Carmen de Hastingae Proelio

The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio ( Chanson of the battle of Hastings ) is the name given to a Latin poem telling the Conquête Norman of England, and which was identified a long time as being the lost poem writes by Guy, bishop of Amiens, and mentioned by the chronicler Orderic Vital. He was discovered in 1826 by Georg Heinrich Pertz in a manuscript gone back to approximately 1100, and is preserved today at the royal Bibliothèque of Belgium.

Description

The poem, of which the tone suggests a literary exercise, begins with a description of the fleet of the duke anchored to Saint-Valery-sur-Somme and awaiting the favorable wind (September 1066). It finishes with crowning with Westminster of Mathilde of Flanders (December 1066). The description of the Bataille of Hastings occupies a third of work approximately. It describes several scenes which are brought back in none the contemporary sources, like the provocation of the juggler Taillefer in front of the English, the four murderers of Harold, the role of negotiator of Ansgard in the head office of London, the presence of Apuliens, of Calabrian and Sicilians to the battle.

It is composed of 835 lines of Pentamètre S and Hexamètre S, and it misses the end. It was published for the first time by Henry Petrie in England, and Francisque Michel in France in the years 1840.

Discusses on the origin of work

Initially, this poem was identified as being that of Guy, bishop of Amiens of 1058 to 1075. The existence of this poem is mentioned by the chronicler Orderic Vital in its Historia ecclesiastica :

“ GUI, bishop of Amiens, composed a metric poem, in which, with the imitation of Virgile and Stace, which sang the exploits of the heroes, it made the description of the battle of Senlac, blaming and condemning Harold, but renting much and glorifiant Guillaume ”.

“ from Flanders passed the sea with a big competition of men and women noble to be made crown Queen of England in 1068. Among the clerks who fulfilled near it the functions of the divine worship, one noticed celebrates it Guy, bishop of Amiens, which already had put in worms the account of the battle of Harold against Guillaume ”.

In 1944, G.H. White argued that this poem is not an original source, but probably a work completed starting from sources of the 12th century. This vision was accepted so much, but Sten Körner then Franck Barlow rejected this vision at the end of the Sixties, and concluded that work was the existing oldest source on the subject, more complete than the Gesta Normannorum Ducum of Guillaume de Jumièges, more honest and more reliable than the Gesta Guillelmi of Guillaume of Poitiers, and than it was more explicit than the Tapisserie of Bayeux.

In 1978, R. H.C. Davis recalled that Orderic Vital had mentioned its use of the poem of Guy of Amiens and the Gesta Guillelmi of Guillaume of Poitiers like sources for its work. However, Vital does not use anything the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio which is not already present in the Gesta Guillelmi of Guillaume of Poitiers. Davis argues that it is strange that Vital does not take again the new scenes contained in the Carmen , and that it would have brought them back without any doubt if he had had knowledge of it. Davis, being based on other inconsistencies, concludes that this poem is a literary exercise written in a school of the north of France or south of the Flanders, between 1125 and 1140, and that it does not have consequently anything to see with the poem of Guy of Amiens.

The controversy on the subject is always of topicality.

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