Queeste. Tijdschrift over middeleeuwse letterkunde in de Nederlanden. Jaargang 2007

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Writing History à la bourguignonne
Susie Speakman Sutch

With regard to: Jean Devaux & Alain Marchandisse (eds.), Littérature et culture historiques à la cour de Bourgogne. Actes des Rencontres internationales, organisées à Dunkerque (Université du Littoral- Côte d'Opale) le jeudi 27 octobre 2005. Le Moyen Âge, t. 112, fasc. 3-4, 2006. ISBN 978-2-8041-5168-9. Price: €70,-.

As Jean Devaux states at the very outset of this volume, ‘Au xv^e siècle “l'histoire s'est faite bourguignonne“’. Although this assertion of A. Molinier has been endlessly repeated, in fact only very few of the writers on whose prolific works this statement is founded have received much critical attention. While the chronicles of George Chastelain and Jean Molinet, the works of Jean Lemaire de Belges, and the mémoires of Philippe de Commynes and Olivier de La Marche have sustained wide scholarly notice, others are largely ignored. Writers such as Mathieu d'Escouchy, Jacques du Clercq, Jean de Wavrin, Jean de Haynin or Jean Le Fèvre de Saint Rémy, to mention only a few, do get attention, but frequently only in footnotes when their testimonies supplement, complete or complement the accounts of their more esteemed colleagues. Fortunately, however, the tide seems slowly to be turning, as the publication of the present volume attests. The result of an international colloquium organized by Jean Devaux and Alain Marchandisse, this volume makes available nine essays each exploring a different Burgundian historian's works or methodology. To be expected the staples are Commynes, Chastelain, Molinet, La Marche and Lemaire de Belges. Noticeably, other writers are present as well: Jean de Wavrin, David Aubert, whom some may know only for his activities as copyist and producer of deluxe manuscripts for the Duke of Burgundy, and the Burgundian apologist Jean d'Auffay.

Jean Devaux's introduction contextualizes this collection of articles by elegantly summarizing the historical themes the commissioners of historical works, ducal and noble alike, especially prized: from the mythical treatment of the history of Troy to the exploits of Jason, and from the heroic deeds of Alexander the Great, the Persian emperor Cyrus, and Charlemagne, to the reproduction of chronicles celebrating the histories of the disparate principalities the dukes controlled recognized as instruments for legitimating their rule over these individual territories. Moreover, reflections of the cherished ambitions of the Burgundian ruler Philip the Good to lead a crusade to recover the Holy Land are to be seen in the marked preference for narratives highlighting overseas voyages. Likewise, feats of arms too, whether reported from actual contemporary events or embedded in romance narratives, held pride of place in the historical narratives of so many of these writers reflecting not merely an interest in historical events but in the ideology that put its stamp on Burgundian chivalric identity.

All the essays assembled here explore, in one way or another, Burgundian historians at work. The first two analyze the historian's craft: not simply what details he included in constructing his account, but the way he assembled the elements or episodes he selected to give structure and meaning to his account. Jean Dufournet and Catherine Emerson, first and foremost, scrutinize their subject texts through the literary historian's lens better to uncover the ideological program and the discursive strategies that the memorialists Philippe de Commynes and Olivier de La Marche respectively employ in their writing of history. The focus in Dufournet's article is the Saint-Pol affair that runs through Commynes' Mémoires like a red thread. By the juxtaposition of discrete episodes in Commynes's Mémoires Dufournet elucidates not simply Commynes' methodology as an historian but his didactic aims as well and the way he draws moral and political lessons from the behaviour and attitudes of the men and their actions he describes. Saint-Pol offers a negative exemplum of indecision and double-dealing comportment that earned him not merely the enmity of Louis xi, Edward iv, and Charles the Bold, but finally his own public execution on 19 December 1475. Juxtaposed to the negative example of St. Pol is that of Odet d'Aydie, Lord of Lescun, who like Commynes chose Louis xi's side and henceforth was his good and loyal servant, and thus serves as an anti-Saint-Pol exemplum. Not surprisingly a second anti-Saint-Pol exemplum is present at this point in Commynes' narrative as well, namely Commynes himself. In his justificatory self portrait he depicts himself as a steadfast loy-

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al servant who once having chosen the king's camp never wavered in his service to his monarch. Meanwhile Catherine Emerson demonstrates how La Marche's treatment of minor characters and their comportment in battle scenes adds depth and definition to his narration of the particular military conflict at hand. She focuses above all on the behaviour of three minor characters: in the one case a treacherous captain who deserts his troops; in the other, a pair of squires who consistently fight with courage and valour. The juxtaposition of these episodes reveals the memorialist's moral judgment not merely of these three individuals but of the opponents in the larger military encounters as well, since they incarnate the moral values that La Marche attributes to the two armies locked in military conflict.

While the articles by Dufournet and Emerson provide us with close readings of individual episodes, those of Estelle Doudet and Jean Devaux offer close readings of the rhetorical discourse that George Chastelain and Jean Molinet employ: the former in his Chronique; the latter in Le Roman de la Rose moralisé. Estelle Doudet deftly elucidates how George Chastelain eschewed mapping his assignment as the first official Burgundian chronicler onto that of the Grandes Chroniques de France, a more than suitable and prestigious model, so as to forge his own historical genre - part account, part moral interpretation. She masterfully articulates how in carrying out his assignment he tailored the cut of the historian's cloak to fit his particular dimensions - a lay historiographe steadfastly refusing to call himself a chroniqueur - and intention: to write an historical narrative making full use of an encomiastic discourse whose goal was to reveal history's moral lessons since for Chastelain the writing history was inseparable from ethical evaluation. In so doing he invented not merely a new historical discourse but a new status for himself, one that was captured in the new title that Charles the Bold attributed to him, namely that of l'indiciaire.

When Jean Molinet succeeded Chastelain in the post of indiciaire, he likewise embraced his master's discourse. Hence he wrote his Chroniques too in a style that combined a pronouncedly rhetorical discourse with a moralist's didactic impulse. He employed this discursive strategy as well, and perhaps somewhat surprisingly, in his prose exegesis Le Roman de la Rose moralisé commissioned by Philippe de Clèves. Jean Devaux's treatment of this work - at once a complete prose version of the poem by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun and an edificatory commentary upon this poem - expertly clarifies how Molinet transforms the romance allegory of the Roman de la Rose into an allegory of the mystical itinerary of the devout soul seeking salvation. At the same time, the author tracks how infuses the whole with concrete illustrative exempla largely through the evocation of recent events and contemporary or quasi-contemporary personages whom he stigmatizes or eulogizes according to the moral lesson that he is endeavouring to convey. For like his fellow historians Chastelain and La Marche, Molinet conceived of history as a vast panorama of memorable deeds and the historian's endeavour to cast them in such a way as to realize their full didactic impact.

In his article Georges Le Brusque evaluates the treatment that Philip the Good's saint voiage - his ambition to lead a crusade and the vow to do so pronounced at the Feast of the Pheasant - received in the accounts of different Burgundian historians. An ideal that ultimately came to nought, it would nonetheless be a recurrent topic between 1453 and 1464. While all the chronicles and mémoires the author examines applaud Philip the Good's ambition and are by and large uncritical of the fact that he ultimately never could launch a crusade, George Chastelain alone puts the duke's non-accomplishment of his vow in a factual light and accords it a realistic evaluation.

After bringing up to date the bibliography on Jean de Wavrin and his Recueil des croniques et anciennes istoires de la Grant Bretaigne, a present nommé Engleterre, Alain Marchandisse pursues two lines of inquiry: in the first place, Wavrin's definitive choice, apparent in the later books of his Recueil, for the Yorkist cause; and in the second, the extent to which the War of the Roses was known in Burgundian court circles. After sketching the life and career of Wavrin, the author ascribes Wavrin's bias for the Yorkists to the personal relationship that likely developed between Wavrin and Edward IV's brother-in-law, Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, and that would have been reinforced by their shared literary tastes. Regarding the second, the author concludes that although observations on this struggle are present to

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a greater or lesser degree in the historical narratives of other Burgundian writers, it is largely thanks to Wavrin's in-depth treatment of this conflict, which he characterizes as reportage journalistique, that the War of the Roses was know in Burgundian circles.

Anne Schoysman explores not the humanist elements present in the writings of Jean Lemaire de Belges as official indiciaire of Marguerite d'Autriche, but rather Lemaire's personal relationship with fellow humanist and printer Josse Bade. While little tangible evidence links Lemaire and Josse Bade, the author persuasively argues for the strength of their relationship, and endorses Pierre Jodogne's suggestion that Lemaire may have been among Josse Bade's advisors. By assessing the printer's production in the years 1500 to 1515, she convincingly illustrates how these two humanists shared a pronounced interest in the same humanistic authors who were important sources Lemaire relied upon in his works and especially in his Illustrations de Gaule et Singularitez de Troie. Seen in this light Josse Bade's dedicatory letter to Jean Lemaire de Belges, at the outset of a volume containing two pamphlets against the Turks that Lemaire had supplied him with, provides conclusive evidence of Lemaire's active participation in Josse Bade's publishing enterprise.

In his article Giovanni Palumbo treats a little acknowledged facet of David Aubert's protean activities as copyist, scribe, workshop head, adapter of texts and author, namely that of historian. Rather than arguing for the attribution of the Croniques et conquestes de Charlemagne to Aubert's pen, the author instead assesses to what extent this vast compilation can be considered an historical text. He approaches this task by analyzing an explicit episode: namely Aubert's version of the Chanson de Roland, focussing explicitly on the Battle of Roncevaux. His technique is to juxtapose Aubert's version with two important sources: the Chronique de Turpin / the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle and the verse-Roland in order to determine Aubert's methodology in composing his Croniques. Not surprisingly, for some episodes he followed the Pseudo-Turpin version of events; for others La chanson de Roland; and where there were discrepancies in these two versions, Aubert made interventions. The author concludes that while the Croniques cannot be considered an historical account, Aubert proceeded like a medieval historian in his rewriting of the events that make up this compilation.

While the other articles in this collection concentrate on authors whose work as historians dominates their literary oeuvre, the final article by Kathleen Daly examines the use to which the jurist Jean d'Auffay put historical documents. Former lawyer at the Parlement of Malines, counsellor and master of requests of Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian of Austria, Jean d'Auffay penned a treatise in which he vindicates Mary of Burgundy's legal rights to the several territories she inherited upon the death of her father, concentrating first and foremost on her hereditary rights to the duchy and county of Burgundy, in the face of Louis xi's contestation. In so far as the duchy of Burgundy was concerned, this legalistic attempt was doomed to failure as Louis's forces firmly occupied it, but the treatise nevertheless enjoyed a long and significant impact on diplomacy: indeed copies of it continued to be made and circulated for upwards of two centuries.

Taken individually the diverse essays grouped in this volume shed light on one single aspect of each historian's contribution to the greater Burgundian historical project. But looked at as a whole, the volume demonstrates a thematic unity and cohesion often absent from publications of conference proceedings. It reveals the multifaceted endeavour that shaped the historical culture at the court of Burgundy and yields a publication of unexpected richness of detail and insight. These aspects are further enhanced by the comprehensive thematic bibliography of over 20 pages that concludes this book and constitutes in fact one of its strongest assets. The bibliography provides complete references for those given in abbreviated form in the footnotes to the articles. At the same time, the articles' footnotes, in their turn, provide a rich resource. In short this volume constitutes a treasure trove of bibliographic source material.

Given the scope and breadth of the essays compiled here, one would hope that these proceedings will generate further conferences at which the same kind of thorough attention will be paid to other Burgundian historians, plentiful numerous in number and hitherto largely ignored. One has only to look at the thematic bibliography of this volume to retrieve their names. This list would include not

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only Jacques du Clercq, Jean de Haynin, Jean le Fèvre de Saint Rémy, and Mathieu d'Escouchy, mentioned at the outset of this review article, but many other chroniclers and memorialists writing both in French and in Latin as well as, and would also include chronicles written in Dutch, for they all made valuable contributions to the historical literature and culture at the court of Burgundy.

Address of the author: Vakgroep Nieuwe Geschiedenis, Universiteit Gent, Blandijnberg 2, b - 9000 Gent.