The Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - C. 1550): Text and Paratext, Codex and Context 9782503585994, 250358599X

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The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - c. 1550)

TEXTE, CODEX & CONTEXTE VOLUME 23 Directrice de collection Tania Van Hemelryck Comité scientifique Bernard Bousmanne Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet Giuseppe Di Stefano Claude Thiry

The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Burgundy-LuxembourgFrance, 1458 - c. 1550) Text and Paratext, Codex and Context

A collaborative study edited by graeme small

Cover illustration: Miniature accompanying CNN79, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 167v. Man finds his donkey thanks to the bellowing he emits following an enema, prescribed by a doctor as the best method for finding lost donkeys. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives & Special Collections.

© 2023, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2023/0095/52 ISBN 978-2-503-58599-4 eISBN 978-2-503-58600-7 DOI 10.1484/M.TCC-EB.5.118224 ISSN 2294-8333 eISSN 2294-8341 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

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Introduction Graeme Small

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Part I The manuscript witness Chapter 1. Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. The physical fabric of the fables Richard Gameson

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Chapter 2. MS Hunter 252: precursors, date and patronage Hanno Wijsman

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Part II Reception in manuscript and print Chapter 3. Printing the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. Anthoine Vérard’s 1486 edition and its sixteenth-century successors Mary Beth Winn Chapter 4. Opening and closing the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. Paratext, context and reception, 1469- c. 1550 Graeme Small

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Table of ConTenTs

Part III Reading text and image in manuscript form Chapter 5. Storytelling through architecture. The miniatures of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles Maud Pérez-Simon

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Chapter 6. Narratological readings of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (CNN3, 21, 27). Text and image in MS Hunter 252 Alexandra Velissariou †

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Part IV The text as a site of language use Chapter 7. Toward a scriptology of Middle French. The case of MS Hunter 252 Geoffrey Roger

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Chapter 8. Stylistic implications of linguistic archaism and contemporaneity in MS Hunter 252 Peter V. Davies †

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Part V Archives in the fiction Chapter 9. Locating storytelling in time and space (HainautBrussels, 1458-59). A Decameronian moment Edgar de Blieck & Graeme Small

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Chapter 10. Tales from the chamber. The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles between Burgundy and Luxembourg Graeme Small

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Conclusions Graeme Small

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Index

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List of illustrations

MS Hunter 252, the sole surviving manuscript of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, has been digitised by the Special Collections staff at the library of the University of Glasgow, and may be consulted at the time of writing at https://www.flickr.com/photos/uofglibrary/albums/ 72157677554501037/. In addition to this resource, a number of illustrations, listed below, have been included in the present volume for ease of reference. Richard Gameson Fig. 1.

Table 1.

Micrograph showing detail on the head of a statue of St Michael in the background of the miniature of CNN11. Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252 fol. 25r. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. The pigments of Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, Summary.

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Miniature of the marriage mix-up in CNN53. Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252 fol. 120v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

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Hanno Wijsman Fig. 2.

Mary Beth Winn Fig. 3.

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Woodcut and dedication to the Duke of Burgundy, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Paris: Anthoine Vérard, 24 Dec. 1486, fol. [a1=a10] (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174). Presentation woodcut and table, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Paris: Anthoine Vérard, 24 Dec. 1486, fol. a2 (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174).

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Fig. 5.

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Figs 7b-c. Fig. 8.

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Fig. 16. Figs 17 a-d.

Presentation woodcut in Vérard’s editions of Sydrac, Paris: 20 II 1486/7, fol. a1 (BnF Rés. Y2-183) (per John Macfarlane, Antoine Vérard [London: Chiswick Press, 1900], Pl. V). Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Paris: Anthoine Vérard, c. 1498, presentation woodcut, fol. aa2 (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Rés 4o BL 4389). Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Paris: Nicolas Des Prez for Durand Gerlier, 3 Feb. 1505, title page (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-176), Verso of title page; colophon and publisher's mark (fol. C5v). Title pages for Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles editions 4 & 5: Paris: Jean (I) Trepperel, c. 1507-11 (Paris, ENSBA); Paris: Michel Le Noir, c. 1510-20 (Paris, BnF). Title pages for Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles editions 6 & 8, Paris: Veuve Trepperel-Jean Jehannot, c. 1515-36 (Washington, LCR); Paris: Veuve Trepperel, c. 1525-30 (Munich BSB). Title pages for Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles editions 7 & 9: Paris: Philippe Le Noir, c. 1520 (The Hague); Paris: Jean (II) Trepperel-Alain Lotrian, c. 1527 (BnF). Title pages for Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles editions 12 & 13: Paris: Alain Lotrian-Denis Janot, c. 1532-36 (Princeton); Paris: Alain Lotrian, c. 1536 (Augsburg). Colophons for editions 4, 5, 6: Jean (I) Trepperel, c. 1507-11 (vente Rahir); Paris: Michel Le Noir, c. 1510-20 (BnF Rothschild); Veuve Trepperel-Jean Jehannot, c. 1515-36 (Washington, LC). Colophons for editions 7, 8, 9: Philippe Le Noir, c. 1524 (The Hague); Veuve Trepperel, c. 1525-30 (Munich, BSB); Jean (II) Trepperel-A. Lotrian, c. 1529-31 (BnF). Colophons for editions 12, 13: A. Lotrian-Denis Janot c. 1532-36 (Princeton); Alain Lotrian c. 1536 (Augsburg). Title pages for editions 10 and 11: Lyon: Arnoullet, c. 1530 (New Haven, Beinecke Library) and 1532 (Paris, BnF). Colophon and woodcut, Lyon: Arnoullet, 1532, fols r7vr8r (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-730). CNN69 and 70: the same woodcut in Vérard’s first edition (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174, fols p2v, p3v) and the two corresponding miniatures in the Glasgow

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manuscript (fols 151r, 152v). Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. Fig. 18. CNN72: the woodcut in Vérard’s first edition (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174, fol. p6r) and the miniature in the Glasgow manuscript (fol. 155v). Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. Fig. 19. Woodcut for CNN9 in Vérard’s first edition (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174, fol. c5v), which is repeated for CNN27, 29, 33, 35, 36, 43, 55, 56. Figs 20 a-d. Woodcut modifications: for CNN10 and 32 in Vérard’s first edition (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174, fols c7r, h4v), for CNN10 in Vérard’s second edition (Paris, BnF Arsenal, 4o BL 4389, fol. d5v); copied for CNN1 (and eight other nouvelles) in the third edition by Des Prez (Paris, BnF Rés. Y2-176, fol. b1r). Fig. 21. Woodcut from the Vengence de nostre Saulveur, Lyon: Jacques Arnoullet, 29 Oct. 1499 (BnF Rés. P-H-11(2)), fol. A2v, that illustrated CNN21 in Olivier Arnoullet’s editions of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, c. 1530 and 1532. Figs 22 a-b. CNN1: woodcut in Vérard’s first edition (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174, fol. b1r) and the corresponding miniature in the Glasgow manuscript (fol. 3r). Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. Fig. 23a. Fig. 23b. CNN1: woodcuts in editions 1-6.CNN1: woodcuts in editions 7-13. Fig. 24. CNN12: woodcut in Vérard’s first edition (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174, fol. d1r) and corresponding miniature in the Glasgow manuscript (fol. 26r). Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

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Graeme Small Fig. 25.

Full folio image of Ms Hunter 252 fol. 66r (CNN28), showing erasure of the reference to Boccaccio by name in the opening sentence. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

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Maud Pérez-Simon Fig. 26.

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Miniature accompanying CNN48, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 112r. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. Miniature accompanying CNN49, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 113v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. Miniature accompanying CNN11, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 25r. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. Miniature accompanying CNN13, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 27v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. Miniature accompanying CNN27, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 62v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. Miniature accompanying CNN30, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 70r. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. Miniature accompanying CNN31, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 72v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. Miniature accompanying CNN54, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 122v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. Miniature accompanying CNN71, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 154v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. Miniature accompanying CNN36, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 89v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. Miniature accompanying CNN85, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 175v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

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Alexandra Velissariou † Fig. 37.

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Miniature accompanying CNN3, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 8v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. 194 Miniature accompanying CNN21, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 45v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. 196

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Introduction

How might one recover the historical meanings and significance of a work of literature? In the field of late medieval French and Burgundian literary production as in so many others, that question was answered with decreasing confidence over the course of the twentieth century. The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles is a case in point. First written under Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy (1419-67), loosely modelled on Boccaccio’s Decameron (c. 1349-53, in the form of its French translation by Laurent de Premierfait, c. 1411-14) and presented as the outcome of real tale-telling by named courtiers, this collection of short stories occupied an important place in early historical investigations of the Burgundian court. However, with one or two notable exceptions, historians since the late 1920s have largely left the subject to literary scholars, to whom the historical significance of these tales has seemed secondary or negligible. Manuals presenting the literary production of the late Middle Ages have continued to serve as common ground between the historian and the literary scholar, whatever divergences might have emerged between their approaches to texts. Georges Doutrepont’s seminal survey of French literature at the court of Burgundy (1909) finds a modern counterpart in ARLIMA (launched 2005), a key internet resource which enables specialists of all disciplines to locate the medieval French literary text in time and place, and to access the latest scholarship.1 Both ARLIMA and Doutrepont pay close attention to the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, so much so that the former obviates any need in the present volume for a bibliography of scholarship of the work. The latter, meanwhile, may be credited with having first elevated this text (previously thought notorious, its ‘licentious

1 ARLIMA’s page on the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles can be consulted at https:// arlima.net/no/32; Georges Doutrepont, La Littérature française à la cour des ducs de Bourgogne, Philippe le Hardi, Jean sans Peur, Philippe le Bon, Charles le Téméraire, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 8 (Paris: Champion, 1909). Graeme Small • Durham University The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - c. 1550), ed. by Graeme Small, Texte, Codex & Contexte, 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 13–22 10.1484/M.TCC-EB.5.132646

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anecdotes’ fit only for the eyes of book connaisseurs, according to Walter Scott) to a central place in Burgundian court culture.2 Of the very many lit­ erary works and authors surveyed by Doutrepont, in fact, only the official ducal chronicler George Chastelain, the courtier-memoirist Olivier de La Marche, the ducal writers David Aubert and Jean Wauquelin, the earlier French court writer Christine de Pizan and the courtier-cum-chronicler Jean de Wavrin (in that order) receive more mentions than the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. And it is worth noting that Doutrepont’s conspectus accorded the work greater prominence than it did to such key texts as Froissart’s chronicles (which, though written earlier, found many readers at the Burgundian court); the work of Chastelain’s successor as official historian, Jean Molinet; all of the major prose romances which Doutrepont himself considered a characteristic feature of Burgundian literature;3 and even translations of the Bible and individual classical histories which were present in the ducal library. Doutrepont’s survey, combined with insights drawn from German historicism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, helped Johan Huizinga formulate what is perhaps the most confident analysis of Franco-Burgundian literature ever written by an historian, and certainly the most widely read: Autumntide of the Middle Ages (1919).4 Firmly believing it was possible to isolate ‘forms of life and thought’ that lay embedded like time-capsules in the literature of the age, as well as its art or its theology, Huizinga used the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles to understand topics as diverse as the significance of proverbs, the symbolism of colour, the role of costume and fashion and the functions of profanity in life and thought in France and the Low Countries during the late Middle Ages.5 Historical research into the work then took an archival turn in the form of Pierre Champion’s 1928 edition of the text.6 Here, the most concerted attempt yet was made to identify the named storytellers of the

2 Walter Scott, Quentin Durward, ed. by Susan Manning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 42. 3 Doutrepont would later carry out an exhaustive study of this genre: Les Mises en prose des épopées et des romans chevaleresques du XIVe au XVIe siècle, Académie royale de Belgique, Classe des lettres, Mémoires, 40 (Brussels: Palais des académies, 1939). 4 Johan Huizinga, Autumntide of the Middle Ages. A Study of Forms of Life and Thought of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries in France and the Low Countries, ed. by Graeme Small and Anton van der Lem, trans. by Diane Webb (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2020). 5 Huizinga, Autumntide of the Middle Ages, pp. 74 n. 77, 168-69, 245, 264 n. 3, 312 n. 24, 409 n. 26, 460. For Huizinga’s influences and method, see Graeme Small, ‘The Making of The Autumn of the Middle Ages, I: Narrative Sources and their Treatment in Huizinga’s Herfsttij’, in Rereading Huizinga. ‘Autumn of the Middle Ages’, a Century Later, ed. by Peter Arnade, Martha Howell and Anton van der Lem (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019), pp. 169-210. 6 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. by Pierre Champion, Documents artistiques du XVe siècle, 5 (Paris: Droz, 1928; repr. Geneva: Slatkine, 1977).

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Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: men who really had told these tales, Champion imagined, ‘by candlelight, while stoking the embers of the fire’ – even if their efforts were subsequently curated by an ‘acteur’ (‘redactor’), who completed the ‘oeuvre d’un artiste et d’un écrivain accompli’ (‘the work of artist and accomplished writer’) by adding some stories himself, then by finishing off the undertaking at the Duke’s request.7 But few subsequent historians have approached Burgundian literature in general, and the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles in particular, with such assur­ ance. Already at the time when Huizinga and Champion were developing their insights, medieval French literature was slipping from the purview of historians. In a passionate defence of the scientific study of texts in their historical contexts, the influential literary scholar Gustave Lanson felt obliged nonetheless to acknowledge, in 1904, that there was no ‘law of correlation between literature and life’.8 The gap between a largely discrete world of literature on the one hand, and social, political or economic life on the other, increased in subsequent decades of scholarship in the field.9 That gap emerges most strongly in Jens Rasmussen’s view, expressed in his survey of French prose narrative forms (1958), that the attribution of stories to named courtiers in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles was ‘no doubt pure fantasy’.10 This claim was not addressed in the next edition of the work which we still use today, Franklin Sweetser’s in 1966, where in fact nothing was added to Champion’s earlier discussion of the work’s historical context.11 Rasmussen’s view was an extreme manifestation of a broader consen­ sus, namely that one should differentiate clearly between literature on the one hand, and everything that lay ‘hors texte’ (‘outside the text’) on the other. That consensus remained apparent, albeit in different ways, in the major studies of Franco-Burgundian literature that appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, notably Daniel Poirion’s Le poète et le prince (1965) and Paul Zumthor’s Le masque et la lumière (1978).12 Roger Dubuis’s 1973 study of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles illuminated the themes and structure of 7 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Champion, p. ix. 8 Gustave Lanson, ‘L’Histoire littéraire et la sociologie’, Revue de métaphysique et morale, 12 (1904), 621-42 (pp. 634-36); Martine Jey, ‘Gustave Lanson: de l’histoire littéraire à une histoire sociale de la littérature?’, Le français aujourd’hui, 145 (2004), 15-22. 9 For this and what follows, see Estelle Doudet, ‘Un Automne impensé: Johan Huizinga et l’histoire littéraire française’, in L’odeur du sang et des roses. Relire Johan Huizinga aujourd’hui, ed. by Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardin (Villeneuve-d’Asq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2019), pp. 87-100. 10 Jens Rasmussen, La Prose narrative française du XVe siècle (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1958), p. 146. 11 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. Édition critique, ed. by Franklin P. Sweetser, Textes littéraires français, 127 (Paris: Droz, 1966). 12 Poirion’s work being marked by ‘le principe intangible de l’autotélisme de la littérature’ (‘intangible principle of the autotelism of literature’), Zumthor’s by his insistence on ‘la

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the tales and their contribution to the development of the genre of the nouvelles which was so influential thereafter in French literary history, but the historical ‘hors texte’ did not fall within the scope of his work either.13 Historical context had become, at best, something to be ‘invoked, rather than investigated’.14 Around the same time, unfortunately, historical commentary on the text was also adopting a discipline-bound view. Richard Vaughan’s fivevolume history of the dukes, completed in 1975, was the fullest historical statement made in the twentieth century on the rise and fall of Valois Burgundy, and several pages were devoted to the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. Vaughan simply asserted, somewhat problematically, that ‘well over half the tales, including some of the fourteen told by the Duke, are true stories … Philip the Good and his courtiers exchanged these bawdy tales and other gossip after dinner at Genappe, Brussels or elsewhere’.15 Thus the hardening of disciplinary boundaries left the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles stranded somewhat awkwardly between two extremes, as a complete fic­ tion or as a source of ‘facts’. There has been a considerable expansion of scholarly interest in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles in the last three decades, and this work has cer­ tainly contributed to a better understanding of how the text might be un­ derstood historically. The orality of the tales has been strongly emphasised by Cristina Azuela and Madeleine Jeay, while Alexandra Velissariou has demonstrated the ‘potentialités dramatiques’ (‘theatrical potential’) of this orality, drawing revealing parallels with the genre of the farce.16 Thanks to the work of Nelly Labère and Nora Viet in particular, we now have a clearer sense of the work’s place in the development of the genre of the nouvelle.17

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différence entre le fait littéraire et le fait social’ (‘the difference between literature and society’): Doudet, ‘Un Automne impensé’, pp. 96-97. Roger Dubuis, Les “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles” et la tradition de la nouvelle au moyen âge (Grenoble: Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 1973). Gabrielle Spiegel, ‘History, Historicism and the Social Logic of the Text’, Speculum, 65 (1990), 59-86 (p. 74). Richard Vaughan, Philip the Good. The Apogee of Burgundy, Second edition, with introduction by Graeme Small (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2002), pp. 158, 160. Alexandra Velissariou, Aspects dramatiques et écriture de l’oralité dans les “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 77 (Paris: Champion, 2012); Madeleine Jeay, Donner la parole. L’histoire-cadre dans les recueils de nouvelles des XVe et XVIe siècles (Montréal: CERES, 1992); Cristina Azuela, ‘Les ruses de la parole dans la nouvelle à la fin du moyen âge: les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, les Contes de Canterbury et le Décaméron’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Paris IV, 1991). Nelly Labère, Défricher le jeune plant: étude du genre de la nouvelle au moyen âge, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 69 (Paris: Champion, 2006); Nora Viet, ‘Des “Cent Nouvelles” à la nouvelle? L’héritage du “Décaméron” à la lumière des titres de recueils français (1462-1536)’, in Boccaccio e la Francia. Boccace et la France, ed. by Philippe Guérin and Anne Robin (Florence: Franco Cesati editore, 2017), pp. 273-86.

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Focussing on the text itself, there have been in-depth studies of the Latin sources of the tales by Raphaël Zehnder, the language of the collection by Geoffrey Roger, and the historical context of the work by Edgar de Blieck.18 The work of the last two in particular is the subject of further development in the present volume. Last but not least, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles have also been used to deepen our historical understanding of wider themes and problems, not least the topic of gender as studied by Luca Pierdominici (in terms of representations of the female body) and by David Fein and David La Guardia (concerning contemporary notions of masculinity).19 The hors texte plays a relatively minor role in this most recent wave of primarily literary scholarship of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, however, and only one major study has considered the work’s historical context in ways that progress or revise Champion’s discoveries from nearly a century ago.20 Reacting against what she characterised as a ‘dehistoricization’ of the literary text resulting from structuralism, semiotics and poststructural­ ism, Gabrielle Spiegel argued in 1990 that historians might respond to instances of the omission or exclusion of the hors texte in the study of literature by examining each work, or each group of works, as ‘situated uses of language’.21 Such an approach in the case of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles would start from ‘the materially extant text’, examining works as ‘sites of linguistic usage… within a highly particularized and local social environment’, and would strive for a ‘relational reading of text and context’. Broadly speaking, the present volume will attempt to read the work in these ways, tracking the text in its various material forms through changing

18 Raphaël Zehnder, Les Modèles latins des “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”. Des textes de Poggio Bracciolini, Nicolas de Clamanges, Albrecht von Eyb et Francesco Petrarca et leur adaptation en langue vernaculaire française (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004); Geoffrey Roger, ‘“Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”: a Linguistic Study of MS Glasgow Hunter 252’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 2011); Edgar de Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Text and Context: Literature and History at the Court of Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 2004). 19 Luca Pierdominici, La Bouche et le corps. Images littéraires du quinzième siècle français, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 65 (Paris: Champion, 2003); David LaGuardia, The Iconography of Power. The French Nouvelle at the End of the Middle Ages (Newark-London: University of Delaware Press, 1999); David LaGuardia, Intertextual Masculinity in French Renaissance Literature: Rabelais, Brantôme and the ‘Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’ (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); David Fein, Displacements of Power. Readings of the ‘Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’ (New York: University Press of America, 2003). 20 See De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Text and Context’, and especially pp. 19-43 (with reference to aspects of the analyses of Hermann Wetzel, Judith Bruskin Diner, Dominique Lagorgette, Nelly Labère and Madeleine Jeay). 21 Spiegel, ‘History, Historicism and the Social Logic of the Text’, quotations here and in the next sentence at pp. 75, 76, 78, 83.

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historical contexts which can be discerned with greater precision than ever before. Our approach is modified and given particular focus by an insight from literary criticism. As Gérard Genette observed, the text rarely appears in its naked state, without the reinforcement and accompaniment of a number of productions, themselves verbal or not, like an author’s name, a title, a preface, illustrations. One does not always know if one should consider that they belong to the text or not, but in any case they surround it and prolong it, precisely in order to present it, in the usual sense of this verb, but also in its strongest meaning: to make it present, to assure its presence in the world, its “reception” and its consumption, in the form, nowadays at least, of a book.22 To these elements of the book, Genette ascribed the term ‘paratext’: ‘the means by which a text makes a book of itself, and presents itself as such to its readers’. The concept of the paratext is then further refined. First, there is the material which is located in and around the literary text itself, which Genette terms the ‘peritext’. In the case of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, the peritext would include the table of contents and chapter titles identifying the conteurs, the title and dedication, the miniatures in a manuscript or woodcut illustrations in an early printed book. Further paratextual elements can be located outside the text, to which Genette applies the term ‘epitext’. In the case of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, epitexts include multiple mentions of the work in library inventories which provide further insight into the work’s reception and even its original form and appearance. Building on these historical and literary approaches to the study of texts, the present study considers the materiality of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles at different points in the work’s existence, and offers a relational reading of text, paratext and context throughout the reception of the work in its different guises. Part 1, ‘The manuscript witness’ starts with a detailed codicological investigation by Richard Gameson of the sole manuscript, MS Hunter 252 of Glasgow University Library, using a wide range of current techniques, and continues with a series of triangulated investigations by Hanno Wijsman to narrow down the original milieu of this one surviving witness, as well as its relationship to its lost predeces­ sor(s). In Part 2, ‘Reception in manuscript and print’, Mary Beth Winn offers a detailed survey of the print history of the work, from Anthoine Vérard’s editio princeps of 1486 down to the first waning in the work’s popularity in the middle of the sixteenth century. The present author 22 Gérard Genette (trans. Marie Maclean), ‘Introduction to the Paratext’, New Literary History, 22 (1991), 261-72 (p. 261).

inTroduCTion

then reflects on the historical context behind each of the different phases of the text’s reception, progressing backwards from the wide audience it reached in print to its narrower public in manuscript form, as well as the factors affecting readers’ perceptions of the literary enterprise across time. Part 3, ‘Text and image’, explores the paratextual value of the illustrations accompanying the manuscript. Maud Pérez-Simon analyses the function of architecture in the illustrative scheme, exploring the artist’s method in conveying key moments of the narrative to the viewer-reader, while Alexandra Velissariou demonstrates how the illustrations afford clear evi­ dence of profound links between ways of reading the Cent Nouvelles nou­ velles and ways of reading the foundational work of the nouvelle tradition, the Decameron. In specific linguistic ways, especially in an age of scribal variation before any significant language standardization had occurred, all literary texts can be examined as ‘situated uses of language’, traceable to time and place by graphematic evidence, morphology or syntax. Part 4, ‘The text as a site of language use’, will examine the linguistic features of the surviving material witnesses to help locate language usage more firmly, with Peter Davies investigating the subject diachronically, Geoffrey Roger diatopically. Both take account of manuscript and early print evidence. In the final section, ‘Archives in the fiction’, a relational reading of text, paratext and ‘hors texte’ is undertaken in an attempt to locate the ‘highly particularized and local social environment’ which is portrayed as the root of the literary enterprise under consideration. Not forgetting the literary purpose of the framing device of named story-tellers, but also assuming it is not a ‘pure fantasy’ as Rasmussen boldly claimed, we respond positively to the paratext’s naming of story-tellers by asking why it was thought these stories should be attributable and to whom, not to mention where and when these stories are presented as having been told. We will also ask what our answers to these questions might mean historically. Edgar de Blieck and the present author tackle this subject in a joint chapter. In the final chapter, a new reading of the paratext invites us to see the work within a particularly well-defined network of sociability and service, and in the context of wider literary traditions to which those milieux subscribed. Taken together, these essays constitute a set of historical readings of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, working backwards from the materiality of the work, its reception, its engagement with audiences through text and image, its language and, ultimately, the historical context it explicitly presents to its readers. A number of well-known problems relating to our source materials will be addressed across the various contributions. The first mention of the work occurs in an epitext – the posthumous inventory of Philip the Good’s library describes a ‘brand new’ volume of the work, but the manuscript in question no longer survives. What happened to that lost manuscript, how does it relate to surviving material witnesses, and what does its existence

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reveal about the relationship between text and context? The first surviving material witness of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles is a unicum as we have seen, and it presents an even greater number of problems, each of them with some bearing on the text’s many contexts. Situating the manuscript in space and time will be addressed through material and iconographical approaches to the codex; comparative linguistic approaches to the text itself; and historical approaches to the paratext, drawing on evidence from the ‘hors texte’ to explore the relationship between the work (in its manuscript and print forms) and social networks. Last but not least, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles was one of the earliest French vernacular works to enter into print. How did the new technology of print change the relationship between text and context? What do comparisons of the first printed edition with its manuscript predecessor reveal for our wider purpose? What can be gleaned from later editions about the changing historical significance of the work? Exploring the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles as a ‘situated use of languge’ from these many different perspectives would have been nigh on impossible for a single scholar from one disciplinary background, and this layered monograph has therefore necessarily been a collaborative enterprise. Some of the collaborations present here go back more than twenty years, while others are relatively recent. An important interim stage in the work was reached in 2011, when a workshop at Glasgow University Library Special Collections brought a number of the teams together for the first time. Since then, a parallel enterprise has come to fruition, and its publication in 2016 has further determined the shape that our own investigation would take (including a greater focus on the materiality of the text, boosted by the work of Richard Gameson and his colleagues which was completed in 2019, and is presented here in Chapter 1).23 In turn, it is intended that the work presented here will contribute fresh insights for a much-needed new edition of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, currently being prepared by one of our collaborators, Geoffrey Roger.24 The contributors to this volume are grateful for the support of the Chancellor’s Fund of the University of Glasgow, the Friends of the Univer­ sity Library of the University of Glasgow, the staff of Special Collections in Glasgow University Library, the Fondation pour la protection du patri­ moine culturel, historique et artisanal (Lausanne) and the History Depart­ ment Research Fund at Durham University. In addition to the personal debts acknowledged below by the contributors, the editor would like to thank his collaborators for their patience and advice, and Céline Berry,

23 The parallel approach led by Jean Devaux and Alexandra Velissariou is published as Autour des “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”: sources et rayonnements, contextes et interprétations, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 81 (Paris: Champion, 2016). 24 With Droz (Geneva).

inTroduCTion

Godfried Croenen, Jean Devaux, Catherine Emerson, Justine FirnhaberBaker, Laurence Grove, Julie Gardham, Martin Heale, Klaus Oschema, Jacques Paviot, Daniëlle Prochowski and David Weston for their generous assistance. This volume is dedicated to the memory of Alexandra Velissariou (1981-2020) and Peter Davies (1944-2020), our joyous and valued com­ panions in ‘le tresgracieux exercise de lecture et d’estude’ (‘the most gracious practice of reading and study’) (Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, prologue).

21

ParT I

The manuscript witness

riCharD gamEsON 

Chapter 1. Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles * The physical fabric of the fables

The present chapter offers an analytical account of the material fabric of Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252 (U.4.2), the only extant manuscript copy of Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles.1 We shall examine in turn the parchment and preparation of the volume, its script and writing, the design and realisation of its artwork, the pigments and painting technique, and its binding. We shall conclude with general observations on what, collectively, this physical evidence implies in relation to the production and patronage of the book.

Parchment and Preparation MS Hunter 252 now consists of 207 folios plus fly- and endleaves; the pages measure c. 254×186 mm, with a text-block of 218×141 mm. Al­ though in its original form, the manuscript had at least ten further leaves and its dimensions were rather larger, it will always have been a volume of middling size (moien in the parlance of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century booklists). Eight leaves have been lost from the first quire of the volume, two from the last; moreover, two of the current leaves are replacements, prob­ ably made in the seventeenth century, for folios that had evidently been damaged by that date.2 The book-block has been brutally cut down, to the extent that the calligraphic capitals and even the ascenders of the ordinary

* With the assistance of Andrew Beeby (Durham University), Catherine Nicholson (Northumbria University) and Louise Garner (Durham University). 1 The standard published description is John Young and Patrick H. Aitken, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of the Hunterian Museum in the University of Glasgow (Glasgow: Maclehouse, 1908), pp. 202-03. 2 Fols 137 and 207; see further below. Richard Gameson • Durham University The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - c. 1550), ed. by Graeme Small, Texte, Codex & Contexte, 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 25–60 10.1484/M.TCC-EB.5.132231

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writing on the first line on many pages have been cropped, as too has the top of the first decorated capital on fol. 2r. However, if the margins initially conformed to the canonical design principles that were followed in a large number of medieval books and so increased in size by regular increments from the inner to the upper to the outer to the lower, with the outer margin being approximately twice the width of the inner one,3 then the unaltered width of the inner margin permits us to reconstruct the original size of the others. As the inner margin is 25 mm wide, the upper margin will once have been in the region of 40 mm, the outer one around 50 mm, and the lower one c. 60 mm. This gives a probable original page size in the region of 320×200 mm. There was no set format for a work of this nature. A comprehensive survey of the text-blocks in Burgundian books produced between 1400 and 1550 (there is no comparable work for other relevant regions) recorded appreciable numbers of literary works for every text-block size from 200 mm high up to 325 mm, the single most common height-range being 275-99 mm.4 The height of the text-block in MS Hunter 252 (218 mm) is thus at the smaller end of the ‘ordinary’ compass and significantly shorter than the height that was most common for a work of its kind. Looking more specifically at copies of vernacular romances that date from the second half of the fifteenth century and belonged to the Burgundian ducal library but considering their dimensions (in their current bindings) as a whole, we again find a wide range of formats, extending from c. 203×140 up to c. 420×290 mm, with text-blocks from 145×100 up to 260×165 mm.5 Yet within these extremes, there are a number that measure in the region of 290×210 mm (text-block 190×125mm), dimensions that must be modestly enlarged to compensate for trimming that has generally been less severe than that suffered by MS Hunter 252.6 In its original form,

3 M. Maniaci, ‘Ricette di costruzione della pagina nei manoscritti greci et latini’, Scriptorium, 49 (1995), 16-41; J. Tschichold, ‘Non-arbitrary Proportions of Page and Type Area’ in Calligraphy and Palaeography: Essays Presented to Alfred Fairbank on His 70th Birthday, ed. by A. S. Osley (London: Faber and Faber, 1965), pp. 179-91. 4 Hanno Wijsman, Luxury Bound. Illustrated Manuscript Production and Noble and Princely Book Ownership in the Burgundian Netherlands (1400-1550) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 471-79. 5 For a convenient conspexus of examples see Georges Dogaer and Marguerite Debae, La Librairie de Philippe le Bon (Bruxelles: Bibliothèque royale Albert Ier, 1967), pp. 95-112 (whence the cited dimensions). 6 KBR 7235 (Dogaer and Debae, Philippe le Bon, no. 138), Chrétien de Troyes; 295×210 (180×113) mm. KBR 3576-77 (Dogaer and Debae, Philippe le Bon, no. 157), Ciperis de Vignevaux and Blancandin ou l’Orgueilleuse d’amour; 290×210 (165×110) mm. KBR 9631 (Dogaer and Debae, Philippe le Bon, no. 158), Le Roman de Girart de Nevers, 285×200 (190×120) mm. KBR 10.387 (Dogaer and Debae, Philippe le Bon, no. 159), Florent et Octavien, 295×210 (190×125) mm. KBR 10.238 (Dogaer and Debae, Philippe le Bon, no. 163), Histoire des Seigneurs de Gavre, 290×213 (195×120) mm.

Les Cent nouveLLes nouveLLes

therefore, our book was close to a standard compact format for such a text in the later fifteenth century. Where MS Hunter 252 departs from its Burgundian counterparts is in its higher than average line count: the ducal vernacular romances, whatever their page size, invariably have a line count lower than thirty; that of MS Hunter 252 is thirty-five. More, therefore, was being squeezed onto each page of our book, one of many symptoms of economy. Another such symptom is the membrane. The parchment of MS Hunter 252 is of modest quality, varying in thickness,7 tone and texture from one sheet to the next, some hair sides having readily visible folli­ cle marks,8 certain sheets being mottled with flaws.9 Hair sides often feel rough, while some flesh sides, though smooth (occasionally even slightly greasy-seeming), are rather yellow in tone. From time to time imperfections in the parchment and irregularities in the way it was pre­ pared have resulted in a roughened surface which has caused the ink to bleed.10 Within the quires, the parchment is arranged with like sides facing each other, a hair side outermost (HF, FH). The variegated nature and appearance of the parchment – be it due to the animal pelts themselves, inadequacies of preparation, or a mixture of both – is a clear indication that this was not a project of the highest grade. Through most of MS Hunter 252 the quires are composed of ten leaves (five bifolia) then six leaves (three bifolia) in alternation. Thus quire II has ten leaves, quire III has six leaves, quire IV ten, quire V six, and so on. There is no obvious rationale for this system (it does not relate to the beginnings and ends of individual contes, for instance); but it is too prevalent not to have been deliberate.11 A rare parallel for such a structure among illustrated French texts dating from the second half of the fifteenth century is provided by a copy of Jean Miélot’s version of the Epitre d’Othéa by Christine de Pizan.12 Unfortunately, neither of these codicologically anomalous volumes is of great help in explicating the other (the only

Thus whereas fol. 99 is 0.35 mm thick, fol. 157 is barely 0.1 mm. For example, fols 76v, 77r, and 180v. For example, fol. 94. For example, fols 61v and 62r. It is likely that the imperfect final quire (XXVII), which now comprises two singletons, a bifolium and an early modern replacement leaf, was originally a six (with the text ending on its penultimate leaf, followed by a blank leaf) and so would have continued the pattern. 12 Aylesbury, Waddesdon Manor, MS 8 (Epitre d’Othéa; Les Sept Sacrements de l’Eglise); provenance, Philip of Cleves (d. 1528): L. M. J. Delaissé, James Marrow and John de Wit, The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor: Illuminated Manuscripts (LondonFribourg: Office du livre, 1977), pp. 154-80 (where attributed to Miélot’s workshop in Lille, c. 1455); the quire structure is described and discussed on pp. 154 and 170-71.

7 8 9 10 11

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further point they have in common is that both contain a text that was not much copied.13 The one certain exception in MS Hunter 252 to the alternation of tens and sixes is quire IX, which has four leaves.14 In addition, it seems likely, in view of the amount of text it had to contain, that the very first quire, though now highly lacunose (with only two half-sheets remain­ ing) was originally a ten.15 Thus the volume probably began with two quires of ten leaves. However, the form of the first quire was doubtless determined by the wish that it should accommodate the entire contents list preceded by a protective blank; moreover, there are a couple of indica­ tions that it was done as a separate phase of work from the rest of the book.16 Consequently, it may not have been considered part of the system that was normative elsewhere. There is no obvious reason why quire IX (fols 61-64), which is not a self-contained textual unit, should have been constructed from four sheets rather than six. Accordingly, one suspects that the divergent form of this gathering was the result of accident rather than design. It could be hypothesised, for instance, that some major error or disfigurement occurred during the writing of its third or fourth leaf that necessitated the rejection of the bifolium in question, whose text was then simply re-copied on the fifth and sixth (now the third and fourth) leaves. If quire signatures, catchwords and/or leaf numbers were supplied, as one might expect, they have all been lost in the brutal trimming. So, too, have all the prickings that guided the ruling. The pages were ruled in red ink for a text-block that, as noted above, measures c. 218×141 mm. The lines are generally faint and discreet; how­ ever occasionally the work was done with more ink on the pen, with the result that the grid becomes more obtrusive.17 In the first quire (bearing the summary of content) only outer bounding lines were supplied (i.e.

13 There is only one other MS of Miélot’s version of the Epitre: Bruxelles, KBR 9392 (The Library of the Dukes of Burgundy, ed. by Bernard Bousmanne and Elena Savini (Turnhout: Brepols-Harvey Miller, 2020), pp. 198-99). 14 Fols 61-64. 15 All that remain are the current fols 1 and 2, which were probably leaves 2 and 10 respectively when the quire was in its original form. The estimate for the quantity of text represented by the chapter summaries missing for the MS between the present fols 1v and 2r (entries 12-96 inclusive) is perforce based on those of the first printed edition (Paris: Anthoine Vérard, December 1486: Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (hereinafter ISTC) in0027700). 16 Unlike the rest of the MS, the surviving leaves from this quire have no horizontal rulings, and the sentence capitals on fol. 2r-v were not stroked in yellow. 17 For example, fol. 52r. This was clearly accidental and an entirely different phenomenon from the deliberate accentuation of some or all of the ruling pattern to create a readily visible frame as, in, e.g., London, British Library, Harley 2846 (Horae; Flanders; xvmed), on all of whose pages the outer double bounding lines are heavily drawn in red ink, whereas the grid of horizontals that actually supports the writing was done so faintly as to be virtually invisible.

Les Cent nouveLLes nouveLLes

it was ‘frame ruled’), whereas throughout the main body of the book a full grid of horizontals to support thirty-five lines of writing was included. Generally, there are single extended bounding lines at the top, bottom, and sides to mark the edge of the text-block; however, on some sheets in quire III double horizontal bounding lines were supplied at the bottom.18 There is no obvious rationale for this vacillation, which would seem rather to reflect initial indecision about the optimum design to follow. Throughout the volume, the horizontals supplied for the text-block irregularly overrun the verticals. A common feature of ruling, this nevertheless signals – like the evidence of the parchment – that the makers of this book were not striving for the best possible visual effect.

Script The text is written in a relatively formal version of cursiva libraria (Secre­ tary).19 This was a long-lived and widely-distributed script, and its useful­ ness for localising and dating our manuscript is accordingly limited. All that can be said is that this particular interpretation of the forms (whose idiosyncrasies are outlined below) is most readily paralleled in general terms in literary texts from northern France (including Normandy) dating from the last third of the fifteenth century, with a preponderance of dated and datable comparanda in the 1470s and 80s.20 All, or almost all, of the main text was the work of a single scribe. The one conceivable exception is fol. 2v, the writing on which has a slightly spikier aspect than is the norm elsewhere; however, this is as likely to be the work of the same scribe using a differently-cut pen as it is to be the work of a distinct hand. The summary of content in quire I is written to a slightly smaller gauge than the main text, a hierarchical distinction that was often applied to ancillary material;21 however, as the letter forms, ductus and disposition of the script in this section are identical to those elsewhere, it was doubtless done by the same hand.22

18 Fols 13-18. 19 The terminology of Albert Derolez, The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), pp. 142-62. 20 Charles Samaran and Robert Marichal (gen. ed.), Catalogue des manuscrits en écriture latine portant des indications de date, de lieu ou de copiste, III (Paris: CNRS, 1974), pl. 192 (1472); VII (Paris: CNRS, 1984), pls 137 (1471), 140 (1471), 142 (1472), 145 (1478), and 149 (1485); Denis Muzerelle, Manuscrits datés des bibliothèques de France 1: Cambrai (Paris: CNRS, 2000), pls 138 (1476) and 145 (1486). 21 The minims are 1-1.5 mm high as opposed to the normal 2+ mm. 22 Pace Luciano Rossi, ‘Pour une édition des Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: de la copie de Philippe le Bon à l’édition d’Antoine Vérard’, Le moyen français, 22 (1989), 69-77 (p. 73), who ascribed it to the rubricator.

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The script of the original rubrics, by contrast, has a more rectilinear matrix and a less angular aspect: they were probably, therefore, the work of a different hand (if perchance they are by the main-text scribe, he evidently strove to distinguish them via a more formal, less spiky effect, and managed to do so consistently throughout). They were written in vermilion, the standard pigment for red text throughout the high and later Middle Ages. A further way in which the rubricator – assuming that he was indeed someone other than the main-text scribe – differentiated his contributions from the work of the latter was by centring them, when the available space permitted it; he even presented some of them in two very short lines rather than as one slightly longer one in order to maximize their contrast to the width of the main text-block.23 The effectiveness of some of his endeavours in this respect was, however, disturbed by subsequent additions that lengthened one or more of the lines in question, reducing their visual distinctiveness, not to mention upsetting their internal balance. It is to these augmentations that we now turn. The handwriting of the colophonic rubric on fol. 2v presents a strong contrast to that of all the others we have just been considering. The text in question is the problematic declaration ‘De dijon lan M iiij c xxxij’ (‘At Dijon, in the year 1432’). Hitherto, commentary on this line has focused on guessing what its manifestly erroneous date ought to have read.24 However, assessment of it should start instead from the fact that, written in script that is wholly distinct from that of the book’s original rubrics, it is patently the work of a different hand – one, moreover, that was surely active at a later date. Judged on palaeographical ground alone, the earliest period to which one could reasonably ascribe such a hand would be the first decades of the sixteenth-century,25 and it could easily be altogether later. Indeed, it has as much in common with the posterior hand that supplied two whole replacement leaves and three smaller strips of text within the body of the book as it does to the writing of the original text scribe and rubricator.26 Consequently, the ‘M iiij c xxxij’ is as likely to be a retrospective fiction as a transcriptional error – rendering attempts

23 See, e.g., fols 20v, 25r, 36v, 38v. 24 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. by Pierre Champion, 3 vols (Paris: Droz, 1928), I, p. lvi, favouring ‘l’an mil iiijc lxii’ (‘the year 1462’); Rossi, ‘Pour une édition’, p. 74, suggesting ‘M iiiic lxxxii’ (1482’). 25 Compare, e.g., script in BnF, MSS Fr 5719 of c. 1521-22 and Fr. 6072 of c. 1520-25: Maxence Hermant (ed.), Trésors royaux: la bibliothèque de François Ier (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2015), nos 71 and 116. For the considerations that favour – though do not require – a later (s. XVII) date for the restorations within the body of the book see further below in the present chapter. 26 The replacement work in question comprises fols 101 (top outer corner), 137 (whole leaf), 193 (a strip at the bottom with five lines of writing), 206 (a strip at the bottom with four lines of writing), and 207 (whole leaf).

Les Cent nouveLLes nouveLLes

at ‘restitution’ otiose. Whatever the truth of this particular point, it is clear that the hand that contributed the colophonic phrase also emended several of the original rubrics. To those on fols 27r, 29v, 40r, 54v, 65v, 115r and 168r it added the rank or position of the tale’s author. Thus the original ‘La xiije nouuelle par mons[eigneu]r De castregat’ of the first was extended with ‘gentilhomme de la chambre de Monseig[neu]r’, while to the original ‘La iiijxx nouuelle par messire michault de changy’ of the last was appended ‘gentilhomme de la chambre de Monseig[neu]r’. For the rubrics on fols 175v, 177r, 179v, 181r, 182v, 184r, 185r, 185v, and 187v, as probably also for that on 196v, this later hand supplied or emended the storyteller’s name as well. The original ‘La quatrevingts cinqme’ of the first of these, for example, was expanded with ‘par Monseigneur de Santilly’, while ‘par lacteur’ was appended to the original ‘La quatreVingts XIXe’ of the last. In sum, the rubrics underwent modest editorial emendation at least a generation, and quite possibly rather longer, after the book was first made. And whatever the time-lapse in question, the authority of the details that were supplied in this subsequent phase of work must be regarded as different from that of the unaltered original rubrics (after all, the date that was offered on fol. 2v is manifestly wrong).27 Returning to the writing of the main text and the original rubrics, we note that it was invariably positioned above, rather than on, the horizontal rulings. On the bottom line of the page, the main-text scribe calligraphically extended the descenders of letters; correspondingly, at the ends of lines he sometimes lengthened horizontal strokes. He habitually terminated many of his thin strokes (such as the tails of ‘g’ and ‘q’ and the leg of ‘h’, as well as the extended tongues of ‘e’) with a little blob. Unlike the very best practitioners of this script, our scribe was not particularly careful about aligning his ascenders, descenders and other extended strokes,28 with the result that the visual harmony of the page is mildly disturbed by obliques at differing angles; the variable form of the tilde (a standard abbre­ viation mark) adds to the variety. More inharmonious was the fact that, 27 The full list of this hand’s contributions is as follows: fol. 2v, ‘De dijon lan M iiij c xxxij’; fol. 27r (CNN13), ‘escuier de m[onsei]g[neu]r’; fol. 29v (CNN14), ‘cheuallier de lordre de monseigneur’; fol. 40r (CNN19), ‘escuier de m[onsei]g[neu]r’; fol. 54v (CNN26), ‘escuier de la chambre de monseigneur’; fol. 65v (CNN28), ‘gentilho[mm]e de la chambre de monseigneur’; fol. 115r (CNN50), ‘premier maistre dhostel de Monseig[neu]r le Duc’; fol. 168r (CNN80), ‘gentilhomme de la chambre de Monseig[neu]r’; fol. 175v (CNN85), ‘par Monseigneur de santilly’ fol. 177r (CNN86), ‘par mons[eigneu]r philipe Vignier escuier de la chambre de monseignueur [sic]’; fol. 179v (CNN87), ‘par monsieur le Voyer’; fol. 181r (CNN88), ‘par aladin’; fol. 182v (CNN89), ‘par Poncelet’; fol. 184r, ‘par Mons[ieu]r de beaumont’; fol. 185r (CNN91), ‘par lacteur’; fol. 185v (CNN92) ‘par lacteur’; fol. 187v (CNN93), ‘par Messire timoleon Vignier gentilho[mm]e de la chambre de Monseigneur’; fol. 196v (CNN99), ‘par lacteur’. The effects of these additions on the paratext and its historical value are discussed more fully below in Chapters 9 and 10 of the present volume. 28 Such as the first part of ‘v’.

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in order to avoid breaking words across lines, the scribe would regularly continue writing into the right-hand margin for as much as a centimetre:29 the inevitable consequence was a ragged right-hand margin. The first letter after the decorated initial that heads each conte was calligraphically elaborated,30 being enlarged to a height equivalent to two or three lines of ordinary text. Sentence capitals, except those on folio 2 (both recto and verso), were generally stroked in yellow; in addition, many of those whose form included a bowl of some sort, were adorned with a dot therein. Pauses within sentences are marked by a low point; the end of a sentence is signalled by a low point and an oblique dash (the latter very lightly done), followed by a generous space; the end of a conte is flagged by a pair of points plus a calligraphic flourish. Rubrics are sometimes terminated by a single point with or without an accompanying flourish; often, however, they simply stop without any form of pointing.31 On some pages the main text has a slightly mottled appearance,32 the ink alternating in tone between light brown and darker brown. This has little or nothing to do with the nature of the ink itself, all of which is gallo-tannic (no trace of carbon was found on any of the pages that were examined scientifically). Rather it reflects the fact that the scribe regularly dipped his pen after, not before, it was running short of liquid. Writing with inadequate ink on the pen also resulted in countless split, scratchy, and thin strokes;33 some of the very thinnest letters were subsequently retraced and hence thickened.34 On other occasions the ink appears to have been too watery and has, in consequence, run,35 a phenomenon distinct from the bleeding that was caused by the nature of some of the parchment. The scribe made few corrections to his work: a single crossing out,36 a couple of interlinear insertions,37 and a handful of rewritings in rasura.38 None of them is substantial. Overall, the writing of the main text gives the impression of being from the hand of a well-practised professional who was working at speed. It is neat and easily legible; however, no particular care was taken to avoid visual imperfections, let alone to make it particularly calligraphic. Nor was

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

There are three such cases on fol. 38r alone. On one occasion (fol. 120v) including a human head. For example, fols 17v and 116r. For example, fols 17r, 19r, 62r, 68r, 173v, 174r, and 175r. Prominent examples on fols 68v, 90v, 92v and 135r. For example, on fols 23r, 73v, and 140r. For example, on fols 63v, 71v, and 86r. Fol. 52v, three lines from bottom. Fols 59v and 193v. For example, fols 28r, line 17; 86, lines 3 and 4 from the bottom; 90v, middle of the page; 99v, and 138r, four lines from the bottom.

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especial attention paid to accuracy,39 and minimal time and effort was allotted to proof-reading and correction. It is easy to envisage such a scribe inverting the order of CNN99 and 100 for some reason or other,40 and not recalling (or bothering to correct) the fact that they were therefore no longer synchronised with their order in the summary of content.

Decorative Design Every conte is preceded by an illustration and headed by a decorated initial. Wherever feasible, the scribe endeavoured to start each new tale – and hence to present these decorative features – at the top of a new page. On more than eighty occasions, such was indeed done, the scribe being prepared to leave up to half of the preceding page blank if such was necessary to achieve this aim (the impression of a gaping space could then be mitigated by placing the rubric for the new conte centrally within it). However, it was evidently felt that a space of twenty or more lines would be too much. Thus if the text of the previous conte ended less than fourteen lines from the top of the page, the next one would be started lower down on that same page. There are seventeen such cases. The decorated initials, generally three lines high, comprise a golden let­ ter shape embellished with ornamentation, set against a square panel that was coloured either red, brown or blue, the panel itself being outlined in black.41 The red is an organic colorant, the blue azurite, the black carbon; the brown is currently impossible to diagnose via non-invasive means.42 Following no discernible order, the choice of colour for the panels appears to be random. The most common forms of ornamentation are geometrical patterning (often based on little circles or florettes) and stylised foliate fronds. Collectively such abstract designs account for more than half of the total (fifty-six cases). About a third of the letters boast large beast heads with gaping mouths and protruding tongues, shown in profile, either singly 39 Some sense of the transcriptional errors can be inferred from bracketed readings within, and the apparatus to, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. by Franklin P. Sweetser, Textes littéraires français, 127 (Geneva: Droz, 1966) plus the notes in Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Champion, II, pp. 275-81. 40 The simplest explanation would be that, having copied CNN98, he took a short break and when he resumed work he began at CNN100 rather than CNN99; when he realised the error, he transcribed the latter as the last item in the collection – in effect, a variant of the single most common cause of scribal errors: eye-skip. 41 Each entry in the summary of content is headed by a 7-mm-high golden ‘L’, set against a panel of blue, brown or red, adorned with golden dots. 42 The composition of the brown pigment could not be identified by Raman spectroscopy (aka FORS, fibre-optic reflectance spectroscopy); however, by ruling out the presence of vermilion, red lead, azurite and ochre, they suggest that the substance is likely to be a mixture of organic materials.

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or in pairs. Almost all the remainder are adorned with one or more birds.43 Initials of the same basic type – a motif (often stylised foliage) done in gold on a red, brown or blue panel – are widespread in French books dating from the second half of the fifteenth century;44 however, the forms of ornamentation seen in MS Hunter 252 are much rarer, being most easily paralleled in Parisian work from the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth. 45 These motifs thus provide a further pointer to connections with northern France, specifically Paris. There is no discernible rationale to the distribution of the different types of design seen in the initials of MS Hunter 252: although some appear with slightly more frequency (relative to their overall number) at particular points in the book than at others, no overarching patterns are apparent beyond the fact that there is a preponderance of geometrical examples at the very beginning of the volume (eight of the first ten initials) and a complete dearth of birds in the last third (none after CNN66). Uniquely, the letter ‘V’ (for ung) on fol. 18r (heading the seventh conte) boasts a small but elegant, stylised rampant lion at its centre (geometrical patterns fill the flanking zones). As this is one of the tales credited to Philip the Good, it is conceivable that the motif is a modest reference to the ensign of Burgundy, a theory that might seem to be supported by the fact that the initial is painted in the Burgundian colours of blue and gold. Such a hypothesis would seem more plausible, however, if this were the first tale in the collection to be attributed to the Duke rather than his fourth,46 and if the initial were the first rather than the third to be rendered in blue and gold.47 The pictures are situated alongside the first ten or eleven lines of each conte, occupying approximately half the width of the text-block at the point in question. The spaces reserved for them vary from exactly square

43 It is impossible to supply exact totals, as a few letters are too damaged to evaluate or have been lost/replaced. 44 Appearing (to mention just a few geographically scattered examples, all horae) in Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MSS 88 (Lyon, xvex), 105 (Rouen, xviin) and 109 (Orléans, xv/xvi); and in Paris, BnF, MS lat. 1202 (Tours, xvex: Tours 1500: capitale des arts. Catalogue d’exposition, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours, ed. by Béatrice Chancel-Bardelot, Pascale Charron, Pierre-Gilles Girault and Jean-Marie Guillouët (Paris: Somogy éditions d’art, 2012), no. 97.) 45 For example, Paris, BnF, MSS lat. 1366, lat. 4994, and Fr. 5087: François Avril and Nicole Reynaud, Les Manuscrits à peintures en France 1440-1520 (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale – Flammarion, 1993), nos 138, 141 and 154. Heribert Tenschert, Leuchtendes Mittelalter II, Katalog xxv (Ramsen: Bibermühle, 1990), no. 55 (Horae, xvex). 46 Although his first tale (CNN1) does not have its own rubric attributing it to ‘Monseigneur’, it is credited thus in the capitula list (1r), and his second and third tales are indeed attributed to ‘Monseigneur’ in rubrics preceding them (CNN2, fol. 5v and CNN4, fol. 11v). 47 There are examples on fols 2v (preface-dedication) and 3r (CNN1); the next appears on fol. 33r (CNN19, a tale credited to Philippe Vignier).

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to slightly oblong.48 In many cases, the square shape and modest size are perfectly adequate for the material presented therein (once indeed the space proved to be rather too wide for the pictorial content).49 On several occasions, however – generally when multiple, distinct episodes are presented side by side – greater lateral space would have been an advantage: had the designer used more of the width of the page, the result could have been less compressed and hence more effective as pictorial narrative.50 One possible reason why this was not done will be considered below in the present chapter.

Pictorial Narrative The choice of subjects to feature in the pictures is often acute: many of the vignettes illustrate the crux of the narrative – the event(s) around which the story turns – via an absolute minimum of scenes. Indeed, in a good number of instances the tale was distilled into a single key moment. The first two illustrations are cases in point: the first features the adulterer revealing to the husband the back view of his wife who is in bed beside him, while the second shows the friar applying the tube to the posterior of the maiden. Of the many other examples, it will suffice to mention: the knight preparing to take the place in bed of the husband for CNN9; the wife holding up a candle to the knight’s blind eye while her lover sneaks away for CNN16; the burning of the monastery for CNN32; the return of the husband, with the wife in bed, one lover hiding beside it, and another skulking in the attic, for CNN34; the pouring of the pail of water for CNN37; the washerwoman-man exposed on a cart for CNN45; the one-eyed priest (mis)marrying two couples in CNN53; the husband and his cousin looking down into the pit containing wolf, priest, maid and wife for CNN56; the wife displaying to her children and servants, her errant husband in bed with the maid for CNN59; the chest being opened to reveal an ass, not a lover, at CNN61; the priest climbing out of the large chest that has been towed away at CNN73; and the man on the scaffold playing the bagpipes, with the Burgundians sallying forth at CNN75. In

48 For example, those on fols 99r and 134v measure 70×70 mm and 71×71 mm respectively, whereas those on fols 115v and 120v are 63×68 mm and 65×70 mm. 49 Fol. 163r. The narrative content (priest, mistress and knight in one bed, the knight reaching under the sheets to entrap the priest’s genitals) only occupies the left-hand half of the picture space, the rest being given over to a strip of empty room and then an empty corridor leading to an archway with a glimpse of landscape beyond. It looks as if this was conceived as a two-part design akin to that on fol. 167v, of which only one part was, in the event, needed or realised. That a bed scene could fill the whole frame is demonstrated by the very next illustration (fol. 164v; cf. also, e.g., fols 12r, 20v). 50 Thus fols 27v, 62v, 66r, 68v, 70r, 75v, 80r, 93r, 105v, 147r, 155v, and 183r.

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all these cases the selection was astute and reflects an informed appreci­ ation of the tales in question. (Unlike the generalised images supplied by some successful illuminators of secular romance in fourteenth-century Paris, which seem principally to have been informed by the rubrics,51 the choice of scenes in MS Hunter 252 was not determined by the chapter summaries since, in so far as these survive in our manuscript,52 they do not correspond particularly closely to the incidents that were selected.) Two scenes were felt necessary to capture the essence of some tales. Such were logically supplied, for instance, for the tit-for-tat couplings of CNN3 and 35. Other examples include the jealous husband making an offering to the Devil, then the Devil inserting his hand into the wife for CNN11; the ravishing and then the tribunal in CNN25; the squire with his head stuck in the privy, then crossing the room with its seat around his neck as the husband faints at CNN72; and for CNN79 the administration of the enema, then the rustic relieving himself, a donkey nearby. CNN58, 94 and 99 were also presented in two scenes (respectively: the two girls refusing the overtures of the two men, then simply ignoring them; the priest with long hair and long gown, then clad in the long-and-short robe appearing before the official; the wife and the wise young lawyer in conversation, then the wife in bed with the lawyer seated alongside her). However, these stories were tripartite ones that cried out for three scenes (in the first case, the insertion between the depicted events of the visit to the prostitutes; in the second, a representation of each of the priest’s three sartorial excesses; and in the third, the addition of the husband either advising his wife or taking his leave prior to the events that were shown). For other tales whose irreducible minimum was more than could reasonably be accommodated in two scenes, three episodes were indeed shown. Thus CNN20 features the visit to the doctor, the coitus cure, and the dinner party at which the husband weeps; while the very next story (CNN21) has the abbess on her deathbed, her urine shown to the doctor, and a queue of men outside the nunnery. Other cases include CNN27, which shows the husband entering the chest, the wife with her lover, then the husband released from the chest; and CNN38, which features the wife dining with her Franciscan lover, the husband beating the neighbour who had been substituted for the wife, and the real wife then displaying her unharmed body to her husband.53

51 Richard and Jeanne Montbaston: Richard H. Rouse and Mary A. Rouse, Manuscripts and their Makers: Commercial Book Producers in Medieval Paris 1200-1500, 2 vols (Turnhout: Brepols – Harvey Miller, 2000), I, pp. 235-60. 52 Fols 1r-v and 2r; printed: Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Champion, I, pp. 3-4 and 12 (the loss of much of Q. I has removed all but those for CNN1-11 and 97-100). 53 The complicated CNN33 (fol. 80r) has four vignettes in three scenes, the third and last of which features the woman conversing with one lover in the foreground and lying in bed with

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When, as in these cases, the picture space is subdivided into several vi­ gnettes, the narrative generally runs from left to right. There are, however, instances where it follows a slightly more circuitous route. The tripartite cycle for CNN85 begins in the upper chamber to the top left, with the priest getting into bed with the wife; it continues in the room below, where the husband and apprentice forge metal; it concludes in the lean-to structure on the right, where the husband and apprentice hammer nails into the priest’s genitals.54 Yet this is still broadly a left-to-right progression. By contrast, there are a few instances where the narrative runs from right to left.55 Thus in terms of the story, the large left-hand scene that dominates the picture space for CNN96 actually comes after the smaller vignette to its right: it is the motif tucked away in the background of this right-hand zone (the priest burying his beloved dog) that initiates events, leading to the fulcrum of the tale (his appearance before, and condemnation by, the avaricious bishop), the denouement of which (the priest deftly escaping imprisonment by offering the bishop the money that the remarkable pet had supposedly willed to the latter) occupies the left-hand zone.56 As the eye naturally expects to move from left to right in the context of a book, it is difficult not to perceive these scenes as presented in reverse order. Exactly the same is true of the tripartite image for CNN55, where the sinister consequences (the lovers dying) appear ‘first’ as the left-hand scene, the infected woman in bed is at the centre, and the beginning of the tale (the first lover/victim being brought to the diseased woman) is presented ‘last’ as the right-hand scene. Ultimately, however, these inversions, though slightly jarring at first glance, are of little consequence as the illustrations in questions are em­ bedded within the text that explains them. In point of fact, none of the illustrations would be comprehensible on its own, without the support of the text, as Maud Pérez-Simon discusses further below in Chapter 6. But then the function of these pictures was not to replicate the content of the writing – recounting the story in full – but rather to offer one or more highlights to introduce it. The rubric that precedes each conte merely states its number in the collection and the identity of its raconteur: it is the picture that offers a ‘snapshot’ of content (akin in function to the slightly arch written summaries provided at the outset of the volume). The the other in the background – articulating the sharing arrangement that is the finale of the tale. 54 Fol. 175v. 55 CNN55, 89, and 96. In CNN20 (fol. 42v) the narrative runs from right to left then back again: the first event depicted (the visit to the doctor) appears as a tiny scene set within the landscape at the ‘back’ of the right-hand zone; the next (the coitus cure) occupies the entire left-hand zone; the last (the husband weeping at the family feast) is the main scene at the front of the right-hand zone. 56 Fol. 192r.

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illustrations thus offer the first-time user an enticement to read in order to discover the full chain of events that these titillating moments encapsulate; while for the returning reader they provide an instant reminder of the content of each tale and thus a convenient device for locating particular items. More generally, they make the book as a whole beguiling for the eye. Accordingly, it is against these criteria – whether or not they represent a climactic or nodal moment that could evoke the tale as a whole, serving as enticement or aide-mémoire – that the illustrations should be judged. Many of them are a resounding success for, as noted above, the selection of scenes was generally shrewd. Nevertheless, there are a few exceptions – cases where the moment or moments chosen seem(s) less than ideal to embody the narrative arc of the tale and/or to encapsulate the essence of its drama. One such instance is CNN29, whose crucial and easily depicted, not to mention most scandalous, element – the new bride unexpectedly giving birth to a son – is inexplicably passed over.57 Similarly at CNN49 it is extraordinary to show the feast en famille yet not to highlight more explicitly the unique dress that the lusty wife was forced to wear then – made of gros bureau gris except a l’endroit du derriere, where there was une piece de bonne escarlate a maniere du tasseau – and which, advertising her errant ways, serves as the climax and resolution of the tale.58 When the heart of the story was an unrepresentable dialogue, a degree of artistic licence might be required, as in the illustration for CNN22, where the knight is shown trying to take the baby from the women – a deed he threatened verbally, but did not actually carry out. Equally, the long, complicated, speech-rich CNN26 is reduced in the imagery to Ger­ ard and Katherine embracing, the latter leaving a note for the former while he sleeps, and then her departure with her uncle.59 Likewise the prolix CN­ N99 is stripped back to the wife and the young lawyer seated and talking, then the lawyer sitting beside the wife’s sick-bed.60 A case whose essence appears to have eluded the designer is CNN28, the fulcrum of which – the amant’s impotence in the face of multiple enticing opportunities – is unmarked.61 (Against the suggestion that impotence may have been felt to

57 Fol. 68v. The tripartite composition features: bride and groom holding hands; bride in bed with groom approaching; the friends at the door of the chamber. 58 Fol. 113v. On the nature of this cloth and its resonances see John H. Munro, ‘The Medieval Scarlet and the Economies of Sartorial Splendour’ in Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E. M. Carus-Wilson, ed. by Negley B. Harte and Kenneth G. Ponting, Pasold Studies in Textile History 2 (London: Heinemann, 1983), pp. 13-70. 59 Fol. 54v. Similarly, the first half of CNN44 (in which the lusty priest negotiates the marriage with the two families in turn, and is then overheard talking incautiously to the bride-to-be) was entirely passed over, the first vignette showing the moment of the marriage itself (fol. 105v). 60 Fol. 197r. This is CNN100 in Vérard’s edition. 61 Fol. 66r.

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be unrepresentable can be set the fact that a man mendaciously claiming to be impotent is the subject of the right-hand vignette for CNN13.62) Some minor departures from the ipsissima verba of the text could have been motivated by iconographic considerations allied to the wish to make the image more affecting. Depicting the maiden in CNN95 as occupied with weaving when the philandering Dominican visits is a clear example, for this detail – unmentioned in the text – evokes the iconography of the young Virgin Mary and thus adds overtones of sacred chastity to the persona of the girl who is about to be duped into sacrificing her virginity, thereby enhancing the dramatic tension.63 Showing the father actually stabbing his son at CNN50, as opposed to merely attempting to do so as the text specifies, may be a less subtle case of heightening the drama, though here an alternative explanation (considered below) is also possible.64 Certain discrepancies between text and image are more difficult to understand in such terms. Cases in point are the unadorned marble walls of the hall in CNN52, which are said in the text to have been bedecked with hangings; and the incongruousness of the blue sky above the knightly group en arrière plan at CNN81 whose journey to this second castle is stated to have happened in pouring rain and at night.65 Similarly, the unadorned plain dress of the wife in CNN99 contradicts the verbal char­ acterisation of her by her husband, who singled out her rich clothing and valuable jewellery as the features that distinguished her from other women; the fine furnishings and objets de luxe that she is specified to have arranged around her chamber prior to the attempted seduction are equally absent.66 A forgiving explanation here would be to suggest that, as

62 Fol. 27v. The vignette in question has the clerk unabashedly displaying his penis to his master. 63 Fol. 190v. Mariagrazia Ricci, ‘Illustrer Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: le manuscrit de Glasgow et l’incunable de Vérard (1486)’, Le moyen français, 69 (2011), 83-98 at p. 93, and Alison Adams, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: the impact of the miniatures’, French Studies, 46 (1992), 385-94, both highlight how the narrative of, and the iconography for, CNN12 and 46 evoke those of and for Tristan and Yseut. For visual comparanda for these cases see Roger Sherman Loomis and Laura Hibbard Loomis, Arthurian Legends in Medieval Art (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1938), ills 120-34. 64 Fol. 115v: ‘il tire bonne dague et marche vers luy et l’en cuide ferir’. 65 Fols 117v, 169v. 66 Fol. 197r. ‘Les beaulx et riches vestements, aneaulx, ornements d’amys et les aultres precieuses bagues dont vous este parée et ornée plus que nulle aultre de ceste cite […] Elle fist […] espandre la belle herbe vert partout en sa chambre, couvrir le lit et la couchette, desploier riches couvertes, tappiz et courtines; et se para et attourna des meilleurs attours et plus precieux qu’elle eust […] et illec [sa chambre] prepara et ordonna les bagues et joyaulx qu’elle avoit attains et mis dehors pour festoier et recevoir son amoureux […] Elle […] le mena en la chambre qui luy estoit appareillée, et ou il fut bien esbahy quand il s’i trouva, tant pour la diversité des paremens, belles et precieuses ordonnances qui y estoient comme aussi

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these details are incidental to the main thrust of the narrative, it may have been felt that they could be disregarded with impunity in the interests of legibility of composition and economy of effort. Certain other departures might be similarly condoned as arising from the limitations of MS Hunter 252’s artist with regard to rendering human physiognomy (and even the human form): one thinks of CNN53, where the point of the story – the inadvertent marriage of an old man to a young woman and a young man to an old woman owing to confusion on the part of a partially-blind priest – is wholly missed in the illustration, which shows a priest surrounded by two men and two women who are all of indeterminate, indistinguishable age.67 Yet all these cases, too, might alternatively – or even simultaneously – relate to a different circumstance, to be examined shortly. Before addressing this alternative circumstance, however, it is worth noting that there are other omissions and inaccuracies (or adaptations) that create more intrusive disjunctions between particular illustrations and their texts. One thinks, for example, of the lack of a door at CNN16, despite much being made of it in the narrative; the absence of a child watching the events of CNN23, notwithstanding his crucial role in their denouement; the depiction in lay rather than clerical garb of the philander­ ing priest of CNN56; having only two lords in bed at CNN63 despite three of them being repeatedly mentioned – indeed named – in the narra­ tive; and depicting as winsomely slender the supposedly heavily pregnant abandoned mistress at her confrontation with her former lover and his new bride on their wedding day for CNN8. It is similarly jarring that neither of the protagonists of CNN96 is shown in clerical garb, despite one being a priest, the other a bishop; that the gluttonous bishop of CNN100 is not represented as big and fat; and that, although the text of CNN70 describes the knight battling a monster with bright eyes alone in his chamber while his companions caroused downstairs, the monster that is depicted does not have bright eyes and the knight’s companions are shown getting out of bed and putting on their clothes in an adjacent room, then racing to see what is going on.68 Possible explanations for such lapses (or modifications) are that, faced with the gargantuan task of devising illustrations for 100 different stories, the designer occasionally ‘nodded’; that between reading the text and developing a design he forgot certain minor elements; that he sometimes skimmed rather than scrutinised the text; that he was told the tales rather

pour la tresgrand beaulté de celle qui le menoit’. This is CNN100 in Vérard’s edition, as also in the capitula list to MS Hunter 252 itself (fol. 2r). 67 Fol. 120v. 68 Intriguingly, the furnishing in the knight’s chamber appears to be a privy rather than a bed (cf. fol. 155v, left-hand scene). On the other hand, the knight is clearly pulling the monster’s horn as specified in the text.

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than reading them personally, or even that they were summarised for him rather than being recounted in full. Indeed, several of these eventualities could have come into play consecutively or concurrently. It is also conceivable that certain details were altered, suppressed or lost in transmission from a pictorial archetype ― the alternative circum­ stance to which allusion has been made above. Confronted by an exemplar that showed a hall bedecked with tapestries, the artist of MS Hunter 252 might reasonably have decided that the fictive fabrics were beyond him or would be too time-consuming or, in his simplified idiom, potentially confusing visually, and hence he omitted them. After all, imitators, even highly talented ones, of the famous image of Jean de Berry seated in front of a tapestry of military exploits at the first calendar miniature of his Très Riches Heures substituted in their versions backdrops with much simpler designs.69 It is clear that the artist of MS Hunter 252 was a modest talent and was working at speed; if he did not always (perhaps ever) read the text itself, then even if he were following an earlier pictorial cycle, he would not have known which of the myriad details in each illustration in his exemplar bore narrative weight. It is not difficult to imagine that someone in such circumstances could have transformed a gravid woman into a non-gravid one, a portly bishop into a svelte one, even forgotten or been unaware that certain figures were supposed to be clerics, and traduced the details of an encounter with a monster. Omitting a door, a child, or jewellery, showing an actual as opposed to an attempted stabbing, and not making any effort to differentiate the ages of participants, despite the importance of all these elements to their respective stories, might be other examples. One may even wonder whether the less than satisfactory two-scene rendering of the tripartite tale of the cleric’s sartorial excesses (CNN94) could have been reduced from a (superficially repetitive) three-scene version. In connection with the hypothesis of a pictorial exemplar, the illus­ tration for CNN44 is highly suggestive and merits close attention.70 It comprises three vignettes: on the left, a man and woman are being married in front of a church doorway by a priest; at the centre, within a cut-away house, a man is beating a woman as she lies in bed; to the right, in front

69 Chantilly, Musée Condé, 56, fol. 1v (the depicted scenes have been tentatively identified as from the Trojan War: e.g. Jean Longnon and Raymond Cazelles, The Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry (New York: George Braziller, 1969), pl. 2 commentary). The Dunois Hours (London, British Library, Yates Thompson 3, fol. 1r: Albert Châtelet, ‘Les Heures de Dunois’, Art de l’enluminure, 25 (2008), 12-73, this folio reproduced on pp. 19 and 28; Richard Gameson, ‘Sin and Salvation in the Dunois Hours’ in Illuminating the Middle Ages. Tributes to John Lowden from his Students, Friends and Colleagues, ed. by Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey and Lucy Donkin (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 369-94, fig. 24.1); Oxford, Keble College, 39, fol. 1r: M. B. Parkes, The Medieval Manuscripts of Keble College Oxford, a Descriptive Catalogue (London: Scolar, 1979), p. 169. 70 Fol. 105v.

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of a church doorway identical to that of the first vignette, a woman and a man, both in secular garb, face each other, the latter clutching a baton in his upraised right hand, a bowl in his lowered left hand. The first two scenes unequivocally correspond to key elements in the written tale – the marriage engineered by the priest for his own lecherous ends, and the brutal ruse enacted by the husband to make his wife detest what she termed chevaucheure. The third is superficially more puzzling. While it could just be rationalised as the husband brandishing a birch rod to deter his wife from indulging with the lusty priest in what she believed to be chevaucheure, this would not account for the bowl, and no such event is specified in the tale. On the contrary, the episode that concludes the written narrative is a final encounter between the wife and the priest in which he first sprinkles her with holy water.71 In the light of this information, it becomes apparent that the man is wielding an aspergillum, with which he is duly sprinkling the woman. The visual confusion here is that he is shown in a blue secular robe rather than a white priestly one, that his tonsure has been assimilated to a hat,72 and that his stole has been turned into a chaperon and cornet (a hood or hat with an integral scarf, as worn by fashionable laymen).73 Now it is highly unlikely that such a misrepresentation, turning the priest into the husband, would have been enacted (or condoned74) by an artist who was designing the scene having just read or heard the story itself; on the contrary, it is much easier to rationalize as a careless transformation brought about by someone who was copying a pictorial model without knowledge of, or not paying attention to, the details of what it illustrated and how it did so. The anomaly at CNN24, where the maiden is shown tying a bundle of wood when the text has her scything grass,75 can be resolved in the same way. The calendars of contemporary books of hours include closely similar figures tying up a bundle of hay or a sheaf of corn beside someone scything the field as part of the depictions of reaping or hay-making – labours of

71 ‘il luy bailla de l’eaue beneite’. 72 Compare one type of headgear worn by secular male figures in numerous scenes, e.g., fols 3r, 6r, 19r, 23r, 26r, 27v, etc. 73 Adorning laymen on, e.g., fols 117v, 120v and 122v. The cornet might equally be worn alone, as by the doctor shown twice on 180r and the young lawyer depicted twice on 197r. Multiple, more detailed representations of the garment appear, e.g., in KBR 9243 (Les Chroniques de Hainault), II, fol. 1: Dogaer and Debae, Librarie de Philippe le Bon, pl. 32; reproduced in colour in Léon Gilissen, Marguerite Debae, Marianne Dewèvre and Anne Rouzet, La Librairie de Bourgogne et quelques acquisitions récentes de la Bibliothèque royale Albert 1er: Cinquante miniatures (Bruxelles: Cultura, c. 1970), no. 20. 74 If perchance paint was added by someone different from the draftsman. 75 Fol. 51v: ‘nostre belle fille sayoit de l’erbe au coing d’un bois’.

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the month for June, July or August.76 Now turning the bundle of hay or corn into one of wood is wholly inexplicable as the act of someone who, having read or heard the tale, had eminently reasonably resolved to deploy a familiar harvesting or hay-making figure here. By contrast, it is entirely intelligible as a visual transformation wrought by a copyist who saw in his exemplar an image of a woman at the edge of a coppice hunched over a bundle of thin stalks and, with superficial logic but in ignorance of the story, opted to paint them as branches rather than as hay. These cases along with some of the others mentioned above, where the ambiguous or inaccurate rendering of a detail or a surprising omission undermines the effectiveness of an iconography that is otherwise well conceived as an illustration of its tale, strongly suggest that the miniatures in MS Hunter 252 were copied from a pictorial exemplar rather than designed ex verbis by the artist of our manuscript.77 It is logical to enquire next, therefore, whether the artist’s visual language – the way in which he depicted things, as distinct from the iconographic content – offers any evidence for, or against, the proposition. This is the subject of the following section.

Artwork: visual language As a draftsman and painter, the artist of MS Hunter 252 manifestly had limited talents; however, this in itself sheds little light on the question of whether he could conceivably have designed the manuscript’s pictor­ ial cycle as opposed to copying it from a fully-illustrated exemplar: for iconographic inventiveness and an aptitude for devising pictorial narrative are entirely different gifts from facility in draughtsmanship and an ability to paint. Nevertheless, forensic consideration of the artistic qualities of his work does provide some additional pointers. The crux of the matter is that there is a paradoxical contrast between, on the one hand, the sophistication of the visual language that underpins the conception of the miniatures and, on the other, the simplicity and the formulaic manner with which it is rendered in MS Hunter 252. The illuminations in MS Hunter 252 reveal familiarity with a range of techniques for evoking the illusion of depth and space. Objects and buildings have orthogonals angled to suggest recession, and their sides

76 For example, London, Victoria & Albert Museum, L.475-1918 (Rouen, xv4/4): Rowan Watson, The Playfair Hours. A Late Fifteenth-Century Illuminated Manuscript from Rouen (London: V&A, 1984), pl. 6. 77 Other places where figures specified in the text to be ecclesiastics are painted, arguably for the same reason, wearing what looks like secular dress occur on fols 125v, 157v (here the tonsure is clearer), 183r, and 192r.

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are coloured differently from their principal face to the same end. There is a measure of atmospheric perspective, whereby colours in a landscape become less saturated the further they supposedly are from the viewer. Many figures and some objects cast shadows, anchoring them to their ground space, and the direction of the shadows is generally coordinated with the fall of light and shade on other elements. Clothing is given form via highlights on one side and darker zones on the other; while some metal objects are articulated with gleams suggestive of reflection.78 Equally, there are ambitious views over urban squares and into receding buildings; there are demanding aerial perspectives down onto (invariably occupied) beds; and there are rear views of horses, foreshortened as they move away ‘into’ the pictorial space. Furthermore, many of the settings are artfully constructed to permit the inclusion of multiple events from the relevant stories: sequential episodes may be separated by architectural or landscape features introduced for that purpose (about which more is said in Chapter 6 below); alternatively, they can be spread around the different chambers of a building, divided between the inside and outside of structures, and/or placed at different ‘depths’ into the pictorial space. Yet these techniques are applied highly formulaically, with the relevant pictorial details cursorily rendered. Thus atmospheric perspective was invariably achieved via a swathe of green grass in the foreground (with or without a curving pink path), a turquoise middle ground, and blue hills in the distance: rather than the one blending into the next via imperceptible gradations, these are painted as three distinct zones. The orthogonals of structures are angled without any understanding – intuitive or mathemat­ ical – of a vanishing point, the foreshortening of curving forms such as portals and arches is generally misjudged, and such recessional space as is nevertheless evoked by these devices may be contradicted by the size, placement and interaction of the figures.79 Paths inevitably feature a scatter of stones; grass always has a few clumps of darker green foliage; while sky, darker at the top, lighter at the bottom, is invariably articulated with a scatter of wispy golden clouds. Similarly, the stone/marble of floors and walls is indicated time and time again via the same highly repetitive circular or ovoid patterning. Shadows, when supplied, always fall from left to right. Above all, almost every figure has the same mitten-like hands (with all the fingers joined together as a single triangular clump) and

78 Thus tableware on fols 168v, 193r and 206v. This is not, however, done for the swords and armour on fols 12r, 14r and 48r. 79 Thus in the townscape on fol. 90v (CNN37), the lines of the paving imply a ground plane receding towards the buildings at the ‘back’ of the picture space – an impression that is then contradicted by the man (the scheming suitor) who leans out of a building at the ‘back’ of the paved area yet is managing to tip dirty water over a woman (the wife) standing at the very ‘front’ of it!

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inexpressive faces, with no attempt made to suggest differences in age or status (crucial though this occasionally is for the narrative), let alone characterisation or mood. In effect, the artist of MS Hunter 252 has a repertoire of pictorial devices that permit him to evoke the visible world. Plainly, however, this repertoire was not devised from consideration of that world itself: rather it was adopted as a set of conventional formulae. Moreover, there is no hint of the artist refining or developing his range as he goes along: on the con­ trary, elements are rendered in exactly the same way at the end of the book as they were in the middle and at the beginning. He was clearly deploying the schemata and devices he had learned at an earlier (probably a very early) stage of his career – an approach he shares with countless minor illuminators of the later fifteenth century. (Of identified contemporaries, it is to the prolific Parisian illuminator now named as François Barbier fils that our artist is most akin in terms of visual vocabulary and style, albeit inferior with regard to skill.80) Some of the formulae in question are recognisable as simplifications of elements within the sophisticated pictorial language developed by the most talented panel painters and illuminators of the fifteenth century; however, this does not alter the fact that what the artist of MS Hunter 252 offered was a poor imitation of that language. The key question for our enquiry now comes into focus: would an artist with such limited facility in draughtsmanship and painting and whose basic approach consisted in deploying inherited formulae have readily chosen to indulge in the many ambitious prospects and designs that he uses in MS Hunter 252 and which test his schematic repertoire to the limit? It is not impossible and, as noted above, iconographic inven­ tiveness is an entirely different gift from dexterity with pen and brush; however, it does not seem very likely. On the contrary, the many challeng­ ing features noted above are considerably easier to understand as designs that were initially devised by a more skilful practitioner (or practitioners)

80 See further comment below, in the contributions of Hanno Wijsman, Maud Pérez-Simon and Alexandra Velissariou. Since his recognition as an individual personality, this artist has been called ‘the Chief Associate of Maître François’ (Eleanor Spencer, ‘Dom Louis de Busco’s Psalter’ in Gatherings in Honor of Dorothy E. Miner, ed. by Ursula E. McCracken, Lilian M. C. Randall and Richard H. Randall Jr. (Baltimore: Walter’s Art Gallery, 1974), pp. 227-40; John Plummer, The Last Flowering. French Painting in Manuscripts 1420-1530 from American Collections (New York: Pierpont Morgan Library – Oxford: OUP, 1982), nos 89-91), ‘Jacques de Besançon’ (Charles Sterling, La Peinture médiévale à Paris 1300-1500, 2 vols (Paris: Bibliothèque des Arts, 1987-90), II, pp. 212-29), and ‘The Master of Jacques de Besançon’ (Avril and Reynaud, Manuscrits à peintures, pp. 256-62). For his current designation see Mathieu Deldicque, ‘L’Enluminure à Paris à la fin du XVe siècle: Maître François, le Maître de Jacques de Besançon, et Jacques de Besançon identifiés’, Revue de l’art 183 (2014), 9-18.

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and which were then copied by the artist of our manuscript in terms of his accustomed formulae.81 Pointing in the same direction and arguably even more telling is the lack of evidence for any working out of the designs in MS Hunter 252 itself via under-drawings, whether of hard point, lead or carbon. Placing even schematically-rendered elements in the correct relationship to each other within a small picture space, ensuring that the various parts of scenes with multiple vignettes would fit together satisfactorily, would have been a highly challenging task. Success to the degree seen in MS Hunter 252 would seem to presuppose either the guidance of a pre-existing model or a measure of preparatory working, and refinement of the design, on the page itself. As no such sketches or lines are apparent to the eye even under magnification (though one can regularly see through the paint to the horizontals that were ruled to support the writing), 82 and as only one small area in a single image was found to display under-drawing (of a different nature) when inspected via infrared imaging (which permits one to see through the paint surface to any carbon-based lines underneath),83 the logical deduction is that the designs were guided by a model. As noted above, the pictorial conception that our illuminator set down in his formulaic way incorporates in a highly simplified manner many of the elements that were used by more talented painters and illuminators of the period. Given the intimate association of the text of Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles with Philip the Good and his circle, it is logical to enquire how the schemata seen in MS Hunter 252 relate in particular to the pictorial language(s) of illuminators who worked for the Burgundian court in the third quarter of the fifteenth century.84 Everything from grand townscapes and landscapes, through cut-away buildings, the use of internal-external spaces for narrative segmentation, and the subdivision and framing of the picture space by columns and tracery, on to individual motifs such as beds viewed from above and horses retreating into the pictorial space, can be found, far more skilfully done, in the work of such celebrated illuminators as the Master of the Gent Privileges, the Master of Girart de Rousillon,

81 Thus the architectural jumble on fol. 151r appears to show him struggling to replicate a particularly complicated structure. 82 Perceptible even in reproduction on, e.g., fols 87v and 99r. 83 Multiple lines underlie the wife’s naked posterior at the extreme left of the image on fol. 25r. However, this is a different phenomenon from the preliminary sketches, trials and re-draftings whose absence is discussed above. The artist was in no sense devising or refining his composition here: rather he seems to have been trying to define the plasticity of one small element within it, whose position had been established without hesitation. Normally hatchings were applied over the main coat of paint; here they underlie it. 84 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Champion, I, pp. ix-l, and the papers published here by Graeme Small.

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Jean Hennecart, Jean Le Tavernier, Willem Vrelant, and Loyset Liédet.85 Given the schematic form to which this pictorial language is reduced in MS Hunter 252, it is impossible to link the compositions seen in our manuscript to any one such personality in particular, distinctive though each one was. However, while paradoxical, indeed virtually inexplicable, as the conceptions of an artist of such obviously limited abilities as that of MS Hunter 252 himself, the designs are readily intelligible as the devisings of one or more of these greater talents. The material considered here and in the previous section points – with differing degrees of probability – to three conclusions. First, the evidence of visual conception and artistic realisation is concordant with that of details of the iconography in indicating that the miniatures in MS Hunter 252 are highly likely to have been based on those of an illustrated exemplar. The illustrations in that putative exemplar, we may safely assume, would have been even more effective in encapsulating the essence of each tale than are the copies preserved in our manuscript. Second, the nature of the visual language is compatible (the limitations of the evidence prohibit any stronger statement) with descent from an exemplar that had been de­ signed in Burgundian court circles. Third, notwithstanding the necessarily tentative nature of the previous point, it is a reasonable proposition, given the dearth of other documented copies of Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, that the images in our book transmit in simplified form the essence of the compositions used in the manuscript, now tragically lost, that had belonged to Philip the Good of Burgundy – a volume which, revealingly, was described in the 1469 inventory of the Duke’s books as ‘historiée en plusieurs lieux de riches histoires’ (‘illuminated in several places with rich illustrations’).86 The inventory description reveals, in addition, that the ducal copy had a two-column format. Were this lost manuscript indeed the archetype (proximate or ultimate) for the illustrations in MS Hunter 252,

85 For convenient, well illustrated overviews of the careers and oeuvres of these and other potentially relevant figures see Miniatures flamandes 1404-82, ed. by Bernard Bousmanne and Thierry Delcourt (Paris: BnF – Brussels, KBR, 2011); and Illuminating the Renaissance: the Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe, ed. by Thomas Kren and Scott McKendrick (Los Angeles: Getty- London: Royal Academy, 2003). On Vrelant’s approach to illustrating secular epics (including his readiness to ‘generalize’ and to depart from the text) see Bernard Bousmanne, ‘Item a Guillaume Wyelant aussi enlumineur’. Willem Vrelant: un aspect de l’enluminure dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux sous le mécénat des ducs de Bourgogne Philippe le Bon et Charles le Téméraire (Bruxelles: KBR – Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), pp. 157-63. For Liédet’s aproach to narrative see Catherine Reynolds, ‘Stories Without Words: the Vocabulary of Loyset Liédet’ in New Perspectives on Flemish Illumination, ed. by Lieve Watteeuw, Jan Van der Stock, Bernard Bousmanne and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe (Leuven: Peeters, 2018), pp. 63-79. 86 Corpus Catalogorum Belgii: The Medieval Booklists of the Southern Low Countries V: Dukes of Burgundy, ed. by Thomas Falmagne and Baudouin Van den Abeele (Leuven: Peeters, 2016) (hereafter, CCB-V), list 5, entry 485 (p. 223); see also list 8, entry 57 (p. 296).

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that could explain why the latter’s miniatures take the shape that they do. For square boxes occupying half the width of the page, which are far from ideal in a volume whose text is written in long lines, would make perfect sense in one that was set out in two columns: they would exactly match the width of a single column.

Pigments and Painting The palette of MS Hunter 252 is dominated by reds, pinks, blues, greys and golden browns, which appear (in different proportions) in almost all of the miniatures. The most common colours thereafter are greens (used for grass, foliage and the occasional interior wall or canopy) and whites (featuring in bed linen, table cloths, clerical robes, undergarments, horses, and some architecture), followed by black (deployed for habits and head-dresses). Other colours are rare: on a handful of occasions a deep orange was deployed for fire or flame, and there is one occurrence of a brilliant yellow.87 The pigments used (identified by Raman spectroscopy, fibre optic reflectance spectroscopy, and multispectral imaging) were as follows (a more detailed listing of which colour stuff was found where is supplied in the Table at the end of the present chapter). Red: organic; vermilion. Pink: organic. Orange: red lead; red lead plus massicot; synthetic arsenic sulphide. Yellow: lead tin yellow (Type I); organic; lead white plus an organic colorant. Yellow-Green: lead tin yellow plus indigo. Green: copper; vergaut (indigo plus lead tin yellow); copper plus azurite; organic. Blue: azurite (lightened with white lead, darkened with carbon); nonazurite copper blue; lapis lazuli (trace only). Purple: vermilion plus indigo; organic; azurite plus an unidentified substance. Brown: indigo plus vermilion; azurite plus an unidentified substance. Dark shading: indigo; indigo plus vermilion. Grey: carbon; carbon plus white; indigo; azurite plus white lead; azu­ rite plus organic. White: white lead (with the addition of vermilion or indigo for flesh tones). Gold: leaf gold; ‘shell’ gold (i.e. gold ink).

87 Fol. 25r; applied to three sections of the demon’s wing.

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Given how little scientific examination has been directed at French manu­ scripts dating from the later fifteenth century, and given further that those few examples that have been studied were decorated by the greatest illumi­ nators of the age, such as Jean Bourdichon,88 whose painting techniques are a world away from the efforts of our artist, it is currently very difficult to contextualize these findings within their own time period. However, if French books from earlier in the century (more of which have been analysed with modern techniques) are also taken into account,89 there is a reasonable body of comparanda. Almost all of the materials found in MS Hunter 252 can be paralleled within this broader corpus. The principle differences in terms of colour stuffs between MS Hunter 252 and the apparent norms of such other fifteenth-century French manuscripts as have been studied scientifically are, on the one hand, the absence from our book of the otherwise commonly-used ochres for browns and yellows, and, on the other, the presence within it of a synthetic arsenic sulfide orange (artificial orpi­ ment).90 As ochres were cheap while vermilion and azurite (components

88 Nancy Turner, ‘The Manuscript Painting Techniques of Jean Bourdichon’ in A Masterpiece Reconstructed: the Hours of Louis XII, ed. by Thomas Kren and Mark Evans (Malibu: Getty – London: British Library, 2005), pp. 62-79. 89 For example, Inès Villela-Petit, ‘Palettes comparées: quelques réflexions sur les pigments employés par les enlumineurs parisiens au début du XVe siècle’ in Quand la peinture était dans les livres: mélanges en l’honneur de François Avril, ed. by Mara Hofmann and Caroline Zöhl (Turnhout: Brepols – Paris: BnF, 2007), pp. 383-91; Margaret Lawson, ‘Technical Observations: Materials, Techniques and Conservation of the Belles Heures Manuscript’ in The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry, ed. by Timothy Husband (New York: Metropolitan Museum of art, 2009), pp. 324-41; Stella Panayotova, ‘The Rohan Master: collaboration and experimentation in the Hours of Isabella Stuart’ in Manuscripta Illuminata: Approaches to Understanding Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, ed. by Colum Hourihane (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014), pp. 14-46. For the pigments used in a Parisian MS of s. xvmed see Richard Gameson and Catherine Nicholson with Andrew Beeby, ‘The Admiral, the Virgin and the Spectrometer: observations on the Coëtivy Hours (Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, W082)’, Gesta, 59.2 (2020), 203-31. 90 Methods of manufacture are summarised by Elizabeth West Fitzhugh, ‘Orpiment and Realgar’ in Pigments: A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics 3, ed. by Elizabeth West Fitzhugh (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1997), pp. 47-79 (p. 55). See further in general Günter Grundmann and Caroline Rötter, ‘Artificial Orpiment: Microscopic, Diffractometric and Chemical Characteristics of Synthesis Products in Comparison to Natural Orpiment’ in Auripigment/Orpiment. Studien zu dem Mineral und den künstlichen Produkten / Studies on the Mineral and the Artificial Products, ed. by Manfrid Schiller, Erwin Emmerling, and Winfried Nerdinger (Munich: Anton Siegl, 2007), pp. 103-40; and Günter Grundmann and Mark Richter, ‘Current Research on Artificial Arsenic Sulphide Pigments in Artworks: A Short Review’, CHIMIA, International Journal for Chemistry, 62 (11) (2008), 103-07. Discovering the material in s. xvii Dutch art, Marc Vermeulen, Steven Saverwyns, Alexia Coudray, Koen Janssens and Jane Sanyova, ‘Identification by Raman Spectroscopy of Pararealgar as a Starting Material in the Synthesis of Amorphous Arsenic Sulfide Pigments’,

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of the mixture browns) were comparatively expensive, the exclusion of the earth colours shows that not every aspect of our book was defined by economy.91 The pigment that was normally used for orange, namely red lead, does appear in MS Hunter 252;92 however, on a couple of occa­ sions an artificial orpiment was deployed for the colour instead. Artificial orpiment has rarely been reported in medieval manuscripts of any sort.93 Yet whether this is because it was genuinely uncommon in late medieval illuminators’ palettes, or rather because the relevant manuscripts have not yet been examined scientifically will only become apparent with future work that embraces more books from the end of the fifteenth century.94 The fact that, in his treatise on artistic techniques and materials, Cennino Cennini (d. by 1427) simply assumed that orpiment was ‘manufactured and made by alchemy’ is highly suggestive in this connection.95 Thus while the presence of the substance in MS Hunter 252 is undoubtedly noteworthy, its real significance – whether aberration, singularity, or part of an as-yet unrecognised trend – is currently unclear. The main idiosyncracies (as they appear at present) in terms of the usage of pigments in MS Hunter 252 relate to the browns and the blues. While mixture browns do feature in other fifteenth-century French manu­ scripts, in our book, unusually, they appear to be the only type of brown that was deployed, the precise composition changing according to the hue

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95

Dyes and Piments, 149 (2018), 290-97, theorize that it may have been obtained as a byproduct of glass-making or as a means of putting degraded realgar to some use. In 1419-20 the price per Lille pound (431.3g) for German blue (azurite) was 48s, that for vermilion was 18s/10d, while that for ochre was a mere 1s/2d: Lorne Campbell, ‘Suppliers of Artists’ Materials to the Burgundian Court’ in Trade in Artists’ Materials: Markets and Commerce in Europe to 1700, ed. by Jo Kirby, Susie Nash and Joanna Cannon (London: Archetype, 2010), pp. 97-182. These records do not include lead tin yellow; however, fifteenth-century Italian sources show that it was in the next ‘price bracket’ up from ochres: while the latter typically cost no more that 8 soldi per libbra, lead tin yellow cost 10-50 soldi per libbra (azurite was typically in the region of 200 soldi per libbra, but could be as much as 400 soldi): Susanne Kubersky-Piredda, ‘The Market for Painters’ Materials in Renaissance Florence’ in Trade in Artists’ Materials, ed. Kirby, Nash and Cannon, pp. 223-43. Unusually, in the s. xvmed Coëtivy Hours mosaic gold was used for orange. Only two examples are noted in Colour: the Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. by Stella Panayotova (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2016), nos 39 and 43 with p. 28: Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 159 (the primer of Claude of France; Loire region, c. 1505); and Marlay Cutting It. 25 (Italy c. 1500). We note that XRF mapping of Marlay Cutting It. 25 had indicated the presence of areas containing arsenic and sulfur (P. Ricciardi, S. Legrand, G. Bertoletti and K. Janssens, ‘Macro X-ray Fluoresence (MA-XRF) Scanning of Illuminated Manuscript Fragments: Potentialities and Challenges’, Microchemical Journal, 124 (2016), 785-91), but that it was only via Raman spectroscopy that the identity of the pigment was subsequently verified (Panayotova (ed.), Colour, p. 121; additional unpublished data recorded by Catherine Nicholson). ‘opimetto […] questo tal colore e artificiato effatto darchimia’: Cennino Cennini’s Il Libro dell’Arte, ed. by Lara Broecke (London: Archetype, 2015), c. 47 (p. 73).

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required. In relation to blues, the notable feature of MS Hunter 252 is the ubiquity of azurite: in addition to being the principal colour stuff used for blue itself (being lightened with white lead or darkened with carbon as required), it was also deployed as a component of mixture purples, browns and greys. (Indigo was utilised, not for blue tones, but rather for shading and in mixtures to create greens and purples.) Lapis lazuli appears on only two folios in exceedingly small quantities. Its sole significant occurrence is in the cloak of the sculpted St Michael shown on fol. 25r (CNN11). Given that this is the only celestial figure to appear anywhere (albeit in effigy) in these decidedly secular illustrations, it seems highly likely that the decision to lavish the most expensive pigment on him represented a mark of respect. As such, it was a purely symbolic gesture, since the pigment cannot be distinguished by the eye from the other (azurite) blues.96 The only other occurrence of lapis is on fol. 3r, the very first miniature in the book, where an infinitesimally small quantity of it was used to darken the outline of a robe that was otherwise entirely painted in azurite. This exiguous use of lapis lazuli was doubtless, in part, a reflection of the non-deluxe nature of MS Hunter 252. However, it may also relate to changes in the availability and cost of the mineral in northern Europe more generally: for it is evident from various sources, not least the accounts of the dukes of Burgundy, that the price of the pigment, always elevated, rose sharply during the course of the century.97 In consequence, painters – whether working on panel or parchment – became more parsimonious and hence selective in their use of it, and placed ever greater reliance upon azu­ rite (which was itself costly in relation to other colour stuffs). One French artist who bucked this trend was Jean Bourdichon (1457/8-1521) who appears to have been unstinting in his use of lapis, at least in the Hours of Louis XII;98 however, as this was a supremely luxurious manuscript made for the king of France, such extravagance was to be expected. By the sixteenth century even so famous an illuminator as Simon Bening of Bruges (1483-1561), working for patrons of the highest order, used azurite where earlier practitioners would have deployed lapis lazuli.99

96 The only other overtly sacred blue object of significant size in the miniature cycle is the large retable on fol 160v: it is entirely painted in azurite. (In the time available to us, we were unable to examine the two small blue retables at the ‘back’ of the illustration on fol. 105v.) 97 Susie Nash, ‘“Pour couleurs et autres choses prises de lui”: the Supply, Acquisition, Cost and Employment of Painters’ Materials at the Burgundian Court c. 1375-1419’ in Trade in Artists’ Materials, ed. Kirby, Nash and Cannon, pp. 97-182; and Kubersky-Piredda, ‘Market for Painters’ Materials’. 98 Turner, ‘Painting Techniques’, p. 65. 99 The present writers have examined leaves decorated by him now in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, plus one in private hands. For the results of analysis of six leaves from the Hours of Albrecht of Brandenburg now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge see Giulia Bertolotta and Paola Ricciardi, ‘Painting Materials in Sixteenth-Century Flemish

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Fig. 1. Micrograph showing detail on the head of a statue of St Michael in the background of the miniature of CNN11. Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252 fol. 25r. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

The process by which the miniatures in MS Hunter 252 were painted was relatively simple. Individual elements were covered in largely unmodu­ lated washes of a single colour. (Modest fluctuations in the density of the paint have less to do with any artistic purpose than with how much of it was on the brush at a given moment and where it may then have pooled owing to undulations in the parchment surface.) An impression of light and shade was then achieved via the addition of hatching strokes, either done in a contrasting tone of the base colour or with a different pigment, while contours were firmed up and other details added by means of further such lines. The basic principles may be readily appreciated from a micro­ graph of the head of St Michael on fol. 25r (Fig. 1). His face, wings and cloak were painted in unmodulated white, red and blue respectively. Basic modelling was then applied to the face via hatchings in grey, the features being added in indigo, with a touch of orange for the lips and one cheek; the blue cloak was articulated with lines in gold; the red wings were out­ lined and given a suggestion of form via darker red strokes, with the addi­ tion of gold for highlights. Correspondingly, a transparent halo was sug­ gested via a few golden lines. The artist was unquestionably adept at this technique – coating areas in a single colour which was then modestly artic­ ulated with lines in a contrasting tone or hue – and applied it to one feature after another in all of his illuminations. It need hardly be added, however, that such an approach was much cruder and more summary than the deli­ cate stippling, overpainting, layering of glazes, and blending of colours that

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characterises finer, more ‘painterly’ work by more distinguished contem­ poraries.100 The palette of the miniature on the replacement leaf, fol. 137r – red, grey, yellow and green – was obviously chosen to harmonize with that of the original stratum of the book; however, the tonalities here are dis­ tinctly paler. The pigments used were vermilion and organic reds, natural orpiment yellow, indigo for blue and grey, plus carbon black; white was achieved via blank, or virtually blank, parchment. The significant point here is the conservative nature of the colorants – all of which were cur­ rent during the late Middle Ages and the early modern period – and, correspondingly, the absence of any ‘newer’ materials such as Prussian blue (available from 1724). Thus there is nothing in the materials to contradict a date for this work in the seventeenth century or even, indeed, the sixteenth. Given that the script on the leaf emulates the original writing, it is difficult to date the campaign on palaeographical grounds. If, however, this replacement (and other restoration) was undertaken around the time that the current binding was supplied, as seems likely, that would indicate the seventeenth century.

Binding The binding, which is of seventeenth-century style, comprises boards of millboard covered in dark brown leather, the book-block being sewn on six bands, with head and tail sewing in white/cream/silver and red/ brown/orange thread, much discoloured. The edges of the book-block were gilded. Gilding on the leather is restricted to the panels of the spine and the edges and inside edges of the boards. All but one of the zones on the spine bear a monogram formed of two interlaced Gs (the first reversed, the second the right way round) surrounded on all four sides by a lion rampant.101 This is the device that, from the seventeenth century onward, was used by d’Estrées family, and is thus the earliest indication of provenance for the volume, albeit without defining to which member of

Illumination, with a Focus on the Use of Copper Sulphates: Simon Bening as a Case Study’ in Manuscripts in the Making: Art and Science II, ed. by Stella Panayotova and Paola Ricciardi (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2018), 118-31. 100 Compare, e.g., the generally more sophisticated approaches outlined in Nancy Turner, ‘“Incarnation” Illuminated: Painting the Flesh in Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Illumination’ in Colour, ed. Panayotova, pp. 271-303; and Nancy Turner with Catherine Schmidt Patterson, ‘Of “Flesh Colour Well Made”: Materials and Techniques for Painting Flesh Tones in Fifteenth-Century Flemish Manuscript Illumination’ in New Perspectives on Flemish Illumination, ed. Watteeuw et al., pp. 269-83. 101 The exception (the second zone from the top) is embossed with the title, ‘Les Cent Nouvelles’.

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the maison in particular it then belonged.102 The pastedowns and fly- and endleaf are of contemporary paper, the principle faces coloured purple and decorated with an all-over pattern of foliate scrolls. The three parchment flyleaves and the two parchment endleaves were doubtless inserted as part of this same binding campaign. Almost no evidence is currently visible for the nature of an earlier bind­ ing or bindings (any stains or impressions on the first and last leaves from board channels or metalwork have been lost with those leaves themselves). However, it is just possible that the hole at the outer edge of fol. 1, towards the bottom of the page, reflects damage from the metalwork associated with the lower of a pair of clasps.

Conclusion Collectively, the physical evidence of variable parchment, expeditious script and unpretentious artwork shows that MS Hunter 252, while an ambitious project, was economically conceived and expeditiously realised. The nature of its ornamental initials and the style of its illuminations favour an origin in, or production by workers from, northern France, par­ ticularly Paris, a localisation with which its script is perfectly compatible. The way in which the illustrations were created, their pictorial language, and certain iconographic anomalies within them strongly suggest that the cycle was copied from an exemplar rather than devised for this manuscript. It is possible that the model, proximate or ultimate, was the illustrated copy of the work recorded in 1469 as having belonged to Philip the Good. The other signal fact about our volume is, of course, that it is now the only surviving manuscript of its text. How, then, should we best make sense of these various characteristics? The production values of MS Hunter 252 may be compared in general terms to those of mass-produced manuscripts such as the horae that were made in large numbers at Rouen in the later fifteenth century.103 Accord­ ingly, it might be tempting to presume that the patron of our volume (like those of Rouen horae) was not of royal, princely or ducal rank but rather someone of the lesser nobility, conceivably even of bourgeois status. Such may have been the case; however, this does not necessarily follow from the quality of MS Hunter 252 per se. In the first place, the various symptoms of economy apparent in the codicology of MS Hunter 252, while leaving no doubt that it was not a luxury volume, do not mean that it was a cheap one. The parchment may be of modest quality, but it is still parchment, not paper; the scribe may 102 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Champion, I, p. cxvi. 103 See Watson, The Playfair Hours.

Les Cent nouveLLes nouveLLes

have worked at speed, but he still supplied calligraphic capitals and he never compromised legibility; the artist may have had limited talents, but he still painted 100 illustrations; and if he barely used the most expensive pigment, he avoided the cheapest ones altogether. More generally, the task of creating a single copy of a romance text with a wealth of narrative illus­ trations and decorated initials, even though modestly realised and even if guided by an illustrated exemplar, was considerably more demanding, time-consuming, and hence expensive than that of producing yet another book of hours to a familiar formula, following well-tried procedures. Second, the many luxurious manuscripts of romances and histories that were commissioned by the dukes of Burgundy and other well-placed, high-ranking connoisseurs, like Louis of Bruges / Lodewijk van Gru­ uthuse,104 should not blind us to the fact that these were not the only forms in which such works were owned in elevated circles, Burgundian or otherwise. Obvious counter-examples are the manuscripts associated with the Artois noble Jean de Wavrin (d. 1471×5), in particular those decorated by the eponymous ‘Master of Jean de Wavrin’, a figure who is presumed to have been active in Lille in the third quarter of the fifteenth century.105 The oeuvre in question comprises secular romances that were transcribed on paper, not parchment, and were adorned with illustrations that, though vivid and expressive, were summarily executed – rapidly-done ink sketches lightly touched with colour. Yet while a world away in terms of materials and expense from luxury manuscripts of the sort mentioned above, these books too came into the collection of Philip the Good. Although the Master of Jean de Wavrin was far more individualistic than the artist of MS Hunter 252 and although his sketchy style is more appealing to the modern eye, such art work was less detailed, less time-consuming and, in consequence, surely less costly than the stolid but fully-painted illuminations of our book. The library of Jacques V d’Armagnac, Duke of Nemours (d. 1477) of­ fers a comparable yet complementary case.106 For alongside the fine books that he inherited from his grandfather, Jean de Berry, alongside his employ­ ment of the master painter Jean Fouquet (or his atelier) to complete the Duke of Berry’s Josephus,107 and alongside his regular employment of

104 Ilona Hans Collas, Pascal Schandel and Hanno Wijsman, Manuscrits enluminés des anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux I: Manuscrits de Louis de Bruges (Paris: BnF, 2009); Wijsman, Luxury Bound, pp. 356-69. 105 Miniatures flamandes, ed. by Bousmanne and Delcourt, pp. 358-66; Livia Visser-Fuchs, History as Pastime. Jean de Wavrin and his Collection of Chronicles of England (Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2018), pp. 206-17 (and for Jean de Wavrin’s books as a whole see pp. 98-235); Wijsman, Luxury Bound, pp. 472-79. 106 Avril and Reynaud, Les manuscrits à peintures en France 1440-1520, pp. 164-67. 107 BnF, MS Fr. 247: Avril and Reynaud, Les manuscrits à peintures en France 1440-1520, no. 71; Jean Fouquet. Peintre et enlumineur du XVe siècle, ed. by François Avril (Paris: BnF-Hazan,

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François Barbier père (Master François) to illuminate historical texts,108 there are, by contrast, the Arthurian manuscripts Jacques commissioned and that he was content to have decorated by very modest talents. These volumes include numerous narrative vignettes that, in terms of artistic quality, are akin to the illustrations in MS Hunter 252. Third, by the late fifteenth century, when our manuscript was pro­ duced, expectations concerning the availability and the physical presenta­ tion of books were being modified by the ever-increasing numbers of printed volumes that were in circulation. Incunabula were now entering private collections of all sorts from royalty downwards, inexorably redefin­ ing bibliographical norms – not least with regard to the nature of artwork, with woodcuts and metalcuts generally replacing hand illumination in all but the most luxurious dedication copies. The precise implications of this much-discussed phenomenon are multifarious and defy easy characterisa­ tion. But that it fostered broader acceptance of less individualised artwork can hardly be doubted; nor that, with increasing numbers of works avail­ able ‘from stock’, it redefined expectations of how long one might expect to wait for certain texts. This last point, like the evident speed with which the aforementioned Master of Jean de Wavrin worked, raises a fourth consideration: while wealth and status were prime factors in determining the grade of book that a patron might choose to acquire, others were opportunity, urgency, and the quantity of images required. If an exemplar were only available for a limited period, if a copy were desired in a hurry, and/or if a work had a lengthy cycle of illustrations, it would be more reliable, whatever one’s rank, to employ an atelier known for speed of delivery than one admired for painstaking – and necessarily time-consuming – finesse. Jacques V of Nemours, who seems to have been more concerned with securing a range of texts than with the luxuriousness of their appearance, was content to entrust the more than 200 illustrations of his monumental Lancelot-Grail manuscript to a team of mediocre artists, some of whose work was, as noted above, on a par with that of the illustrator of MS Hunter 252.109 One unarguable merit of these illuminators, however, was that they ‘got the job done’. If speed were indeed one of the criteria for choosing an illuminator, then one could have done worse than approach the François Barbier fils

2003), no. 34 (where this work is re-attributed to the Master of the Munich Boccaccio and to Jean Bourdichon, the view of Fouquet’s atelier that lies behind this re-designation being set out on pp. 18-28). 108 Avril and Reynaud, Les manuscrits à peintures, pp. 45-52, esp. no. 15. 109 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr. 113-16: the miniatures reproduced in Le roi Arthur & les chevaliers de la Table ronde, ed. by Thierry Delcourt (Paris: BnF-Bibliothèque de l’image, 2009).

Les Cent nouveLLes nouveLLes

whose style and manner are echoed in simplified form in the work of the artist of MS Hunter 252, for his output was prolific. It embraced both manuscript and print. As well as illuminating hand-written liturgical volumes and other texts, Barbier fils worked on over thirty titles printed by Anthoine Vérard (fl. 1485-1512), including copies destined for identifiable recipients of very high rank. Thus not only did he paint a manuscript book of hours for Charles VIII, he also illuminated fifteen Vérard incunabula that the King owned.110 Vérard’s success in marketing suitably crafted prints to royalty and nobility as well as to bourgeois clients, and to the English as well as the French, underlines the new competitiveness of the book-producing world in the late fifteenth century.111 This has a further relevance to the situation of Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles that we should pass in review before summing up. The production-line nature of their working methods and the insa­ tiable demand for horae meant that Rouen manuscript-makers could sur­ vive, and their products remain marketable, in the face of competition from the new medium of print.112 This would manifestly be more of a challenge in relation to longer works of entertainment that were more time-consuming and hence costly to produce, had more restricted clien­ teles and would, in consequence, have been more difficult to sell. The ap­ pearance in print of Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles in December 1486,113 with a second edition issued about a decade later,114 thereby putting the work into wide circulation, goes some way to explaining why MS Hunter 252 is now a unicum. However, consideration of a case like Le chevalier délibéré by Olivier de la Marche, maître then grand maître d’hôtel of the house of Burgundy (d. 1502), a work that was only written in 1483 and was issued in no fewer than six printed editions between 1488 and c. 1500 yet still has a relatively strong manuscript tradition (eighteen copies), shows that this cannot be the whole story.115 The literary tastes of the nobles associated with the Burgundian court were surely also a factor: for what is known of 110 The MS (illuminated richly but not with great finesse) is now Madrid, Biblioteca nacional, MS vit. 24-1; facsimile: Libro de horas de Carlos VIII, Rey de Francia (Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional -Barcelona: Moleiro, 1995) with Ana Domínguez Rodriguez, Las miniaturas del Libro de Horas de Carlos VIII, volumen complementario a la edición facsimil (Barcelona: Moleiro, 1995). For a selection from the incunabula see Geneviève Bresc-Bautier, Thierry Crépin-Leblond and Elisabeth Taburet-Delahaye (ed.), France 1500. Entre Moyen Âge et Renaissance (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux), nos 107, 109-12. 111 Mary Beth Winn, Anthoine Vérard, Parisian Publisher 1485-1512: Prologues, Poems and Presentations (Geneva: Droz, 1997), especially Ch. 4 for his high-ranking patrons. 112 Watson, Playfair Hours, pp. 30-34. 113 Paris: Anthoine Vérard (ISTC in0027700). 114 The latter, issued by Vérard between 8 May 1498 and 25 October 1499, is ISTC in00277300. 115 ISTC il00029000; -010; -020; -030; -032; and -034, all by different printers, the first of whom was Vérard.

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their personal book collections suggests that they would indeed have been more likely to acquire allegorical verse articulating the nature of the human condition than a sprawling collection of ribald tales.116 Considered purely numerically, an obvious comparison for the situa­ tion of Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles is Le Morte Darthur of Thomas Malory, printed by William Caxton in 1485 and then again by Wynkyn de Worde in 1498 but with only a single extant manuscript.117 In the case of the Morte, the prime explanation for the curious pattern of transmission was the incarceration of the author. In relation to Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles one can only speculate as to the cause; however, a reasonable hypothesis would be that it was owing to the ‘incarceration’ in private hands of an always very small number of manuscripts. In the light of these various considerations, a plausible profile for the patron of MS Hunter 252 and credible circumstances for its production may be outlined as follows. The patron would be someone, more probably than not of high status, who was connected to the Burgundian court (hence with access to the ducal manuscript or a copy of it118) who (in contrast to most of his contemporaries there in the 1470s and 80s) actually wanted to own this collection of bawdy tales, and who, whether from expediency, geographical convenience or both, turned to a jobbing atelier, apparently located (or at least trained) in northern France, probably Paris, perhaps in the circle of François Barbier fils, to produce the requisite copy, fully illustrated but in no respect extravagant, conceivably at some speed. Who such a patron is most likely to have been is a question other researchers in the present volume will pursue.119

116 Wijsman, Luxury Bound, p. 506; Collas, Schandel and Wijsman, Manuscrits de Louis de Bruges, p. 12. 117 The editions are respectively ISTC im00103000 (copies: Manchester, John Rylands University Library, 18930 and New York, Morgan Library, DeR 76.1, the latter available in facsimile: Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur printed by William Caxton, 1485, ed. by Paul Needham (London: Scolar Press, 1976) and im00103100. The MS is London, British Library, Add. MS 59678, facsimile: The Winchester Malory, ed. by Neil R. Ker, Early English Text Society SS 4 (Oxford, 1976). 118 By the end of the fifteenth century the ducal manuscript itself had been loaned to Philip of Cleves (d. 1528): CCB-V, list 8, no. 57 (p. 296). 119 We are most grateful to Julie Gardham and her colleagues at Glasgow University Library for so kindly facilitating our work on MS Hunter 252, as also on other MSS in the collection. The scientific analysis of MS Hunter 252 was underwritten by Rob and Felicity Shepherd, that of other MSS by the AHRC: we thank them all most sincerely for their invaluable support.

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59

Table 1. The pigments of Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, Summary.

Red

Pink

Orange

Yellow

Vermilion; Organic

Organic

Red lead; Red lead + massicot; Synthetic arsenic sulfide

Lead-tin yellow (Type I); Organic; Organic + white lead

Green

Blue

Purple

Brown

Verdigris; Verdigris + azurite; Vergaut (indigo + lead-tin yellow); Organic

Azurite; Nonazurite copper blue; Lapis lazuli (trace)

Organic; Mixtures (vermilion + indigo; azurite + ?)

Indigo + vermilion; Azurite + ?

Black

Grey

White

Metals

Carbon; Indigo + vermilion; Gallotannic (text)

Carbon; Carbon + white lead; Azurite + white lead; Azurite + organic

White lead (+ indigo or vermilion)

Gold leaf; Gold ink

haNNO wijsmaN 

Chapter 2. MS Hunter 252: precursors, date and patronage

This chapter will address several related questions concerning MS Hunter 252, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles contained in the volume, and the context of these tales. In the first place, I propose to look at some aspects of the lost Burgundian manuscript of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, contextualizing the few data we dispose of. Secondly, we will take a closer look at the minia­ tures in MS Hunter 252 itself in an attempt to propose a dating for the manuscript on the basis of the fashion visible in the images. Subsequently, I will discuss the style of the miniatures and, finally, I will tentatively propose a hypothesis concerning the identity of the manuscript’s patron. Together, these findings will suggest that MS Hunter 252, the material nature of which Richard Gameson has just described, emerged from a milieu connected to the house of Luxembourg-Ligny in the early 1480s.

The lost Burgundian manuscript With the exception of the early printed editions, from that of Vérard in 1486 onwards, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles are only known to us through a single medieval manuscript.1 As we shall see in Chapter 9 below, the literary project encapsulated within the text was originally devised at the Burgundian court around 1458-59. I will not venture into the questions of attribution of the text; other contributions in this volume tell us more about this. It is, however, important to emphasize that the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles is a rather exceptional text in the history of textual patronage and manuscript commissioning at and around the Burgundian court, on

1 On textual differences between the Glasgow manuscript, University Library, MS Hunter 252 and the Vérard edition, see Mary Beth Winn’s contribution to the present volume. Hanno Wijsman • IRHT Paris The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - c. 1550), ed. by Graeme Small, Texte, Codex & Contexte, 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 61–78 10.1484/M.TCC-EB.5.132232

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account of a striking discrepancy. The text was conceived at the Burgun­ dian court; it explicitly cites many members of this court as narrators of the various stories; and the Duke himself even had an illuminated copy made. At the same time, however, there is no trace whatsoever of the work in other aristocratic libraries of the second half of the fifteenth or the early sixteenth century. It seems, therefore, that the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, in spite of its many early printed editions, never become fashionable in the very environment in which the enterprise emerged. The early editions show that the book found readers in various circles, as we shall see in greater detail below in Chapter 4; but as far as we can tell, it found very little readership at the court where it was conceived. In looking for an explanation for this conundrum, we must acknowl­ edge the fact that the discrepancy may simply arise from a lack of relevant sources: numerous manuscripts have been lost, and we do not dispose of many library inventories in which the text might have been mentioned. Nevertheless, it is difficult to cite another example of a major text for which the situation is as clear-cut as it is in this case: the presence of a fine manuscript in the library of the Duke, yet not one other manuscript mentioned in the inventories of other courtiers’ libraries, and not a single other surviving manuscript from court circles. The ducal manuscript is mentioned in the 1469 inventory made shortly after Philip the Good’s death, in a category of texts to which the rubric Livres de gestes (‘Books of Deeds’) is given. Between items containing the Perceforest and Arthurian romances we find three volumes containing Les cent nouvelles de Bocace (i.e. Boccaccio’s Decameron), as well as a fourth one with our text: Ung livre tout neuf, escript en parchemin, a deux coulombes, couvert de cuir blanc de chamois, historié en pluiseurs lieux de riches histoires, contenant cent nouvelles, tant de monseigneur que Dieu pardoint comme de pluiseurs autres de son hostel, commençant le second feullet aprez la table, en rouge lettre “celle qui se baignoit” et le derrain feullet “lit demanda”.2 [my emphasis] A brand new book written on parchment in two columns with a white chamois leather cover / illustrated in several places with rich illustrations / containing one hundred nouvelles / by my lord, God rest his soul, and by several others in his household / beginning on the second folio after the table [of contents] / in red letters / celle qui se baignoit / and the last folio / lit demanda/

2 Corpus Catalogorum Belgii: The medieval booklists of the southern Low Countries. Volume V: Dukes of Burgundy, ed. by Thomas Falmagne and Baudouin Van den Abeele (Louvain: Peeters, 2016) (hereafter, CCB-V), p. 223 (no. 5.485).

ms hunTer 252: preCursors, daTe and paTronaGe

The precise wording here is important. This description was written down less than a decade after the initial conception of the text, and was probably formulated by Jacques de Brégilles who, as garde des joyaulx (keeper of the jewels), was in charge of the Duke’s manuscripts between 1446 and 1475. It informs us that the hundred short stories were, at the time, understood to have been told (and invented) by Philip the Good and several of his courtiers.3 Furthermore, the manuscript is described as being brand new, and as being written in two columns, which (as Richard Gameson notes above in Chapter 1) is clearly different from MS Hunter 252. We agree that the Burgundian manuscript was therefore probably larger, and conceived as a more prestigious book, than our surviving witness, MS Hunter 252. In 1469 the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles manuscript was to be found along­ side three manuscripts of Boccaccio’s Decameron. Though the former has been lost, all three of the Boccaccio manuscripts still survive today.4 Two of these are manuscripts containing one hundred illustrations, one for each nouvelle, and they are both well-known: the older of the two was made in Paris for John the Fearless around 1418, while the more recent is a copy of the first, undertaken in the mid-1430s and completed in the mid-1440s. I have suggested elsewhere that the initiative to make another copy of the Decameron may have been intended to benefit Isabella of Portugal, Philip the Good’s third wife, whom he married in 1430. Since then, however, Dominique Vanwijnsberghe and Erik Verroken have convincingly argued that the copying, illuminating and binding of the manuscript must have been slightly later. Nonetheless, there is consensus that the expansion of the court which was brought about by the marriage of 1430, and the subsequent birth of a son Charles in 1433, most likely stimulated the Duke to commission a further copy of the work.5 When analysing large libraries like the one built up by the Burgundian dukes, we should bear in mind that these were no monolithic ensembles: collections were kept in various places, carried around and used by various members of the dynasty and

3 This does not necessarily prove of course that the description corresponds to reality, but it does constitute a belief that circulated beyond the text at this point in time. 4 The three Boccaccio manuscripts are: Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. lat. 1989 (= CCB-V, 5.483; made around 1418 for John the Fearless; https://digi.vatlib.it/ view/bav_pal_lat_1989); Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce MS 213 (= CCB-V, 5.484); Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5070 (CCB-V, 5.486; made in the 1430s; https:// gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b7100018t). 5 Dominique Vanwijnsberghe and Erik Verroken, A l’Escu de France. Guillebert de Mets et la peinture de livres à Gand à l’époque de Jan van Eyck (1410-50), Scientia Artis, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 251-73; Hanno Wijsman, Luxury Bound. Illustrated Manuscript Production and Noble and Princely Book Ownership in the Burgundian Netherlands (1400-1550), Burgundica, 16 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 185-86.

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the court, and in this context multiple copies of valued texts could be useful.6 Remarkably, after this intense period of interest in Boccaccio at the courts of both John the Fearless and Philip the Good, to the point even of renewing and extending the idea of a project of telling one hundred novel stories among Burgundian courtiers, all four manuscripts consecutively mentioned in the 1469 inventory (the three Boccaccios and the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles) left the library at an early stage: • The Vatican Boccaccio was not mentioned again after the 1469 inven­ tory, and we find it from at least 1610 onwards in the Palatine library in Heidelberg.7 • The Oxford Boccaccio was mentioned in the 1577-79 inventory, but was owned in the seventeenth century by King Louis XIV of France.8 • The Arsenal Boccaccio was not mentioned again after 1469, and must have been acquired by either Philip or Charles of Croy in the period between 1469 and 1511, since it was one of the manuscripts sold by Charles of Croy to Margaret of Austria in 1511.9 • As we will discuss further below, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles volume was borrowed in 1497 by Philip of Cleves and has been lost ever since. Should we conclude that the Cent nouvelles (Decameron) and the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles remained popular texts in these particular court circles from the late fifteenth century onwards? This conclusion would not be supported by the dispersal of the Boccaccio-related manuscripts we have just noted. The intense interest in the literary genre which we can trace at the court of Burgundy in the earlier fifteenth century appears by this time to have dissipated.10 The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles volume is mentioned once more in the 1487 inventory: Item ung autre grant volume couvert de cuir de chamois gaune, a tout deux cloans et cincq boutons de leton sur chascun costé,

6 Wijsman, Luxury Bound, pp. 171-255. 7 Elmar Mittler, Bibliotheca Palatina (Heidelberg: Braus, 1986), I, pp. 312-13; II, pp. 208-09 (E17.1). 8 Carla Bozzolo, Manuscrits des traductions françaises d’oeuvres de Boccace. XVe siècle, Medioevo e Umanesimo, 15 (Padova: Antenore, 1973), p. 160; G. S. Purkis, ‘A Bodleian Decameron’, Medium Aevum, 19 (1950), 67-69. 9 Wijsman, Luxury Bound, p. 324; Marguerite Debae, La Bibliothèque de Marguerite d’Autriche. Essai de reconstitution d’après l’inventaire de 1523-24 (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), no. 79. Via Margaret of Austria the manuscript regained the Burgundian Library, but in the eighteenth century it was acquired by Antoine-René d’Argenson, marquis de Paulmy, and thus subsequently became part of the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal. 10 On this intense interest, see Alexandra Velissariou, ‘Lectures de Boccace à la cour de Bourgogne’, Publications du Centre européen d’études bourguignonnes 55 (2015), 65-75.

ms hunTer 252: preCursors, daTe and paTronaGe

historié et intitulé Les cent nouvelles, commenchant ou second fuellet compaignon bien peu le sona et finissant ou derrenier cy fit le clerc pareillement. [Added in the margin:] es mains de monseigneur de Ravestein comme dit ledit Woutre. Si en soit ordonné. [my emphasis]11 Item, another large volume covered in unpainted chamois leather, with two brass clasps and five brass buttons on each side, illustrated and entitled Les Cent Nouvelles, beginning on the second folio “compaignon bien peu le sona” and ending on the last one “cy fit le clerc pareillement”. [Added in the margin:] in the possession of my lord of Ravenstein, as the said Woutre says. Let it be so. Again, the book is called Les Cent Nouvelles, rather than Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, keeping the title that was also used to designate Boccaccio’s Decameron. But whereas in 1469 the text was described as consisting of stories ‘tant de monseigneur […] comme de pluiseurs autres’ (‘by my lord … as well as by several others’), in 1487 nothing of that nature was added. The ascription of the tales to named courtiers seems now to have faded from the cataloguers’ attention. The most interesting new detail in the 1487 inventory was, however, the further detail in the margin which was added at a later date: the note that Philip of Cleves (‘my lord of Ravenstein’) had borrowed this book. Indeed, in 1497 he took or acquired at least ten volumes from the Burgundian Library, and apparently never returned any of them.12 When Philip of Cleves died in 1528, an inventory of his goods was ordered by Margaret of Austria in which his books were listed. This inventory contained: ‘Les Cent nouvelles couvert de velours cramoisi garny comme dessus [i.e. de cloans de laitton dorez]’.13 (‘The Cent nouvelles covered in red velvet and decorated as above [i.e with clasps of gilded

11 CCB-V, p. 296 (no. 8.57). I discuss the context around the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles in the 1469 inventory and not in the 1487 inventory, because in 1469 a systematic order clearly appears (which seemingly reflects the way in which the books were organized and kept), whereas in the 1487 inventory it does not (we do not know if this reflects the way the inventory was made, or the way in which the books were kept at the time). On the structure of the 1469 inventory, see: Hanno Wijsman, ‘Listes de livres à la cour de Bourgogne (XVe-XVIe siècle)’, Le pouvoir des listes au Moyen Âge II: Listes d’objets et listes de personnes, ed. by Etienne Anheim, Laurent Feller, Madeleine Jeay, Giuliano Milani, Histoire ancienne et médiévale, 171 (Paris: Editions de la Sorbonne, 2020), pp. 83-104. 12 Hanno Wijsman, ‘Politique et bibliophilie pendant la révolte des villes flamandes des années 1482-92. Relations entre les bibliothèques de Philippe de Clèves, Louis de Gruuthuse et la Librairie de Bourgogne’, Entre la ville, la noblesse et l’état. Philippe de Clèves (1456-1528), homme politique et bibliophile, ed. by Jelle Haemers, Céline Van Hoorebeeck, Hanno Wijsman, Burgundica, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 245-78 (pp. 265-67); CCB-V, p. 370. 13 Anne Korteweg, ‘La bibliothèque de Philippe de Clèves: inventaire et manuscrits parvenus jusqu’à nous’, Entre la ville, la noblesse et l’état, pp. 183-221 (p. 199, no. 8).

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brass]’). It is likely that this item can now be identified as a manuscript which is to be found in The Hague, containing Boccaccio’s text and bearing the arms of Philip of Cleves.14 Hypothetically at least, it is also possible that this reference concerns the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles rather than the Decameron. As we have seen, the title Cent Nouvelles was in fact often used for the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles at the time. Moreover, it seems to have been quite usual in inventories of the time to add Boccaccio’s name when his work was meant.15 The fact that the binding was described as being covered with undyed leather in 1469 and 1487 (respectively cuir blanc de chamois and cuir de chamois gaune), and as being covered with red velvet in 1528 (velours cramoisi garny de cloans de laitton dorez) is not so much of an obstacle, for we are aware that Philip of Cleves appears to have had all manuscripts which he borrowed and never returned subsequently re-covered or rebound. It might be objected that if this really was the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles manuscript, rather than the Boccaccio that belonged to Cleves and which is now located in the Hague, then why is there no mention of the latter in the 1528 inventory? The objection becomes otioise when we note that the 1528 inventory omitted at least four manuscripts which are known from other sources to have been in Cleves’ possession.16 It may well be, then, that the last trace of the Burgundian copy of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles which was made for Philip the Good was indeed the manuscript entitled Les Cent Nouvelles in the 1528 inventory of Philip of Cleves’ collection, which was made in Ghent. I emphasise, however, that this line of thinking, however tempting, is inconclusive. What we can say for sure is that Philip the Good was particularly interested in these collections of one hundred amusing short stories, whether they were old or new. Indeed, he was not only the dedicatee and a presumed co-author of the new cycle, he had no fewer than three manuscripts of Boccaccio’s older cycle, one of which was an exact copy he had made of another in his possession. Since, in this copy, it was not only the text but also the illustrations of the base manuscript which were purposefully and precisely copied, we may wonder whether the miniaturist who illustrated the new Cent Nouvelles nouvelles manuscript in the early 1460s could have drawn inspiration from these earlier Decameron manu­ scripts.17 Illuminators active for Philip the Good in the 1450s and 1460s 14 Korteweg, ‘La bibliothèque de Philippe de Clèves’, p. 199, no. 8. 15 ‘Les cent nouvelles de Bocace’ in the Burgundian library, or ‘La bible des poetes de Bocace des cent nouvelles’ in the 1548 Lalaing inventory. ‘Cy conmenche le prologhe de Jehan Bocache ou lyvre des cens nouvelles’ is a title that appears in the 1541 Lalaing inventory. On these two Lalaing inventories, see: Wijsman, Luxury Bound, pp. 388-406. 16 Korteweg, ‘La bibliothèque de Philippe de Clèves’, p. 213. 17 Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5070 (1430s; https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/ btv1b7100018t) was copied after Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. lat. 1989 (around 1418; https://digi.vatlib.it/view/bav_pal_lat_1989).

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did indeed use examples from the library: Jean le Tavernier, for example, who was inspired by several older manuscripts in the ducal collection in the manuscripts he illustrated in the 1450s and early 1460s. Maud Pérez-Simon will address this question in her contribution below.

Fashion in the miniatures In this second part of the chapter and also in the third, our attention turns to MS Hunter 252 and its miniatures. The fashion of depicted clothing can help us date illustrated manuscripts. Pierre Champion already used this approach in his analysis of the MS Hunter 252 miniatures, but only in very broad terms.18 I will attempt to apply the method in a more systematic way using more extensive resources to reach more precise conclusions. An ensemble of no fewer than one hundred miniatures containing a multitude of different individuals in a context which is, essentially, contemporary, seems to offer an ideal case for the study of fashion. Fash­ ions in clothing could change quickly in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen­ turies, and this fact helps us date images. Over twenty-five years of study, Anne van Buren constituted a corpus of dated images of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century fashion. Her book, published posthumously, constitutes a splendid collection of dated images which will be used here to study MS Hunter 252.19 A few preliminary remarks are necessary. Needless to say, using de­ picted fashion to date works of art is not a foolproof method. One problem is that fashion not only changes over time, it also varies according to social class. One should, therefore, take care to compare like with like, which is not always possible. More specifically, in MS Hunter 252 the miniatures are often not very refined in their depiction of clothing details, as Richard Gameson notes above in Chapter 1. Rather few members of the more fashionably clothed upper classes appear: most depicted persons are clerics, or people of lower social class. Clerics, moreover, have standard gowns that tend not to change much over time. The same is true for the lower and even middle classes: fashions change fastest within the socio-economic and political elite. The scenes depicted in MS Hunter 252 are often ordinary life situations showing non-fashionable working clothes. In spite of all this, there are, however, enough significant details to make a telling selection from the images. As Anne van Buren used to observe, the

18 Pierre Champion, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Documents artistiques du XVe siècle, 5 (Paris: Champion, 1928; repr. Geneva: Slatkine, 1977), p. 268 [digitised: https:// gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k22159s]. 19 Anne Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion. Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands, 1325-1515 (New York: The Morgan Library and Museum, 2011).

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most fashionable people tend to be those who are in the sexually-active age groups. This observation gives some hope for our method in the context of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, where sexual activity is very much to the fore. Head dress

Head dress is often relatively easy to use as an indication for changes in depicted fashion, though in MS Hunter 252 it is not as conclusive as we might have hoped. Men’s hoods tended to become ever flatter during the 1470s, but this observed phenomenon does not apply much outside the upper classes. In MS Hunter 252, men’s hats are very simple throughout (e.g. the miniatures of CNN27 and 29). In no instance at all do the hats in MS Hunter 252 bear feathers: feathers come into fashion from the mid-1480s onwards.20 Indeed, examples can be found in the woodcuts of the 1486 printed Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (e.g. woodcut 22). Like the men, MS Hunter 252’s women also mostly wear simple head dresses: black, topped by short cones (e.g. the miniature of CNN27). These are difficult to date. A more particular women’s headdress is the chaperon with a wide brim and a long cornet, so long that it reaches the ground (the miniatures of CNN32 and 49). Anne Van Buren classes these hats as ‘large middle class chaperons’.21 Unfortunately they tend not to be datable very precisely either, resembling those we find in images from the early 1470s. Such hats seem to be worn mostly by elderly women, so are probably not much influenced by changes in fashion. Most women in MS Hunter 252 wear a simple coiffe on their heads, sometimes with a conish form but never pointed (e.g. the miniatures of CNN27, 33, 41, 58, 78). The well-known pointed turrets do not occur in MS Hunter 252. On the one hand, this absence could be a matter of social class, the turrets especially being worn at court by princesses and ladies-in-waiting. On the other hand, however, not finding any in the one hundred miniatures may also constitute a dating argument, because we can clearly see in dated miniatures that these turrets quickly went out of fashion in the 1480s.22 The men also sometimes wear a chaperon with a long cornet in MS Hunter 252. Often it is not worn on the head, but can be seen hanging over the shoulder (as in the miniatures of CNN87 and 99). In the miniature for CNN87, the head dress is worn by a medical doctor who lays

20 Anne Van Buren’s earliest dated examples of feathers are from exactly 1486: Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, pp. 242-43 (F.147 and F.150). 21 Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, p. 212 (F.134, 1471-2), p. 218 (B.71, 1470-2). 22 Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, pp. 216-45.

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it down next to him on the bed in order not to be hindered by it in his business. In the miniature of CNN44 we see, exceptionally, a cleric who wears a chaperon with a long cornet over his shoulder. Sleeves

Sleeves are often a good dating element too, but the sleeves in MS Hunter 252 do not show many specific features. In fact, almost all sleeves (women’s as well as men’s) are average, tight-fitting sleeves. The only variation is that women’s sleeves sometimes have a ‘revers’ (turned-back cuff). None of this affords much information for dating purposes. But there is one exception. In the miniature of CNN36, a lady stands between two men, of whom the one on the right wears double sleeves. In the text of the story we read that she stands ‘ou mylieu d’un chevalier et d’un escuyer’ (‘inbetween a knight and a squire’). The miniaturist has clearly wanted to show the social difference between an esquire and a knight by giving the latter double sleeves. Even this, however, is quite a common feature in the 1470s and 1480s. Hair style

Hair style may not be clothing, but it too is very much influenced by fashion. Men’s hair length changes over time. Around 1470, men wore their hair quite short, but in the course of the 1470s the fashion for longer hair took hold. By the early 1480s male hair hangs to the neck, whereas in the 1490s it descends to the shoulders or even down the back.23 In MS Hunter 252 there is some variation in male hair length. The youngest and most elegant men, however, seem to wear their hair relatively long (e.g. the miniatures of CNN8, 44, and 74), which suggests a date after 1480. Décolletage

The décolletages (necklines) of gowns give us better information for dating purposes. As far as fifteenth-century male fashion is concerned, gowns always continue high-up and close tightly around the neck until the 1470s, even when a collar is worn.24 Gowns with long lapels along the sides of a V-opening begin to appear from 1477-78 onwards.25 In MS Hunter 252,

23 Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, p. 211 (B.69, 1470), p. 241 (F. 145, 1483 or shortly after), p. 257 (F.162, 1493). 24 Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, p. 211 (B.69, 1470). 25 Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, p. 231 (B.78, for the man on the left, 1477-78), p. 233 (F.139, 1479-80).

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few fashionable men wear a gown with a V-opening, but some do (e.g. on the miniatures of CNN8 and 10). The lapels are not very large, however. In the second half of the 1480s the lapels tend to become larger and larger.26 This is also the case in the woodcuts of the 1486 edition (e.g. in woodcut 22). Fashionable women’s dress follows a very different development in this period. In the early and mid-1470s, a V-shaped décolletage is fashionable27, whereas in the early 1480s a very new décolletage came into fashion: smooth gowns with a deep square or trapezoidal neck.28 In all one hundred miniatures of MS Hunter 252, there is not one single woman’s gown to be found with a V-shaped décolletage (e.g. the well-to-do ladies in the miniatures of CNN8, 29, 41, 44 or 99). This strongly suggests a date soon after 1480. Shoes

In shoe fashion, the 1470s and 1480s mark the important transition from pointed shoes to broad-nosed shoes. In the 1460s and 1470s extremely pointed shoes were popular. This culminates in the early 1470s; in the late 1470s the shoes are still pointed, but only moderately so.29 Around 1480 this changes radically and rather quickly. As early as 1483, but increasingly so in the late 1480s and around 1490, we see broad-nosed round shoes (together with the V-neck and the long hair) for fashionable men.30 Only in the late 1480s does round-nosed footwear come to predominate, so the 1480s are the transitional period from pointed to round. In MS Hunter 252, very tellingly, the shoes are pointed as a rule. In the miniature of CNN24, the young nobleman wears pointed boots. It is important to note that it is Waleran de Luxembourg who is depicted here, a nobleman nicknamed ‘le beau comte’ who should normally be depicted as highly fashionable. His boots are pointed, but in a moderate way. So we certainly find ourselves at some point after the early 1470s. The horseman in the miniature of CNN69 also wears pointed boots.31 In fact, the only round-nosed footwear in MS Hunter 252 are the slippers in the miniature of CNN31 (so here the specific kind of comfortable house shoes may 26 Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, p. 247 (B.86 and B.87, 1487-88). 27 Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, p. 221 (B.73b, 1473), p. 225 (F.135, 1474-76). 28 Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, p. 243 (F.146, 1485-6). Of this specific miniature, Anne Van Buren notes that the older lady wears what, for that moment in time, the mid-1480s, might be considered an old-fashioned V-collared gown, whereas the gowns of the younger ladies all have square necks. 29 Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, p. 197 (B.62, 1460-1), p. 204 (B.6, 1468), p. 215 (F.134, 1471-2, the kneeling man at Christ’s feet), p. 227 (B.75, 1475 or shortly after). 30 Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, p. 241 (F.144, 1483), p. 251 (B.88, c. 1491). 31 They can be compared with those in Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, p. 234 (B.80, 1479).

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explain the round form), and the single shoe worn by the chambermaid from Holland in the miniature of CNN87 (though it is not very clearly visible). Miniature 53

A special case from the point of view of the clothing is minia­ ture 53 (Fig. 2). It illustrates the story of the double mar­ riage mix-up of an elderly rich man with a young poor woman, and of a young poor man with the elderly rich lady.

Fig. 2. Miniature of the marriage mix-up in CNN53. Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252 fol. 120v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

il y avoit ung jeune homme et une jeune fille qui n’estoient pas des plus riches […] aussi y avoit ung homme ancien et une femme vieille […] [Le curé] print le vieil homme riche et la jeune fille pouvre et les joignit par l’aneau du moustier ensemble. D’aultre costé aussi il print le jeune homme pouvre et l’espousa a la vieille femme riche. There was a young man and women who were not the richest […] and also there was an old man and an elderly woman […] [the priest] took the old man and the poor young woman and joined them by the exchange of rings. On the other side, he also took the poor young man and married him to the rich old lady. But who is who in the miniature? The young lady can only be the figure with the long blond hair. It follows that the elderly rich lady must be the figure in the grey dress, with her hair covered beneath a red hear-dress. The one-eyed priest grabs the young girl with his left hand to marry her by mis­ take – as we read in the text – to the elderly man. But in the miniature it is not immediately clear which man the priest is marrying her to, because his right hand is hidden. We must assume that the elderly rich man is the fig­ ure in the foreground, because his gown is longer and his head is covered. Indeed, the spot directly facing the bride seems by convention to be that which is always occupied by the groom in miniatures. This leaves the young poor man as the figure on the left. He is holding his hat in his hand, and he wears a short, fur-lined, rather flashy gown. There is no other gown like it throughout the manuscript. The knee-length proportions of the gown may have been chosen to emphasize the youth

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and low status of the man. But the fact that it is fur-trimmed does not make it look like the attire of a poor man at all, and distinguishes him from every other male figure in MS Hunter 252. Perhaps the specific wedding context explains the special clothing? The text itself does not reveal any details of the two couples’ outfits, so the clothing details are added value by the painter. Typically, the bride and groom and generally all young people present at a marriage are fashionably dressed. In this miniature, however, the bride is quite plainly dressed, only distinguished by a simple headdress which does not afford many distinguishing features. But the young groom is depicted in a so-called half-length gown which, according to Anne Van Buren, only appears in the mid-eighties.32 Could this be an avant-garde, early-1480s appearance of a half-length gown? If so, the very short haircut of the young man produces a conundrum, because this feature points (as we have seen) to the 1470s, even to the early 1470s. To sum up: women’s headdress (with no pointed cones) probably indicates late 1470s or the years after, and so do the men’s headdresses (especially the absence of high hats). Moreover, the absence of feathers on the latter points to a date before the late 1480s. Men’s hair styles seem to situate us in the 1480s. The sleeves only give a general indication of a date somewhere in the 1470s or 1480s, but the men’s décolletages are probably after 1477-78 (because of the occurrence of the gowns with V-openings), whereas the women’s décolletages suggest a date later than 1480 (because of the absence of V-necks). As to the footwear, the miniatures seem to have been painted before the early or mid-1480s (when round-nosed shoes appear). We may conclude that MS Hunter 252 is most likely to have been painted very shortly after 1480, probably around 1482-83. It is to be noted that this date corresponds well to the year 1482, which has been proposed by several scholars in order to explain the obviously erroneous date of 1432 mentioned in the manuscript: the scribe of the rubric may simply have omitted an ‘L’ in the roman date.33 As Richard Gameson has pointed out above, the inscription was added in the early sixteenth century, and may therefore be ‘an historical fiction rather than a transcriptional error’. Without seeking to challenge the validity of that observation, the evidence of the fashion recorded in the miniatures never­ theless converges on or around the date of 1482.

32 Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, pp. 242-43 (F.148, 1486). 33 Luciano Rossi, ‘Pour une édition des Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. De la copie de Philippe le Bon à l’édition de Vérard’, Le moyen français, 22 (1989), 69-77 (p. 74).

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The style of the MS Hunter 252 miniatures The style of the MS Hunter 252 miniatures was traditionally situated by older scholarship in central France, specifically Touraine, in the 1480s.34 As François Avril has indicated, however, the initials (‘initiales vermiculées’) that appear throughout the volume are typically Parisian of the 1480s.35 In fact, there is now an emerging consensus (discussed above by Richard Gameson, and below by Maud Pérez-Simon and Alexandra Velis­ sariou) that the style of the miniatures is close to that of the so-called Master of Jacques de Besançon, a follower of Maître François. This work­ shop was situated, not in Touraine, but in Paris. It is my view that we do not see the hand of this master at work here, but rather his style, or a product of his workshop.36 The style of the miniatures in MS Hunter 252 is not very refined, though it certainly is not clumsy either. We agree with Richard Gameson that they seem to have been executed by someone who drew well, but who did not put a great deal of effort into the finishing-off. It may be that the miniaturist worked with understandable haste to do these one hundred miniatures. It is also distinctly possible that the master did the drawing, while a workshop assistant did the finishing-off. The Master of Jacques de Besançon was active from the mid-1470s to the mid-1490s. His is a complicated case. In fact, there is a documented Jacques de Besançon who worked as an illuminator in Paris. In 1485, he offered a missal to the Parisian confraternity of St John the Baptist, of which he was a member. Our archival source states that he was the ‘enlumineur’ (‘miniaturist’). The manuscript of the confraternity’s missal survives, and it should therefore be possible to use this example as a point of departure for a reconstruction of the artist’s oeuvre.37 However, there are only two miniatures in the missal, both quite modest, and a whole group of other miniatures which, although very similar in style, appear more refined. There is even some doubt as to what is meant by the term enlumineur in this case: it may simply indicate that our artist did the decoration of the missal, but left the painting of the two miniatures to someone else. For this reason, the name ‘Master of Jacques de Besançon’ is used to designate the artist of the miniatures. Recent research by Matthieu Deldique has convincingly demonstrated that the Master of Jacques de Besançon can be identified with François Le Barbier, le Jeune.38

Champion, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, p. 268. I am grateful to François Avril for generously sharing his insights. I thank Maud Simon for the pleasant and fruitful discussions we had on this topic. Paris, Bibliothèque mazarine, ms. 461, fols 9r and 15v. See: https://bvmm.irht.cnrs.fr/ consult/consult.php?reproductionId=14056. 38 François Avril and Nicole Reynaud, Les manuscrits à peinture en France, 1430-1520 (Paris: Flammarion/BnF, 1993), pp. 256-62; Mathieu Deldicque, ‘L’Enluminure à Paris à la fin 34 35 36 37

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The two miniatures in the aforementioned missal, dated to 1485, show some remarkable similarities with MS Hunter 252, even if there are some differences too, and it is not the same hand. The tiled floors, the marbled walls in the background, the columns, and the arches, and even the town­ scape with the walls and houses in the two Mazarine miniatures are all very recognisable from the point of view of MS Hunter 252.39 The treatment of the faces is, however, very different. It is here we see that MS Hunter 252 is less refined, and that we indeed seem to have a case in which the design of the miniatures may have been set out by the master, but the colouring and finishing of the paintings was done by a workshop assistant.

A possible patron of MS Hunter 252 There is no obvious indication in MS Hunter 252 of the identity of the patron of the manuscript, let alone any sign of early ownership. What is striking, however, is that this most Burgundian of texts is written and illuminated in a Parisian manuscript. This observation could suggest that the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles was received in an environment other than the Burgundian court. However, it could also be a sign that something very rare had occurred in this case: that a Burgundian nobleman, wishing to own a Burgundian text, had commissioned a Parisian manuscript to do the work. In the second half of the fifteenth century, nobles at the Burgundian court almost never commissioned manuscripts in Parisian workshops. In the rare cases when they did, it was because they had ‘defected’ to the French king in the years after 1477, when the last Valois duke Charles the Bold died, and they had therefore purposefully adapted to the practices of the French court. After having commissioned many dozens of volumes in Flemish workshops, for example, the inveterate bibliophile Anthony, the Great Bastard of Burgundy and son of Philip the Good, acquired a handful from French workshops. The latter all date from the years shortly after 1477, when Anthony had entered the service of Louis XI. Philippe de Crèvecoeur, lord of Esquerdes and Philippe de Commynes did the same thing: they commissioned some French (specifically, Parisian) manu­ scripts, but only after having abandoned the Burgundian side and having

du XVe siècle. Maître François, le Maître de Jacques de Besançon et Jacques de Besançon identifiés?’, Revue de l’art,183/1 (2014), 9-18. 39 Compare, for example, Paris, Bibliothèque mazarine, MS 461, fol. 9r with the miniature of CNN69 of MS Hunter 252 (for the townscape) or with the miniature for CNN71 (for the marbled walls and the tiled floor) or with the miniatures of CNN34 and 67 (for the golden decoration hanging from the arches).

ms hunTer 252: preCursors, daTe and paTronaGe

entered French royal service.40 In the case of MS Hunter 252, it is therefore tempting to look for potential patrons in these circles of ‘defectors’. Against this hypothesis, however, is the likelihood that typically these men would fully acculturate to their new environment, commissioning not only from Parisian workshops, but seeking to own texts that were en vogue at the French court, rather than Burgundian texts from a bygone era like our work. I know of only one other manuscript comparable to MS Hunter 252, that is to say: a manuscript illuminated in Paris in the style of the Master of Jacques de Besançon, and which contains a typical Burgundian court text. This manuscript was indeed commissioned by a nobleman, not at the French royal court, but at the Habsburg Burgundian court. The existence of these two parallel cases seems interesting enough to me to propose a hypothesis concerning the identity of the commissioner of MS Hunter 252. In 2012, I discovered that a manuscript, now in Gotha, of Jean Wauquelin’s Livre des conquestes et faitz d’Alexandre contains the erased and overpainted ownership marks of Pierre II de Luxembourg, Count of Saint-Pol (c. 1440-82).41 The volume was painted in the workshop of the Master of Jacques de Besançon: not by the very same hand as MS Hunter 252, but in a style very akin to it. Although he remained loyal to the Burgundian-Habsburg dynasty in the years 1477-82, Pierre II de Luxembourg, the oldest surviving son of Louis de Luxembourg Count of Saint-Pol (1418-75), can therefore definitely be shown to have acquired for himself a Parisian manuscript.42 It also contains a very Burgundian text: the Livre des conquestes et faitz d’Alexandre by Jean Wauquelin, Philip the Good’s most celebrated translator and copyist. The Gotha volume is stylistically datable to around 1480, and was certainly completed before Pierre’s death in 1482.43

40 Wijsman, Luxury Bound, pp. 274-75, 544. 41 Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek, Memb. 117. 42 Pierre’s father Louis was accused of high treason and beheaded in Paris in 1475 because he overstretched his double allegiance to the duke of Burgundy and the French king. Pierre was Louis’s second son, but became count of Saint-Pol when his older brother Jean died in 1476 at the Battle of Morat. Pierre was elected to the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1478. On Pierre, see: Hans Cools, Mannen met macht. Edellieden en de Moderne Staat in de Bourgondisch-Habsburgse landen (1475 – 1530) (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2001), pp. 260-61; Les Chevaliers de l’Ordre de la Toison d’or au XVe siècle, ed. by Raphaël De Smedt, Kieler Werkstücke. Reihe D: Beiträge zur europäischen Geschichte des späten Mittelalters 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000), pp. 200-01. Further detail on Pierre is given below, Chapter 4, by Graeme Small. 43 The Livre des conquestes et faitz d’Alexandre was written by Jean Wauquelin in a first version for Jean de Bourgogne, Count of Étampes and Nevers, and a second one for Duke Philip the Good. Only five manuscripts are known, of which three are directly linked to the Duke (Paris, BnF, MSS fr. 1419 and fr. 9342; Paris, Petit Palais, Dutuit 456). See Chrystèle

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Could it be that Pierre commissioned both of these very atypical manuscripts of Burgundian texts, written and illuminated in Paris around 1480? Following this lead, we should recall that Pierre died on 25 October 1482. Since we have established above that MS Hunter 252 was probably made in 1482-83, it is possible that the manuscript was commissioned by him, but subsequently did not receive any ownership marks because the commissioner died before the book was finished. Such circumstances would explain why MS Hunter 252 was finished off rather carelessly, and was subsequently sold without any indication of ownership. A remarkable detail in support of this hypothesis is the fact that after Pierre de Luxembourg died in 1482, his possessions passed to his two young daughters, Marie and Françoise. Philip of Cleves, whom we have already met, not only married the second daughter Françoise in 1487, he had also (in 1485) received the castle and rich domain of Enghien which had been inherited from Pierre de Luxembourg by the eldest daughter, Marie, and which had subsequently been confiscated by Maximilian of Habsburg when Marie and her first husband Jacques of Savoy, lord of Romont fell out of favour.44 In this way the lion’s share of the Luxembourg family library fell into the hands of Philip of Cleves, who then had Pierre’s ownership marks (as well as those of earlier Luxembourg family members) replaced with his own arms, name and emblems.45 These alterations also occur in the manuscript which is now in Gotha. As we saw above, the very same Philip of Cleves borrowed the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles manuscript from the ducal library in 1497 and never gave it back. However striking the coincidence, the tempting idea that MS Hunter 252 passed from Pierre de Luxembourg to Philip of Cleves is

Blondeau, Un conquérant pour quatre ducs. Alexandre le Grand à la cour de Bourgogne (Paris: CTHS-INHA, 2009); Wijsman, Luxury Bound, pp. 247-48. Apart from these manuscripts and the one in Gotha, there is one last (unillustrated) manuscript (Paris, BnF, MS fr. 707). This manuscript was written for Joanna of France (1435-82), daughter of King Charles VII of France, sister of King Louis XI of France. She married John II, Duke of Bourbon, in 1446. Her mother-in-law, Agnes of Burgundy, widow from 1456 to her death in 1476 and sister of Philip the Good, may have influenced Joanna in her choice of this very Burgundian text. (On Agnes’s bibliophily, see: Ilona Hans-Collas and Hanno Wijsman, ‘Le Livre d’heures et de prières d’Agnès de Bourgogne, duchesse de Bourbon’, Art de l’enluminure, 29 (2009), 20-47). Joanna may have had a taste for things Burgundian; she also commissioned a Flemish diptych (Chantilly, Musée Condé). She was sister-in-law to Isabelle of Bourbon (1437-65) and aunt of Mary of Burgundy, and she is known to have had a collection of at least a dozen of manuscripts (Léopold Delisle, Le Cabinet des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque impériale (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1868), I, p. 169; http://bibale.irht.cnrs.fr/33826). 44 Korteweg, ‘La bibliothèque de Philippe de Clèves’, p. 186; Jelle Haemers, ‘Philippe de Clèves et la Flandre. La position d’un aristocrate au cœur d’une révolte urbaine (1477-92)’, Entre la ville, la noblesse et l’état, pp. 21-99 (pp. 42-43). 45 Korteweg, ‘La bibliothèque de Philippe de Clèves’, pp. 186-88; Wijsman, Luxury Bound, pp. 247, 296-307, 432-50.

ms hunTer 252: preCursors, daTe and paTronaGe

highly unlikely, since both noblemen seem to have been very generous in adding their arms, emblems and signatures in their manuscripts and our manuscript bears no ownership marks from either patron. Ultimately, it is not clear why Pierre de Luxembourg (or anyone else Burgundian, for that matter) should have commissioned manuscripts in Paris around 1480. There were political troubles in Flanders, but that did not stop other Burgundian bibliophiles from commissioning Southern-Netherlandish manuscripts throughout that period. What we have observed here, however, is that there are two contemporary manu­ scripts which are very similar in style, one of which is ascertained to be a commission by Pierre de Luxembourg from a Paris workshop. Whether the other, MS Hunter 252, had a parallel origin can only be an hypothesis. The manuscript could only have been made for him and never actually seen by its patron, however, on account of Pierre’s death in October 1482. It should be noted that any interest Pierre de Luxembourg might have had in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles would be easy to explain in more than simply general cultural terms. As we shall see further below in Chapter 9, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles originated as a project at the Burgundian court in 1458-59, when Pierre was eighteen or nineteen years old. His father Louis is mentioned in the text as the narrator of CNN39, while another narrator, Antoine de la Sale, had been appointed as tutor by Louis de Lux­ embourg for his sons around 1448.46 Antoine de la Sale (1385/6-c. 1460), the author who was once frequently mentioned as a possible compiler of the ensemble of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, must therefore have been someone Pierre de Luxembourg knew very well; a tutor at whose feet, as a boy, he had first learned to read and appreciate texts.

Conclusion In this chapter I have attempted to throw some light on MS Hunter 252, the text of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles it contains, and the context of both. MS Hunter 252 was made in Paris in the early 1480s, most probably in 1482. It was illuminated by a hand from the workshop of the Master of Jacques de Besançon. The manuscript contains a text which, as far as our evidence can tell us, encountered success in print (as Mary Beth Winn will show in the next chapter), but not in manuscript form, especially so at the very Burgundian court where it was originally conceived. We only know of one courtier who was interested in it, Philip of Cleves. He borrowed the dedicatee’s copy of the book in 1497 from the Burgundian Library and never returned it. The manuscript has remained lost ever since. 46 Champion, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, pp. xxxvii, xliv, li-liv; Dictionnaire des lettres françaises. Le Moyen Âge (Paris: Fayard, 1992), pp. 228-30 (Sylvie Lefèvre).

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In the final part of this chapter, we have explored the possibility that the only manuscript known to have survived today, MS Hunter 252, may originally have been made for Philip of Cleves’ father-in-law, Pierre II de Luxembourg, Count of Saint-Pol.

ParT II

Reception in manuscript and print

mary bETh wiNN 

Chapter 3. Printing the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles Anthoine Vérard’s 1486 edition and its sixteenthcentury successors

Anthoine Vérard issued the first edition of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles on December 24, 1486. The date is printed in the colophon which also states that the nouvelles were ‘composees et recitees par nouvelles gens depuis nagueres’ (‘composed and told by young people some time past’).1 Among Vérard’s dated editions of secular texts, it is his fourth, although at least three editions of Books of Hours also precede it.2 Vérard’s career spanned nearly three decades and included more than 300 editions. It was launched in 1485 with an edition of Boccaccio’s Decameron, which suggests that this type of collection of stories must have interested him. In that context Verard was also a leader, having issued c. 1501 one of the first and major recueils collectifs of poetry, the Jardin de plaisance.3 Archival records published by Rémy Scheurer show that this first edition of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles was produced in collaboration with the historian Nicole Gilles.4 Gilles was a notary and secretary to the king

1 The titles and colophons of this and all subsequent editions are cited in Appendix II. A copy of the first edition (Paris, BnF Rés Y2-174) has been digitized on Gallica: http:// catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb307448190. 2 A chronological bibliography of Vérard’s editions was published by John Macfarlane, Antoine Vérard (London: Chiswick Press, 1900). Updates were provided in my Anthoine Vérard, Parisian Publisher, 1485-1512: Prologues, Poems, and Presentations (Geneva: Droz, 1997), pp. 490-504. The most recent catalogue was compiled by Louis-Gabriel Bonicoli, ‘La Production du libraire-éditeur parisien Antoine Vérard (1485-1512): Nature, fonctions et circulation des images dans les premiers imprimés illustrés’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, 2015), II: ‘Catalogue des éditions’. 3 Macfarlane, Vérard, no. 141. 4 ‘Nicole Gilles et Antoine Vérard’, Biblothèque de l’École des chartes 128 (1970), 415-19. Scheurer (p. 419) cites two notarial records that attest to the ‘société qu’ilz [Vérard and Gilles] ont eue ensemble pour faire imprimer le livre des Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Mary Beth Winn • State University of New York at Albany The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - c. 1550), ed. by Graeme Small, Texte, Codex & Contexte, 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 81–134 10.1484/M.TCC-EB.5.132233

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of France from 1475 until his death in 1503, entrusted by both Louis XI and Charles VIII with various missions to Italy and regions of France. He financed the edition of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles as well as that of the Sydrac, published just two months later. For both these editions, the printer is thought to be Antoine Caillaut.5 Gilles may have been responsi­ ble for providing the text of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles for publication, and Scheurer even proposed Gilles as the author of the text printed by Vérard.6 Whatever his source, it was Vérard’s text that was used for all subse­ quent editions. These have been difficult to distinguish and to locate, but with help from curators, colleagues, and catalogues, I have established what I believe to be an accurate list of twelve editions that follow the editio princeps.7 First in chronological order is an edition by Vérard himself, c. 1498, then one printed in Paris in 1505 by Nicolas Des Prez, eight more editions by Parisian printers of the extended Trepperel family from c. 1510-36, and two published in Lyon by Olivier Arnoullet, c. 1530-32. In comparing them, I have considered both the text and the illustrations, as

titulemus Cydrac et autres livres’ (‘the company which they formed together to print the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, titulemus Cydrac and other books’). On Nicole Gilles, see also André Lapeyre and Rémy Scheurer, Les notaires et secrétaires du roi sous les règnes de Louis XI, Charles VIII et Louis XII (1461-1515). Notices personnelles et généalogies, Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France in 4o, 2 vols (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1978), I, pp. 149-51; Kathleen Daly, ‘Mixing business with leisure: some French royal notaries and secretaries and their histories of France, c. 1459- c. 1509’, in Power, culture and religion in France, c. 1350-c. 1550, ed. by Christopher Allmand (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1989), pp. 99-115. 5 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Catalogue des incunables (Paris, 2006-14), I, C-216 and II, S-251; Bonicoli, ‘La Production’, II, pp. 52, 180. 6 ‘Connaissant Gilles comme écrivain et sachant maintenant ses liens avec la boutique du pont Notre-Dame, nous avons quelques indices pour identifier avec lui l’auteur de l’habile rajeunissement du texte des Cent Nouvelles nouvelles de l’édition de 1486’ (‘Knowing Gilles as a writer and being aware now of his links with the shop on Notre-Dame bridge, we have several clues to identify him as the author of the skillful updating of the text of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles in the edition of 1486’): Scheurer, ‘Nicole Gilles’, p. 417. 7 For authorization to consult copies of the early editions of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, I wish to thank the curators of the rare book collections at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, British Library, École nationale supérieure des Beaux Arts, Pierpont Morgan Library, Beinecke Library of Yale University and the Library of Congress. Special thanks to those whose collections I was unable to visit and who provided invaluable information and photographs of their copies: Peter Stoll, Universitätsbibliothek, Augsburg; Marieke van Delft, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague; Gertrud Friedl, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. I am very grateful to Bruce McKittrick of McKittrick Rare Books, Inc. for allowing me to spend a day in his remarkable bookshop examining the sole known copy of the Lotrian-Janot edition. That copy is now held in Princeton University Library. Finally, to the organizers of the workshop devoted to the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles and its unique manuscript in Glasgow, I offer my gratitude for the opportunity to share in the investigation of the text, its illustrations, and its many editions.

prinTinG The Cent nouveLLes nouveLLes

well as the format, but given the number of nouvelles and of editions, the comparison below is but an overview.8 It includes nonetheless a cursory look at the popularity and distribution of the various editions. To begin, however, we must examine Vérard’s 1486 edition, because it served as the model for the later editions.

The Editio princeps Vérard’s first edition, in folio format, consists of 154 leaves divided into 19 quires: a10, b-d8, e6, f-s8, t10.9 The text is set in two columns of thirty-six lines each in Bastarda type (100B), the text block measuring 182 × 136 mm. A page heading in larger Gothic type (112G) on both recto and verso of each leaf provides the number of the nouvelle and sometimes the name of its narrator. Within the text block, each nouvelle is introduced by a chapter heading and by a woodcut illustration measuring the width of a single column (~70 × 65 mm). The chapter heading, indicating the number of the nouvelle and less consistently its narrator, stands out on the page because it is indented, prefaced in some copies by a hand-coloured paragraph mark, and usually separated by blank space from both the text of the preceding nouvelle and from the following woodcut. How and where Vérard obtained the text of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, given its Burgundian origins and rare manuscript sources, are still unan­ swered questions, but it is worth remembering that the manuscript, now lost, but cited in the Bruges inventory of the Duke of Burgundy’s library, is described as being written in two columns.10 That is Vérard’s layout, and it differs from the Glasgow manuscript which, as Richard Gameson notes above in Chapter 1, is written in long lines in a single column, thirty-five lines to a page (justification 218 × 141 mm on a page 254 × 186 mm). Presumably the ‘riches histoires’ or fine illustrations of the lost manuscript appeared at the beginning of each nouvelle, as in the Glasgow manuscript whose miniatures are eleven lines high and half a column wide.

8 Since 2011 when I first presented my research into these editions, many other studies have been published. Among the most important are those of Alexandra Velissariou who discusses the editions in Aspects dramatiques et écriture de l’oralité dans les “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 77 (Paris: Champion, 2012), pp. 50-74. Her list of editions (pp. 73-74) differs somewhat from mine and requires clarification, as noted below. See also Alexandra Velissariou, ‘Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles entre manuscrit et imprimé: étude comparative du manuscrit Hunter 252 et de l’édition princeps de Vérard (1486)’, in Les premiers imprimés français et la littérature de Bourgogne (1470-1550), ed. by Jean Devaux, Matthieu Marchal and Alexandra Velissariou (Paris: Champion, 2021), pp. 237-53. 9 Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (hereafter ISTC) in00277000; Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (GW) M27263; Macfarlane, Vérard, no. 4. 10 See Chapters 1 and 2 above.

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Vérard paid particular attention to the illustration of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, having forty new woodcuts specially designed for the edition. They clearly illustrate the stories where they first appear, but many of them are repeated for subsequent nouvelles whose relevance to them is tenuous at best. Only one nouvelle (CNN66) lacks an illustration, presumably by mistake, so a total of 99 images appear with the hundred nouvelles. In addition to the small woodcuts, Vérard used two large woodcuts in the first quire, which contains the prefatory matter: the lengthy table of contents and the prologue to the Duke of Burgundy. These woodcuts are of the same style and size (140 × 120 mm), and both have columns on either side decorated with royal fleurs-de-lis. The subject of each, how­ ever, is decidedly different. Created for this edition, the woodcut for the prologue (Fig. 3) represents the court of Burgundy, with the Duke, Philip the Good, wearing a distinctive headdress11 and the emblem of his order of the Golden Fleece, seated beside the central figure whose identity is made clear by an oversized dolphin behind his chair: Louis XI, dauphin at the time he resided at the Burgundian court (1456-61). Courtiers, including one also sporting the Golden Fleece emblem, stand to either side of these two seated noblemen. It is significant that all the figures hold scrolls to suggest that they participated in the reading, if not the writing, of the tales; the dauphin even holds a scroll in each hand! The heading above this woodcut introduces the dedication to ‘mon tresredoubté seigneur, Monseigneur le duc de Bourgoingne et de Brebant’ (‘my most redoubted lord, My Lord the Duke of Burgundy and of Brabant’). The other woodcut, introducing the table of contents (Fig. 4), repre­ sents a kneeling figure presenting the book to the king who is seated on a throne beneath the royal arms. The arms of the dauphin are displayed at either side, above columns prominently adorned with fleurs-de-lis. This ‘royal’ woodcut was also used in the edition of Sydrac which Vérard published less than two months later,12 an edition that shares with the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles the same type and format. Surprisingly, however, there is one important difference between the two examples. In the Sydrac version (Fig. 5), the kneeling figure gestures with his hands to illustrate the text by representing the philosopher in dialogue with the seated King Boctus. In the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles version (Fig. 6), he holds a book, in the traditional posture of the kneeling author.13 Judging from the state

11 Champion describes the Duke’s hat as a ‘chaperon déchiqueté à la mode de Bourgogne’ (‘fringed headwear in the Burgundian style’): Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. by Pierre Champion (Paris: Droz, 1928; repr. Geneva: Slatkine, 1977), p. 269. 12 Entitled La fontaine de toutes sciences du philosophe Sydrac, the edition is dated 20 February 1486/87; ISTC is00878000, GW M42011, Macfarlane, Vérard, no. 5 (BnF Rés. Y2-183). 13 On the subject of Vérard’s posturing as the ‘author’ of the books he published, see Winn, Anthoine Vérard, pp. 41-69. Bonicoli, ‘La Production’, I, pp. 160-62, discusses this woodcut

prinTinG The Cent nouveLLes nouveLLes

Fig. 3. Woodcut and dedication to the Duke of Burgundy, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Paris: Anthoine Vérard, 24 Dec. 1486, fol. [a1=a10] (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174).

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Fig. 4. Presentation woodcut and table, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Paris: Anthoine Vérard, 24 Dec. 1486, fol. a2 (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174).

prinTinG The Cent nouveLLes nouveLLes

Fig. 5. Presentation woodcut in Vérard’s editions of Sydrac, Paris: 20 II 1486/7, fol. a1 (BnF Rés. Y2-183) (per John Macfarlane, Antoine Vérard [London: Chiswick Press, 1900], Pl. V).

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Fig. 6. Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Paris: Anthoine Vérard, c. 1498, presentation woodcut, fol. aa2 (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Rés 4o BL 4389).

prinTinG The Cent nouveLLes nouveLLes

of the woodcuts, the block was designed for the Sydrac and altered for the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, even though the Sydrac edition post-dates the Nouvelles. This would suggest that Vérard quickly recognized the woodcut’s potential as a dedication scene, representing the presentation of the book to the king of France not by the author, but by the publisher. The significance of this modification must also be considered with re­ spect to the placement of the woodcut within the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, a placement that varies in the five extant copies of the edition, but that has long-term implications.14 The first gathering of Vérard’s edition consisted of ten leaves, signed a2-a5, with one blank leaf. The table of contents, with its ‘royal’ woodcut, begins on the recto of the leaf signed a2, which is conjoined to [a9] whose recto bears the end of the table, leaving the verso blank. The prologue and its ‘Burgundian’ woodcut are printed on the recto and verso of an unsigned leaf, whose conjoined leaf is blank ([a1/a10]). There is no title page. Depending on how the unsigned bi-folium was folded to surround the table on leaves a2-a9, the prologue and its woodcut appear either as the first or the tenth leaf of the quire. This accounts for variations in the collation of the five extant copies and more importantly, for the placement of the prologue and its woodcut before the table or after it. Three copies of this edition of the Nouvelles (PML, LCR, Yale) begin with the presentation woodcut to the king and its table of contents (fol. a2); the prologue and its Burgundian woodcut are relegated to fol. [a10], and the conjoined blank leaf has been removed. Two copies (Paris BnF, ex-Schäfer) open with the prologue to the Duke of Burgundy and its Burgundian woodcut as fol. [a1],15 immediately followed by the king’s woodcut and table (fol. a2); the blank leaf has also been removed. Either way, there is a ‘conflict of interest’ which I believe Vérard sought to over­ ride, first visually, with a woodcut showing the book’s presentation to the king, and second, verbally, as we shall see by examining the prologue. This conflict of interest is why the collation of the extant copies is so intriguing. If the prologue opens the book, then the Duke takes precedence; but if the prologue and its woodcut are bound after the table of contents, then the first image is of the King – ostensibly the King of France. Binders

along with other dedication scenes which he attributes to the same artisan, whom he calls the ‘graveur des dédicaces’ (‘the engraver of the dedications’). 14 Four of the five copies are now located in New Haven, CT, Yale University, Beinecke Library, BEIN 1974 +39 (-, a2-9, [a10]); New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, PML 493, ChL ƒ1454 (-, a2-9, [a10]); Paris, BnF Rés Y2-174 ([a1] a2-9, -); Washington, DC, Library of Congress, Incun. 1486 .C4 Rosenwald (-, a2-9, [a10]). The fifth, formerly in the collection of Otto Schäfer, was sold at Sotheby’s in 1995 and again in 1998 ([a1], a2-9, -) to a private collector in the United States. 15 In the Paris copy, a capital letter A has been hand-written in the signature line of this page to indicate its placement as the first leaf. This is visible in the digitized copy online at Gallica.bnf.fr.

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may have puzzled over the absence of a signed first leaf, but to judge from the copy with the earliest binding, the Yale copy with its (original?) stamped binding, the King’s woodcut was to appear on the first page. The blank leaf [a1] conjoined to the Duke’s prologue on [a10] may well have been intended as a protective covering for the first quire, as was the case for other early editions.16 The issue is conclusively resolved by Vérard’s subsequent edition17 which uses only one woodcut: the presentation of the book to the King, printed beneath a heading announcing the table (Fig. 6). The woodcut differs from the one used in the first edition, but represents the same subject and clarifies the publisher’s intent to honour the King. The prologue appears at the end of the table, with neither an illustration nor a heading naming the Duke of Burgundy. The Burgundian element has been effectively erased.

Prologue Vérard’s insistence on the King’s connection to the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles is manifest not only visually in the woodcuts but verbally in the text of the prologue. As has long been noted, Vérard’s edition adds a key sentence at the end: Et notez que par toutes les nouvelles ou il est dit par Monseigneur, il est entendu par Monseigneur le daulphin lequel depuis a succedé a la couronne, et est le roy Loys unsiesme, car il estoit lors es pays du duc de Bourgoingne. And note that in all the nouvelles which are said to be by ‘My Lord’, it is understood that ‘My Lord’ means the Dauphin, who since succeeded to the throne and is King Louis XI, for he was then living in the lands of the Duke of Burgundy. Critics have questioned this declaration on various grounds. In his 1928 edition of the text, Pierre Champion asks why Vérard would add a note that fooled no one.18 Luciano Rossi questions the change of tense, with 16 Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer observed that in the Paris print shop of the Soleil d’Or ‘vers 1475, l’habitude est prise … de ménager pour chaque volume un feuillet blanc de protection au début du premier cahier’ (‘around 1475, a practice emerged, to arrange for each volume to have a protective blank folio at the start of the first quire’). See ‘Les premiers ateliers typographiques parisiens: quelques aspects techniques’ in La Lettre et le texte (Paris: École Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles, 1987), pp. 213-36 (p. 221). 17 Two copies of this edition have been digitized on Gallica: Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal, Rés 4o BL 4389 (https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1511324d/f1.image) and BnF Rés Y2-175 (http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb33290248j). 18 ‘Alors, pourquoi Vérard ajoute-t-il la note qui ne doit tromper personne?’, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Champion, p. 269.

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Louis XI declared the present king even though the edition was published three years after his death (30 August 1483).19 The identification of Louis XI as ‘Monseigneur’ contradicts the heading above the woodcut representing the Burgundian court where the Duke is called ‘Monseigneur le duc de Bourgoingne’. Nevertheless, this sentence emphasizes a royal connection that is one of the hallmarks of Vérard’s career as libraire. Aside from this added sentence, Vérard’s dedication is almost identical to that of the Glasgow manuscript, but there are several variants that warrant consideration.20 First is the absence of place and date which appear at the end of the manuscript text. Vérard was publishing for Parisian readers of 1486, not for a Burgundian public of c. 1460, which may also explain some geographical changes as clarifications. The Duke’s territory is limited to ‘Bourgoingne et Brebant’ without the added ‘etc.’ found in the Glasgow manuscript. Italy becomes plural (‘des Ytalies’), and ‘Flandres’ is added to the locations of the stories. More significant perhaps is Vérard’s substitution of the word ‘commandement’ for the manuscript’s ‘requeste’, suggesting that the offering of the book was in response to a command. Caution is due nonetheless in the interpretation of such a word, given the ambiguity of Vérard’s references to the king’s ‘command’ in some other editions.21 Whereas the Glasgow manuscript refers to the author’s ‘treschier et tresredoubté seigneur’ (‘most beloved and most redoubted lord’), Vérard’s heading eliminates the first adjective and leaves only ‘tresre­ doubté’, suggesting a respectful distance between servant and lord. The text of the prologue itself does not name the seigneur, and without the heading or the woodcut, the only reference to the Duke of Burgundy appears in Vérard’s added sentence where he is mentioned as the host of the dauphin. Beginning with Vérard’s second edition, therefore, the Burgundian element is minimized. The prologue concludes with the added sentence stating that ‘monseigneur’ refers to Louis XI, and no illustration precedes it. Subsequent editions all follow this pattern. As for the placement of the prologue itself, all the editions print it after the table and use Vérard’s text, changing only a few adverbs.22 The Duke of Burgundy has been so effaced

19 ‘Pour une édition des Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: De la copie de Philippe le Bon à l’édition d’Antoine Vérard’, Le moyen français, 22 (1989), 69-77 (p. 76). 20 See the texts printed in parallel columns in Appendix I. 21 Some editions of Vérard’s Grandes Heures (Macfarlane, Vérard, nos 204-10, 222) assert on the title page that they were undertaken at the king’s command: ‘par le commandement du roy’. Similarly, in prologues that he addressed to the king, Verard affirms that his editions of the Chroniques de France and of the Bible des poetes were published ‘après vostre commandement’. See Winn, Anthoine Vérard, pp. 56, 254, 269, and M. B. Winn, ‘Guillaume Tardif ’s Hours for Charles VIII and Anthoine Vérard’s Grandes Heures royales’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 56/2 (1994), 347-83 (p. 355). 22 Editions 9-13 add the word ‘Lors’ at the very beginning of the text. They also reinforce the praise of the dedicatee by adding the adverb ‘tres’ before the description ‘haultement

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that even as astute a bibliographer as Brunet identified the dedicatee as the King.23 All these factors indicate that subsequent editions were based on Verard’s second edition, not his first. One other variant of the first edition is well-known: the order of CNN99 and CNN100 is reversed from that of the Glasgow manuscript. Vérard’s edition ends not with the story of the bishop eating partridges (which is the last in the Glasgow source), but with the story of the rich merchant who advises his young wife to seek the company of a wise cleric during his absence. From elements within the Glasgow manuscript itself, Edgar de Blieck has shown that the correct order was Vérard’s.24 Both of these nouvelles are attributed to the ‘Acteur’ in the manuscript, but are anonymous in Vérard’s editions. All subsequent editions follow Vérard’s order and anonymity.

Later Editions Vérard published a second, undated, edition of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles some twelve years after the first, which suggests that the publication was successful but not immediately so. In comparison, for example, Vérard issued five editions of the Légende dorée and four of the romance of Tristan.25 For the second edition of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, he added a title page as was by then the practice:26 a very brief title is headed by a grotesque capital L, rather modest in size.27 Although the text is set in thirty-six lines per column, as in the first edition, the type font and there­ fore the text block is larger. As we noted above, a woodcut representing the presentation of the book to the King (Fig. 6)28 appears on the second

23

24 25 26 27 28

et largement doué’. The ‘tres’ had already been added in the Veuve Trepperel-Janot edition (no. 6). One edition (no. 6) is described as having a ‘dédicace au dauphin (Louis XI, à qui est attribuée une partie de ces nouvelles)’ (‘a dedication to the Dauphin [Louis XI, to whom some of these Nouvelles are attributed])’: Jean-Charles Brunet, Manuel du libraire et de l’amateur de livres (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1860-65), I, 1735. Edgar De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Text and Context: Literature and History at the Court of Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 2004), p. 509. Macfarlane, Vérard, nos 4, 28, 45, 51 plus one uncatalogued edition of the Légende dorée; nos 10, 130, 131, 193 for Tristan. See Margaret M. Smith, The Title-page, its Early Development, 1460-1510 (London: British Library; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2000). Macfarlane calls this L no. 4, reproduced as pl. 7 from Vérard’s 1493 edition of the Orloge de Sapience. Bonicoli, ‘La Production‘, III, p. 213-33, provides a more complete repertoire of ‘L majuscules’, including this no. 4, in his ‘Catalogue des gravures’ (p. 215). In the Arsenal copy of the c. 1498 edition, as reproduced here, an early reader wrote the name ‘Charles septiéme’ on the image, at the foot of the king’s robe.

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leaf, below the heading announcing the table of contents, and the prologue appears at the end of the table, with no illustration. The colophon refers to the composition and recitation of the work, but omits any date, and Vérard’s device appears on the facing recto. This edition uses thirty-five of the original forty woodcuts of the first edition, but they are well worn and often altered by removing architectural or other details or indeed by reduc­ ing the number of people in a scene.29 Vérard adds to this edition four dif­ ferent woodcuts that had appeared in other works and that have little rela­ tionship to the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, as we shall see shortly. Most sur­ prising is that the woodcuts are rarely used for the same nouvelles as in the first edition, which suggests either that their significance was lost or that little attention was paid to actually illustrating the nouvelle. The woodcuts were more important as bookmarks, indicating the start of a new story, than as visual illustrations. Vérard’s two editions, both issued before 1500, are the only incunables of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, and it was in the sixteenth century that the work seems to have been most popular, with nine editions produced in Paris from 1505 to 1536 and two in Lyon c. 1530-32. The Parisian editions fall into two uneven groups, the first represented by an edition dated 3 February 1505 and printed by Nicolas Des Prez for at least two, and probably three libraires: Durand Gerlier,30 Guillaume Eustace,31 and Jean Petit.32 The title page uses a large, grotesque capital L and expands the title to include a reference to the number of stories and their subject and purpose: here are ‘cent chapitres et hystoires ou nouveaulx comptes plaisans et recreatiz pour deviser en toutes compaignies’ (‘one hundred chapters and stories, or entertaining and amusing tales to recount in any company’) (Fig. 7a). On the verso of the title page (Fig. 7b), Des Prez

29 Velissariou, Aspects, gives examples of the woodcut modifications (p. 59, n. 5). 30 The copy in the BnF, Rés Y2-176, bears the name and device of Gerlier; it has been digitized on Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b86000684/f1.image. 31 The copy in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce N290, bears the name and device of Eustace but is otherwise identical to the Gerlier copy. I am very grateful to Jo Maddocks, Assistant Curator of Rare Books, Weston Library (Bodleian Libraries), for verifying this information. The Oxford copy is recorded in the Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC) as no. 7939, with the publication date to the year only. 32 An undated edition printed by Nicolas Des Prez for Jean Petit is cited by Brunet, Manuel, I, p. 1733. Brunet refers to the note by La Monnoye concerning the Facétieux Devis des cent six Nouvelles by La Motte Roullant which is recorded in Rigolet de Juvigny, Bibliothèques françoises de La Croix du Maine et de Du Verdier (Paris: Saillant & Nyon, 1772), II, p. 143-44. Since Jean Petit often shared editions with other printers, it seems likely that this edition is another issue of the ones printed by Nicolas Des Prez for Gerlier and for Eustace. The USTC and the Bibliographie des éditions parisiennes du 16e siècle (BP16) cite various shared editions, including the Roman de la Rose printed c. 1496 by Le Petit Laurens of which some copies bear the device of Jean Petit, others that of Anthoine Vérard. Another edition of the Roman de la Rose was printed by Nicolas Des Prez for Jean Petit among others (ISTC ir00313000).

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Fig. 7a. Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Paris: Nicolas Des Prez for Durand Gerlier, 3 Feb. 1505, title page (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-176),

Figs 7b-c. Verso of title page; colophon and publisher's mark (fol. C5v).

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printed a large woodcut having little to do with the subject: a seated cleric reads from a large volume on his bookstand while a scribe seated before him writes in a book, an angel holding an empty scroll above their heads.33 The text is set in two columns of forty-four lines per column, but since it uses a smaller font, the textblock is about the same size as for Vérard’s sec­ ond edition. Des Prez adds the word ‘comptes’ to the colophon (Fig. 7c) which will be repeated in all the subsequent editions, along with the phrase ‘composees et recitees par nouvelles gens depuis nagueres’, as in Vérard’s editions. After the Des Prez printing, a larger group of eight editions was published between c. 1510 and c. 1536 by what can be considered the extended Trepperel family.34 They include one by Jean (I) Trepperel; one by his son-in-law Michel Le Noir (married to Trepperel’s older daughter Macée);35 two by his widow, the Veuve Trepperel, of which one was published in collaboration with another son-in-law, Jean Jehannot (mar­ ried to Trepperel’s daughter Jeanne); one by his son Jean (II) Trepperel in collaboration with Alain Lotrian;36 one by his grandson, Philippe Le

33 The woodcut is also used on the title page of a contemporary edition: Questiones super octo libros phisicorum Aristotelis, published by Des Prez in 1506 (USTC 180238). The USTC lists 218 editions for Nicolas Des Prez, including thirty-eight associated with Jean Petit, four with Guillaume Eustace. The vast majority are in Latin, only thirteen in French, including the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. Des Prez was a printer and bookseller, originally from Troyes, who died before 21 August 1523. See https://data.bnf.fr/en/12230466/nicolas_des_prez/. 34 Stéphanie Rambaud, ‘La “Galaxie Trepperel” à Paris (1492-1530)’, Bulletin du Bibliophile, 2007, no 1, 144-50; Stéphanie Rambaud, ‘Libraires, imprimeurs, éditeurs; Les Trepperel de la rue Neuve-Notre-Dame à Paris’, in Raconter en prose. XIVe-XVIe siècle, ed. by Paola Cifarelli, Maria Colombo Timelli, Matteo Milani and Anne Schoysman (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017), pp. 109-19; Stéphanie Öhlund-Rambaud, ‘L’atelier de Jean Trepperel, imprimeur-libraire parisien (1492-1511)’, in Patrons, Authors and Workshops. Books and Book Production in Paris around 1400, ed. by Godfried Croenen and Peter F. Ainsworth (Louvain: Peeters, 2006), pp. 123-41. I am very grateful to Stéphanie Rambaud for sharing with me her research into the Trepperel family editions which span some forty years (1492-1530). She attributes 240 editions to Jean (I) Trepperel (1492-1511), 175 to his widow in collaboration with Jean Jehannot (1511-21), many of which lack a date as well as a printer’s name. Jean Jehannot, named libraire-juré (‘official bookseller’) of the University of Paris in 1515, died in 1521. Only sixteen editions (1527-35) are associated in BP16 with Jean (II) Trepperel, and even though he called himself libraire et marchand (‘bookseller and merchant’), Renouard identified him with a silk merchant. He died between 1547 and 1550. See Renouard, Répertoire, p. 414 and BP16. 35 Florine Stankiewicz, ‘Répertoire de l’imprimeur Michel Le Noir. L’EAD au service du livre ancien’, Mémoire d’étude, Diplôme de conservateur des bibliothèques, École nationale supérieure des sciences de l’information et des bibliothèques, 2010. For some unknown reason, the repertoire of editions does not include the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. 36 Alain Lotrian (1525-47) succeeded the Veuve Jean Trepperel and collaborated with her son Jean II Trepperel and grandson Denis Janot. The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles editions represent two of 290 attributed to him by the BP16. See Renouard, Répertoire, pp. 284-85; https:// catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb124792369.

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Noir,37 and another by his grandson Denis Janot,38 in collaboration again with Alain Lotrian who alone also published one edition. These names appear in the colophons, and when the colophon is lacking, identification is treacherous because all eight editions are undated and have very similar typography. Composed of irregular gatherings of 4, 6 or 8 leaves, their collations are easily confused. They use the same or similar illustrations, often copying each other’s woodcuts. The text for all the editions is set in two columns of thirty-nine lines each, in a Bastarda type (82B) smaller than that of Vérard. Variations appear in the headings (their placement, the size of type, and the inclusion or absence of the narrator’s name) and in the initials that begin the nouvelles (size, design). However, at least one copy represents a variant or composite edition, with one quire from a printing different from all the others.39 Relative dating is possible only through close examination, which is difficult to accomplish given the limited number of extant copies and their current locations in widely distant libraries. Catalogues are inconsistent, their descriptions incomplete or inadequate, lacking details needed to distinguish among such closely related editions. The sheer volume of woodcuts for one hundred nouvelles in thirteen editions challenges even the most dedicated bibliographer. Below is the list of known editions of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles produced in France before 1540, in what I believe to be chronological order.40 It includes two editions published in Lyon by Olivier Arnoullet, in 1532 and c. 1530, in addition to those printed in Paris. Details about each edition as well as a list of extant copies are provided in Appendix II. A sample of the variety in woodcuts, headings, and initials for the same nouvelle (the fourth) in all editions is presented in Appendix III.

37 Philippe Le Noir (1520?-45) succeeded his father Michel and was in 1522 named one of the two official relieurs-jurés (‘official bookbinders’) of the University of Paris. See Renouard, Répertoire, p. 266; https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb122392751. The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles edition represents one of the 110 attributed to him by the BP16. 38 Son and successor of Jean Jehannot, Denis Janot (1529-44) was libraire juré (‘official bookseller’) of the University of Paris and, in 1544, imprimeur du Roi en langue française (‘the king’s printer of works in French’). The number of his editions now stands at 391 according to Stephen Rawles, Denis Janot (fl. 1529-44), Parisian Printer and Bookseller: a Bibliography (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2018), p. ix. Rawles dates the edition of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles as early 1532 or later (pp. 591-92). 39 The copy now in New York, PML 1028, lacks the title page and colophon that would identify it as belonging to the edition by Michel Le Noir. It is identical to the other known copy of that edition, Rothschild 1694, except for quire v which is unique in its typeset. 40 Velissariou’s list of editions in Aspects, pp. 73-74, differs somewhat from mine, and her references to certain copies require correction. There is only one edition in Washington’s Library of Congress, and none in Rome or Vienna. The identifying numbers are to catalogues: the ISTC and Copinger.

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No.

Edition

Date

1

Paris: par Anthoine Vérard

24 December 1486

5

2

Paris: par Anthoine Vérard

Between 8 May 1498 and 25 October 1499

6

3

Paris: par Nicolas Des Prez pour Durand Gerlier pour Guillaume Eustace pour Jean Petit?

3 February 1505

4

Paris: par Jean Trepperel

c. 1507-11

1

5

Paris: pour Michel Le Noir

c. 1510-20

2

6

Paris: par la Veuve Trepperel et Jean Jehannot

c. 1515-36

1

7

Paris: par Philippe Le Noir

c. 1524

3

8

Paris: par la Veuve Trepperel

c. 1525-30

1

9

Paris: pour Jean (II) Trepperel [A Lotrian]

c. 1529-31

3

10

Lyon: par Olivier Arnoullet

c. 1530

3

Copies located

1 1 0

11

Lyon: par Olivier Arnoullet

12 July 1532

3

12

Paris: par Alain Lotrian et Denis Janot

c. 1532-36

1

13

Paris: par Alain Lotrian

c. 1536

1

Variations in the titles and colophons establish links among the editions and help to date them. Two editions (no. 4 by Jean Trepperel and no. 5 by Michel Le Noir) have the same lengthy title, with an added expression at the end: ‘par joyeusete’ (‘out of joyousness’) (Fig. 8). The title is printed in alternating red and black ink, with a grotesque L only two to three lines high above an illustration composed of individual figures (man, woman, building) copied from the Terence edition published by Vérard c. 1500.41 Above their heads are banderoles with the words ‘Bruyt de’ (‘Fame of ’) and ‘Nouuelle’. On the verso of the title page, a full-page woodcut announces the Table. Trepperel uses an unrelated woodcut from his earlier edition of the Chevalier délibéré,42 whereas Michel Le Noir employs the woodcut of a man and woman on horseback meeting in the forest, which appears again after the colophon. 41 Macfarlane, Vérard, no. 152, ISTC it00106000, GW M45586. 42 The edition dates from 19 September 1500, and the woodcut represents Entendement showing relics to the knight.

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Fig. 8. Title pages for Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles editions 4 & 5: Paris: Jean (I) Trepperel, c. 1507-11 (Paris, ENSBA); Paris: Michel Le Noir, c. 1510-20 (Paris, BnF).

Fig. 9. Title pages for Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles editions 6 & 8, Paris: Veuve Trepperel-Jean Jehannot, c. 1515-36 (Washington, LCR); Paris: Veuve Trepperel, c. 1525-30 (Munich BSB).

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The edition by the Veuve Trepperel and her son-in-law Jean Jehannot (no. 6) mistakenly omits one key word from the title so that it reads ‘Les cent nouvelles’, thereby causing confusion with Boccaccio’s text and mis­ leading even modern bibliographers.43 The same omission occurs in the ti­ tle of the edition signed by the Veuve Trepperel alone (ed. 8) which shares the prior edition’s woodcuts of a man and woman bearing the names ‘Bruyt de’ and ‘Nouuelle’. However, the latter edition innovates in three ways: it uses red ink as well as black, imitating the editions by Jean Trep­ perel and Michel Le Noir; the title begins with the word ‘S’ensuyvent’ (‘Here follow’), as do many contemporary collections of poetry;44 and it ends with ‘Imprimé nouvellement a Paris. xxx. C.’ (‘newly printed in Paris. xxx.C.’) (Fig. 9). This Roman numeral, sometimes wrongly interpreted as a publication date, refers to the number of quires.45 Somewhat later, for Philippe Le Noir’s edition (no. 7) and the three editions associated with Alain Lotrian (nos 9, 12, 13), the title is surrounded by an elaborate archi­ tectural border containing grotesques and scenes of the beheading of John the Baptist (Figs 10-11). As for the colophons, the Veuve Jean Trepperel (ed. 6) adds a reference to the stories as being ‘nouvellement imprimees’, which will be maintained by the subsequent editions. Whereas the first three editions, by Vérard and Des Prez, print the colophon at the end of the text, all subsequent editions place it at the top of a new page, leaving space for a large illustration. Jean Trepperel, Michel Le Noir and the Veuve Trepperel-Jehannot (eds 4-6) use the same image of a man and woman each on horseback, meeting in the forest, with a dog chasing a rabbit in the foreground. Banderoles above their heads remain void of text (Fig. 12).46 Philippe Le Noir (ed. 7) uses a large woodcut of a man extending a mirror bearing the figure of Death toward a lady who reacts in surprise. The Veuve Trepperel (ed. 8) presents an elegantly dressed man and woman standing in a garden, but broken lines at the top of the woodcut indicate that it was intended for a different work. With the Veuve Trepperel-Lotrian edition (ed. 9), an 43 Four editions lack the adjective ‘nouvelles’: two editions associated with the Veuve Trepperel (nos 6, 8) and the two Arnoullet editions (nos 10, 11). Vérard’s undated edition of Boccaccio’s Decameron which bears the title of Cent nouvelles is mistakenly included among the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles editions in Andrew Pettegree, Malcolm Walsby, Alexander S. Wilkinson, French Vernacular Books: Books Published in the French Language before 1601 (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2007), no. 9613, and subsequently in the USTC, no. 70908. 44 In his Bibliographie des recueils collectifs de poésie du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1922; Geneva: Slatkine Reprints 1967), Frédéric Lachèvre cites several examples: S’ensuyvent plusieurs belles chansons, S’ensuyt le Jardin de Plaisance, etc., of which some were published by the Veuve Trepperel. 45 The edition consists, however, of 31 not 30 gatherings, and it appears that here and elsewhere the gathering containing the table is not counted in the overall number. 46 The same image is used on the title page of Michel Le Noir’s edition of Le Rebours de Matheolus, published in 1518. The BnF copy, Rés Ye-256, is digitized on Gallica.

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Fig. 10. Title pages for Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles editions 7 & 9: Paris: Philippe Le Noir, c. 1520 (The Hague); Paris: Jean (II) Trepperel-Alain Lotrian, c. 1527 (BnF).

Fig. 11. Title pages for Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles editions 12 & 13: Paris: Alain Lotrian-Denis Janot, c. 1532-36 (Princeton); Paris: Alain Lotrian, c. 1536 (Augsburg).

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Fig. 12. Colophons for editions 4, 5, 6: Jean (I) Trepperel, c. 1507-11 (vente Rahir); Paris: Michel Le Noir, c. 1510-20 (BnF Rothschild); Veuve Trepperel-Jean Jehannot, c. 1515-36 (Washington, LC).

unrelated scene of knights battling in ships indicates concern only for the space to be filled, not with any illustration of the text (Fig. 13). Lotrian’s two editions use small woodcuts, two from an edition of Matheolus for edi­ tion no. 12, and for no. 13 a group of four woodcuts that had each illus­ trated a nouvelle in the edition itself (Fig. 14). In addition to the Parisian editions of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, two editions were published in Lyon by the same printer, Olivier Arnoullet,47 and they differ significantly from the others in several respects. The text is set in long lines, forty to a page rather than in the Parisian model of two columns; it thus resembles the Glasgow manuscript in layout. The text itself, however, follows Verard’s edition quite closely. Only thirty-eight nouvelles are illustrated, using fourteen different woodcuts; the latter are still only one column wide, so they appear within the text block, at the left margin, with lines of text to the right. Arnoullet’s title begins with the word ‘S’ensuyvent’ and also omits the adjective ‘nouvelles’. Two different images are used for the two editions: the first, of a writer at his desk, the second, of 47 Olivier Arnoullet (1486?-1567) succeeded his father, Jacques, as a printer-bookseller in Lyon, inheriting the paternal woodcuts. During his long career, he published almost exclusively works in French, and his editions of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles constitute two of the 186 editions attributed to him in the USTC. See Henri Baudrier, Bibliographie lyonnaise: Recherches sur les imprimeurs, libraires, relieurs et fondeurs de lettres de Lyon au XVIe siècle, 12 vols (Lyon: A. Brun, 1895-1921; repr. Paris: F. de Nobele, 1964-65), X, pp. 28-29, 39-40, 64.

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Fig. 13. Colophons for editions 7, 8, 9: Philippe Le Noir, c. 1524 (The Hague); Veuve Trepperel, c. 1525-30 (Munich, BSB); Jean (II) Trepperel-A. Lotrian, c. 1529-31 (BnF).

Fig. 14. Colophons for editions 12, 13: A. Lotrian-Denis Janot c. 1532-36 (Princeton); Alain Lotrian c. 1536 (Augsburg).

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Fig. 15. Title pages for editions 10 and 11: Lyon: Arnoullet, c. 1530 (New Haven, Beinecke Library) and 1532 (Paris, BnF).

Fig. 16. Colophon and woodcut, Lyon: Arnoullet, 1532, fols r7v-r8r (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-730).

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two men standing before a scribe or notary whose inkwell sits on the desk in his workshop (Fig. 15).48 Arnoullet’s name figures on the title page, the first edition emphasizing the printing: ‘Imprimé nouvellement a Lyon par Olivier Arnoullet’ (‘newly printed at Lyon by Olivier Arnoullet’), the sec­ ond, the sale: ‘On les vend a Lyon […] cheulx Olivier Arnoullet’ (‘For sale in Lyon […] from Olivier Arnoullet’). The second, moreover, causes a grammatical error by eliminating the word comptes, thereby making the masculine adjective nouveaulx modify the feminine noun hystoires. Arnoul­ let also distinguishes his work by the placement of the colophon at the bottom of the text on the verso of fol. r7, facing a full-page woodcut of the King seated on his throne surrounded by courtiers, on the following recto (Fig. 16). This image was perhaps inspired by Vérard’s woodcuts of the king, although without the presentation of a book.

Table and Headings The table of contents to the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles is extremely long because it provides for each nouvelle an entry that summarizes the story and often identifies the narrator. Vérard adds to the summary found in the manuscript details that are illustrated in the corresponding woodcut. Thus, for example, the entry for CNN4 emphasizes the Scotsman’s large sword and the husband’s fear, and adds at the end a reference to the wife’s complaint to her husband:

Glasgow Manuscript (Table, fol. 1r)

Vérard edition 1486 (Table, fol. a2v)

Par Monseigneur La iiiie nouvelle, d’un archier escossois qui fut amoureux d’une belle gente damoiselle, femme d’un eschopier, laquelle, par le commandement de son mary, assigna jour audit Escossois; et de fait y

(lacking)i La quatriesme nouvelle, d’ung archier escossois qui fut amoureux d’une belle et gente damoiselle, femme d’ung eschoppier, laquelle, par le commandement de son mary, assigna jour audit Escossois et de fait garny de sa grande espee y

comparut et besoigna tant qu’il voult,

comparut et besoingna tant qu’il voulut,

le dit eschopier estant

present ledit escoppier qui de peur c’estoit

48 In his Catalogue of a Collection of Early French Books in the Library of C. Fairfax-Murray (London: Holland Press, 1910; repr. 1961), I, p. 77, Hugh William Davies notes that the letter ‘i’ at the foot of the cut is a mark of the series used in the edition of Guerin Mesquin (1530) by the same printer.

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cachié en la ruelle de son lit, qui tout pouoit veoir et oyr.

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caiché en la ruelle de son lit et tout pouoit veoir et ouyr plainement, et la complainte que fist aprés la femme a son mary.

i The narrator is nonetheless identified as ‘Monseigneur’ in the heading preceding the nouvelle, fol. b7v. See Appendix III.

These additions to the table were followed in many of the subsequent edi­ tions.49 The chapter headings usually provide only the number of the story and, less regularly, the narrator’s name. Although I have not yet made a systematic comparison of variations in the headings, it is worth noting that Arnoullet, unlike the other printers, began to summarize the subject of the nouvelles in the headings. To give just one example, whereas Vérard’s heading for CNN14 reads: ‘La .xiiii. nouvelle par monseigneur de crequy’ (‘the fourteenth tale by My Lord of Créquy’), Arnoullet’s reads ‘La .xiiii. nouvelle de l’hermite qui deceut la fille d’une povre femme’ (‘the fourteenth tale, of the hermit who deceived the daughter of a poor woman’). All the other editors follow Vérard’s pattern. Vérard’s edition occasionally attributes nouvelles to different narrators from those named in the Glasgow manuscript. Later editions repeat Vérard’s attributions, although there are a few discrepancies.50

49 Editions 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 11, and 12 all repeat Vérard’s changes to the heading for CNN4, but I have not yet verified the other editions. A comparison of all entries in all the tables requires further investigation. 50 Thus CNN13, attributed to Monseigneur de Castregat in the manuscript, belongs to ‘l’amant de Brucelle’ in all the editions. In fact, this is the same person, referred to by name in the manuscript but by his official title in the editions. The spelling ‘amant’ as opposed to the official term ‘amman’ is used in the manuscript and in the editions for the other nouvelle narrated by this same person, CNN53. CNN23 is narrated according to the manuscript by Monseigneur de Quievrain, whose name has been altered to ‘Commesuran’ by Vérard and all later editors. Similarly, CNN85-90, 93 and 97 are considered anonymous in Vérard’s edition and all others, despite the identification of narrators in the manuscript. More problematic is CNN95 which, according to the manuscript is narrated by Philippe de Loan (whose name in Verard’s editions has been altered to ‘Laon’) but by Monseigneur de Villiers according to the editions. The nouvelles attributed in the manuscript to the ‘Acteur’ – CNN51, 91, 92, 98, 99 – are anonymous in the editions, with two exceptions: CNN92 is attributed by Vérard and his successors to ‘Monseigneur de Launoy’. CNN99 (CNN100 in the manuscript) is attributed in two editions associated with Lotrian and in the Arnoullet editions to ‘Monseigneur’, an attribution found neither in the manuscript nor in Vérard’s editions. Arnoullet attributes CNN63 to Michault de Chaugy, perhaps in anticipation of CNN64. CNN82 presents a different ambiguity: although the table in the editions attributes it to Monseigneur de Lannoy, who is the narrator named in the Glasgow manuscript, the

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Texts The comparisons I have made of select nouvelles show only minor differ­ ences in the text presented by the printed editions.51 There are occasional additions: of adverbs (‘tres’), of an introductory phrase (‘Advint que’ (‘It happened that’)), and changes in word order, but Vérard’s text was closely followed by all twelve subsequent editions. In CNN4, for example, concerning the Scottish archer who fell in love with a beautiful but married woman, Vérard’s text lacks one phrase at the beginning of the story. The missing text, as written in the Glasgow manuscript, is highlighted here in italics within brackets: Et quand il sceut trouver temps et lieu, le mains mal qu’il peut compta son tresgracieux et piteux cas [auquel ne fut pas bien respondu a son avantage] dont il n’estoit pas trop content ne joyeux. And when he was in the right time and place, as best he could he told his most gracious and piteous tale [to which the response was not so favourable] which he was neither too proud nor joyous about.

heading in all printed editions beginning with Vérard in 1486 names Jean Martin. It is difficult to make sense of these differences, but they provide evidence for the models used by the printed editions. One final discrepancy must be noted with respect to CNN51. Attributed to the ‘Acteur’ in the manuscript, it is anonymous in the headings for both of Vérard’s editions. The Des Prez edition (no. 3) and all subsequent editions name ‘La Roche’ in the heading. This might be explained in one of two ways: first, by an erroneous anticipation – La Roche narrates the next nouvelle, CNN52; or second, as a result of the typographical layout. Vérard’s editions name the narrator in the headings at the top of the page. These page headings do not correspond exactly to the placement of the nouvelle itself, since a nouvelle is likely to begin in the middle of a page, overlapping therefore with the page heading of the previous nouvelle. In the case of CNN51-52, the page heading for both gives the name of Monseigneur de La Roche, but the chapter heading of CNN51 itself gives no name. It would appear that Des Prez inserted the erroneous name from the page heading into the chapter heading, and this was repeated thereafter. 51 For text comparisons between the Vérard edition and the Glasgow manuscript, see De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 507-10. The leaves of Vérard’s second edition containing CNN63 are reproduced on pp. 521-25 and the text transcribed on pp. 511-15. Comparative transcriptions of the same nouvelle from the Glasgow manuscript and from Arnoullet’s first edition are provided on pp. 516-20. The text of the nouvelle in Vérard’s second edition differs slightly from that of the first edition in spelling (luy/lui, autres/aultres) and the use of abbreviations. Unillustrated in the second edition, CNN63 is illustrated in the first edition by the woodcut used earlier for CNN7 and then repeated also for CNN30 and 76. In his edition of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, pp. 272-74, Pierre Champion also cited differences between the Vérard edition and the Glasgow manuscript for the text of CNN1. Le Roux de Lincy based his edition of Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Paris: Charpentier, 1841) on the two editions by Vérard, reproducing their text ‘avec une exactitude scrupuleuse’ (‘with scrupulous accuracy’) (p. viii).

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Although the meaning is altered and the Glasgow version is clearly prefer­ able, the text continues to makes sense, and every edition copies Vérard’s, omitting that phrase.

Illustrations – Woodcuts Vérard is the only editor to have concerned himself with actually illustrat­ ing the text by creating forty new woodcuts clearly related to the stories. Not surprisingly, these appear predominantly, though not exclusively, at the beginning of the work. Thus new woodcuts appear for CNN1-16, 18-24, then less predictably for subsequent nouvelles.52 Seventeen of these forty woodcuts were used only once;53 eight are repeated only once;54 others, from two to as many as eight times.55 There seem to be three errors in their use. The most obvious is the lack of illustration for CNN66. Given the page layout, I suspect this was simply an oversight, since the ninety-nine others each had a woodcut. Nevertheless, Vérard’s second edition did not add an illustration for CNN66, nor did Arnoullet, but all the other Parisian editors did. Two other mistakes relate to woodcuts used in advance of the nouvelle for which they were clearly designed. The woodcut depicting the knight’s fight with the devil, recounted in CNN70, first appears one nouvelle earlier, with CNN69, the story of the wife who remarries believing that her first husband had perished in prison and who dies of remorse when he returns (Figs 17 a-d). The woodcut leaves no doubt as to its subject, but the typesetter may have been misled by the identity of the narrator, ‘Monseigneur’ in both cases. A comparison with the Glasgow miniatures is useful to highlight the discrepancies. The woodcut for CNN72 appeared first for CNN62, perhaps resulting from a misreading of the Roman numerals, although it is interesting that here again the narrator – Monseigneur de Commesuran – is the same for both. CNN62 relates a lover’s discovery of his comrade’s diamond ring in their hostess’s bed; CNN72 concerns the lover who hides in the privy and escapes with the toilet seat on his head. Without doubt, the woodcut

52 New woodcuts appear for CNN38, 44, 45, 47, 51, 53, 57, 62 (although the woodcut refers specifically to CNN72 where it was also used), 65, 69 (although the woodcut belongs with CNN70), 71, 73-75, 78, 79, 99. 53 Woodcuts for CNN1, 5, 6, 13, 16, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 47, 57, 65, 73, 74, 75, 78. 54 Woodcuts for CNN3, 4, 14, 15, 67, 62, 69, 71. 55 All the woodcuts are reproduced in Bonicoli, ‘La Production’, III (‘Catalogue des gravures’), p. 270-80, who cites their use and re-use, not only in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, but in other Vérard editions as well. He also gives examples of various states of the woodcuts as modifications occur through use over time.

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Figs 17 a-d. CNN69 and 70: the same woodcut in Vérard’s first edition (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174, fols p2v, p3v) and the two corresponding miniatures in the Glasgow manuscript (fols 151r, 152v). Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

Fig. 18. CNN72: the woodcut in Vérard’s first edition (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174, fol. p6r) and the miniature in the Glasgow manuscript (fol. 155v). Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

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Fig. 19. Woodcut for CNN9 in Vérard’s first edition (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174, fol. c5v), which is repeated for CNN27, 29, 33, 35, 36, 43, 55, 56.

illustrates the latter nouvelle (Fig. 18). It bears comparison with the miniature in the Glasgow manuscript.56 In terms of the repetition of woodcuts, the most frequently used is the one designed for CNN9 in which a knight enamoured of his wife’s maid offers her delights to his friend after his own tryst, only to discover too late that the maid in bed was none other than his wife. The woodcut represents a man and woman in bed, with two men standing at the left, a somewhat generic scene that could serve in fact for a variety of stories (Fig. 19). Even though a woodcut loses its specific relevance when repeated for different nouvelles, it continues to function as a bookmark and indeed as a mnemonic device that establishes connections to other stories. Laurence Grove has cautioned against seeking ‘textual verisimilitude’ in ‘moveable woodcuts’ whose re-use might be ‘a deliberate ploy intended to play upon curiosity aroused by the new technology’.57 Nevertheless, a choice was made in which images to repeat, and some of the woodblocks underwent alterations before being re-used so as to eliminate certain features or figures, even though the resulting image invariably reflects an imperfect solution. One example is the woodcut used for CNN10, the story epito­ mized by the ‘paté d’anguilles’ (‘eel paté’) which may, like your lovely wife, 56 Despite the apparent error, Vérard’s second edition repeats these woodcuts in the same places. Des Prez repeats the woodcut for CNN69 and 70, but the toilet seat woodcut appears only with its appropriate CNN72. Later editions use entirely different subjects. 57 Laurence Grove, Text/Image Mosaics in French Culture: Emblems and Comic Strips (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 66.

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be your favourite dish, but which becomes monotonous if not nauseating when served every day. The woodcut, which is quite similar to the Glasgow manuscript illustration, depicts the servant and his master talking in the foreground and the servant being forced to eat eel paté in the background (Fig. 20a). The woodcut is re-used three times, in some rather astonishing contexts: for CNN32 (the tithes demanded by the Franciscan brothers), CNN42 (the cleric who is happy to be named curate of his home parish until he discovers that his wife is not dead), and CNN50 (the father who wants to kill his son for trying to ravish his grandmother). For these tales, the plate of eels has been scraped off the woodblock, albeit incompletely (Fig. 20b). As a result, when Vérard re-employed the woodcut in his sec­ ond edition, only the modified form without the eel paté was available (Fig. 20c). This is the version copied by Des Prez who uses it for seven nouvelles, but not always the same ones as in Vérard’s edition (Fig. 20d). Des Prez duplicated woodcuts from Vérard’s second edition rather than the first (1486), the second (c. 1498) being closer in date to his own (1505) and perhaps more readily available. The woodcuts in the Trepperel-Lotrian-Janot editions differ from Vérard’s, and none of them was specially prepared for the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. Some seem especially odd, since they were apparently designed for use in various chivalric romances. Several, for example, depict the knight of the lion. All of them must have been part of the printers’ stock and were chosen presumably for their dimensions. Their origins, however, deserve attention: quite a few were designed for the Livre de Matheolus, and they therefore link the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles to the anti-feminist tra­ dition. The Lamentations of Matheolus against marriage, wives, and women in general, were translated from Latin into French in the late fourteenth century by Jean Le Fèvre de Ressons, and they enjoyed a tremendous popularity, if one can judge by the number of editions printed in Paris and Lyon.58 The woodcuts illustrated well-known examples of wicked, 58 About the editions, see Brunet, Manuel, III, 1526-28; Davies, Catalogue Fairfax-Murray, I, pp. 491-99, with reproductions of woodcuts from the Lyon edition of c. 1495. The USTC lists nine editions of the Livre de Matheolus, four of which are incunables also cited by the ISTC. About the author and his work, see the Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge (https://www.arlima.net/il/jean_le_fevre_de_ressons.html) and modern editions published by A. G. Van Hamel, Les Lamentations de Matheolus et le Livre de leesce de Jehan Le Fèvre, de Resson (poèmes français du XIVe siècle) (Paris: Bouillon, 1892-95) and more recently, Jean Le Fèvre de Ressons, Les lamentations de Matheolus. Édition critique, accompagnée du texte en latin des Lamenta, d’une introduction, des variantes, de deux glossaires et d’un index des noms, ed. by Tiziano Pacchiarotti, Studi e ricerche, 86 (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2010). A copy of the edition by Olivier Arnoullet, Lyon c. 1515, that uses some of the same woodcuts as his edition of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, has been digitized by Google books. A digitized copy of the edition by Jean de Vingle, Lyon, c. 1497, is online at the Bibliothèque Mazarine (Inc 673): https://mazarinum.bibliothequemazarine.fr/viewer/1795/?offset=1#page=1&viewer=picture&o=info&n=0&q=.

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Figs 20 a-d. Woodcut modifications: for CNN10 and 32 in Vérard’s first edition (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174, fols c7r, h4v), for CNN10 in Vérard’s second edition (Paris, BnF Arsenal, 4o BL 4389, fol. d5v); copied for CNN1 (and eight other nouvelles) in the third edition by Des Prez (Paris, BnF Rés. Y2-176, fol. b1r).

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Fig. 21. Woodcut from the Vengence de nostre Saulveur, Lyon: Jacques Arnoullet, 29 Oct. 1499 (BnF Rés. P-H-11(2)), fol. A2v, that illustrated CNN21 in Olivier Arnoullet’s editions of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, c. 1530 and 1532.

disobedient wives who had deceived illustrious men, and all of these im­ ages59 were used in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: Solomon led to worship idols by a woman;60 the wife who is so contrary that she poisons herself from a jar which her husband had forbidden her to touch;61 Queen Vashti who refuses to go King Ahasuerus’s feast and is driven out of town;62 Medea who kills her children;63 Calphurnia, a litigious Roman lawyer who bares her bum to the judges;64 the devil who assures the doctor that the pains of hell are less than those of marriage.65 The woodcut of Aristotle rid­ den by Phyllis is used after the colophon to the edition (no. 12) by Lotrian and Janot. There is no need to emphasize how often printers used the same woodblocks for unrelated texts, but some examples are truly surprising.

59 Although the subject remains the same, variants among the images in the different editions demonstrate that the woodblocks themselves circulated among the printers in various ways. Perhaps shared, or bequeathed, they were subject to wear and were also copied so closely that distinguishing among the resulting woodcuts is difficult. See Appendix III for variants of the same subject. 60 Used in edition 7 for CNN14; in editions 9 and 12 for CNN47; in edition 13 for CNN60. 61 Used for CNN15 in editions 4, 5, 6. 62 Used in editions 4, 5, 6 for CNN4 (see Appendix III), in editions 7, 8, 9 for CNN1, in editions 12, 13 for CNN2. 63 Used for CNN93 in editions 4, 5, 6. 64 Used in editions 4, 5, 6, 7, 12 for CNN2. 65 Used in editions 4, 5, 6, 7, 10-11 for CNN6, 11, 70.

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Figs 22 a-b. CNN1: woodcut in Vérard’s first edition (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174, fol. b1r) and the corresponding miniature in the Glasgow manuscript (fol. 3r). Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

One of the most astonishing examples is the woodcut of a woman in bed with a man standing near her, used by Olivier Arnoullet to illustrate four nouvelles (CNN2, 21, 51, 77) (Fig. 21). The woodcut had appeared thirty years earlier in his father’s edition of a text on the destruction of Jerusalem. The accompanying caption explains ‘How Gay (the seneschal) came to see the emperor [Vespasian], his master, whom he found in bed, very disfig­ ured’.66 The woman in bed apparently sufficed to illustrate the disfigured emperor. Olivier’s use of the woodcut in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles seems far more appropriate. A comparison of the illustrations used for the same nouvelle in all the known editions of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles reveals the similarities and differences among them. The first nouvelle will serve as an example. It con­ cerns the husband who is allowed to see only the ‘derriere’ of the woman – his wife – whom he finds in bed with his neighbour. Vérard’s woodcut, in contrast to the Glasgow miniature offers a dual scene (Figs 22a-b): at the left, a man kneels before a woman, fully dressed and holding a broom in one hand. On the right, the wife is in bed, her naked back turned toward the two men, the husband dressed in robe and hat, pulling aside the bed

66 ‘Comment Gay vint veoir l’empereur son maistre lequel il trouva dedens son lict bien deffiguré’. La Vengence de nostre saulveur…, Lyon, Jacques Arnoullet, 29 October 1499, fol. A2v (Paris, BnF Rés P-H-11[2]); ISTC id00144570; GW 12504; https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/ 12148/bpt6k8709627t.

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Fig. 23a. Fig. 23b. CNN1: woodcuts in editions 1-6.CNN1: woodcuts in editions 7-13.

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Fig. 24. CNN12: woodcut in Vérard’s first edition (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174, fol. d1r) and corresponding miniature in the Glasgow manuscript (fol. 26r). Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

curtains with one hand and holding a candle with the other. The text ex­ plicitly notes the candle held ‘en sa main’ as the husband approaches the bed. This woodcut was clearly designed to illustrate the first nouvelle,67 and indeed it was not used for any other story nor did it appear in Vérard’s second edition. One can only assume the woodcut was lost or damaged,68 because the second edition illustrates this nouvelle with a totally unrelated woodcut of the building of a city (Fig. 23). That woodcut belongs in fact to an edition of Petrus de Crescentiis’s Livre des ruraulx prouffitz which Vérard issued on 10 July 1486,69 just five months prior to his first edition of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. Subsequent editions paid little attention to correlating the text of the first nouvelle with an image, as is evident from a review of the woodcuts

67 The left-hand portion of the woodcut is, however, somewhat at odds with the text. If reading from left to right, then chronologically the scene would suggest the neighbour’s begging for the wife’s attention, but the text specifically mentions the husband’s kneeling to beg his wife’s forgiveness after she convinces him he has wrongly suspected her. The man’s robe and purse are the same as those of the husband in the next scene, which confirms the identity of the two figures. The woman’s dress and broom identify her as the wife, even though the nouvelle relates her returning home in a ‘cotte simple, son corset en son bras’. 68 It is used, however, along with many other woodcuts from the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, in two later editions by Vérard: Les Apologues et Fables de Laurens Valle (c. 1492), fol. A4r (Macfarlane, Vérard, no. 103, ISTC ia00109000), and Les Paraboles maistre Alain (1492/93), fol. a6v (Macfarlane, Vérard, no. 23, ISTC ia00179000). 69 Macfarlane, Vérard, no. 3, ISTC ic00969700, GW 7829.

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they used (Fig. 23). The third edition (Des Prez) employs the woodcut designed for CNN10 concerning the eel paté. For the subsequent editions by the Trepperel dynasty, a woodcut representing a couple at a city sufficed to illustrate the nouvelle. In edition 4, the man and woman with arms folded across their chest leave as the city burns behind them, while in editions 5 and 6 they link arms as they exit from an arched doorway, the woman glancing back over her shoulder. These images were replaced in editions 7 to 9 with one representing a more specific event: Queen Vashti being banished from the city, accompanied by musicians, as the King looks on. Derived from the Matheolus editions, the subject is the same for all three editions, but the actual woodblock is distinct for each. Arnoullet’s woodcut for his two editions (eds 10-11) depicts a man on horseback leaving two women. Not until the twelfth edition by Lotrian-Janot do we find a woodcut related to the story through, as it were, the rear: it is the image from Matheolus depicting Calphurnia baring her bum to the judges. For the thirteenth edition by Alain Lotrian, however, the nouvelle is introduced by a woodcut from a chivalric romance that depicts a queen holding an infant on her lap. A comparison of Vérard’s woodcuts with the Glasgow manuscript miniatures demonstrates how modestly the subjects are treated in the woodcut against the sexually explicit miniature.70 For CNN12, for exam­ ple, both illustrations depict the amorous couple viewed from the tree above by the farmer hunting his calf. In the woodcut, the lover is leaning toward his seated sweetheart, while in the miniature he has reached his hand between her thighs under her raised skirt (Fig. 24).

Ownership and Popularity The number of printed editions of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles as well as the number of extant copies raises questions about their reception, popularity, and influence. A print run for the early sixteenth century usually produced 500-600 copies, although some editions ran to 2000 or even 3000 copies.71 When Nicole Gilles, the co-sponsor of Vérard’s first edition, had an inventory of his library made at the death of his wife in 1499, he had a ‘bote de livres escriptz en lettre d’impression en papier,

70 Dominique Lagorgette has compared images in the manuscript with those in Vérard’s two editions in ‘Staging Transgression through Text and Image: Violence and Nudity in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunter 252, and Vérard 1486 and 1498)’, Text/Image Relations in Late Medieval French Culture, ed. by Rebecca Dixon and Rosalind Brown-Grant (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 89-104. 71 See Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer, ‘Fabriquer un livre au XVIe siècle’ in La Lettre et le Texte, pp. 273-319 (p. 277).

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non reliez appellez Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles en petit volume’ (‘a box of printed paper books, unbound, called Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, in small format’), valued at 28s (solz).72 Unfortunately the number of copies is not indicated, but the sum seems to correspond to eight or nine copies.73 More specific is the inventory of Jean Janot, made in 1522, which cites 168 copies of the ‘Cent nouvelles’.74 Presumably these were copies of the edition he produced with the Veuve Trepperel. Each copy must have cost nearly one livre tournois. Veyrin-Forrer explains that paper constituted a considerable expense, slightly more than that needed to pay the employ­ ees.75 The press itself and the type were the major expenditures, and in 1523 even the smallest woodcut cost two sols. With a work such as the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, then, the illustration involved a considerable expense, which helps to explain why woodcuts were re-used from other editions. The number of extant copies of the thirteen editions is very limited: three editions are known from a single copy, seven other editions by only two or three copies each. Interestingly, Vérard’s two editions are represented by the largest number of copies, five for the first edition, six for the second. It may be that these numbers reflect in part the attention paid to incunables as opposed to early sixteenth-century editions, which have been less well catalogued. The appreciation for beaux livres as opposed to ‘popular’ books may have also affected their conservation. The Trepperels’ editions with illustrations that were abundant in number but of mixed artistic quality may have contributed to their neglect.76 On the other hand, the small number of copies perhaps indicates that the books were read to destruction. Furthermore, despite their courtly origin, the nouvelles may have been most popular with non-aristocratic readers whose personal collections were less often inventoried. Indeed, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles are listed in a dozen of the sixteenth-century Parisian private libraries examined by A. H. Schutz, leading him to conclude that they were ‘popular

72 The inventory is published in Roger Doucet, Les Bibliothèques parisiennes au XVIe siècle (Paris: Picard, 1956), pp. 83-89; the bundle of Cent Nouvelles nouvelles is listed as no. 6. 73 Veyrin-Forrer estimated the cost of a ream of paper at 10 to 25 sols tournois for the early sixteenth century. See ‘Fabriquer’, p. 274. The livre tournois was divided into 20 sols, each of which was divided into 12 deniers. Gilles’s inventory is recorded, however, in ‘monnaie parisis’, which had a 25 per cent greater value than the currency of Tours. The livre parisis was worth 25 sols tournois, and each sol parisis was thus worth 15 deniers tournois. If 28 s. corresponded to 2.8 reams of paper (1400 sheets) @10 sols, and each copy consisted of 154 leaves, then there might be 8-9 copies in the box. 74 Valued at 6 l. 6 s. (monnaie parisis). See Doucet, Les Bibliothèques, pp. 91-104, no. 138. 75 Veyrin-Forrer, ‘Fabriquer’, p. 275. 76 Rambaud elaborates on the reasons for the relative lack of scholarly attention to Trepperel as opposed to Vérard, in ‘L’atelier’, p. 124.

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from the beginning’.77 A review of more than 900 collections in Amiens, however, included only one citation of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, an inventory from 1518 of the library of a ‘procureur’ (‘lawyer’).78 The extant copies do give us some idea of ownership. Of the five known copies of Vérard’s first edition, one belonged to the Count of Angoulême since it is cited in the inventory of his library drafted at his death.79 This copy is now in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris,80 which raises the question of why the king himself did not have a copy.81 Louis XI may well have owned a manuscript copy, but if so it remains unknown. Charles VIII had been on the throne for three years and was sixteen years old when Vérard published his first edition of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, but the bookseller did not begin to offer him his numerous deluxe copies until 1490 or thereabouts. Not surprisingly, given her Burgundian heritage, Margaret of Austria also owned a copy of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles which passed to Mary of Hungary and thence to the Bibliothèque de Bourgogne.82 Now in the Royal Library in Brussels, it is a copy of Vérard’s second edition. One wonders how many other women might have collected this work. At least one, Marie Grenet, signed her name in a copy of Vérard’s second edition, now in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, as did other members of the family prior to 1544.83

77 Alexander Hermann Schutz, Vernacular Books in Parisian Private Libraries of the Sixteenth Century according to the Notarial Inventories (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, [1955]), p. 40. 78 Antoine de Cocquerel, whose inventory of 13 August 1518 included 50 (49) books. Albert Labarre, Le Livre dans la vie amiénoise du seizième siècle. L’enseignement des inventaires après décès, 1503-76 (Paris, Louvain: Beatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1971), pp. 63, 214. This lawyer and owner is discussed further in Chapter 4 below. 79 Edmond Sénemaud, La Bibliothèque de Charles d’Orléans, Comte d’Angoulême au château de Cognac en 1496 (Paris: A. Claudin, 1861), no. 47. 80 Rés Y2-174. 81 The inventory of the royal library made at Blois in 1518 contains a troubling reference to ‘Boccace des cent nouvelles Nouvelles’. In his edition, Catalogue de la Bibliothèque de François Ier à Blois en 1518 (Paris: Librairie A. Franck, 1863, p. 9), H. Michelant identified this as MS fr. 239 now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, but the doubling of ‘nouvelles’ raises the question of a confusion between title and author. The later edition by Henri Omont, Anciens Inventaires et catalogues de la Bibliothèque Nationale, tome I: La Librairie royale à Blois, Fontainebleau et Paris au XVIe siècle (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1908, p. 5), makes no mention of the anomaly. 82 Marguerite Debae, La Bibliothèque de Marguerite d’Autriche. Essai de reconstitution d’après l’inventaire de 1523-24 (Louvain-Paris: Peeters, 1995), pp. 431-33, no. 304. The book is now Brussels, BR, Inc. B 521. 83 Other signatures in this copy (Rés 4o BL 4389) include those of René Grenet (Grevet?) and Katherin Denise. Bound in a magnificent mosaic binding of red morocco by Padeloup (c. 1720), it has been digitized on Gallica https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/ bpt6k1511324d.r=Cent%20nouvelles%20nouvelles?rk=42918;4

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As for later editions, one copy of Jean Trepperel’s edition (no. 4) is bound in a contemporary blind-stamped calf binding and bears the sixteenth-century signature of ‘Julii Landi’ on the title page.84 The Library of Congress copy of the Veuve Trepperel-Janot edition (no. 6) bears an in­ scription dated 1518: ‘Ce present liure apartient a Laurent Viard grenetier de Charroles lequel l’acheta l’an mil v c. et dix huit. Qui le treuvera si luy rende et il payera voulentiers le vin’ (‘The present book belongs to Laurent Viard, granger of Charolles, who bought it in the year 1518. Whoever finds it, may he return it, and he [Viard] will pay him willingly in wine’). The reference to Charolles demonstrates that readers in Burgundian regions acquired Parisian editions of the text.

Conclusion The offer to buy a drink for whoever returns a copy of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles to its rightful owner is perhaps the most appropriate conclusion for any discussion of the text. Nevertheless, the survey of its early printed editions calls perhaps for a few other observations. First, the text provided printers with an opportunity for an abundantly illustrated volume whose pictures undoubtedly contributed to its popularity. Vérard certainly capi­ talized on that idea, as did his successors, even if we modern readers now find many of the woodcuts repetitious or related only marginally to the stories. The number of printed editions launched by Vérard in 1486 is in stark contrast to the single extant manuscript, and it indicates that the work was popular at least until the mid-sixteenth century. The fact that so few copies remain of any of the thirteen editions suggests that the book was well read. While modern editions have focused on the manuscript, readers closer to the text’s origins must have known it instead from the printed text – justification, no doubt, for undertaking a new edition based on Vérard’s text, as Luciano Rossi proposed more than twenty years ago.85 It was certainly Vérard who established the model for the dozen editions that succeeded his, but by 1540 the work seems to have faded from French publishers’ interests. A selection of the nouvelles was published in English translation in London c. 1557 under the title ‘The Deceyte of Women’,86 thereby placing the text in the tradition of antifeminist works, a connec­ tion that was already established by the woodcuts from the Lamentations of Matheolus used in the Trepperel editions. Adaptations of the Cent Nouvelles

84 Now in the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Masson 612. 85 Rossi, ‘Pour une édition’. 86 London: [W. Copland] for Abraham Vele c. 1557; also London: W. Copland for J. Wyght, c. 1558. The edition includes CNN1, 13, 16, 27, 28, 34, 37, 38, 61. On the title page of both editions is the familiar image of Aristotle ridden by Phyllis.

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nouvelles were made in the sixteenth century in English and in Dutch.87 The next edition in French was produced by Jacques Auber in Rouen before 1660,88 and another in Cologne (i.e. Amsterdam) in 1701 with illus­ trations designed by the renowned Dutch artist Romeyn de Hooghe and engraved by G. van der Gouwen. Not until the mid-nineteenth century does the French text receive critical attention. Having begun his career with the publication of Boccaccio’s De­ cameron, Anthoine Vérard undoubtedly viewed the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles as a viable venture in publishing, and his astute sense of the market was again validated. Vérard’s two incunables established the typographical model for the Parisian editions, and his text was copied by the Lyon edi­ tions as well. His assertion that ‘Monseigneur’ referred to King Louis XI, which was repeated in all subsequent editions, exacerbated the nagging question of authorship, and his royal presentation woodcut relegated the Burgundian court to second place, where it remained throughout the sixteenth-century editions by virtue of an unillustrated prologue printed at the end of the table of contents. Still, as all the editions insist in their titles or colophons, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles remain for their readers and listeners ‘des comptes plaisans et recreatifz pour deviser en toutes compaignies par joyeuseté’ (‘entertaining and amusing tales to recount joyously in any company’).

87 Dirk Coigneau, ‘Wrapped in Rhetoric: The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles and Dutch Rederijker Literature’, in The Multilingual Muse. Transcultural Poetics in the Burgundian Netherlands, ed. by Adrian Armstrong and Elsa Strietman (Cambridge: Legenda, 2017), pp. 106-31. 88 Auber died in 1660. The edition contains 95 nouvelles, unillustrated but with a summary before each.

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Appendix I. Prologue to the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles

 

A

4

8

12

16

Glasgow Manuscript (Sweetser ed.)

Vérard edition 1486 (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174, fols a1r‑a1v)

A mon treschier et tresredoubté seigneur, Monseigneur le duc de Bourgoigne, de Brabant, etc.

A mon tresredoubté seigneur. Monseigneur le duc de Bourgoingne et de Brebant

Comme ainsi soit qu’entre les bons

Comme ainsi soit que entre les bons

et prouffitables passe temps, le tresgracieux

et proffitables passetemps, le tresgracieux

exercice de lecture et d’estude soit de grande et

exercice de lecture et d’estude soit de grande et

sumptueuse recommendacion, duquel, sans

sumptueuse recommandacion, duquel, sans

flaterie, mon tresredoubté seigneur, vous estes

flaterie, mon tresdoubté seigneur, vous estes

treshaultement doé, Je, vostre tresobeissant

haultement et largement doué, Je, vostre tresobeissant

serviteur, desirant, comme je doy, complaire a

serviteur, desirant complaire, comme je doy, a

toutes voz treshaultes et tresnobles intencions en

toutes voz haultes et (fol. a1v) tresnobles intencions en

façon a moy possible, ose et presume ce present

façon a moy possible, ose ce present

petit oeuvre, a vostre requeste et

petit euvre, a vostre commandement et

advertissement mis en terme et sur piez, vous

advertissement mis en terme et sur piez, vous

presenter et offrir; suppliant treshumblement que

presenter et offrir. Suppliant treshumblement que

agreablement soit receu, qui en soy contient et

agreablement soit receu, qui en soy contient et

traicte cent histoires assez semblables en matere,

traicte Cent hystoires assez semblables en matiere,

sans attaindre le subtil et tresorné langage du

sans attaindre le subtil et tresorné langaige du

livre de Cent Nouvelles. Et se peut intituler le

livre de Cent nouvelles. Et se peut intituler le

livre de Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. Et pource que

livre de Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. Et pource que

122

 

20

24

28

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Glasgow Manuscript (Sweetser ed.)

Vérard edition 1486 (Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-174, fols a1r‑a1v)

les cas descriptz et racomptez ou dit livres [sic]

les cas descripz et racomptez oudit livre

de Cent Nouvelles advindrent la pluspart es

de Cent nouvelles advindrent la pluspart es

marches et metes d’Ytalie, ja long temps a,

marches et mettes des Ytalies, ja long temps a,

neantmains toutesfoiz, portant et retenant

neantmoins toutesfois, portans et retenans

nom de Nouvelles, se peut tresbien et

tousjours nom de nouvelles, se peut tresbien et

par raison fondée en assez

par raison fondée convenablement en assez

apparente verité ce present livre intituler de Cent

apparente verité ce present livre intituler de Cent

Nouvelles nouvelles, jasoit que advenues soient

Nouvelles nouvelles, Ja soit ce qu’elles soyent

es parties de France, d’Alemaigne,

advenues es parties de France, d’Alemaigne,

d’Angleterre, de Haynau, de Brabant et aultres

d’Angleterre, de Haynault, de Flandres, de Brebant,

lieux; aussi pource que l’estoffe, taille et

etc. Aussi pource que l’estoffe, taille et

fasson d’icelles est d’assez fresche memoire et de

façon d’icelles est d’assz fresche memoire et de

myne beaucop nouvelle.

myne beaucop nouvelle.

C

De Dijon, l’an M.IIII .XXXII (sic)

Et notez que par toutes les nouvelles ou il est dit par Monseigneur il est entendu par Monseigneur le daulphin lequel depuis a succedé a la couronne, et est le roy Loys unsieme, car il estoit lors es pays du duc de Bourgoingne.

VARIANTS from the Vérard edition in later editions (Editions 7-8 not available for comparison). line A Dedication lacking in all other editions. line 1 Editions 9-12 Lors comme; line 2 Editions 6, 9-12 tres proffitables.

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line 5 Editions 2, 3, 6, 9-12 tresredoubte; line 6 Editions 6, 9-12 treshaultement et tres largement. line 8 Editions 9-12 treshaultes et. line 14 Editions 9-12 et aussi traicte. line 20 Editions 9-12 et es mettes. line 22 Edition 12 se peuvent. line 29 Editions 9-12 d’icelle.

Appendix II. Editions of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles 1. Paris: Anthoine Vérard, 24 Dec 1486 2°, a10 b-d8 e6 f-s8 t10 (154 ff); 2 cols @36 lines, 102B Title: none Colophon: Cy finissent les cent nouuelles nouuel || les composees et recitees par nouuelles || gens de puis na gueres/et imprimees a || paris le .xxiiii.iour de de­ cembre Mil || CCCC.lxxx.et vi. p[ar] a[n]thoineverard li || braire demourant a paris sur le pont || nostre dame a lymage saint iehan leua[n]- || geliste ou au palaiz au premier pillier || deuant la chappelle ou on cha[n]te la messe || de messeigneurs les presidens. || [mark Vérard, Renouard 1087] Illustrations: 99 small (40 woodcuts with repeats), 2 large, Vérard’s mark; no illustration for CNN66. Copies (5): New Haven, YUL BEIN 1974 + 39 (Provenance: Edouard Rahir, Cortlandt F. Bishop, Edmée Maus) New York, PML 493, ChL 1454 (lacks 12 fols: a1 [replaced in ms facsimile], s8-t10 [replaced in ms.]; Provenance: Roxburghe, Marlborough, WatsonTaylor, Utterson, Bennett, Pierpont Morgan; binding: nineteenth-century English gilt-tooled gr. mor.) Paris, BnF Rés Y2-174 (lacks fol. a10; Provenance: Angoulême) (Gallica: http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb307448190) Washington, DC, 393 Rosenwald Coll. (Provenance: M.L. de Clinchamp, L. Double; binding: red mor. Trautz-Bauzonnet): https://www.loc.gov/ item/49038221/ private coll. (Sotheby’s 1998; Provenance: Bertin, Tufton, Fairfax-Murray, Bodmer, Schäfer) References: Bechtel N-70, Brunet 1732, CIBN C-216, FB 9611, Goff N-277, GW M27263, ISTC in00277000, Macf 4, Tchemerzine IV, 64-5, USTC 765704

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2. Paris: Anthoine Vérard, s.d. (inter 8 May 1498 and 25 Oct 1499) 2°, aa6 bb4 b-v6 x4 AA-GG6 HH8 (178 ff); 2 cols @36 lines, 119B Title (aa1r): LEs cent nouuelles nouuelles. Colophon (HH7v): Cy finissent les Cent nou- || uelles nouuelles composees & re|| citees par nouuelles gens de puis naguieres et Imrimees [sic]89 a Paris. || Par] anthoyne verard libraire de || moura[n]t a paris sur le pont nostre || dame a lymage saint iehan leuan || geliste ou au palais au premier pil || lier deua[n]t la chappelle ou on chan || te la messe de messeigneurs les pre || sidens. || [HH8r: mark Vérard, Renouard 1088] Illustrations: 95 small (35 woodcuts), 1 large, Vérard’s mark; no illustration for CNN51, 52, 63, 64, 66. Copies (6): Brussels, BR, Inc. B 521 London, BL, IB 41194 (title replaced by pen-and-ink facsimile) Oxford, Bodleian, Douce N 291 (binding: 18th century gold-tooled red mo­ rocco) Paris, BArs, Rés 4o BL 4389 (binding: Padeloup c. 1720; Provenance: Gaignat) (Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1511324d/f1.image) Paris, BnF Rés Y2-175 (Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bp­ t6k8713289z) Paris, MBAVP, Dutuit 496 References: Bechtel N-71, BMC VIII, 92, Brunet 1733, CIBN C-217, FB 9612, ISTC in00277300, GW M27269, Macf 106, Tchemerzine IV, 68, USTC 70537, 767303. 3. Paris: Nicolas Des Prez, 3 Feb. 1505 2°, a-v6 (120 ff); 2 cols @44 lines, 96B Title (grotesque L): LEs cent nouuel || les nouuelles. || Contenant en soy cent chapitres et hystoires ou nouueaulx comptes plaisans et || recreatiz pour deuiser en toutes compaignies. --- for Durand Gerlier: Colophon (v5v): Cy finissent les cent nouueaulx co[m]= || ptes des cent nouuelles nouuelles com= || posees et recitees par nouuelles gens de || puis nagueres: et Imprimees a paris || par Nicolas desprez. Le .iii.iour de fre [sic] || uier.

89 Cited from BnF Rés Y2-175; the word has been corrected in the Arsenal copy to “Imprimees” and the spacing adjusted by deleting the period after “Paris”.

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Lanmil.v.cens et cinq. Pour || Maistre durand gerlier marchant Li= || braire iure de luniuersite de paris De= || mourant en la rue des mathurins a len || seigne delestrille faulx veau. || [mark Durand Gerlier, Renouard 361] copy: Paris, BnF, Rés Y2-176 (Gallica: http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/ cb33290249w lacks fol. k4) --- for Guillaume Eustace 1505, 2° Colophon (v5v): Cy finissent les cent nouueaulx co[m]= || ptes des cent nouuelles nouuelles com= || posees et recitees par nouuelles gens de || puis nagueres: et Imprimees a paris || par Nicolas desprez. Le .iii.iour de fre [sic] || uier. Lanmil.v.cens et cinq. Pour || Guillaume eustace marchant Libraire || tenant sa bouticque dedens la grant sal= || le du palais au troiziesme pillier du co= || ste de la chappelle ou len chante la messe || de messieurs les presidens. || [mark Guillaume Eustace, Renouard 309] copy: Oxford, Bodleian, Douce N290 --- for Jean Petit, c. 1505 (Brunet I, 1733) – no copy known Illustrations: 100 small (25 woodcuts), 1 large, publisher’s mark. References: Bechtel N-72 (Gerlier), Brunet I, 1733 (Gerlier, Petit), BP16_100499, FB 9614 (Eustace), Moreau I (1505): 42 (Gerlier), Tchemerzine IV, 66 (Ger­ lier, Petit), BP16_100499 (Gerlier), USTC 7939 (Eustace). 4. Paris: Jean Trepperel, s.d. (c. 1507-11) 4o, a8 b4 c8 d4 e4 f8 g4 h8 i4 k4 l8 m4 n8 o4 p8 q4 r8 s4 t8 v4 x4 y8 z4 &8 A-C4 (152 ff); 2 cols @39 lines, 83B Title (in red and black): LEs cent nouuelles/nou= ||uelles. Contenant en soy || Ce[n]t chapitres et hystoires/ ou nou || ueaulx comptes plaisans & recrea || tiz pour deuiser en toutes compai || gnies par ioyeusete. [woodcut of man ‘Bruyt de’ and woman ‘nouuelle’ separated by a castle]. Colophon (C6r; cited from Tchemerzine): Cy finissent les ce[n]tnouueaux || comptes des cent nouuelles nouuelles composees et recites p[ar] || nouuelles gens de puis nagueres et. Imprimes a paris Par || Jehan trepperel Imprimeur et libraire. Demourant en la || Rue neufue Nostre dame A lenseigne de lescude France. || A Paris. || [woodcut (84×100 mm) of man and woman on horseback, greeting each other in the forest, empty banderoles above their heads, a dog and a rabbit run on the grass below]

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C6v: mark of Jean Trepperel (per Tchemerzine; lacking in only known copy) Illustrations: 94 small (29 woodcuts), 3 large; no illustration for CNN27, 48, 64, 75, 79, 97. Copy: Paris, ENSBA, Masson 612 (144 ff, lacks all after fol. A4; Provenance: Julii Landi (16e s., Vente Rahir, Solar [1860]); Binding: veau foncé sur ais de bois, comportant une plaque estampée à froid, des rinceaux au motif de trèfle à quatre feuilles entourant une plaque centrale divisée en quatre compartiments verticaux, les deux extérieurs à motif de grappes de raisin, les deux centraux à motif de trèfles. References: Bechtel N-73, Brunet 1734, Tchemerzine IV, 69 5. Paris: Michel Le Noir, s.d. (c. 1510-20) 4o, a8-b4 C6 d4 e8 f4 g8 h4 i6 k4 l8 m4 n8 o4 p8 q4 r8 s4 t8 v4 x4 y8 z4 &8 A4 B4 C6 (154 ff); 2 cols @39 lines, 84B Title (in red and black): LEs cent nouuelles/nouuel || les. Contena[n]t en soy Cent || chappitres et hystoires/ ou nouue= || aulx comptes plaisans & recreatitz || pour deuiser en toutes co[m]paignies || par ioyeusete. (woodcut of man ‘Bruit de’ and woman ‘Nouuelle’ separated by a castle). a1v: [woodcut of man and woman on horseback, greeting each other in the forest, a dog and a rabbit run below, empty banderoles above their heads)]; Sensuit la table des cent || nouuelles Colophon (C6r): Cy finissent les ce[n]t nouueaux || comptes des cent nouuelles nouuelles composees et recites p[ar] || nouuelles ge[n]s de puis nagueres/ & Imprimees Pour michel le || noir Libraire iure Demourant en la Rue sainct iacques a Len || seigne de la Rose blanche. a Paris || [woodcut of man and woman on horseback, greeting each other in the forest, empty banderoles above their heads, a dog and a rabbit run on the grass below] C6v: mark of Michel Le Noir (Renouard 620). Illustrations: 94 small (34 woodcuts), 2 large, mark Michel Le Noir; no illustration for CNN27, 48, 64, 75, 79, 97. Copies (2): New York, PML 1028 (E2 47 D) (lacking 13 leaves: a1-8, t8, B2-3, C1, C6; fols t6, B2-3, C1 supplied in MS facsimile, fols 1-3 in type facsimile; Text ends C5v: Finis (in larger type); Provenance: Hoym, Garrick, Turner, Buckley, Toovey; binding: 18th century dark. gr. mor., gilt with Hoym arms).

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Paris, BnF Rothschild 1694 (Provenance: Pichon (1869), Bignon (1873); binding: mar. bl., signé Bauzonnet, 1838) References: Bechtel N-75, Brunet 1734, Picot, Cat. Rothschild, II, p. 245-47; not USTC 55582 6. Paris: Veuve Trepperel et Jean Jehannot, s.d. (inter 1515-36), 4o, a8 b4 c6 d4 e8 f4 g8 h4 i6 k4 l8 m4 n8 o4 p8 q4 r8 s4 t8 v4 x4 y8 z4 &8 A4 B4 C6 (154 ff); 2 cols @39 lines Title: LEs ce[n]t nouuelles || Contenant Cent || hystoires: ou nou || ueaulx co[m]ptes plaisans a || deuiser en toutes compai || gnies par ioyeusete. || [woodcut of man ‘Bruyt de’ and woman ‘Nouuelle’ separated by a tree]. Colophon (C6r): Cy finissent les cent nouueaulx || comptes des Cent nouuelles nouuelles composees et recytees par || nouuelles ge[n]s depuis nagueres. Nouuelleme[n]t imprimees a paris || par la veufue feu Jehan trepperel et Jehan iehannot. Libraire iure || en luniuersite de paris. Demourans en la rue neufue nostre dame || a lenseigne de lescu de France. || [woodcut of man and woman on horseback, greeting each other in the forest, empty banderoles above their heads, a dog and a rabbit run below] Illustrations: 94 small (27 woodcuts), 2 large; no illustration for CNN27, 48, 64, 75, 79, 97. Copy: Washington, LC, PQ1553 .C3 1512 (Sig. B₂ mutilated, missing text sup­ plied in MS; Provenance L. Viart 1518, Guyon de Sardière) References: Tchemerzine, IV, p. 70 b, Brunet 1735; https://lccn.loc.gov/un­ k81034760 (old cat. 1510); https://lccn.loc.gov/76464849 (corrected catalogue 1512) 7. Paris: Philippe Le Noir, s.d.90 (c. 1524; suit l’ed.#6 – Moreau) 4o, a8 b-d4 e8 f-g4 h8 i4 k8 l-o4 p8 q-s4 t8 v-z4 &4 A8 B-F4 G6 (154 ff); 2 cols @39 lines Title (in red and black, within decorative border): Les ce[n]t nou: || uelles nouuel || les: contena[n]t || ce[n]t hystoires/ ou nouueaulx co[m]ptes || plaisans a deuiser en toutes bonnes || co[m]paignies par maniere de ioyeuse= || te. Jmprime nouuellement a paris. || xxx. C. || ¶ On les ve[n]t a paris en la rue || sainct Jaques a lenseigne de la || rose blanche couronnee. 90 An edition by Philippe Le Noir, dated c. 1520, is cited by USTC 70538, FB 9615, but no surviving copy is known, and the edition may be the same as that listed as c. 1524

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Colophon (G6): Cyfinissent les cent nouueaulx comptes des nouuelles || nou­ uelles/ composees et recites par nouuelles gens depuis || naguieres. Nouuelle­ ment imprimees a Paris par Phi= || lippe Le noir demourant en grant Rue sainct Jacques a || lenseigne de la Roze blanche couronnee. || [woodcut of a man in a long robe showing a mirror reflecting a cadaver to a lady] G6v: small woodcut as used for CNN1 Illustrations: 94 small (29 woodcuts), 1 large; no illustration for CNN27, 35? 44?, 48, 75, 79, 97. Copies (3): The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KW 227 F 7 (c. 1500) London, BL, C.7.a.13 (c. 1530) Wolfenbüttel, HAB 15.5 Eth (2) Refs: Bechtel N-76, BP16_104801, FB 9616, Moreau III (c. 1524): 627, Tchemerzine IV, 67 (c. 1520), BP16_104801 (c. 1524: BL, HAB), ISTC 00277500, GW M27265, Pennink 1655, USTC 768431, 55582 (mistakenly adds Rothschild to the 3 copies listed above) 8. Paris: par la Veuve Trepperel, s.d. (c. 1525-30) 4o, a8 b-d4 e8 f-g4 h8 i(?)4 k8 l-o4 p8 q-s4 t8 v-z4 &4 A8 B-F4 G6 (154 ff); 2 cols @39 lines Title (in red and black): SEnsuyuent Les || ce[n]tnouuelles: co[n] || ten[a]nt cent hystoi || res/ ou nouueaulx comptes plaisa[n]s a deui= || ser en toutes bonnes compaignies par ma= || niere de ioyeusete. Imprime nouuellement || a Paris. xxx. C. || [woodcut of man ‘Bruyt de’ and woman ‘Nouuelle.’ separated by a tree]. ¶On les ve[n]d a paris en la rue neufue no || stre dame. A lenseigne de lescu de France. || Colophon (G6): ¶Cy finissent les ce[n]t || nouueaulx comptes des cent nouuelles nou || uelles:composees et recitees par nouuelles || gens depuis naguieres. N*ouuellement im || primees a Paris par la veufue feu Jehan || trepperel Demourant en la rue neufue No || stre dame a lenseigne de lescu de France. || [woodcut of a man and lady standing in a garden; banderoles are blank, and the upper line of the woodcut is excised] (*N is printed upside down) G6v: mark of Jean Trepperel (Renouard 1074) Illustrations: 94? small (32 woodcuts), 2 large, mark Jean Trepperel; no illustration for CNN27, 48? 68? 79, 97.

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Copy: Munich, BSB, Res. 4o P.o. Gall. 113 (Provenance: Maistre Thomas Alma, https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/resolve/display/bsb10202767.html) Refs: FB 9619, USTC 39130 9. Paris, Jean II Trepperel (Alain Lotrian), s.d. (c. 1529-31; suit l’ed. #7Moreau) 4°; a8 b4-h4 i8 k4 l8 m-p4 q8 r-t4 v8 x-z4 &4 A4-H4 I6 (154 ff); 2 cols @39 lines Title (in red and black, within decorative border): Les ce[n]t nou= || uelles: nou= || uelles: conte= || nant cent histoires ou nouueaulx || comptes plaisa[n]s a deuiser en tou= || tes bonnes compaignies par ma || niere deioyeusete. Imprime nou || uellement a paris. || xxxii. C || ¶On lesvend a parisen la || rue neufue nostre dame aLe[n]= || seigne de Lescu de France.91 Colophon (I6r): ¶Cy finissent les cent || nouueaulx comp tes des nouuelles nouuelles/ composees et re || citees par nouuelles gens depuis naguieres. Nouuellement || imprimees a Paris Pour Jehan Trepperel Demourant en || la rue neufue nostre dame A lenseigne de lescu de France. || [woodcut of battle on ships] I6v: woodcut of man standing in front of a tower in which a woman stands at the window Illustrations: 94 small (13 woodcuts), 2 large; no illustration for CNN27, 48, 64, 75, 79, 97. Copies (3): Manchester, JRUL 11631 Paris, MBAVP, Dutuit 497 (rel. mar. rouge, TrautzBauzonnet) Paris, BnF, Smith-Lesouëf R-81 Refs: Bechtel N-77, BP16_105878, FB 9617=9621, Moreau III (c. 1529): 1685, Tchemerzine IV, 70a, USTC 41463 10. Lyon: Olivier Arnoullet, s.d. (c. 1530) 4°; a-r8 (136 ff.); 40 long lines per page Title (in red and black): Les cent nouuelles. || SEnsuyue[n]t les || ce[n]t nou= || uelles co[n]tenant cent || hystoires/ ou nouueaulx co[m]ptes plaisans || a

91 The red portion is poorly aligned with the black, which may explain why the next Lotrian edition prints these lines totally in red.

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deuiser en toutes bonnes compaignies || par maniere de ioyeusete. Imprime nou= || uellement a Lyon par Oliuier Arnoullet. [woodcut of writer at desk] Colophon (r7v): Cy finissent les cent nouueaulx comptes des cent nouuelles || nouuelles/ co[m]posees et recitees par nouuelles gens despuis na= || guieres. Nouuelleme[n]t imprimees a Lyon sur le rosne par Oli= || uier Arnoullet demourant au pres de nostre dame de confort. r8: woodcut (118×105 mm) of King seated on raised dias, courtiers standing to each side Illustrations: 38 small (14 woodcuts), 2 large; only 38 nouvelles are illustrated: CNN1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 29, 31, 34, 36, 37, 39, 41, 45, 48, 51, 54, 58, 62, 67, 72, 77, 79, 84, 88, 94, 99, 100. Copies (3): Chantilly, MC, IV E 26 London, BL, C 97.b.7 New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Hfa 270J Refs: Baudrier X, 39-40, Bechtel N-78, Brunet 1735, FB 9618, Gültlingen 224:126, Tchemerzine IV, 71, USTC 49827 11. Lyon: Olivier Arnoullet, 12 July 1532 4°; a-r8 (136 ff.); 40 long lines per page Title (in red and black): Les cent nouuelles. || SEnsuyue[n]t les ce[n]t nou= || uelles contenant cent || hystoires nouueaulx || qui sont moult plaisans a racompter en toutes || bonnes compaignies par maniere de ioyeusete. [woodcut of scribe standing behind a counter bearing an inkwell, two men stand before him holding a written page] On les vend a Lyon sur le Rosne aupres de nostre || dame de Confort/ cheulx Oliuier Arnoullet. Colophon (r7v): Cy finissent les cent nouueaulx comptes des cent nouuelles || nouuelles/ composees & recitees par nouuelles gens despuis na || guieres. Nouuellement imprimees le.xii.de Juillet. Mil.ccccc. || xxxii.a Lyon sur le rosne par Oliuier Arnoullet demoura[n]t au || pres de nostre dame de confort. r8: woodcut (118×105 mm) of King seated on raised dais, courtiers standing to each side Illustrations: 38 small (14 woodcuts), 2 large; only 38 nouvelles are illustrated: CNN1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 29, 31, 34, 36, 37, 39, 41, 45, 48, 51, 54, 58, 62, 67, 72, 77, 79, 84, 88, 94, 99, 100. Copies (3):

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London, BL, G10501 Lyon, Bm, Rés 357161 (lacks A-D, R1, R8, replaced by 104 manuscript pages (17th c.?) Provenance: Duvivier; binding: veau fauve 18th c.); https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=7eqim­ mDeKscC&hl=en&pg=GBS.PT129 Paris, BnF, Res Y2-730 Refs: Baudrier X, 64, Bechtel N-79, Brunet 1735, Fairfax-Murray, I, 81, FB 9620, Gültlingen 210:35, Tchemerzine IV, 72, USTC 55834 12. Paris: Denis Janot, Alain Lotrian, s.d (c. 1536) 4o; a⁸ b-h⁴ i⁸ k-z⁴ &⁴ A-L⁴ M⁴ [-]² (154 ff) [signing m3 as mi i]; 2 cols @39 lines Title (in red and black) [within four-block architectural border] Les ce[n]t nou= || uelles : nou= || uelles : conte= || na[n]t cent histoires ou nouueaulx || co[m]ptes plaisa[n]s a deuiser en tou= || tes bo[n]nes compaignies par ma || niere de ioyeusete. Imprime || nouuellement a Paris. || xxxv. C. || ¶On les ve[n]d a Paris en la || rue neufue nostre Dame a || lenseigne de Lescu de France. || Colophon (M6): Cy finissent les cent || nouueaulx comptes des nouuelles nou­ uelles/ || composees & recitees par nouuelles gens de puis || nagueres. Nou­ uellement Imprimees a Pa= || ris par Alain Lotria[n] et Denys Janot Demou || rans en la rue neufue nostre Dame A lenseigne || de lescu de France. || [2 small woodcuts, side by side, from Matheolus]. M6v: mark Denis Janot (Renouard 476) Illustrations: 95 small (23 woodcuts); 2 small unrelated woodcuts on colophon page; no illustrations for CNN27, 48, 75, 79, 97. Copy: Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Library 2014-0102N (ex Huth, Rahir, McKittrick) Refs: Bechtel N-80, BP 16_108071 (suit l’éd. de c. 1529 = BP_105878), Moreau V:65, USTC 76699 13. Paris: Alain Lotrian, c. 1536 4o; a8 b-h4 i8 k-z4 &4 A-L4 M6 (154 ff); 2 cols @39 lines Title (in red and black): Les ce[n]t nou || uelles : nou= || uelles : conte || na[n]t cent hystoires ou nouueaulx || co[m]ptes plaisans a deuiser en tou= || tes bonnes compaignies par ma= || niere de ioyeusete. Imprime nou || uellement

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a Paris. || xxxvi. C. || ¶On les vend a Paris en la || rue neufue nostre Dame a lensei || gne de lescu de France. Colophon (M6): Cy finissent les ce[n]t nou || ueaulx co[m]ptes des nouuelles nouuelles/ composees et recitees par || nouuelles gens depuis || naguieres. Nouuellement Imprimees a || Paris par Alain Lotrian Imprimeur et libraire. Demourant en || la rue neufue nostre Dame a lenseigne de lescu de France. || [4 woodcuts, arranged in a square, one of which was used for CNN1]. M6v: mark Trepperel/ Lotrian (Renouard 1079) Illustrations: 95 small? (23? woodcuts) Copy: Augsburg, UB, 02/III.11.4.3 Refs: Bechtel N-80, BP_108072, FB 9623, Moreau c.1536:66, Tchemerzine IV,71

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Appendix III. CNN4 – Editions 1-9, 11-13

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Chapter 4. Opening and closing the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles Paratext, context and reception, 1469- c. 1550

This chapter and the last two in the present volume seek to historicize our understanding of the literary text by considering the work as a situated use of language at different points in its existence. We begin our exploration of ‘the social logic of the text’ by investigating aspects of the reception of the work in manuscript and print, emphasising the multiple transpositions through which it passed and, in particular, the effect these had upon the ways in which it might (and might not) have been read.1 We will have the opportunity to address some of the particular features of the work’s Nachleben raised in the papers immediately preceding, notably the apparent lack of impact which the work had at the Burgundian court, as Hanno Wijsman demonstrated in Chapter 2; and the long-term effects of Vérard’s interventions in the paratext of his printed edition as discussed by Mary Beth Winn in Chapter 3, which effectively erased the Burgundian origins of the text in favour of a French royal provenance. Our findings also have a bearing on the final section of the volume, which addresses the narrower but fundamental question of the putative genesis of the literary venture as a series of storytelling events at the court of Philip the Good.

Opening up the text in the age of print (1486- c. 1550) Thanks to Anthoine Vérard’s paratext, the humour of the tales could be taken to reflect the attitudes of a small group of powerful men to all

1 Gabrielle Spiegel, ‘History, Historicism and the Social Logic of the Text’, Speculum, 65 (1990), 59-86. Graeme Small • Durham University The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - c. 1550), ed. by Graeme Small, Texte, Codex & Contexte, 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 135–164 10.1484/M.TCC-EB.5.132234

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manner of ‘outgroups’, notably women, townsmen and clerics.2 Within two or three generations at most, however, the reception of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles through the medium of print can be traced among most such audiences. To be sure, the tales had potentially broad appeal given their deliberate association with the Decameron, the French translation of which Vérard had himself edited just one year earlier to launch his publishing career, as we saw in Chapter 3. But the closed frame of the text’s claimed French royal and courtly origins marked out the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles from Boccaccio’s tales, drawing in new readers by means of its particularly historicized paratext. Here was how a king-to-be, who shared a name with the current monarch (Louis XII [1498-1515]) for some audiences of the early printed editions, happened to regale himself in his younger days, among his leading, exclusively male, servants. The exuberance of youthful pastimes and a supposedly privileged insight into elite sociability combined with the patina of recent history to enhance the work’s appeal.3 Processes of cultural transfer, appropriation or subversion could now com­ bine with the reach of the printing press to open up the work to a wider readership. The absence of female storytellers and of any obvious address to a female audience is, as David Fein rightly notes, a major difference between the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles and its Italian model.4 Yet female ownership of Vérard’s edition from 1486 onwards is attested, as we saw above in Chap­ ter 3. To the names cited there, we might add a famous female reader of the work in the first half of the sixteenth century, Margaret of Navarre, author of the Heptameron.5 Female readings (even a princess’s) were bound to take a different view of the text, given that the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles 2 Catherine Emerson, ‘Strangers in the Frame: Inside and Outside the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, French Studies, 72 (2018), 337-49. 3 Olivier Delsaux has recently shown how Vérard had also, just the previous year, altered de Premierfait’s translation of the Decameron to make it more accessible to wider audiences: ‘La “Forme” imprimée du Décaméron de Boccace traduit par Laurent de Premierfait (Paris, A. Vérard, 1485)’, in Le Roman français dans les premiers imprimés, ed. by Anne Schoysman and Maria Colombo Timelli, Civilisation médiévale, 17 (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2016), pp. 25-43. Cf. Anne Robin, ‘Le “Décaméron”, de la traduction de Laurent de Premierfait (1414) à l’imprimé d’Antoine Vérard (1485): une progressive transformation du livre, une progressive substitution de son enseignement’ in Boccaccio e la Francia. Boccace et la France, ed. by Philippe Guérin and Anne Robin (Florence: Franco Cesati editore, 2017), pp. 231-46. For Vérard’s updating of the language of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles to make the work more accessible to a Parisian public, see Alexandra Velissariou, Aspects dramatiques et écriture de l’oralité dans les “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 77 (Paris: Champion, 2012), p. 57. 4 David A. Fein, Displacements of Power. Readings of the ‘Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’ (LanholmOxford, University Press of America, 2003), pp. 2-3. 5 António De Ridder-Vignone, ‘Incoherent Texts? Storytelling, Preaching and the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron 21’, Renaissance Quarterly, 68 (2015), 465-95.

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emerged so explicitly from the interior life of elite men and contain much we may legitimately consider to be rebarbative to women.6 Yet we should also remember that the work belongs to a genre of debate literature which was originally aimed at mixed sex audiences, such as Alain Chartier’s Belle dame sans merci, or others which were intended for female audiences, such as the Évangiles des Quenouilles.7 This last text, much like the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles to which it has been fruitfully compared, presents the reader with multiple elements of the same Decameronian paratext.8 Also written in the Burgundian dominions, this set of tales is told by a group of female collaborators, which are then debated and recorded by a secretary.9 Any discussion prompted by the printed edition of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles among a female readership would include the forming of judgments about the tastes of the conteurs of the tales.10 That the characters in question were specifically identified as a recent king of France and men of his household brought elite male values at the highest social level within the ambit of female judgment. Thanks to Vérard’s editions, as Mary Beth Winn shows in Chapter 3, this self-affirmedly royal and courtly work was also finding its way into bourgeois libraries in Paris, northern France and the Low Countries by the late fifteenth century. One such reader she identifies was Antoine de Cocquerel from Amiens, whom we may discuss here in greater detail as an example of the milieux within which the work was received. Cocquerel’s portrait as master of the poetic and devotional confraternity of NotreDame-Du-Puys hung in Amiens cathedral, depicting him in the company of various illustrious figures, including Louis XII King of France.11 In asso­ ciations such as the Notre-Dame-Du-Puys, nobles and townsmen mingled 6 For evidence from the circle of Isabella of Portugal, Philip the Good’s wife, that the humour typified by the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles was abhorrent to at least some women at the Burgundian court, see Charity Cannon Willard, ‘The Patronage of Isabel of Portugal’, in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. by June Hall McCash (Athens [Georgia]-London: University of Georgia Press, 1996), pp. 306-20 (p. 311). For a reading of CNN4 which explores the rebarbative nature of the work to female readers, see now Catherine Emerson, ‘“Une droicte garenne de cons”: quand les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles s’adressent à un public féminin’, Bien Dire et Bien Aprandre, 36 (Oct. 2021), 247-56. 7 On nouvelles and debate, see Nelly Labère, Défricher le jeune plant: étude du genre de la nouvelle au moyen âge, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 69 (Paris: Champion, 2006), especially pp. 225-88. 8 For a comparison which demonstrates the many ways in which the Évangiles des Quenouilles is a precisely inversed image of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, see Jelle Koopmans, ‘Archéologie des Évangiles des Quenouilles’, in Autour des quenouilles. La parole des femmes (1450-1600), ed. by Jean-François Courouau, Philippe Gardy and Jelle Koopmans, Texte, codex et contexte, 10 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 13-29. 9 Madeleine Jeay (ed.), Les Évangiles des Quenouilles (Paris: J. Vrin, 1985). 10 Emerson, ‘Strangers in the Frame’, p. 349. 11 Stéphanie Deprouw-Augustin, ‘Le Puy d’Amiens peint en 1500, ultime chef-d’œuvre du Maître des Portraits princiers?’, Apprendre à voir (https://deprouw.fr/blog/), 24 June 2019.

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and competed in literary composition, albeit that they claimed to muse on loftier topics than those proposed in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles.12 Perhaps, then, men such as Coquerel did not feel like outsiders when confronted by the closed frame of the tales? After all, he was himself procureur (procurator) of the bishop of Amiens, greffier des élus (secretary to the tax collectors), conseiller (legal adviser) of the bailliage of Amiens and bailli of Moreuil in Picardy, to list his cursus honorum.13 It has even been suggested that the panel he commissioned depicting him in the company of the current king was executed by the ‘Maître des Portraits princiers’, now identified as Jean Beugier, whose other works include a famous depiction of the Burgundian bibliophile and courtier Louis of Bruges, lord of Gruuthuse.14 The example of Cocquerel also suggests that a further group which was sometimes the subject of our tales (but pointedly, it is suggested, never among the tellers) was in fact open to the appeal of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles in the age of print: the légistes et gens de finance (law men and financial officers) on whom princely government relied more and more.15 Different cultural tastes do emerge from comparisons of noble libraries and those of the non-noble fonctionnaires who governed by their side, and in Chapter 10 below we shall provide more detailed grounds for understanding their absence from the venture. But there were also points of intersection between the cultural life of both groups, and many a bureaucrat aspired to the great noble’s lifestyle and mores.16 Vérard at least seems to have considered the technicians of government to be a potential market for his editions, given that he located one of his Parisian shops close to the spot where the gens du Parlement heard mass, presumably to

12 Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘Metaphorical Images of the Sacred Workshop. The Confrérie du puy Notre-Dame of Amiens as a “Hybrid Forum”’, Church History and Religious Culture, 99 (2019), 387-411. 13 Charles Bourdot de Richebourg, Nouveau coutumier général, ou corps des coutumes générales et particulières de France, I (Paris: Claude Robustel, 1724), p. 136; Catalogue du Musée départemental et communal d’antiquités, fondé à Amiens en 1836, par la Société des antiquairies de Picardie (Amiens: Duval et Hermand, 1848), p. 46 (no. 247); Auguste Breuil, La Confrérie de Notre-Dame du puys d’Amiens (Amiens: Duval and Herment, 1854), pp. 24, 32 n.1, 52. 14 Stéphanie Deprouw-Augustin, ‘Jean Beugier, alias le Maître des portraits princiers, un peintre de la fin du XVe siècle entre Amiens, Bruxelles et Bruges’, Revue de l’Art, 208/2 (2020), 17-29. 15 ‘In the Franco-Burgundian team which concocted the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles around the Dauphin at the castle of Genappe, there was not a single legist’: John Bartier Légistes et gens de finance au XVe siècle. Les conseillers des ducs de Bourgogne Philippe le Bon et Charles le Téméraire (Brussels: Duculot, 1952), p. 279. 16 Céline van Hoorebeeck, Livres et lectures des fonctionnaires des ducs de Bourgogne (ca. 1450-1520) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014); Hanno Wijsman, Luxury Bound. Illustrated Manuscript Production and Noble and Princely Book Ownership in the Burgundian Netherlands (1400-1550) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 481-97.

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attract a clientele of lawmen of precisely the kind targeted by the humour of CNN67.17 The man with whom he entered into business to print the first edition of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles in 1486, and who may even have supplied the now-lost source text for that first edition, was himself one of the king’s legal and financial officers, the Parisian bourgeois, royal notary, secretary and auditor of the treasury, Nicole Gilles.18 Gilles was well-read, well-connected in Parisian and Lyonnais literary and publishing circles, and would later become an author in his own right.19 Some of the tales in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles are presented as having emerged from experi­ ences gleaned while serving in matters of government, something which both fonctionnaires and nobles could readily relate to. Of the various ‘outgroups’ who were the subject of laughter and debate in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, in fact, it is really only the clerics who appear to be absent from its attested later owners. Clerics may well have owned copies of the text, of course, and it is worth remembering that at least one is attributed with a tale.20 It is also distinctly possible that clerical views had a bearing upon the work’s reception in the age of print. The placing of several of Boccaccio’s works on the Index in the mid-sixteenth century, and the church’s attempts to control the Decameron’s reception in other ways, had the potential to generate a subversive appeal for the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles.21 Alternatively, condemnation by association could simply restrict the work’s audience: after all, the text explicitly modelled itself both in print and in manuscript on the work of the ‘tres renommé et eloquent Bocace’ (‘the most renowned and eloquent Boccaccio’). As Mary Beth Winn noted above in Chapter 3, the publication history of the text waned markedly towards the middle of the sixteenth century, either because publishers and the public lost interest or, additionally or alternatively, because ecclesiastical attitudes might also have played a part in closing down the reception of the work. At least one reader of MS Hunter 252 thought that imitating Boccaccio merited censure or

17 Velissariou, Aspects dramatiques et écriture de l’oralité, p. 51. 18 Rémy Scheurer, ‘Nicole Gilles et Antoine Vérard’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 128 (1970), 415-19; André Lapeyre and Rémy Scheurer, Les Notaires et secrétairies du roi sous les règnes de Louis XI, Charles VIII et Louis XII (1461-1515), 2 vols (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1978), I, p. 149 (no. 295). 19 Catherine Emerson, ‘Nicole Gilles and Literate Society’, in ‘Le Bel Épy qui foisonne’. Collection and Translation in French Print Networks, 1476-1576, ed. by Catherine Emerson (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2019), pp. 53-70. Gilles’ own Annales et chroniques de France was published in 1492. 20 Michel Baers, Provost of the church of Watten near Saint-Omer (CNN65), discussed further below. 21 Giuseppe Chiecchi and Luciano Troisio, Il Decameron sequestrato: le tre edizioni censurate nel Cinquecento (Milan: Unicopli, 1984).

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Fig. 25. Full folio image of Ms Hunter 252 fol. 66r (CNN28), showing erasure of the reference to Boccaccio by name in the opening sentence. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

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risked proscription: two references to the writer and his work were the subject of sustained attempts at erasure on folio 66 of the codex (Fig. 25). All of these factors help explain the broad appeal of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles and the timing of their multiple appearances in print in the first half of the sixteenth century. This seemingly closed text produced by and for a narrow elite was opened up to wider interpretation and debate by a range of audiences who had so often formed the subject of its original humour. It is important to remember that all such readings were framed by the paratext which Vérard had created: not simply the obvious connection to Boccaccio (which also figured in the manuscript paratext), but the claim that these were stories told by a recently-deceased king in his younger years, and by members of his entourage. This commercially-motivated ploy opened a seemingly closed text to more (and more diverse) audiences than would otherwise have been reached. It was therefore at least as much the new paratext of the printed edition, rather than simply the technology of printing, which opened the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles to new audiences.

A closed book? The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles and Charles the Bold Even before that transposition effected by print and the new paratext, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles had begun to lose contact decisively with the milieu described as the original locus of storytelling event(s), namely the household of Philip the Good. As Hanno Wijsman has noted in Chapter 2 above, the death of the old Duke meant that the court which was destined to receive the redaction of those tales was that of Philip’s son, Charles the Bold, where – unusually among works commissioned for a duke – the text appears to have made little or no impact. Philip the Good himself may never have opened the splendid but now-lost manuscript of the work he commissioned before his death in June 1467, given that it was described as ‘tout neuf ’ (‘brand new’) in the February 1469 inventory.22 Had the manuscript been presented to the original patron earlier, a process akin to the act of publication, the work’s fate might have been very different indeed. Charles the Bold’s court was still connected by networks of service, kinship and sociability to its predecessor, to be sure, but it was also quite different in fundamental respects, as the court of the son so often is in comparison to the father’s. It will be argued here that the paratext which

22 The manuscript was one of five identified as ‘brand new’ in the 1469 inventory: Corpus Catalogorum Belgii: The Medieval Booklists of the Southern Low Countries. Volume V: Dukes of Burgundy, ed. by Thomas Falmagne and Baudouin Van den Abeele (Louvain: Peeters, 2016), pp. 223, 230, 233, 241.

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directed the earliest possible readings of the manuscript Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (tales from Philip the Good’s household) had the effect of closing down, not to say slamming shut, wider interest in the work at the Burgun­ dian court, in stark contrast to Vérard’s paratext (tales told by a king-to-be and his servants) which would open the printed work to different, wider publics. At first, at least, the work did remain demonstrably close to the net­ works from which, according to the paratextual evidence, it had emerged. The final inventory of Philip the Good’s books was drawn up at the ducal palace in Lille in the chamber of Jacques de Brégilles, chamber valet (valet de chambre) and jewel keeper (garde des joyaux) of both Philip and Charles the Bold.23 Brégilles’ duties had long included overseeing the confection and safe-keeping of the Duke’s precious books: for each new acquisition, he issued a receipt to the producer of the book in question, and was therefore well placed to know a great deal about any work he ever admitted to the Duke’s collection.24 Brégilles’ longstanding colleague in this work until the death of Philip the Good has been uncontroversially identified as the narrator of CNN78, Jean Martin. Martin was a chamber valet (valet de chambre) and the first butler (premier sommelier) of the chamber.25 Also involved in making the 1469 inventory was David Aubert, secretary, scribe, and the principal producer of luxury manuscripts for Philip the Good in the early 1460s.26 Aubert’s connections with the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles have been the subject of speculation which is unlikely to be resolved, at least on the current record evidence.27 We can say for certain,

23 Jacques Paviot, ‘Jacques de Brégilles, garde-joyaux des ducs de Bourgogne Philippe le Bon et Charles le Téméraire’, Revue du Nord, 77 (1995), 313-20 (p. 316). 24 Paviot, ‘Jacques de Brégilles’, p. 315; Céline van Hoorebeeck, ‘Du “Garde des joyaux de mondit seigneur” au “garde de la bibliothèque de la cour”. Remarques sur le personnel et le fonctionnement de la librairie de Bourgogne (XVe-XVIIe siècles)’, in La Librairie des ducs de Bourgogne. Manuscrits conservés à la Bibliothèque royale de Belgique. IV. Textes historiques, ed. by Bernard Bousmanne, Tania van Hemelryck and Céline van Hoorebeeck (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), pp. 25-47. On Brégilles, see now also additional information in Cécile Becchia, Les Bourgeois et le prince. Dijonnais et Lillois auprès du pouvoir bourguignon (1419-77), Bibliothèque d’histoire médiévale, 22 (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2019). 25 On Jean Martin, see Graeme Small, ‘Of Burgundian Dukes, Counts, Saints and Kings (14 C.E. – c. 1520)’, in The Ideology of Burgundy. The Promotion of National Consciousness, 1364-1565, ed. by D’Arcy Jonathan Dacre Boulton and Jan R. Veenstra, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 145 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 151-94 (pp. 162-64). Sommelier might also be rendered as ‘personal steward’, in the sense of ‘officer of the chamber charged with the care of the physical body’ of the prince: cf. Jun Hee Cho, ‘Court in the Market: the “Business” of a Princely Court in the Burgundian Netherlands, 1467-1503’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 2013), p. 69, n. 8. 26 Pierre Cockshaw, ‘La Famille du copiste David Aubert’, Scriptorium, 22 (1968), pp. 279-87 (p. 284, n. 51). 27 Richard E. F. Straub, David Aubert, “escripvain” et “clerc”, Faux Titre no. 96 (AmsterdamAtlanta [Georgia]: Rodopi, 1995), pp. 334-35. It has been suggested that David Aubert may

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however, that he had come into ducal service as the ‘writer and servant’ of another conteur who is readily identifiable, the chamberlain Jean de Créquy (CNN14), famously a leading arbiter of literary tastes at the court of Philip the Good.28 Although the old Duke may never have seen the splendid new volume which he commissioned, with its two columns of text and its fine miniatures as described in Chapter 1 above by Richard Gameson, at this earliest stage in its material existence the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles nevertheless remained closely bound up with networks which were attributed with the tales in the first place. But courts are forever changing, as Walter Map, parodying Saint Au­ gustine, once said. Some of the identifiable storytellers had predeceased the old Duke, such as the third-most prolific tale-teller Philippe de Loan, an equerry of the stable (escuier d’escuierie) (CNN5, 20-1, 38, 66-7, 74, 76, 95, 100) who died sometime before January 1466, or Michel Baers, Provost of the church of Watten (CNN65), who died in October 1462.29 Others still had retired from office soon after Philip the Good’s demise,

have been the original acteur charged with redacting the collection of tales, a view advanced on the basis of linguistic comparisons between the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles and some of Aubert’s attested work: Luciano Rossi, ‘David Aubert autore delle Cent Nouvelles nouvelles? La genesi della novella francese e l’attività letteraria alla corte borgognona nel Quattrocento’, Cultura neolatina, 36 (1976), 94-117. The evidence is suggestive but has not won widespread acceptance. A second possible link discussed by Straub is the fact that David Aubert’s brother, Jean II, was ducal receiver-general of Hainaut (1454-63), and therefore may be the anonymous holder of that office who was a main protagonist of CNN1, a tale told by the Duke. Equally, however, there were several earlier receivers of Hainaut whom Philip had appointed, and who might be meant (Guillaume du Gardin, Jean Rasoir etc.): see Inventaire des archives des chambre des comptes, précédé d’une notice historique sur ces anciennes institutions, by Louis Prosper Gachard, Alexandre Pinchart and Hubert Nélis, II (Brussels: M. Hayez, 1845), p. 507. 28 Pascale Charron and Marc Gil, ‘Les Enlumineurs des manuscrits de David Aubert’, in Les Manuscrits de David Aubert, “escripvain” bourguignon, ed. by Danielle Queruelle, Culture et civilisations médiévales, 18 (Paris: Presses universitaires de Paris-Sorbonne, 1999), pp. 81-100 (p. 82). For Créquy, see M. Gil, ‘Le Mécénat littéraire de Jean V de Créquy, conseiller et chambellan de Philippe le Bon’, Eulalie, 1 (1998), 69-95: Charity Canon Willard, ‘Patrons at the Burgundian court: Jean V de Créquy and his Wife, Louise de la Tour’, in The Search for a Patron in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. by David and Rebecca Wilkins (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellon Press, 1996), pp. 55-62; Victorien Leman, ‘Du Mécénat littéraire à la mythification: l’exemple de Jean V de Créquy au XVe siècle’, in Lire, danser et chanter au château. La culture châtelaine (XIIIe-XVIIe siècles), ed. by Jean-Marie Cauchies (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 109-25. 29 Here and at other points I will refer to the rich data of the Prosopographia curiae burgundicae (hereinafter, PCB): see http://www.prosopographia-burgundica.org/. For Philippe de Loan, see PCB Numéro d’identification (hereinafter, no id.) 2097 (Loan). For Baers, see Aimé Leroy, ‘Catalogues des prévots de l’église conventualle de Notre-Dame de Watène, ès-confins de Flandres occidentalle, sus la rivière d’Ath, diocèse de Saint-Aumer et chastellenie de Casel, 1072-1577’, Archives historiques et littéraires du nord de la France et du midi de la Belgique, 16 (1849), 263-300 (pp. 279-80).

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such as Jean Martin mentioned immediately above, or Philippe Vignier (CNN19, 86), a chamber valet like Martin.30 Although a good number of the named storytellers remained promi­ nent in Burgundian service under Charles the Bold, it is important to note that few, if any, were as close to the new Duke as they had been to his father. Many difficulties had arisen over the years between Charles and several conteurs around the thorny subject of Franco-Burgundian relations. As we shall see in greater detail below, it was not unusual for Philip’s former servants to hold lands and sometimes high office under both the King and the Duke, and there were often long family traditions of service on either side. These service and kinship networks were in keeping with the service of a prince, Philip the Good, who still regarded himself as a key actor in French regnal politics.31 But those same networks were placed under strain – even threat – by the actions of Charles, first as count of Charolais, then later as duke, whose desire to pursue Burgundian auton­ omy became increasingly marked. To understand why the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles became a closed book under Charles the Bold, we must therefore situate this use of language in a wider historical context (c. 1428-77). The leading conteur Philippe Pot is perhaps the best case to illustrate the importance of this longer-term perspective. Pot’s father and grandfa­ ther had a long history of service at both the royal and ducal courts, and he began a career in Burgundian service himself in the 1440s.32 ‘Monseigneur de la Roche’ has long been recognised as the most prolific storyteller in our collection of tales (CNN3, 8, 10, 12, 15, 18, 34, 36, 37, 40, 44-5, 47, 48, 52), and for the most part he managed to stay on good terms with Charles, both as count then as duke. Just a year after the ‘brand new’ manuscript of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles is first recorded, however, Pot found that his family connections among the kingdom’s elite placed him in a potentially tight spot. He was in attendance with other courtiers and a visiting Italian prince when Charles the Bold very publicly and pointedly vaunted his maternal Portuguese descent over his paternal Valois line in a meeting with a French royal ambassador. The king’s man who stood on the

30 PCB, no id. 2077 (Vignier); no id. 1510 (Martin). Philippe Vignier may also be the storyteller of CNN93, attributed to Timoléon Vignier, ‘gentilhomme de la chambre’. No-one of this name has been found in the records of court service for the period. As Richard Gameson notes above in Chapter 1, a sixteenth-century hand altered some of the rubrics we can use to identify conteurs, and the addition of the name and post is made in that later hand in this specific case (fol. 187v). Another conteur who does not appear in service after the last year of Philip’s life is Mahieu d’Anquasnes (CNN54), who is last recorded in service on 29 March 1467 (PCB no id. 1374, ‘Personnel’). 31 For an elaboration of this wider point and its historiographical pedigree, see Graeme Small, ‘French Politics During the Hundred Years’ War’, in The Hundred Years War Revisited, ed. by Anne Curry (London: Macmillan-Red Globe Press, 2019), pp. 33-57. 32 PCB, no id. 1484.

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receiving end of the snub was Philippe Pot’s own brother, Guiot.33 Guiot Pot had been a cupbearer at the court of Philip the Good throughout the 1450s, including during the period when the tales were most likely to have been told, but he had then entered the service of Louis XI, sometime after January 1461.34 He rose thereafter to high office in the kingdom as bailli of Vermandois, eventually becoming a member of Louis XI’s council. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Philippe Pot was himself prominent among the Burgundians who abandoned Mary of Burgundy after her father’s unex­ pected demise at the battle of Nancy in 1477. He joined his brother Guiot in royal service, and was rewarded with the posts of tutor (gouverneur) of the future Charles VIII and great seneschal (grand-sénéchal) of Burgundy.35 Further illustration of the point can be made through the members of the Croy clan, which exerted great influence over Philip the Good throughout his long reign, and which had substantial holdings along the frontier regions between royal and ducal territories. As the most powerful single family around the old Duke, and as ‘the soul of the French faction at court’, the Croys were regularly at odds with Charles in the later 1450s and early 1460s when he was still count of Charolais.36 Jean de Lannoy (CNN6, 82, 97), one of several chamberlain storytellers as we shall see,

33 Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, 8 vols, ed. by Joseph Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels: Heusschner, 1863-66), V, 454; Dom Urban Plancher, Histoire générale et particulière de Bourgogne, 4 vols (Dijon: Louis-Nicolas Frantin, 1739-81), IV, p. cclxxiv et seq. (no. CCXIX). 34 For this sentence and the next, see PCB, no id. 0298 (which conflates data on our Guiot with others for an earlier homonym); Die Hofordnungen der Herzöge von Burgund. Band 1. Herzog Philipp der Gute 1407-67, ed. by Holger Kruse and Werner Paravicini, Instrumenta herausgegeben der Deutschen historischen Institut Paris, Band 15 ( Jan Thorbecke: Ostfildern, 2005), p. 383, no. 187; Graeme Small, George Chastelain and the Shaping of Valois Burgundy. Political and Historical Culture at Court in the Fifteenth Century, Royal Historical Society, Studies in History (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1997), pp. 81, 194; Pierre-Roger Gaussin, ‘Les Conseillers de Louis XI (1461-83)’, in La France de la fin du XVe siècle. Renouveau et apogée. Économies, pouvoir, arts, culture et conscience nationales, ed. by Bernard Chevalier and Philippe Contamine (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1985), pp. 105-34 (p. 112). 35 H. Bouchard, ‘Philippe Pot, grand-sénéchal de Bourgogne (1428-93)’, Positions des theses de l’École des chartes (1949), 23-27. In passing, we note that the conteur group therefore included two men who tutored leading princes and even kings in the course of their careers: Antoine de La Sale, discussed further below, tutor first of the sons of René of Anjou, then of Louis de Luxembourg; and Pot. Instruction in courtly arts may be considered part of the enterprise of tale-telling, as we shall discuss in greater detail in Chapter 9 below. 36 Details in Richard Vaughan, Philip the Good. The Apogee of Burgundy, second edition, with Introduction by Graeme Small (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2002), pp. 338-46. For the quote and much more now besides on the Croys, see Werner Paravicini, ‘Montée, crise, réorientation: pour une histoire de la famille de Croy au XVe siècle’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 98 (2020), 149-356 (p. 150).

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belonged to this extensive kinship network of Picard origin.37 The family lost a great deal of their influence at Philip the Good’s court during the Duke’s final years, perhaps especially after 1465, when Charolais was in the ascendant; Jean de Lannoy, by then partly in royal service as we shall see, was himself exiled.38 Philippe de Croy (CNN23, 62, 72), another of the chamberlain conteurs, was also from this kingroup, even if he differed from most in that he had also been close to Charles since childhood.39 Among the Croys under Duke Charles, in fact, it was really only Philippe who enjoyed something approaching the influence which his father, uncle and cousins had exercised at Philip the Good’s court.40 One of the most bitter recriminations which Charles directed against the Croy clan was his claim that late in the 1450s or early 1460s, around the time our tales were presented as having been told, as we shall see below in Chapter 9, they had recruited a famous astrologer of the day to cast and interpret the Count’s horoscope. Philip was thereby to be persuaded that his son was ‘ill conditioned [and] malevolent, and that … if he lived he was cut out to cause a great deal of evil some day’.41 Charles was so incensed by this action that he expounded at length on the matter on at least two occasions, several years apart, in major gatherings: first at a meeting of the Estates-General in 1464 at Bruges, before hundreds of delegates from across the Burgundian dominions; then again four years later after he had become Duke of Burgundy, in his first chapter as sovereign of the Order of the Golden Fleece at Bruges.42 The ‘great savant and expert in the science [of astrology]’ who had supplied the horoscope had been much in demand at the Burgundian court in the troubled times of the late 1450s and early 1460s to which we shall return below in Chapter 9, and the exiled heir to the French throne had even called upon his services in an attempt to predict the date of the death of his father, Charles VII, and therefore of his own accession.43 His name was Michel Baers, provost of Watten: the man identified in all of our paratexts as the storyteller of CNN65, and whose death occurred in October 1462 as we have just 37 Baudouin de Lannoy and Jean Dansaert, Jean de Lannoy, le bâtisseur 1410-93 (Paris : Desclée – Brussels: de Brouwer, 1937). The attribution of CNN97 to Lannoy rests on interpreting the named conteur, ‘Launoy’, as a misspelling of the name. 38 Mario Damen, ‘Rivalité nobiliaire et succession princière. La lutte pour le pouvoir à la cour de Bavière et à la cour de Bourgogne’, Revue du Nord, 91 (2009), 361-83. 39 Monique Sommé, ‘La Jeunesse de Charles le Téméraire d’après les comptes de la cour de Bourgogne’, Revue du Nord, 64 (1982), 731-50 (pp. 735, 741-42). 40 Richard Vaughan, Charles the Bold. The last Valois Duke of Burgundy, second edition, with Introduction by Werner Paravicini (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2002), pp. 248-50. 41 Translation of Charles the Bold’s speech by Vaughan, Charles the Bold, p. 248. 42 Vaughan, Philip the Good, pp. 345-46 (where Watten is misread as Warneton); Die Protokollbücher des Ordens vom goldenen Vlies. Das Ordensfest 1468 in Brügge unter Herzog Karl dem Kühnen, ed. by Sonja Dünnebeil (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2003), p. 48. 43 Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, III, 447-49.

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seen. It is difficult to imagine Charles the Bold opening with pleasure any manuscript containing tales attributed to his worst enemies and the man he felt entitled to regard as their most notorious creature.44 The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles reflected the old Franco-Burgundian world of Philip the Good’s time, and the relevance of that textual frame to the Burgundian elite gradually declined. Several stories are set in that period when Philip the Good aspired to play a central role in the political life of the kingdom. The lord of Talmas, Ferry de Mailly, set his story (CNN75) furthest back in living memory, at a time when the Burgundian and Armagnac parties were vying for control of the region of Champagne (most probably in fact during the campaigns of 1428, led by Jean de Lux­ embourg, uncle of the conteur Louis de Luxembourg [CNN39] Count of Saint-Pol, which Ferry himself participated in).45 Philippe de Croy relayed a story he may have picked up from family members or more aged court associates, set against a precisely and accurately drawn backdrop of the conferences at Calais in 1439 – by which time Charles VII and Philip the

44 Some measure of reconciliation began to emerge in 1468, notably between Charles and the conteur Quiévrain, but the Duke continued to keep many of the Croys at arm’s length: Violet Soens, ‘La causa Croÿ et les limites du mythe bourguignon: la frontière, le lignage et la mémoire’, Publications du Centre européen d’études bourguignonnnes, 52 (2012), 81-97. 45 Champion (and all other commentators in his wake) misidentified ‘Monseigneur de Thalemas’ as Guy de Roye. The lordship of Talmas had in fact passed to Ferry de Mailly, as Bertrand Schnerb has recently demonstrated: ‘Guy, seigneur de Roye. Ung moult noble et vaillant chevalier’, Publications du Centre européen d’études bourguignonnes, 59 (2019), 41-64 (p. 59). On the 1428 campaigns in Champagne, and on Ferry de Mailly more generally, see Ambroise Ledru, Histoire de la maison de Mailly, 2 vols (Paris: Émile Lechevalier, 1893), I, pp. 278-79, 284-88. ‘Monseigneur de Saint-Pol’ is commonly identified as Louis de Luxembourg Count of Saint-Pol (1418-75), following Champion. However, Sylvie Lefèvre, following Gaston Raynaud, suggests that the conteur ‘Monseigneur de Saint-Pol’ is not Louis but one of his brothers, Jacques de Luxembourg, lord of Richebourg, because ‘dans les textes de l’époque (Chastelain, par exemple), le comte soit parfois désigné comme “de Luxembourg”, alors que Jacques, son cadet, peut être appelé “Monsieur/Monseigneur ( Jacques) de Saint-Pol” (‘in texts of the time (Chastelain for example), the Count can sometimes be designated “of Luxembourg”, while Jacques, his younger brother, can be called “Monsieur/Monseigneur ( Jacques) of Saint-Pol”’): S. Lefèvre, Antoine de La Sale. La fabrique de l’oeuvre et de l’écrivain (Geneva: Droz, 2006), p. 171, n.151. In fact, in more than forty passages where the Count of Saint-Pol is mentioned in volumes III-V of Chastelain’s chronicle (the earlier sections not being relevant, either because they predate Louis’s succession to the title, or are misattributed to Chastelain), the Count is only referred to as ‘Louis’ or ‘Louis de Luxembourg’ twice (IV, 219, 495), and on both occasions the title ‘Count of Saint-Pol’ is also added to the name. Louis de Luxembourg is only otherwise called the Count of Saint-Pol or, in the 1460s, Constable of France. In Burgundian household ordinnances, where provisions was made for Louis as a guest, he is only ever referred to by his correct title, the Count of Saint-Pol. He is, therefore, the man with the most legitimate claim to the moniker ‘Monseigneur de Saint-Pol’ in a Burgundian text of the period, and therefore we cannot accept Sylvie Lefèvre’s argument.

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Good had made their peace at Arras.46 Philippe de Loan recounted a tale that centres upon the no-nonsense character of Lord Talbot, one-time ally of Philip the Good during Bedford’s regency, but who became the doughty adversary of both the Duke and the Count of Saint-Pol after 1435, and whose defeat and death at Castillon (1453) is commonly taken as marking the end of the Hundred Years’ War.47 This deep Franco-Burgundian historical frame of the tales remained relevant to the ducal court throughout the second half of the 1450s and during the early years of Louis XI: broadly speaking, the period when any tale-telling is thought to have taken place, and about which much more is said below in the last section of the present volume. Despite Charles VII’s recovery of Normandy and Guyenne in 1449-53 (or indeed because of it), the second half of the 1450s was, admittedly, a time of intense Franco-Burgundian tension as we shall see. Already the Count of Saint-Pol was inclining more towards the King than the Duke, having taken part with many of his followers in the French reconquest of Normandy and Guyenne as a royal captain, then falling out with Philip the Good on unrelated matters in 1455.48 The flight of the Dauphin Louis to escape Charles VII in 1456, followed by the five years Louis then spent in self-imposed exile in the Low Countries under the safeguard of Philip the Good, led the Duke to hope for, perhaps even to expect, a return to the heyday of Burgundian influence in the political life of the kingdom. Some reflection of these events is found in the attribution of at least one tale to a servant of the Dauphin, Jean d’Estuer, lord of La Barde (CNN31), a fact which sets the outer chronological limits for the date of any storytelling event(s) that may have formed the basis of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles to the period 1456-61.49 Tales which evoked a time of Burgundian influence in France were therefore entirely in keeping with the political culture of the Burgundian court under the third Valois duke. Some Burgundian conteurs did indeed find service and reward in the kingdom after Louis XI’s coronation in 1461, for a while at least. Not long after Philip the Good had (as first peer of the realm) placed the French crown upon the new king’s head, his first squire of the stables, the

46 Christopher Allmand, ‘The Anglo-French Negotiations, 1439’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 40 (1967), 1-33 (p. 6); De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 29-33. 47 A. John Pollard, John Talbot and the War in France, 1427-53 (London: Royal Historical Society – New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1983). 48 Céline Berry, ‘Les Luxembourgs-Ligny: un grand lignage noble de la fin du moyen âge’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Paris-Est Créteil, 2011), 3 vols with continuous pagination, pp. 420-9. I am grateful to Dr Berry for sending me an electronic copy of her thesis. 49 As we shall argue below, the attribution of other tales to two further servants of the Dauphin is insecure.

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conteur Hervé de Meriadec (CNN42) was made bailli of the great northern city of Tournai, a French royal enclave in the Burgundian dominions.50 Jean de Lannoy, ducal chamberlain and another conteur, rose higher still, to the council of the king.51 If, as we propose below, ‘Monseigneur de Villiers’ (CNN32, 35, 55, 56, 57) should also now be identified as a ducal chamberlain, Jacques de Villiers, lord of L’Isle-Adam, then here was another Burgundian servant and conteur who attained high office in Louis XI’s France. L’Isle-Adam was appointed prévôt of Paris soon after Louis’s accession, from which lofty position he was responsible for passing a subsequently-commuted death sentence on the celebrated poet François Villon in 1462.52 The Count of Saint-Pol, for his part, continued to culti­ vate both the new King and the Duke of Burgundy after 1461.53 But Franco-Burgundian entente gradually began to unravel, and that original element of the paratexual frame became less relevant to a chang­ ing public. Louis XI’s recovery of the Somme towns from the Duke of Burgundy, facilitated in 1463 by the influence of the Croys, was a turning-point in relations, which then continued to degrade through the remainder of Philip’s reign. Burgundian involvement in the War of the Public Weal pitted the King against a princely coalition led by Charolais in 1465, followed by French support of Liège in its resistance to Burgundian encroachment (1465-8). Within little more than a year of acceding in 1467, Charles the Bold had forced Louis XI to exempt many of his lands from the jurisdiction of the Parlement of Paris, and had taken Edward IV’s sister as his bride. It is important to recall these well-known events in the present context. Tales set against a backdrop of Burgundian influence in France, and of a common English adversary, must now have seemed jaded and distant to say the least. The argument we are formulating here, namely that the original para­ textual frame which directed the reader of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles had lost much of its cultural relevance to the court of Burgundy by the time of Charles the Bold, is fundamentally challenged (at first glance, at least) by the evidence of CNN63. This nouvelle proves in incontrovertible detail that networks of service and sociability around Charles as Count of Charolais did indeed intersect with the work’s original milieu, as it was identified 50 For this sentence and the next, see Werner Paravicini, ‘Un Tombeau en Flandre: Hervé de Meriadec’, Francia, 34 (2007), 85-146 (p. 100). 51 Marie-Rose Thielemans, ‘Les Croÿ, conseillers des ducs de Bourgogne: documents extraits de leurs archives familiales, 1357-1487’, Bulletin de la Commission royale d’histoire de Belgique, 224 (1959), 1-141 (p. 14). 52 Marcel Schwob, ‘Un Journal des greffiers de la Tournelle criminelle datant d’environ 1485, condemnation de François Villon’, Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 43 (1899), 125-26. 53 Berry, ‘Les Luxembourg-Ligny’, p. 429.

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in the earliest paratexts.54 The four characters of the story are introduced without any contextual information, as though all were well known to the intended audience.55 The comic hero of the tale was the storyteller himself, Guillaume de Montbléru, the first squire of the Count’s stables. Montbléru tricked the three companions he had joined at the Antwerp fair by stealing their shirts, hiding them under horse manure in the stables of their inn, then selling them on for his own profit. This event (or something very like it) may even have taken place, to judge from record evidence dating to 1457, when new pourpoints were bought at the Count of Charolais’s expense for the specific characters of the tale at the Antwerp fair.56 To lose one’s chemise or pourpoint meant to be reduced to penury, so it may have been part of the in-joke that two of Montbléru’s three victims were wealthy gens de finance (financial officers) around the Count: Humbert de Plaine, Charolais’s master of the chamber of finance (maître de la Chambre aux deniers), and Roland Pippe, the Count’s former secretary, and by this time the receiver of his revenues and jewel keeper.57 These men were also former servants of Charolais’s mother, and were among the most important figures in Charles’ household; Pippe in particular had served Charolais as his secretary, when the Count was just ten years old.58 The third victim of Montbléru’s jape in CNN63, the Count’s first butler (sommelier) Jean Le Tourneur, may even have been Charles’ longeststanding servant throughout his life.59 Like Pippe, Le Tourneur had served Charolais since the Count was a child. On the eve of the battle of Nancy in 1477, it was this wrinkled retainer who admitted Philippe de Croy, the former conteur mentioned above, to the Duke’s tent to convey the unwelcome view that Charles was in no position to win the day against René of Lorraine and his Swiss allies. It was Le Tourneur, too, who helped identify his master’s corpse after the battle had been lost. Le Tourneur’s

54 The only other possible connection is afforded by CNN22, attributed to ‘Caron’. As we shall see below in Chapter 10, this conteur could potentially be identified (among other, more likely candidates) as the chief messenger of the Count, named Jean Caron. 55 For context to the argument developed here, see De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 389-411. 56 In which case the tale was something of an in-joke. For a comparable example, see Ian Macpherson, ‘Court Poets at Play: Zaragoza, 1498’ in Medieval Spain: Culture, Conflict and Coexistence. Studies in Honour of Angus MacKay, ed. by Roger Collins and Anthony Goodman (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 183-201. 57 http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/definition/pourpoint. For the career of Plaine, see Bartier, Légistes et gens de finance au XVe siècle, pp. 398-99; for Pippe, see Werner Paravicini, ‘Un Suicide à la cour de Bourgogne: Roland Pippe’, Revue du Nord, 91 (2009), 385-420. 58 Sommé, ‘La Jeunesse de Charles le Téméraire’, p. 740. 59 For this and what follows unless otherwise stated, see; V. Tourneur, ‘Jehan de Candida, diplomate et médailleur au service de la maison de Bourgogne, 1472-80’, Revue belge de numismatique et de sigillographie, 70 (1914), 381-411, esp. pp. 404-11; 71 (1919), 7-48, 251-300, esp. pp. 18-20; Cho, ‘Court in the Market’, pp. 67-108.

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appearance as a character in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles is therefore of particular significance. He undoubtedly brings together Charles the Bold’s court and the social world of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, and not simply as a protagonist in CNN63: one of his daughters married the son of Jacques de Brégilles, the keeper of the ducal books who is discussed above.60 Networks of service and kinship within the wider familia of the court remain entwined around these tales, even under a duke whose enmity for some of those identified as contributors in the paratext was intense and enduring. But there is no denying that the Count of Charolais took no recorded part in any tale-telling, whereas his father is attributed with a total of fourteen stories (CNN1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 11, 16, 17, 29, 33, 58, 69, 70, 71). And it can also be shown that CNN63 itself may even be responsible for closing down completely any residual interest which the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles held at the court of the new Duke. Guillaume de Montbléru was already elderly at the time of the story (which was possibly an additional element in the in-joke’s humour): the old prankster did not survive the first year of Charles’ reign.61 Humbert de Plaine was long dead by this point – the venerable financial officer had died either late in 1459 or early in 1460, very soon after the period when any stories were likely to have been told as we shall see.62 Far more disruptive to the power of networks of service and sociability to preserve and promote cultural memory, however, was the untimely death of the last protagonist of CNN63, Roland Pippe, which occurred on 17 February 1462.63 Pippe’s first suicide attempt in October or November 1461 at his own residence at Bruges was a scandal at court. His second attempt occurred in close proximity to Philip the Good and resulted in Pippe’s death by drowning in a well, most likely on the very grounds of the Coudenberg palace at Brussels during a time of great uncertainty brought about by the Duke’s own ill-health and advancing years. These disturbing events were followed by years of wrangling between Pippe’s family and various public authorities which could claim ownership of a suicide’s lands and possessions.64

60 Tourneur, ‘Jehan de Candida’, Revue belge de numismatique, 71 (1919), p. 20. 61 Colette Carton, ‘Un Tableau et son donateur: Guillaume de Montbléru, premier escuyer d’escuyerie du comte de Charolais’, Annales de Bourgogne, 38 (1966), 172-87. In the youthful prank of the old courtier, there may well be some allusion to the reversed behaviour in the lords of misrule tradition associated with times of feast. 62 Bartier, Légistes et gens de finance au XVe siècle, p. 399. 63 For this and what follows, see Paravicini, ‘Un Suicide à la cour de Bourgogne’, not least pp. 418-19, where Pippe’s suicide is described as a ‘transgression [which] radically challenged the peace of the court and, in the process, the roots of its power’. 64 Alexander Murray, Suicide in the Middle Ages, 2 vols (Oxford: OUP, 1999-2000), II, pp. 65 (on Brabant), 78-80 (on the suicide’s family).

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Given contemporary attitudes towards suicide and the circumstances in question, it is extremely unlikely that CNN63 seemed as funny in 1469 as it had, for a while at least, at the court of Philip the Good. The networks of service, kinship and sociability associated with the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles in the oldest paratexts had, since the early 1460s, become embroiled in a series of unfortunate events: self-killing, bitter en­ mities, public recriminations and the dark art of prognostication were now muddled up with any residual attraction the venture might have held. The political climate and political culture of the collection, such as we can trace them, had been utterly transformed. These factors are doubtless connected to Hanno Wijsman’s key observation, in Chapter 2 above, that the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles are unusual among Burgundian works of literature for achieving little or no impact in their original setting, broadly defined as the ducal court – albeit that the new Duke may also, or alternatively, simply not have shared the enthusiasm of both his father and grandfather for the Decameron, which Dr Wijsman also clearly demonstrates.

Textual transmission through networks of kinship and service in Habsburg Burgundy The evident detachment of Charles the Bold from the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles did not necessarily mean the text became a closed book in Burgundian circles in later periods, however. As we have seen, Philip of Cleves (1456-1528) is the last person known to have had the ducal copy of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles in his possession, having been allowed to borrow the manuscript in 1497.65 There is no doubt the subject matter and tone of the work fitted well with Philip of Cleves’ cultural tastes in general, as glimpsed in his other collections.66 But this reader also had strong links of kinship, service and sociability to the original milieu of the text which should be emphasised. Although the observation is not without irony in the case of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (after all, he appears not to have returned the book, and it is now lost), studies of Philip of Cleves’ library have rightly pointed

65 Wijsman, Luxury Bound, pp. 300-01. 66 Godelieve Denhaene, ‘Les Collections de Philippe de Clèves, le goût pour le nu et la Renaissance aux Pays-Bas’, Bulletin de l’Institut historique belge de Rome, 45 (1975), 309-42; Elyne Olivier, ‘Philippe de Clèves, le goût et les particularismes artistiques d’un noble bourguignon à travers le Recueil de mandements, d’inventaires et de pièces diverses concernant la succession de Philippe de Clèves (Lille, ADN, B 3664)’, in Entre la ville, la noblesse et l’état. Philippe de Clèves (1456-1528). Homme politique et bibliophile, ed. by Jelle Haemers, Céline Van Hoorebeeck and Hanno Wijsman, Burgundica, 15 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 143-59.

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to his ‘profound attachment’ to the memory of the Burgundian dynasty.67 Cleves surrounded himself with works which had once been popular at the ducal court, where his Portuguese mother, Beatrice of Coimbra (d. 1462), the Duchess Isabella’s niece, and his father, Adolf of Cleves, lord of Ravenstein (d. 1492), Philip the Good’s nephew, had married in 1454.68 After his mother’s early death, Philip of Cleves was attached as a small child to the household of his aunt, the Duchess Isabella. Later, the mentor of his formidable bibliophilia was the great Burgundian courtier Louis of Bruges, lord of Gruuthuse (d. 1492).69 As an adult, Philip of Cleves had men in his service who formed a living connection with the Valois Burgundian literary past, notably his counsellor and jewel-keeper (argentier) Gonthier Chastelain, illegitimate son of George Chastelain (d.1475), the official chronicler to the last two Valois dukes.70 Chastelain had been so prominent a literary figure in that bygone time that his works still generated intense interest among the families which had served the Valois dukes. Moreover, as we shall see be­ low, Chastelain’s personal connections to several conteurs were remarkably close, even if his own involvement in the enterprise is unlikely.71 Personal kinship ties further help us to understand Philip of Cleves’ interest in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. He was married to Françoise de Luxembourg, through whom he had (long before he borrowed our text) inherited several manuscripts from his wife’s father, Pierre II de Luxem­ bourg (d. 1482), and her grandfather, the conteur Louis de Luxembourg, Count of Saint-Pol (d. 1475).72 Cultural continuities of this kind indicate the residual dynamism of networks of service, kinship and sociability which tied Habsburg Burgundy to its Valois past, and the potential of such

67 Céline Van Hoorebeeck, ‘Les Bibliothèques de Philippe de Clèves (1456-1528), Thomas de Plaine (ca. 1444-1507) et Philippe Wielant (1441-1520). Essai de mise en perspective’, in Entre la ville, la noblesse et l’état, pp. 223-43 (p. 237). 68 For this sentence and the next, see Monique Sommé, ‘Les Portugais dans l’entourage de la duchesse de Bourgogne Isabelle de Portugal (1430-71), Revue du Nord, 77 (1995), 321-43 (pp. 331-35); and Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, IV, 217-18. 69 Hanno Wijsman, ‘Politique et bibliophilie pendant la révolte des villes flamandes des années 1482-92: relations entre les bibliothèques de Philippe de Clèves et de Louis de Bruges et la librairie des ducs de Bourgogne’, in Entre la ville, la noblesse et l’état, pp. 245-78. 70 For this sentence and the next, see Small, George Chastelain and the Shaping of Valois Burgundy, pp. 214-18. 71 See Chapter 10 below. 72 Anne Korteweg, ‘La Bibliothèque de Philippe de Clèves: inventaire et manuscrits parvenus jusqu’à nous’, in Entre la ville, la noblesse et l’état. Philippe de Clèves (1456-1528), pp. 183-97 (pp. 186-88). Philip of Cleves’ sister-in-law Marie de Luxembourg owned one of only two known medieval manuscripts of the Évangiles des Quenouilles, mentioned above: Wijsman, Luxury Bound, pp. 444, 448; Berry, ‘Les Luxembourg-Ligny’, pp. 623, 625.

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networks to preserve and promote the cultural legacy of Philip the Good’s reign: an age which seemed, in retrospect, the ‘golden age of Burgundy’.73 In addition to Louis de Luxembourg’s presence in the text, a further kinship link to the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles existed in the form of the con­ teur Monseigneur de Fiennes (CNN24, 43). This is one of either two fig­ ures: Louis de Luxembourg’s brother, Thibaud (d. 1477), or else Thibaud’s second son and successor, Jacques I (d. 1487).74 Networks of service pro­ vided further Luxembourg-Ligny connections among the figures named in the various paratexts. The celebrated writer and Luxembourg servant Antoine de La Sale was another of the named storytellers (CNN50).75 La Sale had been entrusted from 1448 with the education of Pierre II de Luxembourg, the father of Philip of Cleves’ wife. As we saw above, the conteur Ferry de Mailly, lord of Talmas, was also a Luxembourg servant. Ferry had fought at Agincourt, and later under the Count of Saint-Pol’s

73 Small, George Chastelain, p. 226. 74 It is impossible in the present state of knowledge to resolve which of the two is meant. Thibaud entered holy orders some time before 1460, when he was appointed abbot of Igny (Marne). Given his standing and the probability he was abbot in commendam, however, it is possible that his entry into holy orders occurred not long before he became abbot, despite some published works (based on unknown sources) locating this change in 1456 or 1457. The last known date of a payment to Thibaud for his service at Philip the Good’s court occurs in 1455. Jacques I, meanwhile, was almost certainly the ‘sire de Fiennes’ appointed chamberlain to Philip the Good in the household ordinance of December 1458, since he appears in court service in that capacity in 1459, and consistently thereafter at the same rate of pay. His date of birth cannot have been any earlier than 1442 or 1443, so he was a young chamberlain. I am grateful to Martin Heale and Céline Berry for their advice on some of these matters. As we shall see below, however, the timeframe for any storytelling events at the root of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles stretches from the autumn of 1458 to the summer of 1459, meaning that either Thibaud or Jacques could be our conteur. 75 La Sale’s death in or around 1460 is another element in the dating of any storytelling event(s). We accept the long-established identification of La Sale as a conteur, though it should be noted the attribution is not entirely unproblematic. The rubric of CNN50 in MS Hunter 252 contains a nonsensical attribution of the tale to ‘Monseigneur de La Sale premier maistre d’ostel de monseigneur’. As Richard Gameson notes above in Chapter 1, a sixteenth-century hand altered some of the rubrics we can use to identify conteurs, and the addition of the post is made in that later hand (fol. 115r). There is in fact no holder of the office of premier maître d’hôtel in Philip the Good’s household by that name, and the original formulation simply read ‘Monseigneur de La Sale’. The objection raised by Charles Knudson, that the title ‘Monseigneur’ would not be used of a mere writer and tutor, is manifestly incorrect: in his day, La Sale was indeed (as the Dictionnaire du moyen français defines the applicability of the title) ‘un personage important’ in his milieu, and he was without doubt the conteur with the foremost literary reputation as we shall see below: ‘Antoine de La Sale, le duc de Bourgogne et les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, Romania, 53 (1927), 365-75 (p. 366). In Vérard’s edition, the tale is unequivocally attributed to ‘Antoine de La Sale’. The usual reasons for questioning the evidence of Vérard’s attribution of tales (that he altered the names of some conteurs to make the collection less ‘Burgundian’ and more ‘Delphinal’) does not apply in this case, since La Sale had no formal connection to the Dauphin’s household. On balance, then, the identification appears well-founded.

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uncle, Jean de Luxembourg, during the period of the Anglo-Burgundian alliance; since he was still active in Louis de Luxembourg’s military cam­ paigns of the 1440s and 1450s, he was a venerable and valued servant of the house.76 The social world of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles was therefore quite as much part of the family past of Philip of Cleves’ wife as it was of his own. Women, though so often derided in this particular text, may well have played a pivotal role in its cultural transmission. Thanks to his Luxembourg marriage and his own upbringing at the court of Philip the Good, Philip of Cleves therefore had strong reasons to regard the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles as an important work which was worth borrowing and keeping. As we shall see in later chapters of the present volume, Luxembourg kinship ties form a crucial context for understanding the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles as a literary project, as well as the physical characteristics, decorative scheme, language and provenance of MS Hunter 252 itself (discussed in Chapter 2 above). Ultimately, however, it must be recognised that any family linked to those elements of the Valois Burgundian past which were evoked by the paratext of the work, before Vérard’s transpositions at least, could just as easily have retained an interest in the work. The Pots would be one such example. The family had produced the most prolific conteur, Philippe. Philippe’s career in France after 1477, discussed above, might conceivably have brought our Burgundian text to Paris, where Vérard produced his edition. Philippe’s brother Guiot was a Burgundian servant at the time the tales were most likely told as we have also seen, and Vermandois (where he later became bailli) was one of the most likely regions where, according to the linguistic evidence discussed by Geoffrey Roger in Chapter 7 below, the scribe of MS Hunter 252 should be located. In 1460, Guiot Pot had also become the second husband of Marie de Villiers, youngest daughter of another conteur whom we identify shortly, Jacques de Villiers, lord of L’Isle-Adam.

The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ‘emblem of the generation of Louis XI’ The combined effects of the changed cultural world of Charles the Bold’s court and the opportunism of Vérard’s royal paratext were, in the reception of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, remarkably enduring.77 For the best part

76 Berry, ‘Les Luxembourg-Ligny’, pp. 504-05, 508; Ledru, Histoire de la maison de Mailly, I, pp. 284, 286-87. 77 For the effects of Vérard in particular, but not the fate of the work in Charles the Bold’s reign, see Alexandra Velissariou, ‘Le Paratexte des Cent Nouvelles nouvelles du moyen âge au XXe siècle: titres, préfaces et introductions’, in Autour des Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: sources

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of four hundred years, the work was considered to be one of those rare and enticing works of literature that could be attributed, in part at least, to a king. Walter Scott was just one of the many later readers who were taken in.78 The discovery of MS Hunter 252 by the Shropshire antiquar­ ian Thomas Wright during a visit to see Hunter’s collection in Glasgow marked the start of a more concerted effort to locate the work in its original context, at the court of Philip the Good.79 Yet even now, the work is still sometimes situated within the mouvance (sphere of influence) of Louis XI King of France.80 Yet Pierre Champion could identify no more than three of the conteurs named in the paratexts as members of the skeleton household which served Louis in exile in the Low Countries between 1456 and 1461, re­ sponsible between them for just eight of the one hundred tales. On closer investigation, it turns out that most of these identifications are themselves tenuous.81 It might even be said that Champion’s research perpetuated the association of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles with Louis XI in ways that continue to affect the work’s reception to the present time – a point that will be demonstrated in this final section. Of the three storytellers whom Pierre Champion located in the house­ hold of the Dauphin, only the case of ‘Monseigneur de la Barde’ – Jean d’Estuer, lord of La Barde (CNN31) – now seems compelling. La Barde was a noted presence at the Burgundian court during his time with Louis in the Low Countries as one of the Dauphin’s squires of the stable, and no other lord of that name or title can be cited among Philip the Good’s household servants, or among the wider networks of service and sociability around the Duke.82 La Barde stood out in the eyes of the official Burgundian chronicler George Chastelain as a military man

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et rayonnements, contextes et interprétations, ed. by Jean Devaux and Alexandra Velissariou, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 81 (Paris: Champion, 2016), pp. 193-214. Velissariou, ‘Le Paratexte’, p. 208 (referring to Scott’s Quentin Durward of 1823; Scott himself owned a copy of the printed edition, which he kept at Abbotsford). Thomas Wright, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles publiées d’après le seul manuscrit connu avec introduction et notes, 2 vols (Paris: P. Jannet, 1857); Michael Welman Thompson, ‘Thomas Wright (1810-77)’, Dictionary of National Biography 1885-1900 (https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/30063). The term mouvance is applied in Jean Dufournet, ‘La Génération de Louis XI: quelques aspects’, Le Moyen Âge, 98 (1992), 227-50 (p. 227), which includes Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles among its core texts. Compare with De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 527-34, where similar doubts are raised, but where different materials are investigated and different conclusions reached. Rémy Ambühl, Le Séjour du futur Louis XI dans les pays de Philippe le Bon (1456-61), Cercle d’histoire et d’archéologie du Pays de Genappe, Cahier 13 (Baisy-Thy: Cercle d’histoire et d’archéologie du Pays de Genappe, 2002), pp. 35, 41, 44-45, 50-51. Later, he was made seneschal of Limousin, bailli of Mâcon and seneschal of Lyon: Gaussin, ‘Les conseillers de Louis XI’, p. 112.

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who commanded respect (‘the most valiant and audacious lance of the kingdom in his day’).83 Philip the Good’s administration also identified La Barde as one of a select group of delphinal servants worth supporting with an annual pension and occasional payments during their time in the Low Countries.84 The presence of a favoured servant of the Dauphin within the conteur group has important consequences for locating the depiction of any original storytelling event(s) in time, as we shall see at a later stage in this volume, demonstrating beyond doubt that they are portrayed as occurring between September 1456 and July 1461, when Louis and his men were in Brabant. Champion’s identification of Monseigneur de Beauvoir (CNN27, 30) as Jean de Montespedon, ‘dit Houaste’ (‘known as Houaste’), the Dauphin’s squire and first chamber valet, is more problematic. Admittedly, Montespedon did have a lordship of Beauvoir, and he appears to have gone by that seigneurial title within the delphinal entourage.85 He was an even more trusted servant of the Dauphin’s than La Barde, according to Chastelain: his ‘complete and sole confidant, … he even signed all letters in his [the Dauphin’s] name’.86 But Beauvoir, unlike La Barde, was not an uncommon seigneurial title in the Burgundian lands.87 It is problematic too that Montespedon was commonly known as Houaste in his recorded dealings with Philip the Good’s administration.88 We may go even further, by noting for the first time in this connec­ tion that there was a higher-ranking ‘sire de Beauvoir’ among Philip the Good’s own servants in the period concerned. This ‘sire de Beauvoir’ was to be found in the select group of ducal chamberlains which produced many of the other conteurs identified by Champion. The lord of Beauvoir mentioned in the household ordinances for December 1458 was Jean de Beauvoir, vicomte of Avallon and lord of Chastellux in the duchy of Burgundy, whose career had begun as a squire in the household of the Count of Nevers.89 Beauvoir was the oldest son of a former marshal of France, Claude de Beauvoir, who had figured in the household ordinance for 1449, but who had died three years before the Dauphin fled to Brabant (and therefore some time before any storytelling event is likely to have

83 Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, III, 214. 84 Ambühl, Le Séjour du futur Louis XI, p. 43; De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 193. 85 There was a ‘chambre Monseigneur de Biauvoirs’ in the castle at Genappe, for example (Ambühl, Le Séjour du futur Louis XI, p. 65). 86 Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, III, 214. 87 Several examples in De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 527-30. 88 De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 532. 89 For this and what follows, see Kruse and Paravicini, Die Hofordnungen 1, p. 268, no. 54; p. 269, no. 74 (both 1449); p. 374, no. 69; p. 376, no. 113 (both 1458). For the family tree, see Marie-Thérèse Caron, La Noblesse dans le duché de Bourgogne, 1315-1477 (Villeneuved’Ascq: Presses universitaires de Lille, 1987), p. 382.

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occurred).90 Given the standing and office of Jean de Beauvoir and the fact he was in post in the relevant period, one would need strong grounds to reject him as the conteur known as ‘Monseigneur de Beauvoir’, and replace him instead with the dauphin’s first chamber valet. After all, these were stories attributed in the earliest paratext to Philip the Good and men of his household, not to the Dauphin Louis and his household, as Vérard’s paratext proclaimed. Champion appears to have been unaware of the existence of the ducal chamberlain whose seigneurial title was de Beauvoir; indeed, he may even have been swayed by Vérard’s paratext into accepting a delphinal ‘Beauvoir’, rather than looking for a Burgundian chamber knight of that title. Champion’s identification of the tale-teller known as ‘Monseigneur de Villiers’ with Alain (aka Main) Goyon, lord of Villiers, is the least secure of the three he advances. Since the conteur in question is attributed with five stories (CNN32, 35, 55-7), one of the largest totals, the point is significant. Goyon certainly appears among the Dauphin’s servants during his time in the Low Countries, and two of the tales attributed to Monseigneur de Villiers (CNN55, 57) were located in Dauphiné, where Louis had governed since 1447.91 But the grounds for linking the tales to Goyon are weak, and there are several Burgundian servants who might plausibly be identified as the lord of Villiers; one, as we shall see, has especially strong credentials. It is worth noting, first of all, that the geographical location of a tale is not the strongest textual evidence on which to base the identification of its conteur – certainly by comparison with the more precise association in the epitext or text itself of a tale’s subject and setting with the exercise of a specific office in a named place: Jean d’Enghien’s account of a marriage mix-up in Brussels where he exercised jurisdiction for the Duke as his amman (principal legal officer) (CNN53), for example, or the case that came before Philippe de Saint-Yon as provost of Le Quesnoy, and became the subject of his one tale (CNN25). By contrast, the setting of some of Villiers’s tales in Dauphiné appears incidental. Plots, moreover, are situated in a wide range of locations within the text. Of the fifteen tales told by the

90 PCB no id. 1117 conflates Jean (the son) and Claude (the father), but the payments made in the ‘personnel’ section of the record reveal the difference. The lord of Beauvoir receives a constant salary as chamberlain of 24s per day until 1452. When the identity of the lord of Beauvoir changes in 1453, the daily salary is halved, reflecting the fact the new lord of Beauvoir, Jean, was in fact simply an equerry. His salary rises to the level of 36s per day once he has been appointed chamberlain in the 1458 ordinance. For Jean de Beauvoir as a squire in the 1450s, see Henri-Paul César de Chastellux, Histoire généalogique de la maison de Chastellux (Auxerre: G. Perriquet, 1869), p. 96. Jean was born soon after his father’s third marriage in 1435, and so was in his mid-20s when he was made a chamberlain. 91 He is identified as Alain Goyon, lord of Villiers (Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Champion, p. xlviii) on the basis of Chastelain’s references to this figure (III, 214; IV, 146-47, 182).

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most prolific conteur, Philippe Pot, six are given without any location, five are situated in the ducal dominions (although only one in his native duchy of Burgundy), while four are placed further afield, in England, Paris, Rome and Provence (CNN10, 18, 45, 47). The location of tales may also simply reflect the immediate audience’s horizon of expectations.92 The latter were always likely to include Dauphiné at this particular time, given Louis’s proximity and the fact that at least one of his leading servants, the lord of La Barde, certainly figured among the conteurs.93 Goyon’s associations with Dauphiné as it was governed by Louis from 1447 to 1456 were not particularly strong, in fact – a second reason to doubt Champion’s identification. Goyon was a Breton.94 Following a partition with his brother (who also occasionally appeared in delphinal service), Goyon was enfeoffed with many of his family’s holdings in neighbouring Normandy, where he spent most of his remaining years in the service of the crown after Louis XI’s coronation in 1461. Nor was Goyon’s position within the Dauphin’s household particularly significant. He is first recorded as a delphinal servant in 1453, six years after Louis took up residence in Dauphiné, and he only appears in the Dauphin’s first household ordinance of March 1456, not long before Louis fled the region to take refuge in Brabant with Philip the Good. He was not one of the select group of attested conseillers-chambellans, squires or valets around Louis at Genappe, nor did he have a named chamber at the castle there like Houaste, or receive the sort of financial inducements and rewards the Burgundian administration afforded to La Barde.95 The person who seems to have paid most attention to Goyon in Louis’s entourage was in fact Chastelain, in whose chronicle Champion picked him up. But Champion does not mention that Chastelain may have had a particular interest in Goyon, not least for the prominent role he later played in the fate of the chronicler’s friend, Pierre de Brézé, rather than for any particularly notable contribution he made during Louis’s time in Brabant.96

92 Hence perhaps the frequency with which the duchy of Brabant (generally, or in specific detail) is cited as a location. The court in Philip the Good’s later years spent most of its time in Brabant: Catherine Emerson, ‘Brabant, Holland and Confession in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, Queeste, 28 (2021), 311-31. 93 For a list of locations see Champion’s edition, p. lxix, to which should be added the location of Alexandria, mentioned in CNN19 and 99/100. 94 For this and what follows, see Gareth Prosser, ‘After the “Reduction”. Restructuring Norman Political Society and the “Bien Public”’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University College London, 1996), p. 181, n. 56 (https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/ 1317862/1/289721.pdf). 95 For a list of these servants and details of Louis’s residence, see Ambühl, Le Séjour du futur Louis XI, pp. 40-55, 65-66. 96 Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, IV, 146-47, 182.

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Just as we saw in the case of the lord of Beauvoir, and in contrast to the case of La Barde, close or exact homonyms of ‘de Villiers’ can be found among Burgundian networks of service and sociability at that time. Two were lords of Villers-la-Fay in the duchy of Burgundy, a title occasionally rendered in contemporary sources as Villiers.97 The family produced one ducal chamberlain, Jacques I, whose appointment and reappointments are recorded in the household ordinances of 1438, 1445 and 1449.98 Jacques I was the brother-in-law of Guillaume de Sercey, first squire of the stables, who introduced Olivier de La Marche to court service. His own wife had been governess of the young Count of Charolais.99 Jacques I’s eldest son, Jean II, also had a court career, and held the title ‘sire de Villers’ after his father died some time before the household ordinance of 1458. Jean II de Villers was first cupbearer in the ordinances of both 1449 and 1458, and served in that capacity alongside Guiot Pot, brother of the most prolific conteur in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Philippe Pot, whom we met above.100 Either Jacques I, still a chamberlain in 1449, or more likely his oldest son Jean II, first cupbearer in 1449 and 1458, could therefore have been recorded among the conteurs as ‘monseigneur de Villiers’. But there is a more exact fit than the Breton Alain Goyon or any of the lords of Villers-la-Faye. This particular ‘Monseigneur de Villiers’ was not considered by Champion either. Jacques de Villiers, lord of L’Isle-Adam was, like several other conteurs, a Picard.101 He was also a member of that select body of ducal chamberlains from which many conteurs emerged, first appearing in that role as a new appointment in the household ordinance of December 1458.102 Jacques de Villiers was the oldest son of the celebrated marshal of France Jean de Villiers, lord of L’Isle-Adam, who was the

97 The confusion of Villiers and Villers can result in the conflation of the two names. Entries under the single PCB id. no 0449 (‘Jacques de Villiers’) in fact relate to the three different men of that title who are dealt with in this paragraph. See also De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 165, 204 n. 59, 228, 533. 98 For this and what follows on the family, see unless otherwise stated, Caron, La Noblesse dans le duché de Bourgogne, pp. 149-53. On Jacques I as chamberlain in 1438, 1445 and 1449, see Kruse and Paravicini, Die Hofordnungen 1, p. 157, no. 47; p. 158, no. 59; p. 238, no. 45; p. 269, nos 62, 75. 99 Sommé, ‘La Jeunesse de Charles le Téméraire’, p. 739. 100 Kruse and Paravicini, Die Hofordnungen 1, p. 276, no. 158; p. 383, no. 186. Jean II held the post until 1466. A younger son, Jacques II, would later become master of the household of Margaret of York as Duchess of Burgundy, but since he would not gain the title ‘de Villers’ until 1473, he cannot be the ‘monseigneur de Villiers’ who is attributed with five tales in the text. 101 Opération Charles VI, IF 1777 (https://www.vjf.cnrs.fr/charlesVI/consultation). 102 Kruse and Paravicini, Die Hofordnungen 1, p. 375, no. 81; p. 376, no. 114.

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most prominent fatality among the Duke’s men entrusted with protecting Duchess Isabella during the Bruges uprising of May 1437.103 Jacques de Villiers, lord of L’Isle-Adam, had far more direct links to the networks of service (as they emerge from the paratexts of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles) than any other name we might care to associate with the prolific conteur ‘Monseigneur de Villiers’. As seneschal of the Boulon­ nais in the 1450s (an office his famous father had also held), L’Isle-Adam was the direct superior of the third-most prolific tale-teller of the collec­ tion, Philippe de Loan, his lieutenant in the region.104 L’Isle-Adam may even appear himself in CNN74 as the unnamed seneschal of Boulogne whose late arrival at Mass confounded the officiating priest (although this could potentially also be Jacques’ father, Jean, or some other predecessor). Unlike the Breton Goyon or the Burgundian lords of Villers-la-Faye, this Picard ‘monseigneur de Villiers’ also had an attested literary reputation within Burgundian networks of sociability: he is recorded from 1451 as a member of the venerable Cour amoureuse, to which other conteurs had personal or family connections.105 As we saw above, Villiers later served as prévôt of Paris under Louis XI where, somewhat ironically, he passed a death sentence on one of the greatest names of late medieval French letters, François Villon. In addition to his impeccable family credentials in ducal service, his literary interests, his direct ties of service with a prolific conteur and the possibility that he was an unnamed protagonist in a tale himself, Jacques de Villiers was also the leading military figure in a highly sensitive region, the county of Boulogne. As we shall see below in Chapter 9, Boulogne, which Philip the Good had seized in 1423, lay on the front line of the conflict which threatened to erupt between Burgundy and Charles VII as a result of the Dauphin’s sojourn in the Low Countries.106 The county also lay close by the potential trouble spot of Calais, whence any reverberations from the unfolding conflict of York and Lancaster would likely first be felt in France and the Low Countries. It was a region where the Croy family had established itself firmly: Antoine de Croy, the leader of the Croy

103 Bertrand Schnerb, ‘Jean de Villiers, seigneur de L’Isle-Adam, vu par les chroniqueurs bourguignons’, Publications du Centre européen d’études bourguignonnes, 41 (2001), 105-21. 104 For Jacques de Villiers as seneschal of the Boulonnais in 1450, 1452 and 1461, see Carla Bozzolo and Hélène Loyau, La Cour amoureuse dite de Charles VI, 4 vols (Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1982-2018), II, p. 15, no. 306; and IV, p. 51, no. 306. For his father in the same post: Gilles-André de La Roque, Histoire généalogique de la maison de Harcourt, 4 vols (Paris: Sébastien Cramoisy, 1662), II, p. 1638. 105 Bozzolo and Loyau, La Cour amoureuse, II, p. 15, no. 306. Further family connections within the conteur group to the Cour amoureuse are discussed below in Chapter 10. 106 Pierre Héliot and Alphonse Benoît, ‘Georges de La Trémoille et la mainmise des ducs de Bourgogne sur le Boulonnais’, Revue du Nord, 24 (1938), 29-45; Pierre Héliot, ‘Louis XI et le Boulonnais’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 100 (1939), 112-44.

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family, was captain of the city of Boulogne.107 At the time the tales were most likely to have been told, Jacques de Villiers and his lieutenant were very important servants of Philip the Good indeed. By contrast, Cham­ pion’s Villiers was a secondary character in another household altogether. Of the one hundred tales, then, only one, that told by ‘Monseigneur de la Barde’, now seems credibly linked to the Dauphin’s circle. We may conclude that Champion unwittingly perpetuated some of the effects of Vérard’s paratext upon the reception history of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. The involvement of at least one delphinal servant is undoubtedly impor­ tant for an understanding of the purpose and date of any storytelling event(s) that might have occurred, as we shall see below in Chapter 9. Rather than perpetuate any excessive association of the Cent Nouvelles nou­ velles with Louis XI, however, this discussion of the reception of the work suggests that we should seek to understand why as many as fifteen of our one hundred tales are now attributable to a tight network of service and sociability around a recently-appointed chamberlain of Philip the Good, Jacques de Villiers, and his lieutenant, Philippe de Loan, in the frontier region of Boulogne where Villiers and his father before him had served as seneschal. The role of such networks will be dealt with further below in the final section of this book, when we retrace our steps from the France of Louis XI to the Burgundy of Philip the Good, from the textual witnesses of print and manuscript to the paratextual depiction of the storytelling events lying at their origin.

Conclusion The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles had every chance of success: building on the popularity of Laurent de Premierfait’s translation of Boccaccio, composed with a mixture of familiar and novel motifs, presented in a luxury manu­ script to a court to which the paratext ascribed a form of collective author­ ship, the work was well placed to reach a wider Burgundian audience at the very least. Instead, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles was very nearly one of those many works which – pace Huizinga – were lost for good, known only as a title in a library catalogue, or through some passing mention in another text.108 Any account of the work’s reception must attempt to understand

107 Vaughan, Philip the Good, pp. 337-38. 108 Huizinga contrasts the survival of visual art (‘only a small residue remains’) with that of literature (‘almost completely known to us’): Johan Huizinga, Autumntide of the Middle Ages. A study of forms of life and thought of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in France and the Low Countries, trans. Diane Webb, ed. by Graeme Small and Anton van der Lem (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2020), p. 364. Yet the main source of his investigation, the Chronicle of George Chastelain, itself survives in mere fragments, and Chastelain’s own account of works

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that failure. What saved the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles for posterity was not so much the simple fact that it was printed, which would be the obvious conclusion to draw, but more specifically the nature of the paratext created by its printer to help sell the book. The latter’s royal associations took the reception of the work out of the cul-de-sac where it appears to have languished during the reign of Charles the Bold, thanks (as we have argued here) to what had become, by then, a deeply problematic paratext. Such was the enduring success of those royal associations that Champion and others in his wake, even in quite recent scholarship, imagined them to be even stronger than they really were, making delphinal servants of men named in the paratext who were far more likely, as we have argued here, to have been ducal courtiers. That same paratext was not rebarbative to all Burgundian readers, of course; witness Philip of Cleves’ particular interest in a work which as­ cribed part-authorship to so many men he doubtless remembered from his own childhood, including members of his wife’s family and servants from her grandpaternal household. But by the later 1490s, when he borrowed the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Philip of Cleves cut a rather forlorn figure: defeated by Maximilian in the now-Habsburg Low Countries, isolated by the death of his own father in 1492 and that of his mentor Louis of Bruges in the same year, Philip would live out the remainder of his life far from the centre stage of politics.109 If it is true, as Hanno Wijsman suggests above in Chapter 2, that MS Hunter 252 was never seen by its possible commissioner Pierre II de Luxembourg before his death in 1482, then the reception history of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles was therefore doubly ill-starred; triply so, in fact, if we recall the probability that Philip the Good himself never saw his own fine manuscript, which was described by experts as ‘brand new’ two years after his death.110 For different reasons, the leading figures to whom these stories seemed especially interesting – Philip the Good, Pierre II de Luxembourg, Philip of Cleves – were never able to promote them through their undeniable ability to shape cultural tastes. Only once the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles left the milieux identified in the paratexts and the patron-led world of manuscript promotion did they

he had written (in his Exposition sur vérité mal prise) includes several that no longer exist: Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, VI, 268. 109 I am grateful to Hanno Wijsman for this observation, to which I append the development that follows. 110 If Pierre II did indeed commission MS Hunter 252 yet never saw the finished volume, and had Philip of Cleves been aware of his late father-in-law’s commission, then the latter’s borrowing of the ducal copy in the following decade makes perfect sense. We saw in Chapter 2 that Cleves had ended up with the ‘lion’s share of the Luxembourg library’ in the 1480s – with the exception of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles.

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truly find success. Thus the paratexts of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles in print and manuscript are central to the reception of work, explaining why some may have rushed to open it, but also why for others it remained a closed book.

ParT III

Reading text and image in manuscript form

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Chapter 5. Storytelling through architecture * The miniatures of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles

Following the insight of Gérard Genette that the paratext is the first thing to shape the reader’s contact with a work of literature, our chapter will consider the striking illustrations of MS Hunter 252. In particular, we are concerned with the ways in which the illustrative scheme of the manuscript works in combination with the written narratives of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. MS Hunter 252 contains the only surviving medieval version of the text, as we have seen, and in all likelihood it was made in Paris at the end of the fifteenth century, as attested by the decorated letters with motifs vermiculés (vermiculated motifs) that mark the beginning of the each tale.1 This manuscript is not the original described in the library of Philip the Good, as Richard Gameson and Hanno Wijsman have noted above. It is not possible to say how far and in precisely what ways MS Hunter 252 reflects the original volume that was made for the Duke, whether in terms of the text or the accompanying images. In the miniatures that are placed at the start of each tale in MS Hunter 252, the drawing may appear surprisingly naive for the end of the fifteenth century: a simplified perspective, the repetition of certain settings, the sobriety of the interiors, a certain stiffness in the gestures of the characters and a lack of expression in the faces can all be adduced in support of this judgment. However, we also note that the depicted interiors are elaborate, with mar­ ble slabs on the walls, or else geometrical patterns both on the walls and window frames, and that the draperies are well executed, their modelling enhanced with gold. Above all, we note that the painter carries out his work on drawings that reflect the complexity of certain amorous situations

* I would like to thank Patricia Stirneman for her help with this chapter, for her eagle eye and for her critical spirit. 1 François Avril, private correspondence, letter of 20 July 2011. Maud Pérez-Simon • Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle, Paris 3 The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - c. 1550), ed. by Graeme Small, Texte, Codex & Contexte, 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 167–186 10.1484/M.TCC-EB.5.132235

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(misunderstandings, substitution, spying) through a remarkably skillful compartmentalization of space. As Richard Gameson notes in Chapter 1, the contrast between the inventive and more workmanlike aspects of the decorative scheme of MS Hunter 252 might suggest that the artist of the latter was copying from an earlier, more refined model, possibly the ‘richly illustrated’ copy made for the Duke. What will interest us in this chapter is the interplay of, on the one hand, textual variants of the short stories and the combinatorial possibil­ ities created by the principle of a collection of such tales on the same theme, and, on the other hand, the iconographic opportunities that this generates. As we shall see, the designer of the illustrations, whoever that person might have been, has brilliantly grasped those possibilities through­ out the manuscript.

The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: a narrative algebra The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles are one hundred stand-alone tales, many attributed to named conteurs; and yet the collection should also be consid­ ered as a single entity. Our tales constitute a series of textual variations, a literary play on a single theme, namely substitution amoureuse (love swap). The author plays ad infinitum (or almost ad infinitum, since he stops at a total of one hundred) with the narrative possibilities offered by a couple, a lover (who is sometimes a priest), a mistress, a maid, places full of nooks and crannies, and misunderstandings. The stories end with public humilia­ tion, a happy ending, a trial, a murder and so forth, often with characters who have to make good-hearted efforts to deal with bad luck. The theme of substitution is predominant because it is the source of comedy: one replaces the husband in bed with a neighbour, a cleric, a carter, a man passing by; the priest marries a man to the wrong woman because he is one-eyed; women ask their maids to replace them with their husband or their lover; priests never hesitate to replace the tithe with gifts in kind; a man passes himself off as a woman; a sexual act is passed off as medicine. Madeleine Jeay points out that there is a ‘narrative algebra’ within the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, and postulates the existence of a combinatory principle which governed the elaboration of the compendium.2 Je postule que l’obsession des courtisans conteurs de la cour de Bourgogne et, à travers eux du narrateur anonyme héritier de Boccace,

2 Madeleine Jeay, ‘Ruse ou obsession? La coucherie par substitution dans les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, in Écriture de la ruse, ed. by Elzbieta Grodek (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), pp. 297-307 (p. 298).

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est d’ordre essentiellement narratif : il s’agit de porter à l’extrême le plaisir du jeu sur les configurations possibles d’un scénario. I postulate that the obsession of the storytelling courtiers of the court of Burgundy and, through them, of the anonymous narrator who is Boccaccio’s heir, is of an essentially narrative nature: it is a question of taking to extremes the pleasure of playing on the potential configurations of a scenario. The various configurations of the love theme give the collection its cohe­ sion and coherence.3 This narrative algebra and the corresponding struc­ turing of the images through architecture is the prism through which we will consider the text-image relationship in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles.4 I will build upon Madeleine Jeay’s statement in light of two observations: the diagnosis of the texts by the designer of the images as they now stand, and an evolving use of architecture as a visual structure throughout the manuscript.

Illumination in Hunter 252 The illuminations of MS Hunter 252 were obviously conceived for each story by a designer who knew the characters, the details and the comic plots. Many features indicate this close knowledge of the text. For example, in CNN5, the designer manages to represent in the hands of the English soldier the French soldier’s ‘aguillettes’, which he took from him, accusing 3 Marie-Françoise Notz, ‘Perspective et regard dans les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, in L’Inscription du regard. Moyen-Âge-Renaissance, ed. by Michèle Gally and Michel Jourde (Paris: ENS, 1995), pp. 227-38; Cynthia Syoen, ‘Un “Merveilleux” quotidien: l’amour contrarié dans les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, Le Moyen français, 57-58 (2005-06), 351-65. 4 Much has already been said about the textual narrative and various iconographic elements in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, but through other prisms: Alison Adams, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles in MS Hunter 252: the Impact of the Miniatures’, French Studies, 46/4 (1992), 385-94; Elise Boneau, ‘Obscenity out of the Margins: Mysterious Imagery within the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, MS Hunter 252’, eSharp, 6/2 (2006), 1-18 (https://www.gla.ac.uk/ media/Media_41181_smxx.pdf); Edgar De Blieck, ‘Sacred Images in a Secular Text: the Case of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, in Histoire, images, imaginaire, ed. by Pascal Dupuy (Edizione Plus -University of Pisa, 2002), pp. 117-36; Edgar De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Text and Context: Literature and History at the Court of Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 2004); Dominique Lagorgette, ‘Une Esthétique de la manipulation par la polyphonie généralisée dans les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (ms. Hunter 252 et imprimé Vérard de 1486)’, Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes, 22 (2011), 87-103; Mariagrazia Ricci, ‘Illustrer les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: le manuscrit de Glasgow et l’incunable de Vérard (1486)’, Le moyen français, 69 (2011), 83-98; Alexandra Velissariou, ‘Lectures des Cent Nouvelles nouvelles à travers le programme iconographique du MS Hunter 252 et de l’édition princeps de Vérard’, Studi Francesi, 74/3 (2020), 573-79.

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him of carrying a weapon on his person (‘aguillettes’ were in fact straps or cords which were used to assemble certain parts of a soldier’s clothing or armour by tying them together).5 In CNN7, the cartwright who is in the same bed as the bourgeois couple who lodge him for the night is recognizable by his darker skin.6 The depicted woman (as the text clearly states) has her head on her husband’s shoulder and her buttocks directed towards the cartwright. Fig. 26. Miniature accompanying Richard Gameson has de­ CNN48, Glasgow University Library, scribed MS Hunter 252 exhaus­ MS Hunter 252, fol. 112r. Courtesy of tively in Chapter 1 above, hypothe­ University of Glasgow Library Archives sizing – and providing ample evi­ and Special Collections. dence – that the iconographic pro­ gramme was copied from a more elaborate manuscript, possibly that made for Philip the Good. The painter of MS Hunter 252 is said to have copied the structures and most of the details of the source manuscript, albeit with some confusion, of which Richard Gameson gives several examples. To the latter, we may add the in­ stance of the strange apple held by the patient lover while waiting for his lady in CNN39.7 Similarly, in the image accompanying CNN38, the colour of the husband’s clothing and that of the bed are reversed from one area of the image to the other.8 It is possible that the author made this choice to vary the use of the colours red and blue, as was customarily done in me­ dieval miniatures, especially in contiguous images. Here, however, the in­ version adds real confusion to this story, where the husband and the bed are the same, only the woman in the bed has changed. The image gives the opposite impression. These instances of variation or confusion do not in­ terfere with our demonstration, which will focus mainly on the structuring of the images, which the illuminator, if he has indeed taken as his model another, now-lost manuscript, has undoubtedly copied correctly. Overall, it can be stated that the images accurately capture the complex scenarios of the tales told in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. Yet as Richard Gameson rightly notes above, it is difficult, if not impossible, to deduce the

5 6 7 8

Fol. 12r. Fol. 18r. Fol. 95v. Fol. 93r.

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thrust of the story from the im­ age.9 We may surmise that the images were probably used as visual cues to readers flipping through the manuscript. Some details can only be spotted if one knows details from the story. In the miniature of CN­ N28, for example, it seems as if the man is stroking the grey­ hound’s head, but when one has read the story, one sees very clearly that he is in fact pulling Fig. 27. Miniature accompanying CNN49, the dog’s ears, which is the Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter agreed signal to summon his 252, fol. 113v. Courtesy of University of lover.10 The image of CNN48 is Glasgow Library Archives and Special also remarkable in this respect Collections. (Fig. 26). In each half of the image we see a couple embrac­ ing one another while standing upright, and then lying down in bed.11 The woman bows her head to the side and raises her hand. This gesture seems very imprecise, and the viewer might even think she is defending herself. It is only after reading the story that we understand that by this gesture, she is giving her whole body to her lover except for her mouth, which is the only part to have promised fidelity to her husband. Similarly, we can only un­ derstand the image accompanying CNN49 if we notice the scarlet patch across the buttocks of the dress of one of the women sitting on the bench with her back to the viewer (Fig. 27).12 The text that tells us that the hus­ band had the dress made this way to punish his wife for her infidelity, in order to humiliate her in public.

9 An anecdote may add weight to this subjective finding. While preparing this chapter, I was participating in the work of the Images Group of the Groupe d’Anthropologie Historique de l’Occident Médiéval (GAHOM). Masters students studying medieval art history, history and anthropology were tasked with indexing images of medieval manuscripts. With PierreOlivier Dittmar, I presented several images from MS Hunter 252 to the group, and asked them to guess the stories from the images. The attempts proved to be wrong in almost every case, even though the students knew that the main plot of each story was love. This group, founded at EHESS by Jacques Le Goff, is now called AHLoMA (Anthropologie Historique du Long Moyen Âge). During my time as a student, it was directed by Jean-Claude Schmitt. I owe a great deal to the intellectual stimulation provided by this group. 10 Fol. 66r. 11 Fol. 112r. 12 Fol. 113v.

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The images therefore fulfil an indexing role: they allow the reader to find a passage when he or she is leafing through a book they already know. The details make it possible to distinguish the different plots, but we will see that it is the structuring of space which, by introducing temporality into the images and clearly differentiating them from one another, plays the major mnemonic role.

The role played by architecture in the plots and images Before the invention of measured perspective in Italy during the Quattro­ cento, a common narrative device in medieval miniatures was to show time in terms of movement in space. Right-left and backward-forward relation­ ships, superposition and repetition were all used to help solve problems in narrative movement, shifts in storyline, and to show or highlight sequences of cause and effect.13 The miniaturist faced a twofold challenge: illustrating a new literary genre composed in the French language characterized by condensation and efficiency in the textual narrative; and creating a completely new iconographic programme in its own right. One logical reference for our illustrator may have been the iconographic tradition of the Decameron.14 Notwithstanding the explicit generic and textual model offered by Boccac­ cio, however, one quickly understands that this was not the case: the

13 On the birth and chronology of this phenomenon, see Otto Pächt, The Rise of Pictorial Narrative in Twelfth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962); Miriam Schild Bunim, Space in Medieval Painting and the Forerunners of Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940) (This last work, which covers a long period – from Antiquity to the Renaissance – is very interesting on the overall question, but it does not discuss the fifteenth century and the compartmentalization of space); Alexandra Velissariou, ‘L’Espace et le jeu des Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, Le Moyen Âge, 114/2 (2008), 239-54 (where it is argued that the spatial framework is part of the plot. Hiding places allow for a visual strategy to be developed); Jérôme Baschet, La Civilisation féodale. De l’an mil à la colonisation de l’Amérique (Paris: Aubier, 2004), pp. 319-20 (He insists on the notion of ‘space’ in presenting the organizational synthesis of feudalism as an ‘enclosure’); Jean-Claude Schmitt, ‘Images’, in Dictionnaire raisonné de l’Occident médiéval, ed. by Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt (Paris: Fayard, 1999), pp. 497-511 (‘Medieval images treat the relationship between figure and background quite differently from the images with which we have been familiar since the Renaissance: they ignore the construction of space according to the rules of perspective and, on the contrary, favour a “leafing through” of figures that are superimposed on an “inscription surface”’: p. 500). See also Pierre Francastel, La Figure et le lieu, l’ordre visuel du Quattrocento (Paris: Gallimard, 1967). 14 Jill M. Ricketts, Visualizing Boccaccio: Studies on Illustrations of the Decameron, from Giotto to Pasolini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011 [1997]); Boccaccio e la Francia. Boccace et la France, ed. by Philippe Guérin and Anne Robin (Florence: Franco Cesati editore, 2017).

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illustrations in our recueil offer a visual narration – indeed, a close reading – of each story in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, distinguishing themselves markedly from those of the Decameron.15 MS Hunter 252 was illuminated by a single miniaturist who belonged to a generation of artists (Maître de Robert Gaguin, de la Chronique Scandaleuse, du Cardinal de Bourbon, among others) to whom traditional illumination seemed archaic and conventional.16 They sought to innovate in terms of action and perspective, and through more daring compositions. This generation is influenced by the renewed importance of architecture as witnessed in the development of gothic, and by the new way of looking at things which architectural change implied: À mesure que l’architecture rayonnante domine le ciel de Paris, un changement de même type se produit dans les autres arts. Enluminures, ivoires, vitraux […] adoptent les formes décoratives rayonnantes. Quels que soient les arts, l’architecture devient le point de référence pour la construction des encadrements, tandis que les formes élégantes et les larges plis de la sculpture se retrouvent dans les figures peintes.17 As the radiant architecture comes to dominate the skies of Paris, a similar change is taking place in the other arts. Illuminations, ivories, stained glass […] adopt decorative radiant forms. Whatever the arts, architecture becomes the reference point for the construction of frames, while the elegant forms and wide folds of sculpture are found in painted figures. The authors are referring here to the style we might call Radiant Gothic, i.e. religious architecture, rather than urban or domestic space. However, ‘Ce phénomène témoigne d’une nouvelle conscience, d’une nouvelle at­ tention portée à l’architecture de l’époque et, par-delà, d’un regard sensible sur le monde’ (‘This phenomenon testifies to a new awareness, a renewed focus on the architecture of the time and, through that, a more refined

15 This chapter was finalized during the exceptional circumstances of the Covid-19 outbreak and mandatory containment. Remembering that the Decameron was written during the Great Plague (1349) and recounted the story of young people who resist contagion through isolation, a colleague had the idea to write a blog based on the stories of the Decameron, but adapted to our times, and now published in book form: Nathalie Koble and Tiphaine Samoyault, Décamérez! Des nouvelles de Boccace (Paris: Macula, 2021). As we shall see in Chapter 9 below, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles were themselves depicted as emerging from another existential crisis or ‘Decameronian moment’. 16 François Avril, Quand la peinture était dans les livres. Les manuscrits enluminés en France (Paris: Flammarion, 1993). 17 Meredith Cohen, Xavier Dectot, Paris, ville rayonnante, Musée de Cluny, Musée National du Moyen Âge, 10 février-24 mai 2010 (Paris: RMN, 2010), pp. 52–53.

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view of the world’).18 Because whoever conceived of the iconographic cycle of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles belongs to a generation that sees the world differently, and is influenced by Gothic architecture, he has planned to use architecture as a means of structuring space and the activities ensuing from it. Compartmentalization is in fact necessary given the content of the stories: from the very first story, indeed, the role of architecture is itself stressed as one of the main driving forces behind the action. The house of the unnamed ‘good bourgeois’ who is the subject of CNN1 is one of the most envied and admired in the city (entre les desirez et loez edifices). This splendid house gives onto several streets, but it also features a postern gate (petite poterne) which affords access to a neighbouring house.19 It is this door that one crosses, opens, closes or pronounces to be closed within the narrative, and these actions are the main device in the plot’s twists, turns and comedic value. In other short stories we find many other architectural features or secret corners that give the stories their flavour: an antechamber (CNN28), a small door at the back of the house that opens onto the garden (CNN31), an attic with a pierced floor (CNN34), a small room at the back of the house (CNN39), a chimney (CNN40), a hedge (CNN73), a room that has pierced walls (CNN49) or earthen walls that can be pierced (CNN52), a chest (CNN27), the space between the bed and the wall (ruelle, CNN4, 34, 35), a tapestry (CNN4).20 The illuminator is urged by the text to take advantage of the architectural variations and combinations, and to reflect them in the structuring of his illuminations in order to convey the flavour of the comic situation in which the characters find themselves. Se dessine dans le même temps un espace détourné qui permet de voir sans être vu. Les CNN regorgent de lieux secrets, de maisons à double entrée disposant d’une porte de derrière, de chambres recelant de plus subtiles cachettes : bahuts, casiers, comme si l’espace apparaissait avant tout dans sa capacité à cacher.21 An oblique space emerges that allows us to see without being seen. The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles are full of secret places, double-entry houses with a back door, rooms containing more subtle hiding places: chests, lockers, as if space were perceived above all in terms of its capacity to hide.

18 19 20 21

Cohen and Dectot, Paris, ville rayonnante, pp. 52-53. Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Sweetser, p. 23. Fols 66r, 72v, 85v, 95v, 97v, 157v, 113v, 117v, 62v, 12r, 85v, 87v, 12r. Jean Dufournet and Annie Poujet, ‘La loi de la duplicité dans les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, Mélanges de langue et de littérature françaises du Moyen Âge offerts à Pierre Demarolle, ed. by Charles Brucker (Paris: Champion, 1998), pp. 339-52 (p. 340).

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The illustrator of MS Hunter 252 uses common iconographic devices, then, but also combines them differently from picture to picture, exploring new formulas akin to the ‘narrative algebra’ mentioned by Jeay. Architectural variations in the miniatures play another role. The stories are highly repetitive, complex and potentially difficult to distinguish one from the other. The role of our illuminator was to help the reader of this manuscript to distinguish visually and intellectually between one story and the next. He designed an elaborate iconographic narrative structure that allowed for thematic repetition, but afforded a visual synopsis for each individual variant of the substitution amoureuse theme.

Increasing complexity: bi- and tri-partite images The task of creating a whole new iconographic cycle is a time-consuming and repetitive task, all the more so when the stories are themselves very repetitive. To do his work within a given time, the creator of the icono­ graphic cycle needs to copy and repeat. However, his repetitions are never passive. They show a distinct logic and a quest for efficient and varied narrative devices. New narrative devices appear progressively in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles; simple strategies are developed, and then combined with others in order to build more complex stories. The designer of the images has read the texts and understood them. He exploits the emerging textual innovations, and he captures each story’s plot accurately by com­ bining narrative devices into more complex structures. The first quire (consisting of two folios) contains the table of contents and is not illustrated. Thereafter, the illustrator of MS Hunter 252 begins with very simple compositions. At first he uses basic architectural space and applies to each one of them visual outlines which he reuses: a room (CNN1, 4, 7, 9 and following); two open buildings in a landscape (CNN3, 14, 15, 42); a street lined with houses on both sides (CNN22, 84, 91, 92); a square with a house protruding into a corner (CNN37, 40, 88).22 He adapts them to the stories for the pleasure of varying them: colours of the sheets of the bed or the roof of the houses, the shape of the paving stones in the street and the shapes of the windows. These patterns are eventually combined with one another, and pro­ gressively coalesce into more complex compositions. The first miniatures focus attention on the central element of action – a bed, which is also emblematic of the main theme of the collection wherever it is encouraged by the story (CNN1, 2, 3, 4, 9).23 The miniaturist plays on the size, colour (red, blue, yellow) and location of the bed within the room (left or right). 22 Fols 3r, 12r, 18r, 20v; fols 8v, 30r, 33r, 101; fols 48r, 175r, 185r, 186r; fols 90v, 97v, 181v. 23 Fols 3r, 6r, 8v, 12r, 20v.

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The re-orientation of the bed, vertically to the picture plane, leaves space for the il­ lustration of a second scene. This system is initiated in CNN11 (fol. 25) where, by the simple use of a pillar, the illuminator constructs a new narrative space (Fig. 28). This new device is used no fewer than six times in the next fourteen stories (CNN13, 17, 18, 20, 21, 25). He continued to use it afterwards, but less Fig. 28. Miniature accompanying CNN11, regularly. Thereafter, the use Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, of a bed in an illustration fol. 25r. Courtesy of University of Glasgow calls for a segmented icono­ Library Archives and Special Collections. graphic narrative; in fact, of the remaining forty-three images in which a bed is present, only one reverts to a bed alone, seen hori­ zontally.24 The illuminator makes inventive use of it to describe a multiplic­ ity of situations: concomitant events in contiguous rooms (CNN17, 35), two successive events (CNN21, 70), a causal link (CNN18, 20), repetitive scenes (CNN48) and so forth.25 When an image does not present the ex­ pected direction of action present in the text, it calls for interpretation. For example, CNN11 tells of a jealous husband who one day chooses to make offerings to the devil at the same time as to Saint Michael to find out who will help him to heal from his jealousy.26 At night, the devil answers his call and offers him a ring: as long as he wears it on his finger, his wife will not be able to give him cause to be jealous. When he wakes up, the man real­ izes that he has his finger in his wife’s anus. The image on the left shows the couple in bed and the devil guiding the husband’s finger to his wife’s but­ tocks, while on the right we see the offering scene. It is quite possible that the designer of the iconographic programme wanted to show the most comical and incongruous image first, and its cause only in a second step. It should be pointed out that the illuminator took particular care with this first scene since, as Richard Gameson shows, he put a bright yellow colour on the wings of the devil that is found nowhere else in the manuscript.

24 CNN77, which leaves room to show several people at the dying woman’s bedside. 25 Fols 36v, 87v; fols 45v, 152v; fols 38v, 42v; fol. 112. 26 Richard Gameson gives three other examples of right-left reading of a miniature, CNN55, 89 and 96.

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Beginning at CNN13, the illu­ minator divides his miniature into three scenes, which is quite a chal­ lenge given the narrowness of the frames (just half a column) (Fig. 29). The means are quite var­ ied at the beginning: insertion of a box depicting another room of the house (CNN13); or opening onto a background through a large win­ dow (CNN20); or in the back­ ground, in the landscape (CN­ N21).27 This procedure is formal­ ized from CNN25 onwards, when the arrangement of a small house in the centre leaves a space to the left and right of it, giving a very clear before and after, the image being divided into three vertical thirds.28 The process is repeated from CN­ N26, but in a more abstract way by the introduction of two columns.29 The column then takes the value of either a spatial division or a tempo­ ral division. The illuminator seems satisfied with the efficiency of this process, to the point of using it four times in a row (CNN27-30) (Fig. 30).30 He then grew weary of it without completely abandoning it, since it is found again in CN­ N33, 38 and 55.31 The division of space into three is used once again to reflect the different types of situ­ ations already mentioned, which are a source of comedy (concomi­ tance, causal link and so forth), and it offers better opportunities to

27 28 29 30 31

Fols 27v, 42v, 45v. Fol. 53v. Fol. 54v. Fols 62v, 66r, 68v, 70r. Fols 80r, 93r, 124r.

Fig. 29. Miniature accompanying CNN13, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 27v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

Fig. 30. Miniature accompanying CNN27, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 62v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

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reveal duplicity (CNN27), make people spot a trick (CN­ N28, 38), reveal misunder­ standings (CNN29) or crosspurposes (CNN30), or the dis­ honesty of a character (CN­ N33).32 In addition, the tricompart­ ment arrangement allows games of visual and chromatic opposition and symmetry from which the illuminator can de­ rive narrative and/or comic benefit. One example (CN­ N27) is the story of a woman Fig. 31. Miniature accompanying CNN30, who tricks her husband into Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter climbing inside a storage chest 252, fol. 70r. Courtesy of University of to check if it is big enough to Glasgow Library Archives and Special hold all of her clothes.33 She Collections. then shuts and locks it so that she can spend the night with her lover. In the morning she liberates her husband and reprimands him for having disappeared all night and making her look for him everywhere. The image of the husband being put in the trunk is symmetrical to the im­ age of the husband’s liberation. In the middle, the lovers are standing face to face, which is a metonymy of the night they spend together, and which contributes to the symmetry of the image. Even the decorative panels on the walls contribute to the overall symmetry. The tripartite nature of the image emphasises the treachery of the woman and stresses the originality of the story: the husband is kept out of sight so that the wife can have an affair, in contrast to the more customary trope of the hidden lover. In over half of the miniatures structured into thirds, the last two sec­ tions show contemporaneous events, insisting on cause-and-effect in some, or conflicting/contradictory situations in others. A perfect example of these two mechanisms can be found in the illumination of CNN30 (Fig. 31).34 The story tells of a group of married merchants who go on a pilgrimage to Saint Anthony of Vienne. Due to the spiritual nature of their journey, they take a vow of chastity. Upon reaching an inn, the couples re­ new their pledge, which is overheard by three monks, and then, bound by their renewed vow, sleep apart. The women are tricked by the monks, who 32 Fols 62v, 66r, 93r, 68v, 70r, 80r. 33 Fol. 62v. 34 Fol. 70r.

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silently slip into their beds pretending to be their impenitent husbands. In the last two-thirds of the miniature, both symmetry and asymmetry cause a comic effect: section 3 shows the husbands in their beds, sleeping peace­ fully, while section 2 shows the monks creeping into the ladies’ beds. The irony of the situation (husbands who have a right to sexual intimacy, but take a vow of chastity vs monks who have vowed chastity, but usurp sexual favours) and of the simultaneous actions (sleep vs nocturnal stealth) are highlighted by the mirror images and the visual contrasts (such as colour and orientation). The artist skillfully exploits the humorous nature of cer­ tain role reversals and role inversions through the use of visual similarities and explicit repetitions in the mise-en-scène of the illustrations. The nine tripartite images are very close to each other in the manu­ script. It appears that the illuminator sought to get the most out of the tripartite layout, and then moved on.

The role of three-dimensional architecture Beginning with CNN31, the designer of the iconographic programme took the initiative to distribute his narrative fragments into architectural elements rather than placing them on either side of pillars (Fig. 32).35 These are more daring compositions, making use of architecture that is both more realistic (no division by columns) and more efficient, because it can use the space built in three dimensions (a multi-plane layout) in the service of narration and comedy. The miniature of CNN31 immediately follows the aforementioned dense series of four tripartite miniatures. The tripartition and the symmetry device are now integrated into the concep­ tion of the building. CNN31 tells the story of a squire who visits his master’s lover and passes himself off as a sexual surrogate sent by the master; the squire is eventually found out. On discovering the ruse, the master then decides to share his lover and wine with the squire. The image is divided into three parts: a background, a middle ground and a foreground, distributed on ei­ ther side of a vertical axis that further separates the image into two halves. In the left half of the image, in the background, the squire is approaching the woman’s bed. Still in the left half of the picture, but in the foreground, the knight knocks at the door of the castle. Beyond the temporal gap that separates them, the two images are thematically superimposable: the two men move forward, in a left-right movement, one towards the bed, the other towards the residence, a metonymy of the woman to be possessed. The story finds its resolution in the right half of the image, where only

35 Fol. 72v.

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Fig. 32. Miniature accompanying CNN31, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 72v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

Fig. 33. Miniature accompanying CNN54, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 122v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

36 Fol. 122v.

one scene is visible, in the middle ground. It is a rep­ etition of the woman’s bedroom. The squire greets his master with a cup of wine, the woman waits passively in her bed. The layout is not realistic since the same room can­ not simultaneously be on the left and right, in the background and in the middle ground. This indi­ cates a temporal evolution. The two men meet in the bedroom in the right half of the image, as if the squire had come from the background and the knight from the fore­ ground. The architecture makes it possible to show in a joint movement the resolution of the plot and the reconciliation of the two men. Often, however, the ar­ chitectural decoration served only as a pretext to reproduce the composi­ tion that had previously been achieved with the use of the columns. In CNN54, a woman refuses the advances of a noble­ man, only to catch the at­ tention of a carriage driver by tossing a pillow from the window to lure him to bed (Fig. 33).36 The orga­ nization of the miniature

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makes it possible to visualize three parts of the story: to the left of the building, in front of a landscape, the woman rejects her noble lover. Then we see the lady in her house, at her window, looking at the cartwright in the foreground. The second half of the window shows the woman and the cartwright in bed. What is distinctive here is the use of windows as narra­ tive frames. The vertical window jamb plays the same spatial and temporal role as the columns. All of these illuminations attest to a close reading, indeed, an excellent understanding, of the textual narrative by the miniaturist. The creator of the iconographic programme (whether the artist of MS Hunter 252, or the artist of his sophisticated model) strove to establish a visual narrative that is both clear and takes advantage of architecture to account for the innumerable variants of the same textual plot.

The theme of sight in relation to architecture In the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, the theme of sight is preponderant, since the plot so often turns on characters hiding from husbands, the seeing or not seeing of lovers, the making of signs which are not seen by others and so forth. CNN71 (among many others) emblematizes this issue well, since the cuckolded husband is more angry at his wife because she left the door open when she received her lover than because she cheated on him (Fig. 34).37 CNN36 stresses both in its story-line and in its miniature the importance of architecture in the central theme of seeing/not seeing.38 It is the story of a man who is desperately in love with a woman who does not return his affection. One day, she further inflames his passions by entertaining an ambiguous relationship with two men. The lover wilts as he looks out the window at them. He tells his friend: Regardez a la fenestre, veez la gens bien aises. Et ne veez vous pas comment ilz se devisent plaisamment ?’ [L’ami rit et dit] ‘Quoy ? dit-il; et ne voiz tu pas comment elle tient chacun d’eulx par la resne?39 Look out the window, don’t you see happy people there? And don’t you see how pleasantly they converse?’ [The friend laughs and says] ‘What? Don’t you see that she is holding each of them by the sword strap?

37 Fol. 154v. 38 Fol 89v. 39 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Sweetser, p. 253. For ‘resne’ as ‘courroie de l’épée’, see http:// www.atilf.fr/dmf/definition/rêne.

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She in fact is holding each one by his penis, and nei­ ther, according to the text, notices that she is fondling the other. This short story focuses on the problematic of seeing/not seeing. The unrequited lover was suffer­ ing from seeing the woman he loved in the company of others, but was also failing to comprehend what he saw with his own eyes. His friend asks: ‘Where are your eyes?’ In the miniature, Fig. 34. Miniature accompanying CNN71, standing by the lover’s bed, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, he points his index finger at v fol. 154 . Courtesy of University of Glasgow the woman, stressing the act Library Archives and Special Collections. of seeing and the discovery of what is seen. The author uses the Ovidean metaphor of being blindfolded by love: Et s’il n’eust eu les yeulx bandez et couvers, il povoit veoir apertement ce dont ung aultre a qui rien ne touchoit se perceut a l’œil.40 And if he hadn’t had his eyes blindfolded and covered, he would have been able to see clearly what another person, unaffected by the situation, could see with the naked eye. He also plays on the sleepless nature of unrequited love: ‘il n’avoit garde de dormir tant estoient ses yeux empeschez de veoir son contraire’.41 (He couldn’t sleep because his eyes were so unable to see what was bothersome to him.) This element is represented by a faraway, restless look in the eyes of the frustrated lover. The whole story is built on a succession of glances, since the newcomer notices that one of the two interlocutors of the woman is trying to ‘see’ what the woman and the other man are ‘doing and saying’. He approaches him and advises him to concentrate on his own ‘business’ (‘besoigne’), and not to worry about others. It is not very clear in the text if the lover and his friend and the damsel and her ‘interlocutors’ are all in the same room. The narrator insists on the fact that the group of three is being watched through the window, but the

40 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Sweetser, p. 253. 41 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Sweetser, p. 253.

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characters seem to have moved very easily from one side of the window to the other. Could it be an interior window? It is less the impossible setting that is interesting than the emphasis the narrator places on the window, which is paramount in the development of the theme of seeing/not see­ ing.42 It both hinders and allows the characters to see what is happening, as shown by the lexical field of vision: ‘seeing’, ‘watching’, ‘spying’, ‘hiding from the eyes’, ‘being blind’, ‘discovering’. The miniature is divided into two halves: on the left, the woman in conversation with the two men, on the right, the overcome lover in his bed, his friend standing next to him. This apparently simple arrangement is complicated by a play on the windows (large and small, with and without mullions), which create alternating and interlocking patterns with the panels on the back wall, thus enhancing the illusion of a three-dimensional space. The larger window, the one on the left, puts the reader in the same position as the rejected lover (it acts as a close-up of what he sees/ does not see): at first we only see a woman talking to two men; after reading the text, a closer look reveals where she puts her hands. The reader becomes witness. The narrator takes over from the friend who knows how to unmask love stratagems, as shown in the rest of the quotation above: Et s’il n’eust eu les yeulx bandez et couvers, il povoit veoir appertement ce dont ung aultre à qui rien ne touchoit se perceut a l’œil. Et de fait luy monstra, et veez cy comment.43 And if he hadn’t had his eyes blindfolded and covered, he would have been able to see clearly what another person, unaffected by the situation, could see with the naked eye. And indeed he showed him, and here you see how’. Like the friend, the narrator is the one who makes us see. In the epilogue, the narrator says that the lover has been the unwilling notary of the scene. ‘Notary’ is another word linked with the question of seeing, since it comes from the latin notare: to notice, designate. Like the rejected lover, thanks to a cunning mise en abîme, we also become the unwilling ‘notary’ of the scene. We are placed in the position of voyeur: one that is both awkward and exciting, much as we are in fact when we read the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles as a whole.

42 For a study of the role of the window in medieval literature, see Par la fenestre: études de littérature et de civilization médiévales, ed. by Chantal Connochie-Bourgne, Senefiance 49 (Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2003) (Openedition 2014: https:// books.openedition.org/pup/2172?lang=fr). 43 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Sweetser, p. 253.

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Architecture and metaphors

Fig. 35. Miniature accompanying CNN36, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 89v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

Fig. 36. Miniature accompanying CNN85, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 175v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

him according to the law of retaliation:

Through skilful play on win­ dows and the act of looking/ seeing, the author has given a very good account of the metaphorical game at work in CNN36 (Fig. 35). While read­ ing the tales, I was struck by the variety of metaphors for the sexual act. It almost seems as if each story was invented only to justify a new metaphorical field. The male sexual organ is com­ pared to a foal (CNN7), that of a woman to an eel pie (CN­ N10), the sexual act to using the stirrup (CNN12), a joust (CNN15), a war (CNN16), a prayer (CNN17), almsgiving (CNN18) and so forth.44 Since metaphors are a form of figura­ tive language, that is to say, one based on images, I had the se­ cret hope of finding this metaphorical game in the im­ ages. Unfortunately, CNN85 is the only one to show a sexual metaphor in image, thanks to an architectural device (Fig. 36).45 In this tale, a goldsmith, who is an early-riser, finds out that his wife is having an affair with a priest who replaces him in the bed before it grows cold. The goldsmith kidnaps the priest and decides to punish

44 For a literary study of these sexual metaphors, see Dufournet and Poujet, ‘La Loi de la duplicité’ (pp. 339-52). 45 Fol. 175v.

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et le mary entra le premier et vit que monseigneur le curé tenoit sa femme entre ses braz et forgeoit ainsi qu’il povoit … ‘Par l’ame de mon pere, avant que vous m’eschappez, je vous mectray en tel estat que james n’arez volunté de marteler sur enclume feminine’.46 and the husband entered and saw that the priest was holding his wife in his arms and forging as best as he could … ‘I swear on the soul of my father, rather than let you escape me, I will put you in such a state that you will never again feel like hammering on any feminine anvil’. He takes the priest to a little house and nails his ‘hammers’ to a bench before setting fire to the house. The author extends the metaphor: L’orfevre envoya querir deux grands clouz a large teste, desquelx il attacha au bancq les deux marteaulx qui avoient en son absence forgé sur l’enclume de sa femme.47 The goldsmith sent for two large broad-headed nails, by which he attached to the bench the two hammers that had in his absence been forging on his wife’s anvil. The image follows the tripartite scheme mentioned above, but arranges the three scenes in an original way according to the architecture of the house and the requirements of the plot: the bedroom upstairs, the workshop below, and the annex leaning against the wall of the house. The miniaturist does not represent the priest burning, concentrating instead on the first and painful part of the punishment. He gives a witty insight into the story by using architecture as a narrative device. Upstairs, the woman is being sexually pounded by the priest, and downstairs the goldsmith is hammering a piece of molten metal. These two scenes are concomitant, and the superimposition makes the metaphor apparent. The scene on the right is consecutive to the other two. The visual parallelism between the goldsmith and his apprentice in front of the anvil on the left, then the goldsmith and his apprentice hammering the priest on the right, extends the metaphor. The play on words is made logical through the juxtaposition of metaphorically parallel, yet contextually asymmetrical visual narratives. The vertical parallel depicts the metaphor of forging, whereas the horizon­ tal parallel is a formal rendition of the lex talionis: the priest is punished for his sin by and with the instrument of his own transgression. The comedy

46 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Sweetser, p. 494. 47 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Sweetser, p. 495; Rose Bidler, Dictionnaire érotique: ancien français, moyen français, renaissance, Coll. Erotica vetera (Montréal: CERES, 2002), p. 229.

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of words is made visual.48 We have here a witty use of architecture for structuring a metaphor through space, action and speech. We noted above a sequential progression in the complexity of the techniques used to establish a visual narrative which is parallel to its textual counterpart. Just as a textual algebra system can be shown at work in this manuscript, an iconographic one is also present. It is clear that the creator of the iconographic cycle of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (who may not be the illuminator of this manuscript, as we have seen) meant to use the project of illustrating the work as an opportunity to develop an icono­ graphic programme rich in narrative content and innovative in graphic arrangement that would do justice to the textual innovations present in the work. We noticed an increasing complexity in the compartmentalization of the miniatures, first in number (one to two then three compartments), then in terms of depth (the compartments are integrated into the architec­ tural structure). We have to remember that illustrating a manuscript was a very time consuming and often repetitive act, all the more so in this case because the stories themselves are, by their very nature, repetitions of similar themes. This progressive complexity stops shortly after the first third of the manuscript. Perhaps the designer of the iconography then became tired, or found that adding complexity was slowing down the illustrative part of the manuscript-making process and he had to speed up his work. He then only took up schemes that had already been used, which he sometimes made more complex by playing with the architecture when the text offered a particularly interesting invitation to do so. It is evident that one of the mechanisms chosen by the designer – indeed, a constitutive element of his visual poetics – was architecture: an architecture in which the basic building blocks are textual meaning and metaphorical innovation. We can say that although not all of the stories in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles offered the miniaturist an opportunity to make images as textually rich and visually innovative as the examples we have shown here, they prove how attentive the illuminator was to both the overall narrative content of the stories, and to the particular words and sometimes metaphors that distinguished one short story from another, ultimately serving as a paratextual index by which the reader could quickly identify any particular tale in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles manuscript.

48 For a remarkable example of the illustration of metaphorical and obscene proverbs, see MS Chantilly, Condé 388, studied by Patricia Stirneman, ‘Histoire d’amour sans paroles’, Art de l’enluminure 5 (juin/juillet/août 2003), 4-57.

alEXaNDra vElissariOu † 

Chapter 6. Narratological readings of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (CNN3, 21, 27) Text and image in MS Hunter 252

In the dedication to Philip the Good placed at the beginning of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, the anonymous writer announces what the main goal of his work will be. The latter will recount ‘cent histoires assez semblables en matere’ (‘one hundred stories, quite similiar in content’), but of which ‘l’estoffe, taille et fasson […] est d’assez fresche memoire et de myne beaucop nouvelle’ (‘the substance, size and manner are quite fresh in the memory, and their semblance most novel’).1 The paratext indicates that the originality of the compendium therefore does not lie in the subject matter of the stories, but in their seemingly recent character, and in the way they are narrated. In fact, most of the nouvelles are revivals of old fabliaux or of other old narrative texts.2 The narrative material of the book belongs more generally to what Gaston Paris elegantly called the matériel roulant (circulating matter) of medieval European literature.3 When he used this formula, the famous critic referred to the group of themes and motives found in literature since its earliest origins, whether expressed in oral or written form. In his study of French comical theatre, Pietro Toldo also noted that the nouvelle is ‘un patrimoine commun à tout le monde’ (‘a heritage shared by all’).4

1 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. by Franklin Sweetser, Textes littéraires français, 127 (Geneva : Droz, 1966), p. 22, l. 15-16, 28-29. The translation is my own. However, all the following translations are those of Rossell Hope Robbins, who did not provide a translation of the dedication in her English version of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. The Hundred Tales, trans. by Rossell Hope Robbins (New York: Crown publishers, 1960). 2 See the Appendix in Nelly Labère, Défricher le jeune plant. Étude du genre de la nouvelle au Moyen Âge, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 69 (Paris: Champion, 2006). 3 Gaston Paris, Histoire littéraire de la France, XXX (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1888), p. 48. Unless otherwise stated, all translations of critical works are my own. 4 Pietro Toldo, Études sur le théâtre comique français du Moyen Âge et sur le rôle de la nouvelle dans les farces et les comédies (Rome: Loescher, 1902), p. 3. Alexandra Velissariou † • Université du Littoral – Côte d’Opale The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - c. 1550), ed. by Graeme Small, Texte, Codex & Contexte, 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 187–200 10.1484/M.TCC-EB.5.132236

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Though it is undoubtedly interesting and valuable to note the similar­ ities which exist between some of the Burgundian nouvelles and other previous or contemporary texts, the title itself, a key paratextual element, draws the reader’s attention to the author’s main intention.5 The second occurrence of the word nouvelles functions as an adjective qualifying the nouvelles, that is to say: the stories which are here narrated. What does this adjective mean, except that the stories in question are equated with originality? In a paper focused upon the word nouvelle in the Middle Ages, Roger Dubuis explains the title of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles in the following terms: C’est […] à un jeu sur le double sens de ‘nouveau/nouvelle’ que l’auteur a recours. Nouvelles, ses histoires le sont parce qu’elles relatent des événements récemment arrivés. Nouvelles, elles le sont aussi, surtout peut-être, parce que leur technique et leur écriture sont originales.6 The author plays on the double meaning of ‘nouveau/nouvelle’. His tales are new because they narrate recent events. Most of all, they are also new, because their technique and the way they are written are original. The originality of the nouvelles therefore lies in the form of the com­ pendium, that is to say: in the written word and in the organization of the stories.7 This originality has been demonstrated once more by Roger Dubuis in his thesis on the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, in which he shows the importance of what he calls the point de bascule (‘tipping point’) and the pointe (‘point’) in the writing of the nouvelles.8 Jens Rasmussen has also

5 For example, the tales remind us of many fabliaux and farces. See Roger Dubuis, Les “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles” et la tradition de la nouvelle en France au Moyen Âge (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1973), pp. 273-303; Alexandra Velissariou, Aspects dramatiques et écriture de l’oralité dans les “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 77 (Paris: Champion, 2012), pp. 381-566. 6 Roger Dubuis, ‘Le Mot nouvelle au Moyen Âge: de la nébuleuse au terme générique’, in Roger Dubuis, La Nouvelle et l’art du récit au XVe siècle en France. Recueil d’articles offert par ses amis, ses collègues et ses disciples (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1998) (first published in La Nouvelle, définitions, transformations, ed. by Bernard Alluin and François Suard (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1990), pp. 13-27), p. 45. 7 Janet M. Ferrier remarks that ‘[…] in the nouvelle it is the form that counts far more than the subject-matter. […] While preserving this lack of variety on the matter, the authors of the nouvelle develop all their skill and technical ability to the achievement of perfection in the manner of narrating that matter’: Janet M. Ferrier, Forerunners of the French Novel. An Essay on the Development of the Nouvelle in the Late Middle Ages (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1954), p. 39. 8 Dubuis, Les “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles” et la tradition de la nouvelle en France au Moyen Âge, pp. 109-24.

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analysed the stylistic qualities of the book, in his study entitled La prose narrative française du XVe siècle.9 In an essay on the precursors of the French novel, where a full chap­ ter is devoted to the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Janet M. Ferrier evokes the formalism of the fifteenth century nouvelle, and reminds us that this literary genre is above all concerned with perfection of form.10 The word ‘formalism’ employed by the critic is most interesting. It naturally reminds us of the studies carried out by Russian researchers of the beginning of the twentieth century, which were focused on narrative texts. These critics, called formalists, are the inventors of narratology, of the science du récit (‘narrative science’).11 Narratologists largely inspired French struc­ turalism.12 They aimed to study narrative literature from a point of view which differed from a simple thematic analysis. They believed in the exis­ tence of a ‘grammaire universelle’.13 A ‘universal grammar’ was not limited to the sole area of language, it also concerned the universe of narration.14 Tzvetan Todorov applied this theory to one of the major works connected to the genre of the nouvelle, Boccaccio’s Decameron.15 In an essay entitled the Grammaire du “Décaméron”, he explains which method should preferably be used to analyse the nouvelle from a scientific point of view: ‘Nous chercherons à établir la structure du discours narratif en lui donnant la forme d’une grammaire, telle qu’on la connaît dans la tradition européenne classique’.16 (‘We will endeavour to establish the structure of narrative discourse by giving it the form of a grammar, similiar to the one we know in the European classical tradition.’) This ‘grammaire universelle se situe au niveau de la structure profonde, qui est constituée ici par les schémas narratifs abstraits’ (‘[This] universal grammar can be found in the underlying structure, which is composed in this case of abstract narrative schemas’).17 In other words, Todorov believes that each narrative is composed of a group of units, and that it is possible to imagine a syntax

9 Jens Rasmussen, La Prose narrative française du XVe siècle (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1958). 10 Janet M. Ferrier says that ‘the formalism of the fifteenth-century nouvelles, the predominance of the method of treatment over the theme treated, condemned them to extinction’: Ferrier, Forerunners of the French Novel, pp. 102-03. 11 Tzvetan Todorov, Grammaire du “Décaméron” (The Hague: Mouton, 1969), p. 10. All translations of this work are my own. 12 See for example the themed edition of the journal Communications 8 (1966) entitled Recherches sémiologiques: l’analyse structurale du récit; and Algirdas Julien Greimas, Sémantique structurale: recherche et méthode (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986). 13 Todorov, Grammaire du “Décaméron”, p. 15. 14 Todorov, Grammaire du “Décaméron”, p. 15. 15 Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. by Vittore Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1985). Modern English translation: Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, ed. by Jonathan Usher and trans. by Guido Waldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 16 Todorov, Grammaire du “Décaméron”, p. 16. 17 Todorov, Grammaire du “Décaméron”, p. 16.

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of the nouvelle, a syntax which is built on ‘la combinaison des unités entre elles, les relations qu’elles entretiennent mutuellement’ (‘the combination of units, the relations which link them together’).18 Moreover, in an article entitled ‘La grammaire du récit: le Décaméron’, Todorov explains how to apply the formalist method to the nouvelle: ‘Pour étudier la structure de l’intrigue d’un récit, nous devons d’abord présenter cette intrigue sous forme d’un résumé, où à chaque action distincte de l’histoire correspond une proposition’.19 (‘To study the structure of a narrative’s plot, we must first present this plot in form of a summary, in which each distinct action of the story has a corresponding proposition’.) He then specifies what the basic structure of each narrative might be: L’intrigue minimale complète consiste dans le passage d’un équilibre à un autre. Un récit idéal commence par une situation stable qu’une force quelconque vient perturber. Il en résulte un état de déséquilibre; par l’action d’une force dirigée en sens inverse, l’équilibre est rétabli; le second équilibre est semblable au premier mais les deux ne sont jamais identiques.20 The minimal complete plot consists in the passage from one equilibrium to another. An ‘ideal’ narrative begins with a stable situation which is disturbed by some power or force. There results a state of disequilibrium; by the action of a force directed in the opposite direction, the equilibrium is re-established; the second equilibrium is similar to the first, but the two are never identical. Todorov next reminds us that Il y a par conséquent deux types d’épisodes dans un récit: ceux qui décrivent un état (d’équilibre ou de déséquilibre) et ceux qui décrivent le passage d’un état à l’autre. Le premier type sera relativement statique et, on peut dire, itératif: le même genre d’actions pourrait être répété indéfiniment. Le second, en revanche, sera dynamique et ne se produit, en principe, qu’une seule fois.21 There are consequently two types of episodes in a narrative: those which describe a state (of equilibrium or of disequilibrium) and

18 Todorov, Grammaire du “Décaméron”, p. 18 19 Tzvetan Todorov, ‘La grammaire du récit: le Décaméron’, in Tzvetan Todorov, Poétique de la prose (choix), suivi de nouvelles recherches sur le récit (Paris: Seuil, 1980), p. 49. Translation: Dorothy J. Hale, An Anthology of Criticism and Theory. 1900-2000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), p. 213. 20 Todorov, ‘La grammaire du récit: le Décaméron’, p. 50. Hale, An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, p. 213. 21 Todorov, ‘La grammaire du récit: le Décaméron’, p. 50. Hale, An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, p. 213.

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those which describe the passage from one state to the other. The first type may be relatively static and, one might say, iterative: the same kind of actions can be repeated indefinitely. The second, on the other hand, will be dynamic and in principle occurs only once. Todorov also compares these two types of episodes to ‘deux parties du discours, l’adjectif et le verbe’ (‘two parts of speech, the adjective and the verb’).22 He expands thus: ‘[les] adjectifs narratifs seront […] ces prédicats qui décrivent des états d’équilibre ou de déséquilibre, les verbes, ceux qui décrivent le passage de l’un à l’autre’.23 (‘[N]arrative “adjectives” will therefore be those predicates which describe states of equilibrium or disequilibrium, narrative “verbs” those which describe the passage from one to the other’.) Moreover, in the Grammaire du Décaméron, he mentions a third cate­ gory of la grammaire de la narration (‘the grammar of narration’), the proper name, as opposed to the two others, the adjective and the verb. Todorov defines this category as follows: Syntaxiquement, le nom propre correspond à l’agent. Mais l’agent peut être aussi bien un sujet qu’un objet. […] Le nom propre narratif voit son caractère descriptif réduit à un minimum, il signifie: une personne. […] L’agent est une personne; mais il n’est en même temps personne. En effet la structure de la proposition nous montre que l’agent ne peut être pourvu d’aucune propriété, il est plutôt comme une forme vide que viennent remplir les différents prédicats (verbes ou attributs).24 From a syntactic point of view, the proper name is an agent. But the agent can be a subject just as it can be an object […] The descriptive quality of the narrative proper name is reduced to a minimum and it signifies: a person […] The agent is a person; but at the same time it is nobody. Indeed, the structure of the proposition shows us that the agent cannot possess any attributes, it is more like an empty form which is filled by the different predicates (verbs or adjectives). Unlike Greimas, for example, Todorov does not define the narrative char­ acter as a destinataire (‘recipient’) or a destinateur (‘sender’), but as ‘l’agent d’une série de prédicats’ (‘the agent of a series of predicates’).25 In his view,

22 Todorov, ‘La grammaire du récit: le Décaméron’, p. 50. Hale, An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, p. 213. 23 Todorov, ‘La grammaire du récit: le Décaméron’, p. 50. Hale, An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, p. 214. 24 Todorov, Grammaire du ‘“Décaméron”, pp. 27-28. 25 Todorov, Grammaire du “Décaméron”, p. 29.

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the proper name is included in the adjective or in the verb, and is not, on its own, of any great interest. Todorov is not the only critic to have described narrative in this way. There are similiar ideas in the works of Tomachevski, another Russian for­ malist whose texts have been translated into French by Todorov himself. According to Tomachevski, ‘la fable représente le passage d’une situation à une autre’ (‘the tale represents the passage from one situation to the other’), and ‘les motifs qui changent la situation s’appellent des motifs dynamiques, ceux qui ne la changent pas, des motifs statiques’ (‘motifs which change the situation are called dynamic motifs, those which do not change it are called static motifs’).26 In the remainder of this paper, I propose to pursue the Formalists’ research and thus endeavour to apply to a selection of Burgundian nouvelles the principles of narratology, such as they have been defined by the critics in question in studies of other texts. I will also focus in my analysis upon several miniatures of MS Hunter 252, which, due to their deep connection with the text and their organization, can also be analysed from a narrato­ logical point of view. Once again, but from a different perspective, we will have cause to underline the close interaction of textual and paratextual dimensions of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. As I have already shown elsewhere, the structure of the novellas is generally quite simple.27 It is frequently divided into two parts, separated by what Roger Dubuis calls the point de bascule (‘tipping point’).28 It thus reminds us of the structure of various fabliaux of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries which might have inspired some of the nouvelles, and of the organization of some farces written at the same time or soon after the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. This aspect of the latter literary genre has been thoroughly analysed by Bernadette Rey-Flaud.29 In the case of the nouvelle, it is quite apparent that the simplicity of the tales’ structure is due to the need for brevity: at that period in literature, it was necessary to give the reader or listener a basic narrative which was easily understandable, and which was capable of rapidly producing a comic effect. The third nouvelle of the Burgundian compendium shows this type of structure, as shown in the following summary. In the incipit, the reader is

26 Boris Tomachevski, ‘Thématique’, in Théorie de la littérature. Textes des formalistes russes, ed. and trans. by Tzvetan Todorov (Paris: Seuil, 1965), p. 272. Translation: Tzvetan Todorov, The Poetics of Prose, trans. by Richard Howard (New York: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 220. 27 See Velissariou, Aspects dramatiques, passim. 28 Dubuis, Les “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles” et la tradition de la nouvelle en France au Moyen Âge, pp. 117-24. 29 Bernadette Rey-Flaud, La Farce ou la machine à rire. Théorie d’un genre dramatique, 1450-1550 (Geneva: Droz, 1984).

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acquainted with the initial situation.30 We learn that a knight is married to a ‘belle et gente dame’ (‘a beautiful and charming lady’), and lives in a castle not far from a miller’s abode.31 The latter is also married to a ‘belle, gente et jeune femme’ (‘a pretty and charming young woman’).32 One day, while he is walking by the riverside, the knight chances upon the miller’s wife and convinces her that her ‘devant est en tresgrand dangier de cheoir’ (‘her frontage is in very great danger of sagging’).33 In order to solve this problem, he generously proposes to ‘recoigner’ (‘knock up’)34 this impor­ tant part of the lady’s anatomy. She gratefully accepts his proposal. When the miller comes home, his naive wife informs him of her adventures in the company of their neighbour. Although he manages to conceal his fury, the miller secretly decides to take revenge. He visits the knight’s wife, who is in the middle of taking her bath. Whilst conversing with her, he steals unseen one of her rings, which is on the edge of the tub. Later, when she asks him to come back in order to ask him if he knows of the ring’s whereabouts, he replies that the jewel most certainly fell into the bath water and found its way into her body. He offers to fish out the diamond. The lady accepts. When she tells the knight all about the event, he realizes that the miller has taken his revenge. The story ends on a verbal exchange between the two men: the knight greets the ‘bon pescheur de dyamant’ (‘the good diamond fisher’), whereas the miller greets the ‘bon recoigneur de cons’ (‘the good knocker-upper of cunnies’).35 Together they agree to part on good terms. The structure of the nouvelle can be analysed in the following manner. The initial situation described in the incipit corresponds to a situation of equilibrium, a static episode where nothing happens. It is only a descriptive moment in the intrigue. The arrival of the knight and his conversation with the miller’s wife belong to a situation of transition, a dynamic episode leading to a situation of disequilibrium, in other words: the instant when the miller learns that he has been made a cuckold, and decides to take revenge. This static episode shows the miller’s desire to change the situation with which he is confronted, more precisely to change his position of victim. The episode is static because this desire is still at a virtual stage. The miller’s encounter with the knight’s wife is yet another dynamic episode, which enables the intrigue to progress towards the last episode of the narrative, the final situation, where at last the equilibrium is restored: the two men part on good terms. This last episode, which is 30 Alexandre Lorian, ‘Les Incipit des Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, in IIe colloque International sur le Moyen Âge (Düsseldorf, 17- 19 septembre 1980) (Tübingen: G. Narr, 1982), pp. 171-87. 31 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Sweetser, p. 38, l. 6. Translation: The Hundred Tales, p. 11. 32 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Sweetser, p. 38, l. 9. Translation: The Hundred Tales, p. 11. 33 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Sweetser, p. 39, l. 28. Translation: The Hundred Tales, p. 11. 34 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Sweetser, p. 40, l. 63. Translation: The Hundred Tales, p. 12. 35 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Sweetser, p. 47, l. 285, 287. Translation: The Hundred Tales, p. 17.

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static and harmonious, is character­ istic of most narratives. According to Tomachevski, ‘habituellement, la fin de la fable est représentée par une situation où les conflits sont supprimés et les intérêts sont réconciliés’ (‘normally, the end of the story is represented by a situa­ tion where conflicts are eliminated and interests are reconciled’).36 The nouvelle is therefore built on an alternation of static and dy­ namic episodes, linked together by cause/effect relations. The two dy­ Fig. 37. Miniature accompanying CNN3, Glasgow University Library, MS namic episodes of the story, which are both scenes of adultery, only ex­ Hunter 252, fol. 8v. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Archives ist in a metaphorical form in the written text. and Special Collections. If we now turn to the paratext and observe the corresponding miniature of MS Hunter 252, we can see that it only depicts the two dy­ namic episodes of the narrative, and that in contrast to the text, the two scenes are shown in a realistic fashion. 37 (Fig. 37) In the foreground, we can see the watermill with its wheel turning in the river. Inside the build­ ing, there is a couple in bed, the knight and the miller’s wife. In the back­ ground, a similar scene shows another couple inside a castle: this is the knight’s wife and the miller. The iconographic programme is the result of much careful thinking on the part of the artist, or of the person responsible for its conception. The two chosen scenes represent the two key moments of the story, and they also reflect the binary character of the narrative, which is built on the theme of the trompeur trompé (‘the deceiver de­ ceived’) and, in consequence, on a reversible situation. As Bernadette ReyFlaud puts it with respect to the genre of the farce, the whole nouvelle is a ‘farcerie’ (‘a reversible joke’).38 The picture version of the story shows the two dynamic episodes of the story, thus perfectly reflecting the comical mechanism of the narration. The same type of harmony between the story and its illustration ap­ pears most clearly in the case of CNN27. The text begins with a traditional

36 Tomachevski, ‘Thématique’, p. 273. 37 MS Hunter 252, fol. 8v. 38 Rey-Flaud, La Farce ou la machine à rire, p. 216.

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triangular situation: a married noblewoman falls in love with a prince.39 This stage of the narration is the initial situation, a static episode of equilib­ rium, as the adultery has not yet taken place. The next part of the narration describes a forfeit: the husband, who is the main obstacle to the lovers’ meeting, lets his wife lock him in a large chest containing clothes. His wife’s chambermaids carry the chest into another room, thus leaving the prince alone with his mistress. This dynamic episode shows a transition, where each element is important for the next part of the story. It is fol­ lowed by an episode of disequilibrium, which brings the triumph of adul­ tery. The following conversation between the husband in the chest and his wife is another episode of transition: the woman pretends to discover that her husband is still in the chest. Last of all, the equilibrium is restored thanks to the release of the nobleman, and by the return of everyday life, without the husband ever having discovered the adultery of his spouse. The corresponding miniature shows three of the most important stages of the narrative: from left to right, we can see the locking up of the husband in the chest, the lovers’ meeting, and the release of the husband.40 More precisely than the written word, in fact, the paratextual element of the image shows the basic structure of the story, underlining its principal stages and, from a modern point of view, proving that a narratological analysis of the tale is possible. The latter is made visible by dint of the division of the miniature into three parts, where the architecture, which consists of columns and ornamental archways, plays a capital role in sepa­ rating the different stages of the story (in ways that are discussed more fully in Chapter 5 above, by Maud Pérez-Simon). CNN21 also shows an interesting case of the text-image relationship. It tells the following story: the abbess of a convent falls seriously ill, and all types of medicine prove inefficacious. This is the initial situation, an episode of equilibrium. One of the nuns goes to see a famous doctor, in order to ask him to analyse the patient’s urine. His diagnostic is both funny and dramatic: according to the doctor, if the abbess refuses to sleep as soon as possible with a man, she will die. This is a transition episode, which leads to an episode of disequilibrium: when informed of the situation, the nun refuses to follow the doctor’s prescription, saying that she prefers to die rather than break the rule of chastity. Finally, the other nuns, bound together in a spirit of solidarity, find a solution: they all decide to sacrifice

39 See Michel Olsen, Les Transformations du triangle érotique (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1976). Many of the tales of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles show triangular situations, including a husband, a wife and a mistress or a lover. Very often, the mistress is a member of the man’s household, such as a chambermaid. See Tovi Bibring, ‘Love thy Chambermaid: Emotional and Physical Violence against the Servant in Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, in Emotions in the Household, 1200-1900, ed. by Susan Broomhall (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008), pp. 53-68. 40 MS Hunter 252, fol. 62v. This miniature is reproduced in Chapter 5 above.

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themselves by sleeping with men, so as to enable the abbess to cure herself without feeling guilty. This is a new episode of transition. The story ends with a return to equilibrium, thanks to the arrival of monks, priests and clerks, all of a mind to help the female community out. In the miniature of the same nouvelle, three stages of the story are depicted (Fig. 38).41 On the left, we can see the ini­ tial situation: the nuns are Fig. 38. Miniature accompanying CNN21, stood by the bedside of the ill Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter abbess. On the right, one of the v 252, fol. 45 . Courtesy of University of nuns is with the doctor, who is Glasgow Library Archives and Special looking at the patient’s urine. Collections. This is a transition episode, the origin of the situation of dise­ quilibrium. In the background, we can see the convent, into which a crowd of ecclesiastical men is entering. This is the final situation, the return to a form of equilibrium: an equilibrium very different to the one which existed at the beginning of the nouvelle. These three stories are only a few of the examples which might be cited to confirm the theories of Todorov, who argues that each narrative is composed of basic units linked together by logical relations, that is to say, by adjectives or verbs. At the end of the Grammaire du “Décaméron”, Todorov also describes the general syntactical structure of Boccaccio’s novellas. He proposes to the reader ‘une image générale du récit, telle qu’elle apparaît dans le Décaméron’ (‘a general picture of the narrative, as it appears in the De­ cameron’), whilst reminding us that ‘nombre de traits communs à toutes les histoires du Décaméron caractérisent également le genre entier nouvelle’ (‘numerous aspects shared by the tales of the Decameron also characterize the whole genre of the novella’).42 This type of short story is nearly always composed of two parts: ‘la première partie expose un certain état des choses, alors que la seconde en donne une transformation’ (‘the first part shows a certain state of events, whereas the second tells a transforma­ tion’).43 Todorov links this structure to that of a mathematical problem. The first part of the story shows the initial problem, the second one 41 MS Hunter 252, fol. 45v. 42 Todorov, Grammaire du “Décaméron”, p. 76. 43 Todorov, Grammaire du “Décaméron”, p. 76.

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provides the solution.44 For example, CNN3 displays the following syntac­ tical structure: in the first part, the knight desires the miller’s wife and manages to seduce her; in the second part, the miller takes revenge by se­ ducing the knight’s wife, thus finding a solution to the problem and trans­ forming the events which were described in the first part of the narrative. From this point of view, the paratextual element of the miniature is a per­ fect illustration of the story’s structure, as its binary organization reflects marvelously well the problem and the solution, that is to say: the cuckold­ ing of the miller and the revenge he takes himself.45 Likewise, in CNN21, the problem consists of the illness of the abbess and the impossibility of curing her. The solution is the remedy advised by the doctor and the nuns’ collective decision to follow his advice in order to enable their abbess to recover. The paratext’s miniature is a perfect illustration of the syntactic structure of the tale: to the left, it shows the initial situation; to the right, we can see the solution to the problem.46 Finally, in CNN27, the narration is also divided into two parts: in the first, the desire to commit adultery cannot be accomplished because of the husband’s presence; in the second, the wife finds a way to meet her lover thanks to the invention of a forfeit. In the case of this nouvelle, the miniature only shows the second part of the story, and consequently underlines the deception used by the woman (in other words, the solution to the initial problem).47 Todorov also studies the novella from a semantic point of view, thus maintaining that the unity of Boccaccio’s compendium lies in the theme of exchange or, rather, in ‘l’échange faussé’ (‘a distorted exchange’), that is to say: the transgression of the ‘système de l’échange établi qui gouverne les relations dans une société’ (‘the system of exchange which governs social relations’). 48 According to the critic, it is precisely this transgression of the norm which forms the main interest of the novella. This theory also proves true in many of the tales of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. For example, CNN3 describes an exchange of wives. Each man seduces the other’s spouse, thus reversing the normal social order. In this narrative, the exchange operates both ways. The novella also ends on another exchange, a verbal one this time: each husband calls the other one by a nickname symbolizing his deceitful strategy, in other words, the cunning metaphor used by each man in order to seduce the wife of his neighbour. Todorov shows that in this case, the exchange is negative.49 By contrast, in CNN27 the exchange operates on a one-way basis: the lover swaps places with the

44 45 46 47 48 49

Todorov, Grammaire du “Décaméron”, p. 76. MS Hunter 252, fol. 8v. MS Hunter 252, fol. 45v. MS Hunter 252, fol. 62v. Todorov, Grammaire du “Décaméron”, p. 77. Todorov, Grammaire du “Décaméron”, p. 80.

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husband, becoming, as the writer puts it, the lieutenant (substitute) of the man in question. However, we could also say that the exchange is twofold, since the husband spends the night in a chest, a lot which usually falls to lovers trying to hide from their mistress’s spouse. In CNN21, the exchange is quite different to the ones portrayed in the two other stories. At the beginning of the tale, the abbess refuses the idea of an exchange, in other words to listen to the doctor’s advice. However, convinced by the nuns, she finally gives in and is integrated within a new system of exchange into which she could not previously enter. Todorov points out in relation to Boccaccio’s Decameron that, ‘si le livre a un sens général, c’est bien celui d’une libération dans l’échange’ (‘if the book has a general meaning, it is of liberation through exchange’).50 It is quite apparent that the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, which contain numerous carnival-like facets, also reflect the same way of perceiving the world. In this book, there is a deep unity between the syntactic structure of the novella and its semantic structure, so deep in fact that it is apparent too in the paratextual iconographic programme accompanying the tales. As Todorov puts it, ‘la structure formelle de la question et de la réponse et la structure sémantique de l’échange ne font en fait qu’un’ (‘the formal structure of question and answer and the semantic structure of exchange are in fact one and the same’).51 Consequently, ‘la question et la réponse [sont] le noyau même de toute communication, de tout dialogue, et partant, de tout échange’ (‘the question and the answer are the centre of all communication, of all dialogue and therefore of all exchange’).52 The theories of the Russian formalist concerning the Decameron as­ suredly form an interesting and important starting point for a study of the medieval novella in general. Worthy inheritors of the Italian model and quite modern in their own way, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles show a precise formal and semantic organization which enables them to be easily analysed from a narratological point of view. In the case of MS Hunter 252, the close combination of text and paratextual image enable the reader to discern the underlying structure of each narrative. Indeed, the manuscript’s iconography cristallizes the essential scenes, the decisive episodes of each story.53 The miniatures show either a full summary, or one

50 51 52 53

Todorov, Grammaire du “Décaméron”, p. 81. Todorov, Grammaire du “Décaméron”, p. 82. Todorov, Grammaire du “Décaméron”, p. 82. Jens Rasmussen notes that ‘le caractère statique de la présentation des actes apparaît nettement par la multitude des scènes. La grande quantité de situations scéniques que contiennent ‘Jehan de Saintré’ et les ‘Cent Nouvelles [nouvelles]’ est attestée par les nombreux miniatures et dessins à la plume qui se trouvent dans les manuscrits. Les points culminants de l’action se figent dans une scène où sont exécutés des actes d’une portée limitée pendant que l’aspect général du champ d’action reste inchangé’. (The static character of the presentation of the actions is clearly visible due to the large number of scenes. The

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or several of the most important stages of the narration. This brief study of the Burgundian novellas’ narratological possibilities is intended merely as the starting point of a deeper analysis of the whole book. It would certainly be of great interest to check if these theories can be applied to the rest of the tales.

multitude of scenic situations in ‘Jean de Saintré’ and the ‘Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’ is underlined by the many miniatures and ink drawings which can be found in the manuscripts. The culminating points of the narrative are fixed in a scene where actions of limited impact are shown, whereas the general aspect of the field of action remains unchanged): Rasmussen, La Prose narrative française du XVe siècle, pp. 107-08. The translation is my own.

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The text as a site of language use

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Chapter 7. Toward a scriptology of Middle French The case of MS Hunter 252

Attention now turns from the visual language of the paratext of MS Hunter 252 to the language of the codex itself. As a ‘situated use of language’, the manuscript has, in the past, been mislocated. As we shall see, MS Hunter 252 presents a significant amount of Picard isographs, most probably copied from its model. These variants are consistent with the regional vo­ cabulary one can also find in the text, meaning that the anonymous acteur is likely to have grown up and/or been trained in Picardy. This evidence allows us to conclude that several identifications of the anonymous acteur that have been made in the past are rather unlikely, notably Antoine de la Sale, Olivier de la Marche, Michault de Chaugy or Philippe Pot. *** In spite of teleological misconceptions and/or ideological bias repro­ duced ad nauseam through much of the historiography of French,1 regional spelling conventions were still very much at work in the late Middle Ages and beyond, as has been reported for a long time,2 and quantitatively explored more recently.

1 Algirdas Julien Greimas and Teresa Mary Keane, Dictionnaire du moyen français (Paris: Larousse, 1992), p. xiii; Glanville Price, Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 169-70; Christiane Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française aux XIVe et XVe siècles (Paris: Bordas, 1979; repr. 2005), pp. 19-20. 2 Mildred K. Pope, From Latin to Modern French with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1934), p. 36; Anthonij Dees, ‘Éléments constitutifs du Moyen Français’ in Le moyen français. Actes du Ve Colloque International sur le moyen français, ed. by Sergio Cigada (Milan: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 1986), pp. 7-19 (p. 10); Andres M. Kristol, ‘Le Début du rayonnement parisien et l’unité du français au moyen âge: le témoignage des manuels d’enseignement du français écrits en Angleterre entre le XIIIe et le début du XIVe siècle’, Revue de Linguistique Romane, 53 (1989), 335-67 (pp. 365-67); Claude Buridant, Grammaire nouvelle de l’ancien français (Paris: SEDES, Geoffrey Roger • University of London Institute in Paris The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - c. 1550), ed. by Graeme Small, Texte, Codex & Contexte, 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 203–224 10.1484/M.TCC-EB.5.132237

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The diasystem of medieval written French was supra-regional from the outset; regional graphemes were non-systematic and comparatively few (typically between 3 and 30 per cent according to Charles-Théodore Gossen),3 and some of them became adopted far beyond their original habitat due to wide dissemination and/or sociolinguistic prestige (Insu­ lar, Champenois, Picard and Parisian variants sequentially). Yet these isographs appear to have been perceived as highly distinctive by contem­ porary readers, as evidenced by records describing given documents as either ‘françois’ or ‘picart’ on the basis of their minimal presence,4 or the fact that scriptoria routinely chose between a variety of them when writing to different recipients.5 Diatopic variation in medieval written French therefore is a major sociolinguistic phenomenon, and as such it is the primary focus of what has come to be designated, in Romance historical linguistics, as scriptology. This subfield of historical dialectology and sociolinguistics examines scrip­ tae, i.e. pre-standardisation regional varieties of written language. Scripto­ logical methodology consists in identifying and quantifying regional vari­ ants, primarily phono- and morpho-graphemes, with a view to localising given documents. Because regional variation in written French has never, in any time period, matched regional variation in spoken language, locali­ sation can only be achieved typologically (i.e. diasystematically) as opposed to geolinguistically. Indeed, diatopic substrata are just one of several factors likely to have influenced a given scripta, and unequivocal correspondences between graphemes and phonemes are often impossible to ascertain – although regional toponymy, post-medieval patois literature and modern Oïl dialects may provide convincing corroborating evidence.6

3 4 5 6

2000), p. 28; Serge Lusignan, ‘Le Français médiéval, perspectives historiques sur une langue plurielle’, in L’Introuvable unité du français. Contacts et variations linguistiques en Europe et en Amérique (XIIe-XVIIIe siècle), ed. by Serge Lusignan and others (Quebec: Université de Laval, 2012), pp. 5-107 (pp. 27-92); Alain Rey, Frédéric Duval and Gilles Siouffi, Mille ans de langue française, histoire d’une passion. I. Des origines au français moderne (Paris: Éditions Perrin, ‘Tempus’, 2007; repr. 2013), pp. 104-08. Geoffrey Roger, ‘Les Scriptae régionales du moyen français: état des lieux’, Romanica Helvetica, 138 (2017), 109-52. Charles-Théodore Gossen, ‘Compte-rendu de Louis Remacle, Le problème de l’ancien wallon’, Vox Romanica, 13 (1953-54), 155-64. Serge Lusignan, ‘Langue et société dans le Nord de la France: le picard comme langue des administrations publiques (XIIIe-XIVe s.)’, Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 151/3 (2007), 1275-95 (pp. 1279-80). Martin-Dietrich Glessgen, ‘Les Lieux d’écriture dans les chartes lorraines du XIIIe siècle’, Revue de Linguistique Romane, 72 (2008), 413-54 (p. 523); Serge Lusignan, Essai d’histoire sociolinguistique. Le français picard au Moyen Âge (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2012), p. 183. Hans Goebl, ‘Sur le changement macrolinguistique survenu entre 1300 et 1900 dans le domaine d’oïl. Une étude diachronique d’inspiration dialectométrique’, Dialectologia, 46/1 (2006), 3-43 (pp. 15-16); Lusignan, ‘Le Français médiéval’, p. 92.

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It follows that localising a medieval French text like the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, as it survives in our sole manuscript witness, MS Hunter 252, is a troublesome and occasionally treacherous task, especially when it comes to the Middle French period for which diatopic variation is unfortunately under-researched and largely undocumented.7 Because scribal practices evolved considerably over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the scrip­ tological criteria currently available for localising thirteenth-century texts must be used with great caution,8 as given spellings may have gone from strictly localised to widespread before ultimately disappearing.9 In the absence of a comprehensive survey of regional variants, localising a Middle French manuscript inevitably consists in conflating and cross-comparing scattered evidence from various resources. In the case of MS Hunter 252, what little information is available on its localisation turns out to be contradictory. It is Picard according to Pierre Champion,10 Robert McGillivray11 and the Dictionnaire étymologique de l’ancien français (here­ after DÉAF),12 whereas Christiane Marchello-Nizia localises it in the Îlede-France.13 The Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (hereafter FEW) suggests that its language points towards both Burgundy and Romance Flanders.14 Finally, Luciano Rossi claims that Anthoine Vérard’s indirectly connected,15 printed edition of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Paris, 1486) 7 Dees, ‘Éléments constitutifs’, p. 10; Harald Völker, ‘A “Practice of the Variant” and the Origins of the Standard. Presentation of a Variationist Linguistics Method for a Corpus of Old French Charters’, French Language Studies, 17 (2007), 207-23 (pp. 219-20); Serge Lusignan, ‘L’Aire du picard au Moyen Âge: Espace géographique ou espace politique?’, in Évolutions en français: Etudes de linguistique diachronique, ed. by Benjamin Fagard, Sophie Prévost and Bernard Combettes, Sciences pour la communication, 68 (Bern: Lang, 2008), pp. 269-83 (p. 276); Lusignan, ‘Le Français médiéval’, p. 32. 8 Anthonij Dees, Atlas des formes et constructions des chartes françaises du 13e siècle (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1980). 9 See for instance the rise and fall of the suffix -aigne (Mod. Fr. -agne, Anthonij Dees, Atlas des formes linguistiques des textes littéraires de l’ancien français [Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1987], p. 310), mains (< MINUS, Mod. Fr. moins, Dees, Atlas de l’ancien français, p. 503), varlet (Mod. Fr. valet, Dees, Atlas de l’ancien français, p. 217), -eut / -eurent as preterite endings for -evoir verbs (Mod. Fr. -ut /-urent, Dees, Atlas de l’ancien français, p. 448), or forms of CONNAÎTRE with a cogn- stem (Mod. Fr. conn-, Dees, Atlas de l’ancien français, p. 272), etc. 10 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. by Pierre Champion, Documents artistiques du XVe siècle, 5 (Paris: Droz, 1928), p. liv and glossary. 11 Robert McGillivray, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: A Monograph’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1959), pp. 145-46. 12 http://www.deaf-page.de/fr/bibl/bib99c.php#CentNouvS 13 Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française aux XIVe et XVe siècles, p. 11. 14 Walther von Wartburg and others, Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Eine Darstellung des galloromanischen Sprachschatzes. Beiheft / Complément (Strasbourg: Éditions de linguistique et de philologie, 2010), p. 187. 15 Edgar De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Text and Context: Literature and History at the Court of Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 2004: http://theses.gla.ac.uk/40983/1/2004deBlieckPhD.pdf), p. 508.

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contains ‘features typical of Burgundian dialects’.16 Only Pierre Champion justified his localisation with linguistic evidence, mainly lexical (and con­ vincing overall), which gives a further incentive to explore the graphematic dimension and elucidate the manuscript’s position. This has been done here through direct examination (in relation with Franklin Sweetser’s 1966 edition), as well as cross-comparison with Vérard’s print. It shows that both our extant sources contain regional variants, although significantly fewer in Vérard’s Parisian edition, which nonetheless replicates some of the evidence found in the manuscript, alongside other forms absent from it (as illustrated below). It is likely therefore that the lost original contained more regional features than can be gathered altogether from its two extant copies. On the sociolinguistic context of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles and MS Hunter 252, the following points should be noted or recalled. The tales are ostensibly presented as having been recounted by Philip the Good Duke of Burgundy and members of his court, then compiled at his request as if they had been transcribed from viva voce performance (the anonymous acteur refers to himself as a mere ‘secretary’ of the narrators’ own words – see CNN12, p. 90).17 The storytelling is likely to have taken place ‘between the early autumn of 1458 and the summer of 1459’, at which time the court was initially based ‘in the principle towns of the county of Hainaut’ before relocating to Brussels.18 In that period the Burgundian dominions consisted of the Duchy of Burgundy itself plus, as a result of spectacular territorial expansion initiated in 1384, the Counties of Burgundy and Nevers and what we now refer to as the ‘Burgundian Low Countries’, namely Rethel, Luxembourg, Artois, Hainaut, Brabant, Flanders, Holland, Zeeland, Namur and Limburg. These lands formed a multilingual territory across which several Gallo-Romance and Germanic dialects were spoken (northern and eastern Langue d’oïl, Jurassien, West Central and Low Ger­ man), and characterised by extensive migration from the pays de par-delà (Burgundy) to the pays de par-deçà (Low Countries).19 The Burgundian court brought together different dignitaries from Burgundy and the Low Countries – many of whom were native Dutch speakers – and met primar­ ily in Brussels, Lille and Bruges.20

16 Luciano Rossi, ‘Pour une édition des Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. De la copie de Philippe le Bon à l’édition d’Antoine Vérard’, Le moyen français, 22 (1989), 69-77 (p. 74). 17 Pending the publication of a new edition of MS Hunter 252 (Geoffrey Roger, Geneva: Droz, forthcoming), I refer here to Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. by Franklin Sweetser, Textes littéraires français, 127 (Geneva: Droz, 1966). 18 See Chapter 9 below. 19 Jean Richard, ‘Les Pays bourguignons méridionaux dans l’ensemble des États des ducs Valois’, BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review, 95/2 (1980), 335-47 (pp. 346-47). 20 Graeme Small, ‘Local Elites and “National” Mythologies in the Burgundian dominions in the Fifteenth Century’, in Building the Past. Konstruktion Der Eigenen Vergangenheit, ed.

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It is in this text-book environment for koineisation and creolisation, through dialect- and language-contact, that Philip the Good is reported to have recruited his fellow storytellers. It is important at this stage to restate a number of points addressed more fully in other contributions to the present volume. Those conteurs for whom biographical information is available hail mostly from the Low Countries and Burgundy, but also from Brittany, Saintonge, the Bourbonnais and Markgräflerland.21 This cosmopolitan group comprises humble commoners alongside hugely pow­ erful nobles, including a few knights of the Golden Fleece. It appears to be an entirely masculine crowd, in their twenties through to their seventies,22 whose mission, as outlined in the collection’s epistle, was to produce a northern counterpart to the Italian Decameron, i.e. Boccaccio’s ‘Livre de Cent Nouvelles’, composed of tales taking place primarily ‘in parts of France, Germany, England, Hainaut, Brabant and other places’ (Epistle, p. 20). The Burgundian court was therefore both the collective author and the immediate audience of this performance, with Philip the Good as a leading contributor to, and the dedicatee of, the compiled collection. Beyond the court itself, it is difficult to evaluate how wide a readership the text was aimed at, although the Decameron model would suggest a very broad one indeed. However, we have evidence of just two manuscript copies of the text, and convincing indicators of an additional lost one23 – a shortfall which may well have been caused by Philip’s death and succession, as explained by Graeme Small above.24 While the lost ducal manuscript is described as a luxury artefact, ‘covered with white chamois leather’,25 MS Hunter 252 is a later, less sophisticated piece, and

21

22 23 24 25

by Rudolf Suntrup and Jan R. Veenstra, Medieval to Early Modern Culture/Kultureller Wandel vom Mittelalter zur Frühen Neuzeit, 7 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2006), pp. 229-45 (pp. 235-41); Lusignan, Essai d’histoire sociolinguistique, pp. 187-233; C. A. John Armstrong, ‘The Language Question in the Low Countries: The Use of French and Dutch by the Dukes of Burgundy and their Administration’, in Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by John R. Hale, R. Roger Highfield and Beryl Smalley (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1965), pp. 386-409 (pp. 396, 402); Marc Boone, ‘Langue, pouvoir et dialogue. Aspects linguistiques de la communication entre les ducs de Bourgogne et leurs sujets flamands (1385-1505)’, Revue du Nord, 379/1 (2009), 9-33. Geoffrey Roger, ‘La Mise-en-scène des Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: point de vue dialectologique’, Autour des “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”, sources et rayonnements, contextes et interprétations, ed. by Jean Devaux and Alexandra Velissariou, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 81 (Paris: Champion, 2016), pp. 177-92. De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 216-24; and Chapters 9-10 below (where mention is made of one possible conteur, Jacques de Fiennes, who would have been in his teens). De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 508. See Chapter 4. 1469 inventory of the ducal library, quoted in Georges Doutrepont, La Littérature française à la cour des ducs de Bourgogne, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 8(Paris: Champion, 1909), p. 338.

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probably not a direct copy of the former.26 It contains altered rubrics and interventions by an early sixteenth-century hand apparently unfamiliar with Philip’s court,27 introducing misinformed data such as the date (‘M IVC XXX II’) or the positions of certain storytellers, casting doubt on whether or not the text was actually produced in Dijon as the inscription implies.28 With these points in mind, here is the phono- and morphographematic evidence I have identified towards the localisation of our manuscript, through close examination and comparison with Vérard’s print and Franklin Sweetser’s 1966 edition.

Phono-graphematics Vowels

-A- > -aiThe MS has examples of variation between -a- and -ai-: eight rasiere com­ pared with one raisiere.29 This phenomenon appears to have spread from Lorraine to Franche-Comté and Burgundy,30 and later on to Picardy.31 Alongside forms in -ache, MS Hunter 252 presents alternatives such as caiché (table, p. 2; CNN28, p. 196 – cachié in Vérard’s edition; CNN44, p. 299), caichast (CNN1, p. 25), caicha (CNN4, p. 50; CNN38, p. 264), caichez (CNN13, p. 94 – cachiés in Vérard’s edition), saichant (CNN9, p. 75; CNN26, p. 169). This digraph also appears frequently in Vérard’s edition, and is a northern and eastern Langue d’oïl phenomenon according to Pierre Fouché.32

26 Edgar De Blieck, ‘Sacred Images in a Secular Text: the Case of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, in Histoire, Images, Imaginaire, ed. by Pascal Dupuy (Pisa: Università di Pisa, 2002), 117-36 (p. 122); De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 508. 27 See Chapter 1 above. 28 De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p.47. 29 CNN43, pp. 290, 291, 292 – Vérard’s edition has a masculine ‘rasier’. Pierre Champion glosses it as a unit of measurement for wheat, and notes that the word is often found in documents from northern France (Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, p. 203). Both Frédéric Godefroy (hereafter Gdf – Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle [Paris: Vieweg, 1881-1902], VI, p. 608) and the FEW (X, 99b: rasus) identify this term as Picard and Norman. See also René Debrie, Glossaire du moyen picard (Amiens: Centre d’études picardes, 1984), p. 342. 30 See Dees, Atlas des chartes, p. 224; Dees, Atlas de l’ancien français, pp. 496-97. 31 Charles-Théodore Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard (Paris: Klincksieck, 1970), p. 53. 32 Pierre Fouché, Le Verbe français, étude morphologique (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1931), p. 151.

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-AN- > -oDerivatives of *bilancia consistently show denasalisation: balocho(u)ere, balochoit, balocher (CNN82, p. 483). Vérard’s edition only partially mirrors the first instance (‘baloichere’); all three subsequent mentions are absent. Louis-Ferdinand Flutre notes that /ɑ̃/ has tended to evolve into /o/ in Romance Flanders, Artois and Ternois. In the Somme district, this phe­ nomenon has specifically affected balance, balancer and balançoire, the stem of which is pronounced /baloʃ/.33 Checked -AE- > -ie-

CNN83 has a conjugated form of ahierdre < ADHAERERE: ahiert (p. 486 – print in Vérard’s edition). This -ie- digraph reflects the diphthongisation of checked /ɛ/ in Walloon and neighbouring Picard dialects. It is widely attested in corresponding medieval scriptae.34 Unstressed initial /ɛ/ > /i/ Vérard’s edition has examples of milleur < MELIOR (CNN61, 207a; CN­ N62, 211b – the MS having meilleur in both instances). According to Charles-Théodore Gossen, this is one of the distinguishing vocalic features of Picard in regard to so-called Francien.35 Indeed the DMF only has matching attestations by Jean Froissart. Gossen notes that within Picardy, this grapheme is more frequently found in Artois, Romance Flanders and Hainaut, plus Saint-Quentin and Laon. -O- > -u- vs. -(i)eu-

CNN75 presents an undocumented ulyer, presumably cognate with œiller < OCULARE:36 ‘Et luy la venu fut bien esbahy, Dieu le scet, et regarde et ulye tousjours vers ce bois, mais c’estoit pour neant’37 (this was mistran­ scribed by Franklin Sweetser as veye. Vérard’s edition has ‘regardoit devant et derriere et le plus vers’). While non-palatalisation of final /l/ + yod is

33 Louis-Ferdinand Flutre, Du Moyen picard au picard moderne (Amiens: Musée de Picardie, 1977), p. 25. 34 Charles-Théodore Gossen, Petite grammaire de l’ancien picard (Paris: Klincksieck, 1951), p. 45-46. 35 Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, p. 89. 36 Many thanks to Gilles Roques for suggesting this form to me. See FEW, VII, 314a: oculus. The DMF has one attestation (eillier) by Eustache Deschamps. 37 ‘And he, once he got there, was very astonished, God knows; and he kept looking and staring at this wood, all but in vain’.

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a classic feature of Normanno-Picard, as discussed below, the reduction of /oku/ into /y/ is specifically Picard, pointing in particular towards the Pas-de-Calais and the Somme, as per Charles-Théodore Gossen’s survey.38 Protonic -U- + yod > -ui- vs. -o(i)CUNEARE (Fr. cogner) presents outcomes in both coign- and cuign- (table, p. 2; CNN91, p. 518), the latter form being Picard according to the FEW.39 Charles-Théodore Gossen confirms that this is one of the key vocalic distinctions between Picard and French, as evidenced by PŬGNATA > pugnie and CŬNEATA > cugnie.40 Vérard’s edition has -coingn- in both instances. Consonants

Conservation of velar occlusive /k/: A defining phonological characteristic of Norman and Picard, and Insular French to a lesser extent, is the conservation of the velar occlusive /k/ which underwent palatalisation south of the so-called Joret line, distin­ guishing Normanno-Picard from other oïl dialects, e.g. VACCA > vaque vs. vache.41 This phenomenon is occasionally reflected in regional scriptae, and evidenced within our manuscript in the following forms: Recaner (CNN61, p. 383 – ‘hyngner’ in Vérard’s edition) and racaner (CNN79, p. 469 – ‘reclamer’ in Vérard’s edition), corresponding to French rechaner. The FEW confirms that derivatives of Old Frankish *kinni (cheek) were affected by palatalization south of the Joret line.42 Calonge (< CALUMNIA/CALUMNIARE, Fr. challenge) in CNN76 (p. 455) and CNN96 (p. 541 – Vérard’s edition has calenge in both instances). CNN82 has mercque < *merki (p. 483 – Vérard’s edition has merche). Pierre Champion observes that this is how the word is pronounced in Hainaut.43 According to the FEW, this form is attested in Norman, Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, pp. 77-80. FEW, II, 1531b: cŭneŭs. Gossen, Petite Grammaire de l’ancien picard, p. 59; cf. also Grammaire de l’ancien picard, p. 82. See Pope, From Latin to Modern French, p. 487; Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, pp. 95-100; Louis-Ferdinand Flutre, Le Moyen picard d’après les textes littéraires du temps (1560-1660) (Amiens: Musée de Picardie, 1970), pp. 462-65; Jakob Wüest, La Dialectalisation de la Gallo-Romania: Problèmes phonologiques (Bern: Francke, 1979), pp. 220-24; René Lepelley ‘Particularités phonétiques et romanisation du domaine galloroman “nord occidental”’, Revue de Linguistique Romane, 65 (2001), 113-43 (pp. 113-18). 42 FEW, XVI, 325-26: *kinni. 43 Champion, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, p. 298.

38 39 40 41

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Anglo-Norman and Picard, the rest of the Pays d’oïl presenting a palatalised ‘merche’.44 CNN95 presents a past participle of the verb marescaucier (p. 495 – absent from Vérard’s edition). The velar occlusive in this outcome of Germanic *marhskalk normally evolved to /ʃ/ south of the Joret line, i.e. maréchausser. The MS also suggests conservation of /k/ before -ARE/-ARIU(M) in bucquer (Fr. buschier – Vérard’s edition has hucher),45 crocquer (Fr. crochier),46 sacquer (Fr. sachier – Vérard’s edition has sacha),47 and bancquiers (Fr. banchiers).48 /tj/, /sj/, /kj/ > /ʃ/ vs. /s/ Another phonological trait specific to Picard, Norman and Insular French is the evolution of /tj/, /sj/ and /kj/ into /ʃ/ where other Langue d’oïl dialects have /s/.49 In MS Hunter 252, graphematic evidence of this phe­ nomenon includes the following: • peche < *pettia (CNN1, p. 24; CNN2, p. 35; CNN3, p. 43 – Vérard’s edition has piece in the first two instances, pechié in the third). This form appears in the expression a chef de peche (‘in the end’), alongside thirty-one instances of a chef de piece. The forms pièche and piècha survive into Middle and Modern Picard.50 • sanchié < SANITIATUS (CNN38, p. 165 – Vérard’s edition has changié). The word itself is Picard according to the DMF, referring to Gilles Roques.51 • parchon < PARTITIO (CNN73, p. 445 – Vérard’s edition has porcion).

44 FEW, XVI, 556a: merki; see also Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, pp. 95-100. 45 CNN88, p. 508, ‘knock’. This is a northern form according to Pierre Champion (Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, p. 286). Yan Greub agrees that bucquer was specific to Picardy and Hainaut in the Old French period, but notes that it became widespread in Middle French: Les Mots régionaux dans les farces françaises (Strasbourg: Société de linguistique romane, 2003), pp. 89-90. 46 CNN3, p. 43, ‘grasp’. Pierre Champion notes that this word is still in use in northern France (Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, p. 289). It is still extant in standard French in ‘croque-mort’. 47 CNN98, p. 553, ‘pull’. See Champion, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, p. 304; Jacqueline Picoche, Dictionnaire étymologique du français (Paris: Le Robert, 1979), p. 597; Alain Rey, Dictionnaire historique de la langue française (hereafter Rob hist – Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert, 1992), II, pp. 1855-56. 48 CNN32, p. 225, ‘cushion’. Pierre Champion notes that this word is frequently found in furniture inventories from northern France (Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, p. 285). 49 Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, p. 93; Lepelley, ‘Domaine gallo-roman “nord occidental”’, p. 114. 50 See Flutre, Le Moyen picard, p. 101 (line 202), pp. 149-85 (lines 77, 223, 344, 418, 448, 523, 559, 575), p. 316; Du Moyen picard au picard moderne, pp. 44 § 38, 134 § 159. 51 Revue de linguistique romane, 58 (1994), p. 273.

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• perchant (CNN95, p. 537) and percha (CNN98, p. 551 – Vérard’s edition has perça) from percher < *pertusiare. • chula < *eccillūi illāc (CNN75, p. 453 – Vérard’s edition has cestui ça). Demonstrative articles and pronouns developed a voiceless palatoalveolar fricative in Normanno-Picard. See the examples provided in Charles-Théodore Gossen’s ‘Petite anthologie picarde’: chiauls, chils, chest, chele, che, icheste.52 Louis-Ferdinand Flutre mentions chela, chelo, choulo, cheul(l)e, chu in Middle Picard documents.53 • As observed above, the same phenomenon is at work in deriva­ tives of *bilancia: balochouere, balochoere, balochoit, balocher (CNN82, pp. 483-84 – the final three being absent from Vérard’s edition).54 • soichons < SOCIUS (CNN99, p. 557 – Vérard’s edition has compaignons mariniers). This word is Picard according to the DMF and the FEW;55 it also appears in CNN93, spelled soisson (p. 528 – Vérard’s edition has sortes). • challer < CELARE: toutesfoiz le challoit il a sa femme (‘nevertheless he hid it from his wife’ – CNN99, p. 559. Vérard’s edition has celoit; inter­ ference from chaloir < CALERE is both semantically and syntactically unlikely. • Perhaps worth adding to this list is cuyracher, in CNN90 of Vérard’s edition (273b), where MS Hunter 252 has cuirasses < CORIACEAE (p. 516). One graphematic consequence of this phonological correspondence be­ tween /ʃ/ and /s/ is the usage, originating north of the Joret line, of -c- to symbolize /ʃ/, e.g. sace in the present subjunctive of savoir (Fr. sache).56 Evidence of this can be found here in cicaneur (CNN96, p. 540 – Vérard’s edition has chicaneur). CNN3 has both cruches and cruces < *krûkka (p. 38, 41 – Vérard’s edition has cruches). Besides thirty-one instances of -chev- < CAPUT ((par)achever, eschever), the manuscript contains two -cev-: acevez (CNN75, p. 473 – Vérard’s edition has achevez) and acever (CNN81, p. 449 – Vérard’s edition has achever). While the phonological interpretation of -c- seems rather straightforward here, since cruces occurs alongside cruches, and likewise acev- alongside achev-, it should be noted that both

52 Gossen, Petite grammaire de l’ancien picard. 53 Flutre, Le Moyen picard, pp. 220, 384, 399, 435. See also the entries cheu, cheu…là in René Debrie, Lexique picard des parlers du Vimeu (Amiens: Université de Picardie, 1981), p. 107. 54 See Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, pp. 91-94; Flutre, Le Moyen picard, pp. 465-67; Gdf (I, 165a) and TLFi (https://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/baloche). 55 FEW, XII, 21b: socius. 56 Dees, Atlas des chartes, p. 237; see also Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, pp. 91-92; Jakob Wüest, ‘Französische Skriptaformen II. Pikardie, Hennegau, Artois, Flandern’, in Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik, dir. by Günter Holtus, Michael Metzeltin and Christian Schmitt (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1995), II/2, pp. 300-14 (p. 304).

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morphemes would normally have kept their velar occlusive north of the Joret line, cf. attestations of crucque and akiever in the DMF. There is therefore a chance that -c- might have symbolised /k/ rather than /ʃ/, as suggested by attestations of chief, kief, quief and cief in the DMF’s database. In other words, -c- may symbolize either a Normanno-Picard /k/ or a French /ʃ/, but as a graphematic convention it originates in Picardy. CRASSUS > cras CNN99 has two instances of the feminine adjective crasse (pp. 568, 575) where Vérard’s edition has grasse. Louis-Ferdinand Flutre mentions similar forms in Middle Picard: cra, cras, cresse, encresson, and observes that /kr/ did not develop into /gr/ as it did in French (probably under the influence of GROSSUS).57 The FEW notes that cras is especially common in Wal­ loon, Picard and Anglo-Norman.58 See also the cras and cra entries by René Debrie.59 -ng- vs. -gnCharles-Théodore Gossen observes that, in the Picard scripta, /ɲ/ could be rendered by (i)ng, (i)gn(i), (i)ngn(i).60 The MS contains evidence of such variation in derivatives of LONGE, with eleven occurrences of e(s)loign- alongside two of (d)eslonger (CNN26, p. 170 – Vérard’s edition has eslongier; CNN76, p. 456 – Vérard’s edition has d’eslongner). -gh- / -h- vs. -gThe Cent Nouvelles nouvelles appear to contain the earliest attestation of goguette, created from Old French gogue, ‘joke, jape’ (also attested in CNN29, p. 199):61 gogettes (CNN16, p. 110 – Vérard’s edition has bonne chiere); gohettes (CNN48, p. 317 – Vérard’s edition has goguettes); goghettes (CNN93, p. 528 – Vérard’s edition has goguettes). The digraph -gh-, which one can also observe in Stevelinghes (p. 60, 64) and Gravelinghes (p. 385 – substitute folio) was especially common in the ‘northern region’ accord­ ing to Mildred Pope.62 Indeed Charles-Théodore Gossen lists numerous examples,63 although he does not comment on the geographical extent of

57 58 59 60 61 62 63

Flutre, Le Moyen picard, pp. 230, 463. FEW, II-2, 1277b: crassus. Debrie, Lexique picard des parlers du Vimeu, pp. 132-33. Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, p. 119. See Rob hist, I, p. 898 and TLFi (https://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/goguette). Pope, From Latin to Modern French, p. 279 § 701. Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, pp. 100-02.

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its use. Godefroy has one example of goghe from the Chron. de l’Abb. de Floreffe (County of Namur, dated 1488).64 Our second attestation, gohettes, is potentially interesting towards the localisation of the manuscript, since Louis-Ferdinand Flutre notes that in Vermandois /g/ tends to develop into /h/ before vowels, cf. éheudir < *ex-gaudire, halibié vs. galibier.65 If this particular spelling is indeed not attested outside the Vermandois, and is not a scribal mistake, it then provides us with a highly precise geographical pointer – to an area of about 1000km2 in southern Picardy. One should bear in mind however, that gohettes is the only example of this phono-graphematic phenomenon across the whole document. Non palatalization of final /l/ + yod As indicated above, CNN75 presents an undocumented ulyer, presumably cognate with œiller < OCULARE.66 The non-palatalisation of /l/ + yod is a classic feature of Normanno-Picard, and is abundantly attested in corresponding scriptae, in such examples as ortel, solel, consel, traval, etc.67 Assuming grouller (CNN31, p. 212 – glappir in Vérard’s edition) is not a mere scribal mistake for grouiller (CNN31, p. 211; CNN79, p. 469), it may further illustrate this phenomenon, as does deul < DOLIUM in Vérard’s edition of CNN37 (142a) where the MS has dueil. Conservation of -lrSpeakers of Picard, Walloon, Lorrain and Franc-Comtois appear to have had no difficulty pronouncing /lr/ or /nr/ where other oïl dialects devel­ oped a non-etymological, epenthetic consonant [d] to compensate for the loss of an unstressed vowel, e.g. PŨLVĔRE(M) > *polre > poudre.68 MS Hunter 252 has two forms echoing this phenomenon, both in the third person plural of vouloir in the preterite tense, i.e. voulrent (CNN52, p. 334 – Vérard’s edition has voulsissent; CNN65, p. 410 – Vérard’s edition has voulurent). See Anthonij Dees’ maps for analogous conjugation patterns in the future tense, and confirmation of their geographical intensity in northern and eastern Langue d’oïl.69

Gdf, IV, 302. Flutre, Le Moyen picard, p. 465. FEW, VII, 314a: oculus. The DMF has one attestation (eillier) by Eustache Deschamps. Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, p. 116. See also Dees, Atlas de l’ancien français, p. 228; and Wüest, La dialectalisation de la Gallo-Romania, p. 215. 68 Flutre, Le Moyen picard, pp. 116-17. See also Wüest, ‘Pikardie, Hennegau, Artois, Flandern’, pp. 318-20. 69 Dees, Atlas de l’ancien français, pp. 410, 412. See also André Lanly, Morphologie historique des verbes français (Paris: Bordas, 1995), p. 175.

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Conservation of initial wBesides examples of the conservation of Germanic initial w- in proper names (Walerant, Warengeville and Wastenes), MS Hunter 252 has one attestation of wart < *warda (CNN26, p. 166 – Vérard’s edition has grans languages). Conservation of Germanic initial /w/ is attested in Normandy, Picardy, Wallonia and Lorraine, cf. Anthonij Dees’ map for verbs gager, gagner and garder.70 The fact that this doubly71 Picard wart co-occurs alongside numerous examples of garde raises a few questions: is its use stylistically motivated? If not, how different is its semantic value from that of garde? The MS has nine derivatives of Vulgar Latin *vocitus for VOCUUS, VACUUS, all spelled with an initial w- where Vérard’s edition has vu-: wide(e) (p. 185, 493, 497), wida (p. 442, 557), wide (p. 487), wider (p. 522, 567), widera (p. 565). The /w/ pronunciation is Picard, Walloon and Ardennais according to the FEW.72 Final -te vs. -de Besides conserving its initial w-, wart (CNN26, p. 166 – Vérard’s edition has grans languages) suggests an unvoiced pronunciation of -de, a classic phonological tendency in Picard.73 Christiane Marchello-Nizia observes that northern authors of verse often make voiced and unvoiced consonants rhyme, because their pronunciations are similar.74 One potential other illustration of this phenomenon is coute < CUBI­ TUS (CNN80, p. 472), the final consonant of which underwent voicing in most oïl dialects between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, for reasons unclear to the FEW, whilst remaining unvoiced in Wallonia, the Pas-de-Calais and Lorraine.75

70 Dees, Atlas des chartes, p. 265. See also Flutre, Le Moyen picard, p. 482; Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, p. 108; Lepelley, ‘Domaine gallo-roman “nord occidental”’, p. 135; Pope, From Latin to Modern French, pp. 7 § 14, 74-75 § 158, 91 §§ 186-87, 260 § 677. 71 See -de vs. -te below. 72 See also Frankwalt Möhren, ‘“Guai victis!” Le problème du GU initial roman’, Medioevo romanzo, 24 (2000), 5-81 (p. 38); Lepelley, ‘Domaine gallo-roman “nord occidental”’, p. 136. 73 Flutre, Le Moyen picard, pp. 464, 472. 74 Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française aux XIVe et XVe siècles, p. 92. See also Wüest, ‘Pikardie, Hennegau, Artois, Flandern’, p. 321. 75 FEW, II-2, 1451b: cubitus.

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Morpho-graphematics -ELLA > -ille Christiane Marchello-Nizia, citing -il- forms used by Eustache Deschamps and Jean Froissart, argues that pretonic internal /ɛ/ has tended to evolve into /i/ when followed by palatalised /l/.76 CNN6 has evidence of this phenomenon in coustille < CULTELLA (p. 61), defined by the DMF as a cutlass or short, double-edged sabre. Verbal stems

AVOIR: ar- vs. aurThe manuscript shows variation in the spelling of the future/conditional stem of the verb avoir, presenting twenty-seven instances of aur- besides seventy-five of ar-, all corresponding to aur- in Vérard’s edition. Anthonij Dees’ maps show that this spelling was most common in Old Picard.77 Christiane Marchello-Nizia confirms that their frequency is particularly high in texts originating in Northern France.78 SAVOIR: s(ç)ar- vs. scer- vs. saurSimilar variation can be observed in the future/conditional stem of savoir: three instances of s(ç)aur- besides forty-four of s(ç)ar-, again all corresponding to s(ç)aur- in Vérard’s edition. According to Christiane Marchello-Nizia, ar- and sar- fell from use from the mid-fifteenth cen­ tury.79 The MS also has eleven instances of a raised stem scer-, all corre­ sponding to sçaur- in Vérard’s edition. The DMF has no attestations of this raised stem other than those of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. In Middle Picard, Louis-Ferdinand Flutre notes similar forms for both AVOIR (ara vs. era) and SAVOIR (sara vs. séra). This phenomenon may be linked with the transformation of dental /r/ into velar /R/ in various oïl dialects from the fifteenth century on, particularly in Picard, where /ar/ tended to converge with /ɛr/.80

76 Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française aux XIVe et XVe siècles, p. 76. 77 Dees, Atlas des chartes, p. 249; Atlas de l’ancien français, p. 255. 78 Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française aux XIVe et XVe siècles, p. 223. See also Buridant, Grammaire nouvelle de l’ancien français, p. 266. 79 Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française aux XIVe et XVe siècles, p. 223. See also Buridant, Grammaire nouvelle de l’ancien français, p. 266. 80 Flutre, Le Moyen picard, pp. 386-87, 510.

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LAISSER: lair(r)- vs. laisserThe MS has four instances of the future/conditional stem laisser- besides fourteen of lair(r)-, eight of which correspond to laisser- in Vérard’s edition. This stem is Picard and Lorrain according to Helmut Stimm.81 It may also be found in Franche-Comté and Wallonia according to the FEW and Claude Buridant.82 -MENER: -merr- vs. -mainr-/-menrAlongside seven instances of -mainr-/-menr-, MS Hunter 252 has two attestations of a denasalised stem -merr-: enmerrons (CNN98, p. 548 – en­ menerons in Vérard’s edition) and amerrons (p. 549 – amenerons in Vérard’s edition). These words are spoken by the worst evildoers of the collection, i.e. the murderers of a young knight, who further cause his virgin mistress to kill herself as they attempt to rape her. This future tense stem -merr‑, which does not appear anywhere else in the manuscript, contrasts with the young knight’s use of -mainr- (p. 547). Is it a stylistic device as part of the characters’ portrayal? Pierre Fouché indicates that this case of assimilation of -n- by -r- first appeared in Anglo-Norman texts, and is later attested in central Langue d’oïl where it riled sixteenth- and seventeenth-century grammarians. He also mentions that such assimilation was very rare in the east, and unknown in Picard and Walloon.83 However, Louis-Ferdinand Flutre presents a wide variety of manifestations of this phenomenon in Middle Picard: tairre/ter (tendre), dorrai (donnerai), dorroi (donnerait), merrai (menerai), merra (meneras), verrai (viendrai), verron (viendrons), verroient (viendraient), souvaira/souvera (souviendra), entretara (entretien­ dra).84 SUIVRE: syeu- vs. suyThe MS has one attestation of the Picard/Walloon stem for SUIVRE syeuz (CNN72, p. 459 – Vérard’s edition has suyvray).85 This form derived from Old French *sieure (< *sewwere < SĔQUĔRE) is largely outnumbered by twenty-seven attestations of the more common stem suy-.

81 Helmut Stimm, ‘Zur Lexikologie und Etymologie von altfranzösisch laiier “lassen”, delaiier “aufhalten”, “säumen”’, in Philologica Romanica: Erhard Lommatzsch gewidmet, ed. by Manfred Bambeck and Hans Helmut Christmann (Munich: Fink, 1975), pp. 371-83. 82 FEW, V, 225a: laxare; Buridant, Grammaire nouvelle de l’ancien français, p. 285. 83 Fouché, Le Verbe français, p. 381. 84 Flutre, Le Moyen picard, p. 495. 85 Fouché, Le Verbe français, p. 99; Flutre, Le Moyen picard, p. 457; Gossen, Petite grammaire de l’ancien picard, p. 53 note 1; Lanly, Morphologie historique, p. 267.

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-d- vs. -gn- / -nnBesides three attestations of prenne and one of prengne in the present subjunctive of PRENDRE, the manuscript has a dental prende in CNN99 (p. 560 – Vérard’s edition has prengne). Pierre Fouché observes that -dstems are more frequently found in north-eastern dialects.86 According to André Lanly, this etymological form of the stem (< PRENDAT) was still frequent in the sixteenth century, alongside the analogically remodelled preigne and prenne and the western prienge.87 Likewise the manuscript has variant stems for verbs in -aindre, -eindre and -oindre. Besides five occurrences of palatal craign-, three examples of dental craind- (based on the infinitive) can be found in finite forms: craindent (CNN63, p. 398 – Vérard’s edition has craingnent), craindoit (CNN66, p. 412; CNN73, p. 443 – Vérard’s edition has craignoit in both instances). The same applies to -plaindre, i.e. five occurrences of -plaign- besides one of plaindit (CNN37, p. 259 – Vérard’s edition has plaignit). Feindre has six palatal and two dental stems: feindant (CNN88, p. 510 – Vérard’s edition has feingnant), faindit (CNN33, p. 231). Joindre and its compounds show eight examples of the palatal stem besides two dental joindoient (CNN87, p. 505 – Vérard’s edition has joignoient) and enjoindit (CNN67, p. 417 – Vérard’s edition has enjoingnit). Pierre Fouché quotes exemples of dental stems in texts by Jean Frois­ sart, Arnoul Gréban, Jean de Stavelot, etc., and confirms that, in the PLANGĔRE group, those prevailed in north-eastern dialects.88 Verbal endings

Present subjunctive -ge The manuscript has a single attestation of the present subjunctive ending -ge, here added to cheoir: chiege (CNN3, p. 39 – Vérard’s edition has chee). According to Pierre Fouché,89 this present subjunctive ending was com­ monly found in a zone reaching from the south-west to the north-east. He cites Anjou, Maine, Brittany, Perche, Normandy, Hainaut, along with parts of Picardy and Wallonia. Claude Buridant confirms that this subjunctive ending was active in Picard, Anglo-Norman and western dialects.90

86 87 88 89 90

Fouché, Le Verbe français, pp. 106-07. Lanly, Morphologie historique, p. 260, n. 1. Fouché, Le Verbe français, p. 132-33. Fouché, Le Verbe français, p. 208. Buridant, Grammaire nouvelle de l’ancien français, p. 252. See also Wüest, ‘Pikardie, Hennegau, Artois, Flandern’, p. 311.

ToWard a sCripToloGy of middle frenCh

Feminine past participle to palatal-final 1st group roots Presuming it is not an agreement error, CNN34 shows evidence of -iee being shortened to -ie after a palatal consonant, which is an ending charac­ teristic of the Picard scripta:91 Il eut tantot sa longue robe despoillie (‘His long robe was soon taken off’, p. 242 – ‘il eut tantost despouillié sa robe longue’ in Vérard’s edition).

Morpho-syntax il vs. elle

On two occasions, our scribe wrote il where prevalent practice would have elle: Vindrent en leur chambre Conrard et Gerard, parlans de beaucop de choses, mais il n’y venoit nulz propos en termes que pleussent a Conrard. Quand il vit qu’il ne dira rien si on ne luy mect en bouche, elle luy demanda de quelz gens il estoit de Brabant. (CNN26, p. 174 – identical in Vérard’s edition) Combien que sa volunte fust plainement deliberee et resolue de soy retraire et revenir à son dit premier mestier, toutesfoiz le challoit il a sa femme, doubtant qu’il ne le print a desplaisance. (CNN99, p. 559 – Vérard’s edition has el) The first example is somewhat debatable since the character in question is a transvestite – Katherine pretending to be Conrard. Nevertheless, the fact that elle supplants il in the very same sentence sounds rather unnatural. Although the possibility of a scribal error cannot be ruled out, these two cases may well reflect regional usage. Indeed Christiane Marchello-Nizia notes that eastern and northern oïl dialects may express the feminine singular through il.92 A. Dees’ map shows that this form is most frequently found in thirteenth-century charters from Moselle, Aisne,

91 Gossen, Petite grammaire de l’ancien picard, p. 41; Françoise Vielliard and Olivier Guyotjeannin (dir.), Conseils pour l’édition des textes médiévaux, I. Conseils généraux (Paris: Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 2014), p. 49. 92 Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française aux XIVe et XVe siècles, p. 173.

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Vosges and Hainaut.93 In some modern Picard sub-dialects such as Rouchi, i is frequently used as a feminine third person singular subject personal pronoun.94 noz vs. nostre as possessive determiner for singular nouns

Besides 255 occurrences of the singular form of the first person plural possessive adjective nostre, I have found seven examples of the form noz in the MS, concentrated in just two tales. CNN76 has five instances of noz sire whereas Vérard’s edition has nostre sire/domine (p. 455-56). CNN78 has noz mesnage (p. 463) and noz sire (p. 464), both corresponding to nostre X in Vérard’s edition. Anthonij Dees’ map shows that the weakened possessive determiners no / vo are most frequently found in Picard.95 Charles-Théodore Gossen observes that they are more common in literary texts than notarial documents. 22 per cent of the Picard charters he analysed used them exclusively, while 24 per cent used both no and nostre, and 54 per cent used exclusively nostre.96 Claude Buridant further observes that Picard tended to use no / vo as articles, and nostre / vostre as pronouns or adjectives.97

Concluding remarks MS Hunter 252 presents a significant range of regional graphematic vari­ ants, most of which are also found in other DMF sources. This provides confirmation, if any were needed, that late Middle French is, graphemati­ cally speaking, far from deregionalised, let alone ‘standard’, as evidenced by Vérard’s print differing in over 90 per cent of the data presented here. This also further confirms that a large-scale graphematic survey of fourteenthand fifteenth-century French is much needed, as has been insisted upon for a few decades now.98 The variants identified here belong to northern and eastern Langue d’oïl, namely to the Picard, Walloon, (Anglo-)Norman, Lorrain, Champ­ enois, Burgundian and Franc-Comtois regions. These isographs intersect

93 Dees, Atlas des chartes, p. 26. See also Buridant, Grammaire nouvelle de l’ancien français, pp. 417-18. 94 Jean Dauby, Le Livre du ‘rouchi’, parler picard de Valenciennes (Amiens: Musée de Picardie, 1979), p. 32. 95 Dees, Atlas de l’ancien français, p. 36. 96 Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, p. 127. 97 Buridant, Grammaire nouvelle de l’ancien français, p. 149. 98 Dees, ‘Éléments constitutifs’, p. 10; Völker, ‘Origins of the Standard’, pp. 219-20; Lusignan, ‘L’Aire du picard au Moyen Age’, p. 276; Lusignan, Le Français médiéval, p. 32.

ToWard a sCripToloGy of middle frenCh

consistently in Picardy, which is consistent with lexical evidence presented elsewhere,99 indicating that the anonymous acteur was substantially ex­ posed to the Picard dialect. Furthermore, some of the phono-graphemes point to narrower sectors within the Picard area: the Somme and Pasde-Calais (ulyer), the Somme (baloch-), Hainaut and Romance Flanders (ahierdre), milleur (Artois, Romance Flanders, Hainaut, Saint Quentin and Laon), northern and eastern Picardy (acev-, cruce, cicaneur), the Ver­ mandois (gohettes). They can be seen to intersect on the edges of the counties of Vermandois, Artois, Flanders, Hainaut and Cambrésis. On the principle that scribes tend to deregionalize their models rather than the other way around, they may well be attributed to the single acteur whom Philip the Good asked to record the tales in a volume. This evidence makes identification of the acteur with Antoine de la Sale,100 Olivier de la Marche,101 Michault de Chaugy102 or Philippe Pot,103 as has been argued for in the past, rather unlikely. It follows that northern authors like Jean de Wavrin,104 David Aubert105 or George Chastelain106 – as others have proposed – make far better candidates, as would fellow ducal writer Jean Miélot. The biographical information available for several of them fails to match exactly the perimeter described above. Jean de Wavrin was from Romance Flanders, notably around Douai and Lille – more within the northern and eastern sectors of the region identified.107 Chastelain was a native Flemish speaker who resided during his writing years in Hainaut,

99 Geoffrey Roger, ‘“Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”: a Linguistic Study of MS Glasgow Hunter 252’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 2011: http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ 2872/), pp. 96-105. 100 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. by Paul Lacroix (Paris: Charpentier, 1858); Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. by Thomas Wright (Paris: P. Jannet, 1858). 101 Léon E. Kastner, ‘Antoine de la Sale and the Doubtful Works’, Modern Language Review, 13 (1918), 183-207 (pp. 197-98). 102 Colette Carton, ‘Un Tableau et son donateur: Guillaume de Montbléru’, Annales de Bourgogne, 38 (1966), 171-84 (p. 181). 103 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. by Pierre Champion (Paris: Droz, 1928). 104 Kastner, ‘Antoine de la Sale’, pp. 197-98. 105 Luciano Rossi, ‘David Aubert autore delle Cent Nouvelles nouvelles? (La genesi della novella francese e l’attività letteraria alla corte borgognona nel Quattrocento)’, Cultura Neolatina 36 (1976), 95-118 (pp. 111-15); Richard Straub, David Aubert, “Escripvain” et “Clerc” (Amsterdam / Atlanta: Rodopi, 1995). 106 Hisara Kondo, ‘Du nouveau sur les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: chaque Nouvelle est réellement racomptée’ (unpublished conference paper, thirty-sixth International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, 2001), quoted in Edgar De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Text and Context: Literature and history at the court of Burgundy in the fifteenth century’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 2004), pp. 60-61, 175-76. 107 Antoinette Naber, ‘Les Manuscrits d’un bibliophile bourguignon du XVe siècle, Jean de Wavrin’, Revue du Nord, 72 (1990), pp. 23-48.

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further to the east.108 David Aubert is closer, given what is known of his career: reportedly born in Hesdin, he was first known in any profes­ sional capacity as receiver in the nearby County of Ponthieu, and later in life conducted his affairs in different parts of the ducal dominions.109 Jean Miélot, Aubert’s occasional collaborator, is equally close: born in Gueschart, introduced to ducal service by the Picard lord Jean de Créquy, Miélot became a ducal secretary and canon of Lille, later entering the service of Louis de Luxembourg Count of Saint-Pol, another conteur of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (alongside, the Duke and Créquy).110 These points made, biographical evidence is nevertheless too slight to advance either Aubert or Miélot as the acteur with any certainty – which now makes a case for stylometric cross-analyses of MS Hunter 252 with texts authored by these two writers. In any event, as I have shown elsewhere,111 the distribution of regional variants is rather homogenous across the manuscript, regardless of individ­ ual narrators or discursive modes, although two potential cases of dialectal stereotyping have been detected in direct speech sections (see chula and -merr- above). The diatopic evidence collected here contradicts Christiane MarchelloNizia’s contention that the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles were written in the ‘Île-de-France scripta’;112 indeed it is likely that the lost original contained even more Picard variants. Their use in stories told by courtiers, including the ‘tres chier et tres redoubté monseigneur le duc de Bourgoigne’ (‘most

108 Graeme Small, George Chastelain and the Shaping of Valois Burgundy. Political and Historical Culture at Court in the Fifteenth Century Royal Historical Society, Studies in History (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1997), pp. 15-32, 84-90. 109 Pierre Cockshaw, ‘La Famille du copiste David Aubert’, Scriptorium 22 (1968), pp. 279-87. 110 Hanno Wijsman, ‘Le Connétable et le chanoine. Les ambitions bibliophiliques de Louis de Luxembourg au regard des manuscrits autographes de Jean Miélot’, in Le livre au fil des pages. Actes de la 14e journée d’études du réseau des médiévistes belges de langue française. Université de Liège, 18 novembre 2005, ed. by Renaud Adam and Alain Marchandisse (Brussels: Archives et bibliothèques de Belgique, 2009), pp. 119-50; Hanno Wijsman, ‘Jean Miélot et son réseau. L’insertion à la cour de Bourgogne du traducteur-copiste’, Le moyen français 67 (2010), 129-56. 111 Geoffrey Roger, ‘Direct Speech in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: A Linguistic Analysis’, Le moyen français, 72 (2013), 143-67; Roger, ‘La Mise-en-scène des Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’. 112 Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française aux XIVe et XVe siècles, p. 11. Out of the forty-three texts listed Christiane Marchello-Nizia as sources for her study (pp. 7-11), seventeen are described as being written in the ‘literary language of the Île-de-France’, ‘scripta of the Paris region’, etc., an ascription which occasionally proves over-enthusiastic, if not ideologically biased. Indeed, some of these sources are localised elsewhere, i.e. Picardy (Bérinus – DMF), Anjou (Livre du chevalier de la Tour Landry, cf. Greub, Les Mots régionaux, pp. 32-39), the east (Christine de Pizan, cf. Greub, Les Mots régionaux, p. 302), the west (Antoine de la Sale, Maistre Pierre Pathelin, Le Franc Archier de Baignollet, cf. Greub, Les Mots régionaux, pp. 374-77).

ToWard a sCripToloGy of middle frenCh

beloved and most redoubted lord, my lord the Duke of Burgundy’),113 shows that they were recognised as being sociolinguistically appropriate to the intended audience, which goes against contemporary comments on the perceived superiority of Parisian French. These traits are consistent with the sociolinguistic background of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles project, i.e. tales recounted in the Low Countries, by narrators based in the Low Countries for the most part, and essentially taking place in Picardy’s sphere of influence. Although the text can be said to originate in the Burgundian Dominions at large, it has been shown to contain very few Burgundian variants per se, contrary to unsubstantiated claims by Luciano Rossi, the FEW and others. It follows that the Cent Nou­ velles nouvelles have a rightful place in the prolific Picard literary tradition, and as such should be given due consideration in dedicated anthologies114.

113 For example, ar- (fr. aur-), caich- (fr. cach-), faind- (fr. faign-), peche (fr. pièce), saich- (fr. sach-), sar- (fr. saur-). 114 La Forêt invisible, au nord de la littérature française, le picard, ed. by Jacques Darras and Jacqueline Picoche (Amiens: Éditions des Trois-Cailloux, 1985).

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Chapter 8. Stylistic implications of linguistic archaism and contemporaneity in MS Hunter 252

Prolegomena This paper is intended to complement the preceding diatopical approach to the language of MS Hunter 252 by examining the subject from a diachronic perspective.1 In this initial investigation into the question of archaism and neologism in MS Hunter 252, the focus will be primarily on its grammatical forms, constructions and usage (i.e. morphology and syntax) rather than on its vocabulary or lexis, an area already studied to an appreciable extent by Roger Dubuis and which may lend itself to further exploration in due course.2 As ever there is much scope for debate regarding the finer points of Middle French graphematic and arguably phonological interpretation, and with one or two exceptions I do not propose to broach these issues here. All languages necessarily carry considerable historical baggage, of course, although in their day-to-day utterances and activities speakers are generally unaware of etymologies and the diachronic perspective unless they happen to be philologists. In time, linguistic developments, including those that are politically inspired or determined by fashion or foreign bor­ rowings, all become assimilated and incorporated into the bedrock upon which new linguistic strata are imposed. But this quasi-geological model is rarely uniform: in remote areas especially, older outcrops that for a time

1 I am more than happy to acknowledge my debt to Geoffrey Roger, ‘“Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”: a Linguistic Study of MS Hunter 252’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 2011); co-supervised by James R. Simpson and Peter V. Davies. 2 Roger Dubuis, Lexique des “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”, matériaux pour le “Dictionnaire du moyen français” (Paris: Klincksieck, 1996). Peter V. Davies † • Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC [French], University of Glasgow The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - c. 1550), ed. by Graeme Small, Texte, Codex & Contexte, 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 225–246 10.1484/M.TCC-EB.5.132238

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defy erosion can frequently be seen breaking through the newer accretions or sediments. In other words, the process of superimposed linguistic stan­ dardization is hardly ever evenly distributed, especially in areas resistant to (or beyond) the reach of a centralizing authority; and in the linguistic topsoil, a few fossilized expressions occasionally survive from the remote past. By definition, then, archaisms imply a degree of diehard linguistic (if not political) resistance, and at a subconscious, covert or overt level possi­ bly a hint of subversion. When the process of linguistic standardization is patchy or incomplete, as it was in fifteenth-century France, the question of whether a given form is a regionalism or an archaism can become a matter of fine judgement, dependent upon our having a comprehensive and sound linguistic database of localized contemporary texts for comparison.3 Unfortunately, at present, for Middle French the available research tools are still relatively undeveloped by comparison with those we have for the previous and following periods, viz. Old French and Early Modern French. There is as yet, for example, no linguistic atlas of Middle French written forms comparable to the two atlases produced by Anthonij Dees for Old French charters and literary works,4 although on the lexicographical front the team responsible for the online and regularly updated Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (aka the DMF http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/) is to be much commended for its important contribution, which helpfully complements earlier academic work such as the study of Middle French syntax by Robert Martin and Marc Wilmet and the general study of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French by Christiane Marchello-Nizia, not to mention numerous later articles and a few websites dedicated to specific linguistic topics that are relevant to the period.5 Nevertheless, the deficiencies in, and shortage of, available Middle French research tools mean that the very title of this paper inevitably begs a number of important questions that in our current state of knowl­ edge we cannot properly address. The aim of this paper is firstly to flag these issues, secondly to attempt a preliminary sketch of the degree of linguistic archaism, obsolescence and contemporaneity or neologism in

3 Thus, according to Martin and Wilmet (followed by Roger), it was probably as a regionalism rather than as an archaism that Vérard substituted aucun for all four instances of the indefinite adjective/pronoun nesun(g) found in MS Hunter 252. Robert Martin and Marc Wilmet, Syntaxe du moyen français, Manuel du français du moyen âge, éd. Yves Lefèvre, n° 2 (Bordeaux: SOBODI, 1980), p. 104, § 182; Roger, ‘“Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”’, p. 103. 4 Anthonij Dees, Atlas des formes et constructions des chartes françaises du 13e siècle, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, Bd. 178 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1980); Anthonij Dees, Atlas des formes linguistiques de l’ancien français, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, Bd. 212 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1987). 5 Martin and Wilmet, Syntaxe du moyen français; Christiane Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française aux XIVe et XVe siècles, Bordas études (Paris: Bordas, 1979; revised edition Paris: Nathan, 1997 [Linguistique]).

linGuisTiC arChaism and ConTemporaneiTy in ms hunTer 252

the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, and finally to consider any possible stylistic implications of such features in the hope that it may eventually be possible to reconsider all these aspects more fully in the context of Middle French narrative stylistics. By way of a final preliminary caveat, it is also worth noting that a linguistic and stylistic analysis of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles poses partic­ ular problems because of its much-debated, and in my view probably collaborative method of composition. How far can any archaisms (or neologisms) be ascribed to individual raconteurs who may have influenced the transcribing acteur? Conversely, how far do they reflect the linguistic propensities of the acteur himself?

Selected archaisms in MS Hunter 252 (§§ 1-13) Despite Luciano Rossi’s claim that La comparaison des variantes phonétiques de l’édition Vérard [montre] que celle-ci garde parfois des formes plus archaïsantes que celles contenues dans le manuscrit, voire des traits caractéristiques des parlers bourguignons, The comparison of phonetic variants in Vérard’s edition [demonstrates] that the latter sometimes retains forms that are more archaic than those contained in the manuscript, indeed traits that are characteristic of Burgundian speech, a comparison of MS Hunter 252 with Vérard’s edition tends largely to confirm the opposite view, expressed by Pierre Champion and Mario Roques, namely that ‘Vérard n’a fait qu’un rajeunissement des Nouvelles dans le dialecte parisien’ (‘Vérard only effected a modernisation of the Nouvelles in the Parisian dialect’), and that ‘Vérard a fait revoir le texte pour en supprimer les archaïsmes, les provincialismes et les apparentes obscurités’ (‘Vérard reviewed the text with the intention of removing archaisms, provincial forms and anything that seemed obscure’).6 This process of revision and standardisation is evident in several of the thirteen types of archaism characteristic of MS Hunter 252 that I have selected for individual study here before proceeding to look at three instances of neologism or precocious linguistic features plus one idiosyncratic nonce usage. Incidentally, no particular significance should be read into the fact

6 Compare with Luciano Rossi, ‘Pour une édition des Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: de la copie de Philippe le Bon à l’édition d’Antoine Vérard’, Le moyen français, 22 (1989), 69-77 (p. 74); Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. by Pierre Champion (Paris: Droz, 1928), p. liv; and the review by Mario Roques, Romania, 54 (1928), 562-66 (esp. p. 563).

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that, while the archaisms selected occur indiscriminately in both the plain narrative of the tales and the dialogue ascribed to characters, the few neologisms so far identified do not feature in dialogue. Not only would it be dangerous to generalize from such a small selection of examples, but half of the selected neoteric constructions are by definition of a narrative nature. Let us begin with a point of graphematics (by which linguists mean study of writing systems, not psychological analysis based on handwrit­ ing): § 1. Non-elision of final -e before a vowel, i.e. intermittent use of archaic graph -e before a vowel:7

de assez (p. 35), de ame (pp. 44, 202, 334, 418, 560), je alloye (p. 56), je y aille (p. 62), se alla (pp. 75, 143), que il(z) (pp. 96, 385 – seventeenthcentury substitute folio, 394), de adonc (p. 128), se acoucha (p. 139), de aller (p. 139), de y (pp. 165, 353), de amys (p. 170), de oster (p. 187), que elle(s) (pp. 200, 264, 522, 572, 581 – seventeenth-century substitute folio), de amers (p. 233), se aller (p. 239), de executer (p. 239), se oyt (p. 250), de adviser (p. 258), je en fu (p. 346), de estre (p. 350, p. 581 – seventeenth-century substitute folio), se aidoit (p. 352), de œillades (p. 353), se entreaymoient (p. 385 – seventeenth-century substitute folio), de eulx (pp. 389, 451), se assirent (p. 392), se animerent (p. 392), se osa (p. 406), de impetrer (p. 409), se oyoit (p. 412), de apparence (p. 423), me aller (p. 491), je aray (p. 504), de user (p. 529), de abatre (p. 534), se oda (p. 558), se absentoit (p. 559), me englotisse (p. 564), je eleusse (p. 568), je iray (p. 571), de adjouster (p. 583 – seventeenth-century substitute folio).8 While in view of its occasional survival in Modern French it is possi­ ble to have reservations about Gilbert Ouy’s claim that, already in the so-called autograph manuscripts of Christine de Pizan, the intermittent retention of final -e (called central e by phoneticians) before a vowel is an archaism denoting an ‘extrême souci de correction graphique’ (‘an excessive concern with graphic precision’), this conservative spelling ap­ pears to have become the exception rather than the rule long before the

7 It was only c. 1532 that the apostrophe was borrowed from Ancient Greek to indicate elision in French, and its subsequent use was at first sporadic according to the website http:// www.scienceshumaines.com/les-usages-de-l-apostrophe_fr_670.html. For the fairly frequent survival of non-elision of -e before a vowel in Modern French (e.g. entre amis; un habit presque usé; il y a quelque apparence à cela; remets-le ici; and before words like un, oui, huit, onze, ululer, yacht, yak, yaourt etc.), see Maurice Grevisse, Le Bon Usage, ninth revised edition (Gembloux: Duculot/ Paris: Hatier, 1969), pp. 62-68, § 103. 8 All CNN page references are to the edition by Franklin P. Sweetser, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Textes littéraires français, 127 (Geneva: Droz, 1966).

linGuisTiC arChaism and ConTemporaneiTy in ms hunTer 252

introduction of the apostrophe into French punctuation c. 1532.9 It is therefore possible to see it as somewhat old-fashioned. Moving on to archaic morpho-syntax, we find… § 2. Occasional retention of the final -s flexion in the masculine nominative singular (a relic of the Old French declension system):

Noz amis son mary estoit bien esbahy et desplaisant; […] (CNN20, Monseigneur de la Roche, p. 134).10 Espergner! dist noz amis; creez, si on luy peut aider pour argent je ne luy fauldray pas. (CNN20, Monseigneur de la Roche, p. 135). Par ma foy, beaulx amys, dit elle, je ne scay que vous avez fait ou songé, […] (CNN38, Monseigneur de Loan, p. 266). […] c’est ung sages homs, de bon conseil, et bon amy, et a qui vous et vostre filz ariez ung grand retour et tres bon secours. (CNN44, Monseigneur de la Roche, p. 297 – Vérard’s edition has saige homme). MS Hunter 252 occasionally shows persistence of the Old French declen­ sion system with the retention of the final -s flexion in the masculine nominative singular, even though according to Christiane Marchello-Nizia such instances are rare in fifteenth-century manuscripts. That said, the effacement of the Old French declension system was, as Mildred Pope and Frédéric Duval point out, a patchy process, begun in the western pays d’oïl in the twelfth century, spreading a century later to the Île-de-France and Champagne, then gradually becoming generalized in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but encountering resistance in northern areas of the pays d’oïl such as Picardy, thanks to the large presence of conservative northern scribes. Indeed, Duval notes, even in the sixteenth century there are a few residual attestations of the final -s flexion in the masculine nominative singular, notably when it serves to mark a noun complement, and Vérard eliminates only one of the four instances of the flexion in his 1486 edition.

9 Gilbert Ouy, ‘Les Orthographes de divers auteurs français des XIVe et XVe siècles: présentation et étude de quelques manuscrits autographes’, in Le moyen français: recherches de lexicologie et de lexicographie. Actes du VIe colloque sur le moyen français, Milan, 4-6 mai, 1988, 3 vols, ed. by Sergio Cigada and Anna Slerca (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1991), I, pp. 93-189, esp. p. 123; Roger, ‘“Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”’, p. 129, n. 177. 10 With regard to nozamys, the 1858 editor of Vérard’s text notes: ‘cette expression singulière, qui équivaut à benêt, vient sans doute de ce qu’on qualifiait de nosamis les gens qu’on regardait comme des sots, par opposition à nosseigenurs, qui se disait des personnes auxquelles on devait obéissance et respect’: Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, dites les Cent Nouvelles du roi Louis XI, Nouvelle édition revue sur l’édition originale, avec des notes et une introduction, ed. by Pierre-Louis Jacob (Paris: Adolphe Delahays [sic], 1858), p. 101.

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§ 3. Use of the obsolete subject pronoun + mesme(s) construction:

Car le remede dont il m’advertit, qui estoit de faire recoigner et recheviller mon devant, affin de le garder de cheoir, il mesmes le mist a execution; […] (CNN3, Monseigneur de la Roche, pp. 41-42). « […] et, si bientost ne me despeschez et ne me mettez en paradis, je mesme a mes deux mains vous occiray. » (CNN6, Monseigneur de Lannoy, p. 62 – Vérard’s edition has moy-mesmes.) Je le scay bien, car je mesmes vous baptisay, et en ay aussi fresche memoire comme si ce eust hier esté. (CNN70, Monseigneur, p. 427 – Vérard’s edition has moy-mesmes.) The obsolescent if not archaic construction SUBJECT PRONOUN + MESMES (e.g. je mesmes, il mesmes) appears on three occasions in the cor­ pus. These appear to be among the last attestations of this construction in literary French, although according to Marchello-Nizia, Harold Llewelyn Humphreys suggests it may have survived longer in non-literary sources.11 § 4. Archaic use of stressed or emphatic pronouns in preposition + object personal pronoun + infinitive constructions:

Et, pour abreger, tu ne mengeras jamais aultre viande jusques ad ce que tu me serves ainsi que souloyes, et me feras avoir des unes et des aultres, pour moy renouveller, […] (CNN10, Monseigneur de la Roche, p. 84) […] et ne vous chaille de moy suyvir; […] (CNN16, Monseigneur, p. 111) […] or vous avancez de moy tirer d’icy; […] (CNN27, Monseigneur de Beauvoir, p. 188) […] ce ne sera pas devant que vous ayez promis de moy paier de la gaigeure qu’avez perdue; […] (CNN27, Monseigneur de Beauvoir, p. 188.) Quand le bon seigneur a cogneu a la verité que mes parolles n’estoient pas fainctes, doubtant le grant inconvenient qui m’en pourroit sourdre, a esté bien content de moy dire ce qui est entre vous deux; […] (CNN31, Monseigneur de la Barde, p. 210 – Vérard’s edition has a bien fait de me dire.)

11 Harold Llewelyn Humphreys, A Study of Dates and Causes of Case Reduction in the Old French Pronoun (New York: Columbia UP, 1932), summarised by Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française, pp. 181-82. Martin and Wilmet note another attestation of the construction in the Roman du comte d’Artois, written c. 1453-67: Syntaxe du moyen français, p. 150, § 264; see Le Roman du comte d’Artois (XVe siècle), ed. by Jean-Charles Seigneuret (Geneva: Droz, 1966), p. 50, line 105.

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[…] le monde n’est pas assez grand pour moy sauver que morir ne me faille. (CNN33, Monseigneur, p. 235 – Vérard’s edition has pour me saulver.) […] vous n’avez nulle cause de moy suspessonner en rien de personne qui vive, […] (CNN33, p. 235.) […] seray en habit si descogneu que vostre veille ne ame du monde n’ara garde de moy cognoistre. (CNN37, Monseigneur de la Roche, p. 259 – Vérard’s edition has n’aura de moy cognoissance.) […] je vous requier que vous me dictes la cause qui vous meut de moy tenir si grand rigueur quand je vous veil baiser. (CNN48, Monseigneur de la Roche, p. 317 – Vérard’s edition has de me tenir.) […] je n’attendroye pas de moy venger aux champs. (CNN54, Mahiot d’Auquasnes, p. 344) Helas ! pourquoy me suis je ennuyt couchee pour ainsi moy habandonner a dormir? (CNN59, Poncelet, p. 367 – Vérard’s edition has pour ainsi m’abandonner.) […] je vous feray present de ses genitoires avant qu’il ait loisir de moy rien dire. (CNN64, Messire Michault de Changy, p. 404 – Vérard’s edition has de riens me dire.) […] je ne craindroye en rien le dyable qu’il eust sur moy puissance ne autorite, sinon seulement de moy tenter, et me passeroye de faire le signe de la croix. (CNN70, Monseigneur, p. 427) […] pour Dieu, pensez de moy tirer d’icy. (CNN72, Monseigneur de Quievrain, p. 436) « M’amie treschere, puisque vostre bonté se veult tant humilier que de moy offrir ce que je n’oseroie requerir sans tres grand vergoigne, […] » (CNN98, l’Acteur, p. 546) […] si vous avez la volunté de moy aider en la maniere que j’ay dit, dictes le moy maintenant (CNN99, l’Acteur, p. 576) …and in the third person: […] sans soy trop haster, il commenda ouvrir la porte. (CNN1, Monseigneur, p. 25) […] ce n’est pas sa coustume de soy enclorre si tard, […] (CNN1, Monseigneur, p. 28) […] nostre bon cordelier fut acquicté de sa promesse par soy rendre devers la patiente a l’heure assignee. (CNN2, Monseigneur, p. 34) Ce bon musnier, en la tresbonne grace de madame apres la tres desiree conclusion de sa haulte entreprise, part de leans, et vint en sa maison, sans soy vanter a sa femme de sa nouvelle adventure, […] (CNN3, Monseigneur de la Roche, pp. 46-47) […] et tant d’injures luy va dire que la pacience qu’elle eut de tout escouter, sans mot sonner ne rien luy contredire, estoit assez suffisante d’estaindre le crime qu’elle avoit commis par soy laisser engrosser du picard. (CNN8, Monseigneur de la Roche, p. 69)

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L’oste prend congé de luy et se retrait en sa garderobe, comme il avoit de coustume, pour soy deshabiller. (CNN9, Monseigneur, p. 75) Et puis les ramena dehors, et les fist aller recoucher, car il estoit trop matin pour eulx lever; et aussi s’en alla elle pareillement rebouter en son lit, […] (CNN59, Poncelet, p. 367) Ces trois bons seigneurs, maistre Ymbert, maistre Roland, et Jehan Le Tourneur, demourerent a Envers plus qu’ilz ne pensoient quand ilz partirent de la court, et soubz esperance de bref retourner, n’avoient apporté chacun qu’une chemise; si devindrent les leurs, leurs couvrechefs et petiz draps, bien sales, et a grand regret leur venoit d’eulx trouver en ce party, car il faisoit bien chault, comme en la saison de Penthecoste. (CNN63, Montbleru, pp. 396-97) […] les compaignons de la garnison de Saincte Manehot n’oblierent pas de eulx embuscher au bois auprés de la dicte Justice, […] (CNN75, Monseigneur de Thalemas, p. 451) According to Marchello-Nizia, while the use of emphatic forms of the pronoun in PREPOSITION + OBJECT PERSONAL PRONOUN + INFINITIVE constructions is typical of the ‘textes conservateurs ou ar­ chaïsants de la fin du XIVe siècle’ (‘conservative or archaic texts of the late fifteenth century’),12 their retention in the mid-fifteenth century is rather exceptional. Dès le dernier quart du XIVe siècle, les formes de la série II, sans exclure tout à fait les autres, sont de loin les plus employées […] À partir de 1420 environ, nous pouvons dire que les formes de la série II [sc. unstressed pronouns – PVD] dominent nettement dans cet emploi. […] à partir du dernier quart du XIVe siècle, les formes II commencent à supplanter nettement les formes III [sc. stressed pronouns – PVD] lorsque le pronom est attaché à un infinitif prépositionnel; mais tout au long du XVe siècle subsisteront (en s’amenuisant) quelques îlots de résistance: surtout le réfléchi de 3e personne, et dans une moindre mesure les pronoms personnels des première et deuxième personnes.13 From the late fourteenth century, forms from Series II [sc. unstressed pronouns – PVD], without excluding all others, are by far the most common … From around 1420, we can say that forms from Series II clearly predominate in these settings, and from the late fourteenth century these forms are clearly supplanting forms from Series III [sc. stressed pronouns – PVD]…when the pronoun is attached to a prepositional infinitive construction; but

12 Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française, p. 195. 13 Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française, p. 196.

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throughout the fifteenth century, a few pockets of resistance will persist, albeit in declining numbers: especially the third person reflexive pronoun, and to a lesser extent personal pronouns in the first and second person. Somewhat contrary to the conclusion of this general observation, however, MS Hunter 252 has only twelve PREPOSITION + me + INFINITIVE constructions (i.e. using the unstressed pronoun), as compared with sev­ enteen PREPOSITION + moy + INFINITIVE. Nevertheless in preposi­ tional infinitive constructions using the third person reflexive pronoun, the modern construction dominates with twenty-two instances of PREPOSI­ TION + se + INFINITIVE as compared with just nine of PREPOSITION + soy / eulx + INFINITIVE.14 § 5. Use of the archaic feminine demonstrative pronoun ceste:

CNN2, 30, 98 and 100 retain the Old French form and syntax of the feminine demonstrative pronoun ceste (< VL *ecce ista(m), originally a compound form) used to indicate proximity without necessarily requiring the addition of a following reinforcing particle: Ce procés tant plaisant et nouveau, affin qu’il fust de pluseurs gens congneu, fut en suspens tenu et maintenu assez et longuement; non pas que a son tour de rolle ne fust bien renvoyé et mis en jeu, mais le juger fut differé jusques a la fasson de cestes ! (CNN2, Monseigneur, p. 37) Cela fait, ils rentrerent en leur chambre, et puis dirent que fortune et honneur a ceste heure leur court sus, et qu’ilz ne sont pas dignes d’avoir jamais bonne aventure, si ceste, qu’ilz n’ont pas pourchassee, par lascheté leur eschappoit. (CNN30, Monseigneur de Beauvoir, p. 202) « Beaulx seigneurs, dist le chevalier, si vous me cognoissiez bien, vous ne me tiendriez pour tel qui maine par les champs les femmes telles que vous nommez ceste. […] » (l’Acteur, CNN98, p. 550) Nous yrons en la ville, qui est trop mieulx empoissonnee que ceste cy; […] (Phelipe de Loan, CNN100, p. 581 – This preservation of archaic usage in a substitute folio is interesting evidence of scrupulous concern on the part of an antiquarian bibliophile.) Pace Marchello-Nizia, who maintains that, where feminine singular demonstrative pronouns are concerned, ‘Dans la majorité des textes du XIVe siècle et dans presque tous ceux du XVe siècle, la seule forme est celle, en toutes fonctions’ (‘In the majority of fourteenth-century texts, the 14 For the competing forms of the predicative reflexive pronoun in Middle French (soi, lui/elle, and eux/elles), see Martin and Wilmet, Syntaxe du moyen français, pp. 163-64, § 279.

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only form of the pronoun used is CELLE, in all settings’),15 it is generally admitted that the timescale of the evolution of demonstratives in Middle French is complicated and may well have varied from region to region.16 Incidentally, the reader is not alone if she or he is baffled by the sense of the feminine plural form of the demonstrative in the first of the four ex­ tracts cited (from CNN2): ‘le juger fut differé jusques a la fasson de cestes’. For Franklin Sweetser, ‘Il faut probablement sous-entendre « lectres »’, i.e. ‘letters, legal documents’,17 while Jacob (aka Lacroix), finding the meaning unintelligible, emends the plural to a singular and adds a different ‘missing’ word to read de ceste cause.18 § 6. Use of the archaic form of the oblique case relative pronoun qui:

[…] je vous feray en bref et a la verité ung bien gracieux compte d’un chevalier qui la pluspart de vous, mes bons seigneurs, congnoissez de pieça. (CNN81, Monseigneur de Vavrin, p. 473) With regard to Middle French forms of the relative pronoun, Martin and Wilmet observe that Il ne reste que très peu de traces de l’ancien emploi de cui régime avec antécédent animé. A la fin du XVe siècle, on peut le considérer comme tout à fait archaïque et exceptionnel.19 There remain very few traces of the former use of oblique cui referring to an animate antecedent. We may consider it to be quite archaic and exceptional by the end of the fifteenth century. One of these very rare attestations occurs in MS Hunter 252 in CNN81 (ascribed to Monseigneur de Vavrin) and is accepted by Vérard without emendation, no doubt because the form spelled qui is indistinguishable from the widely used nominative form of the pronoun: ‘je vous feray en bref et a la verité ung bien gracieux compte d’un chevalier qui la pluspart de vous, mes bons seigneurs, congnoissez de pieça’. Martin and Wilmet note two other fifteenth-century attestations in the Roman du Comte d’Artois and the Mystere du Viel Testament. Unsurprisingly, examples 15 Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française, p. 127. 16 Anthonij Dees, Étude sur l’évolution des démonstratifs en ancien et en moyen français (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1971), pp. 139-48, 152; Frédéric Duval, Le français médiéval, L’Atelier du médiéviste (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), p. 129. Dees ascribes the complexity of the later evolution of demonstratives to two causes, viz. the disparity of spoken and written forms of French and the influence of regional writers after 1350, especially those hailing from western and southern France. 17 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Sweetser, p. 603. 18 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. by Jacob (Pierre-Louis Jacob = Paul Lacroix), p. 42. 19 Martin and Wilmet, Syntaxe du moyen français, p. 253, § 424.

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that are syntactically comparable if not graphematically identical are easier to find in earlier Middle French. Marchello-Nizia notes three instances of cui with genitive rather than accusative force (i.e. meaning ‘whose’) in works by fourteenth-century authors ( Joinville, Froissart and Fouke Fitz Warin), together with instances of the preposition + qui / cui construction which survives in Modern French.20 § 7. Use of the archaic numeric adjective ambedeux:

[…] pourtant ne furent les amourettes rompues, car elles estoient si parfond enracinees es cueurs des ambedeux parties par les exploiz qui s’en estoient ensuyz, que impossible estoit les desrompre ne desjoindre, […] (CNN73, Maistre Jehan Lauvin, pp. 440-41) According to Martin and Wilmet, during the Middle French period ‘Ambe­ deux = « tous les deux » est devenu rarissime’ (‘Ambedeux = ‘both’ has be­ come extremely rare’),21 although the DMF suggests that it was relatively common in the fourteenth century but rapidly fell into disuse thereafter. § 8. Archaic use of the preposition de in comparative constructions:

[…] elle n’avoit pas mains de desir de luy de lyer son emprinse […] (CNN22, Caron, p. 146) […] quoy que aucunesfoiz il executast, et de la main et de la bouche, pluseurs besoignes que plus sage de luy n’eust sceu acever. (CNN75, Monseigneur de Thalemas, p. 449) According to Martin and Wilmet, de, en AF, peut fonctionner à la place de que dans la comparative de disparité, quand le second terme de la comparaison est un pronom et que celui-ci, en dépit de sa forme de régime, obligatoire après préposition, est senti comme sujet. Mais cet emploi est déjà archaïsant.22 in Old French, de may replace que in comparative clauses expressing disparity, where the second term is a pronoun which, despite being oblique (as required after a preposition), is perceived as a grammatical subject. But this usage is already old-fashioned. Constructions of this type appear in MS Hunter 252 either followed by an infinitive as part of a complement (as in the first example) or, as in the 20 Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française, p. 160. 21 Martin and Wilmet, Syntaxe du moyen français, p. 100, § 177. 22 Martin and Wilmet, Syntaxe du moyen français, p. 241, § 401.

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second example, introducing the second part of a comparative qualifying the indefinite subject of a clause. While it is still widely attested in the pays d’oïl in the fourteenth century, this construction seems to be obsolescent a hundred years later, the only other example noted by Martin and Wilmet being provided by the Picard author David Aubert in his Croniques et conquestes de Charlemaine.23 § 9. Use of the archaic prepositional phrase enseur de / ensus de meaning ‘(far) away from’:

Quand le vaillant hommes d’armes sceut l’Escossois enseur de luy, ainsi effrayé qu’il estoit, sans a peine savoir parler, sault de son pavillon, et commence a tenser sa femme de ce qu’elle avoit souffert le plaisir de l’archier. (CNN4, Monseigneur, p. 51 – Vérard’s edition has issu hors de l’huys [luy according to Sweetser].) « Va t’en, va t’en ensus de moy, et fay tant que tu trouves le picard qui t’a fait grosse et luy dy qu’il te defface ce qu’il t’a fait. […] » (CNN8, Monseigneur de la Barde, p. 69 – Vérard’s edition has arriere.) Et nostre clerc, plus cognoissant et mieulx voyant que cy dessus, saillit en piez, assault sa maistresse et la reboute en sus de luy, priant qu’elle le laisse escripre. (CNN23, Monseigneur de Quievrain, p. 151 – Vérard’s edition has reboute arriere de luy.) Et quant il fut en sus d’elle, il se doubta beaucop de point parvenir a son intencion, veu qu’il ne povoit obtenir d’elle ung seul baisier. (CNN48, Monseigneur de La Roche, p. 316) […] si s’advisa a chief de piece qu’il la chassera paistre en sus de luy, […] (CNN68, Messire Chrestian de Dygoyne, p. 419 – Vérard’s edition has paistre hors d’aveques luy.) « […] Je vous promectz par ma foy de vous mener ailleurs, ung peu ensus de ceans, ou l’un nous fera toute aultre chere. […] » (CNN81, Monseigneur de Vavrin, pp. 476-77 – Vérard’s edition has en arriere de.) The five instances of ensus de and the lone example of enseur de found in MS Hunter 252 appear to be extremely rare to judge by the DMF and Marchello-Nizia, who comments that ‘ces termes semblent vieillis à la fin du XVe siècle, ou ambigus: dans les editions incunables, ils sont parfois remplacés’ (‘these terms seem dated by the end of the fifteenth century; in

23 Martin and Wilmet, Syntaxe du moyen français, p. 138, § 245.3°; David Aubert, Les Croniques et conquestes de Charlemaine, 3 vols, Anciens auteurs belges, n. s., 3, ed. by Robert Guiette (Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1940-50), I, p. 64. Marchello-Nizia notes fourteenth-century attestations in the work of Eustache Deschamps, Geoffroi de La Tour Landry, and in the Passion du Palatinus (La Langue française, p. 263).

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early printed books, they are sometimes replaced’),24 as indeed happens in all but one instance in Vérard’s publication. § 10. Use of the archaic construction subject personal pronoun + direct object + finite verb:

« […] Nenny! nenny ! ja Dieu ne veille que je vous face telles promesses, a qui je prie qu’il permette la terre ouvrir qui me englotisse et devore toute vive, au jour et heure que je n’y pas commettray, mais auray une seule et legiere pensee a la commettre… » (CNN99, l’Acteur, p. 564 – Vérard’s edition has au jour et heure que, je ne dy pas commettray, mais auray …) In his diachronic survey of word order in Old and Middle French conjunc­ tive clauses, Dees observes that certains indices invitent à supposer que les évolutions considérées sont plus ou moins avancées selon les dialectes. […] Froissart et surtout Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles semblent retarder sur un texte tel que Les Quinze joies de mariage.25 certain indications lead us to suppose that the evolution under consideration appears more or less advanced according to dialect […] Froissart and especially Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles seem to lag behind a text such as Les Quinze joies de marriage. Dees found in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles seven conjunctive clauses with the archaic structure SUBJECT PERSONAL PRONOUN + DIRECT OBJECT + FINITE VERB. With the gradual abandonment of the declen­ sion system, this construction, which prevails in such early Old French texts as the Vie de Saint Alexis and the Chanson de Roland, was afterwards increasingly challenged by rival structures until it ultimately disappeared. There appears to be a vestige of this type of construction in the curious example reproduced here from MS Hunter 252 and, if this is indeed the case, its use suggests a remarkably high degree of syntactic conservatism. § 11. Archaic use of the temporal adverb ja without reinforcing mais in future tense constructions when negative:

« Je scay bien que vostre maistre veult, mais il n’y touchera ja si je n’ay dix escuz. » (CNN18, Monseigneur de la Roche, p.121)

24 Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française, pp. 277-78. 25 Dees, Atlas des formes linguistiques de l’ancien français, p. 299.

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« […] mais je vous dy bien que si ne me rendez mes dix escuz, ja ne m’en partiray, advienne ce qu’en advenir peut. […] » (CNN18, Monseigneur de la Roche, p. 123) « […] Ne vous chaille, Madame, qu’on dye, dit la prieure; vous ne serez ja reprouchee de gens de bien. […] » (CNN21, Philipe de Loan, p. 143) « […] A dya, vous direz ce que vous vouldrez, ce dit Girard, mais je ne croiray ja que femmes soient si loyalles que pour tenir telz termes; et ceulx qui le cuident sont parfaiz coquars. […] » (CNN26, Monseigneur de Foquessoles, p. 176) « […] Tant estes vous plus beste, ce dit Girard, et si vous maintenez ceste folie, jamais vous n’arez bien et ne ferez que songer et muser, et secherez sur terre comme la belle herbe dedans le four chault, et serez homicide de vous mesmes; et si n’en arez ja gre; […] » (CNN26, Monseigneur de Foquessoles, p. 177; cf. l. 1) « […] mais au fort je n’en feray ja procés; si mal y a, il en est cause. […] » (CNN30, Monseigneur de Beauvoir, p. 204) « […] ouvrez moy l’huys, si buray une foiz. – Vous n’y entrerez ja, par Dieu! dit elle. (CNN31, Monseigneur de la Barde, p. 212 – Vérard’s edition has vous n’y entrerez par Dieu.) « S’il vous plaisoit, j’entreroye voluntiers dedans ceste eglise pour dire ung Pater noster et ung Ave Maria. […] – Nostre Dame, dist il, vous n’y entrerez ja maintenant. […] » (CNN32, Monseigneur de Villiers, p. 217) « Dictes moy, dist l’oste, la chose comment elle va, par ma foy je vous lairray aller, et ne vous feray ja mal; si non je vous tueray tout roidde. » (CNN32, Monseigneur de Villiers, p. 220) « […] et si avons tout laissé pour venir icy, cuidans menger de la lemproye; mais ad ce que nous voyons, elle ne nous fera ja mal. » (CNN38, Monseigneur de Loan, p. 263) […] je vous requier que vous soyez mon moyen vers ce cardinal que je le serve; et, par ma foy, je feray tant que vous ne aurez ja reprouche pour moy. (CNN42, Meriadech, p. 284) « […] vous estes arrivee en bon hostel, si Dieu plaist, et n’ayez doubte, on ne vous y fera ja desplaisir; […] » (CNN53, Monseigneur l’Amant de Bruxelles, p. 340) « Or gardez bien que tu ne dyes a personne que je sache parler de ceste matere, et je te promectz que je ne te feray ja mal. » (CNN60, Poncelet, p. 375) « […] Je suis au fort contente, dist la fille, de la mettre et bouter ou il fault, mais si elle devoit y pourrir, je ne l’en retireray ja. » (CNN86, Monseigneur Philipe Vignier, p. 501 – Vérard’s edition has ne l’en retireray ne sacqueray ja.)

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« Mais puis qu’il vous plaist me secourir, je ne seray ja cause de ma mort. […] » (CNN95, Philipe de Loan, p. 537) Following Martin and Wilmet,26 Geoffrey Roger describes this feature as ‘somewhat archaic’ despite it being widely attested in MS Hunter 252. The DMF confirms that this usage was rare by the mid-fifteenth century. The fact that its occurrence is limited to passages in direct speech is explained unsurprisingly by the normal absence of futurity in straight narrative. § 12. Use of archaic parataxis, viz. use of the complétive juxtaposée:

Je cuide bien vous avez bonne cognoissance et familiarité avec mon mary; en l’estat que vous me voiez icy m’a il laissee et abandonnee pour mener sa marchandise es parties d’Alixandrie, ainsi qu’il a de long temps accoustumé. (CNN99, l’Acteur, p. 572-3 – Vérard’s edition has je cuide bien que.) Et croiez avant qu’elle en peust oyr nouvelle ce ne fut pas sans avoir peine et du malaise largement. (CNN8, Monseigneur de La Roche, p. 69 – cited by Martin and Wilmet, 1980, p. 227, § 370.) The introduction of an object noun clause without an intervening conjunc­ tion QUE (a construction comparable to the common Modern English omission of THAT) was widespread in Old French, especially in twelfthcentury epic texts, as Philippe Ménard observes.27 According to Frede Jensen, in Old French ‘with verbs of belief, knowledge and semblance, omission of que occurs very generally, regardless of the choice of mood’.28 Marchello-Nizia appears to have overlooked the example in our MS when she notes that ‘cette construction ne semble pas dépasser le milieu du XVe siècle’ (‘this construction does not seem to persist beyond the mid­ dle of the fifteenth century’).29 Martin and Wilmet note two further in­

26 Martin and Wilmet, Syntaxe du moyen français, p. 30, § 23. 27 Philippe Ménard, Syntaxe de l’ancien français, Manuel du français du moyen âge, ed. by Yves Lefèvre, n° 1 (Bordeaux: SOBODI, 1973), p. 188, § 198. 28 Frede Jensen, Old French and Comparative Gallo-Romance Syntax, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, Bd. 232 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1990), p. 498, § 957. Even in Modern French it is not always easy to say whether parataxis or modalisation is involved. See the examples cited in Julie Glikman, ‘Les propositions subordonnées sans mot subordonnant, étude diachronique’, Les Cahiers de l’ED 139, Sciences du langage, 2005-2006 (Paris: Publication de l’Université Paris X Nanterre), p. 55-69. Glikman discusses some types of Middle French propositions paratactiques complétives et consécutives. 29 Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française, p. 341.

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stances of fifteenth-century parataxis in the writings of Guillaume Alexis / Alecis (c. 1425-86) and Antoine de La Sale (c. 1386- c. 1460).30 § 13. Only occasional use of que to introduce imprecative or optative subjunctive constructions, despite this practice being generalised in Middle French:

Faictes de moy tout ce qu’il vous plaist; je suis content de cligner tant que l’on vouldra, mais que garison s’en suyve ! (CNN87, Monsieur le Voyer, p. 504) Oncques ne feiz telle folie, la Dieu mercy; et quand la volunté me seroit telle, que Dieu ne veille ! (CNN98, l’Acteur, p. 550) Absence of certain recent developments in French may also indicate a tendency to archaism. For example, according to Christiane MarchelloNizia, the use of the conjunction que to introduce imprecative or optative subjunctive constructions is a development peculiar to Middle French.31 Yet surprisingly Roger has found but two such examples in the corpus (and that in a negative context)32 to complement Marchello-Nizia’s findings in La Passion du Palatinus, Jehan de Saintré, Maistre Pierre Pathelin, Le Franc Archier de Baignolet and Le Roman de Jehan de Paris. *** It would have been possible to extend this list of archaisms by including obsolescent verb forms such as those of cremir, used once in CNN59

30 Martin and Wilmet, Syntaxe du moyen français, p. 227, § 370; ‘Les Faintes du Monde’, in Œuvres poétiques de Guillaume Alexis, 3 vols, ed. by Arthur Piaget and Émile Picot (Paris: Didot, 1896-1908), I, pp. 55-119 (p. 117, line 838); Antoine de La Sale: Jehan de Saintré, ed. by Jean Misrahi and Charles A. Knudson, Textes littéraires français, 117 (Geneva: Droz, 1965), p. 6, lines 18-19; Antoine de La Sale: Jehan de Saintré, 2 vols, CFMA, 114 and 115, ed. by Mario Eusebi (Paris: Champion, 1993), I, p. 27 (III); Antoine de La Sale: Jehan de Saintré, Lettres gothiques, ed. by Joël Blanchard and transl. by Michel Quereuil (Paris: Livre de Poche/LGF, 1995), p. 42. 31 ‘[…] il s’agit d’un emploi de que qui se développe en moyen français: celui où il introduit un subjonctif en indépendante ou principale; quelle que puisse être l’origine de cet usage, on ne peut considérer les propositions en question comme des subordonnées’ (Marchello-Nizia, La Langue française, p. 295). See also Ménard, Syntaxe de l’ancien français, p. 147, § 153, Rem. 3. Jensen (Old French and Comparative Gallo-Romance Syntax, p. 356, § 731) notes occasional use of the independent optative subjunctive introduced by que in Old French, however. 32 Roger (‘“Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”’, p. 179) sets these two occurrences against thirtyone equivalent optative structures without que, including such similar examples as: ‘Dieu le vous veille pardonner!’ (p. 350) and ‘Dieu nous veille garder et defendre de toute male adventure!’ (p. 438).

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(p. 368) alongside those of its more common alternative form craindre which are found elsewhere in the collection.33 But such observations risk venturing beyond the stated scope of this paper towards lexis.

Selected neologisms or precocious / nonce features in MS Hunter 252 (§§ 14-17) Turning now to the question of contemporaneity in Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, we may quite naturally expect this to be linked to the lively dialogue that abounds in its pages. For, to quote Geoffrey Roger yet again: The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles are prominently concerned with social exchange; they exhibit a myriad of characters, whose conversations are potentially interesting from a linguistic perspective,34 as they may give a relatively realistic impression of the vernacular of the period.35 A number of observers have commented upon the direct speech passages in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. De Blieck notes that: ‘There is not one Nouvelle in the whole collection which does not revolve around a dialogue – an exchange of replies, essentially in direct or indirect speech’. According to Gaston Paris, ‘C’est une reproduction singulièrement habile, sous l’apparente négligence, de la langue alors parlée’ [It is a singularly skilful reproduction of spoken language, beneath the apparent casualness’] (1913, p. 251). Sweetser likewise praises the ‘écrivain habile, doué d’une oreille très fine pour saisir le langage parlé de ses contemporains de tous les milieux sociaux’ [‘skilful writer with a very fine ear for picking up on the speech of his contemporaries from all social backgrounds’] (Roger, ‘“Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”’, p. xiv). Emma Stojkovic-Mazzariol, meanwhile, notes of CNN88: […] le récit est fortement dynamisé, parce qu’il est structuré sur deux moments de tension et deux moments de détente et théatralisé, en 33 Though Roger (‘“Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”’, p. 128, § 3.3.10) accepts Rossi’s view that cremir is an ‘arcaismo interessante’, he concedes that its forms are attested in several later fifteenth-century texts as noted in the DMF. 34 All nouvelles considered, more than 300 characters get to speak. 35 Albeit at one (or more than one) remove, given that we are supposedly reading the transcript of courtiers’ representation of the said vernacular. Nonetheless, as Dees points out: ‘Quant à savoir quel type de texte nous renseigne le mieux sur la langue parlée, tout nous semble inviter à faire confiance aux textes narratifs et, subsidiairement, aux discours directs plutôt qu’aux textes narratifs’ [‘As for which type of text best informs us on the subject of spoken language, everything encourages us to accept with confidence narrative texts and, subsidiarily, direct speech over narrative texts’] (Dees, Étude sur l’évolution des démonstratifs, p. 30).

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outre, par les dialogues directs qui, calqués sur la langue parlée, si riche d’éléments linguistiques non-référentiels et donc purement affectifs, deviennent des applications exemplaires du mimétique pur.36 […] the narrative is highly dynamic because it is structured around two moments of tension and two moments of relaxation, and made theatrical, moreover, by dialogues of direct speech which, based on the spoken word, so rich in non-referential linguistic elements and therefore affective in a pure manner, become exemplary instances of pure mimesis. Yet paradoxically, at the risk of repeating a point, half of the selected neoteric constructions featured in this paper are by definition of a literary nature rather than characteristic of spoken style. § 14. Rare early use of the ‘historic future’:

S’il eust osé, voluntiers l’eust tuee a ceste heure; toutesfoiz, affin d’oyr encores le surplus, s’il y est, il aura pacience. (CNN78, Jehan Martin, p. 464 – Vérard’s edition has eut.) Contrary to the generally archaistic and conservative language of the tales, Martin and Wilmet observe here a rare early example of the Middle French ‘futur historique’.37 Like the narrative or historic infinitive which follows, this is a really interesting anticipation of Modern French usage. § 15. Rare early use of the ‘narrative or historic infinitive’:

Et lors bon mary de se courroucer; et fiert tant qu’il peut de son pié contre la porte, […] (CNN1, Monseigneur, p. 28). Tantost qu’elle fut partie, bon mary de monter a cheval, et par aultre chemin que sa femme tenoit, picque tant qu’il peut au Mont-SaintMichel […] (CNN65, Monseigneur le Prevost de Wastenes, p. 408) Here, MS Hunter 252 presents two early attestations of the narrative or historic infinitive, which according to Martin and Wilmet in the midfifteenth century ‘ne connaît qu’un usage très limité’ (‘is in very limited use’).38

36 Emma Stojkovic-Mazzariol, ‘L’Auteur des Cent Nouvelles nouvelles et le Pogge: une rencontre manquée?’, in Études littéraires sur le XVe siècle. Actes du Ve colloque international sur le moyen français, Milan, 6-8 mai 1985, 3 vols, ed. by Sergio Cigada and Anna Slerca (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1986), III, pp. 103-23. 37 Martin and Wilmet, Syntaxe du moyen français, p. 85 § 145. 38 Martin and Wilmet, Syntaxe du moyen français, p. 213, § 350.

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The one other contemporary example that Martin and Wilmet provide is taken from Antoine de la Sale’s Jehan Saintré, in which the infinitive is constructed with à rather than with de in a variation on the construction whose possible origins are suggested by Maurice Grevisse: Précédé de or et de de avec l’article défini, l’infinitif servait à exprimer une exhortation pressante: Mi fil, or del HASTER (Herman de Valenciennes dans Bartsch, 23, 58). C’est peut-être ce tour qui est à l’origine de notre infinitif de narration (mais on admet plus généralement que l’infinitif de narration appartient à la catégorie des phrases nominales, sans verbe personnel).39 Preceded by or and by de with the definite article, the infinitive served to express an urgent exhortation … It is perhaps this turn which lies at the origin of our own narrative infinitive construction (although it is generally acknowledged that the narrative infinitive belongs to the category of nominative phrases, without personal verb). § 16. Rare early use of the conjunction ny (Modern French ni):

Et de fait, pour la joye qu’elle eut de ce que son mary n’estoit point si mal ne si desvoyé qu’elle esperoit, ny que son cueur luy avoit jugié, elle s’en alla querir ses enfans et les varIetz de l’ostel et les mena veoir la belle compaignie. (CNN59, Poncelet, p. 367) Another rare though not pioneering feature is the use of the conjunction ny, attested only once across the whole document. To quote Alain Rey, Latin Nec a d’abord donné ne (842). La forme ni apparaît timidement au XIIIe s.; rare jusqu’à la fin du XVe s., elle se répand rapidement au XVIe s., écrite ny, et s’impose à côté de ne au XVIIe s.40 [Latin] Nec first of all gave ne (842). The form ni appears gradually in the thirteenth century; rare until the end of the fifteenth century, it spreads rapidly in the sixteenth, written as ny, and it establishes itself in the seventeenth century alongside ne. 39 Maurice Grevisse, Le Bon Usage, ninth revised edition (Gembloux: Duculot / Paris: Hatier, 1969), p. 690, § 750 Hist. 40 Alain Rey, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 2 vols (Paris: Le Robert, nouvelle édition, 1993), II, p. 1321. Other isolated fifteenth-century attestations appear in the Mystere du Viel Testament (Martin and Wilmet, Syntaxe du moyen français, p. 275 § 466), Villon and Alain Chartier’s La Belle Dame sans mercy. For these and earlier instances, see the database of the CNRTL (Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales, http://www.cnrtl.fr/ etymologie/ni).

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§ 17. Nonce use of si for the affirmative adverb ouy :

Le musnier demande a madame s’elle l’avoit a l’entree du baing, et elle dit que si. (CNN3, Monseigneur de la Roche, p. 45 – Vérard’s edition has ouy.) In CNN3 Madame answers an affirmative question with si, which even in Middle French, according to Martin and Wilmet, is ‘contraire à toute norme’ (‘contrary to all norms’) and flies in the face of Dante’s typology of Romance languages in De Vulgari Eloquentia.41 ***

In conclusion: stylistic implications Though my selection suggests that archaisms heavily outweigh neologisms or precocious linguistic features in Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, their coex­ istence in a single work seems to reinforce the view that it is, to quote Edgar De Blieck: a cross-generational project, but one whose participants reflected the everyday realities of social and political experience and identity at a game old man’s court: the older men with whom the Duke was on friendly terms predominate among the raconteurs, though young blood is not unrepresented, and the bulk of the storytelling was done by the middle-aged and the vigorous.42 The resulting hybrid style, which is to be expected in a multi-layered and collective composition, may have been lent some degree of linguistic coherence by the action of the real or supposed reporting author or scribe, whose use of conservative Picard scripta would not be inconsistent with a tendency towards archaism and who may well have been a senior figure at court. That said, it is worth noting that we cannot here simplistically equate neologisms with youth and archaisms with advancing years. The few neologisms that I have identified are not confined to tales told by younger members of the Burgundian court; for while the raconteur Pon­ celet, alias Jean du Poncel or du Ponceau, was a relatively recent appoint­ ment as chamber valet and rhetorician and possibly therefore young, Jehan 41 Martin and Wilmet, Syntaxe du moyen français, p. 36, § 35; Dante, De vulgari eloquentia, ed. and transl. by Steven Botterill, Cambridge medieval classics, 5 (Cambridge: CUP, 1996), p. 16 (Book I, viii, § 5): ‘nam alii oc, alii oïl, alii si affirmando locuntur’. 42 Edgar De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Text and Context: Literature and History at the Court of Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 2004), p. 224.

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Martin, another occupant of that first post, was also, as we shall see in later chapters, a significant figure in the Burgundian administration and a keeper of the jewels at court; and one of the two rare early instances of the narrative or historic infinitive is ascribed to the Duke himself. (For the record, the other usage was by ‘Monseigneur le Prevost de Wastenes’, in other words Michel Baers, who was also of advanced years at the time, as can be seen elsewhere in the present volume.)43 Moreover, even Poncelet’s tales are not completely devoid of archaisms (see §§ 4, 11 above). How far is the hybrid style of Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles typical of other fifteenth-century narrative works? That, I suggest, is a matter for future research.

43 See Chapter 4 above.

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Chapter 9. Locating storytelling in time and space (Hainaut-Brussels, 1458-59) A Decameronian moment

Having considered in Chapter 4 above the potential roles played in the Nachleben of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles by social networks identifiable from the paratextual and textual evidence, we now turn in our final section to the presence and significance of such networks within the text itself. As Jelle Koopmans has rightly stated, insofar as the work has any ‘cadre détaillé’ (‘detailed frame’) at all, ‘celui-ci se limite à la mention des noms des narrateurs, et c’est tout’ (‘the latter is limited to the names of the narrators, and that is it’). He continues: on […] est en droit de se poser la question simple de savoir ce qui se trouve “sous” ce recueil: à quelle réalité ou à quelle culture sociale fait-il allusion? Ou s’agit-il uniquement d’une reprise du modèle italien? Y-a-t-il bien un auteur qui imagine une situation narrative et existe-til une certaine unité ou du moins un projet d’ensemble derrière le recueil? Y-a-t-il effectivement de participation des différents narrateurs ou s’agit-t-il d’auteurs qui […] ont apporté chacun leur contribution; ou est-ce encore un auteur qui leur attribue […] une nouvelle, voire des nouvelles qu’ils seraient contents d’assumer mais qu’ils n’ont jamais racontées? C’est-à-dire que si les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles peuvent être considérées comme une retombée d’une culture orale, de rencontres où l’on se raconte des nouvelles, des précisions au sujet de cette culture seraient certes à donner. Si, par contre, les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles ne sont pas un compte-rendu, mais une pure fiction qui détaille ce qui serait à envisager comme une telle rencontre, elles documentent une

Edgar de Blieck • independent scholar Graeme Small • Durham University The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - c. 1550), ed. by Graeme Small, Texte, Codex & Contexte, 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 249–266 10.1484/M.TCC-EB.5.132239

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possibilité, un champ de la “pensabilité” de la chose, qui mériterait également plus ample commentaire.1 We are entitled to ask the simple question: what lies “beneath” this collection? To what reality or what social culture does it allude? Or is it purely a reprise of the Italian model? Is there really an author who imagines a narrative situation, and is there a certain unity, or at least an overall project, behind this collection? Is there actual participation by different storytellers, or are they actually authors […] who each made their own written contribution? Or again, is there a single author who attributes to each of them […] a nouvelle or indeed several nouvelles, which they would be happy to have in their name, but which they never actually told? In other words, if the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles can be considered a spin-off from an oral culture, from encounters in which people actually did tell each other stories, then further details of that culture would certainly be needed. If, by contrast, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles are not a formal minute but a purely fictional account of how such an encounter might be imagined, then they document a possibility, a space in which to consider how such a thing might be “thinkable”, which itself would also merit fuller commentary. These excellent questions are, of course, for the most part unanswerable, at least in compelling detail. Each close investigation of some important aspect of the text brings tantalising evidence that strengthens one possibil­ ity or another, without however ruling out some alternative conclusion: the hybridity of language identified by Peter Davies above (Chapter 8) leaves open the possibility of a real cross-generational project, for example, while the dominant Picard traits of the scripta demonstrated by Geoffrey Roger (Chapter 7) may reveal something of the linguistic – and therefore geographical, political and possibly even social – identity of a single au­ thor whose personal interventions remain impossible to measure. It is important, too, to recall that many of the possible ‘realities’ ‘beneath’ the text do not necessarily stand in opposition to one another: some tales, perhaps even many, could reflect lived experiences of conteurs or named protagonists, without all necessarily doing so; a single imagined assembly in which tales were told could equate to a number of quite different real occasions or circumstances when storytelling did really occur in some shape or form. Given the impossibility of proving one underlying ‘reality’ over another, or of assessing the relative weight of any we might detect, it

1 Jelle Koopmans, ‘Espaces ludiques: le jeu de la sociabilité bourguignonne’, in Autour des “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”: sources et rayonnements, contextes et interprétations ed. by Jean Devaux and Alexandra Velissariou, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 81 (Paris: Champion, 2016), pp. 31-40 (pp. 34-35).

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is certainly legitimate to conclude more generally, as Jelle Koopmans has done, that the tales reflect the essentially ludic quality of Burgundian court culture, as Johan Huizinga sensed many years ago, and as can be witnessed in a variety of documented cultural practices at court which Koopmans discusses in further detail.2 But it is possible, too, to reflect more closely on the only detailed paratextual frame we have been given, namely the conteurs’ names (and sometimes offices). True, it is an imperfect frame, given that MS Hunter 252 and Vérard’s edition contain undoubted errors and deliberate changes. Nevertheless, it is a frame which receives important validation in an authoritative epitext, the 1469 inventory of Philip the Good’s books: according to cataloguers who were very well placed to know (as we saw in Chapter 4 above), the patron commissioned a manuscript ‘containing one hundred nouvelles / by my lord, God rest his soul, and by several others in his household’.3 In what follows in this section, consisting of two chapters, we seek to provide new answers to some obvious questions a historian might ask. Who is presented as telling these stories? Where, when and why would such storytelling have taken place? How far might networks of service, sociability and kinship have determined participation in storytelling practices? What functions could storytelling perform within those same networks? To address these questions, we use as our starting point the paratextual and textual evidence that channels the reader into accepting the historicity of the named individuals in the conteur group, and work outwards from that evidence to explore the ‘social logic of the text’ as it presents itself to its intended audience, namely the court of Philip the Good.4 We will argue that the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles constitutes a source for understanding storytelling practices at court; in other words, to invert a famous phrase, that there is an archive in the fiction.

2 We now recognize that Homo Ludens, Huizinga’s great work of 1938, is closely connected to concerns first explored in Autumntide of the Middle Ages, which he regarded as his most prominent publication: Andrew Brown, ‘Huizinga’s Autumn: the Burgundian Court at Play’, in Rereading Huizinga. ‘Autumn of the Middle Ages’, a Century Later, ed. by Peter Arnade, Martha Howell and Anton van der Lem (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019), pp. 25-39. 3 As we have also seen in Chapter 4 above, some aspects of Pierre Champion’s still widely accepted analysis of the conteur group, as listed in our paratexts, are not without error or misapprehension. Further examples will appear in this chapter and in Chapter 10. 4 The three conteurs for whom we do not propose an identification in Chapters 4, 9 and 10 of the present volume are Maistre Jehan Lanvin/Lauvin (CNN73), Monsieur de Santilly (CNN85) and Monsieur le Voyer (CNN87). As Richard Gameson notes above in Chapter 1, a sixteenth-century hand altered some of the rubrics we can use to identify conteurs, and the addition of the names of Le Voyer and Santilly are just such later emendations (fols 175v, 179v). The tales are in both cases anonymous in the Vérard edition, so any attempt to resolve these identities is especially problematic. Lanvin’s name is rendered by Vérard as Lambin, so there is at least a second witness to a conteur, although no firm

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Story telling at court Storytelling was an essential skill at court. The act of narration spanned a range of social contexts in which it was necessary or desirable to be able to recount, relate, report or set forth: the ability to hold an audience with the spoken word, to make a case, or to compose in writing, for instance. Something of that range is captured in contemporary meanings of the nouns histoire and historien (when used in a verbal, rather than a visual, sense).5 One of the named conteurs, Jean de Lannoy, uses the word historien in these ways around this time in a famous letter of advice addressed to his infant son. Lamenting his own lack of a proper education, which he hopes his son will acquire, Lannoy describes his ‘deep shame and humiliation’ in the council chambers of the king or the duke when asked to give his opinion, especially after the ‘learned clerks, eloquent legists and ystoryens who have spoken before me’.6 Here, the word historien captures the ability to narrate or set forth in a formal political setting, but the flexibility of the term is such that Lannoy may additionally mean that the discourse of politics contained within such narrations was both legal and historical in nature. In CNN38, to give a different example, the principal storyteller in the collection, Philippe Pot, makes a contribution to the series of tales (or as he calls it, the ‘present story’, ‘ystoire presente’) concerning a jealous man, ‘a very great connoisseur of history’ (‘tres grand historien’) who sought to guard himself against the perceived treachery of women by constantly poring over ‘anciennes histoires’ (‘old stories’) for useful exempla.7 These ‘old stories’ are defined specifically, not as chronicles or identification will be proposed here. Edgar de Blieck notes there is a Lille family by the name of Lanvin: ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Text and Context: Literature and History at the Court of Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 2004), p. 50, n. 17. To this we may add there was a prominent Dijonais family with court connections at this time named Lambin: Cécile Becchia, Les Bourgeois et le prince. Dijonnais et Lillois auprès du pouvoir bourguignon (1419-77), Bibliothèque d’histoire médiévale, 22 (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2019), pp. 227-28, 419. 5 http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/definition/histoire; http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/definition/historien. 6 Baudouin de Lannoy and Georges Dansaert, Jean de Lannoy le bâtisseur, 1410-92 (Paris: Declée - de Brouwer, 1937, pp. 119-21, 138-40, 147-48. As Mario Damen points out, Lannoy must therefore have remained silent for the 15 or 16 years when he headed the council of Holland as stadhouder of the duke: M. Damen, De stad van dienst. De gewestelijke ambtenaren van Holland en Zeeland in de Bourgondische periode (1425-82) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000), p. 203. 7 Our translation of the noun historien is taken from DMF above, where this specific passage of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles is referred to. The term ‘histoire’ is the one most commonly used to describe each of the tales recounted in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, appearing in CNN20, 26, 37, 71, 84 and 89: Roger Dubuis, Les “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles” et la tradition de la nouvelle en France au moyen âge (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1973), pp. 15-17.

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historical romances, but as the works of the second-century poet Juvenal, the thirteenth-century poet Mathieu of Boulogne, and the contemporary text known as Les Quinze Joies de Mariage, all of which related examples of marital infidelity. Armed with extracts from these historical literary texts, the ‘historien’ made for himself a ‘chronicle and register’ (‘livre croniquées et registrées’) of female adultery, to help him guard himself against it (unsuccessfully, as it turned out). Histoire and historien are used here to describe, by turns, an individual’s contribution to collective storytelling; as a shorthand for literature from the distant or recent past which is studied for profit, its lessons applied to one’s own life; and more narrowly, to describe someone who engaged in the act of literary and historical composition. So while we can agree that the purpose of the storytelling depicted here was partly ludic, and that these were tales which were designed to entertain, we also contend that the ability to narrate, recount, or set forth, celebrated no fewer than one hundred times in this collection, grounds the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles in the social realities of court life. Wit and a way with words, wrapped up in good stories, were highly prized, to be practised, emulated and perfected. The universality of story-telling practices discussed in Chapter 6 above made the acquisition, exercise and celebration of such skills an attainable goal.

Locating storytelling events in time and space It is possible to discern members of four distinct service networks among the identifiable conteurs mentioned in the paratext and text of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: those of the Dauphin and the Count of Charolais (albeit with only one securely identifiable member from each, as we saw above in Chapter 4); the Duke’s own men, by far the largest single group­ ing; and a small but highly significant contingent around Louis de Lux­ embourg, Count of Saint-Pol.8 The unusual combination of households present in the conteur group allows us to understand reasonably precisely when and where the storytelling events, which the paratext invites its intended audience to accept as historical fact, are depicted as having occurred. 8 What follows in the first section of this chapter draws on research first presented in De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, especially pp. 187-213. However, the analysis there has been updated, reconfigured and recontextualised by Graeme Small, using new information on individual conteurs gathered from the Prosopographia curiae Burgundicae (hereinafter PCB: see http://www.prosopographia-burgundica.org/), and from other source editions and publications that have appeared since 2004. The new central argument presented in the second part of this chapter was suggested by the findings of this revised and collaborative work.

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The presence of the Dauphin’s servant, Jean d’Estuer, lord of La Barde (CNN31) opens a broad window when any tale-telling could take place, during Louis’s exile in the Low Countries under Philip the Good’s protec­ tion between September 1456 and July 1461. This feature is often seen as the key element in the dating of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, but in fact the coming together of the other three households in one literary venture is of greater importance. Considerable tensions and even bitter enmities existed between these service groups at particular points in time; to find these men in the same company was only possible under specific circumstances. The main flashpoints between the groups concerned had ignited around the Croy family, which was dominant at the court of Philip the Good. Between the Croys and the Count of Saint-Pol, first of all, great animosity had arisen in 1455 over the marriage of the latter’s daughter Jacqueline to the eponymous cousin of the conteur Philippe de Croy (CNN23, 62, 72), despite bitter opposition from the father of the bride. The ensuing conflict led to the Duke’s confiscation of Saint-Pol’s lands in the county of Hainaut, and still in 1456, Saint-Pol could be described as one of two rebels whom Philip the Good ‘hated most in the world’.9 It was not until the very end of 1458 or early 1459, as we shall see below, that the first steps towards a reconciliation were taken. Between the Croys and the Count of Charolais, Philip the Good’s only legitimate son and heir, trouble had flared early in 1457 when Charolais rejected his father’s instruction that he appoint the conteur Philippe de Croy to a position in his household, in place of the Count’s preferred can­ didate.10 Such was the extent of the ensuing crisis that the duchess Isabella of Portugal withdrew from court to take up residence at La Motte-aux-bois in the castellany of Cassel, around 160kms from Brussels, while Charolais thenceforth spent more and more of his time in the similarly-distant county of Holland, his visits to the Duke being limited to one or two brief occasions each year.11 It took a looming threat of dramatic proportions to bring the four mutually suspicious households together again. The possibility of open warfare between Philip the Good and Charles VII of France, who was determined to bring the Dauphin to heel, grew considerably in the course

9 Richard Vaughan, Philip the Good. The Apogee of Burgundy, second edition with Introduction by Graeme Small (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2002), p. 338. The quote is from Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, 8 vols, ed. Joseph Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels: Heusschner, 1863-66), III, 132. (The other rebel was Reinoud van Brederode.) 10 Vaughan, Philip the Good, pp. 338-39. 11 Vaughan, Philip the Good, p. 343; Werner Paravicini, ‘“Acquérir sa grâce pour le temps advenir”: les hommes de Charles le Téméraire, prince héritier (1433-1467)’, in À l’ombre du pouvoir, ed. by Jean-Louis Kupper and Alain Marchandisse, Bibliothèque de la Faculté de philosophie et lettres de l’Université de Liège (Liège: Presses universitaires de Liège, 2003), pp. 361-83.

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of 1458. Since Charles had attempted to use military force to bring Louis back from Dauphiné in 1456, the possibility of bloodshed was quite realis­ tic; and given the recently-proven military might of the king in Normandy and Gascony, even more severe consequences for ducal power could legit­ imately be feared. Among the precautionary measures Philip took were two reconciliations, first with his most dangerous internal opponent of recent years, the rebellious city of Ghent (April), then with the Count of Saint-Pol, whose extensive landholdings and networks of service, kinship and lordship across Picardy and other frontier lands would, in the event of war, form a strategically vital buffer between Charles and Philip. Although a full reconciliation with Saint-Pol would not occur until 1461, the first steps were taken in late December 1458 and early January 1459. Saint-Pol met with the Duke at Mons, where he received restitution of some of his confiscated lands in the frontier region of Hainaut. He was also entrusted with military responsibilities in the key Boulonnais region, where other conteurs held important positions of authority as we saw above in Chap­ ter 4.12 The presence among the conteurs, not just of the Count of Saint-Pol (CNN39), the highest-ranking contributor after the Duke, but also of the lord of Fiennes (either the Count’s brother, Thibaud, or his nephew, Jacques, as we also saw above in Chapter 4), one of the Luxembourg fam­ ily’s longest-serving Picard supporters and most experienced military cap­ tains, Ferry de Mailly, lord of Talmas (CNN75), and the tutor entrusted with the education of Saint-Pol’s sons, Antoine de La Sale (CNN50), is therefore highly significant in establishing the period when any tale-telling is likely to have occurred.13 The fraternization of these men with others from Burgundian networks of service and sociability can only have taken place once the Duke and Count, and the networks around each, had begun to reconcile their differences. While it may be true, as we shall see, that Luxembourg and Burgundy were essentially the ‘même milieu’ in terms of the cultural interests of household members, politically this was not the case at all – not from 1455 until late 1458 at the earliest, in any case.14 This reconciliation is therefore of much greater importance than the presence of a single delphinal servant in terms of the resonances the paratext could produce within an audience of the written text at the court of Philip the Good. A number of other paratextual and textual details converge on a similar timeframe. It may be significant that three of the protagonists who had

12 De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 196, n.38. 13 For the identifications of Saint-Pol, Fiennes and Talmas, the last a revision of both Champion and De Blieck, see above, Chapter 4. 14 Compare with Sylvie Lefèvre, Antoine de La Sale. La fabrique de l’oeuvre et de l’écrivain (Geneva: Droz, 2006), p. 200.

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their shirts stolen at the Antwerp fair ‘roughly two years ago’ in CNN63 by the Count of Charolais’s first esquire of the stables were also named as the recipients of new shirts paid for on the Count’s instructions in 1457 ‘at the time of the Antwerp fair’.15 The inference we may draw – that some of the tales were being told in the summer of 1459, between early June or mid-August – can be set alongside the date of the marriage mix-up which forms the plot of CNN53, located in the principal church of the court when it resided in Brussels. George Chastelain recounts the same story in his official chronicle, and dates the marriage to 4 February 1459.16 Later in the collection, Jean de Lannoy locates one of his tales in ‘our castellany of Lille’ (CNN82), a jurisdiction that only fell within his purview as governor of Lille, Douai and Orchies in May or June 1459 (and which remained in his care until 1462, if we seek a terminus ad quem).17 The death ‘vers 1460’ (‘around 1460’) of Antoine de La Sale, the most famous literary name among the conteurs, made his participation in any storytelling an impossibility.18 Realistically, any real-life storytelling events encompassing one hun­ dred tales could only have occurred over a prolonged period, involving many different actors in multiple encounters around the Duke.19 A thor­ ough investigation of the ducal archives by Edgar de Blieck, combined now with data from the Prosopographia curiae burgundicae and publications which have appeared since 2004, indicates that the greatest number of mentions of known conteurs occurs between the early autumn of 1458 and the summer of 1459 – a window of time which is entirely in keeping with the rare textual indications for dating the work discussed immediately above. So the composition of the conteur group, as it is presented in the

15 De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 393-97, 401. Antwerp had two fairs each summer, the first starting two Sundays before Pentecost, the second on the first Sunday after Assumption. 16 Georges Chastellain, Chronique. Les fragments du Livre IV révélés par l’Add. ms 54156 de la British Library, ed. by Jean-Claude Delclos (Geneva: Droz, 1991), pp. 230-33 (‘the last Sunday one could get married before Lent’); De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 370-89. 17 De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 79, n. 116; Becchia, Les Bourgeois et le prince, p. 179. 18 Sylvie Lefèvre, ‘Antoine de La Sale’, Dictionnaire des lettres françaises. Le Moyen Âge (Paris: Fayard, 1994), 78-80 ( p. 79). The deaths of two protagonists mentioned in the tales, Clais van Utenhoven in February 1458 (CNN69) and that of Humbert de Plaine late in 1459 or early 1460 (CNN63) do not have much bearing on when either tale might have been told: De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 27, n. 67. 19 Unless one were to imagine some kind of epic story-telling event on a scale comparable to the Feast of the Pheasant at Lille in February 1454, when large numbers of Burgundian courtiers did indeed assemble to read out short but important, more-or-less pre-prepared texts, in the form of their crusading vows. Any such event would surely have left an imprint on the record.

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paratextual evidence, evokes a particular time in the life of the community for which the final written work was intended. The court was located during the first three or four months of this period in the main towns of the county of Hainaut, no more than 40kms distant from one another along the frontier with the kingdom of France.20 Hainaut was one of the principal areas – along with the Boulonnais and Picardy – where the impact of any Franco-Burgundian conflict was most likely to be felt. In all three regions, the Duke needed the support of the networks of kinship, lordship and service built up over the long term by the Croys in particular, but also by the Luxembourgs.21 Philip the Good had every reason to pull those networks as closely to him as he could in the months concerned. Thereafter, for all of 1459, the Duke and his court were based in the relative fastness of Brussels. It is possible to situate with some precision almost all the named and identifiable individuals who are attributed with one or more stories in the collection around the Duke during this time. These months witnessed a lengthy period of service for Philippe Pot, the ducal chamberlain (cham­ bellan) who recounted the largest number of tales in the collection, and who was present with the court both in Hainaut in December 1458, and again in the spring and summer of 1459 in Brussels.22 Philippe de Loan, the third most prolific contributor after Pot and the Duke himself, was summoned to court on 5 January 1459 from Boulogne, and in early April he was also dispatched from Brussels on a mission to the Earl of Warwick in Calais.23 If, as we argued above in Chapter 4, the next-most prolific conteur ‘Monseigneur de Villiers’ (CNN32, 35, 55-7) should be identified as Jacques de Villiers, lord of L’Isle-Adam, Loan’s immediate superior in the county of Boulogne, then this conteur was also mainly based elsewhere in the months concerned. Like Loan, however, he made occasional visits to court at this particularly sensitive time, when Boulogne was of capital importance to the Duke. It may therefore be no coincidence de Villiers was first appointed a chamberlain by the household ordinance of December 20 Herman Vander Linden, Itinéraires de Philippe le Bon, duc de Bourgogne (1419-67) et de Charles, comte de Charolais (1433-67) (Brussels: Hayes/Palais des académies, 1940), pp. 390-410. 21 Of Croy power in Hainaut, Chastelain observed around this time: ‘ils avoient toutes les places frontières et fortes du pays pour eux et en leur garde, reservé les grandes villes’ (‘they had all the frontier points and strongholds for them and under their guard, saving the big towns’): Oeuvres de Chastellain, IV, 349. See also V. Soens and H. Cools, ‘L’aristocratie transrégionale et les frontières. Les processus d’identification politique dans les maisons de Luxembourg-Saint-Pol et de Croÿ (1470-1530)’, Revue du Nord, 30 (2014), 209-28. 22 De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 90. Additionally, ten service payments for Pot at Brussels between 16 April and 24 August 1459 can now be found in PCB no id. 1484, ‘Personnel’. 23 De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 91, n. 158. There are no surviving payments for service at court recorded for Loan until February 1460 in PCB no id. 2097.

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1458. He received payment for service in March 1459, and was also summoned from Boulogne to Brussels on secret matters in the summer of that year.24 Michel de Chaugy was, alongside ‘Monseigneur de Villiers’, the next most mentioned conteur (CNN28, 40, 64, 79, 80). The nature of his office as one of the Duke’s maîtres d’hôtel (master of the household) demanded regular and prolonged sojourns at court, as we shall see further below, but his service is specifically attested in the first five months of 1459, then again in July and August.25 Poncelet, identified as Jehan du Ponceau de Poncelet, is attributed with the next greatest number of tales (CNN59, 60, 61, 89). He formally entered ducal service as a varlet de chambre and rhetoricien (chamber valet and poet) in September 1458, replacing in those functions the better-known poet Michault le Caron, ‘dit Taillevent’ (who is himself one plausible candidate for identification as the ‘Caron’ who told CNN22).26 Service payments record Poncelet’s attendance at court every month from February to August 1459.27 His entry into service is one of several new appointments or changes of role that occur in these months within the group of identifiable conteurs, alongside that of Jacques de Villiers dis­ cussed above and other servants discussed below. Just as the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles brought opposing factions together in a time of political crisis, the sociability of storytelling could also serve to integrate new appointments within household networks of service: another function of storytelling which can be deduced from the archive that lies within the fiction. Next among the contributors, with three tales each, were the cham­ berlains Jean de Lannoy (CNN6, 82, 97) and Philippe de Croy, lord of Quiévrain. Lannoy was at court in Mons in January 1459, whence he left on a high-level mission to France, returning to Brussels several weeks

24 Die Hofordnungen der Herzöge von Burgund. Band 1. Herzog Philipp der Gute 1407-67, ed. by Holger Kruse and Werner Paravicini, Instrumenta herausgegeben der Deutschen historischen Institut Paris, Band 15 ( Jan Thorbecke: Ostfildern, 2005), p. 375, no. 81. As noted above in Chapter 4, PCB no id. 0449 conflates three people of similar name. See also De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 91, n. 158. 25 PCB no id. 1489, ‘Personnel’; De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 89. As Richard Gameson notes above in Chapter 1, a sixteenth-century hand altered some of the rubrics we can use to identify conteurs. In this case, the rubricator added the erroneous office ‘gentilhomme de la chambre de monseigneur’ to CNN28 and CNN80 (fos 65v, 168r). 26 Taillevent appears on Philip the Good’s household ordinance of 1449, but is noted as having died, and having been replaced on 16 September 1458, by Jean du Ponceau dit Poncelet: see Die Hofordnungen 1, ed. by Kruse and Paravicini, p. 296, no. 418, which corrects J. Watkins, ‘A note on the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, Modern Language Review, 36 (1941), 396-97. Poncelet’s appointment was renewed very soon after, in December 1458, in the new court ordinance promulgated at that time: Kruse and Paravicini, Die Hofordnungen 1, p. 408, no. 532. 27 PCB no id. 2019, ‘Personnel’.

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later.28 Quiévrain, meanwhile, served continuously at court for a period of six months up to 22 November 1458, and was paid again at the end of December for a further period of service. He was also recorded on the household wages at several dates in January, February and June 1459.29 Of the group of Burgundian servants with two tales to their name, Jean d’Enghien (CNN13, 53), another of the Duke’s masters of the household (maîtres d’hôtel) who each served in rotation, was paid for his court service in Brussels in the early months of 1459, and again in June, July and Au­ gust.30 He was also ordinarily resident in the city as amman, the principal legal officer of the duke in his de facto capital city. One of several conteurs to serve as a chamber valet, Philippe Vignier (CNN19, 86) received payment to allow him to return from Brussels to his residence in Burgundy in March 1459.31 Chrestien de Digoine, lord of Thianges (CNN46, 68) had been an esquire of the stables (like Hervé de Meriadec and Philippe de Loan) since January 1452, but became another of the new appointments to the post of chamberlain in December 1458; he received payment for his service in November and December that year.32 If, as we argued above, ‘monseigneur de Beauvoir’ should be identified with Jean de Beauvoir, vicomte of Avallon and lord of Chastellux in the duchy of Burgundy, then he too was newly appointed in December 1458 as a chamberlain, his first allotted period of chamber service occurring in July 1459.33 Other than ‘Alardin’ (CNN77, 88) discussed further below, the last remaining teller of two tales, Waleran de Wavrin (CNN81, 83) is not clearly attested at court in the period that concerns us. However, contact between this longstanding chamberlain and the ducal administration was maintained during these months, and this great adventurer and crusader continued to be in favour with Philip the Good.34

28 De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 89. There is no additional information in PCB no id. 0299 for the period concerned. 29 PCB no id. 1263, ‘Personnel’; De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 93. 30 PCB no id. 1588, ‘Personnel’; De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 85. As Richard Gameson notes above in Chapter 1, a sixteenth-century hand altered some of the rubrics we can use to identify conteurs. In this case, the rubricator added the erroneous office of ‘escuier de monseigneur’ to CNN13 (fol. 27r). 31 De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 94; PCB no id. 2077, ‘Personnel’. As Richard Gameson notes above in Chapter 1, a sixteenth-century hand altered some of the rubrics we can use to identify conteurs. In this case, the rubricator added the erroneous office of escuier de monseigneur (CNN19, fol. 40r) and the less inaccurate escuier de la chambre de Monseigneur (CNN86, fol. 177r). 32 Kruse and Paravicini, Hofordnungen I, p. 290, no. 331; p. 374, no. 59; PCB no id. 1755, ‘Personnel’; De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 90. 33 PCB no id. 1117, ‘Personnel’, 25 July 1459 (Brussels). 34 Waleran de Wavrin’s service as chambellan was frequent from around 1434 to around 1450, then again in the years 1462-4, but he does not appear regularly on the surviving household escroes (daily attendance and payment scrolls) in 1458 or 1459: PCB no id. 0662, ‘Personnel’.

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In sum, then, twelve identifiable conteurs attributed between them with a total of 56 out of one hundred tales are recorded in active service or, in just one case, that of Wavrin, as the recipient of ducal favour, between the autumn of 1458 and the summer of 1459.35 If we add the tales attributed to the Duke himself, the anonymous acteur (CNN51, 91, 92, 98 and 99), the substantial contingent of Luxembourg men and the two secure identifications from the households of the Dauphin and Charolais, the total becomes 82 tales. It might be objected, of course, that these men were all just as likely to have been present in any other period. Clearly that could not be said of the Luxembourg men, however. As we have also seen, the presence of men of Charolais’s household had been a less frequent occurrence at Philip the Good’s court since early 1457.36 Of the Duke’s own servants, several identified conteurs were new or recent appointments to the household offices which brought them into the prince’s presence.37 To control expen­ diture, ducal record-keeping tracked attendance and service as closely as possible. Saving errors or gaps in the documentation, or the possibility that a servant might come into brief but unrecorded contact with the court, the fact that we can find the named storytellers of over four-fifths of the tales at court during the same period is therefore of critical importance in understanding our paratexts as situated uses of language. These empirical findings must be factored into any intepretation of the work and its histori­ cal significance. Moreoever, of the remaining identifiable Burgundian conteurs with just one tale to their name, most can also be shown to have served at court in these months. The chamberlain Jean de Créquy (CNN14) was involved in the organisation of jousts which were held at Valenciennes in December 1458, and he was present at court again in Brussels in February, March,

For payments made to him by the ducal administration in the first half of 1459, see De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 94, n. 171. 35 In order of the number of tales attributed to them: Pot, Loan, Chaugy, Villiers, Poncelet, Lannoy, Quiévrain, Beauvoir, Enghien, Vignier, Wavrin, Digoine. 36 Charolais’s household was itself in the same locations as Philip the Good’s (Mons, Le Quesnoy, Brussels) in early January and late February 1459, when the presence among Burgundian servants of Guillaume de Montbléru, Charolais’s first esquire of the stables, is attested: PCB no id. 0985, ‘Personnel’; Léopold Devillers, ‘Les Séjours des ducs de Bourgogne en Hainaut, 1427-82’, Bulletin de la Commission royale d’histoire, 6 (1879), 323-468 (pp. 355-56). 37 In order of the number of tales attributed to them: Villiers, Poncelet, Beauvoir, Digoine; possibly also ‘Alardin’, if the tentative identification of Alardin which is discussed below in Chapter 10 is accepted. In total, these recent appointments are attributed with thirteen tales between them (or fifteen, including Alardin). A further new appointment, Rudolf IV of Baden-Hachberg, is discussed below, bringing the total to fourteen tales (potentially rising to sixteen) told by newly integrated men of the chamber.

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July and August 1459.38 Hervé de Meriadec, first squire of the stables, was so present at court during this period that the administration, following an accounting error, drew up a schedule of the times when he was not on the household daily list of payments.39 Pierre David (CNN49), another of the chamber valet-conteurs, was with the Duke in April 1459, while his colleague as chamber valet, Jean Martin, was in service on various dates in January, February, April and May 1459 at Brussels.40 The ducal quartermaster (fourrier) and chamber valet (valet de chambre) Mahieu d’Anquasnes (CNN54) is attested multiple times in service in January, February, April, May and June 1459, during which period he also received livery and a wedding gift from the Duke.41 A very few of the identifiable single-tale conteurs are harder to place in the rich record evidence of the court in the period concerned, but in almost all cases their links to the court are attested in some significant way. Although we do not find payment of his service in the surviving records for the period, Rudolf IV of Baden-Hachberg, Margrave of Rötteln (CNN84), was yet another new appointment to the office of chamberlain in the household ordinance of December 1458.42 The ‘monseigneur de Beaumont’ (CNN90) whose identity Champion was unable to resolve may have been another chamberlain, Guillebert II de Lannoy, who inher­ ited the lordship of Beaumont from his heirless older brother Hue in 1456, and who was listed in the household ordinances for 1449 and 1458.43 Other than his reappointment as a chamberlain, no record of Guillebert

38 PCB no id. 0392, ‘Personnel’; De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 89-90. As Richard Gameson notes above in Chapter 1, a sixteenth-century hand altered some of the rubrics we can use to identify conteurs. In this case, the rubricator added the correct detail that Créquy was a knight of the Golden Fleece (fol. 27r). 39 PCB no id. 0739; De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 89, n. 148. This document reinforces the point made above about the precision and accuracy of the evidence at our disposal to identify a period when any storytelling could have occurred. 40 For Pierre David, see PCB no id. 0409, ‘Personnel’ (16 April). For Jean Martin, see De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 88; Kruse and Paravicini, Hofordnungen I, p. 296, no. 419; PCB no id. 1510, ‘Personnel’. 41 PCB no id. 1374, ‘Personnel’; ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 88, n. 146. 42 Petra Ehm, Burgund und das Reich. Spätmittelalterliche Auβenpolitik am Beispiel der Regierung Karls des Kühnen (1465-77), Pariser historische Studien, Band 61 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2002), p. 222. 43 De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 236, n. 182. As Richard Gameson notes above in Chapter 1, a sixteenth-century hand altered some of the rubrics we can use to identify conteurs. In this case, the rubricator added Beaumont’s name (fol. 184r), and the tale is anonymous in Vérard’s edition. The identification of Beaumont is therefore especially problematic. Despite the fact the name was probably quite widespread, the only other men named Beaumont in the household ordinances and daily lists of court service are archers of Philip the Good: men who would not be addressed as Monseigneur (PCB no id. 1227, Antonin de Beaumont; PCB no id. 2151, Ernoulet de Mirecamp, dit de Beaumont). For Guillebert de Lannoy’s household appointments as chamberlain, see Kruse and Paravicini,

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II de Lannoy’s service has been found in the surviving documentation for this period either (although given that he was, by this point in his life, in his early seventies, this is not especially surprising).44 Jacques de Fouquesolles (CNN26) is also named in Burgundian records as a ducal chamberlain; although he does not appear to have served in that capacity during the months concerned, he did continue to receive payments from the administration.45 All three of these men were of sufficient standing and importance in the period concerned to have come into brief and unrecorded contact with the networks of service and sociability that can be identified in the paratext and text of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. The two most difficult exceptions to the patterns identified here, at first glance at any rate, are the men who held no office at court at all. As provost of Le Quesnoy, Philippe de Saint-Yon (CNN35) was an important ducal agent in a strategically significant town, and his daily activities supplied the subject matter of his tale. He was, nevertheless, a subordinate officer in the provincial administration, rather than a court servant.46 As provost of the church of Watten, Michel Baers was entrusted with a dynastically prestigious church near Saint-Omer.47 Again, however, he had no office at court, unlike almost all the identifiable conteurs on the Duke’s side.

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47

Hofordnungen I, p. 269, no. 73; p. 376, no. 112; see also PCB no id. 0318. Champion simply suggested ‘Beaumont’ might be a member of the Croy clan, but without any evidence. Jacques Paviot, ‘Ghillebert de Lannoy, seigneur de Santes, Willerval, Tronchiennes, Beaumont et Wahégnies’, in Les Chevaliers de l’Ordre de la Toison d’Or au XVe siècle. Notices bio-bibliographiques, ed. by Raphaël De Smedt (Frankfurt-am-Main: Lang, 1994), pp. 42-45. De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 48, n. 9; 90. There is no mention of Fouquesolles in Kruse and Paravicini, Hofordnungen I, or in the PCB. As Richard Gameson notes above in Chapter 1, a sixteenth-century hand altered some of the rubrics we can use to identify conteurs. In this case, the rubricator added the erroneous office ‘escuier de la chambre de monseigneur’: Fouquesolles was a knight (fol. 54v). Saint-Yon nevertheless appears to have come from a well-connected family with literary credentials. It is ‘more than likely’ he should be identified as the son of an écuyer échanson of Philip the Good, Garnot de Saint-Yon, who had once also served at the royal court, played a part in the Cabochien revolt, and then formed part of the Anglo-Burgundian regime in Paris, during which time he served Charles VI as his librarian: Ludovic Nys, ‘Tribulations hennuyères d’un manuscrit du Miroir historial. À propos de trois bifeullets conservés aux Archives départementales d’Indre-et-Loire’, Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes, 27 (2014), 235-55 (p. 249). In that case Philippe de Saint-Yon was, like several conteurs discussed above in Chapter 4, an example of the Franco-Burgundian milieu around Philip the Good which generated the text, but which was less in favour under Charles the Bold. The provost’s church housed the tomb of Philip the Good’s distant but illustrious ancestor Thierry of Alsace, Count of Flanders (d. 1168). Count Thierry had taken holy orders at Watten in the last years of his life and was traditionally seen as the prince who had brought the relic of the Holy Blood to Bruges, an event commemorated annually in one of the largest civic processions in northern Europe. See M. Courtois, ‘Annales et privilèges de l’église de Watten’, Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de la Morinie, 1 (1852-56), 17-27 (p. 20); N. Huyghebaert, ‘Iperius et la translation de la relique du Saint Sang à Bruges’, Annales de la Société d’émulation de Bruges, 100 (1963), 110-87 (p. 115).

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In reality, however, the presence of both of these men tends to strengthen the case made here for the timing of the period most likely identified by the paratextual and textual references to conteurs. The ducal household itself came to Le Quesnoy for a rare ten-day visit during its tour of the frontier regions of Hainaut in late September 1458, allowing at least one lengthy occasion when the provost could participate in the court’s sociability.48 Saint-Yon’s personal network of service also extended into the conteur group. His immediate superior in Le Quesnoy was the governor Jean de Haubourdin, bastard of Saint-Pol, a ducal chamberlain himself, and a kinsman of the conteur Louis de Luxembourg as we shall see further below.49 The provost of Watten, meanwhile, rendered a different kind of service to Philip the Good and his court, as we saw above in Chapter 4. His reputation as a ‘great savant and expert in the science [of astrology]’ was frequently tested in these troubled times, as the Duke, Dauphin and others sought to make an uncertain future seem less inscrutable through Baers’ prognostications. Philip the Good sent a messenger to Baers from Valenciennes late in 1458 bearing sealed letters on a secret matter; the provost’s response, for which the messenger was instructed to wait, was received at Mons on 26 December, where Saint-Pol and the Duke were then burying the hatchet, and where, days later, the promulgation of a new household ordinance would bring several other named conteurs into their positions at court.50

A Decameronian moment Writing of the ‘effet du réel’ (‘realistic effect’) created by ‘seemingly authen­ tic historical details’ (or, to put it even more strongly, ‘historical referents’) which often frame examples of the novella tradition of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and of which the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles is a particu­ larly formative example, Kathleen Loysen urges modern audiences not to be ‘deceived by the literary artifices employed by the authors of these texts, to attempt to verify the apparently factual references they include’.51 We may agree that to disappear entirely down the rabbithole of historical research into our conteurs is, potentially, to risk ‘[losing] the point of the literary game … which is to focus our attention on the artifice itself, the 48 Vander Linden, Itinéraires de Philippe le Bon, pp. 390-91. 49 Jean de Haubourdin’s presence at court is attested in January, March and April 1459: PCB no id. 0391, ‘Personnel’. 50 De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 90-91; Kruse and Paravicini, Hofordnungen I, p. 368. 51 Kathleen Loysen, Conversation and Storytelling in Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century French ‘Nouvelles’, Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures, 129 (New York/ Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004), p. 11.

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process of literature, and the contextualisation of the speaking voices’. In this case, however, to fail to probe the frame of the novellas in sufficient depth is not only to miss the historical significance and purpose of the tale-telling we are invited to contemplate, which an historian might con­ sider important after all; it would also be to fail to understand how the paratexual frame very clearly locates the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles within a specific literary tradition, that of the Decameron itself. At no point, in fact, do the surviving paratexts of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles adopt the Decameronian rationale for storytelling, namely as the pastime of an elite during a period of existential threat and unavoid­ able isolation. Laurent de Premierfait had, admittedly, diluted Boccaccio’s intense emphasis on plague and the need to self-isolate in his long intro­ duction to his own French translation of 1414, but the sense of drawing together during a time of crisis to participate in the distractions and rewards of literary debate at least remained present in his rendering of the Italian source. The trope was also mirrored in other creative ventures of the time which were known to some of our storytellers. In the Livre des Cent ballades (c. 1389-96), of which Philip the Good owned at least one manuscript, literary composition is presented as the pastime of Marshal Boucicaut and his knightly companions during their return journey from perilous adventures in the near East.52 On their return to France, the original participants are joined in their initiative by a small number of named noble collaborators to complete the literary venture, including John Duke of Berry, Philip the Good’s great-uncle. In his youth, Guillebert II de Lannoy (if he was indeed, as suggested above, one of our conteurs) had been a member of the Cour amoureuse, that literary society established at the court of Charles VI in 1401 to ‘while away some of the time more graciously’ during an outbreak of plague.53 The Cour amoureuse had gradually become a Burgundian network of sociability over the first two or three decades of the fifteenth century, and had included among its membership Jacques de Villiers, mentioned above, as well as the fathers of conteurs Philippe Pot and Philippe de Croy.54 Locating any original storytelling event in the period from the autumn of 1458 to the summer of 1459 reveals that the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles did more than simply echo the title of the French translation of Boccaccio’s 52 Les Cent ballades, poème du XIVe siècle composé par Jean le Seneschal, avec la collaboration de Philippe d’Artois, comte d’Eu, de Boucicaut le jeune et de Jean de Crésecque, ed. by Gaston Raynaud, Société des anciens textes français (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1905), pp. xlvi-lxx. 53 Carla Bozzolo and Hélène Loyau, La Cour amoureuse dite de Charles VI, 4 vols (Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1982-2018), II, p. 55, no. 399. 54 Bozzolo and Loyau, La Cour amoureuse, II, p. 15, no. 306 (Villiers); II, p. 55, no. 398 (Antoine de Croy); II, p. 43, no. 367 (Renier Pot). Bozzolo and Loyau corrected their erroneous claim that Antoine de La Sale was a member too; the man of that name was in fact a homonym: Lefèvre, Antoine de La Sale, pp. 34-36.

loCaTinG sToryTellinG in Time and spaCe

Decameron, or adopt the device of telling one hundred stories. The par­ ticular composition of the conteur group presented in the paratext and text reveals that for anyone who had served at the court of Philip the Good in the later 1450s, the impetus for this literary venture was also, unmistakably, an historically significant crisis: not plague, as was the case in the Decameron or the foundation of the Cour amoureuse, but the first serious threat of widespread, kingdom- and region-engulfing warfare since the momentous events of 1453, and indeed the most substantial external military threat to Burgundian rule in the Low Countries since Valois power had been established there three generations earlier. After all, the achievements of Charles VII’s standing army were still fresh in the memory. The end of over thirty years of English rule in Normandy, and of hundreds of years of English possession of Guyenne, were epoch-defining moments in their day. As Charles ‘the most victo­ rious’, spurred on by the desire to correct a recalcitrant Dauphin, set about uprooting ‘the massive tree’ that was Burgundy (to borrow Basin’s metaphor), and as the renewal of civil war in England threatened un­ predictable outcomes for regions neighbouring the kingdom and Calais, the Duke of Burgundy and his court prepared by resolving internal con­ flicts, strengthening frontier regions and, as the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles reminded those who could understand the composition of the conteur group presented in the work’s paratext, by telling stories – the established, gracious pastime of an elite that awaited the outcome of menacing events over which it had only a measure of control.55 That at least was the pre­ cise historical context evoked by what might seem an otherwise random assembly of ludic courtiers, as it is revealed by the work’s paratext – our archive in the fiction. In the words of the official ducal chronicler who lived through this period and wrote about it in great detail, ‘threats of war and tribulation emerged on all sides, and it was feared that they would soon come to pass’.56 But time may also have dragged during these months because the destabilising prospect of dynastic change further darkened the atmos­ phere. Philip the Good, a prince then in his early sixties, but who had generally ‘kept out of the clutches of his doctors’ throughout his long

55 Thomas Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, ed. by Charles Samaran, 2 vols, Classiques de l’histoire de France au Moyen Âge (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1933-44), II, 246. The conflict of Lancaster and York had further potential to split the Luxembourg-Ligny faction (related by marriage to the Woodvilles) and the Croy faction at Philip the Good’s court: Céline Berry, ‘Les Luxembourgs-Ligny: un grand lignage noble de la fin du moyen âge’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Paris-Est Créteil, 2011), 3 vols (continuous pagination), pp. 70, 363, 417. 56 Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, III, 441.

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reign, was beginning to show signs of serious physical frailty.57 A first bout of illness in June 1458 caused consternation at court, and brought the Duchess out of the seclusion she had imposed upon herself after Philip had exploded in rage at their son and heir the year before. A further debilitating fever in November left the Duke vomiting blood, ‘which was a terrifying thing to see’.58 The frequency with which a tale’s humour turns around the role of doctors, ailments and cures is remarkable (CNN 2, 3, 20, 21, 24, 34, 38, 51, 55, 77, 79, 87, 90, 95). In the new context identified here, the storytelling acquires further layers of meaning: sociability that may have been intended to be restorative for the Duke, but which also had the capacity to reassure the networks of service and sociability that gravitated in his personal orbit, and which would surely be disrupted, and probably disbanded, on his demise.

Conclusions Through the Decameron (or its translation by Laurent de Premierfait), but also in other works that were read at the ducal court, literature taught that in moments of isolation and existential threat, telling stories was an appropriate pastime. For the intended audience of the Cent Nouvelles nou­ velles, namely the court of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, the paratext identified the work as a lesson from literature that could be applied to real life. Not, of course, that we can simply affirm this was the most important reality that lay ‘beneath’ the work, even if some version of it may indeed have been in play: the next chapter deals with further significant contextual elements. Here, however, we have shown that the realities evoked by the previously obscure paratext clearly located the work, for the Duke and his entourage at least, in a Decameronian tradition of storytelling during a time of multiple crises. This use of language was unmistakeably ‘situated’ and had particular resonance ‘within a highly particularized and local social environment’, namely the court of Duke Philip the Good, who commissioned the manuscript in the first place.59

57 For this sentence and what follows, see Vaughan, Philip the Good, p. 131; De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 233-34. 58 Georges Chastellain, Chronique. Les fragments du Livre IV, ed. Delclos, p. 146. 59 Gabrielle Spiegel, ‘History, Historicism and the Social Logic of the Text’, Speculum, 65 (1990), 59-86 (p. 78).

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Chapter 10. Tales from the chamber The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles between Burgundy and Luxembourg

Finding so many of the conteurs in identifiable places and one period of time, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, is important in defining the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles as a situated use of language. But further work can be done to understand the networks of service and sociability which are presented to the audience in the work’s paratexts. On the face of it, the conteur group was utterly disparate in terms of social standing and rank at court.1 As Peter Davies suggests above, even the language use in individual tales may reflect generational differences among the storytellers.2 Closer examination reveals, nevertheless, that the conteurs constituted for the most part a tightly assembled network at the inner core of court life. For reasons arising from the political context we have identified in Chapter 9, that core remained necessarily open to certain other groups during the period in question, both within the ducal court, and in respect to the households of Charolais, the Dauphin and the Count of Saint-Pol. Build­ ing on the insight that the paratext evokes a Decameronian moment of crisis in which storytelling was both displacement and a unifying process, we now argue that those processes must be located in cultural milieux that are both far narrower and far wider than simply ‘the Burgundian court’ where Champion placed them: narrower, in that they can be located specifically within the ducal chamber; broader, in that they must be under­

1 Edgar de Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Text and Context: Literature and History at the Court of Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 2004), p. 184. For aspects of the ‘common ground’ between conteurs named in the paratext, distinct from the common ground identified in the present chapter, see pp. 213-319. 2 See above, Chapter 8. Graeme Small • Durham University The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - c. 1550), ed. by Graeme Small, Texte, Codex & Contexte, 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 267–290 10.1484/M.TCC-EB.5.132240

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stood in a long-term context of castral life in northern French aristocratic households, whence so much medieval vernacular literary production emerged.

Locating the conteurs within the wider household It is highly instructive to compare the composition of the conteur group with the description of the Burgundian household by the maître d’hôtel Olivier de La Marche. Although written more than a decade after the specific period evoked in the paratext of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, La Marche’s account reflects his long experience at court, and he is a privileged witness.3 The household La Marche describes was a large establishment inte­ grating scores of servants at any given time, and one which could be expanded to include many more on occasion, all of them serving across largely distinct, if related, networks of service. The offices of the chapel are described first, followed by the council and audience. Next came the great pensionaries, usually blood relatives of the prince or other men of very high status who attended court, and who held a pension from the duke. Thereafter, La Marche lists the offices which are held for fixed periods in the year (par terme), beginning with the chamber personnel who served the duke’s person on a day-to-day basis. But the bulk of noble servants in court service occupied the offices relating to the four services associated with food, drink and the management of the stables. In the order La Marche presents them, these officers were the écuyers panetiers (pantlers), the écuyers trenchants (carvers), the écuyers échansons (cupbearers) and the écuyers de l’écurie (squires of the stables). Below these noble servants came the many offices of the kitchens, the hunt and the guard. The most striking point we notice is the dense concentration of conteurs named in the paratexts of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles among the offices of the chamber, as distinct from any other single division of the ducal maison which La Marche describes in such detail. Of the one hundred tales, thirty were told by men whom we can identify as ducal chamberlains, a total that rises to thirty-eight if the new identifications of the lords of Beauvoir, Villiers and Beaumont proposed above in Chapters

3 Olivier de La Marche, ‘L’Estat de la maison du duc Charles de Bourgoingne dit le Hardy’, in Mémoires, 4 vols, ed. by Henri Beaune and Jules d’Arbaumont, Société de l’Histoire de France (Paris: Renouard, 1883-88), IV, 1-94. Here and at other points I will refer to the rich data of the Prosopographia curiae burgundicae (hereinafter, PCB): see http:// www.prosopographia-burgundica.org/. On La Marche, see PCB no id. 1146, and also Werner Paravicini, ‘La Cour de Bourgogne selon Olivier de La Marche’, Publications du Centre européen d’études bourguignonnes, 43 (2003), 89-124.

Tales from The Chamber

4 and 9 are taken into account.4 Of the remaining tales, a further nine can be attributed to lesser officers of the chamber, rising to ten if the conteur known as ‘Caron’ is identified as a valet de chambre of that name (see below).5 Even if none of the new identifications suggested here is accepted, the total number of tales attributable to chamber staff and their Duke amounts, on Champion’s consensus, to fifty-three, a figure that rises to sixty-two if the identifications of Beauvoir, Villiers, Beaumont and Caron are revised. As we shall see below, a further nineteen tales in the collection are attributed to a small group of men who certainly had ex officio access to the chamber, to which group we might add the anonymous acteur who took his instructions from Philip the Good. A total of between seventy-seven and eighty-six tales are therefore attributable to networks of service and sociability in that specific area of household service. We may conclude that the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles were, for the greater part, tales from the chamber, not the court in general. This new finding, which will be refined in what follows, is entirely in keeping with Olivier de La Marche’s description of the household, and of the place of chamber personnel in that context. Of all the duke’s servants, according to La Marche, a chamberlain was ‘une personne fort privée et secrete du prince’ (‘a person most privy and most in the prince’s confi­ dence’). ‘Gens de grant maison’ (‘men of the great families’), chamberlains were expected to sleep near the duke when serving at court to see to his security, comfort and daily needs, for ‘le plus grant honneur si est de servir le prince ès choses plus secretes’ (‘the greatest honour lies in serving the prince in the most intimate things’).6 La Marche’s famous account in the same text of the recreational practices of the chamber during evening gatherings around the duke was doubtless highly idealised, but it is also difficult to reject entirely given his position and experience. He clearly

4 Pot (15), Lannoy (3), Quiévrain (3), Wavrin (2), Digoine (2), Fiennes (2), Créquy (1), Fouquessoles (1), Rötteln (1). 5 Poncelet (4), Philippe Vignier (2), Pierre David (1), d’Anquasnes (1), Jean Martin (1). (As noted above in Chapter 4, it is possible that the otherwise unidentified Timoléon Vignier, conteur of CNN93, is also a misreading of Philippe Vignier, which would add one more tale to our total.) Given these men are all valets de chambre, it is possible that the unidentified conteur Alardin (CNN77, 88) is one of the very small number of their colleagues in that office, Alardin le Fèvre, who was in fact appointed as a valet at the same time as Poncelet (Sept. 1458), and who was present at court in office in the months May-August 1459: Die Hofordnungen der Herzöge von Burgund. Band 1. Herzog Philipp der Gute 1407-67, ed. by Holger Kruse and Werner Paravicini, Instrumenta herausgegeben der Deutschen historischen Institut Paris, Band 15 ( Jan Thorbecke: Ostfildern, 2005), p. 295, no. 411; p. 408, no. 528; PCB no id. 2042, ‘Personnel’. But even if our emphasis here on chamber personnel constitutes a new reason in favour of this identification, other candidates exist and it is impossible in the current state of knowledge to distinguish between them. Other candidates are discussed in De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 287-88. 6 La Marche, ‘L’Estat de la maison du duc Charles’, pp. 16, 40, 42-43.

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presents the chamber, and the practices of sociability associated with it, as one of ‘the places and the modes for apprenticeship in or exercise of the art of narration in Renaissance society’:7 ‘Les ungs chantent, les autres lisent romans et nouvelletez, les autres se devisent d’amour et d’armes, et font le prince passer le temps en gratieuses nouvelles’ (‘some sing, others read romances and fashionable works, others compose on themes of love or arms, and have the prince pass his time in gracious tales’).8 The expectation that literary entertainments performed or composed in the chamber should be nouvelle is particularly striking in this passage, given that the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles are themselves predominantly attributable to chamber staff. Something of the intimacy, confidence and wit that characterized so­ ciability between the Duke and his chamber servants emerges further in an episode around this time involving the two most prolific conteurs of the collection of tales, the Duke and his chamberlain Philippe Pot.9 The sixtyyear-old Duke had just returned from a solitary, night-time, mid-winter escapade on horseback in the forest between Brussels and Halle, brought on by his explosive row with his son and heir over the appointment of Philippe de Croy to Charolais’s household, mentioned above in Chapter 9. It fell to Pot to defuse the Duke’s rage, which Chastelain describes him as doing with a characteristic bon mot: Or vint le mercredy matin, et messire Philippe Pot vint hurter à Geneppes à la chambre du duc qui jà estoit levé du lit, et lui raddouboit-on une jambe que la nuyt devant avoit blessée en chéant son cheval sur luy. Sy entra dedens le chevalier, et lui dist: ‘Bon jour, monseigneur, bon jour, qu’est cecy? Faites-vous du roy Artus maintenant ou de messire Lancelot? Que veut dire cecy? Cuidiez-vous qu’il n’y ait nuls messires Tristans qui voisent par chemin et qui vous valent bien? Toutevoies, à ce que je voy, ce n’est pas sans avoir trouvé aventure, car vous y avez esté, ce samble.10 And so came the Wednesday morning, and my Lord Philippe Pot went to knock on the door of the Duke’s chamber at Genappe, where they were tending to his knee, which he had injured the night before when his horse fell upon him. And he said: ‘Good day, 7 R. Chartier, ‘Review: Fiction in the Archives: Pardon tales and their Tellers in SixteenthCentury France, by Natalie Zemon Davies’, Journal of Modern History, 62 (1990), 381-84 (p. 383). 8 La Marche, ‘L’Estat de la maison du duc Charles’, p. 16. 9 For further discussion of chamber knights as men of wit and fine words with ‘obligations of status to fulfil their destiny as a warrior elite’, see Mark Ormrod, ‘Knights of Venus’, Medium Aevum, 73 (2004), 290-305. 10 Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, 8 vols, ed. Joseph Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels: Heusschner, 1863-66), III, 279.

Tales from The Chamber

sire, good day, and what’s all this? Are you doing a King Arthur now, or perchance a Lancelot? What’s going on here? Don’t you think there are enough Tristans out there who can do just as well as you? In any event, I can see you’ve certainly been in the wars. Champion’s hypothesis that Pot was the unnamed acteur behind the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles cannot be proven, but the nature of Pot’s service, and the sociability that contemporaries believed existed between him and the Duke, marked out this smooth talker as a likely leaven in any chamber storytelling events he took part in. Around these activities we can place several other conteurs in their allotted roles in the Duke’s chamber, once again thanks to La Marche’s account of the household. The first butler (premier sommelier) had access to the keys of the chamber, which were normally in the keeping of the first chamberlain; since the first butler could be called on at all hours of the day or night to meet the Duke’s needs, however, access to the keys was a necessity for the sommelier.11 The occupant of this office within our group of valet-conteurs, Jean Martin, was also assistant to the ducal jewel-keeper: ‘fort privé du prince, car il a en ses mains ung million d’or vaillant’ (‘most trusted by the Duke, because he has a million in gold in his hands’). Be­ tween them, Martin and his superior were expected to keep all the Duke’s silver and gold plate, precious stones and other high-value objects in their trusted care, including his books as mentioned above in Chapter 4.12 A further four named conteurs appear in the chamber valet group, each with his personal attributes and role: the venerable Pierre David, first appointed to the chamber in August 1429 and last recorded in service in April 1461; Mahieu d’Anquasnes, appointed valet in February 1450; Philippe Vignier, made usher and valet in place of his father Jean on 30 August 1456; and Jean du Ponceau de Poncelet, the most prolific conteur of the valet-group, but also the most recent appointee in the chamber, having only joined the personnel in September 1458 as valet and rhetorician.13 The number of chamber valets rises to six if ‘Caron’ is identified as Poncelet’s predecessor, Michaut Taillevent, as we shall see below; and to seven, if ‘Alardin’ is indeed Alardin le Fèvre, albeit that this identification is necessarily more tentative as we have seen in the present chapter. Mahieu d’Anquasnes was not simply a valet de chambre: he also served as quartermaster (fourrier) of the chamber. The quartermaster is identified as a key post by Olivier de La Marche. The fourrier and his assistants were sent ahead to prepare the duke’s lodgings when the court was on its travels, 11 La Marche, ‘L’Estat de la maison du duc Charles’, pp. 12-13, 16. 12 La Marche, ‘L’Estat de la maison du duc Charles’, p. 18. 13 Kruse and Paravicini, Die Hofordnungen 1, p. 68, no. 260 (Pierre David); p. 294, no. 390 and p. 405, nos 498 and 499 (b) (d’Anquasnes); p. 296, no. 413 (a) and De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, p. 248 (Philippe Vignier). For Poncelet, see Chapter 9 above.

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and saw to such basic comforts and needs as the making-up of fires, the lighting and furnishings.14 Last thing at night, the quartermaster was ex­ pected to beat the ducal mattress and pillow, to ensure the prince’s comfort and safety. As two of the tales themselves note, the quartermaster’s office was also entrusted with the important and sensitive task of arranging ac­ commodation in the surrounding city for any visitors to the court, whether in hostelries or private households.15 Along with the first butler ( Jean Martin) and usher (Philippe Vignier), Mahieu d’Anquasnes was therefore a key link between the chamber, the wider court, and any prominent visitors from beyond the perimeter of those circles whose standing or role might warrant access to the prince. The quartermaster knew where to find such visitors at a moment’s notice, as it was his responsibility to assign them to lodgings. The butler held the keys to the duke’s chamber, the only person other than the busy, high-status first chamberlain to do so. Last but not least, it was the usher who admitted the guest or guests through the guarded chamber door. For contemporaries familiar with the Burgundian court (which we know the original audience of the work was expected to be), the paratext of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles could be understood as an invitation to come to court from your lodgings, to approach the chamber’s locked or closed door and obtain admittance, and then to listen to stories that were told there, perchance to tell one yourself – thereby entering into a privileged network of service and sociability.

Conteurs with access to the chamber The small minority of identifiable conteurs-servants in the paratextual evidence who were not part of this core chamber group were neverthe­ less high-ranking men, and their presence is entirely in keeping with La Marche’s understanding of their roles at court. These were men who either had ex officio access at all times to the chamber, or else were closely linked to the chamber during the period when, as we saw in Chapter 9, the tale-telling was presented by the paratext as having occurred. Two of the conteurs with multiple tales to their names, Michault de Chaugy and Jean d’Enghien, were masters of the household. This was a post of such seniority within the prince’s establishment (according to La Marche, who held it himself) that its holders had access to almost every other area of service, including the chamber, council and war council.16 The masters of the household stood on a par with the first chamberlain

14 La Marche, ‘L’Estat de la maison du duc Charles’, pp. 18-19; 77-79. 15 Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Sweetser, pp. 431 (CNN71), 502 (CNN87). 16 La Marche, ‘L’Estat de la maison du duc Charles’, pp. 4, 6, 8, 80. For the next sentence, see pp. 13-14.

Tales from The Chamber

in terms of rank, so to find them as prominent actors in the sociability of the chamber, as it is captured in the paratextual presentation of the conteur group of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, is entirely logical. By contrast, two or three of the other conteurs were squires of the stable. La Marche tells us that these servants were normally furthest removed from the chamber, the lowest of the four household services of the ducal body and mouth (that is to say, the pantlers, carvers, cupbearers and squires of the stables). Once again, however, his account affords a clear understanding of why these men in particular – Hervé Meriadec, chief squire of the stables, Philippe de Loan, the third most prolific storyteller and Chrestien de Digoine, a teller of two tales and a squire of the stables until his promotion to chambellan in December 1458 – should appear in the conteur group at this particular time. During periods of conflict, the squires of the stable moved from being the furthest of the four services from the prince to the closest, the chief squire of the stables then occupy­ ing the chamber next to the Duke’s.17 The most strenuous of the household services, these men were expected to set an example to all others, ‘pour donner à chascun couraige de valloir et honte de faire le contraire’ (‘of courage to show one’s worth, and shame to do the contrary’).18 In times of war, the chief squire of the stables rose to the standing of first butler of the chamber. It was Meriadec’s duty and honour to carry the prince’s ceremo­ nial sword, and in war all the household services in military matters were expected to rally to his banner if the duke’s were not in sight. Meriadec also had safekeeping of the duke’s standard and heraldic emblems. In a time of crisis and impending conflict, the presence of the chief squire of the stables and one or possibly two of his subordinates is therefore readily explained by the roles allotted to them within Burgundian networks of service.19 If the households of the Dauphin and the Count of Charolais followed similar protocol – as there is every reason to believe, since the Burgundian ducal household tended to follow French royal precedent, which was then mirrored in its own lesser satellites, as Aliénor de Poitiers, herself a veteran of court practices in the 1450s, makes plain – then it is highly significant that each of these other households was also represented in our group of conteurs by a prominent squire of the stable.20 La Barde, ‘the most

17 For this and the following sentences, see La Marche, ‘L’Estat de la maison du duc Charles’, pp. 58-63. 18 La Marche, ‘L’Estat de la maison du duc Charles’, pp. 59-60. 19 For Meriadec’s military career, see Werner Paravicini, ‘Un Tombeau en Flandre: Hervé de Meriadec’, Francia, 34 (2007), 85-146. 20 Evidence of Burgundian household practices being based on French royal precedent is amply demonstrated in the memoirs of Aliénor de Poitiers, lady-in-waiting at the Burgundian court in the 1450s: Jacques Paviot, ‘Aliénore de Poitiers, “Les États de France” (“Les Honneurs de la cour”). Nouvelle édition’, Annuaire-bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France (1996), 75-118.

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valiant and audacious lance of the kingdom in his day’ was squire of the Dauphin’s stables, as we saw in Chapter 4 above; Montbléru for his part was first squire of the stables to the Count of Charolais. The Count of Saint-Pol was not represented by squires of his stable so far as we know, but he too had similar men around him who might advise in matters of war and honour: Antoine de La Sale, author of well-known treatises on such matters, and Ferry de Mailly, a veteran captain of many Luxembourg campaigns. Men of action and men of words combined in the conteur group, further strengthening the case made above in Chapter 9, namely that the paratext unmistakably evoked a time when the four storytelling households found themselves on a war footing.

The chapel and clerics The predominance of chamber personnel among the conteurs, and of key men with ex officio access to the chamber, makes the few other storytellers who come from different parts of household service seem like outliers. Although the chapel was listed first among the household services in La Marche’s account, Champion detected just one connection to that service within the conteur group. Jean [le] Caron, identified by Pierre Champion as the ‘Caron’ who recounted CNN22, was a priest and steward of the chapel, a composer in his own right and an acquaintance of the official chronicler George Chastelain.21 More recently, David Fiala has gone further, suggesting that as many as three tales might be attributed to chaplain staff: one to Caron (following Champion); a second to Robert de la Magdaleine, aka Robert Pele, a ducal chaplain; and a third, CNN98, to ‘le Breton, probablement le chapelain Simon le Breton’.22 None of these attributions is secure, however, and two are certainly unsustainable. The identification of Caron as the chapel steward of that surname is less certain than Champion, and others in his wake, have imagined. Jean [le] Caron in fact had several prominent homonyms in court service or within the wider ducal administration.23 One of these men was Jean Caron, the Count of Charolais’s chief messenger, whose attendance at court is attested in the records throughout the storytelling period evoked

21 Pierre Champion, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, Documents artistiques du XVe siècle, 5 (Paris: Champion, 1928), p. xxxiv; Jeanne Marix, Histoire de la musique et des musiciens à la cour de Bourgogne sous le règne de Philippe le Bon (1420-67) (Paris: Heitz, 1939), p. 193. 22 David Fiala, ‘La Cour de Bourgogne et l’histoire de la musique’, in La Cour de Bourgogne et l’Europe. Le rayonnement et les limites d’un modèle, ed. by Werner Paravicini, Beihefte der Francia, 73 (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2013), pp. 377-402 (p. 393, n. 43). 23 De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 533-34.

Tales from The Chamber

by the paratext, as we saw in Chapter 9.24 Given Charolais’s only occasional residency at court at this stage, not to mention the difficult political situation and Philip the Good’s recurrently poor health, it is plausible the Count’s chief messenger (in addition to his first squire of the stables) should have been an occasional presence at his father’s court. Another homonym was Michel le Caron ‘dit Taillevent’, a valet de chambre and joueur de farces who died some time before, possibly even in, September 1458, and who was replaced at that point in those offices by the conteur Jean du Ponceau du Poncelet.25 Taillevent’s literary credentials dating back nearly three decades, and the fact he was, like so many other conteurs, a member of the chamber personnel, mark him out as a far more likely con­ tributor than either the Duke’s chapel servant or his son’s messenger. The attribution to the chapel steward Caron is, at any rate, more problematic than most. There is some evidence that the office of provost of the church of Watten had institutional links to the ducal chapel. It was, after all, a coveted post, given the prestigious links it had to the ruling dynasty, as we saw above in Chapter 9. After the death of Michel Baers in October 1462, the next two appointments which were made to that benefice, at the duke’s re­ quest, were both former members of the ducal chapel: the chaplain Robert de la Magdaleine (aka Pele, 1462-78) and the chanter Claude de Messey (1478-1512).26 However, David Fiala’s unexplained attribution of CNN65 to Robert de La Magdaleine, rather than to his immediate predecessor Michel Baers, is flawed on two counts. By October 1462, when the one replaced the other in the prestigious post at Watten, a number of key events had already occurred within the conteur group which would make de La Magdaleine’s participation entirely out of keeping with the other evidence discussed in Chapters 4 and 9 above. The lord of La Barde and several key Burgundian conteurs had left the court the previous year to take up service under a new king. Pierre David’s decades-long career in the chamber had come to an end, and the death of Roland Pippe by suicide had left the court reeling. Antoine de La Sale – the most famous writer evoked in the paratext – had already died, and ‘le sire de Beaumont’ (if that was indeed the famous crusader Guillebert II de Lannoy, as we propose)

24 Kruse and Paravicini, Hofordnungen 1, pp. 199, 232, 348; Holger Kruse, Hof, Amt und Gagen. Die täglichen Gagenlisten des burgundischen Hofes (1430-67) und der erste Hofstaat Karls des Kühnen (1456), Pariser historische Studien, 44 (Bonn: Bouvier, 1996), pp. 199, 232, 252, 264. 25 See above, Chapter 9; and on his life and work, Robert Deschaux, Michault Taillevent: un poète bourguignon du XVe siècle. Édition et étude (Geneva: Droz, 1975). 26 Aimé Leroy, ‘Catalogues des prévots de l’église conventualle de Notre-Dame de Watène, èsconfins de Flandres occidentalle, sus la rivière d’Ath, diocese de Saint-Aumer et chastellenie de Casel, 1072-1577’, Archives historiques et littéraires du nord de la France et du midi de la Belgique, 16 (1849), 263-300 (pp. 280-91); PCB no id. 3054 (de la Magdaleine).

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had followed him to the grave. Whereas Baers was a highly prominent figure in court life, due to his astrological skills and the very great favour he enjoyed from the Duke, the Dauphin and the Croy faction, his successor did not leave any such impression on the wider record. There is no reason on the basis of what we know to identify the Provost of Watten as anyone other than Michel Baers. The third proposed link to the chapel, in the form of Simon le Breton, is the most obviously unsustainable. CNN98 is attributed in the manu­ script, not to ‘le Breton’, but to the anonymous acteur. No conteur is named ‘le Breton’ or is even identified as a Breton in the text, even though the first squire of the stables, Hervé de Meriadec (CNN42), was originally from the duchy of Brittany.27 The likelihood that chapel staff had nothing to do with the tales at all, rather than simply little to do with them as Pierre Champion suggested, does not mean that Baers was necessarily the only cleric involved in the enterprise. If ‘Monseigneur de Fiennes’ is to be identified as Thibaud, rather than his son Jacques, then he was on the brink of taking up holy orders at the time he told his two stories.28 As we have seen, Thibaut had become a Cistercian monk and abbot in commendam by some unknown point in 1460. Later, he would be made bishop of Le Mans and a papal legate.29 Thibaud may even be the unnamed high-status widower and recent entrant to holy orders who received stylised and probably quite public letters from two of our other conteurs, Antoine de La Sale and Philippe Pot, on the subject of his spiritual journey away from the world and towards his monastic vocation.30 Fascinating though this prospect may be, it is unfortunately impossi­ ble to prove that Thibaud was the single intended recipient of the two letters discussed by Sylvie Lefèvre. These documents remain an important glimpse of the possibility that there was once an epistolary epitext to the networks of service and sociability which produced the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: a dimension for which the record evidence, like that for the debates the stories were intended to elicit, is sadly elusive.

27 The conteur ‘Monseigneur de Villiers’ was identified as the Breton Alain Goyon by Champion, but as we have seen, this identification contains a number of significant flaws and a far more plausible candidate, Jacques de Villiers, lord of l’Isle-Adam, exists (see above, Chapter 4). 28 See above, Chapter 4; and Céline Berry, ‘Les Luxembourgs-Ligny: un grand lignage noble de la fin du moyen âge’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Paris-Est Créteil, 2011), 3 vols (continuous pagination), pp. 667-68 (for genealogical tables of the Luxembourg family). 29 Paul Cordonnier, ‘Trois évêques du Mans du nom de Luxembourg (Thibaud, Philippe, François)’, Revue historique et archéologique du Maine, 52 (1972), 27-38. 30 Sylvie Lefèvre, Antoine de La Sale. La fabrique de l’oeuvre et de l’écrivain (Geneva: Droz, 2006), pp. 113-22.

Tales from The Chamber

The household services The difficulty of demonstrating the participation of chapel personnel in the conteur group is ultimately less surprising than the fact that none of our identifiable tale-tellers, other than two or possibly three squires of the stables whose presence is explained above, can be located in the main household services, that is to say: among the very large number of pantlers, carvers and cupbearers appointed by the court ordonnances.31 The numerous household squires were entrusted with a wide range of governmental tasks and had many of the same attributes which one finds among members of the conteur group. Philippe Bouton, for instance, had been a carver since 1456, and had already written poetry addressed to Philip the Good by that time.32 Olivier de La Marche, Bouton’s first cousin, was a carver by the 1450s, and although he is best known for his Mémoires and other later works, he also wrote throughout his life and helped create and stage court performances in that same decade (including the Feast of the Pheasant in 1454).33 The official chronicler George Chastelain was a pantler and ducal counsellor whose career and presence at court reached a highpoint in precisely the period when, as we have argued above, the tales were told.34 Wit was valued beyond the chamber, across the household services in fact. Yet none of these men or others of their station appear by name in the conteur group. It would be wrong to think that pantlers, carvers or cupbearers had no associations whatsoever with the networks of kinship, service and sociabil­ ity which can be traced in our paratexts and texts. The different sectors of court life were never quite so discrete. Chastelain is the best documented case of such connections. Two men who are attributed between them with almost one-fifth of all our tales were very close indeed to the ducal pantler-cum-chronicler, namely Philippe Pot and Philippe de Croy.35 In his chronicle we find Chastelain relaying sensitive information that could only have been given to him personally by some of the other conteurs, notably Jean de Lannoy and Hervé de Meriadec, or praising the achievements

31 The only exception among the identifications and alternatives discussed above is the cupbearer Jean II de Villers, discussed in Chapter 4 above as one possible candidate for identification as ‘Monseigneur de Villiers’. As we also saw, however, the chamberlain Jacques de Villiers, lord of L’Isle-Adam, offers a far stronger match. 32 On Bouton, in addition to the items cited in ARLIMA, see Marie-Thérèse Caron, La Noblesse dans le duché de Bourgogne, 1315-1477 (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses universitaires de Lille, 1987), pp. 143, 281-82, 293-94. 33 La Marche, Mémoires, II, 112-13, 170-78. 34 Graeme Small, George Chastelain and the Shaping of Valois Burgundy. Political and Historical Culture at Court in the Fifteenth Century, Royal Historical Society, Studies in History (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1997), pp. 64-90. 35 Small, George Chastelain, pp. 67, 71 n. 105, 76-78, 82, 89.

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and character of yet more, notably Jean de Créquy, Jean Martin and Jean d’Enghien.36 The exploits of Guillaume de Montbléru during a visit to Paris in the summer of 1459 warranted comment too, and Chastelain considered this conteur (who was also the comic hero of the tale, it will be recalled) to be ‘a most gentle squire’ and the ‘most novel man on earth’.37 Poncelet was even Chastelain’s near neighbour within the precinct of the ducal residence at Valenciennes, the Salle-le-Comte, where they had both been accorded lodgings by their master, and it is important to note that the second of Poncelet’s four contributions to the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles finds a very close parallel (in terms of plot and characters) in an early chapter of Chastelain’s official chronicle.38 The pantler Chastelain therefore knew several chamber servants well; he even knew some of the tales that were presented as having been told in the chamber. Such is the range and depth of these connections, indeed, that one feels it necessary to think of reasons why Chastelain, the greatest historien at court, would not have contributed to the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. It seems highly unlikely that the subject matter and tone of the communal literary enterprise were somehow beneath le grand George, the most celebrated and highly remunerated writer at the ducal court.39 As Jean Devaux has recently pointed out, tales intended to shock or give pause for thought sit alongside more comic or salacious fare in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, and are as much the subject matter of the work of Chastelain or his successor Jean Molinet in their chronicles.40 In addition to the strong cor­ respondence of Poncelet’s second tale to a chronicle chapter, the second story attributed to Jean d’Enghien is also told in a very similar fashion in the chronicle. Knowingly, one feels, Chastelain characterised his version of the story as ‘ung cas de … nouvelle condition’ (‘a novel case’).41 On his appointment in 1455, the Duke had asked Chastelain to write, alongside his historiographical work, ‘choses nouvelles et morales, en quoy il est expert et cognoissant’ (‘new and moral works in which he is expert and 36 Small, George Chastelain, pp. 78 (Lannoy), 79 (Meriadec); Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, III, 19, 148 (Créquy); IV, 351-52; V, 231 (Martin); IV, 140, 424 (d’Enghien). 37 Georges Chastellain, Chronique, ed. Delclos, p. 237. 38 De Blieck, ‘The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’, pp. 305-06, 420-23. 39 Or as Bernard Guenée puts it, the only fifteenth-century writer to have ‘tutoyé la gloire’ (‘been on first name terms with Glory’): Du Guesclin et Froissart. La fabrication de la renommée (Paris: Tallandier, 2008), p. 186. 40 Jean Devaux, ‘“Qui est notable et veritable exemple”: les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles et le didactisme bourguignon’, in Autour des “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”: sources et rayonnements, contextes et interprétations, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 81 (Paris: Champion, 2016), pp. 41-52 (p. 42). A similar overlap is traced between Philippe de Vigneulles’ historical writing and his own Cent Nouvelles: Hisara Kondo, ‘Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles bourguignonnes et Philippe de Vigneulles’, in Autour des “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”, ed. by Devaux and Velissariou, pp. 215-25 (p. 220). 41 Georges Chastellain, Chronique, ed. Delclos, p. 230.

Tales from The Chamber

knowledgeable’) – a remit that echoed the title of Laurent de Premierfait’s translation of the Decameron (Livres des Cent Nouvelles morales et joieuses), and which was surely broad enough to tempt the telling of one or two nouvelles nouvelles by the most high-profile writer at court.42 And yet it is also very hard to imagine why any contribution by Chaste­ lain – who remained illustrious for at least a generation after his death – should have passed unnoticed in our paratexts, for all their imperfections, particularly when other men with a literary reputation figured in the august company portrayed there. Although he was in the service of the Count of Saint-Pol, La Sale’s work in particular appears to have found its earliest significant audience at the Burgundian court: to omit to mention the most famous writer at the Duke of Burgundy’s court in the paratext, had he taken part, is scarcely conceivable, especially in the context of a reconciliation between the two houses and the fact that Chastelain was well-acquainted with one of the Count of Saint-Pol’s brothers, Jacques de Luxembourg.43 Nor is it obvious why any contribution by Chastelain, had he made one, should have escaped the attention of the expert literary men who described the now-lost manuscript that was made for the Duke in the 1469 post-mortem catalogue of his books. The official chronicler was still active at that date, and the cataloguers were content to refer to him simply as ‘Jorge’ in another of their entries in the same document.44 It would be too much to say that Chastelain was bound – still less duty-bound – to have contributed to the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, but he was certainly well placed to do so, and any contribution by him was unlikely to have passed unmentioned in a work attributed to several of his acquaintances, friends and admirers, not to mention potential rivals of his considerable literary reputation.45 There is, however, one simple explanation for Chastelain’s absence from the surviving paratextual evidence, and it is one which strengthens the case being made in the present chapter. Chastelain was not a storyteller because he was not part of the daily routines of the network of service and

42 Nelly Labère, Défricher le jeune plante. Étude du genre de la nouvelle au Moyen Âge, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 69 (Paris: Champion, 2006), p. 407. 43 Lefèvre, Antoine de La Sale, pp. 409-47. 44 Joseph Barrois, Bibliothèque protypographique, ou librairies des fils du roi Jehan, Charles V, Jean de Berri, Philippe de Bourgogne et les siens (Paris: Treuttel and Würtz, 1830), p. 153, no. 969 (Exposition sur vérité mal prise). 45 I have been unable to consult a 2001 paper by Professor Hisara Kondo, in which he articulated the view Chastelain might even have been the anonymous acteur of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. For reasons that are made clear here, this would not be our conclusion. The paper is unpublished, but is mentioned in Medieval Institute, ‘Western Michigan University, 36th International Congress on Medieval Studies (2001)’, International Congress on Medieval Studies Archive, 10 (https:// scholarworks.wmich.edu/medieval_cong_archive/10), p. 140.

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sociability that generated the type of storytelling events which are evoked in the paratextual and textual evidence. As Olivier de La Marche tells us, pantlers, cupbearers or carvers could be called upon to serve food or drink in the chamber, but usually this was left to the chamber personnel.46 Only if all the chamberlains were absent from court would the first carver be called upon to perform the most skilled and demanding task in the service of food, namely cutting the prince’s meat when he was served in the chamber. Cupbearers were not called upon to serve the prince his wine in the chamber, for this signal honour was reserved for the highest prince in attendance, or for the first chamberlain. The first pantler only served in the chamber if the masters of the household were absent. Personal service of the prince in his chamber was therefore something the household squires might experience only exceptionally; they stood at one remove from the networks and occasions of sociability in the chamber which, according to our paratext, generated the storytelling events behind the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. On the one occasion when Chastelain recorded his own service in that context, the detail of his account suggests it was indeed an unusual occurrence. Serving breakfast to Philip the Good on campaign in Holland ‘par un beau matin’ (‘on a fine morning’), to which he even attaches a specific date and time (ten o’clock on the morning of 10 August 1456), acting under the direction of a multiple tale-teller in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles as it happens, the chronicler notes: Moy-mesme, escrivain de cestes, le servis eschanson et pannetier avecques messire Michel de Changy [sic], un des maistres d’hostel qui le servit du couteau. Sy me recorde comment en parlant avec luy beaucoup en disnant et que je regarday taisamment ses manières, me sambloit lors qu’onques prince de meilleur samblant n’avoie vu en armes, ne qui tant fist à redouter, à le voir comme il estoit là assis, car ne sambloit tant seulement un duc d’un ost, ne d’un pays, mais un empereur à qui ymage et samblant le monde entier devoit obéyr par nature. Cestui déjun se passa et approchèrent dix heures et le soleil rendoit jà forte chaleur.47 I myself, the present writer, served him as cupbearer and pantler with Messire Michel de Chaugy, one of his masters of the household, who carved for him. And I remember how, as I spoke with him a great deal as he dined, and as I watched his manners in

46 For this and what follows, see La Marche, ‘L’Estat de la maison du duc Charles’, pp. 39-40, 42. 47 Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, III, 156-57; Herman Vander Linden, Itinéraires de Philippe le Bon, duc de Bourgogne (1419-67) et de Charles, comte de Charolais (1433-67) (Brussels: Hayes/Palais des académies, 1940), p. 360.

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silence, it seemed to me then that I had never seen a prince who looked better in arms, nor one who was more redoubtable, to see him seated there, for he resembled, not so much a duke at the head of an army, or of a land, but an emperor whose image and mein were of a nature to command the obedience of the whole world. This breakfast finished around 10 o’clock, and the sun was already very hot. If squires were only occasionally involved in the service of food and drink in the chamber (as La Marche explicitly states, and as Chastelain’s singular memory of this occasion further suggests), then they had no formal role whatsoever in the many other routines of the chamber. The daily needs of the duke in his chamber were attended to by higher-ranking men, such as the chamberlains who placed the night-cap on his head, or by lesser personnel, who might nevertheless become highly influential and powerful in their own right by dint of serving the prince in the most intimate matters. Chastelain thought his near-neighbour Poncelet to be ‘un pauvre vallet clergeant’ (‘a poor valet-clerk’), but that conteur who is named in our paratexts was nevertheless the daily companion of powerful chamber ser­ vants. Poncelet performed intimate tasks for the duke in their company, and this was something Chastelain rarely experienced. None was more powerful among the chamber valets at this time than Jean Coustain, who knew ‘ce que faisoit besoing en la chambre’ (‘what needed to be done in the chamber’), and had become, by 1457, one of Philip the Good’s closest servants, ‘la garde et fermoer des secrets de son maistre’ (‘the guard and the lock of all his master’s secrets’), as Chastelain himself wrote.48 Poncelet was in the habit of dining in Coustain’s private quarters, as Chastelain also reveals.49 For all his superior literary and social standing compared to Poncelet, the pantler-cum-chronicler was not part of the routines of chamber service and sociability in which the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, according to the work’s paratext, had originated, and which brought ‘poor valets’ like Poncelet into daily contact with powerful men like Jean Coustain. The chamber could magnify the importance of men involved in the quotidian elements of court life, just as the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles magnified quotidian sociability within the chamber – albeit under the exceptional circumstances delineated above in Chapter 9, to which the Decameronian precedent seemed especially relevant. 48 For this and what follows, see Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, III, 273; IV, 235, 259. On Coustain’s rise and fall, see especially Jonas Braekevelt, ‘Jean Coustain en de hoge rechtsmacht te Lovendegem en Zomergem: favoritisme, schenkengen en afgunst aan het hof van Filips de Goede’, Handelingen der Maatschappij voor oudheidkunde en geschiedenis te Gent, 64 (2010), 87-128. 49 Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, IV, 258-59.

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The great pensionaries A further important court group that is conspicuously absent among the conteurs evoked in the paratexts of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles is that of the grands pensionnaires, the highest-ranking lords who received a pension from the Duke to retain their service and loyalty. These men were often blood relatives of the Duke, such as the Count of Étampes, or else were important regional allies, such as the Duke of Cleves. The absence of these men tends to confirm the argument made here, that these were tales associated in the first instance with the Duke’s own chamber and servants. Occasionally under Philip the Good, and much more so under Charles the Bold, pensionaries did hold the office of chamberlain. Thibaud de Luxembourg held a pension from the Duke, for example, and was a regular presence at court in the first half of the 1450s.50 But pensionaries were generally greater lords than Thibaud de Luxembourg in Philip the Good’s time, and it is possible he was only accorded a pension on account of the fact he was, at Philip’s court, the highest-ranking member of the Luxembourg-Lignys, a family headed by Thibaud’s brother Louis, Count of Saint-Pol. Thibaud was entitled to his brother’s dining rights at court on a substitute basis in 1445 and again in 1449, for example, presumably because the Count was rarely there.51 To have found the great pensionaries participating in a literary venture that was predominantly based, as we have seen, on networks of service and sociability around the Duke’s own chamber would indeed be remarkable. Such men had their own households and chambers, and other networks of service and sociability routinely orbited those princely suns.

Luxembourg and Burgundy By depicting the negative space around our subject, we see the latter’s outlines emerge more sharply: the chamber fills up our picture, while the chapel, pensionaries and household services fade into the background, or else do not figure at all. The predominance of networks of service and sociability among the conteur group based around the chamber personnel of Philip the Good therefore throws into even sharper relief the presence among the storytellers of Louis de Luxembourg, Count of Saint-Pol. The Count’s presence (and that of some of his most important, longstanding servants and close family members) points to an unnoticed but

50 Berry, ‘Les Luxembourgs-Ligny’, p. 366. The combination of chamberlain and pensionary became very common under Charles the Bold from 1474, as witnessed by the large number of chambellans-pensionnaires recorded in the PCB. 51 Kruse and Paravicini, Hofordnungen 1, pp. 260, 318.

Tales from The Chamber

fundamental characteristic of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, namely: that the storytelling, as it is presented in the paratext, was something of a joint venture of the houses of Burgundy and Luxembourg-Ligny. The sociability of the enterprise was not only located at a time of strategic reconciliation between the two houses in the context of impending war; it was grounded in long-standing relations between them, and typifies an influential form of northern French aristocratic cultural life that was common to both. This core feature of the conteur group reveals just how wide of the mark any continued association of the work with Louis XI’s influence really is, and takes us closer to the purpose of storytelling in court circles. Whereas Burgundian expansion across the Low Countries had en­ gulfed many smaller houses of long standing in the region, there were still others which exercised a certain amount of autonomy from the dukes, creating and preserving their own networks and pursuing their own inter­ ests.52 The house of Luxembourg-Ligny was one such house. From the later fourteenth century until the execution of Louis de Luxembourg in 1475, the counts negotiated with some success their own path between the king of France and the duke of Burgundy.53 In the process, networks of kinship, lordship and service between the two princely houses could become deeply entangled. The lords of Fiennes – both Thibaut and his son Jacques – were the leading representatives of the house of Luxembourg-Ligny at the ducal court, but they were not the only men there who were connected to such networks. Jean V de Créquy, conteur of only one tale but probably the most influential adviser to Philip the Good in terms of the Duke’s literary tastes, was from a Picard noble family with a history of serving the Luxembourgs in that region in arms.54 Jean V himself stood on several occasions as the procurator for Jean de Luxembourg, Louis de Luxembourg’s uncle, at the earliest chapters of the Order of the Golden Fleece throughout the 1430s, and was a witness to Louis de Luxembourg’s marriage agreement (1435) to Jeanne de Bar, Louis’s first wife, to whom Créquy was also distantly related.55 The conteur Jean d’Enghien was a leading servant of Philip the Good as we have seen, as a master of the Duke’s household and his main legal officer in what had effectively become the ducal capital

52 As we are rightly reminded now in Robert Stein, Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States. The Unification of the Burgundian Netherlands, 1380-1480 (Oxford: OUP, 2017). 53 Berry, ‘Les Luxembourgs-Ligny’, passim. 54 Berry, ‘Les Luxembourgs-Ligny’, pp. 500, 502. 55 Die Protokollbücher des Ordens vom goldenen Vlies, I, Herzog Philipp der Gute 1430-67, ed. by Sonja Dünnebeil (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2002), pp. 30, 36, 41, 82; André Duchesne, Histoire généalogique de la maison de Béthune (Paris: Sébastian Cramoisy, 1639), pp. 308, 321-22; Preuves, p. 246. I am grateful to Andrew Green for his advice on Créquy.

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city, Brussels.56 But Jean d’Enghien’s principal lordship of Kestergat was in fact a feudal dependency of the Luxembourgs.57 Jean may even have been introduced to Burgundian court service in the first place by Pierre I de Luxembourg, father of Louis and Thibaud, and we can say for certain that in 1450, when Jean d’Enghien was granted the right to exercise high justice in his lordship, the conteur Louis was the grantee. Philippe de Saint Yon is a third example. As provost of Le Quesnoy, one of the frontier regions most under threat in the looming Franco-Burgundian hostilities of 1458-59 which we discussed above in Chapter 9, Saint-Yon answered to the governor there, the Bastard of Saint-Pol, Jean de Haubourdin. The Lord of Haubourdin was a kinsman of both Louis and Thibaud, and a long-term servant at the court of Philip the Good: like Thibaud, he held the rank of ducal chamberlain. Both Haubourdin and Thibaud had served with the Count of Saint-Pol in arms in support of Philip the Good, most recently in the Ghent campaigns of 1452.58 Jacques de Fouquessoles, another of the chamberlain-conteurs, served as Thibaud de Luxembourg’s own standard-bearer during the Ghent campaigns that occurred in the following year, a position of great trust and honour.59 His own lands lay in the strategically significant Boulonnais, where Philip the Good had every reason to strengthen his position. When we add these men to the known Luxembourg contingent, we find that a total of eight members of the conteur group were linked by Luxembourg networks of service, kinship or lordship – a number that further archival discoveries is unlikely to diminish. Louis de Luxembourg’s own household was a noted centre of patron­ age and literary creation in its own right, and indeed it exercised some influence over the cultural tastes and practices of its larger Burgundian counterpart.60 As we saw above in the present chapter, Antoine de La

56 On this last point, see also Claire Dickstein-Bernard, ‘La Voix de l’opposition au sein des institutions bruxelloises 1455-67’, in Hommage au professeur Paul Bonenfant (1899-1965). Études d’histoire médiévale dédiées à sa mémoire par les anciens élèves de son séminaire à l’Université libre de Bruxelles (Brussels: s.n., 1965), pp. 479-500. 57 For this and what follows, see Paul de Win, ‘Jan van Edingen, heer van Kestergat, en zijn oudste zoon Lodewijk werden allebei amman van Brussel in de 15de eeuw’, Eigen Schoon en De Brabander, 99/4 (2016), 491-534. I am grateful to Dirk Schoenaers for this reference. 58 Berry ‘Les Luxembourg-Ligny’, pp. 345-52. 59 La Marche, Mémoires, II, 324. 60 Here I agree with, and seek to develop with different examples and with historical evidence, a point made by Madeleine Jeay in her ‘Le Travail du récit à la cour de Bourgogne. Les “Évangiles des Quenouilles”, les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles et Saintré’, in “A l’heure encore de mon escrire”: aspects de la littérature de Bourgogne sous Philippe le Bon et Charles le Téméraire, ed. by Claude Thiry (Louvain-la-Neuve: Les Lettres romanes, 1997), pp. 71-86, namely that the many literary links between the two houses evoke ‘un contexte d’expérimentation, d’atelier, d’une sorte d’“ouvroir de littérature potentielle”’ (‘a context of experimentation, of a workshop, of a sort of “manufactory of literary potential”’ [the latter a reference to a

Tales from The Chamber

Sale’s earliest and most significant audience was to be found at the court of Burgundy. The plot of CNN98 may have been influenced by the work of another of the Luxembourg literati, Rasse de Brunhamel, La Sale’s collaborator and a servant of the Count, and a writer with whom La Sale shared an admiration of Boccaccio.61 Louis de Luxembourg’s uncle, Jean de Luxembourg, is thought to have appointed Enguerran de Monstrelet, the great chronicler of the second half of the Hundred Years’ War and Jean Froissart’s continuator, as bailli of Compiègne and prévot of Cambrai.62 Soon after his death in 1453, Monstrelet became a model and a source for several of the famous Burgundian chroniclers of Philip the Good’s court, not least George Chastelain.63 Jean Miélot (discussed above in Chapter 7) began his writing career in the late 1440s as a scribe, translator and remod­ eller of texts at the court of Philip the Good, but passed into the service of the Count of Saint-Pol as chaplain, secretary and writer in the later 1460s.64 The Count and his family were, like many of their Burgundian counterparts, notable bibliophiles whose libraries can to some extent be reconstructed.65 Louis’s second wife, Marie of Savoy, owned one of only two surviving contemporary copies of the Évangiles des Quenouilles, a text in which, as with the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, tales are told by a group of collaborators, in this case all women, and then recorded by a secretary, ostensibly for the purposes of engendering debate within the group.66 We do not have any other literary compositions to attribute to the Count of Saint-Pol, his brother Thibaud, his nephew Jacques or his longstanding supporter and captain, the lord of Talmas, but we do know that Jacques de Luxembourg, lord of Richebourg, the brother of Louis and Thibaud,

61 62

63 64

65 66

French literary group founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and others]) (p. 74). The key difference here is that the political reconciliation of Luxembourg and Burgundy is portrayed as having been accompanied, perhaps even to some extent facilitated, by literary experimentation and associated practices of sociability. Lefèvre, Antoine de La Sale, pp. 165-67. Hanno Wijsman, ‘History in Transition. Enguerrand de Monstrelet’s Chronique in Manuscript and Print (c. 1450-c. 1600)’, in The Book Triumphant. Print in Transition in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. by Malcolm Walsby and Graeme Kemp, Library of the Written Word, 15 (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2011), pp. 199-252 (p. 201). Small, George Chastelain, pp. 133-34, 135-36, 140, 152-54, 166, 185-86, 187. Hanno Wijsman, ‘Le Connétable et le chanoine. Les ambitions bibliophiliques de Louis de Luxembourg au regard des manuscrits autographes de Jean Miélot’, in Le Livre au fil des pages. Actes de la 14e journée d’études du réseau des médiévistes belges de langue française. Université de Liège, 18 novembre 2005, ed. by Renaud Adam and Alain Marchandisse (Brussels: Archives et bibliothèques de Belgique, 2009), pp. 119-50. Berry ‘Les Luxembourg-Ligny’, pp. 614-33. Madeleine Jeay (ed.), Les Évangiles des Quenouilles (Paris: J. Vrin, 1985), p. 35.

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engaged in poetic exchanges with his friend Chastelain, and was a noted collector of books.67 Among the quite distinct networks of kinship, lordship, service and sociability which can be traced within the conteur group as it is evoked in the paratexts of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, those of the Luxembourg connection were therefore no poor relations; quite the opposite, in fact. This conclusion adds significant weight to the suggestion made above by Hanno Wijsman in Chapter 2, and further supported by evidence pre­ sented in Chapters 4 and 7, that MS Hunter 252 itself may well have been made for another Luxembourg family member, Pierre II, who was son of one conteur, Louis de Luxembourg, and pupil of another, Antoine de La Sale. In fact, the paratext of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, far from evoking a French royal literary text, presents us, and an audience even better placed to know than we are, with a quite specifically Burgundo-Luxembourg cultural world. The spectacular rise of Burgundy in French letters in the fifteenth century – segregated from France by Auguste Molinier, catalogued by Georges Doutrepont, analysed by Johan Huizinga – can obscure the fact that the regions over which the dukes came to rule had long literary tradi­ tions bolstered by the patronage of many smaller comital and seigneurial households dating back to at least the twelfth century.68 In this region, service and sociability in a great lord’s house had long been associated with new developments in French vernacular writing. Gabrielle Spiegel has even argued that the peculiar characteristics of these northernmost regions of the continental Francophone world gave rise in the thirteenth century to one of the most significant moments in the development of French letters, namely the adoption of vernacular prose in French historywriting, and that only at a later stage was the new literary form absorbed and promoted by the French royal court.69 As we have seen here, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, the first in a long-line of collections of novellas composed in French stretching through Philippe de Vigneulles, Margaret of Navarre, Jean de La Fontaine and many others, followed a very similar trajectory. Originating in an important moment in the life of networks of lordship, kinship, service and sociability in northern households, not just the Burgundian court but also that of the Luxembourg-Lignys, they 67 Jacques Paviot, ‘Politique et culture chez un grand seigneur du XVe siècle’, in Penser le pouvoir au Moyen Age, VIIIe-XVe siècle. Études offertes à Françoise Autrand, ed. by Dominique Boutet and Jacques Verger (Paris: ENS rue d’Ulm, 2000), pp. 327-34. 68 Graeme Small, ‘Clio à la cour de Bourgogne’, in La librairie des ducs de Bourgogne. Manuscrits conservés à la Bibliothèque royale de Belgique. IV. Textes historiques, ed. by Bernard Bousmanne, Tania van Hemelryck and Céline van Hoorebeeck (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), pp. 11-23. 69 Gabrielle Spiegel, Romancing the past. The rise of vernacular historiography in thirteenthcentury France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

Tales from The Chamber

too were appropriated for the cultural prestige of the monarchy thanks to Anthoine Vérard’s interventions, and the audiences which he and other printers further afield in France garnered for the work. In its language, as Geoffrey Roger demonstrated in Chapter 7, MS Hunter 252 nevertheless retains the northern essence of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, just as the vestiges of the conteur group, only partially remembered in that witness but reconstructed in more detail here, bring us closer to the laughter and debate which followed stories (if not exactly these stories, in their every detail or narrative twist) which were told in the chamber of Philip the Good, sometimes in the company of Luxembourg servants.

Conclusions The paratext of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles channelled the intended audi­ ence into accepting the text as the product of storytelling practices among named court servants. As a result, the historian is invited to approach this work of fiction as an archive: to investigate the networks of service, kinship and sociability at court, as well as the functions within those networks which the courtly art of storytelling might fulfil. By interrogating contemporary documentary material and narrative sources alongside the names identified in the paratext, as we have done in the last two chapters, we can better understand storytelling acts as situated uses of language, in ways that might even encourage the literary scholar to reappraise the significance of the hors texte. Should we be surprised that at the centre of political life, during a time of intense crisis and existential threat, politics would apparently figure so little in the pastime of an elite, as it is evoked in our paratexts? Roger Dubuis, without knowledge of the historical circumstances identified here, and really just echoing Huizinga in many ways, saw the Cent Nouvelles nou­ velles as a prime example of escapism from the harsh realities of life.70 But, as David Fein has pointed out, storytelling also involved profound medita­ tion on the exercise of power: on the practices of domination and control, negotiation or deception, humiliation or reconciliation which are present in all human interactions, including the political.71 In other similar settings too, we can see elites eschew explicitly political topics of discussion in their everyday interactions, and focus instead on telling anecdotes about sex or ruses. There is among political activists in modern civic life in the USA

70 Roger Dubuis, ‘L’Indifférence du genre narrative aux problèmes politiques du XVe siècle’, in Culture et politique en France à l’époque de l’humanisme et de la renaissance, ed. by Franco Simone (Turin: Accademia delle scienze, 1974), pp. 213-27 (pp. 224-27). 71 David A. Fein, Displacements of Power. Readings of the ‘Cent Nouvelles nouvelles’ (LanholmOxford, University Press of America, 2003).

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a ‘strenuous disengagement’ from political topics in their conversations with peers and collaborators, and a focus instead on solidarity promoted through humour and nostalgia.72 British eavesdropping on captured highranking German prisoners in World War 2 revealed some discussion of ideology or the business of warfare, to be sure, but also stories told about sport or sex.73 Unlike prisoners, however, the conteur-group of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles found itself, at the time unmistakably evoked by the work’s paratext, on the point of being called to fulfil its obligations as a martial elite, perhaps especially among the knights of the chamber, so often the core of a ruler’s army. In telling these or similar tales, the court was certainly ‘at play’, then, as Jelle Koopmans has argued, but it was doing much more besides. Storytelling could also reconcile, reassure, embolden, encourage or unite. In the context of Luxembourg-Burgundy relations and the darkening clouds of the wider political situation between France, Burgundy and England discussed here and in Chapter 9, the practice of storytelling was both instrument and commemoration of a fractured elite’s efforts to unite and face existential threat. As Jean Dufournet perceptively observes, without specific reference to the contextual circumstances we have revealed here, laughter in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles réconcilie, apaise, restaure une saine bonhomie qui libère l’allégresse du corps: les trompés pardonnent aux trompeurs, les cocus concluent la paix sans plus discuter, comme si la force du rire était dans cette capacité d’apaisement.74 reconciles, brings peace, restores a healthy bonhomie which releases physical exhilaration: those who are deceived forgive those who deceive them, cuckolds make peace without further quibbling, as if the power of laughter resided in this capacity to pacify. The connection of this fundamental aspect of the content of our tales with the previously obscure paratext of the work is, we argue, the ‘chaînon manquant’ (‘missing link’) in our understanding of why it was, at the court of Burgundy under Philip the Good, that storytelling should have been elevated to an art form in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles; why it was celebrated in such an elaborate text, which was itself grounded (to some unknown extent) in wider literary practices by a skilled author; and why the resulting work of literature should have been preserved in a luxury manuscript intended for the old Duke himself, accompanied by miniatures 72 Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics. How Americans produce Apathy in Everyday Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 73 Sönke Neitzel, Tapping Hitler’s Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations, 1942-45, translated by Geoffrey Brooks (Barnsley: Frontline Books, 2007). 74 Jean Dufournet, ‘Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, emblème de la génération Louis XI’, in Autour des “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles”, ed. by Devaux and Velissariou, pp. 15-29 (p. 26).

Tales from The Chamber

which were executed by an artist so innovative that his brilliant designs still shine through the work of the less-skilled imitator who illustrated MS Hunter 252, as we saw in Chapters 1, 5 and 6.75 The involvement of other households in the activity, especially Picard lords linked to Luxembourg networks, reflects the fact that storytelling as an art form was an extension of deeply influential cultural practices asso­ ciated over several centuries with castle life in the continental northern Francophone world. Boccaccio was easily – indeed, eagerly – absorbed into the cultural life of these same milieux, reminding us once more of Huizinga’s perspicacity when he noted that the ‘forms of life and thought’ of Quattrocento Italy were not so very different from those we find in a supposedly antediluvian Burgundian world.

75 ‘Chaînon manquant’: Koopmans, ‘Espaces ludiques’, p. 40.

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Conclusions

In this collaborative study of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, we have sought to present a relational reading, not simply of text and context, but of texts, paratexts and contexts; in doing so, we have attempted to offer an historical understanding of a literary work which strongly influenced the emergence of the genre of the nouvelle in French and the other European languages into which the work was rendered. Although they were probably connected and both produced in Paris in the early to mid-1480s (as argued in different ways by Richard Gameson, Hanno Wijsman, Mary Beth Winn, Maud Pérez-Simon and Alexandra Velissariou), the two earliest material witnesses of our work present signif­ icantly different texts. Linguistically (as Geoffrey Roger argued above), MS Hunter 252 is tied to a ‘particularized and local social environment’: by retaining so many of the dialectal traits of its model, it presents itself quite precisely as a Picard text, most likely (as suggested by Hanno Wijs­ man) made for a noble house which was once a dominant presence in that region, the Luxembourg-Lignys. In his edition, meanwhile, Vérard consciously effaced the localised or archaic dialectal forms of his own unknown source text (as both Peter Davies and Geoffrey Roger demon­ strated) in order to appeal to a wider commercial public in the Fran­ cophone world. Judging from the work’s subsequent publication history (catalogued for the first time by Mary Beth Winn), the decision was a good one. Vérard’s emendations to the paratext (as we also saw in Winn’s chapter) had similar intent, and skewed scholarly understanding of the work’s context for centuries. The supposedly royal associations of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, rather than the truly Burgundo-Luxembourg character of the enterprise, are still overemphasised in scholarship today (as we saw in Chapter 4). None of these differences between our two material witnesses is so great that we are unable to see past them to a third, now-lost witness. The illustrative scheme of MS Hunter 252 is workmanlike in execution Graeme Small • Durham University The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - c. 1550), ed. by Graeme Small, Texte, Codex & Contexte, 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 291–296 10.1484/M.TCC-EB.5.132647

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but brilliant in conception (as Hanno Wijsman, Maud Pérez-Simon and Alexandra Velissariou showed in different ways), and was clearly modelled (as Richard Gameson argued) on a higher quality original, or even on a copy of a higher quality original, rather than designed from scratch. Its model may have been the fine illustrated manuscript which was made for Philip the Good in the 1460s, which seems to have disappeared for good around half a century later (discussed by Hanno Wijsman), or potentially another copy of that manuscript. MS Hunter 252 and the lost ducal manuscript were connected in another way, in that both can be linked to a particular local social environment. Pierre de Luxembourg, whose name has been suggested as the owner of MS Hunter 252, was the father-in-law of Philip of Cleves, who later borrowed and lost the ducal manuscript and inherited some of Pierre’s books (as we saw in Chapters 2 and 4). Both men were scions of great houses that had enjoyed considerable influence under the Valois dukes, especially Philip the Good. The epitext (in the form of the 1469 library catalogue entry) which is our only material source for the existence of our third, now-lost witness can be set alongside the imperfect peritextual evidence (chapter titles, rubrics and so forth) of the surviving witnesses to delve further into the history of our text. By reconstituting the conteur group and by drawing upon evidence outside the text to understand that group’s composition, as Edgar de Blieck and the present author have done, we see that the work clearly presented itself to its original intended audience, the ‘highly particularized and local social environment’ of the court of Philip the Good, in far more specific ways than we have hitherto realised: as the product of an exceptional, Decameronian moment of crisis, perhaps the greatest that had faced that political milieu in many decades (Chapter 9); and as tales that were told in the quotidian environment of the Duke’s chamber, either by chamber personnel, or by men with access at that time to that intensely privileged space (Chapter 10). The fact that members of the Luxembourg-Ligny family, its leading servants and allies were so in­ tensely involved in this otherwise exclusive venture tends to strengthen the suggestion made by Hanno Wijsman that our only surviving manuscript witness was connected to that family, for which it had particular (although not unique) significance. Whether these tales were actually told in this form, by these men or in this order are of course things we will probably never know; nor are we ever likely to know the identity of the unnamed redactor who finished the work off. The hybrid style of the language of MS Hunter 252 is certainly in keeping with some degree of collective composition (as Peter Davies demonstrated), and the dialectal traits of the work lend weight to some possible identifications of the acteur over certain others (as we saw in Geoffrey Roger’s chapter): in particular, the Picard writer David Aubert (discussed in Chapter 4), or possibly even his fellow Picard Jean Miélot

ConClusions

(who has not previously figured much in the debate) now seem better candidates than Philippe Pot or any others that have been ascribed the role of acteur by posterity.1 There is, in any event, a wider historical significance to this literary work which emerges from our relational reading of text and context. Story­ telling was literally elevated to the status of an art in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: not simply in the form of a beautiful and costly manuscript completed with remarkable literary and artistic skill at the Duke’s request, but more profoundly in its celebration of storytelling by a group of men whose identity would have been immediately obvious to the intended audience of the text, and whose composition as a group was evocative of a particular moment in the court community’s recent past. Writing of the court of Louis XIV, Norbert Elias identified the courtly art of observation, performed in silence, as the courtier’s necessary attribute and defining pastime.2 By contrast, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles reveals the value attaching to the courtly art of storytelling, performed in a brief tale with narrative drive and easily recognisable structure (as Alexandra Velissariou demonstrated above), completed by a punchline or a suitable moral, possi­ bly laced with literary allusion and/or sharpened by mentions of people, events or places which meant something to the audience. Generating effective narratives was a political skill then as now, although narratives told among powerful figures need not always be political (as we suggested in Chapter 10). Beautiful illustrations captured, not the entire plot of such stories (for such a thing was impossible), but rather key moments which structured the storytelling (again shown by Alexandra Velissariou), thereby creating a paratextual index (as both Richard Gameson and Maud Pérez-Simon argued) which allowed the stories to be found, retold and told again for different audiences. The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles also reveals something of particular courts, not simply of courtly forms of life and thought in the fifteenth century. The naming of specific individuals in the paratext made stars of these men, and featured stories supposedly from their lives, the lives of their friends and acquaintances, their close family or recent ancestors. Boccaccio’s De­ cameron did not adopt this paratextual framing technique: tale-tellers were imaginary and of both sexes, unattached to any clearly identifiable milieu (except a generally elite one). But other texts which were well-known at the court of Philip the Good had done so, as we saw in Chapter 4: the Livre des Cent ballades celebrated the creativity and wit of Philippe d’Artois

1 Miélot’s geographical origins are, as Geoffrey Roger showed, a clear fit with the linguistic traits that can still be discerned in MS Hunter 252, and his career – discussed by the present author in Chapter 10 – also spans both Burgundy and Luxembourg in the period concerned. 2 Norbert Elias, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), pp. 106-10.

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Count of Eu, his hereditary seneschal and other servants, not to mention Marshal Boucicaut, John Duke of Berry and several royal chamberlains. The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles placed the wit and creativity of Philip the Good’s squire of the stables or master of the household on a par with such venerable examples. As a venture, the text looked back to a time when Boccaccio was intensely popular in French Valois circles, when John of Berry had engaged Laurent de Premierfait to translate the work, which John the Fearless and his son Philip the Good were keen to acquire for themselves (as Hanno Wijsman demonstrates above). The essentially collaborative nature of the enterprise which, as they are portrayed in the paratext at least, Philip and the men of his chamber embarked upon during a period of dynastic crisis and existential threat, calls to mind John Arm­ strong’s insightful comment that the court of Burgundy was ‘something of a syndicate in which people took stakes so as to share in the fortunes of the house’.3 Can we imagine such a thing happening at Charles the Bold’s court? Charles was famously and repeatedly reprimanded by the knights of the Golden Fleece for the harsh way in which he customarily spoke to his noble servants. His official chronicler complained that the Duke insisted on holding audience trois fois la semaine, le lundi, le mercredi et le vendredi, après disner, là où tous les nobles de sa maison estoient devant luy en bancs, chascun selon son ordre, sans y oser faillir, et luy en son haut-dos couvert de drap d’or, là où il recevoit toutes requestes, lesquelles il fit lire devant luy, et puis il en ordonna dessus à son Plaisir. Là se tint deux, trois heures, selon la multitude des requestes, souvent toutesfois à grand tannance des assis, mais souffrir en convenoit.4 three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays after the midday meal, where all the nobles of his household sat before him on benches, each according to his estate, without daring to disobey, while he sat on his high-backed chair covered in gold cloth to receive all petitions, which he had read out in front of him, and which he then dealt with as he pleased. There he sat for two to three hours depending on the number of petitions, often to the great displeasure of those who were seated, but there was nothing to be done.

3 C.A. John Armstrong, ‘The Golden Age of Burgundy: Dukes that Outdid Kings’, in Arthur G. Dickens (ed.), The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage and Royalty, 1400-1800 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), pp. 55-75 (p. 60). 4 Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, ed. by Joseph Kervyn de Lettenhove, 8 vols (Brussels: Heusschner, 1863-66), V, 370.

ConClusions

At Charles the Bold’s court, there was ‘ordre et règle’ (‘order and disci­ pline’); a servant spoke when spoken to, whatever his standing.5 Perhaps it was not only the unfortunate associations of a paratext rendered contro­ versial by the events of the early 1460s (Chapter 4) which led to the exceptional (Chapter 2) non-reception of the work at the court of the last Valois duke of Burgundy? But the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles did not disappear altogether. Even if MS Hunter is a unicum, the long-term reception of the work was wide­ spread, as Mary Beth Winn amply shows above. To the post-Valois gener­ ation, the time of Philip the Good had been something of a golden age, certainly compared to the tribulations that followed 1477. Even if men like Pierre II de Luxembourg or Philip of Cleves did not exercise the cultural influence their ancestors had once enjoyed, we can understand the residual attraction for them of a text which had made stars of their fathers, uncles, cousins or fathers-in-law, their tutors or mentors, their family servants. It is most likely to this ‘highly particularized and local social environment’ that we owe the work’s survival in the apparently barren but crucial period between Philip the Good’s reign and Vérard’s first edition. If the making and reception of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles reveal a great deal about the changing nature of the courts which successively ruled the Valois and Habsburg Burgundian dominions, it is tempting to say, after what we have learned here, that they tell us little or nothing at all about successive royal courts with which the work has been associated. In this respect, posterity was tricked by Vérard. In another way, however, the success of the printed editions says much about the cultural agency of the king’s court in the age of print. Especially from his second edition onwards, as Mary Beth Winn argued, Vérard suggested that the work appeared with the king’s imprimatur: it was produced at the king’s command (not the duke’s request), and it was prefaced by a woodcut of a presentation scene depicting the ruler. All subsequent editions drew on Vérard’s explicitly royal second edition. By these means and in this form, the pastime of courtiers and kings became the reading material of a wider public, ground­ ing the literary genre within a wider canon and contributing to its lasting success.

Contact details In addition to the professional affiliations for each author indicated at the start of each chapter, which will allow the reader to make contact with authors, Edgar de Blieck can be contacted at [email protected]. 5 Werner Paravicini, ‘Ordre et règle. Charles le Téméraire en ses ordonnances de l’hôtel’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (1999), 311-59.

295

Index

Acteur, The, 15, 31 n. 27, 106 n. 50, 203, 231, 233, 237, 239, 240, 260, 279, 292-93 Agincourt, Battle of, 154 Ahasuerus, King, 112 Aisne, 219 Alardin, 31 n. 27, 259, 260 n. 37, 269 n. 5, 271 Alexandria, 159 n. 93 Alexis, Guillaume, 240 Alsace, Thierry of, Count of Flanders, 262 n. 47 Amant, see: Amman Amiens, 118, 137-38 Amman: see Enghien, Jean d’ Amsterdam, 120 Anglo-Norman, 211, 213, 217, 218, 220 Angoulême, Count of: see Orléans, Charles d’ Anjou, 218 Anjou, René, Duke of, 145 n. 35 Anquasnes, Mahieu d’, 144 n. 30, 231, 261, 269 n. 5, 271 and n. 13, 272 Antwerp, 150, 256 Argenson, Antoine-René d’, marquis de Paulmy, 64 n. 9 Aristotle, 112 ARLIMA (Archives littéraires du Moyen Âge), 13 Armagnac, Jacques V d’, Duke of Nemours, 55, 56 Armagnacs, 147 Armstrong, C.A. John, 294

Arnoullet, Jacques, 101 n. 47, 112, 113 n. 66 Arnoullet, Olivier, 82, 96, 97, 99 n. 43, 101 and n. 47, 103-04, 105 and n. 50, 106 n. 51, 110 n. 58, 112, 113, 114, 116, 129-31 Arras, Treaty of, 148 Arthur, King, 271 Artois, County of, 209, 221 Artois, Philippe d’, Count of Eu, 293-94 Auber, Jacques, 120 Aubert, David, 14, 142-43, 221, 222, 236, 292 Aubert, Jean II, 143 n. 27 Auquasnes: see Anquasnes, Mahieu d’ Avril, François, 73, 167 n. 1 Azuela, Cristina, 16 Baden-Hachberg, Rudolf IV, Marquis of Rötteln, 260 n. 37, 261, 269 n. 4 Baers, Michel, Provost of Watten, 139 n. 20, 143, 146-47, 242, 245, 262, 263, 275-76 Bar, Jeanne de, 283 Barbier fils aka Le Jeune, François, 45, 56, 57, 58, 73-75 Barbier père, François, 56 Basin, Thomas, 265 Beaumont, Antonin de, 261 n. 43 Beaumont, Monseigneur de: see Lannoy, Guillebert de

298

index

Beauvoir, Claude de, Marshal of France, 157-58 Beauvoir, Jean de, vicomte of Avallon and Lord of Chastellux, 157-58, 230, 233, 238, 259, 260 nn. 35 and 37, 268, 269 Beauvoir, Monseigneur de, 160: see Beauvoir, Jean de, vicomte of Avallon and Lord of Chastellux; see also Montespedon, Jean de, ‘dit Houaste’ Bedford, John, Duke of, 148 Bedroch der vrouwen, Dat, 120 n. 87 Belle dame sans mercy, La, 137 Bening, Simon, 51 Berry, Céline, 148 n. 48, 154 n. 74 Berry, John, Duke of 41, 55, 56, 264, 294 Besançon, Jacques de, 73 Beaumont, Monseigneur de: see Lannoy, Guillebert II de Beugier, Jean, 138 Bible, The, 14 Blois, 118 n. 81 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 13, 62, 63, 65, 66, 81, 99, 120, 136, 139-41, 162, 168, 172, 189, 196, 197, 207, 264, 285, 289, 293, 294; see Decameron, The Boctus, King, 84 Boucicaut, Marshal, 264, 294 Boulogne, 162, 257, 258 Boulogne, County of, 161-62, 255, 284 Boulogne, Mathieu de, 253 Boulogne, seneschal of, 161 Bourbon, Isabella of, Countess of Charolais, 76 n. 43 Bourbon, John II, Duke of, 76 n. 43 Bourbonnais, 207 Bourdichon, Jean, 49, 51 Bouton, Philippe, 277

Brabant, Duchy of, 151 n. 64, 157, 159 and n. 92, 206, 207, 219 Brandenburg, Albrecht of, Hours of, 51 n. 99 Brederode, Reinoud van, 254 n. 9 Brégilles, Jacques de, 63, 142, 151 Breton, Simon le, 274, 276 Brézé, Pierre de, 159 Brittany, Duchy of, 159, 207, 218 Bruges, 51, 146, 151, 161, 206 Bruges, Holy Blood, Procession of the, 262 n. 47 Bruges, Louis of, Lord of Gruuthuse, 55, 138, 153, 163 Brunet, Jean-Charles, 92 and n. 23 Brunhamel, Rasse de, 285 Brussels, 16, 119, 151, 158, 206, 254, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260 and n. 36, 261, 270, 284 Buren, Anne van, 67, 68 Burgundian dominions, The, 137, 146, 149, 206, 223, 295 Burgundy, Agnes of, 76 n. 43 Burgundy, Anthony of, the Great Bastard, 724Burgundy, Duchess of, see: Isabella of Portugal Burgundy, Duke of: see John the Fearless, Philip the Good, Charles the Bold Buridant, Claude, 217, 218, 220 Cabochien revolt, The, 262 n. 46 Caillaut, Antoine, 82 Calais, 147, 161, 257, 265 Calphurnia, 112, 116 Cambrai, 285 Cambrésis, 221 Caron: see Caron, Michel le, ‘dit Taillevent’ Caron, Jean, chief messenger of the Count of Charolais, 150 n. 54, 274

index

Caron, Jean (le), chapel clerk and composer, 274 Caron, Michel le, ‘dit Taillevent’, 235, 258, 269, 271, 275 Cassel, 254 Castillon, Battle of, 148 Caxton, William, 58 Cennini, Cennino, 50 Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, The, projected edition of, 20 Champagne, County of, 147 and n. 45, 220, 229 Champion, Pierre, 14, 15, 17, 67, 82 n. 11, 90, 106 n. 51, 147 n. 45, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 205, 206, 208 n. 29, 210, 211 nn. 46 and 48, 227, 251 n. 3, 261 and n. 43, 267, 269, 271, 274, 276 Chanson de Roland, 237 Charles VI, King of France, 262 n. 46, 264 Charles VII, King of France, 74 n. 43, 92 n. 28, 146, 147, 148, 161, 254, 255, 265 Charles VIII, King of France, 57, 82, 118, 145 Charolais, Count of: see Charles the Bold Charles the Bold, Count of Charolais then Duke of Burgundy, 63, 74, 141, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150-51, 155, 163, 253, 254, 256, 260 and n. 36, 262 n. 46, 267, 270, 273, 274, 282, 294 Charolles, 119 Chartier, Alain, 137 Chastelain, George, 14, 147 n. 45, 153, 156, 157, 158 n. 91, 159, 162 n. 108, 221, 256, 257 n. 21, 265-66, 270, 274, 277, 278-81, 285-86; see also Exposition sur vérité mal prise Chastelain, Gonthier, 153

Chaugy, Michaut de, 31 and n. 27, 105 n. 50, 203, 221, 231, 258, 260 n. 35, 272, 280-81 Chevalier délibéré, Le, 57, 97 Chronique de l’abbaye de Floreffe, 214 Cleves, Duke of, 282 Cleves, Adolf of, Lord of Ravenstein, 153, 163 Cleves, Philip of, Lord of Ravenstein, 27 n. 12, 58 n. 118, 64-66, 76-78, 152-55, 163, 292, 295 CNN1, 34 n. 46, 34 n. 47, 106 n. 51, 107 and n. 53, 111, 112 n. 62, 113, 114, 115, 118 n. 86, 143 n. 27, 151, 174, 175, 208, 211, 231, 242 CNN2, 34 n. 46, 107, 112 and nn. 62 and 64, 113, 151, 175, 211, 231, 233, 234 CNN3, 36, 107 and n. 54, 144, 175, 192-94, 197, 211 and n. 46, 212, 218, 230, 231, 244 CNN4, 34 n. 46, 104, 105 n. 49, 106, 107 and n. 54, 112 n. 62, 133-34, 137 n. 6, 151, 174, 175, 208, 236 CNN5, 107 and n. 53, 143, 169 CNN6, 107 and n. 53, 112 n. 65, 145, 216, 230, 258 CNN7, 106 n. 51, 107, 151, 170, 175, 184 CNN8, 40, 69, 70, 107, 144, 231, 236, 239 CNN9, 35, 107, 109, 151, 175, 208, 232 CNN10, 70, 107, 109, 111, 116, 144, 159, 184, 230 CNN11, 36, 51, 52, 107, 112 n. 65, 151, 176 CNN12, 39 n. 63, 107, 115, 116, 144, 184 CNN13, 31 n. 27, 39, 105 n. 50, 107 and n. 53, 176, 177, 208, 259

299

300

index

CNN14, 31 n. 27, 105, 107 and n. 54, 112 n. 60, 143, 175, 260 CNN15, 107 and n. 54, 112 n. 61, 144, 175, 184 CNN16, 35, 40, 107 and n. 53, 151, 184, 213, 230 CNN17, 151, 176, 184 CNN18, 107, 144, 159, 176, 184, 237, 238 CNN19, 31 n. 27, 34 n. 47, 107 and n. 53, 144, 259 and n. 31 CNN20, 36, 37 n. 55, 107 and n. 53, 143, 176, 177, 229, 252 n. 7 CNN21, 36, 107 and n. 53, 112, 113, 143, 176, 177, 195-96, 197, 198, 238 CNN22, 38, 107, 150 n. 54, 175, 235, 258 CNN23, 40, 105 n. 50, 107 and n. 53, 146, 236, 254 CNN24, 42, 70, 107 and n. 53, 154, 175 CNN25, 36, 158, 176, 177 CNN26, 31 n. 27, 38, 177, 208, 213, 215, 219, 238, 252 n. 7, 262 CNN27, 36, 68, 109, 174, 177, 178, 194-95, 197, 230 CNN28, 31 n. 27, 38, 140, 171, 174, 177, 178, 208, 258 CNN29, 38, 68, 70, 109, 151, 177, 178, 213 CNN30, 106 n. 51, 177, 178, 233, 238 CNN31, 71, 148, 156, 174, 179-80, 214, 230, 238, 254 CNN32, 35, 68, 110, 111, 149, 158, 238 CNN33, 36 n. 53, 68, 109, 151, 177, 178, 218, 231 CNN34, 35, 144, 174, 219 CNN35, 36, 109, 149, 158, 174, 176, 262 CNN36, 69, 109, 144, 181, 184

CNN37, 35, 44 n. 79, 144, 175, 214, 218, 231, 252 n. 7 CNN38, 36, 107 n. 52, 170, 177, 178, 208, 211, 238, 252 CNN39, 147, 170, 174, 255 CNN40, 144, 174, 175, 258 CNN41, 68, 70 CNN42, 110, 149, 175, 238, 276 CNN43, 109, 154 CNN44, 38 n. 59, 41, 69, 70, 107 n. 52, 144, 208 CNN45, 35, 107 n. 52, 144, 159 CNN46, 39 n. 63, 259 CNN47, 107 and nn. 52-53, 112 n. 60, 144, 159 CNN48, 144, 170-71, 176, 213, 231, 236 CNN49, 38, 68, 171, 174, 261 CNN50, 31 n. 27, 39, 110, 154 n. 75, 255 CNN51, 105-06 n. 50, 107 n. 52, 113, 260 CNN52, 39, 106 n. 50, 144, 174, 214 CNN53, 35, 39, 40, 71, 72, 105 n. 50, 107 and n. 52, 158, 238, 256, 259 CNN54, 144 n. 30, 180, 231, 261 CNN55, 37 and n. 55, 109, 149, 158, 176 n. 26, 177 CNN56, 35, 40, 109, 149, 158 CNN57, 107 nn. 52 and 53, 149, 158 CNN58, 36, 68, 151 CNN59, 35, 231, 232, 240, 243, 258 CNN60, 112 n. 60, 238, 258 CNN61, 35, 209, 210, 258 CNN62, 107 and nn. 52 and 54, 146, 209, 254 CNN63, 40, 105 n. 50, 106 n. 51, 149-51, 218, 232 CNN64, 105 n. 50, 231, 258 CNN65, 107 nn. 52 and 53, 139 n. 20, 143, 214, 242 CNN66, 84, 107, 143, 218 CNN67, 107 n. 54, 143, 218

index

CNN68, 236, 259 CNN69, 71, 107 and nn. 52 and 54, 108, 151 CNN70, 40, 107 and n. 52, 108, 112 n. 65, 151, 176, 230, 231 CNN71, 107 nn. 52 and 54, 151, 181-83, 252 n. 7 CNN72, 36, 107 and n. 52, 108, 146, 217, 231, 254 CNN73, 35, 107 nn. 52 and 53, 173, 211, 235, 251 n. 4 CNN74, 69, 107 nn. 52 and 53, 143, 162 CNN75, 35, 107 nn. 52 and 53, 147, 209, 212, 214, 232, 235, 255 CNN76, 106 n. 51, 143, 210, 213, 220 CNN77, 113, 176 n. 24, 259 CNN78, 68, 107 nn. 52 and 53, 142, 220, 242 CNN79, 36, 107 n. 52, 210, 214, 258 CNN80, 31 n. 27, 215, 258 CNN81, 39, 212, 234, 236, 259 CNN82, 105 n. 50, 145, 175, 209, 210, 212, 256, 258 CNN83, 209, 259 CNN84, 252 n. 7, 261 CNN85, 31 n. 27, 37, 105 n. 50, 184, 251 n. 4 CNN86, 31 n. 27, 105 n. 50, 144, 238, 259 CNN87, 31 n. 27, 68, 69, 71, 105 n. 50, 218, 240, 251 n. 4 CNN88, 31 n. 27, 105 n. 50, 175, 211 n. 45, 218, 241, 259 CNN89, 31 n. 27, 37 n. 55, 105 n. 50, 176 n. 26, 252 n. 7, 258 CNN90, 212, 261 CNN91, 31 n. 27, 105 n. 50, 175, 210, 260 CNN92, 31 n. 27, 105 n. 50, 175, 260 CNN93, 31 n. 27, 105 n. 50, 112 n. 63, 212, 213

CNN94, 36, 41 CNN95, 39, 105 n. 50, 143, 211, 212, 239 CNN96, 37 and n. 55, 40, 176 n. 26, 210, 212 CNN97, 105 n. 50, 145, 258 CNN98, 33 n. 40, 105 n. 50, 212, 217, 231, 233, 240, 260, 276, 285 CNN99, 31 n. 27, 33 and n. 40, 36, 38, 39, 68, 70, 92, 105 n. 50, 107 n. 52, 212, 213, 218, 219, 231, 237, 239, 260 CNN100, 33 and n. 40, 38 n. 60, 39 n. 66, 40, 92, 105 n. 50, 143, 233 Cocquerel, Antoine de, 118 and n. 78, 137-38 Coimbra, Beatrice of, 153 Cologne, 120 Commesuran, 103 n. 50, 105; see Croy, Philippe de Commynes, Philippe de, 74 Compiègne, 285 Conrard: see CNN26 Coudenberg palace, 151 Cour amoureuse, La, 161, 264, 265 Coustain, Jean, 281 Créquy, Jean V de, 105, 143, 222, 260, 261 n. 38, 269 n. 4, 278, 283 Crèvecoeur, Philippe de, Lord of Esquerdes, 74 Croniques et conquestes de Charlemaine, 236 Croy, Charles de, Prince of Chimay, 64 Croy, Antoine de, 161-62, 264 n. 54 Croy family, 145-46, 149, 161-62, 254, 257 and n. 21, 262 n. 43, 265 n. 55, 276 Croy, Philippe de, Lord of Quiévrain, 64, 105 n. 50, 146, 147, 150, 231, 236, 254, 258-59, 264, 270, 277 Croy, Philippe de, lord of Renty, 254

301

302

index

Damen, Mario, 252 n. 6 Dante Alighieri, 244 Dauphiné, 158, 159, 255 David, Pierre, 261, 269 n. 5, 271 and n. 13, 275 Debrie, René, 213 De Blieck, Edgar, 17, 92, 241, 244, 256 Decameron, The, 13, 19, 62, 63, 64, 81, 97 n. 43, 120, 136, 152, 172-73, 189-92, 196, 198, 207, 263-66, 279, 292, 293 Deceyte of Women, The, 119 Dees, Anthonij, 214, 215, 216, 219, 220, 226, 234 n. 16, 237 Den Haag: see Hague, The Deldique, Mathieu, 73 Delsaux, Olivier, 136 n. 3 Denise, Katherin (sic), 118 n. 83 Deschamps, Eustace, 209 n. 36, 214 n. 66, 216, 236 n. 23 Des Prez, Nicolas, 82, 93, 94, 95, 99, 106 n. 50, 109 n. 56, 110, 111, 116, 124-25 Devaux, Jean, 278 Devil, The, 36 De Vulgari Eloquentia, 244 Digoine, Chrestien de, Lord of Thianges, 259, 260 nn. 35 and 37, 268 n. 4, 273 Dijon, 30, 31 n. 27, 208, 252 n. 4 Douai, 221, 256 Doutrepont, Georges, 13, 286 Dubuis, Roger, 15, 188, 192, 225, 287 Ducal library, inventory of (1469), 19, 47, 54, 62, 63, 64, 65, 83, 141-43, 163, 167, 168, 251, 279 Ducal library, inventory of (1487), 64, 65 Dufournet, Jean, 288 Dunois Hours, The, 41 n. 69 Duval, Frédéric, 229

Edward IV, King of England, 149 Elias, Norbert, 293 Enghien, 76 Enghien, Jean d’, Lord of Kestergat, amman of Brussels, 31, 105 n. 50, 158, 238, 259, 260 n. 35, 272, 278, 283, 284 England, Kingdom of, 159, 207, 265 Épître d’Othéa, 27 n. 12, 28 n. 13 Estates general (1464), 146 Estrées, d’, family, 53 Estuer, Jean d’, Lord of La Barde, 148, 156-57, 160, 162, 230, 236, 238, 254, 273-74, 275 Étampes, Count of, 282 Eustace, Guillaume, 93, 95 n. 33, 97 Évangiles des quenouilles, 137, 153 n. 72, 285 Exposition sur vérité mal prise, 163 n. 108 Feast of the Pheasant, 256 n. 19, 277 Fein, David, 17, 136, 287 Ferrier, Janet, 189 Fiala, David, 274, 275 Fiennes, Monseigneur de: see Luxembourg, Thibaud de; Luxembourg, Jacques de Flanders, County of, 209, 221 Flutre, Louis-Ferdinand, 212, 213, 214, 217 FORS (Frequency offset Raman spectroscopy), 33 n. 42, 48 Fouché, Pierre, 208, 217, 218 Fouke Fitz Warin, 235 Fouquesolles, Jacques de, Lord of, 238, 262 and n. 45, 268 n. 4, 284 Fouquet, Jean, 55 Franc archier de Baignolet, Le, 240 France, Joanna of, 76 n. 43 Franche-Comté, 217 Froissart, Jean, 209, 216, 218, 235, 237

index

Gardin, Guillaume du, 143 n. 27 Gay (emperor’s seneschal), 113 Genappe, 16, 157 n. 85, 270 Genette, Gérard, 18, 167 Gent: see Ghent Gerard: See CNN26 Gerlier, Durand, 93, 94, 97 Ghent, 66, 255, 284 Gilles, Nicole, 81, 82, 117, 139 Golden Fleece, Order of the, 75 n. 42, 84, 146, 207, 283, 294 Gossen, Charles-Théodore, 204, 209, 210, 212, 213, 220 Gouwen, Gilliam van der, 120 Goyon, Alain, Lord of Villiers, 158-60, 276 n. 27 Gréban, Arnoul, 218 Greimas, Algirdas, 191 Grenet, Marie, 119 Grenet, René, 119 n. 83 Greub, Yan, 211 n. 45 Grevisse, Maurice, 243 Grove, Laurence, 109 Gueschart, 222 Guyenne, 148, 255, 264, 265 Hague, The, 66 Hainaut, County of, 143 n. 27, 206, 207, 210, 211 n. 45, 218, 220, 221, 254, 255, 257 and n. 21, 263 Haubourdin, Jean de, Bastard of Saint-Pol, 263 and n. 49, 284 Heale, Martin, 154 n. 74 Heidelberg, see: Palatine Library Hennecart, Jean, 47 Heptameron, The, 136 Hesdin, 222 Holland, County of, 254, 280 Hooghe, Romeyn de, 120 Huizinga, Johan, 14, 162, 251, 286, 287, 289 Humphreys, Harold Llewlyn, 230 Hunter, Sir William, 156

Igny, 154 n. 74 Île-de-France, 229 Isabella of Portugal, Duchess of Burgundy, 63, 137 n. 6, 150, 153, 161, 254 Jacob, Pierre-Louis: see Lacroix, Paul Janot, Denis, 96, 97, 100, 102, 110, 112, 115, 116, 117, 119, 131 Jardin de plaisance, 81 Jeay, Madeleine, 16, 168-69, 175, 284 n. 60 Jehannot, Jean, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 114, 127 Jensen, Frede, 239 John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, 63, 64, 294 Joinville, Jean de, 235 Joret line, the, 210, 211, 212, 213 Josephus, 56 Julii Landi, 119 Juvenal, 253 Katherine: See CNN26 Kestergat, Lord of: see Enghien, Jean d’ Koopmans, Jelle, 249, 251, 288 La Barde, Monseigneur de: see Estuer, Jean d’ Labère, Nelly, 16 Lacroix, Paul, 234 La Fontaine, Jean de, 286 La Guardia, David, 17 Lalaing inventories (1541, 1548), 66 n. 15 La Marche, Olivier de, 14, 57, 160, 203, 221, 268-69, 271-73, 277, 280-81; see Chevalier délibéré, Le Lambin: see Lanvin La Motte-aux-bois, 254 Lancaster, House of, 161, 265 n. 55 Lancelot, 56, 270

303

304

index

Lanly, André, 218 Lannoy, Guillebert II de, 31 n. 27, 261-62, 264, 268, 269, 275 Lannoy, Hue de, 261 Lannoy, Jean de, 145, 146, 149, 230, 252, 256, 258, 260 n. 35, 268 n. 4, 277 Lanson, Gustave, 15 Lanvin, Maistre Jehan, 235, 251 n. 4 Laon, 209 Laon, Philippe de, 105 n. 50; see Loan, Philippe de La Roche, Monseigneur de: see Pot, Philippe La Sale, Antoine de, 77, 145 n. 35, 154 and n. 75, 203, 221, 240, 243, 255, 256, 264 n. 54, 274, 275, 276, 279, 284-85, 286 Launoy, Monseigneur de, 105 n. 50 Lauvin: see Lanvin, Maistre Jehan Le Fèvre, Alardin: see Alardin Lefèvre, Sylvie, 147 n. 45, 276 Légende dorée, La, 92 Le Mans, 276 Le Noir, Michel, 95, 96, 97, 99, 101, 114, 126-27 Le Noir, Philippe, 95, 96, 97, 99, 100, 102, 115, 127-28 Le Petit Laurens, 93 n. 32 Le Quesnoy, 158, 260 n. 36, 262, 263, 284 Le Roux de Lincy, Antoine, 106 n. 51 Les Apologues et fables de Laurens Valle, 114 n. 68 Les Paraboles Maistre Alain, 114 n. 68 Le Tavernier, Jean, 47 Le Tourneur, Jean, 150-51 Le Voyer, Monseigneur de, 31 n. 27, 240, 251 n. 4 Liédet, Loyset, 47 Liège, 149 Lille, 27 n. 12, 55, 142, 206, 221, 222, 256 and n. 19

Livre des cent ballades, 264, 293 Livre des conquestes et faitz d’Alexandre: see Wauquelin, Jean Livre des ruraulx prouffitz: see Petrus de Crescentiis Livres de geste, 62 Loan, Philippe de, 105 n. 50, 143, 148, 162, 229, 233, 238, 239, 257, 259, 260 n. 35, 273 Lorraine, 215, 217, 220 Lorraine, René, Duke of, 150 Lotrian, Alain, 95, 96, 97, 99, 100, 102, 105 n. 50, 110, 112, 115, 116, 129, 131-32 Louis XI, Dauphin, King of France, 76 n. 43, 82, 84, 89, 90, 91, 92 n. 23, 118, 120, 145, 146, 148, 149, 154 n. 75, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 162, 253, 254, 255, 260, 263, 265, 267, 273, 275, 283 Louis XII, King of France, 51, 136, 137 Louis XIV, King of France, 64, 293 Loysen, Kathleen, 263-64 Luxembourg, Françoise de, 76, 153-55, 163 Luxembourg, Jacqueline de, 254 Luxembourg, Jacques de, Lord of Fiennes, 154 and n. 74, 255, 268 n. 4, 276, 283, 285 Luxembourg, Jacques de, Lord of Richebourg, 147 n. 45, 279, 285 Luxembourg, Jean de, Count of Ligny, 75 n. 42, 147, 155, 283, 285 Luxembourg-Ligny, House of, 61, 76, 257, 260, 265 n. 55, 276 n. 28, 282-87, 291 Luxembourg, Louis de, Count of Saint-Pol, 75, 77, 145 n. 35, 147, 148, 149, 153, 154, 155, 222, 253, 254, 255, 263, 267, 274, 279, 282, 283, 284, 285

index

Luxembourg, Marie de, 76, 153 n. 72 Luxembourg, Pierre I de, Count of Saint-Pol, 284 Luxembourg, Pierre II de, Count of Saint-Pol, 75, 76, 77, 78, 153, 154, 163 and n. 110, 255, 286, 292, 295 Luxembourg, Thibaud de, Lord of Fiennes, 154 and n. 74, 255, 268 n. 4, 276, 282, 283, 284, 285 Luxembourg, Waleran de, Count of Ligny and Saint-Pol, 70 Lyon, 93, 96, 101 n. 47, 110, 120, 139 Magdaleine, Robert de la: see Pele, Robert Mailly, Ferry de, Lord of Talmas, 147, 154, 232, 235, 255, 274, 285 Maine, 218 Maistre Pathelin, 240 Malory, Thomas, 58 Map, Walter, 143 Marchello-Nizia, Christiane, 205, 215, 216, 219, 222, 226, 229, 230, 232, 233, 235, 236, 239, 240 Margaret of Austria, regent of the Habsburg Netherlands, 64, 65, 119 Margaret of Navarre, 136, 286 Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, 149, 160 n. 100 Markgräflerland, 207 Martin, Jean, 106 n. 50, 142, 144, 242, 244-45, 261, 269 n. 5, 271, 272, 278 Martin, Robert, 226, 234, 235, 239, 242, 243, 244 Mary of Burgundy, 76 n. 43, 145 Mary of Hungary, 119 Mary, Virgin, The, 39 Master of Girart de Roussillon, 46 Master of the Gent Privileges, 46 Master of Jacques de Besançon, 73, 74, 75, 78

Master of Jean de Wavrin, 55, 56 Master of Robert Gaguin, 173 Master of the Cardinal of Bourbon, 173 Master of the Chronique scandaleuse, 173 Matheolus, 99 n. 43, 110, 116, 120 Maximilian of Habsburg, 76, 163 McGillivray, Robert, 205 Medea, 112 Ménard, Philippe, 239 Meriadec, Hervé de, 149, 238, 259, 261, 272, 276, 277 Messey, Claude de, 275 Miélot, Jean, 27 n. 12, 28 n. 13, 221, 222, 285, 292 Mirecamp, Ernoulet de, ‘dit Beaumont’, 261 n. 43 Molinet, Jean, 14, 278 Molinier, Auguste, 286 Mons, 255, 260 n. 36, 263 Monstrelet, Enguerran de, 285 Montbléru, Guillaume de, 150-51, 232, 260 n. 36, 274, 278 Montespedon, Jean de, ‘dit Houaste’, Lord of Beauvoir, 157-58, 159 Morat, Battle of, 75 n. 42 Moreuil, 138 Morte d’Arthur, Le, 58 Moselle, 219 MS Brussels, KBR 3576-77, 26 n. 6 MS Brussels, KBR 7235, 26 n. 6 MS Brussels, KBR 9392, 28 n. 13 MS Brussels, KBR 9423, 42 n. 73 MS Brussels, KBR 9631, 26 n. 6 MS Brussels, KBR 10.238, 26 n. 6 MS Brussels, KBR 10.387, 26 n. 6 MS Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum 88, 34 n. 44 MS Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum 105, 34 n. 44 MS Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum 109, 34 n. 44

305

306

index

MS Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum 159, 50 n. 93 MS Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Marlay Cutting It. 25, 50 nn. 93-94 MS Chantilly, Musée Condé 56, 41 n. 69 MS Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, Wo82, 49 n. 89 MS Glasgow, University Library, Hunter 252, 20, 25-59, 61-78, 83, 91, 101, 104, 105 and n. 50, 106 n. 51, 107, 108, 116, 139-40, 155, 167-86, 192-99, 203-23, 225-45, 251, 286, 289, 291-92, 295 MS Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek, Memb. 117, 75, 77 MS London, BL Harley 2846, 28 n. 17 MS London, BL Yates Thompson 3, 41 n. 69 MS London, Victoria & Albert Museum, L.475-1918, 43 n. 76 MS Madrid, Biblioteca nacional, Vit. 24-1, 57 n. 110 MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 214, 63 n. 4, 64 MS Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, 5070, 63 n. 4, 64, 67 n. 17 MS Paris, Bibliothèque mazarine 461, 73 n. 37, 74 and n. 39 MS Paris, BnF Fr. 113-16, 56 n. 109 MS Paris, BnF Fr. 247, 56 n. 107 MS Paris, BnF Fr. 707, 76 n. 43 MS Paris, BnF Fr. 1419, 76 n. 43 MS Paris, BnF Fr. 5719, 30 n. 25 MS Paris, BnF Fr. 6072, 30 n. 25 MS Paris, BnF Fr. 9342, 76 n. 43 MS Paris, BnF Lat. 1202, 34 n. 44 MS Paris, BnF Lat. 1366, 34 n. 45 MS Paris, BnF Lat. 4994, 34 n. 45 MS Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. Lat. 1989, 63 n. 4, 64, 67 n. 17

Mystère du viel testament, 234 Namur, County of, 214 Nancy, Battle of, 145, 150 Nevers, Jean of Burgundy, Count of, 157 Normandy, Duchy of, 29, 148, 159, 215, 218, 255, 265 Notre-Dame-du-Puys (Amiens), 137 Orchies, 256 Orléans, Charles d’, Count of Angoulême, 118 Ouy, Gilbert, 228 Ovid, 182 Palatine Library, Heidelberg, 64 Paris, 34, 36, 54, 58, 63, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 91, 93, 96, 99, 110, 118, 136 n. 3, 137, 139, 149, 159, 161, 167, 173, 223, 278, 291 Paris, Gaston, 187 Paris, University of, 96 nn. 37 and 38 Parlement of Paris, 138, 149 Pas-de-Calais, 210, 215, 221 Passion du Palatinus, La, 240 Pele, Robert, 274, 275 Perceforest, 62 Perche, 218 Petit Jehan de Saintré, 240, 243 Petit, Jean, 93, 95 n. 33, 97 Petrus de Crescentiis, 114 Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, 13, 16, 19, 34, 46, 47, 54, 55, 62, 64, 66, 67, 75, 84, 89, 90, 91, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 152, 154, 156, 157, 161, 163, 170, 187, 206, 207, 208, 221, 222, 230, 231, 232, 233, 242, 244, 245, 251, 253, 254, 256, 257, 260, 261, 263, 264, 265-66, 269, 270-71, 273, 275, 278, 279, 282, 284, 287, 288, 292, 293, 294, 295

index

Phyllis, 112 Picardy, 203-23, 229, 255, 257, 289 Pierdominici, Luca, 17 Pippe, Roland, 150-51, 275 Pizan, Christine de, 14, 27, 228; see also Épître d’Othéa Plaine, Humbert de, 150-51, 256 n. 18 Poirion, Daniel, 15 Poitiers, Aliénor de, 273 Poncelet, Jean du Poncel de, 31 n. 27, 231, 232, 238, 243, 244, 258, 260 nn. 35 and 27, 269 n. 5, 271 and n. 13, 275, 278, 281 Pont Notre-Dame, 82 n. 6 Ponthieu, County of, 222 Pope, Mildred, 213, 229 Pot, Guiot, 145, 155, 160 Pot, Philippe, Lord of La Roche, 106 n. 50, 144-45, 155, 159, 160, 203, 221, 229, 230, 231, 236, 237, 238, 239, 244, 252, 257, 260 n. 35, 264, 268 n. 4, 270-71, 276, 277, 293 Pot, Renier, 264 n. 54 Premierfait, Laurent de, 13, 162, 264, 266, 279, 294 Provence, County of, 159 Public Weal, War of the, 149 Queneau, Raymond, 284 n. 60 Quiévrain: see Croy, Philippe de Quinze joies de marriage, Les, 237, 253 Rasmussen, Jens, 15, 19, 188 Rasoir, Jean, 143 n. 27 Rawles, Stephen, 96 n. 38 Raynaud, Gaston, 147 n. 45 Ressons, Jean Le Fèvre de, 110 Rey-Flaud, Bernadette, 192, 194 Roger, Geoffrey, 17, 239, 240, 241 Roman de Jehan de Paris, 240 Roman du comte d’Artois, 234

Rome, 96 n. 40, 159 Roques, Gilles, 209 n. 36, 211 Roques, Mario, 227 Rossi, Luciano, 90, 120, 142 n. 27, 205, 223, 227 Rothelin, Monseigneur de: see Baden-Hachberg, Rudolf IV Rötteln, Marquis of: see BadenHachberg, Rudolf IV, Rouchi, 220 Rouen, 54, 57, 120 Roye, Guy de, 147 n. 45 Saint-Omer, 262 Saintonge, 207 Saint-Pol, Bastard of: see Haubourdin, Jean de Saint-Pol, Count of: see Luxembourg, Waleran de; Pierre I de; Louis de; Pierre II de Saint-Quentin, 209 Saint-Yon, Garnot de, 262 n. 46, 284 Saint-Yon, Philippe de, 158, 262, 263 Salle-le-comte, The, 278 Santilly, Monseigneur de, 31, 251 n. 4 Savoy, Jacques of, Lord of Romont Savoy, Mary of, 285 Schäffer, Otto, 89, n. 15 Scheurer, Rémy 81, 82 Schnerb, Bertrand, 147 n. 45 Schutz, A.H., 118 Scott, Sir Walter, 14, 156 Sercey, Guillaume de, 160 Soleil d’or (Paris), 90 n. 16 Solomon, 112 Somme (towns and region), 149, 221 Spiegel, Gabrielle, 17, 286 St Augustine, 143 Stavelot, Jean de, 218 Stimm, Helmut, 217 St John the Baptist, 99; confraternity of (Paris), 73 St Michael, 51, 52, 176

307

308

index

Stojkovic-Mazzariol, Emma, 241 Straub, Richard, 143 n. 27 Sweetser, Franklin, 15, 206, 208, 234 Swiss, The, 150 Sydrac, 82, 84, 87, 89 Talbot, John, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, 148 Tavernier, Jean le, 67 Terence, 97 Ternois, 209 Thalemas, Monseigneur de: see Mailly, Ferry de, Lord of Talmas Todorov, Tzvetan, 189-92, 196-97, 198 Toldo, Pietro, 187 Tomachevski, Boris 192 Touraine, 73 Tournai, 149 Trepperel family, 82, 95, 110, 118, 120 Trepperel, Jean (I), 95, 97, 99, 101, 114, 119, 125-26 Trepperel, Jean (II), 95, 97, 100, 102, 115, 129 Trepperel, Jeanne, 95 Trepperel, Widow, 95, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 114, 115, 117, 119, 127-28 Très riches heures of John, Duke of Berry, 41 Tristan, 92, 270 Troyes, 95 n. 33 USA, The, 287 Utenhoven, Clais van, 256 n. 18 Valenciennes, 260, 263, 278 Valenciennes, Herman de, 243 Vanwijnsberghe, Dominque, 63 Vashti, Queen, 112, 116 Vaughan, Richard, 16 Velissariou, Alexandra, 16, 96 n. 40

Vengence de Nostre Saulveur, 112 Vérard, Anthoine, 18, 28 n. 15, 57, 61, 68, 70, 81-93, 95, 96, 97, 99, 104, 105 n. 50, 106, 107, 110, 114 and n. 68, 117, 118, 119, 120, 123, 124, 135, 136, 138, 141, 142, 155, 162, 205, 208, 209, 210, 212, 217, 219, 220, 227, 234, 237, 242, 244, 251 and n. 4, 286, 291, 295 Vermandois, 145, 155, 214, 221 Verroken, Erik, 63 Vespasian, 113 Veyrin-Forrer, Jeanne, 117 Viard, Laurent, 119 Vie de Saint Alexis, 237 Vienna, 96 n. 40 Viet, Nora, 16 Vigneulles, Philippe de, 186 Vignier, Philippe de, 31 n. 27, 144 and n. 30, 238, 259, 260 n. 35, 269 n. 5, 271, 272 Vignier, Timoléon de, 31 n. 27, 144 n. 30 Villers-la-Faye, Jacques I, Lord of, 160 Villers-la-Faye, Jacques II, Lord of, 160 Villers-la-Faye, Jean II, Lord of, 160, 277 n. 31 Villiers, Jacques de, Lord of L’IsleAdam, 149, 155, 160-62, 238, 257-58, 260 nn. 35 and 37, 264, 268, 269, 276 n. 27, 277 n. 31 Villiers, Jean de, Lord of L’Isle-Adam, 160-61, 162 Villiers, Marie de, 155 Villiers, Monseigneur de, 105 n. 50, 158-62, 276 n. 27; see Villiers, Jacques de, lord of L’Isle-Adam; Villers-la-Faye, Jacques I of; Jacques II of; Jean II of; Goyon, Alain, Lord of Villiers Villon, François, 149, 161

index

Vingle, Jean de, 110 n. 58 Vosges, 220 Vrelant, Willem, 47 Warwick, Earl of, 257 Washington, USA, 96 n. 40 Watten, church of, 262 n. 47 Watten, Provost of: see Baers, Michel Wauquelin, Jean, 14, 75 Wavrin, Jean de, 55; see also Master of Jean de Wavrin Wavrin, Waleran de, 221, 234, 236, 259 and n. 34, 260 and n. 35, 268 n. 4

Wilmet, Marc, 226, 234, 235, 239, 242, 243, 244 Woodville family, 265 n. 55 Worde, Wynkyn de, 58 World War 2, 288 Woutre, 65 Wright, Thomas, 156 York, House of, 161, 265 n. 55 Zehnder, Raphaël, 17 Zumthor, Paul, 15

309