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07.09.21, Noble, ed., La Conquete de Constantinople

07.09.21, Noble, ed., La Conquete de Constantinople


This work may be characterized as an edition and translation, a fact not mentioned on the title page, intended for professional historians, as distinct from adepts in linguistic, literary, or cultural studies. It is thorough, solid, and modest, the latter feature all too evident in the parsimonious format of the book, in which the notes scarcely appear to the naked eye.

Clari's account of the Fourth Crusade is less widely known than Geoffroi de Villehardouin's, and is from the perspective of a fairly ordinary knight rather than a leader and emissary. Much concerning the Fourth Crusade--its murky objectives, smaller than anticipated fighting force, troubled financing, and unforeseen outcomes--is still debated and a chief virtue of the present edition is to give a lucid survey of recent scholarship in the introductory "Political and Military Background." Cautious but well-founded conclusions emerge: "The idea that the whole crusade was devised by the Westerners as a means of conquering Byzantium and ending the schism between the eastern and western churches seems on balance improbable" (x). The jockeying for position among the principals is less readily charted. References to religious and cultural differences between Latins and Greeks, as well as the obvious divergent politico-economical objectives, might well have been further developed. The disconnect between the military and diplomatic leaders, and the host that followed them, who long thought Egypt continued to be the objective, is well illustrated in Clari.

The section on "The Author and his Work" is a straightforward presentation of the known facts, but the reviewer misses any consideration of the political and literary aspirations of the minor northern French nobility, both authors and patrons, as brought to our attention in Gabrielle M. Spiegel's groundbreaking work of 1993, Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France. In a rather different kind of deferral to earlier scholarship, the editor is content to follow, with some few corrections, Philippe Lauer's edition of 1924 (although he has made his own transcription of the single manuscript) and, despite some comment, refers readers to Peter Dembowski's La Chronique de Robert de Clari: etude de la langue et du style (1963) on these matters, which are of considerable importance to a good many potential readers. This said, useful comment is found on the written conventions of the Picard dialect in which the work is cast, and this will certainly aid readers who who wish to take advantage of the facing-page text and translation.

This presentation of the chronicle is helpfully completed by a bibliography of primary sources (which wisely also includes editions of Villehardouin) and of secondary studies. Although the 135 pages of text and translation are followed by only six pages of notes, this is a dense (not only typographically) and very valuable part of the edition, full of accurate historical data and explanations, the groundwork of informed detail that led to the solid opening section. Irritatingly, the parenthesis, that is, the typographical symbol, is rather erratically employed in some notes. The volume includes family trees and dates for the emperors of Constantinople and an index of proper names, ordered by the form in which they occur in Clari's text.

The translation succeeds moderately well in its objective "to render Clari's text into modern English which will clarify the difficulties of the language" (xxx). One of the chief problems of translating the medieval Picard of the chronicler is his relatively limited vocabulary, where many words might be said to have both a generic and one or more specific meanings. The editor-translator's recurring problem is whether to choose among the several significations of a base word and have these overtly reflected in English, or to provide the explanatory information in the notes. Thus, rike may on one occasion be rendered by its English reflex rich, while elsewhere powerful would best characterize the leading men or richly outfitted the fleet. Another general problem is the vocabulary of technologies that we may no longer fully understand in all their detail. By and large Noble deals well, if a bit pedestrianly, with these dimensions of the edition and translation. More detailed comment on a single chapter (XIII, pp. 14-17), concerned with the Doge's proposal to take the Christian city of Zara, the embarkation of the fleet from Venice, and the call at the port of Pola in Istria, will illustrate the author's approach and some of its limitations.

The Doge's statement "Seigneur, il est ore yvers, ne nous ne porriemes passer mie outre mer, ne che n'est mie remes en mi" is rendered "Lords, now it is winter, so we cannot travel overseas, nor does the blame fall on me." Winter travel by sea was never willingly undertaken in the Middle Ages, so that the superfluous English "so" suggests that the Doge is informing the crusaders of a factor of which they were ignorant. "Travel overseas" sounds a bit odd when most travel was along the coasts and "put to sea" might be preferred. "ne ... mie" is translated with a simple negative "not", while in light of the parallel clauses something more emphatic is called for. "Blame" is an excessively judicial phrasing when season and weather were the determining factors. Repunctuating, we may translate as follows: "Lords, it is now winter; neither can we possibly put to sea nor is it at all my fault." The Doge continues: "Mais faisons le bien!" "But let us do what is best!" seems almost an ethical weighing of circumstances. The Doge seems rather to mean "Let's make the best of it!", especially when his plan is to take an unwary city, Zara, as the best use of the down time. The townsfolk there have "seriously wronged" the Venetians. But the verb meferre must certainly mean the infliction of material damage and physical injury, and not just a more legalistic wrongdoing. "Et se vous me voles croire" is translated over literally as "If you are willing to believe me" when "And if you will believe me" would be adequate.

I pass now to single terms, some of a technical nature. Zara is said to be "molt plentiive de tous biens" but this surely entails more than being "very well supplied." The crusaders would not be interested only in enhancing their food and military stores; there is also the promise of good old-fashioned plunder here. The leaders of the crusade agreed to the "plan" ("consel") but it was not known to the host. "Adont si atirerent tout communaument leur oirre et leur navie tout entirement; si se misent en le mer," Noble translates, rather awkwardly: "Then they all got their equipment ready and the whole fleet; and so they put to sea..." Here there are several slight distortions of Clari's text, which has an important adverb and a nominal concept not reflected in the English. The host is acting in concert ("communaument"), not as individuals. "Oirre" (spelled erre in other authors, related to Latin errare) has not been recognized as referring to their intended "passage," and not to equipment, although readying and stowing their gear was certainly a central part of preparations. This is a statement about logistics, in which the fleet is the more concrete part, while provisioning, allotting men, animals and supplies to individual ships, retaining pilots, deciding on the formation of the fleet, and so on entailed both planning and actual physical effort. In references to the vessels that the Venetians gather, Clari alternates between navie and estoire. The latter merits a philological note (somewhere, sometime) deriving, as it seems, from Old Norse styri (helm, rudder) or styra (to navigate), as do Norman words for steersman and not destined to survive into modern French, doubtless because of the homonymity with estoire (history, story). Perhaps there was a distinction between navy, the totality of vessels available to a power, and fleet, those actually assembled for a single purpose.

Noble provides informative notes on four ships types that are named: nef, uissier, dromon, and galie. The first is certainly the "round ships" of the era, chiefly used for commerce. Uissiers, with side openings, were used for animal transport, although "barge" does not suggest the degree of seaworthiness required for open water. Dromon as "freighter" is certainly accurate but has misleading connotations of more than sail or oar propulsion. Given the prominence of galleys, a fuller description would have been informative. The pavellon that provides shelter on the Doge's splendid galley was doubtless rather more than an "awning." And "deseure lui" surely means "above it" (the ship), and not "above him" (the Doge). Ships' tents or tilts featured collapsible frames and doubtless also had canvas sides as well. Great joy is shown at the "esmovoir," which is best seen as "setting sail" rather than the vaguer "sailing." Later the same verb is translated "cast off" but not all the vessels in a fleet of this size could have been moored to the quais of Venice. A note identifies castiaus as castles at the stem and stern, but Noble prefers to locate the clerics singing Veni creator spiritus on the poops. Later he translates the same word as "top castles," since it is now the emplacement of standards and banners that is referenced. The editor translates the rather curious phrase "en chele mer" as "out to sea" and this is surely close to the mark. Seeing here Old French cele (discrete), I would prefer "on the open sea." In a complex simile Clari sees the sea ablaze with the many ships and with the great joy shown by the pilgrims. Noble creates a mixed image when he translates the verb formier, used of the sea, as "billow." While the verb may mean "to move in agitated fashion," it was also used of light phenomena and the participle formiant meant "sparkling." Clari's image is then more consistent than the translations shows.

"Adont si alerent tant qu'il vinrent a une chite. Poles avoit a non." Noble both misreads the conjunctive phrase si ...tant que and suppresses the oral flavor of Clari's words with "So they sailed on until they came to a city called Pola." More accurately: "Then they sailed on until they came to a city. Pola was its name." Noble translates the subjectless verb "ariverent" as "they (the sailors and soldiers) went ashore" but I suspect the understood subject is the ships, which "made land." "Rafreskir" is first translated as "reprovision" then as "recover (personal wellbeing)." Since there is also explicit mention of the purchase of fresh food stores, I suggest that the focus of the verb is on R8R, the pilgrims resting up from the rigors of travel by sea. The chapter concludes with the amazement of the townsfolk of Pola at the ardor of the crusaders, the size of the fleet, and the great "nobility" that both displayed. The judgment of the residents is introduced with the stock phrase "et si disent bien, et ch'estoit voirs ..." which Noble translates as "and indeed they said, and it was true ..." A more idiomatic phrasing might be "and well they said, in truth..." In summary, we have perhaps only two outright translation errors in these 32 lines but a good many interpretations that are just a bit off, either in their appreciation of semantics or of style.

Clari will be read for his exuberant curiosity, which Noble recognizes, and for the perspective of the average representative of the minor nobility that he brings to these tumultuous events, not primarily to refine our appreciation as historians of the essentially political complexities of the Fourth Crusade. Noble's solid edition will facilitate this approach to the chronicle but important questions of historiographical principle, ideological thrust (as concerns both the understanding of events and the purpose of the chronicle itself), and narrative style remain to be addressed.