Disagreeing With History

I’ve learned enough to be comfortable with disagreeing with professionals.

Does that sound presumptuous to you? It did to me the first time the thought occurred to me.

The first time I found a mistake in a history book was while reading The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny, as translated by Richard W. Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy. I would have to reread the book to find the passage, and this essay isn’t about exactly why I thought they missed a beat in their translation, but I read a passage and it didn’t seem right to me.

The book includes both the original text in the medieval French as well as the modern English translation. When I came across this passage in the translation I immediately looked to the original text. Now, I do speak and read modern French, and several times in the past I have muddled my way through brief passages of medieval French. If you know where the modern accent circumflex (^) comes from and you know of the somewhat archaic French literary tense then it can be done with considerable difficulty. I still find the occasional word that has no obvious modem equivalent, but I can often get a sense of the meaning.

I’m not an expert, and I know it, but I’ve spent more than twenty years of my life studying knights and chivalry, which is a little redundant from a certain point of view. More than just studying the history I have tried to crawl inside the head of the medieval knight to that I could act like one.

And that is where my problem arose.

Geoffroi de Charny was the epitome of the knight of the 14th Century. He could be called the best French Knight of his era. He was the bearer of the French war banner, the Oriflamme at the Battle of Poitiers and died there with it in his hand. The Book of Chivalry was not his only book on Knighthood.

Anyone who has attempted translation knows that it is not enough to just translate the words, one must also translate the meaning. I have often been handed short translations from English to French and asked if they were accurate. Often my response is something like, “Well, these words do mean the same thing as those words, but no Frenchman would say it that way.”

When I read Geoffroi’s words, I could see that words might have been translated correctly, but the meaning expressed in English did not seem to match what the author said in medieval French. I think that my studies and attempts to understand the mind of the medieval knight gave me a different, and I think more accurate, understanding of what Geoffroi de Charny was trying to say.

That in a specific and almost certainly overly long example, but there are others.

I have read enough books by modern history professors to learn that they disagree on fundamental points. Even such seemingly simple questions as the beginning and end of the Middle Ages can lead to a wide variety of answers.

In addition to historians there are also historiographers. Historiographers study the history of history. How has the study of and writing about history changed over time. I’ve only read one book of historiography…that I remember, but it furthered my attitude that you cannot take what you read in a history book as the absolute truth.

Revisionist history is not a new phenomenon.

But, in addition to conscious, if not actively malicious, attempts to rewrite history, it must also be remembered that history is a profession and that rising to the top of that profession may require more than repeating well-known facts. Getting a PhD is supposed to require adding to the sum of human knowledge, but in the field of history it is often difficult to uncover new facts, so most doctoral candidates seem to be providing new insights into well-known facts.

This often means taking a controversial position and then drawing out facts to support it, and there can be a lot riding on how well the historian supports his position. First, there is the PhD itself. Later, the professional standing to get a better position at a better university. Finally, there is the ultimate goal of tenure.

My point in all this is that modern historians may have an axe to grind. What the facts really say or mean may be less important than grabbing an academic spotlight and making your peers stop and consider your viewpoint. I sometimes feel that modern works of history are more about showing how clever the author is than about getting to the truth.

Now, am I saying that historians are uninterested in the historical facts or that historians will twist those facts into any pretzel shape just to prove a point? No, but I am saying that the sources chosen and the passages quoted may be used to advance a position, rather than letting the facts themselves tell the story.

All history is interpretation.

The professor in my first history class told me that. I have never forgotten it. It is a good thing to remember when you pick up a history book. You are not reading history; you are reading someone’s interpretation of history.

And it is actually okay to disagree.