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Abstract
The Municipal Library of Tournai was struck in an air raid during the Second World War. Among the valuable manuscripts that were lost was Bibliothèque de la ville de Tournai MS 129, a fragmentary manuscript containing the alexandrine quatrain version of the Old French Vie de Saint Alexis. This poem, also known as the Chanson de Saint Alexis, represents one of the oldest surviving poetic traditions in French and enjoyed considerable popularity during the centuries after it was produced. Despite considerable scholarship on the Vie de Saint Alexis, the Tournai MS has gone largely unnoticed and is not mentioned in editions of the decasyllabic version of the Vie, nor is it mentioned in the only edition of the quatrain version. Thankfully, a nineteenth-century transcription of the lost Tournai copy survived the war. This article compares this transcription to surviving versions of the Vie de Saint Alexis to explore how the lost Tournai text intersects with, and illuminates, the broader tradition of the poem.
Notes
1 Catherine Vincent also writes that “La Vie de saint Alexis fait partie des premières grandes œuvres rédigées en langue d’oïl” (par. 8) (“The Vie de saint Alexis is among the first significant works written in the langue d’oïl”); all translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated.
2 One of the poem’s early editors, Gaston Paris, suggested that the poem began to circulate in written form around 1040 (Paris, Littérature 7; see Storey, Annotated, 25). F. Zufferey suggests, on linguistic grounds, that the vernacular version emerged around 1050 (2; 8-9). Christopher Storey, surveying the evidence, suggests that the text “was composed in the second half of the 11th century, and almost certainly after the end of the First Crusade (1059)” (Annotated 25). More recently, Maurizio Perugi has argued that the vernacular version of the Vie could not have been written before 1112 (419).
3 De Vernon’s authorship is not commonly accepted today. Some do, however, ascribe the poem to De Vernon; see, for example, a recent article by Catherine Vincent (par. 8). Vincent attributes this view to Christopher Storey (although Storey is far more restrained in his reporting of the evidence; see La Vie de saint Alexis 148).
4 The octosyllabic version is no. 4 on the work’s Arlima page (see also Paris, “La vie de saint Alexi en vers octosyllabiques” 166). The version in monorhymed alexandrine laisses is no. 5. This version is preserved in two manuscripts, ‘P’ - Paris Bibl. nat., fonds fr. no. 2162; and ‘O’ - Oxford, Bodl., Canonici misc. 74 (Stebbins 5). These two MSS have been edited by Charles E. Stebbins. Independent versions translated from Latin include that inserted into the Tombel de Chartreuse (no. 7), and the prose versions (8 and 9) (see the poem’s Arlima page, “La Vie”).
5 For another who views the A text as superior, see Sckommodau. An edition based on MS A has since been completed by T.D. Hemming (Citation1994). Other editors have selected manuscript L on the basis of what Carl J. Odenkirchen describes as its “completeness" (57). Perugi (Citation2014) chooses MS L as a base text on the basis of a complex recension that takes into account the Latin versions (601-608; 617-618). On the critical history of the manuscript tradition of the text, see Tony Hunt (225, note 10; 226, note 24).
6 For his 2000 edition, Perugi attempts to reconstruct a stemma for the Vie, but Perugi revisited the issue in his 2014 study of the poem (583-87) and the matter remains the subject of ongoing critical inquiry. Further discussion of the relationship between copies of the eleventh-century text is beyond the scope of this investigation.
7 This is version 3 on the work’s Arlima page (“La vie”). Paris and Pannier had not identified the Carlisle MS at the time of their 1872 edition. This second manuscript is described by Gaston Paris in “Un second manuscrit de la rédaction rimée (M) de la Vie de saint Alexis,” and by R. Fawtier and E. C. Fawtier Jones; see also Elliott 18.
8 The Q tradition has been edited by Pannier (Vie 346-388), with a brief and dismissive introduction by Gaston Paris (Vie 332; the manuscripts are described on 7, 27 and 331). Elliott suggests that the Q tradition is closer to manuscript M2 than M1 (19).
9 The list is given on the poem’s Arlima page (“La vie”). On MS H see Paul Meyer (Citation1901). The Bern MS is described in Hermannus Hagen’s catalogue (296). On preliminary analysis, MS G shares readings with P and E, but further collation is beyond the scope of this article and best left to future editors of the quatrain version.
10 The count of 247 is given by Faider (3). It is based on the manuscripts described by Wilbaux (Wilbaux gives numbers up to 245, but one of these manuscripts, no. 3, is in three parts). The count does not include the Assistance publique fonds or Nouveau fonds. The count of pre-1500 manuscripts that were lost is mine, based on the dating given in catalogue descriptions by Faider and Wilbaux. Two additional manuscripts (MSS 243 and 244 in Wilbaux) are not dated and may therefore date to this pre-1500 period, but this is unlikely judging from Wilbaux’s descriptions. MS 213 may have contained some medieval material but it was more likely a post-medieval copy.
11 The Tournai MS is not mentioned in the early editions of the poem, including Wilhelm Müller’s (Citation1845). Dr Geßner’s (1855), or Jakob Schipper’s edition of the English versions of the poem (1877). The MS is also not mentioned among the seven copies of the monorhymed quatrain version described by Pannier (Vie 331-340). In his 1953 edition of the earlier poem, Gerhard Rohlfs states that the fourteenth-century quatrain version survives in “mehreren Handschriften” (6) (“many manuscripts”) but does not list these. Of the 23 editions of the earlier version of the Alexis text listed by Christopher Storey in his 1987 Annotated Bibliography, I have checked all except nos. 23, 27 (a translation into modern French), and 30-31 (all of which were unavailable to me) and none of them mentions the Tournai MS. In his own conservative edition of manuscript L of the earlier version of the poem (1934), Christopher Storey does not describe the various manuscripts of the poem, so the Tournai MS is naturally not mentioned (nor is it mentioned in his 1968 edition, undoubtedly for the same reason). Nor is the Tournai MS mentioned in more recent editions. It is not mentioned by Stebbins in his 1974 edition (unsurprisingly, since this edition is focused on the thirteenth-century laisse version). Alison Goddard Elliott’s 1983 edition does not mention it, perhaps because this edition is focused on the earlier, eleventh-century version (14). Recent studies are also silent on the Tournai MS, likely because they tend to be focused on the earlier tradition of the poem. In her 1991 study, Rachel Bullington suggests that there are 17 manuscripts of the Old French Vie but does not list them in detail (7-9, note 7). In his extremely detailed and comprehensive study of the Alexis tradition and the Old French Vie (2014), Maurizio Perugi offers an updated version of his 2000 edition of the eleventh-century Vie and establishes the sources of the Old French version but does not consider the Q tradition at any length and so does not mention the Tournai MS (the MSS of the eleventh-century version are described on 617).
12 The Bibliographical entry for the work in the Dictionnaire Étymologique de l'Ancien Français states that the Tournai MS version “correspond en gros aux vers 264-570” (“corresponds roughly to verses 264 to 570”) of the eleventh-century Alexis. But the version corresponds much closer to stanzas 123 line 4 to 190 line 4 in Pannier’s 1872 edition, as discussed above.
13 This description is based on those of Paul Faider (146) and Amable Wilbaux (62).
14 Linguistic localisation is best avoided given the state of the transcription, on which see below. While the anonymous editor claims that the edition preserves the particularities of the language, there are no marks of abbreviation or other qualities that reflect a strictly diplomatic transcription and we must assume the editor silently expanded abbreviations, which would influence the linguistic forms of the transcription.
15 There are several lives of St Alexis listed by Sanderus but none can be positively identified with Tournai MS 129.
16 The editor writes that “La Société a ordonné l'impression de ce fragment dans toute sa naïveté, avec ses bizarreries d'orthographe, et sans autre addition que la ponctuation nécessaire à l'éclaircissement du texte” (67) (“The Society called for the printing of this fragment in all its naivety/primitiveness with its particularities/oddities of spelling, and without any other addition than the punctuation that was deemed necessary for the clarification of the text”). We must assume, however, that the transcription is not completely diplomatic, since there are no marks to signal expanded abbreviations; see above, note 14.
17 The collation is also limited by the state of scholarship on the quatrain version of the Vie. The only edition remains Pannier’s, and while it should be praised for taking into account many versions of the text, its Lachmannian editorial approach results in occasional silences on variant readings and a synthetic text which can give the impression of greater variation between copies than is attested by the manuscript tradition. Pannier outlines his editorial approach on pp. 344-45. In addition, a few verses of the quatrain version are printed by Carl J. Odenkirchen in his edition (56-58).
18 Substantive variant readings that J shares with the whole CDP branch occur at the following lines of Pannier’s edition: 129.1, 130.3, 134.2, 142.1, 147.3, 147.4, 152.2, 170.1, 174.3. The variants J shares with D provide further evidence that J belongs in this branch.
19 Substantive variant readings that J shares with D include 129.3, 132.2, 134.3 (also shared with B and P), 141.3, 143.4 (similar variants), 144.1, 144.2, 145.3, 146.4, 150.2, 151.4, 157.4 (also shared with C and F), 169.4, and the variants listed above. Variants shared with other manuscripts are fewer but do occur on occasion; see e.g. 146.3 (shared with B) and 190.3 (shared with B).
20 That D is not descended from J is clear from e.g. 124.3, 125.2 and 126.2. That J is not descended from D is clear from e.g. 131.3, 132.2 and 139.2.
21 The idea that the twelfth century saw a shift from ‘epic’ to ‘romance’ was developed by W. P. Ker (3). Ker’s formulation was taken up and extended by R. W. Southern, who argued that the twelfth century came accompanied by a turn toward self-reflection and a related turn toward works with romance elements (227-28). For those who reject this model, see, for example, Sarah Kay’s The Chanson de Geste in the Age of Romance and Keith Busby’s Codex and Context: Reading Old French Verse Narrative in Manuscript. I discuss the matter at further length in my monograph (Murchison 30-31).