virtue of
plausibility in his prologue, he was not thereby admitting to writing anything other than the truth.
Narratio probabilis
In late tenth-century Reims the most important, and the most readily available, discussions of the
virtues of narrative were to be found in Cicero’s De inventione and in the commentary on the De
inventione by the fourth-century Neoplatonist scholar Marius Victorinus.
The De inventione was an
important handbook of rhetorical doctrine throughout late antiquity and the early middle ages, but in
the late tenth century both it and the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium began to be the focus
of intensive and renewed study, a development that led in the eleventh century to the production of
the first new commentaries on these works since late antiquity.
Richer’s dedicatee and intellectual
mentor, Gerbert of Aurillac, was himself an avowed Ciceronian and one of the most skilled rhetoricians
of his day.
After Gerbert became scholasticus of the cathedral school of Reims in 972, he overhauled
the study of rhetoric, seeking out new manuscripts of Cicero and Quintilian and incorporating
rhetorical debates (controversiae) into the curriculum.
As part of his curricular reforms, he revived the
25
See Lake, ‘Rhetorical and narrative studies’, 197–203; 213–70.
26
Marii Victorini explanationes in Ciceronis rhetoricam, ed. A. Ippolito (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 132, Turnhout,
2006).
27
Lawrence of Amalfi (d. after 1048) produced a gloss on the De inventione some time in the middle of the eleventh century.
Manegold of Lautenbach (c.1030–1103) wrote glosses on both the De inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium slightly later.
See John O. Ward, Ciceronian rhetoric in treatise, scholion, and commentary (Typologie des sources du moyen aˆge occidental 58,
Turnhout, 1995), 90, and more recently Ward, ‘Cicero’s De inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium: commentaries and
contexts’, in: The rhetoric of Cicero in its medieval and early renaissance commentary tradition, ed. V. Cox and J.O. Ward (Leiden,
2006), 3–69. For the proliferation of manuscripts of the De inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium beginning in the tenth
century see Birger Munk Olsen, L’E
´tude des auteurs classiques latins aux XI
e
et XII
e
sie`cles, 3 vols (Paris, 1982–89), vol. 1, 127–9.
28
There is no evidence that Richer was ever a student of Gerbert at the cathedral school of Reims, and I share the
opinion of Jason Glenn that Richer may have been too old by the time Gerbert arrived to have ever formally been his
student. See Glenn, ‘Master and community in tenth-century Reims’, in: Teaching and learning in northern Europe,
1000–1200, ed. S. Vaughn and J. Rubenstein (Turnhout, 2006), 51–68, at 62, note 35. However there is every reason to
think that Richer looked upon Gerbert as an intellectual mentor.
29
For an examination of the rhetorical curriculum at Reims under Gerbert’s tenure and evidence that Gerbert introduced
Victorinus to Reims, see Lake, ‘Rhetorical and narrative studies’, 150–207. For his pedagogy in general see Pierre Riche´, ‘L’En-
seignement de Gerbert a` Reims dans le contexte europe´en’, in: Gerberto, scienza, storia e mito. Atti del Gerberti Symposium (25–27
iuglio 1983), ed. M. Tosi (Piacenza, 1985); O. Darlington, ‘Gerbert, the teacher’, American Historical Review, 52 (1946/47), 456–76;
and He´le`ne Gasc, ‘Gerbert et la pe´dagogie des arts libe´raux a` la fin du dixie`me sie`cle’, Journal of Medieval History, 12 (1986),
111–21. For Gerbert’s Ciceronianism see letters 44 and 58 in Gerbert d’Aurillac: Correspondance, ed. Pierre Riche´ and J.P. Callu, 2
vols (Les Classiques de l’histoire de France au moyen aˆge, Paris, 1993).
J.C. Lake / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 221–238
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study of the De inventione at Reims and introduced the commentary of Victorinus there for the first
time.
Richer was clearly affected by, and almost certainly played a role in, the revival of Ciceronian
rhetoric at Reims. The Historiae is full of indications of the importance of formal rhetoric, from textual
allusions to the De inventione, to the dozens of speeches Richer wrote (most of whose marginal titles
contain terms like conquestio, indignatio, and deliberatio, which are termini technici of classical rhetoric),
to his recommendation of Gerbert’s Acta of the synod of Saint-Basle as a model text for students of
rhetoric.
Richer may also have been one of the scribes of Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, MS Class. 25,
a manuscript copied at Reims around the year 1000, which contained both the De inventione and the
Victorinus commentary.
We can be certain that Richer was familiar with the De inventione, and his
allusion to the virtues of narrative in the prologue would appear to be a conscious attempt to ascribe
the Ciceronian requirements for the narratio to his own work.
In classical rhetoric the term narratio was used to describe the second component of a formal
oration, in which the speaker recounted a version of events that best accorded with whatever he was
trying to persuade his audience of. Narratio could also be construed more broadly, however, to cover
any kind of narrative, including history. In the De inventione Cicero enumerates three types of narratio,
two of which involve ‘public issues’ (civiles causae) and one of which is unconnected to public issues.
This third type of narratio is subdivided into two categories, one organised chiefly around events, and
the other around people.
The former category includes three further subdivisions: fabula, historia,
and argumentum d the same categories of historical narrative defined by Isidore of Seville, who
derived his definitions of these terms directly or indirectly from the De inventione. Cicero, however,
does not define history in precisely the same terms as Isidore, but as gesta res, ab aetatis nostrae
memoria remota: ‘an account of actual occurrences remote from the recollection of our own age’.
Cicero clearly implies that history is a narrative based on true events. At the same time history, like
any other narratio, had to employ the tools of rhetoric if it was to persuade and delight its audience. The
most important of these tools was inventio, the ‘discovery’ of material. It is under the heading of
inventio that Cicero describes the three virtues of narrative: clarity, conciseness, and plausibility
(narratio aperta, narratio brevis, narratio probabilis).
The particular goal of narratio probabilis was to
persuade by appealing to certain beliefs that the speaker (or, in this case, the writer) believed the
audience would have. In order to establish plausibility in the narratio, the writer or speaker was
required to attend to a number of different factors. Cicero offers the following list: The narrative will be
plausible [.] if the proper qualities of the character are maintained, if reasons for their actions are
plain, if there seems to have been ability to do the deed, if it can be shown that the time was opportune,
the space sufficient and the place suitable for the events about to be narrated; if the story fits in with
the nature of the actors in it, the habits of ordinary people and the beliefs of the audience.’
30
For allusions to the De inventione see the index in Historiae, 318. At Historiae 4.73 Richer recommends Gerbert’s Acta of the
synod of Saint-Basle (991) as a work ‘composed with Ciceronian eloquence and a marvellously pleasant manner of expression.
It is filled with objections and responses, complaints and invectives, conjectures and definitions, and it very clearly and logically
employs major and minor premises and conclusions. It will be found very useful not only for those involved with cases that
come up before synods, but to all of those familiar with rhetorical issues.’
31
Hartmut Hoffmann, Bamberger Handschriften des 10. und des 11. Jahrhunderts (MGH, Schriften 39, Hanover, 1995), 22–3 and
27–8.
32
De inventione, 1.19.27: Narrationum genera tria sunt: unum genus est in quo ipsa causa et omnis ratio controversiae con-
tinetur; alterum, in quo digressio aliqua extra causam aut criminationis aut similitudinis aut delectationis non alienae ab eo
negotio quo de agitur aut amplificationis causa interponitur. Tertium genus est remotum a civilibus causis quod delectationis
causa non inutili cum exercitatione dicitur et scribitur.
33
De inventione, 1.19.27: Eius partes sunt duae, quarum altera in negotiis, altera in personis maxime versatur.
34
De inventione, 1.19.27, trans. H.M. Hubbell, Cicero. De inventione; De optime genere oratorum; Topica (Loeb Classical Library,
Cambridge, MA, 1949), 55.
35
De inventione, 1.20.28–21.29.
36
De inventione, 1.21.29; trans. Hubbell, 61: Probabilis erit narratio [.] si personarum dignitates servabuntur; si causae
factorum exstabunt; si fuisse facultates faciundi videbuntur; si tempus idoneum, si spatii satis, si locus opportunus ad eandem
rem, qua de re narrabitur, fuisse ostendetur; si res et ad eorum, qui agent, naturam et ad vulgi morem et ad eorum, qui audient,
opinionem accommodabitur.
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Marius Victorinus used a diagram to summarise the seven elements necessary for securing plau-
sibility in the narration: person (persona), deed (factum), cause (causa), place (locus), time (tempus),
method (modus), and means (facultas). Each one of these narrative elements corresponded to a ques-
tion: quis, quid, cur, ubi, quando, quomodo, and quibus adminiculis respectively.
He then notes that
Cicero rightly added an eighth element, opinion (opinio), because the narrative should accord with the
character of the speaker or defendant, the opinions of the judges, and the customs of the people.
A
writer who did not take into account each of these aspects of narrative risked undermining the
credibility (fides) of his account.
Of course, the historian was typically in no position to be informed about each of these individual
factors for every event that he recounted. In this case ‘discovery’ (inventio) of material for the narratio
became true ‘invention’, as the author was compelled to supplement what actually happened (the
verum) with inferences about the kind of thing that could have happened (the verisimile).
This was
a licit and entirely necessary procedure, for the demand that a narrative be probabilis did not require
that it be true, only that it seem to be true. As Cicero says when discussing the orator’s use of plausible
arguments: ‘That is probable which for the most part usually comes to pass, or which is a part of the
ordinary beliefs of mankind, or which contains in itself some resemblance to these qualities, whether
such resemblance be true or false.’
Thus, while the Ciceronian doctrine of narrative plausibility
demanded that the speaker or author take into account a wide range of circumstances in composing
a narratio, it also freed him from the restriction of limiting himself to information that was known to be
true.
If we analyse Richer’s history in terms of the various elements Cicero and Victorinus thought were
necessary in order to secure narrative plausibility, we find that in general terms he accounts for all of
them. Because the Historiae are written in a loosely annalistic framework and comprise a series of
smaller mini-narratives rather than the single master narrative envisioned by classical rhetoricians,
each of the Ciceronian elements of narrative is not fully developed in every scene or chapter. Yet Richer
attempts in most cases to flesh out his source material by introducing precisely those aspects of
narrative that were needed to create a sense of verisimilitude. He does this through rhetorical inventio,
by supplementing the facts available to him via Flodoard and oral traditions with the kinds of things
that very well could have happened.
A good example of the way in which Richer’s historical invention works in practice is found in Book
2, when he recounts the death of Count Heribert II of Vermandois (d.943), an ambitious and unscru-
pulous magnate who had aroused the particular ire of the Reims clergy by securing the archbishopric of
Reims for his five year-old son Hugh.
Flodoard provides a typically dispassionate one-sentence report
on his death: ‘Count Heribert died and his sons buried him at Saint-Quentin.’
Richer’s account of
Heribert’s death includes considerably more detail:
In the meantime, Heribert was plotting all manner of mischief and making detailed arrange-
ments for the ruin of certain people. While he was sitting among his men, dressed in his finery
and holding forth to them with an outstretched hand, he was struck with severe apoplexy
brought on by an excess of humours, and at the very moment when he was giving orders, his
hands contracted and his sinews grew tight, his mouth twisted up to his ears, he shuddered and
37
Marii Victorini explanationes in Ciceronis rhetoricam, 1.21, ed. Ippolito, 94: nam in his septem omnis ad fidem argumentatio
continetur.
38
Marii Victorini explanationes in Ciceronis rhetoricam, 1.21, ed. Ippolito, 94.
39
De inventione, 1.7.9: inventio est excogitatio rerum verarum aut veri similium quae causam probabilem reddant; Victorinus,
Marii Victorini explanationes in Ciceronis rhetoricam, 1.7, ed. Ippolito, 45: Inventionem esse dicit ad negotii fidem aut verarum
rerum aut veri similium excogitationem; sed orator in veri similibus maxime versatur.
40
De inventione, 1.29.46; trans. Hubbell, 85, 87: Probabile autem est id quod fere solet fieri aut in opinione positum est aut
quod habet in se ad haec quandam similitudinem, sive id falsum est sive verum.
41
See Helmut Schwager, Graf Heribert II. von Soissons, Omois, Meaux, Madrie sowie Vermandois (900/06-943) und die Francia
(Nord-Frankreich) in der ersten Ha
¨lfte des 10. Jahrhunderts (Mu¨nchener historische Studien, Abteilung Mittelalterliche Geschichte
6, Kallmu¨nz (Opf.) 1994).
42
Flodoard, Annales, sub anno 943, ed. Lauer, 87: Heribertus comes obiit, quem sepelierunt apud sanctum Quintinum filii sui.
J.C. Lake / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 221–238
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his hair stood up on end, and right in front of his men he unexpectedly dropped dead. He was
taken up by his men and buried at Saint-Quentin.
This account of Heribert’s demise is not found in any other source, and there is no reason to think it
is based on anything other than Richer’s imagination, particularly since he took his account of the
symptoms preceding Heribert’s death directly from a medical manuscript he had read at Chartres.
The story was not, strictly speaking, true. It was, however, entirely plausible, and entirely fitting, given
the wickedness of Heribert’s life.
This passage is just one example of the way in which Richer deployed the doctrine of narratio
probabilis. In some cases his changes to Flodoard’s annals were subtler; in some cases they were even
more extensive. In every instance, however, he expanded upon Flodoard by providing the components
of narrative that annals almost inevitably lacked: detailed descriptions of people, places, occasions, and
things; explicit connections between cause and effect; and, perhaps most importantly, the analysis of
motive. The text of the Historiae itself suggests that, contra Schulz, Richer was very much aware of the
precise meaning of probabiliter, and that he used this term consciously and deliberately in his prologue
in order to lay claim to the narrative virtue of plausibility.
In order to confirm this hypothesis, however, a further potential objection must be dealt with, an
objection based upon Richer’s own use of the term probabilis. For apart from the prologue Richer
employs the word probabiliter in several instances where it appears to imply something much closer to
the truth than what is merely ‘plausible’ or ‘readily believable’. In Book 2, for example, he tells the story of
the rivalry between Bishop Derold of Amiens and an unnamed doctor from Salerno, both of whom served
in a medical capacity at the court of Charles the Simple. In an effort to determine which of the two men
had a superior understanding of medicine, the king invited them both to dine with him over a period of
several days, during which time he posed a number of questions to each of them. ‘Derold’, Richer tells us,
‘as one who had been educated in the arts of letters, defined what was put to him probabiliter.’
A similar usage is found in Richer’s account of the disputation between Gerbert and the Saxon
schoolmaster Otric of Magdeburg before the court of Otto II at Ravenna in 981.
The disputation was
occasioned by Otric’s claim that Gerbert was promulgating an incorrect taxonomy of the different
branches of knowledge (divisio philosophiae) among his students d a claim that Richer points out was
untrue.
Before the emperor and an audience of learned men Gerbert emphasised that he subscribed
to the correct and authoritative divisio philosophiae, a division, he pointed out, that he recently
demonstrated probabiliter dilucideque.
Shortly after his account of the disputation, Richer lauds the newly crowned emperor Otto II for his
learning, drawing particular attention to his skill at disputation: ‘[He was] a man characterised by great
intellectual ability and the possession of every virtue, and renowned for his knowledge of the liberal arts,
to the point that when engaging in a disputation he could state propositions in accordance with the rules
43
Richer, Historiae, 2.37: His ita sese habentibus, cum Heribertus quaeque pernitiosa pertractaret, ac de quorundam calam-
itate multa disponeret, cum inter suos in veste preciosa sederet, atque apud illos extensa manu concionaretur, maiore apoplexia
ob superfluitatem humorum captus, in ipsa rerum ordinatione constrictis manibus nervisque contractis, ore etiam in aurem
distorto, cum multo horrore et horripilatione coram suis inconsultus expiravit. Susceptusque a suis, apud sanctum Quintinum
sepultus est.
44
The manuscript is Chartres, Bibliothe`que municipale, MS 62, which Richer must have read during his journey there in 991.
See L.C. MacKinney, ‘Tenth-century medicine as seen in the Historia of Richer of Reims’, Bulletin of the Institute of the History of
Medicine, 2 (1934), 347–75, at 366 and note 49. Richer’s version of Heribert’s death differs significantly from the contemporary
accounts of Rodulf Glaber, Historiae 1.3, in: The five books of the histories, ed. J. France (Oxford, 1989), and Folcuin of Lobbes, Gesta
abbatum S. Bertini Sithiensium, ch. 102, ed. O. Holder-Egger (MGH SS 13, Hanover, 1881), 626. See also Philippe Lauer, Le re`gne de
Louis IV d’Outre-mer (Paris, 1900), 292–9.
45
Richer, Historiae, 2.59: Deroldus quidem utpote litterarum artibus eruditus, probabiliter obiecta diffiniebat.
46
Richer, Historiae, 3.57–65. See Kortu¨m, Richer von Saint-Remi, 83–92.
47
Richer, Historiae, 3.56. Based on misinformation brought back to him by a spy he had sent to Reims, Otric wrongly accused
Gerbert of treating phisica as a division of mathematica. According to the Aristotelian and Boethian divisio philosophiae, physics,
mathematics, and theology were all subdivisions of theoretical knowledge.
48
Richer, Historiae, 3.59: Nec me movebit malivolorum livor, quorum instinctu id factum est, ut rectissima philosophiae
divisio, probabiliter dilucideque a me nuper ordinata, unius speciei suppositione vitiata sit. At 3.60 Otric demands that Gerbert
complete his division: sicque fieri poterit, ut ex probabili divisione, vitiosae figurae suspicio a te removeatur.
J.C. Lake / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 221–238
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of the art and draw readily believable conclusions.’
In each of these passages the adverb probabiliter is
used to describe the formulation of arguments or propositions that appear to come much closer to the
truth than mere plausibility, at least as that term is defined by Cicero in the De inventione. It hardly seems
possible that Richer meant to imply that Derold’s definitions of medical terms, Gerbert’s divisio
philosophiae, and Otto II’s propositions were plausible in the same way that an orator’s tendentious and
partly fictionalised narratio was plausible. But if probabiliter does mean ‘truly’ or ‘correctly’ in these cases,
then we must confront the possibility that Richer used this term with the same meaning in his prologue.
So was Richer using probabiliter to mean one thing in his prologue and another thing in these passages?
To answer this question, we must recognise the distinction between plausibility as predicated of
a narrative and plausibility as predicated of an argument, specifically a dialectical argument. In the
passages cited above, Derold, Gerbert, and Otto are not devising rhetorical narratives; they are prac-
tising dialectic. Derold defines terms, Gerbert divides the different branches of knowledge into genera
and species, and Otto practises syllogistic reasoning. Definition, division, and deduction are all oper-
ations that fell under the heading of dialectic, and plausibility as a term of art in dialectic differed in
important ways from plausibility as a virtue of narrative. Crucial for resolving the apparent inconsis-
tency with which Richer uses the word probabiliter in these examples and in the prologue is the fact
that dialectical plausibility did, in fact, usually imply something much closer to the truth than narrative
plausibility. The reasons for this are twofold.
In the first place, dialectical plausibility was not established through a process of rhetorical
invention. Invention in dialectic was a matter of discovering the correct argumentative strategies, or
topics, to pursue when debating one’s opponent. Plausibility was located in the arguments themselves;
it was not established by introducing circumstantial details such as ‘qualities of character’ (personarum
dignitates) and ‘causes of action’ (causae factorum) d details that were essential for making a narrative
plausible.
Hence, while dialecticians employed arguments and drew conclusions that were ‘readily
believable’ (probabilis) rather than necessarily true, they were not, like orators or historians, in the
business of inventing plausible fictions.
They were making arguments that could be accepted as true.
More importantly, no matter how impeccable the logic of a dialectical argument, by definition it
could not advance beyond the level of plausibility or ready believability. This is spelled out explicitly in
the works of Boethius, whose corpus of translations and commentaries provided the foundation for the
study of dialectic in the early middle ages. Boethius drew a distinction between logical demonstration
(demonstratio), which employed true premises and drew necessarily true conclusions, and dialectical
disputation (dialectica), which used premises that were generally accepted and led to conclusions that
appeared to be true, or were generally thought to be true.
The term he used to describe the premises
and conclusions of dialectic was probabilis: ‘readily believable’.
In his commentaries on Porphyry’s
Isagoge and Cicero’s Topics d both texts that were studied at Reims in Richer’s time d Boethius equated
the probabilis with the verisimilis and defined these terms to mean what is ‘not contrary to belief’ (non
praeter opinionem).
In his treatise On differential topics (De topicis differentiis), Boethius defined
probabile in the following terms:
49
Richer, Historiae, 3.67: Vir magni ingenii totiusque virtutis, liberalium litterarum scientia clarus, adeo ut in disputando ex
arte et proponeret, et probabiliter concluderet.
50
De inventione, 1.21.29.
51
Eleonore Stump’s rendering of probabilis as ‘readily believable’ is the most accurate translation of this term. I have
continued to use the translation ‘plausible’ for the sake of simplicity.
52
Boethius, De topicis differentiis, in: Patrologia Latina, ed. J-P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–64), vol. 64, cols 1181C–1182A. For
a translation of this work and a detailed analysis of how Boethius’s dialectical topics could actually be used, see Eleonore Stump,
Boethius’s ‘De topicis differentiis’ (Ithaca, NY, 1978), esp. 179–204.
53
Aristotle used the term
3
’
nd
o´
x
o
2
/
3
’
nd
o´
xa
to describe premises that were accepted, as opposed to demonstrably true. Boethius
translated
3
’
nd
o´
x
o
2
/
3
’
nd
o´
xa
as probabilis/probabilia.
54
In his translation and commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge, Boethius translates
l
o
giku
´
ser
o
n
(Isagoge 1.2) as probabiliter,
which he then defines as verisimiliter: probabiliter autem ait, id est verisimiliter, quod Graeci
l
o
gik
~
u2
vel
3
’
nd
o´
xu2
dicunt. See In
Isagogen Porphyrii commenta, 2.1.11, ed. S. Brandt (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 48, Vienna, 1906), 168.
Boethius goes on to explain why probabiliter is a more accurate translation than rationabiliter: Longe enim melior ac verior
significatio ea visa est, ut probabiliter sese dicere promitteret, id est non praeter opinionem ingredientium atque lectorum,
quod introductionis est proprium.
J.C. Lake / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 221–238
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Something is readily believable if it seems true to everyone or to most people or to the wise
d
and of the wise, either to all of them or most of them or to those most famous and distin-
guished d or to an expert in his own field [.] or, finally, if it seems true to the person with
whom one is having the conversation or who is judging it. In this the truth or falsity of the
argument makes no difference, if only it has the appearance of truth.
This definition of plausibility is almost identical to the one that Cicero gives when discussing
rhetorical arguments in the De inventione.
Both dialecticians and orators, after all, made use of
plausible arguments (not to be confused with plausible narratives) in order to convince their audiences.
Nonetheless, there were important differences between dialectical and rhetorical arguments.
In his
definition of probabile from On differential topics, for example, Boethius emphasises the judgement of
experts and the wise in determining plausibility. This is because the validity of a dialectical argument
was determined by a specialist audience or by the participants themselves, not by the reaction of the
crowd or the opinions of judges. Dialectic, moreover, engaged with general philosophical questions
(‘should a man marry?’), while rhetoric focused on particular issues involving specific people (‘should
Cicero marry?’). Dialectic used syllogisms, while rhetoric used enthymemes.
Yet both dialectical and
rhetorical argument shared the same goal: they both aimed to establish belief rather than to prove
necessary truths. To see why this should be the case, we must consider the distinction Boethius makes
between necessary and plausible arguments
‘Something is necessary’, Boethius says, ‘if it is as it is said to be and cannot be otherwise.’
There
were two types of necessarily true arguments or propositions. First, there were those that were both
necessarily true and readily believable, for example ‘if something is added to a certain thing, the whole
is made greater.’
Then there were propositions, such as geometrical theorems, which, while they
were necessarily true, were not immediately obvious, and so not readily believable.
The believability
of necessarily true propositions, however, made no difference as long as it was truth that was being
investigated. According to Boethius, the analysis of necessary truths took the form of demonstration
(demonstratio), a form of logical discourse proper to the philosopher, rather than the dialectician.
There could be no real dispute about necessary truths. The philosopher did not seek to persuade; he
demonstrated.
The opposite was true for the dialectician and for the orator who used dialectical arguments.
Because their object was to persuade rather than to demonstrate, they were interested only in what
was readily believable, rather than what was necessarily true. The dialectician could employ some
necessarily true premises and arguments, but only the ones that were also readily believable. And,
unlike the philosopher engaged in demonstratio, the dialectician could also employ arguments that
were readily believable but not necessarily true, for example, ‘if she is his mother, she loves him.’
The
use of readily believable arguments was a defining feature of dialectical argumentation, and it is easy to
see why. For if all of the arguments or premises upon which an argument was based were necessarily
true, then there could be no subject for debate, only a more or less complex process of demonstratio.
The other key difference between dialectical disputation and demonstration was that the parties in
a dialectical disputation only debated over the plausibility of propositions, not their truth. ‘The
55
De topicis differentiis, col. 1180C–D, trans. Stump, 39: Probabile vero est quod videtur vel omnibus, vel pluribus, vel sapi-
entibus, et his vel omnibus, vel pluribus, vel maxime notis atque praecipuis, vel quod unicuique artifici secundum propriam
facultatem [.] id praeterea quod videtur ei cum quo sermo conseritur, vel ipsi qui iudicat, in quo nihil attinet verum falsumve
sit argumentum, si tantum verisimilitudinem teneat.
56
De inventione, 1.29.46.
57
De topicis differentiis, cols 1205C–1206D.
58
An enthymeme was an imperfect or incomplete syllogism in which one of the terms was missing or the major premise was
plausible rather than true. See Lausberg x 371.
59
De topicis differentiis, col. 1180C; trans. Stump, 39.
60
De topicis differentiis, col. 1180D; trans. Stump, 40.
61
De topicis differentiis, col. 1181B.
62
De topicis differentiis, col. 1182A. See also Stump, 41: ‘The philosopher and demonstrator investigates only truth alone; and it
makes no difference whether the arguments are readily believable or not, provided they are necessary.’
63
De topicis differentiis, col. 1180D.
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dialectician and the orator’, Boethius explains, ‘occupy themselves with a kind of argument common to
them both, for each of them aims at arguments that are readily believable, whether they are necessary
or not.’
This statement is the key to explaining why Richer uses the term probabiliter when describing the
definitions of Derold, the divisions of Gerbert, and the syllogisms of Otto II. The participants in a dia-
lectical disputation were only concerned to make their arguments plausible. They might also happen to
be true, but this was outside the compass of dialectic proper. Thus, the word probabiliter in these
passages does not refer to the same sort plausibility that is used to judge the effectiveness of
a rhetorical narratio. Here the word probabilis refers to the highest level of truth that can be achieved in
a dialectical disputation: ‘ready believability’.
Given Richer’s formidable education, it is all but certain that he had studied Boethian logic in some
detail. Reims was famous for the study of dialectic even before Gerbert took up the post of scholasticus
there in 972.
After Gerbert became the master of the cathedral school, he continued to teach an
impressive body of dialectical works, including Boethius’s ‘On differential topics’ and his commentaries on
Porphyry’s ‘Isagoge’ and Cicero’s ‘Topics’.
Reims in the last three decades of the tenth century was
a centre of both dialectical and rhetorical studies, and Richer was one of the most educated men in an elite
intellectual milieu. There is no reason to doubt that he understood the difference in connotation between
plausibility as predicated of a dialectical argument and plausibility as predicated of a historical narrative.
Fundamenta and exaedificatio
I hope that I have now persuaded the reader of two things: first, that Richer was deliberately echoing
the De inventione in his prologue in an attempt to lay claim to the Ciceronian virtues of narrative; and
second, that he understood precisely what probabiliter meant when applied to a historical narrative, as
opposed to a dialectical argument. Now according to Cicero and Victorinus a narrative was probabilis if
it accounted for the seven narrative circumstances of persona, factum, causa, locus, tempus, modus, and
facultas, and if it had the appearance of truth, whether or not it really was true. So, in staking a claim to
the plausibility of his history, was Richer ipso facto revealing that he had consciously applied a standard
less rigorous than that of res verae to his work? Was this an admission to his audience that his history
was made up of plausible falsehoods?
The answer to this question, I think, is no, but not because Richer really meant veraciter when he
wrote probabiliter. It is because, in the classical tradition of history-writing to which he was heir, truth
and plausibility were separate and distinct standards that applied to different parts of the historian’s
composition. Truth was established through two practices: the use of well-attested facts (dates, people,
places, and events) as the basis (fundamenta) for a historical narrative and the recounting of these facts
64
De topicis differentiis, col. 1191D; trans. Stump, 41.
65
Another example of dialectical plausibility in Richer’s history is found at 3.35. Here Richer describes Abbot Rodulf of
Saint-Re´mi’s use of a dialectical topic to produce a readily believable (probabile) argument. At an assembly of abbots, Rodulf
fulminates against the custom of intimate friendships between monks. To emphasise how contrary to nature such friendships
are he declares: si [.] compater est, ut a verisimili probabile efferam, cum eo qui pater est ipse est et pater (‘If [.] someone is
a compater, then to adduce the plausible from the verisimilar, he is a father with one who is also a father himself’). Here Rodulf
employs the topic of notatio or etymologia, according to which a word is a symbol or token (nota) of its own meaning. See
Cicero, Topica, 8.35 and Boethius, In Ciceronis topica, ed. J. Orelli and G. Baiter, Ciceronis opera quae supersunt omnia, 8 vols
(Zurich, 1833–38), vol. 5, part 1, 336–7. The meaning of compater (‘with a father’) is inferred from the form of the word itself:
cum þ pater.
66
The opportunity to study with Gerannus, a celebrated teacher of dialectic, brought Gerbert to Reims in the first place. See
Richer, Historiae, 3.45.
67
Richer, Historiae, 2.46. According to Richer, Gerbert also taught Aristotle’s Categories and On Interpretation, and Boethius’s
On the categorical syllogism and On hypothetical syllogisms, as well as the treatises ‘On definition’ and ‘On division’. He states that
Gerbert used Marius Victorinus’s translation of Porphyry’s Isagoge, but this work is no longer extant and was almost certainly
not available at Reims. He must instead be referring to Boethius’s translation of the Isagoge, the first edition of which contained
many quotations from Victorinus’s translation. See Pierre Hadot, Marius Victorinus. Recherches sur sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris,
1971), 20, note 108; 367–9; and Richer, Historiae, 193, note 3. On definition was thought for a long time to have been written by
Boethius (as Richer himself thinks), but the author was actually Marius Victorinus. See John Marenbon, Boethius (Oxford, 2003),
13–14; 184, note 18.
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in a non-biased way.
The narrative virtue of plausibility, on the other hand, was located in the
rhetorical superstructure built on top of this basis of fact, the exaedificatio.
The earliest and most influential discussion of this distinction between fundamenta and exaedificatio
is found in the speech of Marcus Antonius in Cicero’s De oratore, a speech that is thought to accurately
reflect Cicero’s own views about history-writing.
Antonius famously alludes to a ‘first law of history’:
that one should say nothing that is false and keep silent about nothing that is true.
As Tony Woodman
has shown, this statement is not quite an endorsement of modern standards of historical writing. First of
all, Antonius implies that the requirement of truthfulness applies only to the basic framework of facts,
the fundamenta. Second, Antonius (and thus Cicero) construes truth and falsehood primarily in terms of
partiality (gratia) and bias (simultas). ‘Contrary to what scholars have generally believed’, Woodman
notes, ‘Cicero in the De oratore does not present truth as the opposite of what we would call fiction.’
Not only did Cicero not rule out the use of plausible fictions by the historian, he explicitly endorsed
them, both in the De inventione and in the De oratore.
For Cicero, proper history could only be written by
an orator, someone who could construct a rhetorical superstructure (exaedificatio) over the basic foun-
dation of facts. In constructing this edifice, the historian was expected both to add new content (res) and to
express that content in suitable language (verba). This is precisely what Richer laid claim to in his prologue
when he stated that he would use different words and an entirely different rhetorical form from Flodoard.
It was in the construction of the exaedificatio that plausibility became a virtue because the historian was
obliged to provide an account of narrative circumstances d place and time, the motivations and intentions
of historical actors, the causes and effects of their actions d about which he could often only make
educated guesses. Moreover, like the orator constructing the narratio of a speech in order to convince an
audience of his arguments, the historian had to present the facts in a manner that supported whatever
point he was trying to make. As long as he was not motivated by naked partisanship or bias, he was
allowed d indeed, called upon d to amplify those facts by dressing them up in plausible fictions.
The De oratore was copied at Reims at Gerbert’s behest, and it is tempting to imagine that Richer was
influenced by Marcus Antonius’ discussion of historiographical method.
It is not necessary to posit
a direct connection between the De oratore and Richer, however, for Cicero’s ideas about the applicability
of rhetoric to history had become normative by the early middle ages.
Ciceronian influence is evident,
for example, in the definition of history found among the rhetorical excerpts of Paris, Bibliothe`que
nationale, MS lat. 7530, a compilation of mostly grammatical and rhetorical texts copied at Monte
Cassino between 779 and 796: ‘History is the recounting of deeds that are worthy of memory. Its subject
is either warfare or civil affairs, that is, those of peacetime. The historian has a threefold duty: to expound
what is true, and to do so clearly, and concisely. [Historical] content is true if the antiquity and obscurity
of past actions are carefully investigated, and if, after they have been investigated, it is related without
fear, partisanship, or malice.’
Here we find the familiar idea that historical truth is guaranteed by two
practices: a careful enquiry to establish a framework of facts, and an accounting of those facts free from
prejudice or partisanship. Left implicit in this definition is the idea that any history that was diligently
68
Cicero, De oratore, 2.53, ed. A.S. Wilkins (Oxford, 1902).
69
De oratore, 2.51–64. For this paragraph I am indebted to the insights of A.J. Woodman, ‘Theory: Cicero’, in: Rhetoric in
classical historiography. Four studies (London, 1988), 70–116, and esp. 70–95.
70
De oratore, 2.62: Nam quis nescit primam esse historiae legem, ne quid falsi dicere audeat? Deinde ne quid veri non audeat?
Ne qua suspicio gratiae sit in scribendo, ne qua simultatis.
71
Woodman, ‘Theory: Cicero’, 83.
72
He does so implicitly at De inventione, 1.19.27 by defining history as a kind of narratio. Antonius’s discussion of
historiography at De oratore, 2.51–64 makes this point more clearly.
73
The colophon of Erlangen, Universita¨tsbibliothek, MS 380, a manuscript that contains the De oratore, indicates that it was
copied for Gerbert by a monk named Ayrard between 983 and 991, during the period when Gerbert was assembling his
rhetorical library at Reims. See Hoffmann, Bamberger Handschriften, 23 and note 59.
74
See Ray, ‘The triumph of Greco-Roman rhetorical assumptions’.
75
Excerpta rhetorica, in: Rhetores Latini minores, ed. Karl Halm (Leipzig, 1863), 585–9, at 588, ll. 18–22: Historia est rerum
gestarum et dignarum memoria relatio: ea versatur aut in rebus bellicis aut in negotiis civilibus, id est pacis. Historici officii sunt
tria: ut veras res, ut dilucide, ut breviter exponat. Verae res sunt, si rerum actarum vetustas et obscuritas diligenter exploretur, si
explorata libere, id est sine metu aut gratia aut invidia referatur. For the manuscript see Ward, ‘Cicero’s De inventione and the
Rhetorica ad Herennium’, 12–16.
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researched and not written with overt bias could be accepted as true. This definition of truth gave the
historian ample licence to expand the factual framework of history through rhetorical exaedificatio.
In Cicero’s view, then, which remained highly influential in the middle ages, the historian’s task was
to take the basic facts of history, uncontaminated by bias, and to turn these facts into a convincing and
appealing narrative through the techniques of rhetorical invention. From the perspective of modern
historical scholarship, these techniques were guaranteed to produce distortions. But this was not the
view of either classical or medieval historians, who viewed rhetorical amplification as a necessary part
of history writing. Plausibility was not simply a watered-down version of truth used by historians. It
was a separate and distinct standard applied to the practice of rhetorical exaedificatio. Thus, when
Richer claims to write probabiliter he is making a positive claim about the narrative superstructure of
his work, but no claim at all about its truth value.
This may help to explain why medieval historians before Richer tended not to say anything about
the plausibility of their work. Only a historian who was deliberately attempting to comply with the
Ciceronian prescriptions for historical narrative would have considered plausibility to be a virtue
(rather than a necessity), and only a historian consciously writing rhetorically inflected history in the
classical mould would have proudly laid claim to the plausibility, rather than the truthfulness, of his
history. The fact that Richer says nothing about truth does show that he was not overly concerned with
proving the accuracy of his work to his audience. This is not quite the same thing, however, as an
admission that he was writing falsehoods, for the factual framework of his history was essentially
sound. Richer took his fundamenta from authoritative written sources such as Flodoard’s annals and
History of the church of Reims, the letters of Gerbert, and the Acta of synods. These sources were
sufficiently truthful because they had been written down by well-known and reputable authors.
Richer’s task was to take this material and turn it into a convincing and appealing narrative by erecting
over it a new rhetorical superstructure, or, in his words, by encompassing it in a different scema ora-
tionis. To call his history probabilis was to pay Richer a high compliment. Plausibility was what Cicero
himself had demanded of narrative history.
Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Gesta Normannorum
Plausibility and truth, then, were not mutually exclusive terms. History could be, and the best narrative
history was supposed to be, both plausible and true. This helps to explain why Richer’s contemporary,
and fellow historian, Dudo of Saint-Quentin (c.960–1026) could, at different points in his history of the
dukes of Normandy, allude to both the truth and the plausibility of his work.
Dudo was educated in
the schools of northern Francia (perhaps at Lie`ge), and his training in rhetoric must have been similar to
that offered at Reims.
Not coincidentally, his work shares many important features with the Historiae.
The rhetorical techniques of exaedificatio d speechwriting, dialogue, and, a highly ornate prose style
d
pervade Dudo’s history.
He indulges in plausible fictions as much as, if not more so, than Richer,
and like Richer he alludes to the virtues of narrative in talking about his work.
Dudo prefaces the third book of his history with an 82-line poem in which he likens his venture into
the turbulent waters of history-writing to the apostle Peter’s fitful attempts to walk on water during the
storm (Matt. 14:22–32).
Dudo prays to Christ to support him in his efforts, as he once supported Peter
on the waves. Specifically, he asks for help with the rhetorical exaedificatio of his work:
Edifying my mind with the seven-fold nectar of the Spirit,
My heart with the spark of rhetoric’s flood,
76
De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum, ed. Jules Lair (Paris, 1861), more commonly known as the Gesta Nor-
mannorum. See also the English translation and commentary by Eric Christiansen, Dudo of St Quentin. History of the Normans
(Woodbridge, 1998). For an analysis of how Dudo conceived of the truth of his history see Shopkow, History and community,
126–9. Richer’s last datable entry to the Historiae is a notice of the appointment of Gerbert to the archbishopric of Ravenna in
998, which is found in a series of annalistic jottings on f. 57v. Dudo began work in 996 and stopped writing at some point
around 1020. See Christiansen, Dudo of St Quentin, xi–xii.
77
Leah Shopkow, ‘The Carolingian world of Dudo of Saint-Quentin’, Journal of Medieval History, 15 (1989), 19–37.
78
Richer, it should be pointed out, does not use the same kind of highly ornamented prose style that Dudo does.
79
De moribus, 3, pref., ed. Lair, 177–8; trans. Christiansen, 55–6, and see 198, note 225.
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And my tongue with the three-part proposition,
You will sprinkle them from the fount of health-giving knowledge,
So that the narrative of this history, which we will reveal,
Will be concise and plausible,
And from this it will be clear to the discerning man.
May the brevity of the partition shine out in the diction
And may each explanation be entirely clear.
Let the small number of characters be tied
To the genre, and let the application of rhetoric
Be derived from the facts and the theme.
This part of the poem is a kind of inventory of the ways in which Dudo wants to apply the technical
precepts of rhetoric to his history. He asks for God’s help to make the narrative concise (brevis), plausible
(probabilis) and clear (apertus); he seeks ‘brevity in partition’ (partitus brevitas);
a small number of
characters (paucitas personae) who will be ‘tied to the genre’ (nectatur generi); and he asks that a proper
application of rhetorical techniques be developed from the facts at his disposal and his chosen theme
(exque datis atque negotio/ sumatur ratio rhetoricabilis).
These last lines serve as a perfect encapsu-
lation of the distinction between fundamenta and exaedificatio. The data and negotia that Dudo
mentions are the basis of history d the people, places, names, and events. Dudo has set himself the
ambitious task of applying the appropriate rhetorical superstructure (ratio rhetoricabilis) to this foun-
dation, and it is this that is causing him particular anxiety as he draws near to the middle of his work.
In a subsequent poem Dudo reiterates his belief that a historical narrative must be plausible. He
prefaces Book 4 of the Gesta Normannorum with a series of poems sung by the Muses in honour of his
first patron, Duke Richard I of Normandy. Clio, the Muse of history, is the first of the nine to speak. She
notes that it is her right ‘to tell posterity stories of things of the believable order’ (credibili ordine).
Credibilis here is a synonym for probabilis. For Dudo the task of history as a literary art form (personified
by Clio) was to render the deeds of the past believable, and this was achieved through the application of
the techniques of rhetorical invention.
Dudo, like Richer, viewed the virtues of narrative as a stylistic ideal, and the contents of his history
show that he strove to meet the demands of narrative plausibility with considerable enthusiasm. As is
the case with Richer’s Historiae, the techniques of rhetorical invention in Dudo’s work are most obviously
on display in certain types of set-pieces, most notably speeches, dialogue (sermocinatio), and descrip-
tions of people, places, and events.
But whereas Richer’s principal task was to expand upon Flodoard’s
annals by attending to each of the narrative elements required to secure plausibility, Dudo did not have
a similarly authoritative source to serve as the framework for his history. As a consequence, narratio
probabilis for Dudo extended beyond adding plausible details to previously recorded historical events or
making conjectures about the kinds of things that were likely to have been said or done in a certain
historical situation. The process of inventio for Dudo entailed a great deal of outright invention.
This was particularly true when it came to writing the early history of the Normans, a period for
which there were no written sources, only oral traditions. The rhetorical requirements of narrative
80
De moribus, 3, pref., ed. Lair, 177–8, ll. 66–77, reading famen for flamen at l. 73: Mentem septifidi nectare Spiritus, / Et cor
rhetorici fomite gurgitis, / Et linguam trimodo proloquio struens, / Asperges salubris fonte scientiae; / Narratus brevis ut sitque
probabilis, / Atque hinc exstet apertus homini scio / Hujus historiae, quam reserabimus. / Partitus brevitas famine splendeat, / In
toto niteat quaeque solutio: / Nectatur generi sic quoque paucitas / Personae, exque datis, atque negotio / Sumatur ratio
rhetoricabilis. I have departed somewhat from Christiansen’s translation.
81
The partition (partitio) or division (divisio) was the part of a speech following the narratio in which the speaker first outlined
the areas of dispute between himself and his opponent and then enumerated the points he was going to discuss. See De
inventione, 1.22.31.
82
Christiansen, 198, note 226, states that Dudo drew upon Martianus Capella, De nuptiis 5.551 for the virtues of narrative. This
is possible, but Martianus Capella uses the terms lucida and veri similis, not Dudo’s aperta and probabilis, vocabulary that instead
reflects the De inventione.
83
De moribus, 4, ed. Lair, 211: Iuris namque mei credibili ordine rerum historias reddere posteris, trans., Christiansen, 86.
84
For a particularly elaborate description see Dudo’s account of the reaction to Richard I’s death; De moribus, 4.129, ed. Lair, 298–9.
85
For a concise summary of the inaccuracies and distortions in Dudo’s work see Christiansen, xvi.
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historiography gave Dudo the freedom to take what scanty information there was about mysterious
early Norman leaders such as Hasting (Alstignus) and Rollo and expand it into proper history by
reconstructing a plausible version of their deeds. In the case of Rollo and his descendants, William
Longsword and Richard I, Dudo’s deployment of narratio probabilis often veered into panegyric, as he
attributed words and deeds to his Norman protagonists that historically-minded readers can only treat
with extreme scepticism. While the ultimate purpose of Dudo’s history remains elusive, it is clear that
he used the fictional licence afforded to historians by the doctrines of Ciceronian rhetoric to invent
much of the early history of the Normans and to burnish the reputations of his Norman patrons, Dukes
Richard I and Richard II, and their forebears, Rollo and William Longsword.
However, the fact that Dudo exploited the fictional potential of narratio probabilis so fully did not
prevent him from also claiming that what he wrote was true, and, in contrast to Richer, he does at least
allude to the truth value of his work. In his dedicatory epistle to Bishop Adalbero of Laon (c.950–c.1031)
Dudo states that after the death of his original patron, Duke Richard I, he was urged to keep writing by
Richard II and Count Rolf, who insisted that his history avoid the ‘vice of ambiguity’ (bilinguitatis vitium)
and be free from ‘any stain of falsehood’ (ullo mendacii inquinamento). Dudo follows this with a stan-
dard prefatory topos, telling Adalbero that he has sent him his history so that ‘its untruths may be
removed, and whatever truth (quid veritatis) it contains may be corroborated by your authority.’
Towards the end of Book 1, Dudo tells the reader that he will not dwell on all the hardships endured by
the Franks during the time of the Viking invasions. Instead, he will be brief; he will ‘state the truth of
the matter (rei veritatem), and reject misleading sophistry’.
Neither this statement, nor his references
to his patrons’ desire for historical accuracy, nor his formulaic request for corrections from Adalbero
can be said to qualify as a ringing endorsement of the truth of his own work. However, they do
demonstrate that Dudo adhered at least superficially to the principle that history should be true.
Conclusion: fictional truth in Adalbero of Laon’s Carmen ad Rotbertum regem
Neither Richer nor Dudo saw any contradiction in the idea that a history could be true and at the same time
subject to amplification by way of rhetorical invention. Thus we need not assume that historians who
claimed to write plausibly, or who claimed to recount things that could have happened (quae geri potuerunt)
in addition to what had actually happened (quae vere gesta sunt), did not understand the full import of what
they were saying.
When Richer states that he will write probabiliter and Dudo prays for a narratus
probabilis, they are not talking about truth; they are laying claim to the narrative virtue of plausibility. The
fact that plausibility was not felt to be inconsistent with truth in spite of the fact that it was established
through the use of credible fictions and the invention of unknowable details seems strange to us. None-
theless, the medieval understanding of historical truth was sufficiently flexible to allow it.
As a coda to this investigation of the co-existence of truth and plausibility in medieval historiography,
it is worth briefly examining a revealing passage from another contemporary source, the Carmen ad
Rotbertum regem of Adalbero of Laon (the same Adalbero to whom Dudo addressed his dedicatory
letter).
Like Richer and Dudo, Adalbero had been trained in Ciceronian rhetoric, first near Metz and
86
For the possible purpose(s) of Dudo’s history see Christiansen, xxiii–xxix, and Shopkow, History and community, 173–88.
87
De moribus, epistola panegerica, ed. Lair, 120: Tuae majestati mittere disposui, ut falsa amputarentur, et si quid veritatis in
illo haberetur, tua auctoritate confirmaretur; trans. Christiansen, 6. For the author’s request for emendations and corrections as
a topos see Simon, ‘Untersuchungen zur Topik der Widmungsbriefe’, part II, 124–9. It is possible that one of the motivations
behind Dudo’s use of the topos of correction here was to absolve himself of responsibility for the plausible fictions he included
in his history, fictions that doubtless would not have bothered his Norman patrons, but which might have raised eyebrows
among other readers d particularly those not necessarily sympathetic to the Normans.
88
De moribus, 2.8, ed. Lair, 137: exprimatque rei veritatem, spernens sophismatis errorem, trans. Christiansen, 22.
89
See De inventione, 1.19.27: Narratio est rerum gestarum aut ut gestarum expositio; Marii Victorini explanationes in Ciceronis
rhetoricam, 1.19, ed. Ippolito, 85: Quare quoniam non tantum illa narrantur quae vere gesta sunt, sed etiam illa quae non sunt
gesta sed geri potuerunt, ideo ait ‘narratio est rerum gestarum aut ut gestarum expositio’.
90
Adalbe´ron de Laon: Poe
`me au roi Robert (poem cited hereinafter as: Carmen ad Rotbertum regem), ed. Claude Carozzi (Les
Classiques de l’histoire de France au moyen aˆge, Paris, 1979). See also R. Coolidge, ‘Adalbero, bishop of Laon’, Studies in Medieval
and Renaissance History, 2 (1965), 1–114, at 71–6. Coolidge, ‘Adalbero’, 71–2, assigns the Carmen a date between 1010 and 1020.
Carozzi, ed., ‘Poe
`me au roi Robert,’ implies that Adalbero wrote it after 1025, towards the end of his life.
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later at Reims, and the Carmen reveals that he was particularly well acquainted with the Victorinus
commentary on the De inventione.
The Carmen itself takes the form of a dialogue between praesul (Adalbero himself) and rex (King
Robert the Pious). Part satire and part complaint, the poem is a platform for Adalbero to voice his
displeasure with what he sees as dangerous changes in the kingdom’s social structure, which he blames
primarily on the Cluniac order and their ‘king’, Abbot Odilo.
Much of the work is governed by the motif
of the ‘world turned upside down’.
In the first half of the poem Adalbero describes peasants decked
out in gem-encrusted crowns, knights wearing monastic cowls, bishops ploughing naked in the fields,
shepherds and sailors occupying bishoprics, and monks taking up arms and riding into battle against
the Saracens on donkeys and camels, led by Odilo, their princeps militiae.
At the end of this section,
Adalbero asserts that what he as just described is ‘true’ (vera) and worthy of belief.
In the second half of the poem Adalbero presents his own ideas about the proper social and
political organisation of the realm, including his famous formulation of the three orders: those
who pray, those who fight, and those who toil.
When the king, seemingly unhappy with Adal-
bero’s criticisms, proposes that the bishop may have become senile, Adalbero responds that human
beings are composed of two natures, one corporeal and mutable, one incorporeal and divine.
He
implies that both natures are capable of understanding and making judgements, but that only the
second is capable of understanding the immutable truths of God and his creation. In Adalbero’s
case, it was this faculty, the sensus intellectibilis, operating through the Holy Spirit, which discerned
the divinely ordained order of the world that he has revealed to King Robert.
As a final point,
Adalbero adds, somewhat cryptically, that everything that corporeal or intellectual understanding
requires is ‘necessary’ (necessarius), which means that his theories about social order are neces-
sarily true.
This reference to necessary arguments prompts King Robert to inquire if everything that he has heard
from the bishop in the course of their discussion is really true. Adalbero then sets out to defend the
truthfulness of the fabulous imagery found in the first half of the poem. Their dialogue proceeds as follows:
King: Are all of these things proven through these kinds of necessary arguments?
Bishop: There is another hammer, the plausible case, and here it is:
I have discovered what I have arranged, not unmindful of these things.
I speak for the present, and what I say is true.
King: It is not right to call true that which is not true;
Fiction does not imitate truth, nor is it said to.
Bishop: But I have spoken the truth; you know that I have not exceeded its bounds.
Neither song nor tale soothes my fancy.
You should know that these things did not happen, but all of them could have happened.
91
For Adalbero’s education see Coolidge, ‘Adalbero’, 7–10; and Carozzi, ed., ‘Poe
`me au roi Robert’. For evidence of his
knowledge of Victorinus and his use of classical rhetoric in the Carmen, see Carozzi, ed., ‘Poe`me au roi Robert’.
92
Carmen ad Rotbertum regem, ll. 114; 155–7.
93
For this medieval literary topos see Ernst Robert Curtius, European literature and the Latin middle ages, trans. Willard R. Trask
(Princeton, NJ, 1990), 94–8.
94
Carmen ad Rotbertum regem, ll. 37–44; 142–62.
95
Carmen ad Rotbertum regem, ll. 169–70: Credere vera dehinc super his non falsa notavi. / Ordinis est igitur haec trans-
formatio regni.
96
Carmen ad Rotbertum regem, ll. 295–6: Triplex ergo Dei domus est quae creditur una. / Nunc orant, alii pugnant aliique
laborant.
97
Carmen ad Rotbertum regem, ll. 306–45. See Poe`me au roi Robert, ed. Carozzi, xxxii–xxxiii.
98
Carmen ad Rotbertum regem, l. 318: Spiritus his resonat non me dementia torquet; and l. 342: Intellectibili sensu sunt haec
capienda.
99
Carmen ad Rotbertum regem, l. 344–5: Dico necessarium quod quaelibet exigit harum / Argumenta necessario dicuntur et
ista.
100
Carmen ad Rotbertum regem, ll. 347–54: Rex: Cuncta neccessariis argumentantur ab istis? / Praesul: Malleus alter adest qui
causa probabilis, hic est: / Inveni quod disposui, non immemor horum, / Eloquor in presens et quod pronuncio verum. / Rex:
Quod non est verum, non est fas dicere verum / Fabula non similat verum, nec dicitur esse. / Praesul: En dixi verum, scis non
excedere verum; / Nenia nulla meum nec fabula mulcet amorem. / Non sic gesta scias, sed cuncta geri potuisse.
J.C. Lake / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 221–238
237
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The most recent editor of the Carmen, Claude Carozzi, points out that this exchange is really a dispute
about how to classify Adalbero’s narrative.
The king at first dismisses it as fabula d something that is
neither true nor has the appearance of truth d while Adalbero implies that he has, on the contrary, created
an argumentum d a narrative that, while fictional, nonetheless could have occurred. Neither one supposes
that what Adalbero has described is historia, that is, an account of actual occurrences. Nonetheless,
Adalbero still claims the mantle of truth for his work (En dixi verum), while simultaneously admitting that
much of what he has described it is merely plausible (Non sic gesta scias, sed cuncta geri potuisse)!
This short passage is a neat encapsulation both of the malleability of the word ‘true’ when applied to
medieval narratives and of the anxiety that plausible fictions might engender in their audience. We,
like Robert the Pious, may suspect that much of what we read in medieval histories is merely plausible,
even as we confront the formulaic assurances of historians that what they write is true. For us, the
contradiction between truth and plausibility is clear. Yet the histories of Richer and Dudo, and the
Carmen ad Rotbertum regem of Adalbero of Laon, show very clearly that in the middle ages narrative
plausibility was not seen to be incompatible with historical truth. It is not a coincidence that all three of
these authors came out of the schools of northern France in the late tenth century, at a time when
Ciceronian rhetoric, and the De inventione in particular, began to attract increasing attention. For Cicero,
plausibility was not a weaker version of truth appropriate to orators and historians; it was a ‘virtue of
narrative’, which took what was true and made it convincing.
It is also important to note that the dedicatees of each of the three works we have examined were as
familiar with the doctrines of Ciceronian rhetoric as their authors. Gerbert of Aurillac, to whom Richer
dedicated his Historiae, was personally responsible for the revival of Cicero at Reims in the third quarter
of the tenth century. Adalbero of Laon, the recipient of Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum, used the termi-
nology of the De inventione and the Victorinus commentary to provide marginal glosses to his Carmen
ad Rotbertum regem. King Robert the Pious, to whom Adalbero sent his poem, had himself studied with
Gerbert at the cathedral school of Reims and was knowledgeable enough to debate the meaning of
rhetorical terminology with Adalbero.
Richer, Dudo, and Adalbero could expect the recipients of
their work to recognise that the ‘discovery’ of plausible material through the techniques of rhetorical
invention was a necessary feature of historical narrative.
Thus, when Richer states in his prologue that he intends to write probabiliter, we must understand
this word as both he and his patron, Gerbert of Aurillac, would have d as a terminus technicus of
Ciceronian rhetoric. He was not using the word probabiliter as a synonym for veraciter; nor, on the other
hand, was he admitting that his history failed to meet the standard of truthfulness. His invocation of
the virtues of narrative was part of an attempt to lay claim to the mantle of Ciceronian rhetoric for his
work. In short, when he claims to write plausibly, we may take him at his word.
Justin Lake received his Ph.D. in medieval Latin philology from Harvard University in 2008; he is currently Assistant Professor of
Classics at Texas A&M University. His research interests include medieval historiography and rhetoric, and the classical tradition
in the middle ages. He is currently completing a translation of Richer of Saint-Re´mi’s Historiae for the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval
Library and writing a book on Richer and his history.
101
Poe
`me au roi Robert, ed. Carozzi, xxv.
102
For Robert’s studies with Gerbert see Helgaud of Fleury, Epitoma vitae Regis Rotberti Pii, ed. R. Bautier, Vie de Robert le Pieux
(Paris, 1965), 60.
J.C. Lake / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 221–238
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