NORMA ISO 38500

3.1 Arms from the Somme

The two coats of arms that sit below the miniature on fol. 1 recto have been left as a dead end since they were first described in print by Henri Omont.133 Identifying these particular arms with any certainty poses an incredible challenge, as the charges (crosses on both, a label and a charged quarter, respectively) are common throughout European heraldry. Within Picardy at least, crosses and labels are the most common ordinaries and subordinaries respectively.134 The colours too (gold, red, and black) are the most common in medieval French armorials; even silver would be more distinctive.135 It would therefore be no surprise to find multiple descriptions of exactly the same blason being associated with different families in different armorials, a common difficulty even with less ubiquitous charges and colours. The most recent catalogues of arms make it possible to correlate the central shield with an Artesian blason described as belonging to ‘Le Seigneur de Bernastre’ in the 15th-century Armorial Leblancq (and in the other, later derivatives of the Amorial Urfé): a black cross on a field of gold, surmounted by a red label with three points.136 _This

133

Omont,Couderc and de La Roncière, eds., Catalogue pp. 345–6, no. 24406.

134

Michel Popoff, ‘La partie Picarde de l’Armorial Navarre’, in Cahiers d’Héraldique IV (Paris: Le Léopard d’or, 1983), pp. 49–83 at pp. 50–52: ‘La pièce la plus fréquente est la croix … ’, p. 51; ‘ … le

lambel est la brisure la plus souvent rencontrée, ce qui, jusqu’à preuve du contraire, ne semble pas exceptionnel … ’, p. 52.

135_{Robert Nussard, ed., Le rôle d'armes Bigot, Documents d'héraldique mediévale 2 (Cahot: Le}

Léopard d'or, 1985), p. 14.

136_{Michel Popoff, Marches d'armes I: Artois et Picardie, Beauvaisis, Boulonnais, Coriois, Ponthieu,} Vermandois (Paris: Le Léopard d'or, 1981), pp. 59–60. Popoff lists the blason as 1739 in the Armorial Urfé and 417 in its derivative, the Armorial Le Blancq (Cambrai, Bibliothèque publique, MS 350). It may be found as the last item on fol. 184r of F-Pn fr. 5232. The association of the black cross on gold

combination is not unique in heraldry: the same appears ascribed to Jean de Vecy (an Anglo-French knight and the husband of Gui de Lusignan’s niece) in the Camden Roll.137

The Bernâtre hypothesis is the more promising as it points to Artois, the very region most often associated with late-thirteenth-century trouvère activity and where Elizabeth Aubrey has already located the manuscript in her description.138 Bernâtre itself was (and is) a small town situated midway between Arras and Amiens.139 Its lords in the thirteenth century included Jean de Préaux and his brother Raoul de Préaux, a family name eventually supplanted by Raoul’s title, de Rayneval. A letter from Jehan to Raoul dated 1273 and reported in an inventory of 1515, records their titles and holdings, as well as the sale of Jean’s claims to Hangest en Senters to Raoul.140 An alliance of 1320 brought the land under the dominion of the Boubers- Tuncq family; Jean de Boubers married Mahaut de Rayneval, dame de Bernâtre, adopting her arms, a black cross on a field of gold, charged with five shells, still

(though without the label) with the Boubers-Bernâtre family is also attested by the Armorial

Bergshammar, also derived largely from the Armorial Urfé, see Popoff, Artois, p. 59 andJean-Bernard de Vaivre, ‘Elements d’héraldique médiévale : Orientations pour l’étude et l’utilisation des armoriaux du Moyen Âge’, Cahiers d’Héraldique I (Paris: Centre nationale de la recherche scientifique, 1974), pp. I–XXXIV at p. X.

137_{This is Shield 42 (number 41 in the Anglo-Norman blazon) of the ‘Camden Roll’, British Museum,}

Cotton Roll XV.8. Gerald J. Brault, ed., Eight thirteenth-century rolls of arms in French and Anglo- Norman Blazon (University Park, PA and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1973), p. 69 and James Greenstreet, ‘The Original Camden Roll of Arms’, The Journal of the British

Archaeological Association, First SeriesXXXVIII (1882), pp. 309–28 at pp. 314 and 326. See also the note on Jean de Vecy in François Marvaud, Études historiques sur la ville de Cognac et

l’arrondissement (Angoulême: Lefraise, 1856), p. 122. John de Vecy or Vesci became the first baron by writ in 1253 on the death of his father William and died in 1289.

138

Aubrey, ‘4 Vernacular Monophony: French’, at p. 857. This corresponds to her proposed origins for KNPX as well, but see Stones, Gothic Manuscripts, Part I vol. 2, p. 160 and Chapter 1 above for signs of Parisian production in the linguistic habits of V’sscribes.

139

Théodose Lefèvre, Notice historique sur le canton de Bernaville (Somme) (Amiens: Yvert et Tellier, 1897), p. 52.

carried by Raoul de Rayneval (de Bernâtre) in 1335.141 These arms and the chansonnier could therefore reasonably be rough contemporaries.

The other coat of arms (duplicated on either side of the central arms) is more of a challenge. At some point, their quarters contained charges, but these have been scraped off, perhaps intentionally. There is one family that is known to have carried a gold cross on red and made a habit of differentiating individual members it by using different charges on a dexter quarter or canton: that is the family Varennes, as identified in the Picard section of the the Armorial de Navarre.142 The entry lists Achille carrying gulesà croix or and his son and grandson each adopting a different canton, Florent’s containing a lion with queu fourchy (lionceau à queue fourché) and Mahieu’s containing a mullet of six points pierced (molette).143 Although there are other families known to have carried gold crosses on red fields, none are known to have adopted a canton or quarter.144

Establishing a specific connection at the end of the 13th century or beginning of the 14th between a particular branch of the family Varennes and the lords of Bernâtre might be possible in future following a consulation of the archives of the

141_{Lefèvre, Bernaville,pp. 52–3.}

142_{Popoff, Marches d’Armes I, p. 50, Popoff, ‘La partie Picarde de l’Armorial Navarre’, in Cahiers} d’Héraldique IV (Paris: Le Léopard d’or, 1983), pp. 49–83 at p. 80. The Picard family de Varennes that produced Florent, the first amiraldeFrance, is not to be confused with the lords of the Lyonnais chateau of the same name. See Claude le Laboureur, Les Mazures de l’Abbaye Royale de l’Isle-barbe ou Histoire de tou ce qui s’est passé dans ce celebre monastèredepuis sa secularisation jusques à present 2 vols. (Paris: Jean Couterot, 1681), vol. 2, pp. 616–26.

143

Florent, or perhaps a different individual with the same forename is described as bearing the cross without the quarter in P. Anselme, Augustin Déchauffé continued by M. du Fourny, Histoire

généalogique et chronologique de la maison royale de France, 3rd edition, Revûe, corrigée & augmentée par les soins du P. Ange & du P. Simplicien, Augustins Déchauffez 10 vols. (Paris: Compagnie de libraires associez, 1733; repr. Paris: Éditions du Palais Royal, 1967) vol. 7, p. 732; Jacques Le Goff, Saint Louis (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), p. 293.

144

It is the quarter or canton that is unique and it is unclear from Popoff what colouring the Varennes adopted for the quarter. Although there have been, for example, some half-dozen English family arms with the same colouring of cross and field with charges in the dexter chief, none sported a canton or quarter. G. D. Squibb and A. R. Wagner, eds, Paperworth’s Ordinary of British Armorials (London: Tabard, 1961), pp. 622–9.

Département de la Somme. However, tracing the family trees and family histories of these plausible owners is beyond the scope of this thesis. It would be futile to attempt it without knowing, for instance, whether the arms are included as a sign of familial ownership or municipal provenance. Furthermore, my aim is precisely to move away from the search for origins toward a broader view of a continuum of creation, reception, and recreation. What would be useful, could it be uncovered, is the path that took the manuscript from the possession of whoever inserted the coats of arms into the hands of its next known owner. That the city of Varennes itself is situated less than 50 kilometres from Bernâtre (similarly between Amiens and Arras) strengthens the possibility of an early Picard possessor of the manuscript.

Unfortunately, this new information so far takes us only as far as supporting a place of origin in Artois for V. If the connection to the Varennes family could be secured, at least the prominent rank of V’s earliest known owners (the family that produced Florent de Varennes, first admiral of France and particular companion of Louis IX) could be established with certainty.145

3.2 ‘Furent donnez Raoulet Berthelot et Perrine Fougerays’:A Courtly Anthology in Bourgeois Tours

Among the sparse pieces of evidence attesting to V’s medieval ownership is an inscription on fol. 119v documenting a 15th-century marriage. Though scholars have referenced the inscription, none have attempted a full transcription. 146 The script,

145

Le Goff, ibid., p. 293; Joseph Strayer, ‘The Crusades of Louis IX’, in idem, Medieval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History: Essays by Joseph R. Strayer with a foreword by Gaines Post (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 159–92 at p. 185.

though forbidding, is legible and a preliminary attempt is provided in Appendix A section 6. My reading, ‘mercredi avant la tous sains xxixe jour d’ottobre’ contradicts Epstein’s year of 1457 (though Raoulet’s V is plausible as the C of cinquant) as well as the date of 20th October that Segré provides. In 1427, the 29th was indeed the Wednesday before All Saints by the Julian calendar.147

What neither scholar has previously noted is the place of the wedding: l’église de saint-pere-pulier de tours, presumably referring to the church of Saint-Pierre-le- Puellier, built in Tours in the 12th century. This localisation of the wedding allows the idenitification of this Raoulet Berthelot with a clerk, active in Tours in the early 15th century and a member of a rapidly ascending bourgeois family.148 Although city documents do not attest to any Perrine de Fougerays, there is evidence of a wealthy Fougerais family in Tours starting in the middle of the 14th century. Between 1347 and 1385, a Guillaume Fougerais (a changeur, surely too old to have been the Guillaume who fathered Perrine) paid taxes as the proprietor of ‘sept grandes maisons’.149 In 1420, a ‘maistreRaoul de Fougerais’, educated in Paris, is installed as

chanoine at Saint-Martin. From Raoul’s lengthy petitions to be given this post, Chevalier concludes it was an enviable one, demonstrating the status and education of at least one member of the Fougerais family.150

École nationale supérieure des sciences de l’information et des bibliothèques (2010) p. 18; Marcia Epstein,‘Prions’,p. 8; Segre, ed., Bestiaires, p. xlv.

147

By reference to the Sunday Letter E for 1427 in the Perpetual Table of Sunday Letters in Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens, eds., The Oxford Companion to the Year (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999),pp. 831–2 and the date-to-feria conversion table in ibid., Appendix G, p. 858. 29 October 1457 (Sunday letter B) was a Saturday.

148_{Bernard Chevalier, Tours, Ville Royale: 1356–1520, origine et développement d’une capitale à la} fin du Moyen âge (Louvain and Paris: Vander-Nauzelaerts, 1975), refers to Raoulet as ‘un simple clerc, d’un niveau d’instruction très modeste’, p. 168. However, the Berthelot family in general was in the process of successfully transitioning away from the languishing banking profession and Raoulet’s relatives would soon appear as employees of the royal household, ibid., p. 195.

149

Ibid., p. 161.

150

Archives communales de Tours,BB, R.1, fol. 66, 2 March 1420 and X 1C, 127, nos. 122–3, cited in

While the evidence is still too scanty to speculate on the reasons for the marriage of the two families, the documents do suggest that Raoulet was marrying up while Perrine was marrying down. The fortunes of les Fougerais had been established during the banking boom in Tours of the 14th century, but by the early 15th century, there was dwindling space for bankers and the legal profession was becoming more important in the city relative to other trades.151 Raoulet’s position as clerc and later as

clerc du bailliage probably offered more promise of later success than immediate capital.

The manuscript, then, might well have been a symbol of social mobility. If we imagine it was given as part of the dowry, it was surely an exceptional boon. Conversely, we might expect that the manuscript was no longer as prized as it had been, having come exceptionally far socially and geographically from its original conception. The fact that it was in the possession of a bourgeois family this long after its initial compilation says virtually nothing about the origins of the manuscript. It is unlikely that a family like the Fougerais commissioned it, given the coats of arms on fol. 1r. If my hypothesis in the previous section is correct, the manuscript arrived among the Tourangeau families only after considerable travel. The only documentation that might offer some hope of tracing the manuscript immediately before or after 1437 are records of the Berthelot family, and these offer little assistance. The reconstructed Berthelot family tree at the Bibliothèque nationale reaches back only as far as the late 15th century.152 The numerous inscriptions, signatures, charters and other statements of rights and notices of payment by various

151

Chevalier suggests that to become a changeur in 1424 was ‘s’engager dans une voie bouchée’,

Berthelot in that same collection of documents includes nothing from Raoulet. The documents in Tours do mention Raoulet as an employee specifically, but there is no reason to expect they provide the truly useful information that family documents such as his testament might have done.153

3.3 Medieval Song in a Humanist’s Library

Thanks to the coat of arms of Claude d’Urfé on an inserted parchment page immediately before the chansonnier itself, we can be certain that the codex formed part of the formidable collection of around 200 manuscripts at La Bâtie, Claude’s expanded family estate. Most of the renovations took place around the 1550s, not long before Claude’s death in 1558 and the expansions to the library presumably took place then as well.154 Most of the 200 were rebound in green leather, vellum, or morocco and embossed with the Urfé coat of arms, or in some cases, two interlocking C’s (for Claude) with an I in between (for his wife, Jeanne).155 André Vernet has identified well over three-quarters of the manuscripts (though the thousands of printed books remain elusive) and their present locations, thanks in part to a description from 1773, just before the bulk of the collection was sold off to the Duc de La Vallière.156 This inventory (now housed in a manuscript in Amsterdam), sketchy though it is,

153

Archives anciennes, Archives municipales de Tours, BB, R. 5, fols. 177, 1433, cited in Chevalier,

Tours, p. 168.

154

The Archives de Meaux à St-Just-en-Chevalet, no. 192 for the year 1551 reveal that he took out a loan of 2000 écus at that time, presumably as a means of financing the building project. His financial difficulties around this time are well documented and presumed to result from the enormous costof building the Bâtie; cited in Vincent Guichart, ‘Claude d’Urfé: Eléments de biographie’, in idem., ed.,

Claude d’Urfé et la Bâtie: l’univers d’un gentilhomme de la Renaissance (Montbrison: Conseil general de la Loire, 1990), pp. 21–39 at p. 30, note 51.

155

Léopold Delisle, Le Cabinet des manuscrits, 3 vols.(Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1868), vol. 2, p. 421; André Vernet, ‘Les manuscrits de Claude d’Urfé (1501–1558) au château de la Bastie’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 120 (1976), pp. 81–97 at p. 89.

156

allows us not only to connect descriptions to decorations in current manuscripts, it also gives an idea of the binding at the time. Some 80 books are listed and followed by a description of a common green binding and inserted decoration.157 It is clear that these books had pride of place, as the following descriptions of some additional 60 books are less detailed and no mention is made of the binding or decoration. Many have lost their binding or had it replaced, though many volumes still retain it.158

Given that the current binding of V is recent (the current covering dates to 1971, according to a note in blue ink on fol. Ir from a BnF librarian, ‘Reliure restaurée en 1971’), the information from the Amsterdam inventory is potentially extremely useful. Was V one of the manuscripts to be given green binding, along with the interior coat of arms? If so, perhaps the ordering of the two collections was changed at that time, due to Claude d’Urfé’s preference for the decorated trouvère songs over the austere prose treatise that opens the second volume. Only one entry in the inventory refers to a notated chansonnier, mentioning tablature, not square notation. Yet V was not the sole medieval chansonnier Claude posessed: the notated troubador collection F-Pn fr. 22543 (Troubadour R) was also in the Urfé library, along with other song-books. The Rouen puy collection of chansons royale and ballades, originally presented to Claude’s mother-in-law, Anne de Graville, is clearly referred to by entry 17 of the list that follows those possessing the tranche dorée: ‘Manuscrit de chantes royaux, rondeaux et balladées’.

157

‘Tous les livres cy dessus ont la tranche dorée, sont reliés en velours vert avec deux escussons des armes d’Urfé au milieu de chaque costé, et aux quatre coins de la reliure un sacrifice, des devises et des chiffres, le tout de cuyvre doré en relief’,Amsterdam, Remonstrantsche Kerk, III, C.211_{; the entire}

catalogue is transcribed in Vernet, ‘Bibliothèque’, at pp. 188–9.

158

Confirmation that entry no. 42 refers to V and not to TroubR comes from the fact that the same number is found at the top of fol. 1r to the left of the foliation in V. The catalogue entry refers to a ‘Livre de chansons, la pluspart mises en tablature, manuscrit en vélin’, without indicating the language of the collection. In TroubR, the majority of songs are lacking notation, though notation does appear on enough pages to give the impression that about half the collection has music. By contrast, the overwhelming majority of V’s songs contain notation, the exceptions coming only at the end with the chansonspieuses.

The inventorist is almost certainly referring to V here, in which case we may be confident that : a) by 1773, the current ordering had been established (ensuring the identification of the book as a song collection and not a miscellany) ; and b) the manuscript formed part of the heart of Claude d’Urfé’s collection and was luxuriously bound in green and decorated with a gold coat of arms. We might also suspect that this probable rebinding (likely in the 1550s but before 1558) coincided with the