History of the Dukes of Normandy and the Kings of England by the Anonymous of Béthune

Abstract

Ever since its publication by Francisque Michel for the Société de l’Histoire de France in 1840, the Old French prose history of the dukes of Normandy translated here has been recognized as an important source for the history of Normandy, England, Flanders, and Capetian France. Its unnamed author is customarily referred to as the ‘Anonymous of Béthune’ because of the prominence in the narrative of the lords of Béthune (dépt. Pas-de-Calais), who were ‘advocates’ (lay protectors) of Arras but also major landowners in England between the eleventh and mid-thirteenth centuries. The same writer is believed to have been the author of a vernacular prose history of the kings of France, usually called the Chronique des Rois de France, which was partly published by Léopold Delisle in 1904. The two Béthune texts reworked and continued two French texts from the beginning of the thirteenth century, known, respectively, as the Chronique de Normandie and the Geste de France, which in turn drew upon and embellished older Latin texts—respectively, in the traditions of Norman and pro-Capetian historical writing. Despite their wealth of original detail, historians have been hesitant to use the two Béthune histories as historical sources. In part, this is due to their genre: vernacular texts, whether in prose or verse, have often been treated with suspicion by medieval historians trained in the use of Latin chronicles, and the relationship between the many vernacular histories from this period is also problematic. Yet there can be no doubt that the lack of either a modern critical edition or an English translation of the Anonymous Norman history has also hindered its use, and so the present work, published in Routledge’s Crusade Texts in Translation series, is very welcome indeed. The translation, using the 1840 edition, was drafted by the distinguished translator Janet Shirley, who died in 2017, but it is Paul Webster who has prepared it for publication, with extensive historical notes and a scholarly introduction.