2016
Cairn
Paul Chaffenet, « De la conversion monastique au châtiment divin : l’exemple du comte Albert II de Vermandois (début du xie siècle) », Revue du Nord, ID : 10670/1.59781a...
From monastic conversion to divine punishment. The case of Count Albert II of Vermandois (early eleventh century)Book III of the Gesta of Cambrai contains several stories of divine punishment which do not deal with the history of Gerard I’s episcopate. Chapter 23, which describes the hypocritical penance of Count Albert II of Vermandois († 1015/1017), his aborted monastic conversion and his horrendous death, is not anecdotal at all. A prosopographic clarification about this count makes it possible to date more rigorously the writing of this narrative. Replaced in its literary context (that of the whole Gesta), this episode may illustrate bishop Gerard’s thought : indeed, language sins, as well as hazards related to penance or oath, are themes frequently found in the work. The causal link between Albert II’s perjuries and heavenly revenge is reminiscent of the persistent conflicts between bishop Gerard and Gautier II of Lens, castellan of Cambrai. In the mind of the Cambresian chronicler and his sponsor, Count Albert’s damnatio memoriae conveys at its worst the hostility against the house of Vermandois, but it is also an indirect victory of the episcopate on a vindictive lay aristocracy.