Library Dissertation Showcase

Sacred history and the construction of ‘Frankish’ identity in Guibert de Nogent’s Dei gesta per Francos

  • Year of Publication:
  • 2017

The focus of this research project is Dei gesta per Francos (The Deeds of God through the Franks, henceforth DGPF), a chronicle of the First Crusade written in 1108 by Guibert de Nogent, a French Benedictine Monk. The DGPF is a reinterpretation of an earlier chronicle, the Gesta Francorum (Deeds of the Franks, henceforth GF), which was composed in the early twelfth century by an anonymous participant of the First Crusade. Due to the DGPF’s close association with the GF, Guibert’s chronicle has traditionally been examined in conjunction with several near-contemporary accounts of the First Crusade to shed light on the development of crusading ideology in the century following the conclusion of the expedition. However, in the last decade, renewed scholarly attention has been dedicated to the DGPF to explore how and why the history of the First Crusade was (re)interpreted by a clerical non-participant of the expedition. The fundamental purpose of this research project is to build on previous scholarship regarding history-writing in the aftermath of the First Crusade in order to explore the interaction between Guibert’s perception of sacred history and his construction of a ‘Frankish’ identity for Christian crusaders in the DGPF.

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