The 1127 murder of Charles, Count of Flanders, is well known to medievalists, due primarily to the account by the contemporary Galbert of Bruges. Less well known is the “life” of Charles by another contemporary, Walter of Thérouanne, here translated by Jeff Rider. Charles’s translated vita is accompanied in this volume by the vita of Bishop John of Thérouanne and several other shorter pieces concerning the counts of Flanders and the murder. Jeff Rider prepared the Latin edition of these works for the Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis (vol. 217) so he is deeply familiar with them. As well as the translations, Rider provides an extensive introduction with information on Walter as well as a timeline of the events of the count’s murder. The result is an exemplary volume for Anglophone scholars, providing a direct entry to the Latin original along with all sorts of useful details, or for any reader interested in events in this period in a place where the French kingdom and the (German) Roman Empire met.
For the translations, Rider sought to find a middle point between a literal adherence to the Latin and a simpler, modern English form of narrative. On the one hand, he found it important to suggest the style of the original, sometimes ornate, Latin, while on the other hand needing to make the English prose comprehensible. He succeeded well, and the text reads smoothly, though occasionally one wishes he had broken up some of the longer sentences.
In addition to the introduction, Rider provides extensive notes to help the reader understand Walter’s references and identify people. There is also a map of Flanders and detailed family trees, to make it possible to keep straight everyone named Robert or Baldwin or William or Mathilda. Charles’s family connections stretched from Denmark and England to Saxony and Sicily.
Although the attention here is primarily given to Charles’s murder, the life of Bishop John is a good addition. This bishop is very little known, but Walter’s biography of him provides an intriguing insight into how those seeking a religious education at the end of the eleventh century had to search out teachers, before the establishment of the better-known schools (like Chartres) or the universities. It also gives a case study of how one could become a bishop at that time and all the responsibilities that entailed.
The volume will be useful to anyone studying the complicated politics of Flanders and northern France in the early twelfth century. It would work especially well in a class for master’s students or advanced undergraduates, providing both first-hand information on a highly important series of events and also an opportunity to see how a medieval narrative writer shaped his account for how he wanted those events to be remembered.
