ABSTRACT
Guibert's writing changes after his election as abbot. It is a gradual process rather than an immediate transformation, one that depends both on his own political experiences and on the new ideas he discovered in and around Nogent. The optimism of the “Little Book on Virginity” and the supreme intellectual confidence of the Moralia Geneseos are still apparent in 1108 as he writes his Crusade chronicle. They have all but vanished in 1115 when he writes his Monodies. The despairing character of Book I of the Monodies, as I have suggested throughout part one of this book, owes as much to the worldview of this older Guibert as it does to the experiences of young Guibert. That such a strong residue of the original psychological system survives in his memoirs is a testament to the true power of the idea. This evolving, increasingly ironic sense of life begins with his election as abbot and becomes most strikingly apparent through a comparison of his two major historical works, his record of the First Crusade and of the communal revolt at Laon in Book III of the Monodies. It is to these topics that we shall now turn.
