Jean d' Arras and Couldrette: Political Expediency

and Censorship in Fifteenth-Century France

Matthew W; Morris
Oxford College of Emory University

The romance of Melusine is one of the most intriguing monu-

ments handed down to us from the Middle Ages. The legend
behind it concerns the Lusignan family of France and Cyprus, who
claimed to be descended from Melusine, a fairy of Poitou, whose
origins hark back to her status as a Celtic deity representing the
sovereignty of the land, and whose role it was to choose and form
union with the rightful ruler of the land.1
The first recorded mention of the legend dates from about
1340. The tale itself was not incorporated into literature until
1393 when Jean d'Arras composed the first Melusine romance in
prose. His version was followed almost immediately by
Couldrette's poetic version in 1401. Both versions of the tale
relate the story of the "other-world" lady, Melusine, who marries a
mortal, helps him to found a seigneurie, and bears him ten sons
who go forth to found kingdoms and duchies of their own. In the
end, Melusine is betrayed by her husband. Against injunction, he
spies upon her and sees her frolicking in her bath, a beautiful
woman from the waist upward, a serpent from the navel down.
He denounces her, then regrets his action, but too late; she must
depart. Taking the form of a winged dragon, she flies away, never
to return except as banshee to her descendants or when the castle
changes lords (Morris13-18).
The numerous extant fifteenth-century manuscripts of both ver-
sions (13 for the prose; 20 for the poetic) testify to the great
appeal of these romances to readers throughout France during the
late Middle Ages. Shortly after the appearance of Jean d' Arras's
and Couldrette's tales, the Melusine story spread rapidly to
Germany, England, and Eastern Europe.
As the fifteenth century progressed, demand for the two ver-
sions steadily increased. To meet the demand in France, editions
of Jean d' Arras's prose version began to appear very soon after the
introduction of the printing press in France (1470). The first of
35
 these appeared in 1478; seven other editions of this version
appeared before the end of the fifteenth century. 2
Outside France's borders, demand for printed editions of the
romance was iill1 as pronounced. In fact, the very first printed
edition of the Melusine was that of Couldrette translated into
German and executed in Germany in 1474 (Thuring 1), four years
before the first French prose edition.3 At least two other editions
of this German translation appeared in the last quarter of the fif-
teenth century. In all, twenty-eight editions of the German version
(based on Couldrette's poem) have appeared since that 1474 edi-
tion.
In addition to the German Melusine, translations of the story
into other languages attest to the Melusine's aesthetic quality and
ability to attract universal audiences. Among the many
translations of the romance, there were early Melusine editions in
Flemish, Danish, Czech, Spanish, Swedish, English, Dutch,
Icelandic, and Russian.4 These attest to the universal interest in
this poignant tale of love and enchantment. 5
One of the great unanswered questions concerning the dissemi-
nation of the Melusine romances, however, has to do with the fact
that no printed French edition of Couldrette's poetic version was
ever executed until 1854, while some thirty-seven editions of Jean
d' Arras's prose version were printed. Scholars who have attempt-
ed to answer this question generally agree that no definitive con-
clusions can be drawn. Nevertheless, some light can be shed on the
subject by an examination of political events of late-fourteenth-
cnetury Poitou, a region plunged into the intermittent violence and
turmoil of the Hundred Years War. At the time of Jean d'Arras's
composition of the Melusine, a large part of France was under the
domination of England. Furthermore, almost all of France was
divided into French and English factions. The conflict with
England was less a foreign war than a civil war undertaken and
led by Englishmen. In it, Frenchmen did the fighting for the benefit
of English overlords to whom they owed allegiance.6 In this war-
torn region, instability and confusion were the rule of the day. In
the city of Poitiers, for example, three-fourths of the inhabitants
wanted French rule, but the other fourth, who held all the power
and armed might, were determined to remain English. In Poitou,
36
as in other provinces, it was not uncommon to find French
fortresses and English fortresses situated very near to each other.
These were the circumstances which nourished the volatile soil
of internecine strife from which sprang the romances of Jean
d' Arras and Couldrette. Created against a backdrop of conflict, the
Melusine tales were, in effect, two competing works of propaganda
whose aims were to further the respective French and English caus-
es.
Jean d' Arras's version of the tale was written at the behest of
his patron, Jean de Berry, one of the fiercest adversaries of England
and companion in arms of Du Guesclin, the conqueror of Poitou
and Lusignan (Stouff 9). According to Jean d' Arras's prologue to
the prose romance, the Duc de Berry had commissioned the work
at the request of his sister Marie, Duchesse de Bar. Her desire for
a work dealing with the legendary origins of the Lusignan family
was based on their descent from the house of Luxembourg whose
members were descendants of the Lusignans.7 Jeande Berry's real
motives, however, were more than likely inspired by political aims.
In the late-fourteenth century, he was faced with the task of
reestablishing French authority in a newly re-conquered Poitou
(Lehoux 336-338). His interest in attaching himself, by means of
a literary tale, to the fairy of Poitou, was to enhance his prestige in
the eyes of the Poitevins {a people very much attached to belief in
Melusine's power as tutelary spirit of the land;8 he hoped to there-
by reinforce his legitimate right to rule over the region.
Couldrette's poetic version was commissioned by Guillaume de
Parthenay, a powerful Poitevin magnate and English ally-one of
the strongest adversaries of the French during the Hundred Years
War. His motives-also political-for commissioning the poetic
version were identical to Jean de Berry's with the added objective
of serving the cause of the English in France by heaping praise
upon his English suzerains and their French partisan allies (Lehoux
214-215,286).
That these two rival magnates used the Melusine legend and
romances for enhancing their claims to territories in Poitou is
incontestable. The implications of their rivalry went far beyond
the borders of Poitou, however. The romances were not simply the
creations of two noblemen involved in an isolated territorial strug-
37
gle. A broader understanding of the motives behind the composi-
tion of both works reveals them to be products of a struggle of
much wider dimension between French and English-a contest of
national scope,in fact, whose prize was the throne of France. And,
as events would bear out, the ultimate victors of the struggle were
the Valois kings and their royal successors.
Given the political aims of both versions of the Melusine
romance, the propagation at the presses of the one and relegation
to obscurity of the other were logical outcomes of the final defeat
of the English in France. With the conflict ended and Poitou
restor~d to the possession of the French crown, the poetic version
undoubtedly fell victim to censorship because of the threat it posed
to the authority of the victorious French faction. All available evi-
dence points to the probability that the victorious Valois kings,
fearing a return of dissension and challenge to their definitive right
to rule in Poitou-indeed, in all of France-would logically have
barred from the presses a work whose very aim from inception
was to strengthen the cause of their adversaries-the English and
their French partisan allies.
Significant evidence suggesting press censorship of the poetic
version of the Melusine can be gathered from an examination of
the oldest and most elaborate extant manuscript containing
Couldrette's work: MS 12575 of the French Bibliotheque
Nationale (dating from ca. 1430 [Desaivre 239]). There is evi-
dence to suggest that this manuscript-from all appearances, pro-
duced by artisans of the ducal Burgundian court-belonged to
Marie de Cleves, a princess of the La Marck line, wife of Charles
d'Orleans, and mother of Louis XII. In all likelihood, this volume
was one of the many (Thompson 446) that came with Marie as
part of her dowry upon her marriage to Charles d'Orleans in
1440. From the inventories recorded of Charles d'Orleans's
library, we know that one of the items listed was a work entitled
Melusine (Delisle 93). An interesting feature of MS 12575 is a
missing 410-line segment containing a genealogy and poem of
praise to the Parthenay family. The folios of this segment, begin-
ning with the mention of Melusine's youngest son, Thierry-sup-
posed progenitor of the Parthenays-as heir to Lusignan have been
excised from the manuscript. The removal of this panegyric and
38
genealogy is a sure indication of an attempt by its owners to
undermine the Parthenays' territorial claims. One may logically
conjecture that these excised pages, tracing the descent of the
Parthenays-allies of the English-from Melusine and designating
them as heirs to Lusignan, would be inappropriate for the library
of Charles d'Orleans: this Valois prince had not only suffered
twenty-five years imprisonment at the hands of the English, but, as
a source of even greater bitterness against them and their allies in
France, he had seen his own father murdered and mutilated by one
of England's principal allies: the Burgundian Duke, Jean Sans Peur.
If-as evidence indicates-Charles d'Orleans was indeed the
book's owner, destruction at his hand of these pages-which legit-
imize claims of supporters of the English cause-would be quite
plausible. Such a segment would have been anathema to this
Valois prince, nephew of Jean de Berry, and father of the future
Louis XII.
That Couldrette's work was blocked from the presses by the
victorious French monarchy is consistent with the royal power's
attitude toward the press during the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies. What is known about press censorship in France during
this period-when many of the editions of the prose Melusine were
printed-would indicate that censorship of the poetic version of
the Melusine by the Valois kings and their successors was in con-
formity with the royal power's developing tendancy to garner con-
trol of the press in order to promote its own interests.
According to Georges Minois, the Middle Ages had been a
period of autocensorship wherein the rare works expressing oppo-
sition to established authority were stifled by social pressure alone
(12), without need for intervention by the authorities. With the
growth of a wider educated public and greater impetus for intellec-
tual "effervescence" which came in the later 15th century, howev-
er, the powers which had previously felt confident in their monop-
oly of the truth, reacted with repressive measures (Minois 12). The
first active attempts at censorship came from the Church (and in
particular, from its daughter, the University). As early as 1411,
according to Louis Radiguer, "...Lettres patentes had stipulated
that all works must be approved by the University of Paris" (19).
After the advent of the press in France, efforts to impose censor-
39
 ship became more strident. According to Minois, "It was the royal
power that tOok the initiative with the creation of the "privilege "
which appeared in the 1480's. For every work, the book sellers
had to obtain authorization to sell from the civil authorities. This
authorization was obtained by lettres patentes of the royal
chancery, a bill of Parlement, or permit from the provost of Paris"
(Minois 46).
In the beginning, the "privileges" were granted rather freely
and served, for the most part, as authorizations protecting authors'
and printers' rights to production of their works (Brown 2); even-
tually, however, they were transformed by the privilege granting
authorities into a means of imposing censorship. The right to
grant such privileges was at first shared by the Sorbonne (as agent
for the Chruch), the royal authority, and the Parlement and
Prevote. As the tendancy of the privilege granting authority moved
more and more in the diredtion of censorship, however, the idea of
shared authority gradually eroded and gave way (Minois 25) to
powerful initiatives by the monarchy to monopolize control of the
presses (Radiguer 10). As the end of the Middle Ages approached,
the Sorbonne ceded more and more of its power in matters related
to censorship and intellectual control to the royal authority and
Parlement (Minois 25).
Tandem control of the presses by the crown and Parlement
continued for some time because of the goals shared by these two
powers. In many respects, the Parlement's interests and those of
the royal authority were coalesced. In all matters concerning
"Privileges, the Parlement consulted the Procureur de roi"
(Armstrong 37).
Gradually, however, there was a progression, toward complete
control of the presses by the royal authority alone. In less than a
century after the creation of the "privilege," the Parlement was ex-
cluded from privilege granting authority. Eventually, the royal
monopoly of printing in France was fully realized (culminating
with the Edit de Moulins in 1566)9 with direct censorship imposed
by blockage from the presses of those works that might be judged
as counter to royal interests. Into such a category would have fall-
en the poetic Melusine. As a work upholding the territorial claims
of those who had supported the English, Louis XI and his succes-
40
I
sors would certainly have had an interest in preventing through
press censorship its dissemination.
One question, nonetheless, inevitably arises in the search for a
plausible explanation for the absence of any pre-nineteenth-century
French editions of the poetic Melusine: and that is, could the pref-
erence for the prose Melusine with its numerous early editions be
merely due to a matter of taste on the part of the medieval audi-
ence? In answer, one must conclude that it seems highly unlikely.
In the first place, the large number of extant manuscripts containg
Couldrette's work (twenty manuscripts of Couldrette's version as
opposed to thirteen of Jean d'Arras's) attests to its aesthetic appeal
to medieval French audiences. What is more, the numerous early
translated editions in German and other languages demonstrate its
universal appeal to medieval audiences in general. Further, it can
be argued, as noted by some critics, that the Couldrette version is a
more concise and structurally sound work than the somewhat
meandering and schematically incomplete prose version (Desaivre
135). In view of such observations, logic leads us to conclude that
the poetic Melusine's failure to come to the presses in France could
hardly be based on any lack of literary or aesthetic appeal.
At the end of the Hundred Years War, restoration of order was
an urgent priority for the Valois kings. In a nation emerging from
the turmoil of war, the struggle for political cohesion required a
scrutiny of unprecedented degree on the part of the crown. Its ini-
tiatives to assure royal control of the presses in France were,
indeed, motivated by an awareness of the press's efficacy for pro-
moting royal interests.10 The Valois were aware, aswell, of the
threat the press could pose to those interests if allowed to operate
out from under their scrutiny. The monopoly over printed matter
they eventually gained amounted to no less than a total power of
censorship. It is unlikely that any production of the press could
fail to be affected by the scrutiny of a monarchy possessed of such
a power and determined, above all else, to protect its own inter-
ests. This would certainly be true of Couldrette's Melusine, a com-
position that shows every indication of being a propagandistic
work favoring the recently defeated English and their French parti-
san allies-a work that, furthermore, challenged the claims of the
Valois to disputed territories in France. It would stand to reason
41
that the newly victorious royal power would block from the press-
es a work posing such a threat to a still fragile order-a work
which owed its very inception to the political rivalry between the
Valois and a family that numbered among the fiercest of the rebel
French barons determined to end Valois rule: the Parthenays of
Poitou.
Notes
1 The significance of the attempt by the Lusignans at linkage
with a supernatural being has to do with Melusine's origins as a
Celtic deity. To the inhabitants of Poitou-Pictavia,land of the
Celtic Pictones in pre-Roman times-Melusine was the anthro-
pomorphic representation of the sovereignty of the land whose
right and privilege it was to recognize and form union with the lig-
itimate ruler of the territory.
2 By the end of the fifteenth century, seven printed editions of
Jean d'Arras's prose version had appeared in France, the first dat-
ing from 1478. Some thirty further editions of this prose version
appeared in following centuries (Morris 20).
3 This edition was published in Geneva by the German printer
Steinschaber von Schweinfurth (Meyer 7).
4 Desaivre, pp. 244-68 and Jean d'Arras, L'Histoire de la Belle
Melusine, Reproduction en fac-simile de l'edition de Geneve
imprimee par A. Steinschaber en 1478. Ed. W. J. Meyer. Paris:
librarie Ed. Champion, 1924, pp. 11-12.
5 It was probably due to a familiarity with many of the ele-
ments (giants, monsters, serpents, etc.) in Melusine that the people
of Germany and Eastern Europe showed a special liking for the
fairy of Poitou; they consequently found a great rapport between
the story of Melusine and their own legends and folklore.
6 The term "Englishman" did not necessarily imply that one
was an inhabitant of England. One distinguished between the
English of the French nation and the English of the English nation.
It often happened that a man divided his life into periods of loyal-
ty to the two warring nations. A Frenchman could turn
42
Englishman and back to Frenchman again. Froissart, for example,
after having served the Queen of England (Philippe de Hainaut),
passed into the service of princes devoted to France.
7 According to the prologue of the prose version, Jean de Berry
was further urged to have such a work executed by his cousin,
Josse de Luxembourg, Marquis of Moravia. Jean de Berry, Marie,
and Josse were grandchildren of Jean l'Aveugle, King of Bohemia
and Count of Luxembourg (Stouff 2).
8 The Poitevins were descendants of the Celtic PictOnes, who
retained belief in the tutelary spirit of the territory (Pictavia) as the
personification of the sovereignty of the land. According to Celtic
belief, the "sovereignty" (in this case Melusine) sought out and
chose union with the legitimate ruler of the land (Lehoux v.l, 343).
9 With the Edit de Moulins in 1556, it was forbidden by royal
authority to the Parlement and prevot de Paris to grant any "conge
d'imprimer" (a privilege they held formerly). Charles IX forbade
the printing of "aucun livre, carte ne peinture sans l'expres com-
man dement et conge de Sa Majeste et de son Conseil prive." Le
pouvoir royal cherche a reserver Ie monopole du contra Ie de l'im-
prime, qu'il s'attribue par l'edit de Moulins en 1566 (Minois 56).
10 One of the chief aims of the monarchy after the advent of
the press was to see that it was used in service of its propaganda
(both interior and exterior) in forming public opinion (Minois 20).
Works Cited
Armstrong, Elizabeth. Before Copyright: The FrenchBook-
Privilege System1498-1526. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990.
Brown, Cynthia J. Poets, Patrons, and Printers: Crisis of
Authority in Late Medieval France. Ithaca: Cornell U P,1995.
Delisle,Leopold. Le Cabinet des manuscrits de la Bibliotheque
Imperiale, vol I. Paris: Imprimerie Imperiale, 1868.
Desaivre, Leo. Le My the de la Mere Lusigne. Mem. Soc. de statis
tique, science, lettres et arts des Deux Sevres, t. xx. Niort: 1882,
p.239.
43
 Herbet, Felix. "Le Roman de Melusine" Revue de I'Aunis de la
Saintonge et du Poitou t. IX. Niort: L. Couzot, 1869.
Lehoux, Fran~oise. Jean de France,due de Berry. Paris: A. et
J. Picard, 1966.
Meyer, W.]. L'Histoire de la Belle Melusine (deJean d'Arras),
Reproduction en fac-simile de I'edition de Geneve imprimee par
A. Steinschaber en 1478. Paris: librarie Ed. Champion, 1924.
Minois, Georges. Censure et Culture sous l'ancien regime.S.L.:
Fayard, 1995.
Morris, Matthew W. A CriticalEdition of Melusine, A Fourteenth-
Century Poem by Couldrette. Dissertation: Universityof
Georgia, 1977.
Radiguer, Louis. Mattres Imprimeurs et ouvriers typographes
(1470-1903). Paris: SocieteNouvelle de Librairie et d'eedition,
1903.
Stouff, Louis. Essai sur Melusine, roman du XIVe siecle,par Jean
d'Arras. (Dijon: Universite de Dijon, 1930.
Thompson, ].W. The Medieval Library. Chicago: Universityof
Chicago Press, 1939.
Thuring von Ringeltigen, Die Historie von einer Fraugennant
Melusine, die eine Meerfei und dazu eine geboren Konigin gewe
sen. Deutsche Voisbucher. Munchen: Wilhelm Langesiesche-
Brandt Ebenhausen, 1912.
Woledge,Brian. Bibliographiedes romans et nouvelles en prose
franfaise anterieursa 1500. Geneve et Lille:Droz, 1954.

44