Jason Glenn, in Politics and History in the Tenth Century: The World and World of Richer of Reims, argues (among other things) that Richer actually began his work in the middle of what is the autograph and only surviving manuscript of the Historia, and revised it at least three times. If I say that this book reminds me a little of Richer's Historia in that regard, it should not be taken as a criticism, for Glenn's book is as rich and interesting (and only rarely as enigmatic) as Richer's. The different parts (not three recensions, but three sections) have each their own tones and aims, like Richer's narrative, linked, but not entirely univocal.
The first part, consisting of four chapters, works its way outward from the historian himself to the three environments-cathedral, school (in the broadest sense of the intellectual world), and monastery. Although Richer says little about himself, a Richer is mentioned in the necrology of the cathedral, who Glenn argues with reasonable plausibility (which is, sensibly, the only claim Glenn makes for any of his arguments) is the historian. This man was a cantor at the cathedral, who then became a monk. The role of cantor leads Glenn to a discussion of what the lives of the canons were like at the cathedral, including the spaces through which they moved, and the kind of training this man, perhaps our historian, would have required to be a cantor (which leads to a discussion of the liturgy). A number of eleventh-century historians were cantors, which leads Glenn to a chapter on the schools at Reims, their revitalization in the 890s, and the arrival of Gerbert of Aurillac at an already flourishing intellectual center. Finally, Glenn describes the growth of the monastery of Saint-Remigius and the life of the monks there, noting that if the Richer of the necrology is the historian, he was one of the few to leave the relative comforts of the canon's life for the monastery.
The second part situates the historian and his history in the center of the political situation in Francia at the end of the tenth century, with a further four chapters. Of these four, the longest of the four and to me the most fascinating by far in the book (and I suspect that Glenn thinks so too) is the last (chapter 8), where he sketches out at length the process of composition of the Historia. (If you do with this book what I often suggest my students do with a medieval text--count the pages and see where the median page lies and possibly the weight of the text--you will find yourself in this chapter [if you do not include the appendices in your page count].) I won't do a resume here (go read it yourself!). But I will say that Glenn amply demonstrates that this messy, much revised pile of parchments of different sizes, with insertions and deletions, changes of direction and heart, notes of various kinds, and lacunae is a treasure, because it offers an incredibly rare insight into an historian at work, shaping and reshaping his material, before the presentation copy (if there ever was one) was made. Glenn's diagrams make a very complex discussion possible to follow and the linkage between the images and the text are excellent.
This analysis of the composition of the Historia is crucial, for on it the last section of the book hangs. The first two chapters of this second part (chapter 5 and 6) offer a very short synopsis (5 pp.) of the events of 986-991 and an account of the documents that Gerbert of Reims, who was archbishop between 991 and 998 (he gave up a losing battle and left in 997 and his rival Arnulf returned in 998; Gerbert as Sylvester II reinstated Arnulf officially in 999), who produced the only other documents that cover (not to say illuminate) this period, all intended to defend his actions and argue for his legitimate elevation to the archiepiscopal see. The third chapter (chapter seven) offers an interpretation of Richer's treatment of the Capetians, which reveals Carolingian sympathies. This interpretation of Richer as offering a veiled critique of the new regime is not new, but it is, I think, offered in part as a set-up with its payoff down the road in chapter eight, where Glenn shows how this interpretation was retroactively put into place through revision.
Just as the second section reaches forward from Richer's formation to the events of his own time, the final section of the text, "Historian and Community, Past and Present" reaches back beyond Richer into the past (just as Richer wrote the early part of his history after the more modern part). Glenn places Richer within the community of historical writing in Reims in the tenth century and introduces his predecessor, Flodoard, the man with whom Richer's writing is often (unfavorably) compared on matters of "accuracy" and "objectivity". Flodoard and Richer alternate in the remaining chapters of the book. A brief chapter introduces Flodoard and his work. Then chapter 10 outlines the political events of 888-829, from the coronation of Odo to the death of Charles "the Straightforward" (as Glenn, following Janet Nelson, translates "Simplex"), and follows this narrative with an analysis of the ways Flodoard and Richer portrayed these events. Glenn argues that Flodoard is, in his less forceful way, as partisan as Richer, in that he supported the Robertians and saw Robert's elevation and then Radulfus's as legitimate. Richer had read and used Flodoard's account (if he had other sources, they either have not survived or been identified), and in his initial drafting of the opening of his history (which as Glenn has already explained in chapter 8 came after the drafting of later portions of it), mostly interpreted and expanded Flodoard to give the events more sense in his eyes. However, in the next set of revisions, he diverged sharply from Flodoard's presentation of events, telescoping the events of two decades to link up incidents such as the murder of Archbishop Fulk in 900 and the rebellion of Robert in 922 as part of a large plot by Robert to take over the throne. In the process, he presented an airbrushed portrait of Charles and said whatever he could to damn Robert as a tyrant. Glenn argues that this may well have been a deliberate attempt to counteract Flodoard's more favorable narrative, and one that his readers may have called him on, as he also added an explicit reference to Flodoard's work in a very defensive tone.
Chapter eleven is all Flodoard's, and explores the responses in his writings (in addition to annals, he wrote a history of the bishops of Reims and poetic hagiography) to a two-decade struggle over the see of Reims, in which Artaud, a monk of Saint-Remigius and the eventual winner of the battle, alternated with Hugh, the son of Herbert II of Vermandois. This struggle not only affected the magnates, but also the canons of the cathedral (Flodoard was himself imprisoned for five months and had estates confiscated) and the community at large, and it must have produced a conflict within these communities that has left little trace, except in writings like Flodoard's, where, what on the surface appears to be a full acceptance of Artaud, may reveal a preference for Hugh.
The eleventh chapter sets up the twelfth chapter, Richer's treatment of the same events, and particularly the synod of Ingelheim in 948 that replaced Artaud on the throne, among other things. Although these events were now nearly a half-century in the past, Glenn argues that Richer's political philosophy is revealed in his focus on the case brought by Louis IV against Hugh the Great at that synod, rather than the case brought by Artaud against Hugh (neither historian is much interested in the third case brought by Rodolphus of Laon against Hugh the Great also for forcing him out of Laon). In this incident and others, Richer develops the notion of a res publica, which is neither the regnum Francorum nor the king nor the magnates, but a corporate entity composed of them all, perhaps close to what later English sources would call "the community of the realm". Looking back over the conflicts of the previous century, Richer again and again saw the failure of the magnates to respect the office of the king, taking into consideration its hereditary claims, and of the kings to give their due to their magnates and rule with them. For Richer, kingship was both hereditary and consensual; hereditary claims might be abrogated in times of great necessity (as when Odo superseded a minor, Charles the Straightforward), but they could not be disregarded lightly.
Glenn ends (in a manner of speaking--another one of the perhaps deliberate ways this book echoes the shifts and turns taken by its principal subject) with an epilogue in which he begins with a trip that Richer made to study in Chartres. In Richer's narrative the trip begins with a chance meeting and invitation--two weeks before Charles of Lorraine's capture and the end of hopes of Carolingian resurgence. But Glenn then proceeds to cast all manner of doubt on Richer's account, which could be an account of his pell-mell flight from Reims after--not before--the decisive moment. The account dissolves under the weight of the uncertainties it contains, leaving as its residue our appreciation of the high stakes in the events of 986-91 and the impact of these events on the community of Reims. Five appendices follow: on the discovery of Richer's manuscript, on the poem of Adso of Montdidier that may mention Richer, on Richer's account of the synod of Saint-Basle, which deposed Arnulf of Reims and put Gerbert in his place, and two appendices on revisions in the fifth and second quires of the manuscripts.
This book deals with materials that have all been available for a long time, the few scant shreds that treat the later tenth century, so it is a work of interpretation. Among Glenn's many virtues are wide reading (people like myself, who enjoy chatty and dense footnotes will enjoy Glenn's greatly, while those who don't will, well, not, and too bad for them!), a simultaneously learned and humble voice when he uses the first person singular (although for his broad conclusions he tends to use the first person plural, which punctures the intimacy achieved with his use of the singular and can be either traditionally scholar-stuffy or tourist-guidey, depending), and clarity of writing (this book, despite its sometimes diffuse qualities, was good reading). He makes available to those unwilling (or unable) to make their way through the German and French literature some of the main arguments about these texts and lets them in on a discussion now a century and a half in the making. He manages to create a sense of the individuality and agency of the political players (among which he, and I following him, would place the historians). Anyone who uses Flodoard or Richer as sources should pay attention to this book, as should those working in the parts of early medieval European history less favored by evidentiary remains. And those who go to Hoffmann's facsimile edition will want to have chapter eight to hand when they do. While an intelligent general reader could undoubtedly follow Glenn's book, it isn't where I would send him or her first--and the books in this series from Cambridge are aimed at those with scholarly inclinations, not general readers, anyway.
Scholars who work on historical writing in other eras will also benefit from this book, but probably less, for two reasons: they will not be surprised by Glenn's findings about these texts, although they will undoubtedly admire the care and quality of his interpretations, and they will be quite unlikely to find a similar manuscript that contains all the evidence of its own reworkings. A number of other historians were active revisers--William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon both come to mind, along with the king of revisers, Froissart, who seems to have ripped whole sections of his history apart and completely replaced some passages with others--but the evidence for this activity tends to be scattered across manuscripts and in ways that raise questions about whether all the revisions were, in fact, the historian's own. In other cases, active revision may well have taken place, but the evidence vanished with the wax in which the drafts were written or the earlier copies, if the work was entrusted to parchment. A final or presentation copy has replaced the earlier messy drafts. Thus we cannot tell how typical Richer was or whether Richer's revisions reflect the turbulence of his political times and own experiences, some quality of his own personality, or more normative processes that can shed light on how historians usually went about their tasks. That may be too much to ask of Richer, however, or of any medieval historians, that they illuminate the rest for us. It probably suffices to have such great illumination on the work of one.