SOURCE: Blacker-Knight, Jean. “Wace's Craft and His Audience: Historical Truth, Bias, and Patronage in the Roman de Rou.” Kentucky Romance Quarterly 31, no. 4 (1984): 355-62.

[In the following essay, Blacker-Knight argues that Henry II was displeased with the Roman de Rou because in it Wace's loyalty was to recounting history as he understood it rather than to slanting his narrative in the King's favor.]

Wace's Roman de Rou, although not written in the Anglo-Norman dialect, was directed to an audience closely connected with the far-reaching Anglo-Norman regnum.¹ Written by a Norman cleric for Henry Plantagenet, king of England, duke of Normandy, and count of Anjou, the Rou was intended to be read at Henry's court, whether the king were in England or Normandy. It was meant to appeal to the Anglo-Norman aristocracy, eager to learn of its Norman ancestors and their dealings with the English, the Bretons, the Angevines, and the French. However, if we are to judge from some of Wace's editorial comments in the Rou and from the relatively small number of extant manuscripts, it would appear as if the contemporary audience did not receive the work favorably.²

Even though we will never be able to know with certainty the identity of the individuals gathered at the king's court at any particular time, we can gain insight into the literary tastes of the audience as a whole by examining the reception afforded a given work. Wace's Roman de Rou provides an interesting test case for a study in audience expectations because Wace specifically states that his patron was not pleased with the poem. While this royal patron's opinions should not be considered as the sole indicator or dictator of audience reaction at court, it is reasonable to assume that his interests and those of the other members of the audience were not mutually exclusive.

In the epilogue of the Roman de Rou, Wace tells us of Henry's displeasure, revealing that another author had been commissioned to take up the work, at what stage Wace does not say:³

                    Die en avant qui dire en deit;
j'ai dit por Maistre Beneeit,
qui cest' ovre a dire a emprise
com li reis l'a desor lui mise;
quant li reis li a rové faire
laissier la dei, si m'en dei taire.
Li reis jadis maint bien me fist,
mult me dona, plus me pramist,
e se il tot doné m'eüst
ço qu'il me pramist, mielz me fust;
nel poi aveir, ne plout al rei,
mais n'est mie remés en mei.

(II, III, 11419-430)

For the listening audience, this must have served as a poignant farewell. But for a reader—whether medieval or modern—this information acts as an incentive to reread the poem, to determine the cause of the patron's displeasure. Wittingly or not, and the former seems more likely, Wace has guaranteed himself a thorough rereading, another chance to earn the reader's favor since he had lost that of his patron.

Henry II commissioned the Roman de Rou around 1160, the year Wace provides as the starting date for the composition of the Rou (I, CA, 1-4). Nearly fifteen years later, the king transferred his mandate from Wace to Benoît de Sainte-Maure, author of the Roman de Troie.⁴ There are many possible sources of Henry's dissatisfaction with the Rou. To mention a few, critics have speculated that the poetic form of the Rou, two-thirds of which was written in octosyllabic rhymed couplets, was passé at court;⁵ or that Wace, already nearing fifty years of age when he began the history, was growing too old ever to be able to complete the work;⁶ or that some of the political content of the work was not to Henry's liking.⁷ The present paper will argue that this last possibility provides at least a partial explanation for Wace's problematic relationship with his patron. In addition, it will be shown that Wace's desire to conform to his notion of honest scholarship, that is, to be as impartial as possible and to avoid invention, caused him at times to present dual versions and to withhold information, which in turn irritated his audience. In some instances, Wace's interpretations of events and his unwillingness to invent circumstantial details reveal him to have been more faithful to his idea of truth in historiography than he was to Henry's interests.

The Roman de Brut,⁸ Wace's translation and adaptation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae,⁹ was completed in 1155 and contains no dedication.¹⁰ The English poet, Layamon, working upon Wace's Brut, says that Wace gave a copy of the Roman de Brut to Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II's queen.¹¹ This remark has led some critics to assume that Wace wrote the poem at Eleanor's behest, when in fact Wace could merely have been using the Brut to introduce himself to the court and thereby encourage royal patronage.¹² It is clear, at any rate, that sometime between the completion of the Brut and 1160, Wace entered Henry's employ in the capacity of writer. In the Rou, Wace tells us that Henry gave him a prebend in Bayeux (I, III, 173-74); perhaps this gift of land with a stipend or just the stipend was made in payment for the Brut or as advance payment for the Rou. From the various references Wace makes to financial need, we can conclude that he looked to Henry for a large portion of his livelihood.¹³

One would naturally expect, then, that a writer of vernacular history dependent upon a royal patron would slant his narrative to suit the political interests of the ruling house. This is not to say that the recipients of commissioned historiography were interested exclusively in propaganda and panegyric written in their behalf; nevertheless, this was what was dedicated to them more often than not. However, Wace was neither a propagandist nor a panegyrist; his loyalties lay more with his conception of the actual nature of past events than with his patron's personal or political ego.

Wace's purpose in writing the Rou was to trace the history of the Norman dukes from the Norse warrior, Rollo, to whom Charles the Simple, king of the Franks, was forced to grant Normandy in the second half of the tenth century, through the life and times of Henry II.¹⁴ However, Wace never reached the deeds of Henry II; the narrative ends with events soon after 1106, only six years into the thirty-five-year reign of Henry Plantagenet's grandfather, Henry I.

Since no vernacular historian had treated this subject before Wace, his written sources were all in Latin.¹⁵ They included the first chronicle of the Normans, Dudo of St. Quentin's De Moribus et Actis Primorum Normanniae Ducum, c. 1015-26;¹⁶ the Gesta Normannorum Ducum of the monk, William of Jumièges, c. 1070;¹⁷ the Gesta Guillelmi, written by one of William the Conqueror's retainers, William of Poitiers, c. 1073-74;¹⁸ William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum Anglorum, c. 1125-1140;¹⁹ and Orderic Vitalis's Historica Ecclesiastica, c. 1114-1141.²⁰ Wace rarely diverged from his written sources, except to add material culled from oral sources, and in certain places where he interprets events differently from any of his sources. When it comes to these differing interpretations, it is altogether possible that Wace consulted sources of which we are unaware; it is more likely, though, that his own views affected his transmission of the sources which we know he used.

Three major instances in which Wace deviates from his sources also happen to be potential irritants as far as Henry was concerned. The first contains Wace's version of events leading up to the Norman Conquest, that is, Edward the Confessor's naming of a successor and Harold Godwinson's subsequent ill-fated voyage to Normandy. Wace does not present the staunchly Norman version of events, related by William of Jumièges, William of Poitiers, and Orderic Vitalis, in which Harold is sent by Edward to assure William the Bastard of his succession to the throne of England. According to Wace, Harold himself decides to go to Normandy to free the hostages held by William as a guarantee of Edward's promise (II, III, 5585-88). This version is known to have been presented in the chronicles of Eadmer of Canterbury and Simeon of Durham, and it is possible that Wace could have derived his preferred version from them or from oral sources.²¹ Still, one is puzzled as to why Wace preferred this English version, which gives Harold the initiative over Edward, thereby placing the emphasis on Harold's negative action rather than on Edward's positive one. Harold is portrayed as headstrong and Edward as too weak to exert any influence over his vassal. In contrast, the Norman version definitely has propagandistic overtones, painting Edward as the strong, benevolent king, William as the unquestioned heir, and Harold as errand-boy.

To make matters worse, Wace presents a second version—the Norman one—following immediately upon the first:

Issi l'ai jo trové escrit;
e uns altres livres me dit
que li reis le rova aler,
por le realme asseürer
al duc Guilliame, son cosin,
que il l'eüst emprés sa fin;
ne sai mie certe achaison,
mais l'un e l'autre escrit trovon.

(II, III, 5597-5604)

Wace's attempt here to appear impartial by presenting two versions, albeit disproportionate in length, is admirable if it is interpreted as an example of his zeal for objectivity in historical reporting. It is not unreasonable to assume, however, that Henry might have viewed this impartiality as vacillation or incompetence on Wace's part. Henry might have thought that Wace was either unwilling to toe the Norman party line or that he was incapable of determining what actually did happen. Perhaps other historians would have found it useful to know that there were at least two versions of these events, but the non-scholarly lay audience would, no doubt, have appreciated a single, straightforward version.

The second and third examples of possible irritation from the political standpoint are the character portrayals of Henry I, king of England, and his brother Robert II, duke of Normandy. Wace interprets the power struggle between the two brothers in a way opposite to that of two of his primary sources, William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis. The conflict stemmed from the fact that Henry had hastily seized the throne of England after the untimely death of his brother, William II. Robert, the eldest of the three sons of William the Conqueror, was on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the time, and was unable to defend his claim to the throne.

Wace saw Robert as the rightful heir to the throne, according to the custom of primogeniture. Wace portrays Henry as a greedy usurper who erred not only by setting himself upon the throne of England, but also by forcing his illegitimate claim to Norman lands. Henry captured his brother at the battle of Tinchebray in 1106 and imprisoned him in England, where Robert was to spend the remaining thirty years of his life. Orderic saw this imprisonment as just punishment of Robert, whom he viewed as a rebel baron. William of Malmesbury went further by stressing Henry's generosity in providing Robert with all the amenities due a man of his rank, except his liberty.

Wace, on the contrary, never strays from the side of the firstborn son. Robert is seen as humble and gentil in his willingness to settle for an annual allowance from Henry, along with holding Normandy, rather than to pursue his claim to the throne. But Henry preferred war to peace, so long as peace was to stand in the way of his holding both England and Normandy. Henry is portrayed as upsetting the natural order by fighting his brother, and in the end he wins because he is the stronger (II, III, 11337-344).

This interpretation of the conflict between Henry and Robert might not have sat well with Wace's patron for the following reasons: first, Henry I, grandfather of Henry II, is seen in a negative light; second, primogeniture was deemed paramount to the uniting of England and Normandy by a legitimate son already enthroned; and third, the issue of usurpation and land-rights was a particularly sensitive one at the time Wace was writing, because of Henry's ongoing disputes with his own sons. This last point is supported by evidence that Henry II's son Henry, called the Young King, had vehemently pressed his claim to his father's continental lands in 1174, and Wace is thought to have stopped writing in that year.²² The fact that the Rou ends abruptly after the depiction of the wars between Henry I and Duke Robert II also lends credibility to the contention that this final section may have been particularly repugnant to Henry Plantagenet.

Thus far we have discussed Wace's sins of commission: his presentation of potentially politically unpopular versions of the Anglo-Norman past. But it was a more general and diffuse sin of omission which drew Henry into Benoît's camp. In our discussion of Wace's rendition of the events leading up to the Norman Conquest, we pointed out that Wace offered two versions, leaving it up to his audience to decide the matter for itself. To this we should add Wace's habit of pleading ignorance in certain instances, since he chose not to invent the details which would have filled in the picture. Both of these techniques sprang from one impulse, that of an historian anxious to appear honest and objective. Wace's desire to be an accurate historian caused him to leave out the very kinds of details his audience would have enjoyed—in addition to the “hard facts”—thus disappointing their expectations of hearing about numerous feats of prowess, descriptions of dress, mores, and habits.

Wace's frequent use of phrases such as “ne sai vaslez ou esquier” (II, III, 4934), “ne sai de veir treis faiz ou quatre” (II, III, 3671), and “mais jo ne sai que chascuns dist” (II, III, 6170), is surprising.²³ But, although we are taken aback by Wace's recourse to claims of ignorance, we do not miss the circumstantial details which he does not know and, thus, cannot provide. For the most part, these details are not relevant to the outcome of events being related. For example, we moderns do not find it necessary to know whether it was a boy or a squire who alerted the French troops to flee the battle of Mortemer; or whether William took Harold into Brittany three times or four during Harold's mission; or what each of the barons said to William when he pledged his support to him. Of course, there are points upon which modern researchers would have welcomed further information, but where Wace declares ignorance: How did Harold die at Hastings? Was the death of William II an accident or murder? However, the finer details tend to clutter the picture for modern historians by shifting the focus toward foreground minutiae and away from the central issues. Not so for the medieval audience.

This does not mean that Wace shunned elaboration per se. We can see this in the highly-detailed characterization of Duke Richard I, filled in with dialogue and legends (I, II, 2017-4425; I, III, 195-770); in the conventional death-bed speech of William the Conqueror (II, III, 9104-62); and in the dramatic dialogues between Henry I and Duke Robert II (II, III, 10595-705). The long list of participants at the battle of Hastings (II, III, 8415-8667) and the colorful anecdote about Taillefer, the jongleur, who sings the Chanson de Roland to the Norman troops before the battle (II, III, 8013-38), are further examples of occasions where Wace chose to employ his powers of description.

What Wace provided in the Roman de Brut in terms of local color and dialogue must have been sufficient and pleasing in style, or he probably would not have been asked to write the history of the Normans. However, in the Rou he fell short of his medieval audience's thirst for all the details. He probably claimed ignorance one too many times; his audience would have been happy to hear what sort of man had alerted the French troops at Mortemer, and exactly how many times—and in what manner—William the Conqueror took Harold into Brittany, and precisely what each of the barons said to William in promising aid. Wace's scruples as an historian prevented him from overly indulging in the art of invention, but his audience would likely have preferred him to be less inhibited. Epic hyperbole would have been favored over statements of doubt regarding whether there were hundreds or thousands of men present at any particular battle.

Wace could only have profited from the full use of his visual imagination, which he chose to exploit in the Brut, yet turned away from in the Rou. The fact that Wace told his audience that he could not provide many specifics was probably more irritating than if he had just left them out to begin with; in that way he would have been calling attention to the material he did present rather than to that which he did not. In an effort to make his audience aware of his unwillingness to embellish—with details not provided by any of his reliable oral or written sources, that is—Wace placed historical accuracy and faithfulness to his material above the interests and expectations of his audience. Wace's intellectual integrity left Henry no choice but to turn to another for revisionist history with all the trimmings.

Notes

1. A. J. Holden, ed., Le Roman de Rou de Wace, 3 vols. (Paris: Société des Anciens Textes Français, 1973). References are to this edition, providing volume number, part number of the poem, and verse number.

2. The Rou is found in two thirteenth-century manuscripts, one fourteenth-century manuscript, and one seventeenth-century compilation (Holden, ed., Vol. III, pp. 19-24). Wace's Roman de Brut, on the other hand, is found in 24 manuscripts (including five fragments), of which 16 of the completed manuscripts and three of the fragments are from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Arnold, ed., Vol. I, pp. vii-xiv).

3. See D. Tyson, “Patronage of French Vernacular History Writers in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” Romania, 100, 2 (1979), 180-222, who speculates that Henry might not have wanted Wace to stop writing. She suggests that, instead, the king may have wished for both versions to be completed so that he could choose the better one (p. 198). However, it seems that if that had been the case, Henry would have given Wace some kind of reward as incentive to stay on, since he was also providing him with a direct competitor for royal patronage. The fact that Wace thought he was being replaced is a fairly good indication that Henry did not encourage him to continue alongside Benoît.

4. L. Constans, ed., Le Roman de Troie par Benoît de Sainte-Maure, 6 vols. (Paris: SATF, 1904-12). See Holden, ed., Vol. III, 13-14, for the possible dates of composition of the Rou.

5. M. D. Legge, “The Influence of Patronage on Form in Medieval French Literature,” in Stil- und Formprobleme in der Literatur, Vorträge des VIII. Kongresses der Internationalen Vereinigung für Moderne Sprache und Literatur in Heidelberg (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, Universitätsverlag, 1959), p. 140; H.-E. Keller, Étude descriptive sur le vocabulaire de Wace, Diss. Universitäts Basel (Berlin, 1952), pp. 25-26. The “Chronique Ascendante,” vv. 1-315, which opens the poem, was written in alexandrines; the second part, vv. 1-4425, also in alexandrines; and the third part, vv. 1-11440, in octosyllables.

6. W. F. Schirmer and U. Broich, Studien zum literarischen Patronat im England des 12. Jahrhunderts, Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Forschung des Landes Nordrein-Westfalen, Vol. 23 (Cologne and Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1962), 87-88.

7. U. Broich, pp. 71-88. However, whereas Broich argues that Wace was overly biased in favor of the Normans, neglecting Henry's connections with the English and Scottish nobilities, this paper will show that Wace was not biased along any particular party lines; instead, he seemed to follow his instincts in the face of each bit of evidence.

8. I. Arnold, ed., Le Roman de Brut de Wace, 2 vols. (Paris: SATF, 1928).

9. A. Griscom, ed., The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth (London, 1929).

10. Wace states that he completed the Brut in 1155 (Brut, II, 14864-865).

11. M. D. Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), p. 45.

12. Legge, art. cit., p. 137; R. Lejeune, “Role littéraire d'Aliénor d'Aquitaine et de sa famille,” Part I, in Cultura Neolatina, XIV, 1 (1954), 25.

13. See, for example, I, CA, 9-16, 20-24; I, II, 4422-25; I, III, 143-77; II, III, 11425-430.

14. This is implicit in the reverse chronological order of the “Chronique Ascendante.” This section, which functions as the prologue to the poem, begins with Henry II and traces the royal line back to Rollo, preparing the reader for the opening of the poem proper.

15. See Holden, ed., Vol. III, 99-117, for a discussion of Wace's sources.

16. Dudo of St. Quentin, De Moribus et Actis Primorum Normanniae Ducum, ed. J. Lair (Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, 1865).

17. William of Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. J. Marx (Société de l'Histoire de Normandie, 1914).

18. William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi Ducis Normannorum et Regis Anglorum, ed. R. Foreville (Paris, 1952).

19. W. Stubbs, ed., De Gestis Regum Anglorum Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Monachi, 2 vols. (London: Rolls Series, 1889).

20. M. Chibnall, ed., The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968-80). See Chibnall, Vol. IV, xxii, for a discussion of Wace's use of Book VII and possible use of Book VIII of the Historia Ecclesiastica.

21. Holden, ed., Vol. III, 148.

22. Holden, ed., Vol. III, 13-14; see W.L. Warren, Henry II (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 117-18, for a reference to the rift between Henry Plantagenet and the Young King during this period.

23. These quasi-formulaic claims of ignorance occur roughly every hundred lines throughout the third part of the poem.