Miraculous Rhymes: The Writing of Gautier de Coinci 1843841266, 9781843841265

Table of contents :
Preface vii
Abbreviations ix
PART I: The Writer and his Writing
Introduction 3
1. The Design of the ‘grant livre’ 21
2. Bookends 49
PART II: The Web of Words
3. Gautier and Music 75
4. The Play of Words 123
5. ‘Compasser les rimes’ 161
6. Conclusion 187
Bibliography 203
Index of Rhetorical Terms 209
General Index 21

Citation preview

Gallica Volume 8

MIRACULOUS RHYMES THE WRITING OF GAUTIER DE COINCI

The well-connected, northern-French monk and musician Gautier de Coinci (1177/8–1236) occupies an unassailable position as one of the most exceptional vernacular writers of the Middle Ages, concerning whom there is nevertheless no full length study in English. In a meticulously planned and supervised collection of miracles of Our Lady, which survives in a remarkable number of manuscripts, some beautifully illustrated, Gautier deploys his outstanding talents as a composer of songs, an acerbic satirist, an audacious inventor of rich and equivocal rhymes (of a virtuosity unparalleled before the ‘Grands Rhetoriqueurs’ on the eve of the Renaissance), a confident lexical innovator, an exuberant exponent of rhetorical wordplay, an incisive observer of contemporary society, and a man of profound personal piety. This study of word-patterning in Gautier seeks to compensate for the dearth of stylistic studies of Old French and to examine in detail the relationship between rhetoric and religion, courtoisie and Mariolatry, aristocratic tastes and the way to spiritual renewal. Gautier’s writing strategy is shown to be a means to rise beyond secular, aristocratic values by building on them and transcending them rather than opposing and rejecting them. Tony Hunt is a Fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford.

Gallica ISSN 1749–091X General Editor: Sarah Kay

Gallica aims to provide a forum for the best current work in medieval French studies. Literary studies are particularly welcome and preference is given to works written in English, although publication in French is not excluded. Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to the editor, or to the publisher, at the addresses given below; all submissions receive prompt and informed consideration. Professor Sarah Kay, Department of French and Italian, Princeton University, 303 East Pyne, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA The Managing Editor, Gallica, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK Already Published 1. Postcolonial Fictions in the Roman de Perceforest: Cultural Identities and Hybridities, Sylvia Huot 2. A Discourse for the Holy Grail in Old French Romance, Ben Ramm 3. Fashion in Medieval France, Sarah-Grace Heller 4. Christine de Pizan’s Changing Opinion: A Quest for Certainty in the Midst of Chaos, Douglas Kelly 5. Cultural Performances in Medieval France: Essays in Honor of Nancy Freeman Regalado, eds Eglal Doss-Quinby, Roberta L. Krueger, E. Jane Burns 6. The Medieval Warrior Aristocracy: Gifts, Violence, Performance, and the Sacred, Andrew Cowell 7. Logic and Humour in the Fabliaux: An Essay in Applied Narratology, Roy J. Pearcy

MIRACULOUS RHYMES THE WRITING OF GAUTIER DE COINCI

Tony Hunt

D. S. BREWER

© Tony Hunt 2007 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Tony Hunt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2007 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 978 1 84384 126 5

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library This publication is printed on acid-free paper Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster Printed in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn

Contents Preface

vii

Abbreviations

ix

PART I: The Writer and his Writing Introduction

3

1. The Design of the ‘grant livre’

21

2. Bookends

49

PART II: The Web of Words 3. Gautier and Music

75

4. The Play of Words

123

5. ‘Compasser les rimes’

161

6. Conclusion

187

Bibliography

203

Index of Rhetorical Terms

209

General Index

211

Preface In an attempt to appeal to two audiences, a broadly based one of medievalists and a more specialised group of Old French scholars, I have divided the following study into two parts. The first half offers a general presentation of Gautier and an overall survey of the Miracles de Nostre Dame. In the belief that this may be of interest to general readers and medievalists with no specialisation in French I have translated all extended quotations from the Old French and paraphrased short quotations. The second part of the book is much the more technical, dealing with wordplay of such precision and subtlety that translation would have done nothing but obscure it, besides greatly lengthening the chapters. In recognition, however, that Gautier’s lexis is often individualistic, not to say recondite, I have supplied marginal glosses where I judged them to be helpful. I would like to thank the Publisher’s reader for valuable and encouraging observations. Note: References to Gautier’s miracle stories follow the pattern established by his principal editor, V. F. Koenig, with slight modifications: the initial number (1 or 2) indicates Books 1 and 2 of the Miracles. The following abbreviations identify the individual items: Pr = Prologue; Mir = Miracle (including 2 Mir 9 ‘L’Empeeris qui garda sa chastee contre mout de temptations’); Ch = Chanson; Chast = 2 Chast 10 ‘Des nonains de Nostre Dame de Soissons’; Ep = Epilogue; Dout 34 = ‘De la misere d’omme et de fame et de la doutance qu’on doit avoir de morir’; Sal = ‘Les salus Nostre Dame’; 2 Prière 37, 38 = ‘C’est une oroison a Nostre Dame’; 2 Prière 39 = ‘Les cinc joies de Nostre Dame’; 2 Prière 42 = ‘Galterus ad Dominum’.

Abbreviations Ann. Ac. Sc. Fenn. Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae ANRT Atelier national de reproduction des thèses ANTS Anglo-Norman Text Society CCM Cahiers de civilisation médiévale CFMA Classiques français du moyen âge CUERMA Centre universitaire d’études et de recherches médiévales d’Aix FS French Studies HLF Histoire littéraire de la France MA Le Moyen Âge MAe Medium Aevum MLQ Modern Language Quarterly NM Neuphilologische Mitteilungen PL Patrologia Latina PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America PRIS-MA Bulletin de liaison de l’ERLIMA, Université de Poitiers RPh Romance Philology Société des anciens textes français SATF SISMEL Società internazionale per lo studio del Medioevo TEXT An Interdisciplinary Annual of Textual Studies TLF Textes littéraires français Z.f.rom.Phil Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie ZFSL Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur

PART I

The Writer and his Writing

Introduction This is the first study in English to be devoted to one of the most remarkable writers of medieval France, indeed of the whole Middle Ages, who, despite his exceptional talents and pronounced personal traits, has been woefully neglected for half a century, with no appraisal of his work as a whole. Few medieval writers showed a more single-minded devotion to the Virgin Mary than the northern-French Benedictine monk Gautier de Coinci, whose two books of Marian miracles contain 58 narratives, 18 chansons and total approximately 35,500 octosyllabic lines, an astonishingly generous sample of literary Old French which qualitatively puts him on a par with the output of so celebrated a writer as Chrétien de Troyes, and quantitatively exceeds the entire medieval production of fabliaux, or of the Roman de Renart in its fullest extent. Scarcely less notable is the fact that no writers before the ‘Grands Rhétoriqueurs’, writing in the age of Louis XI, Charles VIII and Louis XII, showed such exuberant commitment to the figurae verborum of medieval rhetoric and such carefully, sometimes astringently, planned application of sophisticated wordplay

  Cf. G. Gros, Martial d’Auvergne et les ‘Matines de la Vierge’: étude sur les formes de la dévotion mariale au temps de Louis XI, Annales littéraires de l’Université de Besançon, Littéraires 1 (Paris, 1994) and id., Le Poète, la Vierge et le Prince: étude sur la poésie mariale en milieu de cour aux XIVe et XVe siècles (Saint-Etienne, 1994); H. Becker, Die Auffassung der Jungfrau Maria in der altfranzösischen Litteratur (Göttingen, 1905); H. P. J. M. Ahsmann, Le Culte de la sainte Vierge et la littérature française profane du moyen âge (UtrechtNimègue/Paris, 1930); Sister M. V. Gripkey, The Blessed Virgin Mary as Mediatrix in the Latin and Old French Legend prior to the Fourteenth Century (Washington, DC, 1938); P. V. Bétérous, Les Collections de miracles de la Vierge en gallo et ibéro-roman au XIIIe siècle, Marian Library Studies N.S. 15–16 (Dayton, Ohio, 1983–4), eadem, ‘Quelques aspects de la piété populaire au XIIIe siècle à travers les miracles mariaux’, in La Piété populaire au moyen âge. Actes du 99e Congrès National des Sociétés Savantes, Besançon 1974, Section de philologie et d’histoire jusqu’à 1610 t. 1 (Paris, 1977), pp. 283–91; D. Colombani, ‘Savoir prier Notre-Dame, à l’exemple de Gautier de Coinci’, in M. François (ed.), Le Livre des miracles de Notre Dame de Rocamadour. 2e Colloque de Rocamadour 1972 (Rocamadour, 1973), pp. 95–115; D. Iogna-Prat, E. Palazzo, D. Russo (eds), Marie: le culte de la Vierge dans la société médiévale (Paris, 1996).   I have dealt with a single exception in ‘Wordplay before the Rhétoriqueurs’, in K. Busby, B. Guidot and L. E. Whalen (eds), ‘De sens rassis’. Essays in Honour of Rupert T. Pickens (Amsterdam/New York, 2005), pp. 283–96, where I examine a poem attributed to Walter of Bibbesworth from the fourteenth century.



TONY HUNT

to devotional themes. Beyond that, few medieval verse-writers matched Gautier in the inventiveness and richness of his rhymes, though, here again, scarcely any attention has been paid to this aspect of his writing. Another attraction is that Gautier is a rare example of the author as originator and architect of the unified book, carefully planned and executed according to his direction. The Miracles are ‘en devenir’, subject to a continual process of authorial revision, both piecemeal and as a totality, of quite fascinating complexity, as M. Okubo has recently shown in his meticulously detailed investigation of the genesis of the collection. There are few comparable cases in which the textual transmission of a work reveals quite so much about the author’s purpose and the working of his mind. The survival of his work, in part or whole, in 114 manuscripts (17 of which transmit the complete Miracles), with 61 deriving from the thirteenth century, cannot fail to impress, for its extent is exceeded only by the celebrated Roman de la Rose. In addition to questions of style and structure, there are also pictorial and musical dimensions to this imposing and inclusive artistic monument. Gautier was a composer who included chansons to be sung in his testament to Our Lady (see Chapter 3 below), which also became the repository for artistic illustration and decoration of the highest order, including the beautiful MS BNF f.fr. 22928 (MS L) whose illuminations display the influence of the school of Master Honoré. Yet Gautier’s distinction is not simply that of a literary artist with superabundant talents and exhilarating verbal skills. His miracle narratives might with some justification be regarded as ‘petits sermons en vers’, and though medieval sermons are often approached with a lack of enthusiasm, they

  See G. Gros, Le Poète marial et l’art graphique: étude sur les jeux de lettres dans les poèmes pieux du moyen âge (Caen, 1993).   Another example would be Adenet le Roi, see n. 42.   M. Okubo, ‘La Formation de la collection des Miracles de Gautier de Coinci’, Romania 123 (2005), 141–212 and 406–58.   The earliest manuscript (Paris, BNF fr. 2163) was written a mere thirty years after Gautier’s death by a monk, Guillaume de Morigny, in 1266. Vatican City, BAV, Pal. lat. 1969 is almost complete but lacks the prologue to Book 1 and the following chansons plus a small number of individual items, see K. Christ, Die altfranzösischen Handschriften der Palatina (Leipzig, 1916), pp. 66–70.   It is possible that the MS was executed at Soissons at the end of the thirteenth century, as may also be the case with the St Petersburg MS (R), probably from the same atelier, which shares a very similar iconographic programme. For R see I. P. Mokretsova and V. L. Romanova, Les manuscrits enluminés français du XIIIe siècle dans les collections soviétiques 1270–1300 (Moscou, 1984), pp. 102–47 (both black-and-white and colour reproductions). T. Voronova and A. Sterligov, Manuscrits enluminés occidentaux, VIIIe-XVIe siècles (Bournemouth/St Petersburg, 1996), p. 67, date the manuscript too early (1260–70). The miniatures in LR are related to those of N (BNF fr. 25532), which seems to have been copied at Saint-Médard and offers an extremely reliable text. The illustrations in the authoritative ‘Soissons MS’ (MS S, BNF nouv. acq. fr. 24541) are dealt with by H. Focillon in Le Peintre des Miracles de Notre Dame (Paris, 1950). See also C. Lapostolle, ‘Images et Apparitions: Illustrations des “Miracles de Nostre Dame”’, Médiévales 2 (1982), 47–67.



INTRODUCTION



frequently furnish allusions to contemporary life which make them intriguing and valuable mirrors of the society in which their author lived and of his relationship with it. In this respect Gautier’s miracle tales represent significant contributions to the study of the world he inhabited, for they are firmly located, as his many autobiographical details and local allusions make clear, in the Soissonnais of the first half of the thirteenth century. Indeed, Gautier’s own life and activities are so well documented in his works that we can summarize them with some confidence and easily persuade ourselves that he is a fleshand-blood character, not a shadow: Gautier de Coinci takes his name (1 Pr 1 329), in all probability, from the village of Coincy-L’Abbaye, south of Soissons, in the canton of La Fère-enTardenois, arrondissement of Château-Thierry, where he was born in 1177 or 1178. It was at Soissons, and the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Médard  (home to many sons of the wealthy), that he spent the years 1193–1214, receiving at the school there a thorough education in letters and in music. He then, at the age of thirty-seven, became Prior at Vic-sur-Aisne, a village near Soissons, where his uncle, a powerful lord, had been Prior before him, and where he himself appreciated peace and freedom from intrigue (1 Mir 11 2110ff ) and hence, inspired by the relics of Saint Leocadia in his charge,10 initiated his great poetic enterprise, the redaction of the two books of his Miracles de Nostre Dame. In 1233, the Miracles essentially completed, though perhaps not in their intended final form, he became, again like his uncle Gui (1 Mir 11 1979), Grand Prior of the Church of Saint-Médard at Soissons where he remained till his death in 1236 at the age of fifty-nine. Saint-Médard may well have become a centre of the diffusion of different redactions of the Miracles. In his various capacities Gautier must have been a busy man with limited leisure for writing, especially since he was a migraine sufferer, as he laments when declaring himself obliged to pause and take a break before resuming his efforts and starting Book 2 (see 1 Mir 44 857ff, added to Book 1 between 1220 and 1223; 1 Mir 11 2301ff, at the end of the Ildefonsus miracle; and 2 Pr 42–3). He concludes Book 2 with the regret that he will be unable to provide a Book 3, declaring (2 Ep 33 60): ‘Et nepourquant, se tres bien dure / La teste eüsse et bien delivre, / Encor fesisse le tiers livre; / Mais dongereuse l’ai et tendre, / Pour ce n’i veil or plus entendre’ 11 (see also 2 Ep 33 159–60). Historical sources confirm a sustained family connection with SaintMédard. In addition, Gautier was well connected by friendship. He refers appreciatively (1 Mir 11 1994; 1 Mir 44 621) to the Abbot of Saint-Médard,   The notation of prologues, epilogues, chansons and miracle narratives follows that employed by V. F. Koenig in his four-volume edition, see Preface above.   Bishop of Noyon and Tournai who died c. 560. 10  See A. Moreau-Néret, ‘Le Culte de sainte Léocadie en France et notamment dans le Soissonnais’, Bulletin philologique et historique année 1969, Actes du 94e Congrès national des sociétés savantes tenu à Pau t. 1 (Paris, 1972) [pp. 317–27], 321–23. 11  ‘Yet, if only I’d had a strong, clear head, I’d have written the third book; but I’ve a weak, sore head, so I shan’t think about it.’



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Milon de Basoches, who had been Abbot of Marchiennes, of Tournai and of Saint-Rémi at Rheims, and he dedicated ‘De la chastee as nonains’ to the Abbess of Notre Dame de Soissons, Béatrix de Cherisy (1216–36) (2 Chast 10 25), as well as sending his greetings (2 Chast 10 44ff ) to the Abbess of Fontevrault-L’Abbaye (1217–28) called Berthe. Gautier also shows warm affection for Robert de Dive, Prior of Saint-Blaise at Noyon (2 Ep 33 67, 108), a successor of Raoul (1 Mir 44 661) to the abbacy of Saint-Eloi at Noyon, who was an enthusiastic reader of Gautier’s Marian poetry. Indeed, completed sections of the poetry were promptly dispatched to him for copying and illumination and it may be that Robert was responsible for the marginal glosses found in certain manuscripts.12 Lay intimates of Gautier included (2 Mir 24 662) Raoul III of Nesle, Count of Soissons and his third wife, Ade de Grantpré (2 Mir 22 15; Ep 33 133), the Count being a practical informant on local events as witnessed by his father Yves de Nesle (see 2 Mir 24 664), and the Countess being the instigator of Gautier’s writing up of some of the events (2 Mir 22 15–16). Another aristocratic woman with whom Gautier was on cordial terms was Marguerite d’Avesnes, Countess of Blois (2 Ep 33 132). Other figures, anonymous, include an elderly nun (2 Mir 24 659) who had been an eyewitness of one of the miracles attributed to the ‘saint soulier’, preserved in the Abbey of Notre Dame at Soissons, whilst Gautier himself was a participant in one of the miraculous events he describes (1 Mir 44 esp. 425–7). More remotely, there are references to a number of contemporary figures: Aloysius (or Alvise?), Bishop of Arras (2 Mir 27 180, 482); Baudouin I, Count of Hainaut and Flanders (2 Mir 12 29, 32, 39) and his would-be substitute, the hermit Bertran (2 Mir 12 38); Bishop Barthélemy of Laon (2 Mir 17 201); and Mathilda I (2 Mir 23 122; 2 Mir 24 4, 476), Abbess of the monastery of Notre-Dame-de-Soissons in the twelfth century. Local topographical allusions include, in the story of Gondree of Audignicort (2 Mir 24) – a village north-west of Soissons – the abbey of St Crespin on the Aisne (165), the cathedral of Saint-Gervais-et-Protais (later Notre Dame) at Soissons (160), the priories of Saint-Léger and Saint-Jeandes-Vignes, both at Soissons (164 and 165). There are references to Couvrelle, a locality of Soissons (2 Mir 29 777); Erbout, on the outskirts of Vic-surAisne (1 Mir 44 649); Fontenoy (2 Mir 22 34), a village on the Aisne west of Soissons; Pont d’Arcy (1 Mir 36 286), a village on the Aisne east of Soissons; Gonfrécourt i.e. Confrécourt (2 Mir 22 33), to the north-west of Soissons; Longpont, a village south-east of Soissons and the site of a Cistercian abbey with links to Raoul III, Count of Soissons, and his wife Ade (1 Mir 11 499, 1 Mir 37 738); Laon (see 2 Mir 14 1ff, esp. 2 Mir 26); Vaux (2 Mir 22, 28, 33, 40), a village to the west of Soissons; and Villeneuve (-Saint-Germain) (2 Ep 33, 145), an eastern suburb of Soissons.

Gautier was thus a man with a great number of local contacts who knew the region round Soissons well. He names himself ‘Gautier de Coinsi’ in the First 12  See V. Väänänen, Gloses marginales des Miracles de Gautier de Coinci, Ann. Acad. Sc. Fenn., B 53, ii (Helsinki, 1945), p. 8.



INTRODUCTION



Prologue to Book 1 (329),13 and later as ‘li prieuz de Vi, danz Gautiers’ (2 Chast 10 63) and simply ‘Gautiers’ (2 Dout 34 1). There is a reference in 1 Mir 11 2240 to his hagiographical work, the Vie de sainte Cristine, (‘Prent avec toi sainte Cristine, / Dont rimoiai l’autr’an l’istoire’).14 He is equally explicit about his Latin sources,15 which included a manuscript, now lost, from the library of Saint-Médard. He was able to draw on accounts by Hugues Farsit (Hugo Farsitus),16 a regular canon of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes at Soissons, about cures effected in 1140 at the time of the ‘mal des ardents’ epidemic in the Abbey of Notre Dame at Soissons,17 where a manuscript copy was held, and also accounts of miracles concerning Notre Dame de Laon, by Herman de Tournai,18 which Gautier claims to have consulted at ‘Chievi’ near Laon.19 He also had the advantage of word-of-mouth transmission from eyewitnesses 20 and of ‘uns livres grans’ about the miracles at Soissons.21 Throughout his work Gautier maintains a lively and attentive relationship with his audience, whom he addresses on almost one hundred occasions, and which is sometimes specified as a female one. This is the case in ‘Des Nonains

13  The rubric at the head of Book 1 refers to ‘Gautiers, prieus de Vi, moines de saint Mart’. See also 1 Mir 44 4 ‘prïeus de Vi’, 2 Sal 35 664 ‘tes prïus de Vi’, 2 Prière 37 ‘oracio domini Galteri prioris de Vi ad piissimam Dei matrem’, 2 Prière 42 ‘Item Gautier a Nostre Seigneur’, and 2 Ch 36 92 ‘Sa chançon ci finee li prïeus de Vi a’. 14  This work, of some 3792 alexandrines, occurs in only one manuscript (s.xv) of the Miracles, and in one other manuscript (Carpentras = M). See O. Collet (ed.), Gautier de Coinci, La Vie de Sainte Cristine, TLF 510 (Genève, 1999), M. Okubo, ‘A propos de la Vie de Sainte Christine de Gautier de Coinci’, Romania 121 (2003), 248–64, and E. PintoMathieu, ‘La Vie de sainte Cristine de Gautier de Coinci ou la langue de l’esprit’, in eadem (ed.), Les représentations littéraires de la sainteté du Moyen Age à nos jours (Paris, 2006), pp. 13–24. 15  They are discussed by A. Mussafia, ‘Über die von Gautier de Coinci benützten Quellen’, Denkschr. der Kaiserl. Akad. der Wiss. zu Wien, Phil.-Hist. Kl. 44,i (1896), pp. 1–58. 16  See 2 Mir 22 153; 2 Mir 24 16; 2 Mir 25 477; 2 Dout 34 2368. 17  Libellus de miraculis Beatae Mariae Virginis in urbe Suessionensi, PL 179, 1778– 1800. Cf. the anonymous, Soissonnais author of the Plantaire, ed. M. A. Savoie (Washington, DC, 1933), p. 48 ll. 99–104: ‘Est il ne pais ne contree / ou ne soit Marie nommee? / A Soissons, la gent valee, / Molt est sa vertu esprouvee. / Le fer d’enfer i a restraint / Et miracles i a fait maint.’ 18  De miraculis Sanctae Mariae Laudunensis, PL 156, 962–1018. See 2 Mir 17 where he reports that so many miracles were worked at Laon ‘C’un mout biau livre en escrist on / Au tanz l’evesque Bertemil. / Treize anz tout droit et cent et mil / Lors eut en l’Incarnatïon’ (200–3). See also G. Niemeyer, ‘Die Miracula S. Mariae Laudunensis des Abtes Hermann von Tournai: Verfasser und Entstehungszeit’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 27 (1971), 136–63. 19  I.e. Chivy-lès-Etouvelles (2 Mir 26 27f, cf. 203). 20  1 Mir 11 2061 ‘Encore vivent cil qui me dirent / Que leur pere les larrons virent / Qui la [sc. the statue of Our Lady] ravirent et emblerent’. 21  1 Mir 11 1846, 1864, 1867. For other references to first-hand knowledge cf. 2 Mir 30 572f, 609ff, 651ff.



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de Nostre Dame de Soissons’ (2 Chast 10),22 which begins with a flowery captatio benevolentiae expressing Gautier’s ardent desire to send to the sister and ladies of Notre Dame a dish of fishes caught in the Aisne at Vic, not served up to them on a board, but presented in the pages of a fine book which makes better ‘pages’ than a messenger or courier: Ici me prent, ici m’aard Granz volentez, par saint Maard, Qu’a mes dames que mout ai chieres, As damoyseles, as cloistrieres De Nostre Dame de Soissons, Envoy un mes de tes poissons Com j’ai peschié a Vi seur Aisne. Par un garçon sour un ais ne Lor tramet je pas cest present, Ainz lor envoy, ainz lor present Par cest biau livre et par ces pages, Qui parleront plus bel q’uns pages, C’unz troteapié ne c’unz corliuz. (2 Chast 10 1–13)

Gautier cleverly plays on the double meanings of page ‘page’ and ‘pageboy’, mes ‘dish’ and ‘messenger’, and poisson ‘fish’ and ‘something of importance’, whilst rhyming the river Aisne with the fish-bearing board ais (ne (from which the fish were probably hung) in a strong enjambement (ll. 8–9) and producing a series of rimes équivoques or punning rhymes based on homonyms. The word for messenger, troteapié, is a hapax paired with the perfectly common corliu (‘runner’). The nuns are recommended to read the story of the Empress, not forgetting the queue or ‘tail’ (19), that is, Gautier’s own elaboration of a chosen aspect of the miracle’s significance.23 There is a neat envoi (a short concluding stanza addressing the poem to a prince or distinguished personage) whereby the author dispatches his work in the manner of the courtly lyric poets: Livres, va t’en isnelement, Salue moy mout doucement 22  ‘Des nonains de Nostre Dame de Soissons’ (2 Chast 10) looks back to ‘De l’empeeris qui garda sa chastee contre mout de temptations’ (‘L’empereris de grant bonté / Dont ci devant vos ai conté’ [83–4]), addressing those women who, following the injunction in the Gospels (Matthew 19:29 and Luke 14:26) ‘Guerpi avez peres et meres, / Parenz, amis, sereurs et freres, / Et copees vos treces blondes ...’ (2 Chast 10 137–9; cf. 2 Mir 9 3642 and 2 Chast 10 734–5). They are described as ‘vos damoyseles, / Vos cloistrieres, vos jovenceles’ (439– 40), ‘vos cloistrieres, vos damoyseles, / Vos josnes touses, vos puceles’ (731–2), ‘Vous jouvenceles et vos touses’ (855), ‘Vous cloistrieres, vos jovenceles’ (901). Women are also addressed in 1 Mir 11 2090 ‘Dames, dames ...’. The audience is addressed as ‘seignor’ in 1 Mir 40 262 and 1 Mir 42 252. 23  See 2 Mir 28 226, 237, 239, and below pp. 29ff.



INTRODUCTION



L’abbeesse de Nostre Dame Qui mout est certes douce fame. Les damoiseles, les cloistrieres Salue moi, quant en cloitre ieres. (2 Chast 10 23–8) [Off with you, book, convey my kind greetings to the dear Abbess, to the ladies of the cloister, when you’re there.]

The abbess in question is Béatrix de Chérisy (1216–36) to whom is joined (45) the Abbess of Fontevrault (Berthe, 1217–28). The play on poissons is continued in the author’s identification of himself: Entendez la page 24 presente Que vos tramet, que vos presente Li prïeuz de Vi, danz Gautiers. Vos orisons et vos sautiers, Voz doz ave, voz doz salus Desire plus que bars ne lus. (2 Chast 10 61–6) [Attend to the page which Dom Gautier, the prior of Vic, sends you; I much prefer your prayers, your psalters, Aves, and salutations, to bass and pike.]

Elsewhere Gautier apologizes to the female members of his audience, bidding them not to be displeased by his treatment of ‘painted ladies’, that is, he apologizes to the ‘fragrant’ for those who are ‘flagrant’, playing on the phonetic similarity of blasme and basme: Por Dieu, por Dieu, vos bonnes dames, Ne vos griet pas se foles fames Un petit ai ici blasmees. Vos bonnes dames enbasmees Estes de basme et de toz biens. (1 Mir 42 523–7)

Whether he is addressing men or women, however, Gautier draws attention to the linguistic divide which may separate audiences.25 Any monk should delight in treating ‘et en roumains et en latin’ (2 Mir Pr 1 122 and 320) the praise of Our Lady. Gautier again refers to the use of the two languages in the miracle of Our Lady of Sardenai: 24 

Cf. 2 Chast 9 1146 ‘Li sages clers dit en sa page ...’. In 1 Mir 23 54 Gautier recommends ‘a toz lettrés’ that they read daily the five psalms which the dead monk had linked to the letters of the name MARIA. 25 

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En latin est en mout de leuz. Et en latin est bialz et genz, Mais pour ce que toutes les genz N’entendent pas tres bien la lettre, Ici le veil en romans mettre. (2 Mir 30 10–14) 26 [In many places it is in Latin, fine and elegant, but since not everybody understands Latin, I have undertaken here to translate it into the vernacular.]

and to the Latin of his source, which he will relate by putting it into the romance vernacular: Un bel miracle weil retraire Et en rommans de latin traire. (2 Mir 9 21–2)

He is stuck, though, when he comes to the ‘Christikerka’ (Christchurch) of his source, plumping for ‘Cristilierça’ (k misread as li?), hoping not to be asked the vernacular name, since he has no familiarity with Insular French, ‘for I was not reared by a nurse from England’: Une vile de grant renon, Mais en roumanz n’en sai le non – Et nus ne le me doit requerre, Car bien saichiez qu’en Engleterre Ne fu pas nee ma norrice. (2 Mir 16 23–7)

He draws his audience’s attention to the task he is performing aloud for them, but which is recorded in a ‘folio’ or manuscript page: Or entendez qu’a en cest fuel: D’or en avant venir vos veil A ce pour quoy je commençai; Ce myracle n’enroumençai Se pour ce non que ja orez. (2 Mir 17 1–5)

[cf. 2 Mir 32 67]

[Attend to what this folio contains. From this point on I will come to my reason for beginning. I put this miracle into French for the reason you will now hear.]

26 

Cf. 2 Mir 24 656f.



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The structural division of the Miracles into two books, and the absence of a third, are explained by Gautier’s martyrdom to migraines. The ending of Book 1, with the tale of Saint Leocadia, is clearly marked by a reference to ­debilitating headaches: Cis premiers livres ci define  ... Ici m’alainne viel repenre Et mon las chief, que mout ai tenre, Un petit ci recrïerai Et puis aprés recrïerai Et redirai encor avant. De ce m’aatis bien et vant, Quant reposez serai un peu, Que remetrai les fers ou feu. (1 Mir 44 847, 857–64) [This is the end of the first book ... Here I pause for breath, and to refresh my weary and sore head, and then I’ll proceed. I can confidently say that when I’ve had a little rest, I will put the irons back in the fire.]

This can be compared with Gautier’s statement at the end of the Prologue to Book 2: Leü en ai tant que ma teste Bien me tesmoigne et bien m’ateste Que toz sui vains et toz lassez, Mais j’ere ja toz repassez S’un petitet chanter, par m’ame, Puis des doz chans la douce dame. (2 Pr 1 387–92) [I’ve done so much reading that I am light-headed and weary, but I shall make a quick recovery, upon my soul, if I can sing sweet songs of our sweet Lady.]

And at the end of the Book: Et nepourquant, se tres bien dure La teste eüsse et bien delivre, Encor fesisse le tiers livre; Mais dongereuse l’ai et tendre, Pour ce n’i veil or plus entendre, Qui que m’en tiengne a sot n’a saive. (2 Ep 33 60–5) [Yet, if I only I’d had a strong, clear head, I’d have composed the third book, but I’ve a weak, sore head, and shan’t think about it, whether I’m considered to be foolish or wise.]

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A special group of miracles is demarcated within Book 2. The ‘Soissons miracles’ begin at 2 Mir 22, where Gautier explains that he had earlier omitted them, but on rereading them in the ‘grant livre’ wishes to treat of the best of them in deference to Countess Ade of Soissons. In 2 Mir 24 he declares: Ançois que fors dou livre issonz Des Myracles qui a Soissonz Avinrent si grans et si haut Au tanz l’abbeesse Mahaut, Encor deus biax vos retrairons Et puis as autres noz trairons. (1–6) [Before we exit from the book of those great and lofty miracles which occurred in the time of the abbess Matilda, we will relate to you a further two fine ones and then turn to the others.]

The miracles belong to a particular period and they were so numerous that from them was composed a fine chronicle, splendid accounts and great reading matter (2 Mir 25 454 ‘Que faite en fu mout bele ystoyre, / Mout bialz traitiez et mout bialz lires’), so that Gautier simply emphasizes the difficulty of choice they posed. He wishes to commemorate the cures of the ‘ardant fu’ (‘le feu des ardents’, erysipelas or ergotism?): Se je des anz selonc la letre Faire vos veil narracïon, Lors eut en l’incarnacïon Trente et un an et cent et mil. Cel an meïsme, ce dit cil Qui cest escrit apropria, Pappe Innocens si dedia Saint Maard le viel de Soyssonz. (2 Mir 25 464–71)

‘accomplish’

[To give you an account of the years according to the Latin, it was the year of our Lord 1131. In that year, according to the one who accomplished this document, Pope Innocent dedicated the church of Saint Medard at Soissons.]

An eyewitness, maistre Huez, wrote down an account of the miracles: Trop convenroit ence en mon cor S’en mon livre voloye escrire Quanqu’au sien oy conter et dire; Je n’en porroye a chief venir. (2 Mir 25 484–7)



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[It would suit me perfectly to be able to write in my book everything I heard narrated in his book; I would never get to the end.]

This marks the end of the section devoted to the ‘Soissons miracles’. In the Epilogue to Book 2 Gautier furnishes us with a number of additional details concerning his method of working. In particular he mentions ‘mon ami, dant Robert de Dive’ (67), a kindred spirit, Prior of Saint-Blaise and subsequently Abbot of Saint-Eloi-de-Noyon, to whom he sends his work in recognition of his help and interest: De tout l’enche qu’ai en mon cor Tant de salus pas n’escriroye Com je li mant a ceste voye Par cest livre que li envoy. Il m’est avis que bien l’avoi Quant tout premiers l’envoi a lui, Car ne connois certes nului Plus volentiers de lui le lise Ne qui plus tost le contrescrise Ne qui mielz le sache atorner, Flourir ne paindre n’aourner. (2 Ep 33 94–104) [With all the ink left in my inkhorn, I could never write all the greetings I send him in this book. I consider that I direct it well in sending it straightway to him, for I know nobody who would more willingly read it, would more quickly produce a fair copy of it, who could better order, embellish, decorate and adorn it.]

There is a formal envoi: Livres, or tost! va t’en! va t’en! Va a Noion, plus n’i aten. Bien sai que jour et nuit t’abee Robers, qui m’a m’amor robee. Mil fois le me salüeras Et, luez que contrescris seras, Garde d’aler ja mais ne fines. (2 Ep 33 105–11) 27 [Off with you, book, go to Noyon without delay. I know full well that Robert, who has seized my love, eagerly awaits you night and day. Give him a

27  Cf. the opening of the tale of the sisters of Nostre Dame de Soissons, 2 Chast 10 23 ‘Livres, va t’en isnelement, / Salue moy mout doucement / L’abbeesse de Nostre Dame / ... / Les damoiseles, les cloistrieres / Salue moi, quant en cloitre ieres ...’.

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thousand greetings, and the moment you are recopied, take care you do not cease your travel.]

Robert is bidden to greet a long catalogue of people (aristocrats and religious) and his two countesses, of Blois and of Soissons. In the last major piece in the Miracles (2 Dout 34) Gautier does not deny that he occasionally lets through something inappropriate or distasteful, what he calls ‘une meüre’ (‘S’a la fois get par aventure / Entre deuz vers une meüre, / Ce ne rest mie grans outrages’, 1515–16). He knows that not all his audience will be receptive. In one miracle an impoverished and recalcitrant nephew, albeit imbued with letters, tells his uncle, an abbot: Or voi je bien, fait il, or primes, Sire viellars, que me gabez. C’est coustume de ces abbés, Quant n’ont talent de riens doner, Si commencent a sermonner. N’ai nul talent qu’a piece die Patrenostre ne patrelie Ne prïeres ne misereles. Plus volentiers chant pastoreles Et d’Olivier ou de Rollant. Cil moigne et cil abbé crollant Doivent toz jors les un piler Siaumes rungier et murmeler. (1 Mir 39 82–94) [I can see at once, old man, that you are mocking me. That is the custom with abbots, who when they do not wish to give anything, start sermonizing. I have no inclination to say the Lord’s Prayer or some ‘Our Father’, or petitions or penitential litanies. I am happier singing pastourelles, or about Oliver and Roland. These doddering monks and abbots are always leant against a pillar muttering and mumbling the psalms.]

Ja ne m’aïent patrenostres Ne prïeres ne misereles. Mielz aim sonnés et pastoreles Que je ne face telz antroingnes. (1 Mir 39 118–20) [No more ‘Our Fathers’, or prayers or penitential psalms, please. I much prefer songs and pastourelles to such twaddle.]

contemptuously adding that when he is no longer good for anything, he will join one of the religious orders (grivelez is an ironic invention):



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Lors serai moignes blans ou noirs, Grivelez, bruns ou bis ou beges. (1 Mir 30 102–3) [Then I shall be one of the black monks, or white, speckled, brown, or grey or undyed.]

Gautier’s Miracles succeed in combining universal truths with an intensely personal tone connected with experience and his own opinions 28 – the figure of dubitatio (expression of uncertainty) and the unleashing of vehement imprecations not excluded.29 Indeed, expressive use is made of the inexpressibility topos! 30 Why, then, should the Miracles have been so neglected? At first sight it may seem incomprehensible that there has been so little critical writing on Gautier’s work generally and not a single oeuvre de synthèse. The most likely reasons are the sheer bulk of the Miracles and problems of access to them. In 1857, four years after producing an archaeological study of the Aisne,31 the abbé Poquet published an incomplete edition of the Miracles, which, though not without blemishes, was a remarkable attempt to save Gautier from oblivion.32 It was not replaced for a century. The biggest boost to Gautier’s fortunes came with the admirable study of the transmission of his work, in

28  On the two figures of Gautier in his works, ‘le je-écrivain’ and ‘le je-récitant’, see A. Drzewicka, ‘Le livre ou la voix? Le moi poétique dans les Miracles de Nostre Dame de Gautier de Coinci’, MA 96 (1990), 245–63. 29  There are some twenty-five cases of dubitatio (‘je ne sai’) and ten of correctio (‘Qu’ai je dit?’ / ‘Or ai voir dite grant falorde’). For a variety of oaths see 1 Mir 11 460, 1151–2; 2 Chast 9 1005; 2 Mir 9 1005 and 1890; 2 Mir 13 258; 2 Mir 20 390; 2 Mir 23 164; 2 Mir 24 540, 679; 2 Mir 27 515 and 535; 2 Mir 30 596, 684. Frequent use is also made of exclamations, and the phrase foy que doi m’ame (2 Mir 11 701; 2 Mir 17 153; 2 Mir 18 1; 2 Mir 21 170; 2 Mir 24 573, 595; 2 Mir 26 579). 30  See G. Borriero, ‘Il tópos dell’ineffabile nella retorica medievale e nella lirica trobadorica’, Medioevo romanzo 23 (1999), 21–65 and passages beginning at 1 Mir 10 1660, 1670; 1 Mir 11 96, 196, 615; 1 Mir 17 128; 1 Mir 18 461; 1 Mir 19 367; 1 Mir 20 200; 1 Mir 22 102, 436; [Our Lady] 1 Mir 29 74, 92; 1 Mir 31 36–7, 105; 1 Mir 33 62; 1 Mir 36 37, 75, 115 and cf. 1 Mir 36 109, 131; 1 Mir 37 366; 1 Mir 39 257; 1 Mir 40 246, 256; 2 Mir Pr. 1 300; 2 Chast 927, 2247, 2272, 3344, 3354; 2 Mir 11 261, 538; 2 Mir 12 131, 138; 2 Mir 13 300, 530; 2 Mir 16 148; 2 Mir 19 112; 2 Mir 19 191, 217; 2 Mir 24 228, 472, 648; 2 Mir 25 23 (re ND), 360, 379; 2 Mir 26 14–15, 605; 2 Mir 27 12, 227, 472, 518; 2 Mir 28 190, 378; 2 Mir 29 274, 278, 282; 2 Mir 30 352; 2 Mir 32 264, 292; 2 Ep 33 36; 2 Dout 1283, 2496. 31  A. E. Poquet and J. B. Delbarre, Les Gloires archéologiques de l’Aisne (Soissons, [1853]). 32  Les Miracles de la Sainte Vierge traduits et mis en vers par Gautier de Coincy, Prieur de Vic-sur-Aisne et religieux bénédictin de Saint-Médard-lès-Soissons, publiés par M. L’abbé Poquet, avec une introduction, des notes explicatives et un glossaire, accompagnés de nombreuses miniatures et d’un très-curieux frontispice (Paris, 1857; repr. Slatkine, Genève, 1972). It was a limited edition, hence the reprint, and was severely criticized by romance philologists including Erhard Lommatzsch.

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some eighty MSS, by Arlette P. Ducrot-Granderye.33 Subsequently, Gautier was fortunate to find a devoted editor in the American scholar V. F. Koenig,34 who over a period of twenty-five years (1955–70) edited, in four volumes, all the texts which constitute the Miracles de Nostre Dame.35 Despite the justified criticisms levelled at Koenig’s editorial and text-critical method,36 especially his rather subjective eclecticism, the unavailability to him of the Hermitage (St Petersburg) manuscript,37 and the fact that his arrangement of the text is not that found in any of the surviving MSS, least of all in L (BNF f.fr. 22928) which was his base, he performed a signal service to medievalists and it was a singularly unhappy chance that he did not live to complete his edition with the planned fifth volume, which was to contain an introduction, notes, indexes and glossary. It took some thirty years, longer than Koenig had taken to produce his edition of the whole text, for this disabling lack to be remedied – at least in part – by the appearance of the glossary and indexes (far from complete) prepared by Olivier Collet, who also undertook a survey of other works sometimes thought to be by Gautier.38 It has thus taken almost a century and a half for medievalists to be equipped with the necessary material to study the

33  A. P. Ducrot-Granderye, Études sur les ‘Miracles Nostre Dame’ de Gautier de Coinci: description et classement sommaire des manuscrits, notice biographique, édition des miracles ‘D’un chevalier a cui sa volenté fu contee por fait après sa mort’ et ‘Coment Nostre Dame desfendi la cité de Costentinnoble’ d’aprés tous les manuscrits connus, Ann. Acad. Sc. Fenn., B 25,ii (Helsinki, 1932; repr. Slatkine, Geneva, 1980). Mme Ducrot-Granderye surveys seventeen codices containing the complete text of the Miracles, and four which have the whole of Book 1 only. She records approximately the same number of manuscripts containing individual pieces by Gautier. It should be noted that the so-called ‘Soissons manuscript’ (BNF nouv. acq. fr. 24541) was produced elsewhere, in the first third of the fourteenth century, possibly for Jeanne de Bourgogne, displaying the work of the artist Jean Pucelle (d. 1334), before it entered the Grand Séminaire at Soissons (pp. 19–36); see also F. Avril, L’enluminure à la cour de France au XIVe siècle (Paris, 1978), p. 65). The St Petersburg MS (NLR, Fr. F. v. XIV. 9) and BNF fr. 25532 may have been copied and illustrated at Saint-Médard in the late thirteenth century. Three later manuscripts, BNF fr. 986, BNF fr. 22928 and Vatican City, BAV Pal. lat. 1969, were written in the dialect of the Soissonnais. 34  See the obituary notice in RPh 31 (1977), 717–18. 35  Published by Droz in the series Textes littéraires français, the volumes appeared in the years 1955, 1961, 1966 and 1970. I have retained Koenig’s reference system, except that I have changed his 2 Ch 9 (the Empress of Rome), which is not a chanson, to 2 Mir 9 and substituted the abbreviation Ep for Epi(logue). 36  See particularly J. Monfrin, Bibl. de l’École des Chartes CXV (1957), 257–60; C. Fahlin, Z.f.rom.Phil. 74 (1958), 320–1; E. Rankka, Studia Neophilologica 35 (1963), 337–41; G. Bianciotto, RPh 24 (1971), 656–64; J.-C. Payen, ibid., 28 (1974), 248–51. 37  See A. Långfors, Miracles de Gautier de Coinci. Extraits du manuscrit de l’Ermitage, Ann. Acad. Sc. Fenn, B 34 (Helsinki, 1937). 38  O. Collet, Glossaire et index critiques des oeuvres d’attribution certaine de Gautier de Coinci (‘Vie de sainte Cristine’ et ‘Miracles de Nostre Dame’), Publications romanes et françaises CCXXVII (Droz, 2000) and ‘Gautier de Coinci: les oeuvres d’attribution incertaine’, Romania 121 (2003), 43–98 where he edits La Nativité Nostre Dame.



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extraordinarily individual figure of Gautier de Coinci.39 Collet’s great contribution, after the lexical observations provided in the editions of individual Miracles from the Helsinki school under the direction of Arthur Långfors,40 has been to highlight Gautier’s almost unparalleled achievement as a lexical innovator and to clarify the meaning of many of his idioms. Thus Collet records no fewer than 582 words first attested in Gautier (with a further 138 to which some uncertainty adheres); to these, astonishingly, may be added some 155 (plus 8 uncertain) hapaxes. The harvest includes both learned words and forms and also many popular and dialectal items and idioms. As a major contributor to the extension of the French language Gautier thus steals a march on Jean de Meun, Pierre Bersuire and Nicole Oresme whose achievements as enrichers of that language are more familiar. All the same, there are many facets of Gautier’s literary practice which merit further study if their true significance is to be appreciated.41 The personally supervised composition of a manuscript book, as represented by the Miracles de Nostre Dame, is almost unique before the fourteenth century, rivalled only, 39  The first fruit of this revival of interest has been the inclusion of some of Gautier’s Miracles, together with a translation, in a number of anthologies, namely P. Kunstmann, Vierge et merveille: les miracles de Notre-Dame narratifs au moyen âge (Paris, 1981), pp. 56–140 (1 Mir 12; 1 Mir 20; 1 Mir 21; 1 Mir 33; 1 Mir 26; 2 Mir 27) and C. Beretta (ed.), Gautier de Coinci, Gonzalo de Berceo, Alfonso X el Sabio, Miracoli della Vergine: Testi volgari medievali (Torino, 1999), pp. 4–479 (Old French text and Italian translation; omits 1 Mir 11, 13, 20–4, 26–31, 33–6, 38, 40–7; 2 Ch. 2–8, 2 Mir 9–11, 13–17, 19–20, 22–4, 26–7, 29, 31–2; 2 Dout 34; 2 Sal 35; 2 Ch 36; 2 Prière 37–40), notes pp. 1157–98. Earlier, a number of the Miracles had appeared in English in Alice Kemp-Welch, Of the Tumbler of Our Lady and Other Miracles (London, 1909), pp. 37–49 (1 Mir 31), 61–68 (abridgement of 1 Mir 21), 71–75 (1 Mir 23), 93–104 (2 Mir 28), 107–26 (2 Mir 18), 129–37 (2 Mir 21). A convenient survey of the miracle stories for the general reader is provided by D. Colombani, ‘Savoir prier Notre-Dame ...’, pp. 95–115 (see n. 1 above). On Berceo see Juan Carlos Bayo, ‘Las colecciones universales de milagros de la Virgen hasta Gonzalo de Berceo’, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 81, vii–viii (2004), 849–70. Note also the issue of Médiévales 1982 devoted to ‘Gautier de Coinci: le texte du miracle’. 40  These are listed by Koenig in vol. 1, p. xv of his edition. To them should now be added E. v. Kraemer, De la bonne enperis qui garda loiaument sen mariage, Ann. Ac. Sc. Fenn., B 82,ii (Helsinki, 1953); R. Hakamies, Deux Miracles de Gautier de Coinci, Ann. Ac. Sc. Fenn., B 113,i (Helsinki, 1958); P. Jonas, C’est d’un moine qui vout retolir a une nonne une ymage de Nostre Dame que il li avoit aportee de Jherusalem. Miracle versifié par Gautier de Coinci, Ann. Ac. Sc. Fenn., B 113,ii (Helsinki, 1959); E. v. Kraemer, Huit Miracles de Gautier de Coinci édités d’après le manuscrit de Léningrad, Ann. Ac. Sc. Fenn., B 119 (Helsinki, 1960); L. Lindgren, Les Miracles de Nostre Dame de Soissons versifiés par Gautier de Coinci, publiés d’après six manuscrits, Ann. Ac. Sc. Fenn., B 129 (Helsinki, 1963). A further edition is E. Rankka, Deux Miracles de la sainte Vierge par Gautier de Coinci: ‘Les 150 Ave du chevalier amoureux’ et ‘Le sacristain noyé’ (Uppsala, 1955). 41  The Paris thesis (thèse de doctorat nouveau régime) of Jean-Louis Benoît, L’Art littéraire dans les ‘Miracles de Nostre Dame’ de Gautier de Coinci (1999), is available as a result of the reprint by the Atelier National de Reproduction des Thèses. The thesis of Annette Garnier, Péché, pénitence et rédemption chez Gautier de Coinci, Thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris IV-Paris Sorbonne, 2 vols (Paris, 1994) has been diffused in a variety of published articles.

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perhaps, by the arrangement of Adenet le Roi’s works in MS Paris, Arsenal 3142.42 The processes of redaction and revision, each change producing consequential modifications, have been meticulously examined by Masami Okubo,43 and whether or not he proves to be right about the reasons and timing of the changes, he has valuably revealed coherent patterns in the manuscript texts and cast much light on the fortunes of the chansons. Gautier’s lyric production, whilst playing an important role in the development of the Miracles and recalling the innovation of Jean Renart in his Guillaume de Dôle,44 nevertheless goes unmentioned in a major study of lyric insertions in narrative fiction.45 Part of Gautier’s project was to provide a literary celebration of the love of Our Lady as a superior alternative to the celebration of the dompna (Lady) of secular courtly culture. The project provides an interesting pendant to the contemporary courtly society studied in its literary manifestations by J. W. Baldwin.46 The fascinating autobiographical revelations contained in Gautier’s Miracles are particularly concentrated in 1 Mir 44 (‘Comment sainte Leochade fu perdue’) and three chansons (1 Ch 45–7), the only chansons in the Miracles which can be reliably dated. The prologues and epilogues also contain personal details. Gautier is no less interesting for his individualistic brand of mordant wit and caustic ridicule and the existence of a complete edition fills many of the gaps in Lommatzsch’s early study of his satirical vein.47 There is room for further work on Gautier’s relations with his contemporaries, particularly the Reclus de Molliens – a monk named Barthélemy from the Abbey of Saint-Fuscien-au-Bois (Somme), author of two lively, eloquent, moral and satirical works, the Roman de Carité (c. 1224, largely anti-clerical) and the Roman de Miserere (c. 1230), the surviving MSS almost totalling the number of copies of the Miracles. Gautier also shares features with Helinand de Froidmont,48 and clearly had an influence on Rutebeuf.49 42  See S. Huot, From Song to Book. The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry (Ithaca/London, 1987), pp. 39–45. 43  See n. 5 above. 44  See the essays by M. B. M. Boulton, M. Zink, R. Psaki and H. van der Werf in N. V. Durling (ed.), Jean Renart and the Art of Romance: Essays on ‘Guillaume de Dole’ (Gainesville, FL, etc., 1997). 45  M. B. M. Boulton, The Song in the Story: lyric insertions in French Narrative Fiction, 1200–1400 (Philadelphia, 1993). 46  J. W. Baldwin, Aristocratic Life in Medieval France: the romances of Jean Renart and Gerbert de Montreuil, 1190–1230 (Baltimore/London, 2000). 47  E. Lommatzsch, Gautier de Coincy als Satiriker (Halle a. S., 1913). 48  See The Verses on Death of Helinand of Froidmont, Old French Text with Verse Translation and Commentary by Jenny Lind Porter, Introduction by William D. Paden (Kalamazoo, 1999). Some of the perceived similarities are recorded by Collet, Glossaire, p. xix. 49  A. Junker, ‘Über den Gebrauch des Stilmittels der Annominatio bei Rutebeuf’, Z.f.rom. Phil. 69 (1953), 323–46 finds 439 examples of annominatio in 2360 of the total of 12654 lines by Rutebeuf, including up to 18 words entering into a single figure. The figure of annominatio belongs to elevated style, and combines associations, paradoxes and causal connections in a manner which may maintain real thematic significance and argument.



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The present study is concerned with Gautier’s writing and style, in particular, his use of annominatio, that is, wordplay exploiting etymology and homophony, in an attempt to go beyond the uncomprehending aspersions of Amaury Duval in the Histoire Littéraire de la France 50 which refer to ‘d’insipides jeux de mots revêtus de rimes’. Even such a stout servant of Gautier as Arthur Långfors seems to concede this particular criticism: ‘Son faible pour les artifices de versification (rimes équivoques, léonines, dérivatives ou grammaticales) peut paraître puéril’.51 Today we may feel that there is something itself slightly puerile in so describing the devoutly executed efforts of a man who was so exceptionally gifted, linguistically and musically, and whose religious ardour cannot be doubted or derided. In our early chapters, therefore, we build up a cultural profile of the monk of Soissons, who is well worth getting to know and who seems never to have been either dry or flippant. There can be no doubting his passionate and absolute devotion to Our Lady. How then does rhetorical wordplay function in such an enterprise? That is the challenge before us – to understand before we judge.

50  51 

t. XIX (1838), pp. 843–57. Romania 53 (1927), 477.

1

The Design of the ‘grant livre’ In any stylistic study of Gautier’s writing, including his rhetorical wordplay and audacious rhyming, the architecture of his painstakingly constructed artistic and spiritual edifice  can scarcely be relegated to the background. On the contrary, it is central to his enterprise and demonstrates clearly his minute (and continuing) attention to stylistic and textual matters, including his handling of discrete formal units which we shall be considering in this chapter. At the conclusion of his autobiographically enlivened account of Ildefonsus of Toledo Gautier presents himself as a writer exclusively concerned to honour Our Lady, whose favour is his unique inspiration and reward. The mere mention of writing characteristically generates rimes équivoques, homophonous word-rhymes, as he compares and contrasts his activities as a sort of jongleur de Notre Dame with those of the secular poets and entertainers: Adés fuisse ses escrivainz, Mais mout tost sui, quant escri, vains. Por ce que redout ce meschief, Li pri qu’un peu m’estraint mon chief De ses tres blanches mains polies, Si en dirai mains de folies.  ... Des troveeurs, quant je m’essai, Ne mepris mie les essaies, Mais por ce se vest noires saies Et il vestent les robes vaires, Ne leur desplaise mes affaires, Car troveres ne sui je mie Fors de ma dame et de m’amie Ne menestrex ne sui je pas. (1 Mir 11 2301–6, 2310–17)

  See the study of M. Okubo, art. cit., who traces in the manuscripts signs of Gautier’s changes of plan, arrangement, and word patterning, and concludes (p. 143) ‘Dans ces conditions ne pourrait-on pas concevoir les Miracles de Gautier non comme une cathédrale dessinée par un Suger, mais comme une église romane remaniée à l’époque gothique et retouchée encore aux temps baroques, dans laquelle les interventions successives, loin d’altérer la beauté primitive, engendrent un nouvel équilibre?’

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[At once I would be her writer, but I rapidly become, when I am writing, light-headed. For fear of such a mishap, I pray to her to enclose my head in her smooth, white hands, that I may say fewer foolish things ... When I put my skills to the test, I do not scorn the devices of the trouvères, but I am dressed in rough black serge, whilst they sport fur-trimmed garments, may my role be not displeasing to them, for I am no trouvère save to my lady and friend, no common minstrel am I.]

Gautier insists that he does not compose for material gain: ‘Je ne truis pas por avoir pris / Ne por robes ne por avoir’ (2322–3), ‘Je ne truis pas por avoir robe’ (2327), ‘Je ne truis mie por avoir’ (2333). Unlike mere entertainers, he is guided only by piety and an aesthetic which is nourishd by that piety. His own great book of miracles (he also uses ‘le grant livre’ to refer to his Latin source) is the product of thoughtful reflection, its composition and arrangement carefully considered and revised and painstakingly implemented in a number of stages. The structure of Book 1 of the Miracles is essentially based on the idea of a narrative frame and a lyrical frame. The narrative frame is provided by two accounts, one of them autobiographical, of miracles associated with Saint Leocadia (1 Mir 11 and 1 Mir 44). The lyric frame is provided by a set of seven chansons at the beginning (1 Ch 3–9), and then three songs at the end (1 Ch 45–7) which are devoted to Saint Leocadia. Prominent at the head of Book 1, after the two prologues and the seven chansons, and before the account of Saint Leocadia (as the first of two miracles associated with Ildefonsus of Toledo) is Gautier’s working of the Theophilus legend. Whatever one may think of the lengthiness of his version (2092 lines), its function is to proclaim and illustrate the central role of Our Lady as mediatrix in what remains throughout Gautier’s work a theocentric conception of miracles. She is above all ‘la Vierge de la concorde’, emphasized by the annominatio on the stem corde with which the miracle ends (the final word is concordes), a paragon of humility (the central virtue, along with poverty, in the Miracles), whilst also being depicted, unusually (see 1 Mir 43 264–76 and 2 Mir 11 262–96), as severe in her anger  

See Gripkey, op. cit., p. 176. ll. 2078–92.   See especially 1 Mir 10 1832ff and 1924ff, and 2 Chast 10 334ff. See also 2 Mir 11, 11–12, 30, 43, 334. There is an extended commentary on poverty in 2 Mir 18 525ff. The two are combined in 2 Mir 20 (‘D’un vilain’) – ‘Les povres genz qui nïent n’ont / Symple et devot et humele sont’ (237–8) – a tale which shows that simplicity and ignorance (127 ‘N’ainc ne sot nes sa patrenostre’; cf. 41–2) are no bar to the grace of God ‘Qu’il ne prent garde a nezun fuer / Fors a l’entencïon dou cuer’ (167–8), so that ‘Li lais ne fait mie a gaber / Pour ce s’il ne seit sillaber: / Puis qu’a bien pense et a bien tent, / Comment qu’il die, Diex l’entent’ (171–4), cf. 180ff (resumed in ‘Un vilain symple, un ydiote / Aimme assez mielz, c’en est la some, / Qu’un soutil clerc ne c’un sage home’, 200–2). Note the observations on the cruelty of the world to the poor in the poignant story of the disfigured Gondree, 2 Mir 24 215ff. For humility see 1 Mir 10 41 and 90 (contrast 494–5), 1 Mir 15 23, 1 Mir 17 24, 1 Mir 19 238, 242.  



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and able to shock sinners out of their obtuseness. Almost programmatically, the Théophile, as well as defining Our Lady’s role, is replete with rhetorical elaboration, above all figures of repetition and parallelisms  which provide dramatic emphasis and lyric intensity in both direct speech and narrative. Admittedly, here at the beginning of the ‘livre’ the rhetorical devices are more conventional than the sophisticated etymological wordplay found in many of the subsequent Miracles, but they play an important part in structuring the text, which provides a most comprehensive picture of Our Lady’s power to restore sinners, for initially Théophile, representing the monastic ideal, falls prey to vainglory in a situation of self-distrust marked by an almost Gidean irony (one thinks of Alissa in La Porte Etroite). After this comprehensive opening drama, Gautier placed the miracle of Saint Ildefonsus of Toledo, originally in a short version (116 lines), surviving in 6 MSS, later replaced by a version even longer than the Théophile, namely 2356 lines, which in its original length and in the uncomplicatedness of its protagonist’s Marian devotion was designed to form a pointed contrast with the preceding narrative. After the Théophile come thirtythree miracle tales, many of which are arranged in discernible groupings. Towards the end of Book 1 Gautier feels under some pressure to complete his project, noting that were it not for the need to finish, his subject matter would provide material for a great volume: Se je n’avoie si grant haste De traire a finement ceste evre, Si grant matere en li m’aoevre C’un grant livre em porroie faire. (1 Mir 44 748–51)

‘Cis premiers livres’ is then terminated by the onset of one of Gautier’s migraines and marked by the insertion of the liturgical formula of conclusion, Tu autem (‘Dites amen, tu autem di’). There follow simply three chansons, the third of which concludes with Saint Leocadia, with Our Lady as intercessor, and with her Son in a prayer that we may finally be brought into the presence of the holy Virgin Mary:   See the appreciation contained in the introduction in A. Garnier (ed.), Gautier de Coinci, Le Miracle de Théophile ou Comment Théophile vint à la pénitence, CFMA Textes et traductions 6 (Paris, 1998).   ‘véritable ossature du texte’, Garnier, ed. cit., p. 50.   Cf. 1 Mir 11 2264–6: ‘Se je “Tu autem Domine” / a ce myracle dit avoie, / Plus briément outre m’en iroie’. See J. Chailley. ‘Du Tu Autem de Horn à la musique des chansons de geste’, La Chanson de geste et le mythe carolingien: Mélanges René Louis (Saint-Pèresous-Vézelay, 1982), t. 1, pp. 21–32. The Tu autem, domine, miserere nobis is the concluding formula of the lessons at Matins which seems then to have been used as a concluding formula in vernacular saints’ lives and even chansons de geste. It concludes the Anglo-Norman romance of Horn. See also F. Lecoy, ‘Notes de lexicographie 10. Tu autem’, Romania 70 (1948–49), 350–4; A. Långfors, ‘Notes lexicographiques, deuxième article, Tu autem’, NM 43 (1942), 141–7; and A. Hämel, ‘Tu autem’, ibid. 44 (1943), 106–8.

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Leochade, deprie A la dame des angles – C’est la virge Marie, Qui siet sur les archangles – Par sa grant cortoisie Si parfez touz nos face Qu’en pardurable vie Veoir puissons sa face. Amen. [Refrain] – He! pucele sanz fiel, Prie a ten ami douz, Qu’en la gloire dou ciel Nos conduie et maint touz. (1 Ch 47 73–84)

In Book 2, after an extensive prologue (410 lines), there are twenty-four miracle narratives followed by an epilogue (2 Ep 33). Beyond the miracle collection a long concluding section comprises two moral treatises: the long poem on the wretchedness of Man’s condition and the fear of death (in one MS ‘De miseria hominis et dubitacione mortis’, in another ‘du despit du monde’) (2 Dout 34), which is largely an invective against the vices of avarice, pride, cupidity, luxuria etc., with frequent naming of authorities; and another composition, ‘Les salus Nostre Dame’ (2 Sal 35 inc. ‘A la fin de cest livre, ou j’ai pené jor maint’). A concluding sequence of short items consists of a chanson on the Annunciation (2 Ch 36), two prayers to Our Lady (2 Prière 37 and 38), a poem on the Five Joys of Our Lady (2 Prière 39) and the final prayer (2 Prière 42, ‘Galterus ad Dominum’) consisting of twenty-five lines on the single rhyme –ïon, ending with the Latin ‘Ubi erit fletus et stridor dentium’ (Matthew 8:12; 13:42 etc. ‘There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth’). The two Books of the ‘livre’, or miracle collection, thus begin with prologues, continue with chansons, and develop into a series of miracle tales, with the Ildefonsus story (1 Mir 11) as the longest narrative in Book 1, and the story of the Empress of Rome (2 Mir 9) occupying a corresponding position and importance in Book 2, the weak man of the Théophile, the next longest tale, being contrasted with the strong woman, whose massively extended story marks the preeminence of her sex. Book 1 concludes with a return to chansons of an autobiographical sort, marking a moment of anguish and subsequent relief (respectively the result of the disappearance and reappearance of the relics of Saint Leocadia in 1219). Book 2 moves towards a more liturgical celebration where the final pieces recycle the themes and lexemes of the previous chansons from both Books 1 and 2.

  See N. Black, ‘Woman as Savior: the Virgin Mary and the Empress of Rome in Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles’, Romanic Review 88 (1997), 503–17, and eadem, Medieval Narratives of Accused Queens (Gainesville, FL., 2003), pp. 20–36.



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The evidence suggests that the plan of the ‘grant livre’ underwent several revisions (five according to M. Okubo). Gautier may have started composing miracle tales, possibly as individual items (as is suggested by their isolated appearance in some MSS), in the second half of 1214 after he had become Prior of Vic-sur-Aisne. He then elaborated a collection, in two major phases (from a single book to two books), which had achieved a distinctive form by 1222–24, when the story of Ildefonsus (1 Mir 11) was rewritten and greatly amplified. He may well have gone on writing after becoming Grand Prior of Saint-Médard on 19 June 1233 and continued up to his death on 25 September 1236. Following M. Okubo, the first stage in the compilation (comprising a single book) was achieved by 1218, when the chansons had not yet been inserted, the miracle of Ildefonsus existed simply in its short form (116 lines), and ‘De la misere d’omme et de fame’ (2 Dout 34) appeared in a preliminary version of 810 lines. This stage is represented by MSS adgr. A second stage, also contained in a single book, is represented by S2 (BNF nouv. acq. fr. 24541, with certain poems repeated in a new order), in which some chansons appear. Some years later, in the period 1222–24, Gautier, inspired by the earlier disappearance and subsequent restoration of the relics of Saint Leocadia at Vic-sur-Aisne,10 expanded the miracle of Ildefonsus to 2356 lines (surviving in twenty MSS) with reverential treatment of Saint Leocadia (who was not mentioned in the short version), and in the same spirit introduced the miracle of the saint (1 Mir 44) followed by the chansons devoted to her (1 Ch 45–7). There are also present chansons 1 Ch 3–9. The collection now, in its third stage, consists of two books, in the second of which appears 2 Chast 10. These changes illustrate the high degree of personal involvement of the author in the reshaping of his work, often down to the smallest detail, but their exact chronology is disputed and irrecoverable. Manuscripts LF reflect this particularly harmonious stage.11 MS N (BNF f.fr. 25532) reveals a further refining process in the two-book version of the Miracles where there are now seven chansons in Book 2 (2 Ch 2–8) and three songs to Saint Leocadia (1 Ch 45–7) in Book 1, which are balanced by three new prayers (2 Prière 37–9) concluding   See Ducrot-Granderye, op. cit., pp. 157–71, Koenig, ed. cit., t. 1, pp. xxvi, xxix et seq., and the genetic study by Okubo, art. cit. 10  The relics were stolen on 21 May 1219 and fished out of the river Aisne on 25 May 1219. 11  Okubo, art. cit., p. 444 summarizes: ‘La construction en deux livres, dont c’est la première apparition, est déja très harmonieuse; les prologues des deux livres, de longueur à peu près égale (I Pr 1–2, 404 vers au total; II Pr 1, 410 vers), annoncent les chansons, bien que celles du livre II soient encore absentes; les deux livres commencent par deux longs textes de taille à peu près égale (I Mir 10–11, 4448 vers; II Mir 9 et II Chast 10, 4766 vers dans LF); chaque livre se termine par un épilogue-miracle (fin de I Mir 44 et II 32); les deux livres sont clos par la troisième partie: l’Épilogue (II Epi 33), la Doutance, augmentée de plus de 1300 vers (II Dout 34), les Salus Nostre Dame (II Sal 35) et une chanson mariale (II Ch 36). Il conviendrait ainsi d’y voir une structure tripartite.’

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Book 2, now some 2000 lines longer than in the previous stage. In the final redaction, represented by the Morigny MS, the chansons (1 Ch 3–9, 45–7, and 2 Ch 3–8) are no longer present and there are signs of a reorganisation which was incomplete, evidently suspended by the author’s death. Throughout these stages ‘De la misere d’omme et de fame’ was regularly amplified and then transposed from its original position in Book 1 to become 2 Dout 34. According to Jacques Chailley, the chansons span the period 1219–33, the latest being 2 Ch 7 and 8, with the possibility that a further three chansons of uncertain attribution may have been written in 1233–36, but almost all the detail buttressing his arguments may be challenged. Clearly, the expansion of the miracles associated with Ildefonsus was inspired by more than simple joy at the restoration of Saint Leocadia’s relics to the church at Vic. If the Théophile had shown what Our Lady could do for a churchman (a bishop’s ‘vidame’ or diocesan administrator), the Ildefonsus story showed what a churchman could do for Our Lady. Gautier viewed Ildefonsus with particular pleasure and reverence, for he was a musician, a tireless writer, and model churchman. He was also an example from whom Gautier himself could constantly draw strength since Ildefonsus too was inspired to write by his love of Our Lady: Un livre fist si biau dité, Si biau diter ne le peüst Se grant amor a li n’eüst (1 Mir 11 588–90)

and thereby earned her miraculous gratitude, so that in the end his soul is taken to Paradise ‘par la prïere Nostre Dame’ (1 Mir 11 660) – all this a ‘mise en abyme’, a miniature internal duplication or reflection of Gautier’s own strategy. Ildefonsus, who was a pupil of Isidore of Seville ‘li parfons puis, / La grans fontainne de clergie’ (1 Mir 11 694–5), retained his great virtues of humility and voluntary poverty,12 consideration of which permitted Gautier by way of counter-demonstration to give full rein to his satirical bent 13 and produce a series of excursus, small treatises almost, on the money-grabbing clergy, cardinals, lawyers, hypocrites and Jews, a cast of actors who reappear intermittently in the individual miracle stories and the epilogues.14 Ildefonsus himself is recorded as having written tracts against the Jews, and the Théophile, which precedes the miracle concerning the admired archbishop of Toledo, presents a very negative portrait of the Jew.

12  ‘N’achata pas s’archeveschié / Ne ses provendes ne vendi / Por Dieu dona tot et tendi / Quanqu’a donner eut li preudom’ (1 Mir 11 704–7). 13  See E. Lommatzsch, op. cit. 14  For imprecations directed at the Jews see 2 Mir 13 258–9, and cf. 408ff, with the word judaïsme at 539.



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From the overall structure of the ‘grant livre’, in which we note Gautier’s concern with harmony and balance, symmetry and correspondence, we may now pass to compositional features of the miracle tales themselves, before returning to a particular rhetorical feature which unifies the collection. The basic pattern of most of Gautier’s miracle tales is first of all characterized by an opening formula about the reciting of the miracle and, frequently, by a source reference (‘ce truis’ etc.) too. This opening formula is often indistinguishable from those employed in secular literature (‘Who wishes to hear, draw near’; ‘Be quiet and you shall hear’; ‘Hear a sweet miracle and lend me your ears’): Qui vielt oïr vers moy se traie: Talenz me prent qu’encor retraie De la soutil phisicïenne ... (2 Mir 25 1–3)

[cf. 1 Mir 31 1]

[Who wishes to hear, let him draw near. I have a desire to tell more about the skilled physician ...

Un myracle que mout loe on. Or vos taisiez et si l’oez.  ... Un doz myracle or entendez Et vos oreilles me tendez. (2 Mir 26 4–5, 21–2) [A miracle which is much praised. Be quiet and you shall hear it.  ... Listen now to a sweet miracle and lend me your ears]

The request for silence 15 is retained from epic exordia, but may be embroidered with distinctive metaphor: Volentiers cont a cialz, par m’ame, Qui de cuer aimment Nostre Dame, Et s’il a ci clerc, lai ne laie Cui il anuit, tout sanz delaie Traie se arriere, si s’en voise: Je n’ai cure qu’il face noyse Ne qu’entor noz ci se deruie. Qui au pourcel et a la truie 15 

See also 1 Mir 21 1, 1 Mir 22 1 and 1 Mir 42 3–4.

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Respant ses pierres precïeuses, Il s’entremet de grans wisseuses. Qui mielz aimme vainnes paroles, Espringueries et karoles Que la refectïon de l’ame N’aucun biau dit de Nostre Dame Voist s’en, voist s’en, ja ça ne viegne! Li boz saut luez fors de la vigne Que li roysinz prent afflourir: Endurer ne puet pour morir La sovatume de la fleur. Ausi saichiez qu’il sont pluiseur Qui tant sont fol et soterel Qu’il resamblent le boterel.16 Bonne oudeurs les tue et affole  ... A ciauz ne cont rien, naie! naie! Quar une truie une pasnaie Aimme assez mielz c’un marc d’argent. Tout autel font bestial gent. Tant par sont plain de grant folage C’une risee, un rigolage, Une grant truffe, une fallorde, Une fatrousie, une bourde Oyent plus volentiers, par m’ame, Que de Dieu ne de Nostre Dame Un biau sermon, un biau traitié. (2 Mir 29 7–29, 43–53)

‘silly’ ‘toad’

[Upon my soul, I am happy to recite to those who love Our Lady with all their heart, and if there be present any clerk, layman or laywoman, who is irritated, let them withdraw at once and disappear. I have no desire for a disturbance or bad behaviour. He who casts his pearls before swine, is truly wasting his time. Away with whoever prefers vain words, jigging and dancing, to nourishing the soul and hearing a fine poem about Our Lady. The toad promptly leaves the vine when the grapes start to appear; it cannot abide the sweetness of the flower. I can tell you there are several so foolish and silly as to resemble the toad. Sweet scent kills and destroys them ... I do not address them. Certainly not! A sow much prefers a parsnip to a mark of silver. That’s what people who are little more than beasts are like. They’re so stupid that they prefer listening to jests, a joke, some triviality, empty talk, nonsense verse, a falsehood, upon my soul, than a fine sermon or treatise on God or Our Lady.]

16  Cf. 2 Mir 30 581: ‘De teuz connois, par saint Romacle, / Quant conter oient un myracle, / Qui luez les nez en vont fronçant / Et par derriere en vont grouçant / Ausi com fait li boterialz.’



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There is an assurance of the pleasure which will accrue to the audience: A oïr est mout deliteus (1 Mir 10 1789) Conter vos veil por resjoïr (1 Mir 33 2) Un biau myracle mout piteus Et a oïr mout deliteus. (1 Mir 26 3–4) [It is a delight to hear] [I will tell you, to bring joy] [A beautiful, moving miracle and a delight to listen to]

Occasionally, Gautier opens with a metaphor, such as that of being led, by Our Lady of course, to a safe port by a fair wind (1 Mir 43). After an introduction there follows the narrative or tale, typically of around 150 to 250 lines, but sometimes much longer, which provides the essample.17 The protagonist is usually someone who, however prominent his or her faults, has unwavering devotion to Our Lady (has her ‘en cuer et en memoire’), sometimes kneeling regularly before her image. Frequently the devil then plots some mischief against that person out of envy. Our Lady herself is often presented as mediatrix (moianne 2 Mir 23 227f ).18 Apart from the miracle tale proper (referred to as a dit in 1 Mir 38 2), and the extended prologues and epilogues in the ‘grant livre’, a further structural unit is supplied by the queue or moral lesson, which Gautier, often at length (see 2 Mir 11 550ff ), appends to each narrative tale,19 and which incorporates a concluding passage of wordplay, usually connecting directly with a theme of the tale. In some cases the tale or narrative occupies less than half the miracle account and the rest is taken up by the queue, which, according to Gautier’s own acknowledgement, may even be read independently of the narrative, which he has not wanted to hold up with his sententious observations:

17 

See esp. 1 Mir 40 8, 13, 18. For a typology of the protagonists and plots of the Miracles, in five categories, see J.-L. Benoît, ‘La Sainteté dans les Miracles de Nostre Dame de Gautier de Coinci’, PRIS-MA 16,i (2001), 31–40. 19  The moral may occasionally be given some way from the end, with the formula ‘Cis myracles nos semont ...’ (1 Mir 37 694), ‘Cis myracles bien nos descuevre ...’ (1 Mir 36 225), ‘Cis myracles bien nos ensaigne ...’ (1 Mir 41 269, 1 Mir 42 413). 18 

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Quant me convient sieurre le fuel, Je ne puis pas avec la letre Quanque je pens ajoindre et metre, Car trop i aroit de delai. Por ce laissié a la foiz l’ai, Por ce les queues i ai mises Et si ai fetes tex devises Que cui la queue ne plaira Au polagrefe la laira Et qui la queue veut eslire Sans le miracle la puet lire. (2 Mir 28 232–42) [When it pleases me to follow the folio [i.e. manuscript source], I cannot add ad libitum to the Latin, for that would create too much of a delay. I have therefore sometimes left it and provided ‘codas’, and I have distinguished them in such a way that whoever does not like the ‘coda’ can skip it at the appropriate paragraph and whoever wishes to pick it out can read it without the miracle.]

Announcement of the queue is unmistakable, the subject ‘miracle’ being followed by a verb of instruction or enlightenment such as moustrer, aprendre, esclairer, enorter.20 The following examples will show how clearly the queue is perceived as a regular, formal unit in the composition of the miracle tales: Cis myracles bien moustre au doit Que toz li mondes douter doit La puissant mere au roy puissant.  ... A ce miracle puet veoir Qui bien le list ententilment Que cil qui la servent piument Par tout la truevent douce et piue Et par tout ont la Dieu aiue. (2 Mir 17 133–5/142–6) [This miracle indicates clearly that everyone should fear the mighty mother of mighty God ... From this miracle anyone can see who reads it attentively 20  There is a variety of introductory formulas. See 1 Mir 10 1785 [Theophilus] ‘Cis myracles n’est pas de fables, / Ains est si vrais et si estables / Qu’en sainte eglyse est receüs / Et en main haut covent leüs. / A oïr est mout deliteus / Et s’est mout douz et mout piteus / Por pecheürs reconforter’; 1 Mir 14 72; 1 Mir 18 685ff; 1 Mir 19 498ff; 1 Mir 23 43/49; 1 Mir 24 189ff; 1 Mir 27 77; 1 Mir 29 115ff; 1 Mir 36 225ff; 1 Mir 37 694ff; 1 Mir 41 269; 1 Mir 42 413ff; 2 Mir 18 493; 2 Mir 20 333. The queue is not so explicitly marked at 1 Mir 14 72, 1 Mir 16 172. See also 2 Mir 11 550ff (announced through declaration that the source ends at this point); 2 Mir 12 207ff; 2 Mir 24, 481ff; 2 Mir 26 671, 677, 682; 2 Mir 29 529ff; 2 Mir 30 717ff; 2 Mir 32 119ff.



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that those who serve her devotedly always find her gentle and merciful and receive God’s assistance.]

Qui raconter oit ce myracle Entendre i puet, par saint Romacle, Que qui pour Dieu le sien desploie Bien le marie et bien l’enploie. Diex paie adés si riches solz Pour un denier rent il cent solz. (2 Mir 18 493–8) [Whoever hears this miracle can understand from it, by Saint Remaclus, that he who makes available to God all he owns makes a good settlement and profitable investment. God at once pays such good rates that he returns a hundred ‘solidi’ for every ‘denarius’.]

Cis myracles bien noz aprent Que grant cure de s’ame prent Et bien le regne Dieu desert Qui Nostre Dame honeure et sert. (2 Mir 20 333–6) [This miracle teaches us clearly that whoever honours and serves Our Lady, amply looks after his soul and merits the kingdom of God.]

Qui ce myracle bien remire Bien puet penser et bien puet dire Que retraire ne saroyt ame La grant douceur de Nostre Dame.  ... Cist miracles nos a apris Que nus de cuer ne la requiert Qu’ele ne face quanqu’il quiert.  ... Cis myracles bien noz esclaire Que Nostre Dame seit mielz faire Que nus ne saroyt deviser. (2 Mir 24 481–4/494–6/497–9) [Whoever reflects carefully on this miracle may certainly believe and say that not a soul could express the gentleness of Our Lady  ... [This miracle has taught us that no-one who petitions her with their whole heart will fail to have their request granted

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 ... [This miracle clearly shows us that the activity of Our Lady is beyond anything of our devising.]

Cis myracles bien nos enorte Que la grant dame qui est porte De paradys servomes tuit  ... Cis myracles bien noz esclaire Que mout par est Diex debonnaire  ... Cis myracles bien noz aprent Que granz chose est de penitance (2 Mir 26 671–3/677–8/682–3) [This miracle urges all of us to serve the great lady who is the gateway into Paradise  ... [This miracle clearly reveals to us that God is gracious  ... [This miracle teaches us what a great thing penitence is.]

Cis myracles que j’ai conté La grant douceur, la grant bonté De Nostre Dame bien demoustre. (2 Mir 29 529–31) [The miracle that I have related shows us clearly the great graciousness, the great goodness of Our Lady.]

Cis biaus myracles, ce me samble, Bien nos enorte toz ensamble Qu’amer devons d’entier corage La mere Dieu et qu’en s’ymage Servir et grant honeur porter Nous devons bien tuit deporter Ausi com fist la sainte nonne. (2 Mir 30 717–23) [This fine miracle, as I see it, clearly urges all of us to love the mother of God with all our heart, and that we should rejoice in serving and honouring her image just as the holy nun did.]



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Par le myracle et par la queue Daint Diex voloir qu’encor esqueue Aucune bone crestïenne D’amer la joie terrïenne. (2 Chast 10 19–22) [Through the miracle and the coda may it be God’s will to prevent any good christian woman from loving earthly happiness.]

Two-thirds of the way through the miracle of the youth who sang the Gaude Maria response (2 Mir 13), we read that those who are not eager to serve Our Lady are little better than beasts and monsters: Cis myracles bien dist et moustre Que bestes sont tuit cil et mostre Et de leur ames peu leur chaut De li [sc. Our Lady] servir qui ne sont chaut. (2 Mir 13 557–60) [This miracle declares and shows that those who are not ardent in her service [sc. that of Our Lady] care little for their souls and are beasts and monsters.]

Gautier is only too aware of his propensity for what may seem somewhat fanciful embellishment, and he explains that at the end (parclose) of each miracle tale he engages in wordplay (sour aucun mot ou je m’embat) which will bring smiles to the faces (fait rire) of members of the audience who have been moved to tears by the narrative: S’un petit ai ici bordé, Ne vos griet pas, pour amor Dé. Aucune foys a la parclose De ces myracles di tel chose Sour aucun mot ou je m’enbat Ou je meïsmes mout m’esbat Et dont refais a la foys rire Cialz que plorer ai fait au lire. De ces myracles i a telz Qui tant sont doz et tant piteuz Que pluisors gens les cuers apitent Et a plourer auquans escitent. (2 Mir 13 733–44) [If I have here indulged in pleasantry, do not be displeased, for the love of God. Sometimes, at the end of these miracles, I say something about a word I pounce on and indeed enjoy playing with, whereby I sometimes succeed in bringing a smile to those whom I have reduced to tears reading the

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narrative. Certain of the miracles are so gentle and moving as to move many people’s hearts to pity and some to tears.]

This seems to chime with the ending (98–100) of the interpolation in MSS D and I of 2 Mir 17, expressing Gautier’s dislike of the English: S’ai des Englois godé ichi, Por esbanoier et por rire, J’ai voir plus fait que por mesdire. [I’ve mocked the English here more for fun than out of a desire to slander.]

The queue may occur very early in the narrative, for instance in 2 Mir 32, where we are exhorted to serve Our Lady, particularly on Saturdays (124): Par ce myracle que j’ai dit Bien noz moustre sanz contredit Et ensaingne li tres doz pere Que jor et nuit sa douce mere Servir devommes doucement. (2 Mir 32 119–23) [Our gracious Father, through the miracle I have recited, shows and instructs us unhesitatingly to serve graciously night and day his gracious mother.]

As a space for the author’s creativity, the queue is essential to Gautier’s enterprise and inspires a digression as follows: De ce myracle plus n’i a Ne mes livres plus ne m’en conte, Mais, par la foy que doy le conte, N’est pas raisons qu’on me resqueue Que je n’i face un poi de queue. Sovent m’est vis, par saint Romacle, Queque je sui en plain miracle, Qu’en prison soie en une barge; Mais quant sui hors, lors sui au large, Lors pens et di quanque je vuel. (2 Mir 28 222–31) [There is no more to this miracle, my source relates nothing further, but by the faith I owe the count [Raoul III de Nesle?], that is no reason to prevent me from providing a modest coda. By Saint Remaclus, I often think, even



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in mid-story, that I am a prisoner on a boat; but when I am outside, then I am at liberty,21 and then I am free to think and say whatever I like.]

A passage from one of the Miracles illustrates the basic demonstration behind them all by asserting, in the manner of the eighteenth-century novelist, that anyone hearing them and not being moved to devote themselves to the service of Our Lady has a heart of iron or steel: Cis myracles nos certefie De ma dame sainte Marie La grant douceur et la pitié. Sa grant douceurs a respitié Maint pecheür de mort d’enfer. Le cuer a d’achier ou de fer Qui ce myracle oit et entent Se toz jors mais ne bee et tent A son service bien paier. (1 Mir 27 77–85) [This miracle assures us of the gentleness and pity of my lady, Holy Mary. Her pity has saved many sinners from death in Hell. Whoever hears and reflects on this miracle has a heart of steel or iron, if he does not seek and strive to render her service.]

The essential condition of Our Lady’s intervention is a clear manifestation of respect for her, frequently represented by veneration before her image or by a prayer (the latter suffices in 1 Mir 39 about an unrepentant, spendthrift cleric, whom even priests shun and who is initially buried in a ditch, and also in 1 Mir 17 with a priest who devotes himself to wordly pleasures, and 1 Mir 16 about a drunken monk). Non-believers refer to the image of Our Lady as ‘marïole’ (1 Mir 13 39, 1 Mir 42 145). As we saw above, Gautier expects his audience to be moved by the examples contained in his narratives and does not believe they could possess such hardness of heart as to remain insensitive to the beneficence of Our Lady: Tuit li myracle Nostre Dame Sont si piteuz et doz, par m’ame, N’est nus qui bien les recitast Cui toz li cuers n’en apitast. (1 Mir 19 1–4) [All the miracles of Our Lady are so moving and gracious, upon my soul, that no one could recite them properly, without their heart being moved to compassion.] 21 

With a play on ‘on the open sea’?

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Bien a le cuer plus dur que pierre Qui ces myracles ot retraire S’a bien servir la debonnaire Qui tant par est douce et humainne Soventes fois ne met grant painne. (1 Mir 24 184–8) [Whoever hears these miracles recited, and does not frequently strive to serve our gracious Lady, who is so gentle and humane, has a heart of stone.]

Mout a dur cuer qui ne souspire Qui ce myracle oit reciter. (1 Mir 28 208–9) [Whoever hears this miracle recited and does not breathe a sigh, has an exceedingly hard heart.]

Dur cuer eüst, foy que doi m’ame, Se de pitié ne fust meüz. (2 Mir 21 170–1) 22 [He would have to have a hard heart, upon my soul, not to be moved to compassion.]

Only occasionally does Gautier begin the miracle tale with a sententious commentary, otherwise his introductions are generally economical. 1 Mir 40 starts by contrasting unrighteous discourse, which weakens and corrupts good morals, with wholesome observations, which save men from foolish thoughts and deeds: Bien est que nos le bien dïons, Car male collocutïons Blece et corront les bones meurs Et mout empire les pluiseurs. Bien fait qui bien dit et retrait, Car maint home sache et retrait De fol pensé et d’uevre fole Examples de bone parole. (1 Mir 40 1–8)

22  See also 2 Mir 32 189 ‘Le cuer a plus dur d’un cailleu / Qui mout n’aimme la mere Dieu’; 2 Ep 33 1 ‘Qui ces myracles a leüs / Bien est chetis et durfeüs / Et bien soufflé l’a li maufés / S’espris n’est mout et eschaufés / De bien servir la douce dame’. Cf. 2 Chast 9 893–4 (in connection with the Empress).



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[It is right that we state the good, for unrighteous words harm and corrupt good living and make many degenerate. Whoever speaks and reports well, does a good thing, for the example of wise speech draws many a man from thinking and acting stupidly.]

It continues in a vein which recalls the historiographer Wace: Ça en arriere nostre ancestre La conversatïon et l’estre Des bones gens qui le bien fisent En mimoire et en escrit misent Por ce qu’essample i presissienz Et que nos nos i mirissienz. (1 Mir 40 9–14) [In past times our ancestors recorded in writing the behaviour and qualities of good people who did good, so that we may find in them an example and source of inspiration.]

A just view of Gautier’s ‘grant livre’ must take into account the overall design, and the adjustments made to it, as well as appreciating his handling of formal units such as the prologue, epilogue, narrative, queue, and chanson. Another formal feature which the genesis of the Miracles clearly shows Gautier to be have been attentive to is the strategic establishment of textual echoes, correspondences and symmetries. He carefully arranged for the symmetrical arrangement of the chansons. The first seven chansons of Book 1 (1 Ch 3–9) are balanced by three (1 Ch 45–7) at the end, and are further complemented by the seven (2 Ch 2–8) which open Book 2. In addition 1 Ch 3 is set to the same melody as 1 Ch 46, and 1 Ch 47 to the same as 2 Ch 36. The prologues to both books engage with the issue of chant (1 Pr 2 7, 8, 12, 17, 19, 34, 58, 59, 63, 65, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74); 2 Pr 1 321, 325, 326, 331, 354, 365, 369, 370, 386, 391, 392, 395, 399, 400, 401) and both contain wordplay on chansonettes / chansons nettes (1 Pr 2 7–8; 2 Pr 1 325–6) and chanter / enchanter (1 Pr 2 69–72; 2 Pr 1 369–70). The prologues also connect through anadiplosis (repetition of a key word at the end of one unit in the opening of the next unit) with the chanson that follows them (1 Pr 2 74 chant; 2 Pr 410 deport). The play on port / deport, of course, marks the beginning of the Theophilus story (1 Mir 10 1–12) and also the end of 2 Mir 32 301–8 (in the last redaction, represented by M, it is elaborated) which is the last miracle story and is followed by an explicit in many of the manuscripts. It also marks the beginning of 1 Mir 43. Another case of anadiplosis is illustrated by the play on fin which concludes 2 Dout 34 (2612–30) and the opening of the following item, the prologue to the ‘Salus Nostre Dame’, the first words of which are ‘A la fin de cest livre’ (cf. the further play on fin in 653–6 and 661–4, and finally in 2 Prière 38 72–8 and 2 Prière 39 35–6). The play on fin also marks the

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conclusions of 2 Mir 22 (233–46) and 2 Mir 31 (128–36); these may be marks of conclusion to the whole collection which have survived from earlier revisions or a sign that these pieces formerly circulated independently. Such correspondences are unlikely to be fortuitous because of their one-time or present position. For example libraire is placed at the beginning of the prologue to Book 2 (2 Pr 1 1) and of 2 Mir 19 (that is, the middle item of Book 2 if we discount the final prayers), and is replaced, with the same meaning, by aumaire in 2 Ep 161. The play on M-A-R-I-A in 1 Pr 46 46–7 finally reappears in the ‘Salus’ (2 Sal 69ff ).23 Another correspondence covering the beginning and end of the Miracles is the image of the viele used as a symbol of poetic composition: ‘Or veil atant atraire ma lire / Et atemprer veil ma vïele’ (1 Pr 2 56–7) and ‘Bien puis en sauf metre ma lire / Et traire arriere ma vïele’ (2 Ep 33 52–3). One of the textual patterns we have discussed – annominatio – also has a structural and semantic function. This formal feature, essential to the study of Gautier’s rhetoric, which has not received attention and yet is essential to our enquiry, is the device by which Gautier carefully sought to conclude each of his miracle tales with a passage of rich rhymes and rimes équivoques exploiting the figures of traductio and annominatio on an unprecedented scale, either foregrounding an important theme or motif of the narrative, or else expressing the virtues of Our Lady and the obedience she deserves. Each miracle, in other words, is concluded by a passage, of between eight and fourteen (exceptionally eighteen) lines, which exploits two types or figures of wordplay. The most consistent feature of the procedure is the exploitation of morphological variations on a single etymological stem, a figure known as polyptoton when it is purely a question of flexions, and as traductio when we are dealing with derivatives (i.e. additions of prefixes or suffixes to the stem) – what are often known as paronyms.24 In Gautier this procedure is often compounded with the use of one etymological stem which is a homonym or homophone of another etymological stem, thus morphological variations or derived forms of amer ‘to love’ may in addition be mixed with forms of amer ‘bitter’. This technique is frequently known as annominatio – more generally, paronomasia or wordplay, which is the basis of rimes équivoques and in which the homophonous words are grammatically different, that is to say different in flexion, syntactic function, or meaning, which is normally the condition for tolerating rimes identiques where the rhyme words seem simply to be the same. No study of this rhetorical feature of the Miracles has ever been made,25 and it therefore seems right, before proceeding later in our study to the analysis of individual examples of 23 

Cf. 2 Dout 34 772–81 and 807–19. See, for example, the following case in A Plantaire, ed. Savoie, p. 104, ll. 227ff ‘Marie a vertus de desjoindre / Et si a vertus de rejoindre. / Elle desjoint qui mal sont joint / Et qui mal desjoint sont rejoint. / Hons a fame a mal jointure / ... / Tel jointure desjoint Marie, / Quar molt li desplait puterie. / Ele rejoint le cuer volage / A Dieu, quant est de lui sauvage, / Siques ele joint et desjoint.’ 25  It is ignored in A. Schinz’s curiously negative study, ‘L’Art dans les contes dévots de Gautier de Coincy’, PMLA 22 (1907), 465–520. 24 



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accumulated wordplay, to summarize the procedure here by identifying in each miracle tale the basis of the wordplay and the narrative theme with which it is connected: 1 Pr 1 ends with fourteen lines on derivatives of traire (311–24), exemplifying the appropriate senses of ‘relate’ and ‘attract’, followed by lines 325–30 on Our Lady’s supervision of Gautier’s language. 1 Pr 2 ends with twelve lines on derivatives of chanter (63–74), following Gautier’s introduction of music: ‘or veil atant traire ma lire / Et atemprer veil ma vïele, / se chanterai de la pucele / ...’ (56–8) and anticipating the play on chant with which the succeeding song begins. [Chansons 3–9] 1 Mir 10 (‘Comment Theophilus vint a penitance’) begins with twelve lines on derivatives of porter (1–12) and ends with fourteen lines on derivatives of corde (2079–92, cf. 1255–8), appropriately evoking the harmony and conciliation which Our Lady has effected between Theophilus and God (‘fera toutes les concordes’, 2092). 1 Mir 11 (‘D’un archevesque qui fu a Tholete’). As befits this extensive miracle concerning a figure whom Gautier so admired, it concludes with no fewer than three sections of wordplay: derivatives of robe / lobe (2327–32); apareille / despareille (2335–42); and membre / remembre / desmembre (2343–56). Our Lady is peerless and deserves a constant place in our memory, as the example of Ildefonsus shows. 1 Mir 12 (‘De l’enfant a un gïu qui se crestïena’) ends with twelve lines on derivatives of dur and durer (131–42), marking the obdurateness of the Jews. 1 Mir 13 (‘De la tavlete en coi l’ymage de la mere Dieu estoit painte’) ends with ten lines on derivatives of fondre (83–92, with alliteration), with a negative force appropriate to Gautier’s unremitting hostility to the Jews: ‘Por ce sont il tout enfondu, / Flestre et fronci, fade et fondu’ (91–2). 1 Mir 14 (‘De un provoire qui toz jors chantoit Salve, la messe de Nostre Dame’) ends with eight lines rhyming on derivatives of chanter (87–94), a fitting theme since the ‘provoire’ ‘ne savoit chanter ne lire / En romancier chartre ne brief / ne ne savoit longue ne brief’ (6–8), but could sing only the Salve sancta parens mass. 1 Mir 15 (‘Dou clerc mort en cui boche on trova la flor’) has the concluding twelve lines marked by derivatives of ploier (113–24), appropriate since the clerk’s redeeming feature was always to kneel when passing the image of Our Lady (cf. 1 Mir 17 12ff ) and the moral is ‘Oïr poez qui por la mere / Le roi dou ciel ses genolz ploie / Que sa painne bien i emploie’ (112–14).

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1 Mir 16 (‘De un moigne que Nostre Dame delivra dou Dyable’) concludes with fifteen lines on derivatives of livre (184–198), which puns on l’ivre, the drunken monk at the centre of the tale (‘de l’ivre ot la delivrance’, ‘De l’yvresce le delivra’). There is also wordplay at the beginning on derivatives of teche (9–16). 1 Mir 17 (‘D’un clerc grief malade que Nostre Dame sana’) ends with twelve lines on derivatives of cointe (165–76) to emphasize the value of Our Lady’s friendship and the clerk’s love for her ‘de si amoureus cuer’ (163).26 1 Mir 18 (‘De une noble fame de Rome’) has an appropriately rhetorical ending of twelve lines on derivatives of espurer, since the lady commits incest and is hence ‘impure’.27 Over a longer passage of the conclusion there is anaphoric repetition of Pechiez and Confessions (the whole of ll. 685–730 is on confession). 1 Mir 19 (‘Dou riche et de la veve fame’) ends with fifteen lines on derivatives of mordre and consequent wordplay (558–72). The whole point here is that at the beginning there is a passage of traductio on mordre and mort (‘bite’ and ‘death’) in relation to usurers: ‘Tant par est plains de grant menjue / Plus muert de faim quant plus mainjue. / Mais mors, qui n’est mie a amordre / Des useriers malement mordre, / Cel userier si parfont mort / Morir l’estut de male mort. / Si tost con la mors l’asailli ...’ (55–61) and this is echoed in the concluding wordplay which repeats all these words.28 1 Mir 20 (‘De l’abeesse que Nostre Dame delivra de grant angoisse’) ends with twelve lines on derivatives of faire (395–406). The miracle tale also includes play on maris / marie etc. (161ff ), since the pregnant abbess is not married. The relevance of faire here is that the abbess’s ‘misdeed’ is to become pregnant, but from this mesfait come good deeds by the bishop, the abbess herself, and her son who duly becomes bishop (‘maint bien fist en l’eveschie’, 378), so that it can be fittingly concluded (400) ‘Maint bon affaitement fait a / La mere Dieu de maint mesfait’. 1 Mir 21 (‘De l’enfant qui mist l’anel ou doit l’ymage’) ends with thirteen lines on derivatives of marier / Marie (184–96) precisely because the theme of the story is that of a mésalliance, the young clerk marrying his sweetheart 26  See F. J. Beaussart, ‘“D’un clerc grief malade que Nostre Dame sana”. Réflexions sur un miracle’, Médiévales 2 (1982), 34–46. 27  Note that the lady disposes of her child in her ‘privee’ (281), just as in 1 Mir 13 a Jew pushes a statue of Our Lady into a ‘privee’ (58). 28  Cf. A Plantaire, ed. Savoie, p. 55, ll. 126–38 ‘En une pomme fu la mors. / Du mors dont si fumes la mors / Qu’aprés ce mors n’ot que remordre, / Quar tous li mondes fu la mors. / Sachies ce ne fu pas la mors / Dont au cuer puist remordre. / Ha! com si est mal mors a mordre / Qui nous fist mors a Dieu amordre. / Pour nous la mort n’i fu nou amors / Fors pour nous la mort desamordre / Et de pechié pournous remordre / A lui dont fumes desamors’.



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when he has already vowed allegiance to Our Lady, and of the subsequent renunciation of his young bride (the marriage is unconsummated) and his spiritual marriage, as a monk, to Our Lady. 1 Mir 22 (‘Dou jovencel que li dyables ravi, mais il ne le pot tenir contre Nostre Dame’) ends with ten lines on derivatives of faus (467–76), which is the epithet applied to the purely human love which leads the husband and wife to break their vow of chastity and thus precipitates the crisis (the birth of a son) which is at the centre of the story. The wordplay on faus is accompanied by ­derivatives of amor (459–66). 1 Mir 23 (‘D’un moigne en cui bouche on trouva cinc roses nouveles’) ends with nine lines on derivatives of servir (60–8) which take up the theme of lines 3–4 where the monk ‘symplement / Servoit Dieu et devotement’, a trait which is illustrated by the fact that he devised a form of worship by attaching a psalm to each of the letters of MARIA and when he died was found to have five red roses in his mouth (see the similar motif in 1 Mir 39). 1 Mir 24 (‘Dou moigne que Nostre Dame resuscita’) ends with eleven lines on derivatives of baillier (224–34), constituting an ironic reprise of baillius in line 7. The story deals with an unconscientious, lax and worldly monk who after death vainly beseeches Saint Peter to admit him to Heaven. The efficient intercessor with God is shown to be Our Lady. The conclusion affirms that our true stronghold (baille) is the cloister, whereas many, like the lax monk, feel insecure if they are not ‘ou provos ou baillis’ (230; cf. ‘provos et baillius’, 7). 1 Mir 25 (‘De celui qui se tua par l’amonestement dou dyable’) ends with twelve lines on derivatives of torner (197–208). A powerful man is intent on undertaking a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella, but is prevented from doing so by the Devil who deceives him into killing himself. He is restored to life by Our Lady and makes his way to Cluny and becomes a monk. The emphasis on torner expresses Gautier’s belief in the cloister as the true home to which we should return. The would-be pilgrim in this tale is returned to the religious life in accord with his original desire (to make the pilgrimage to Santiago) from which he was ‘turned’ by the Devil (‘por destorbier ce saint voiage’, 28). 1 Mir 26 (‘D’une nonain qui vaut pechier, mais Nostre Dame l’en delivra’) ends with eight lines on derivatives of penser (217–24), a less strictly thematic ending than usual, but which points to the need for the young religious to keep her thoughts on her true spouse (espoz) God (see 181–6), who knows everyone’s thoughts, and not allow them to be turned (197–8) to other things, such

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as the ‘haut home de la contree’ who desires her.29 Of the true spouse it is said: ‘De li ne fait mie despensse / Cele qui a tel espoz pensse’ (223–4). 1 Mir 27 (‘D’un moigne qui ne seoit mie as eures Nostre Dame’) ends with ten lines on derivatives of seoir (133–42) which embody the main theme expressed at the beginning (13), namely that a certain prior, with a quite unexemplary record, was saved by Our Lady as a result of his devotion to her, symbolized by the fact that he would never sit during his devotions. There is a play on the twin meanings of seoir, ‘to sit’ and ‘to suit, to be appropriate’. 1 Mir 28 (‘Dou chevalier a cui la volenté fu contee por fait’) ends with seventeen lines on derivatives of porter (272–88). A powerful knight with no respect for the Church, other than a devotion to Our Lady, is minded to found an abbey (though he mistreated such places in the past, 20–1) but dies before doing so. He is finally saved by Our Lady’s intercession because of his intention (proposement) to found an abbey. Gautier concludes by, in contrast, attacking the materialistic and acquisitive knights and their futile activities (‘Ce sont chevalier abatquatre, / Qui vont joster au nit de pie’, 238–9) who, unlike their predecessors, lay much greater store by emporter than on aporter, who take pleasure, deporter, in raporter and whose fate is to be born away by devils ‘S’a Sainte Eglise ne raportent / Ce qu’a force et a tort enportent’ (287–8).30 1 Mir 29 (‘De la nonain a cui Nostre Dame abreja ses salus’) ends with sixteen lines on derivatives of honeur (257–72). This miracle is unusual in that over half of it is devoted to the repetitious rehearsing of the ‘moral’, rather than to the story (a nun called Eulalia who is instructed by Our Lady to reduce the number of her salus from 150 to fifty and hence ponder more what she is saying), namely ‘Cil sagement chante et psaumoie / Et ses prïeres bien enploie / Qui a la bouche met le cuer, / Mais ses prïeres rue puer / Cil qui n’entent a ce qu’il dit’ (165–9). This leads to a passage of repetitio on the accommodation of bouche and cuer (164–202) before the conclusion of the story. There is also anaphoric repetition of Saluons (224–42) in recollection of Eulalia’s actions (224–5). The concluding passage on derivatives of honeur is thus not thematically or lexically related to the story or its moral, but underscores the need to honour, and adore (aourer) Our Lady. 1 Mir 30 (‘Dou larron pendu que Nostre Dame soustint par deuz jors’) ends with nine lines on derivatives of fort (125), particularly confort. The story is of a hardened and convicted robber, who is nonetheless devoted to Our Lady and is saved from the gallows by her, since ‘La mere Dieu ne jete puer / Larron, fossier ne robeür. / La mere Dieu nul pecheür, / Tant soit pechierres, ne degete’ (86–90). The text ends with the healing properties of Our Lady and so plays 29  Cf. A. Berthelot, ‘Anti-miracle et anti-fabliau: la subversion des genres’, Romania 106 (1985), 399–419. 30  Cf. A. Garnier, ‘Deux Miracles de Nostre Dame de Gautier de Coinci’, Romania 106 (1985), [341–98], 341–70.



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on the verbs conforter, reconforter, desconforter and their derivatives (122–30). Again, there is no lexical or strictly thematic link with the story itself. 1 Mir 31 (‘Dou soucretain que Nostre Dame visita’) has, just before the end, a passage of nine lines on derivatives of torner (253–62) to express the capacity of Our Lady to effect change and concludes with fifteen lines on derivatives of dur / durer (272–86) to emphasize Gautier’s point that we should accept an element of hardship in our devotion to Our Lady, or as he puts it, ‘Mout en est plus li salus dolz / Quant li genoil un peu s’en duelent’ (236–7). 1 Mir 32 (‘De l’ymage Nostre Dame’) ends with eleven lines on derivatives of jor (242–52) applied to our service of Our Lady, rather than being related to any specific element of the story, which is concerned with the notion of keeping a clean house (i.e. the church interior) as a sign of respect for Our Lady and as a good example (essamplaire) to lay people. 1 Mir 33 (‘De deuz fammes que Nostre Dame converti’) ends with eight lines on derivatives of salu (153–60) which have no direct link with the story but are part of a longer, concluding exhortation. 1 Mir 34 (‘De l’ymage Nostre Dame qui se desfendi dou quarrel’) ends with derivatives of ombre and encombrier (207–16) to express the theme of protection which has been represented in the story by the image of Our Lady used as a shield in battle. 1 Mir 35 (‘D’un abbé qui nagoit en mer’) ends with ten lines on derivatives of port (205–14), which is entirely appropriate to this maritime miracle and the fact that Our Lady is here presented as ‘Dame qui de mer iez estoile’ (203). Cf. the end of 2 Pr 1. 1 Mir 36 (‘De un evesque de Clermont’), an invective against drunkenness (see 257–66 on gorge, 275–80 on derivatives of mal) which ends with ten lines on derivatives of garder (315–24) which is not thematically related to the story itself. 1 Mir 37 (‘D’un escommenié’) ends with nine lines on derivatives of sot (852–60), which reflects the central theme of ‘li bons sos’ (376; cf. 571ff ) or ‘li sages folz’ (421), which is summarized in 851–3. The final wordplay is preceded by another reprise of an earlier theme, that of death, see 755ff and 497–509. 1 Mir 38 (‘De l’orison Nostre Dame’) ends with the Latin words of a brief prayer to Our Lady which has featured in the miracle and is followed by an introductory formula announcing the next piece, where the same prayer plays a central role (1 Mir 39 consequently lacks an introductory formula). There is no extended wordplay therefore.

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1 Mir 39 (‘De cele meïsme orison’) ends with ten lines on derivatives of (se)corre (311–20) with no strict thematic relevance to the narrative, but the help of Our Lady to which we should speed. 1 Mir 40 (‘D’un moigne’) ends with twelve lines on forms of (a)prendre (307–18), thereby recalling the didactic prologue (1–14) with its theme of ‘prendre essample’ (13). 1 Mir 41 (‘De un chevalier’) ends with seventeen lines on derivatives of bras (364–80) concerning the notion of embrace, since the story is devoted to the contrast of a knight’s unrequited love for a girl and his fulfilling love for Our Lady. 1 Mir 42 (‘D’un moigne qui fu ou fleuve’) ends with eleven lines on derivatives of borbe (632–42). The tale comprises two debates, one between Our Lady and the Devil over the right to the drowned monk and, second, a debate by the author in blame and then praise of women. The overall theme is that of Luxuria and the final wordplay takes up lines 421–2 (emboans boe / ... emboe). 1 Mir 43 (‘De la nonain’) ends with nineteen lines on derivatives of dur (542–60; thirty lexical items; cf. 1 Mir 44 262–7) since Gautier has already (483ff ) emphasized the harshness of the cloister and its rewards (the nun who left to marry in this story finally returns to the cloister and her husband enters one).31 1 Mir 44 (‘Comment sainte Leochade fu perdue’) ends with ten lines on derivatives of mugue (837–46). This conclusion to 1 Mir 44 is then followed by a conclusion to the whole of Book 1 (‘Cis premiers livres ci define’, 847). The events associated with Saint Leocadia, which involved Gautier personally, are divided between two miracles, 1 Mir 11 and the present, thus acting as a narrative and thematic frame. In the passage concluding Book 1 (‘Cis premiers livres ci define’, 847) there is a coda of eight lines on derivatives of tendre (875–82). Then come three chansons to Saint Leocadia. [Chansons 1 Ch 45–47] 2 Pr 1 ends with fourteen lines on derivatives of port (397–410) to emphasize the restorative pleasure the poet receives from singing of Our Lady, thus introducing Chansons 2 Ch 2–8, the first of which continues the rhyme in port(e. 2 Mir 9 (‘De l’empeeris qui garda sa chasteé contre mout de temptations’) has close to the end (3955–9) a short passage on fin and derivatives to mark the Empress’s death, but actually ends with an announcement of the next miracle:

31 

Cf. A. Garnier, ibid., 370–98.



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‘Ici commens et ici fin. / Qui vielt oïr oie comment / Un petitet de mon froment / Veil ci semer et de m’anone: / Parler encor veil de ma none’.32 2 Chast 10 (‘Des nonains de Nostre Dame de Soissons’) is a verse-sermon which ends with sporadic wordplay on marier – Maria (1160, 1165–8) indicating the spiritual marriage of those in the cloister with the Heavenly Bridegroom, echoing the choice of the Empress in the preceding tale (there are retrospective references at 83ff, 680ff and 744ff ), and leads to a celebratory song, ‘La fontenele i sort clere’, and a brief coda mixing Latin and French (1169–78). 2 Mir 11 (‘De saint Basile’) ends with ten lines on derivatives of mont / monde in praise of Our Lady.33 2 Mir 12 (‘Comment Nostre Dame desfend la cité de Constantinnoble’) ends with eight lines (247–54) on tor / torner and their derivatives. 2 Mir 13 (‘De l’enfant resuscité qui chantoit Gaude Maria’) ends with nine lines on derivatives of esciter (744–52), since Gautier has just explained the different effects on his audience of his own handling of the queue, which, whether they produce mirth or tears, excite in the listener love of Our Lady. 2 Mir 14 (‘Comment li horsfevres fu renluminez’) does not end with any wordplay, since it is really a prologue to the next narrative. 2 Mir 15 (‘Des marcheans qui offrirent a Nostre Dame deniers et puis li tolrent’) does not end with any wordplay; it is essentially the second element of a narrative triptych (2 Mir 14–16). 2 Mir 16 (‘Comment la fiertre fu boutee hors de l’eglyse’) does not end with wordplay because it is continued in the next narrative. 2 Mir 17 (‘Comment li moustiers et toute la vile fu ars par un dragon’) ends with ten lines on derivatives of duire (259–68), since the previous narratives have dealt with the travels involved in Bueve’s translation of the portable altar from Laon to England. 2 Mir 18 (‘Dou gïuis qui reçut l’ymage Dieu en wages’) ends fittingly with eight lines on derivatives of don (579–86), which contrasts with the wages of the title, in a demonstration that God rewards giving done in His name and not in the name of worldly values. 2 Mir 19 (‘De deus freres, Perron et Estene’) ends with nine lines on derivatives of bouler / boulir (466–74) since this satire on lawyers depicts them as masters of fraud and deception who enjoy studying in Bologna.

32  See A. Garnier, Mutations temporelles et cheminement spirituel: analyse et commentaire du Miracle de l’Empeeris de Gautier de Coinci (Paris, 1988). 33  Cf. A Plantaire, ed. Savoie, p. 34, ll. 31–4 ‘Par mer puis entendre le monde. / O munde fu Marie munde. / Marie ou munde nequedent / Ne mit ne cuer ne main ne dent’.

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2 Mir 20 (‘D’un vilain’) ends with twelve lines on derivatives of batre (507–18) illustrating the notion of correction. 2 Mir 21 (‘Dou cierge qui descendi au jougleour’) ends with fourteen lines on derivatives of corde (345–58), entirely appropriate since the narrative is dominated by the metaphor of the viele and the harmony of heart and voice. [The Soissons miracles] 34 2 Mir 22 (‘Les miracles Nostre Dame de Soissons’) ends with fourteen lines on derivatives of fin (233–46) which plays on the two senses, ‘end’ and ‘refine’, in what is an example of devotion to Our Lady.35 2 Mir 23 (‘Item dou soller’) ends with nine lines on derivatives of muse (342–50), playing particularly on the association of musars with the character Buesars (33f, 341f ). 2 Mir 24 (‘De Gondree, comment Nostre Dame li rendi son nez’) ends with fourteen lines on derivatives of colp (681–94). 2 Mir 25 (‘Comment Nostre Dame rendi un homme le piet’) ends with eleven lines on derivatives of ardre (502–12), since like the preceding narrative, the tale deals with the ‘ardant feu’ (2 Mir 25 461), the ‘feu d’enfer’ (2 Mir 25 10, 491, 494, 501–2, 505, cf. 2 Mir 22 74; 2 Mir 24 13; 2 Mir 26 344; 2 Mir 26 373) which afflicted so many, including Robert de Joï, and leads thematically to the next miracle.36 2 Mir 26 (‘D’une fame qui fu delivree a Loon dou feu’) ends with thirteen lines on derivatives of loer (758–70), thereby incorporating the name Loon (763, 770).

34  Cf. 2 Mir 25 451: ‘A Soyssonz, la riche valee, / Tanz myracles et tele alee / Eut, si com truis, a ce tempoire / Que faite en fu mout bele ystoyre, / Mout bialz traitiez et mout bialz lires.’ In 2 Mir 24 1–2 ‘Ançois que fors dou livre issonz / Des Myracles qui a Soissonz / Avinrent ...’ refers to the ‘grant livre’ of 2 Mir 22 3, from which Gautier declares he will draw two more (2 Mir 24 5 ‘Encor deus biax vos retrairons / Et puis as autres noz trairons’). See 2 Mir 27 225: ‘Li feuz d’enfer si fort se prist / Par tout Artoys et tant esprist / Et d’uns et d’autres que redire / Ne vos saroye le martyre ...’ The symptoms are graphically described in ll. 256ff. 35  Cf. A Plantaire, ed. Savoie, p. 74, ll. 25–30 ‘Par armoise j’entens la dame / qui fine fu plus qu’atre fame, / Quar de l’affineur affinee / Fin fu et medecinee / Si comme l’or en la fornaise / Fu affinee ceste armoise.’ 36  See the reference to the events of 1131, recorded by Hugues Farsit, at 459ff: ‘Por ce que veil que chascune ame / Saiche en quel tanz a Nostre Dame, / Au saint soller pour l’ardant fu / La tres grans ale a Soyssonz fu, / Escrire ci le veil et metre: / Se je des anz selonc la letre / Faire vos veil narracïon, / Lors eut en l’incarnacïon / Trente et un an et cent et mil.’



THE DESIGN OF THE ‘GRANT LIVRE’

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2 Mir 27 (‘D’une fame qui fu garie a Arras’) ends with nine lines on sent (652–60) which, in its play on assentir, takes up the theme of those mescreanz who do not believe in the miracles of Our Lady.37 2 Mir 28 (‘Comment Nostre Dame sauva un home ou fons de la mer’) ends with ten lines on derivatives of rive (473–82), where the metaphor of reaching the bank is appropriate to the miracle of the saving of a man who falls out of a boat into the sea. 2 Mir 29 (‘D’un clerc’) ends with eight lines on gari / garite (947–54) as part of military terminology praising Our Lady as the knight’s invincible shield. 2 Mir 30 (‘De l’ymage Nostre Dame de Sardanei’) does not, exceptionally, end with sustained wordplay. The miracle centres on the gesture of kneeling. 2 Mir 31 (‘De un moigne de Chartrose’) ends with nine lines on derivatives of fin (128–36), cf. 2 Mir 22. 2 Mir 32 (‘Le myracle qui desfendi les samedis Nostre Dame’) ends with eight lines on derivatives of port (301–8) forming a pattern with port at the opening of the Théophile, and at the end of 1 Mir 43, and 2 Pr 1 399–410, and 2 Ch 2 1–8. 2 Ep 33 Here the conclusion does not entail traductio. 2 Dout 34 (‘De la misere d’omme et de fame et de la doutance qu’on doit avoir de morir’) ends with nineteen lines on derivatives of fin (2612–30). We have thus identified the formal elements which make up the composition of the Miracles and in which we shall be seeking to study Gautier’s particular brand of wordplay and rhyme, which, as we have seen, are not at all unrelated to formal, structural functions.

37  See R. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, ‘Sexual and Textual Violence in the “Femme d’Arras” Miracle by Gautier de Coincy’, in eadem et al., Translatio Studii: Essays by his Students in Honor of Karl D. Uitti for his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Amsterdam/Atlanta, GA, 2000), pp. 51–64.

2

Bookends Our study of the compositional features of the Miracles de Nostre Dame has shown the strong connection between structures and wordplay, the latter appearing as anything but incidental decoration. Aside from the miracle narratives themselves, however, Gautier includes in the ‘grant livre’ a number of major prologues and epilogues  in the manner of a frame, or ‘bookends’, which now deserve examination if we are to come to a proper understanding of his purpose and the means he adopted for achieving it. It will emerge that his aim is to appropriate the language, themes and characters of courtly literature with the intention of transcending that world in a vision of Mariocentric love to which his audience will find themselves subtly transported. The First Prologue of Book 1 (1 Pr 1) at once confirms the lexical and rhetorical exuberance with which he customarily invests his writing and which differentiates it from that of the jongleurs. The conscious artistry of this writing is already apparent in the multiple hendiadys, that is, the binomial constructions used to designate glory, recollection, Our Lady, and the poet, with which he begins: A la loenge et a la gloire En ramembrance et en memoire De la roïne et de la dame Cui je commant mon cors et m’ame. (1–4)

The poet’s subservience to Our Lady, hands clasped (‘a jointes mains’, 5), an ubiquitous emblematic gesture in the Miracles, plays on both religious and   Some general reflections have been published in M.-G. Grossel, ‘Prologues et épilogues dans les Miracles Notre Dame de Gautier de Coinci’, Bien Dire et Bien Aprandre (2001), 111–22; F. Laurent, ‘“Si douz miracle enseveli dedens la letre ont trop esté”. Le Livre des miracles de Gautier de Coinci’, in E. Baumgartner and L. Harf-Lancner, Seuils de l’oeuvre dans le texte médiéval II (Paris, 2002), pp. 219–43, and M. Zink, Poésie et conversion au moyen âge (Paris, 2003), esp. pp. 218–27.   See 1 Mir 10 93, 1399, 1492, 2190; 1 Mir 12 107; 1 Mir 15 62; 1 Mir 16 133; 1 Mir 17 21; 1 Mir 18 136; 1 Mir 20 92 and 347; 1 Mir 22 148, 246, 265, 411; 1 Mir 23 56; 1 Mir 29 24; 1 Mir 31 20 and 122; 1 Mir 35 94; 1 Mir 36 47 and 52; 1 Mir 37 348 and 395; 1 Mir 42 42; 1 Mir 43 472; 2 Mir 9 2770, 2938 and 3147 and 3335, 3933; 2 Chast 10 30 and 1002; 2 Mir 11 333; 2 Mir 12 83; 2 Mir 13 364; 2 Mir 18 201 and 433; 2 Mir 19 141; 2 Mir 22 45; 2 Mir 24 467; 2 Mir 26 303; 2 Mir 27 480; 2 Mir 29 261 and 265; 2 Mir 30 95; 2 Dout 34 10; kneeling: 1 Mir 10 1769; 1 Mir 43 472 (‘En souspirant a jointes mains,

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feudal connotations. His purpose is to translate into verse (‘translater ... en rime et metre’ ) the miracles he has found in a Latin source in the library at Saint-Médard, primarily for the sake of those, both male and female, who have no Latin (‘la letre / n’entendent pas’, 8–9) and who may find a useful illustration (‘boen essample’, 18) in the miracles he reports, just as he himself finds unalloyed pleasure (delit) in narrating material concerning Our Lady, Qu’el reciter ai grant delit; Sovent m’i vois mout delitant. Escriture dist de li tant

/ En souspirant a nus genolz’) – also often ‘a nus genolz’: 1 Mir 10 851, 1274, 2070; 1 Mir 11 533; 1 Mir 15 20f, 63, 113 and 118; 1 Mir 16 154; 1 Mir 17 18, 114 and 221; 1 Mir 18 13 and 385; 1 Mir 19 242 and 343; 1 Mir 20 118 and 230; 1 Mir 21 37; 1 Mir 23 12; 1 Mir 28 46; 1 Mir 29 270; 1 Mir 37 346 and 629; 1 Mir 31, 123, 235, 245 and 249; 1 Mir 32 18; 1 Mir 33 23; 1 Mir 38 322 and 1 Mir 39 78 and 147 ‘A genolz et a jointes mains’; 1 Mir 29 24; 1 Mir 40 89 (‘a jambes ploïes’); 1 Mir 40 167; 1 Mir 42 13; 1 Mir 42 278; 1 Mir 43 102 and 152 ‘Mout humelement ses genolz ploie’ and revolt 184–5; 1 Mir 43 473; ‘A nus genolz et a nus coutes’ 1 Mir 10 925 and 1466; 1 Mir 22 343; 1 Mir 31 25; 2 Mir 9 148 and 3846ff, 3852ff, 3933; 2 Mir 9 632–3; 2 Chast 10 1029; 2 Mir 11 224, 238, 349, 539 and 2 Mir 26 737, 2 Mir 29 258f; 2 Mir 30 737, 829 and 2 Mir 31 13 ‘a nus genolz’ and 27–8; 1 Mir 10 1466; 1 Mir 31 24; 2 Chast 10 1100; 2 Mir 11 349 and 390; cf. 1 Mir 15 20–1. See also 2 Mir 24 232 ‘A nuz genouz, a mains ploïes’. In 2 Mir 30 842 Gautier explains: ‘N’est pas bien chaus, n’est pas bien vis / En l’amor la tres douce dame, / Ce m’est avis, soit hom, soit fame, / Qui a la fois devant s’ymage / De doz cuer et de doz corage / Souvent ne se ploye et embronche’ etc. – on the application to monks Gautier comments ibid. 863 ‘Quant li genoul sont en la pourre, / Lors doit li cuers devant Dieu courre ...’. See also 2 Mir 31 66 ‘Pour ce myracle ci conseil / A mes amis et mant a toz / Qu’il n’aimment pas tant leurs genolz / Qu’autel ne facent a la fois. / Quant li cors a les genolz frois, / Adont est l’ame en baing tout chaut, / De la charoigne ne noz chaut / S’a froit ou chaut pour sauver l’ame.’ See also 1 Mir 29 237 ‘En bon usage cil s’aüse / Qui ses genolz escorche et use / En salüer li et s’ymage. / Qui bien l’aimme de fin corage / Ses genolz doit ben esnüer / Por li plaisamment salüer’, and 1 Mir 31 236 ‘Mout en est plus li salus dolz / Quant li genoil un peu s’en duelent. / Cil qui lor ames sauver vuelent / Cest usage doivent apenre; / N’ait nus si mole ne si tenre / La charoigne qu’ainsi ne face’. Cf. the complaint in 1 Mir 43 181 ‘En li [sc. Our Lady] salüer mes genolz / Escorchiez ai et usez toz. / S’ai fait que fole et que chaitive: / Ja mais por li tant con je vive / Ne ploierai genoil que j’aie’. For penre vainnes (venia – a posture of contrition) see Collet, Glossaire and 1 Mir 31 26, 71 and 1 Mir 36 283. The other symbolic gesture, of gratitude, is illustrated by the Empress in 2 Mir 9 3317 ‘Quant l’empereres l’entendi, / Les mains au ciel luez en tendi’, by the sacristain in 1 Mir 16 147ff and by the bishop in 1 Mir 10 1460.   See P. Ourliac, ‘Troubadours et juristes’, CCM 8 (1965), 159–77. On the theme of giving oneself sore knees in devotion to Our Lady see 1 Mir 29 237, 1 Mir 31 236; 2 Mir 31 66ff. In 1 Mir 43 a nun in love with her abbess’s nephew revolts against her service of Our Lady: ‘En li salüer mes genolz / Escorchiez ai et usez toz. / S’ai fait que fole et que chaitive’ (181–3).   G. Gros in Revue des Sciences Humaines 251 (1998), p. 78, n. 20, interprets metre as ‘le substantif technique (d’usage alors assez neuf, semble-t-il, dans notre langue)’.



BOOKENDS

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Que chascons se doit deliter En quanqu’est de li reciter. (26–30)

The traductio on delit (‘delight’), the chiastic repetition of reciter acting as a frame, and the bold ‘rime équivoque’ of de li tant (‘delighting’ / ‘so much about her’) are the very hallmarks of Gautier. His desire to advertise the material of his source, where the miracles have hitherto remained buried in the Latin (letre) – ‘Si douz myracle enseveli / Dedens la letre ont trop esté’ (32–3) – is a determined one: ‘Des plus biaus en volrai fors metre / Tout mot a mot, si com la letre / Et l’escriture le tesmoigne’ (35–7). This assurance of faithful (‘mot a mot’), rather than literal, translation, in conformity with the written (Latin) source, is ironically accompanied by a spontaneous combustion of wordplay, which, typically, mixes traductio and annominatio: La mere Dieu tel sens me doigne Ou aucun bien puisse puisier. Ma povre scïence espuisier Et essorber assez tost puis Se j’en son parfont puis ne puis Qu’espuisier ne puet nus puisieres, Tant soit espuisans espuisieres: C’est mers c’onques nus n’espuisa. Veez son nom: M et puis A, R et puis I, puis A, et puis Mers troverés, ne mie puis: Marie est mers que nus n’espuise; Plus i trueve qui plus i puise. (1 Pr 38–50)  [May Our Lady give me understanding whereby I may draw some good. I will soon exhaust and extinguish my poor wits if I cannot draw from her deep well which no drawer of water can empty, however draining a drawer he may be: she is an inexhaustible sea. See her name: M and then A, R and then I, then A, and then you will find ‘sea’, not ‘well’. Mary is a sea which nobody can exhaust. The more you draw there, the more you find.]

As well as the traductio on puisier (< puteus) ‘to draw’, there is annominatio on the homophones puis (< *postius) ‘then’, puis (< potio) ‘may’, puis (