Self and Society in Medieval France: The Memoirs of Abbot Guibert of Nogent (Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching S)

Rating:
Summary: Medieval Mama's Boy
Review: Beyond the dry second- and third-hand tellings of history are the real stories told by the real people-and it doesn't get much realer than Guibert of Nogent. He's arrogant, condescending, socially inept and has a weird fixation on his mother. Proof positive that men were messed up way before women's liberation hit the scene. I don't claim to be a historian. I've never read St. Augustine's Confessions, on which Guibert modeled his own work. I can't say for certain that Guibert wasn't your typical Medieval French monk, but I find it hard to believe that most monks had mothers who spent the latter part of their lives trying to recapture their virginity. But that's what's great about reading first-hand accounts, no "typicals" get in your way. For instance: How many third-hand historical texts would have a chapter that begins: "Since hardly anyone passed the bishop's corpse without casting at him some insult or curse and no one thought of burying him. . .?" Believe it or not, this type of image seems to be common in the literature of the time. Now if only we could work it into the popular conception of history, maybe we'd have a few less romanticizers telling us how society is falling to pieces.