Rhetorical and narrative studies on the Historiae of Richer of Saint-Remi

About this book

The Historiae of Richer of Saint-Remi should not be read as an attempt to influence political opinion in and around Rheims. Instead, we should understand it primarily as a literary work intended to promote Richer's status within the scholarly community at Rheims, to curry favor with his dedicatee, Gerbert of Aurillac, and to secure a place for the author in written memory. Richer's intention was not to produce a polemical work in favor of either Carolingian or Capetian dynastic claims, but to produce a work of rhetorical historiography in the classical mold. His self-consciously rhetorical style distances Richer from prior Rheims historiography and testifies to the revival of interest in classical rhetoric in the cathedral schools of the late tenth century. This study follows several different, but related, lines of enquiry, including: (1) a close reading of Richer's prologue in order to demonstrate that behind the façade of introductory topoi lie several keys to reading the Historiae , most importantly the author's use of the standard of narratio probabilis ; (2) an examination of the curriculum in rhetoric at the monastery of Saint-Remi and the cathedral school of Rheims under Gerbert, relying on evidence from the Historiae , the letters and synodal acts of Gerbert, and an anonymous poem written at Saint-Remi in the 980's; (3) an analysis of Richer's deployment of the precepts of classical rhetoric, particularly those of Cicero's De inventione , in composing his own speeches and rhetorical set-pieces, and the influence of his primary stylistic models, Sallust and Hegesippus, and (4) an interpretation of Richer's autobiographical account of his journey to Chartres in 991, understood here as an attempt by Richer to fashion a textual portrait of himself as a humane scholar, an image calculated to appeal both to his patron, Gerbert, and to the broader scholarly community at Rheims.