Oxford World’s Classics

  Roman De Brut

  Wace (b. after 1100, d. 1174 × 83), historian and poet, was born in Jersey. Some have considered him to have been of noble birth, but this has not been substantiated nor has the misnomer Robert Wace, which dates back to the eighteenth century. According to autobiographical passages in his last work, the Roman de Rou (1160–c.1174), a history of the Norman dukes from the founding of the duchy to 1106, which drew on Latin sources, including the Norman histories of William of Jumièges, William of Poitiers, and Dudo of St Quentin, and the English histories of William of Malmesbury and Eadmer of Canterbury, as well as oral sources, Wace was taken to Caen as a young boy for religious training. He continued his studies in the Île-de-France, later returning to Caen to devote himself to a literary career; in the Rou, he refers to himself as a clerc lisant (a reading or teaching cleric). Although none of the lyric poems which Wace says he wrote appear to have survived, three hagiographical texts are extant from the earlier part of his career: the Vie de sainte Marguerite and the Conception Nostre Dame (both c.1130–40) and the Vie de saint Nicolas (c.1150). In 1155, Wace completed the Roman de Brut, the oldest extant Old French chronicle of the early kings of Britain. Based largely on the vulgate and First Variant versions of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae (c.1138), it contains material from oral sources and possibly also other written sources, including the earliest extant reference to King Arthur’s Round Table. In his Middle English adaptation of Wace’s Brut (c.1200), Laȝamon reports that Wace offered the Roman de Brut to Eleanor of Aquitaine, consort of Henry II; however, no other evidence has yet been found to support Laȝamon’s claim. Wace played an important role in the development of the French language through his use of an especially large and varied vocabulary and in the development of Old French narrative, primarily Arthurian romance.

  Glyn S. Burgess is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Liverpool. He has translated The Lais of Marie de France (with Keith Busby), The Song of Roland, the three twelfth-century romances of antiquity, and the Roman de Rou of Wace (2002). In 1990 he was made a Chevalier des Palmes Académiques and he is an honorary President of the International Courtly Literature Society.

  Jean Blacker is Professor Emerita of French, Kenyon College. Her recent publications include Wace: The Hagiographical Works (with Glyn Burgess and Amy Ogden) and Court and Cloister: Essays in the Short Narrative in Honor of Glyn S. Burgess (with Jane Taylor). Her current research is on the uses of King Arthur in French and Latin historical narrative of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, foundation myths, origins, and identities in the legendary history of Britain.

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  Oxford World’s Classics

  Wace

  Roman de Brut

  Translated by

  Glyn S. Burgess

  With an Introduction and Notes by

  Jean Blacker

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  Translation © Glyn S. Burgess 2023

  Editorial material © Jean Blacker 2023

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  Acknowledgements

  We should like to express our gratitude to all those who have assisted us during the time we have been working on this volume. In addition to our sponsoring editor at Oxford University Press, Luciana O’Flaherty, the copy editor Rowena Anketell, Elizabeth Chadwick, Emma Varley, the proofreader Dorothy McCarthy, typesetters, and reviewers, special thanks go to Leslie Brook, Edwina Finefrock, Jack Finefrock, Janet McArthur, and Ian Short.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Note on the Translation

  Select Bibliography

  Summary of the Text

  ROMAN DE BRUT

  Explanatory Notes

  List of Manuscripts

  Glossary

  Index of Personal Names

  Index of Geographical Names

  Introduction

  Life and Work

  Wace’s Roman de Brut (1155) can be seen as the gateway to the history of the Britons for the vernacular worlds, both French and English—and thus to Arthurian history as seen in one of his extremely popular Latin sources, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (late 1130s). For historical texts the Brut was a foundational work, an inspiration for a series of anonymous verse Bruts of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries and for the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut—the most widely read French vernacular text on this material in medieval England—as well as a forerunner of the Middle English Brut tradition, including Laȝamon’s English verse Brut (c.1200). Wace’s poem thus inaugurates Brut traditions in verse and in prose, in historiography and in literature.

  In addition to having been most likely considered to be a historical text by Wace and his contemporaries, as well as by historians after him, the Roman de Brut is also one of the fundamental works of medieval French literature, as it introduces to the French-speaking public of England and France the theme of King Arthur and his court. It also includes the first written account of the Round Table, which Wace developed with remarkable inventiveness. In the Middle Ages the distinction between romance and history was not as clear-cut as it is today; for example, there were close thematic, lexical, and structural ties between the Brut and the romans antiques which we consider fictional, the Thèbes (1150), the Eneas (1160), and the Troie (1165) (also referred to as the romans d’antiquité). The Roman de Brut also contains the earliest example of the term roman with the meaning ‘French vernacular text’ (v. 14866). This term was soon applied to the genre of romance itself.1 A number of themes are common to both historical writing and literature—family, war, chivalry, kingship, power, wealth, the possession of land, the power of love, marriage—themes that would become fundamental to the development of European literature over the centuries. One of the most prolific of twelfth-century vernacular authors, Wace is best known for his two verse chronicles (histories), the Roman de Brut2 and the Roman de Rou (1160–c.1174), but he is also the author of three surviving hagiographical works, the Conception Nostre Dame (c.1130–c.1140), and the first French lives of St Margaret (also c.1130–c.1140) and St Nicholas (c.1150).3

  Wace was born in Jersey, probably sometime between 1100 and 1110, perhaps closer to 1110 as it appears that he was still writing in the mid-1170s. As nothing definite is heard of him after c.1174, it is possible that he died between 1174 and the early 1180s. In the surviving manuscripts of his works his name occurs in a number of forms: Wace, Gace(s), Gasce, Grace, Guace(s), Vacce, Vace, Vuace.4 He tells us that he was from Jersey though we don’t know how long he lived there. While still quite young, he was taken to the ducal capital of Caen and sent to school there (in his words he was ‘mis a letres’, Rou, III, v. 5307). In Caen he could have attended the school of the abbey of Saint-Étienne, which took boys from the secular world and educated them alongside those who were destined for the cloister.5 Wace would have studied Latin at this school, and it was perhaps at an early age that he learned to translate and adapt Latin narratives, skills he developed into such a fundamental aspect of his career as a writer.

  The information that Wace was born in Jersey and studied in Caen comes from a passage in the Rou (
III, vv. 5299–318); other passages provide further biographical information. He also tells us that he was educated in France, which at that time was the area now known as the Île-de-France. While it is possible that he went to Chartres, Paris provided the finest available education in theology and in the subjects of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric), so it was probably in this environment, which was developing as a new centre of royal government as well as of learning, that he qualified as a magister, thus acquiring the right to teach (licentia docendi). He subsequently returned to Caen where, he tells us, he began to compose works in the vernacular. As vernacular literature was already established throughout the Norman and Anglo-Norman realm, Caen may have been a place where translations and adaptations from Latin had more appeal than they did to the Latin-based intelligentsia in Paris. Unlike monks, who were obliged to write their chronicles and other works in Latin, Wace, as an independent secular author, would have had the opportunity to write in French.6

  One of Wace’s best-known statements about himself is that he held the office of clerc lisant during the time of three Henrys: Henry I, Henry II, and Henry the Young King (who was crowned in June 1170, but never lived to reign) (Rou, III, vv. 179–80). The post of clerc lisant seems to have been a secular one. Its duties are not clear, but they may well have involved studying, teaching, interpreting and reciting texts, plus various forms of administrative tasks, such as acting as a notary.

  Wace presumably continued to live in Caen, but at some unknown date (probably in the mid- or late 1160s) King Henry II granted him a prebend (provende) in Bayeux (Rou, III, vv. 171–5, 5313–18). Just what this prebend consisted of is not clear. A prebend could be an endowment of lands, churches, or rights from the estates of abbeys or cathedrals. In Wace’s case it seems to have been the status of non-dignitary canon at the cathedral of Bayeux.7 He may have had no specific duties other than the requirement to be present to witness abbey transactions, but he might also have been obliged by the bishop to attend monthly chapter meetings in Bayeux. The distance from Caen to Bayeux is under 30 kilometres, so he could have continued to live in Caen.8 We don’t know why Henry gave Wace the prebend; it could have been a reward for the progress he had made on the Rou or a belated acknowledgement of his earlier Brut, which had been completed in 1155.

  Those seeking further confirmation concerning Wace’s presence as a cleric in Caen or Bayeux may consult several charter attestations that include the name Wascius (or variants). There are four charters of interest from the cartulary of the cathedral of Bayeux, printed as Livre noir, and those of the priory of Le Plessis-Grimoult and the abbey of Saint-Martin de Troarn, which remain in manuscript.9 The earliest occurrence (although it is a copy in a much later document) is an agreement, dated February 1169, between Bishop Henry of Bayeux (1165–1204) and Abbot Gislebert of Saint-Martin de Troarn, which resolves a dispute over the benefices and churches that formed the liberty of the abbey. A Wacius (the form in the text is ‘Wacio’, as attestations are recorded in the ablative case) is among the witnesses named as canons. In another of Bishop Henry’s charters, now dated c.1170–3, a ‘magister Wacius’ is a witness to the confirmation by the bishop of Bayeux and others of the privileges and possessions of the regular canons of the priory of Le Plessis-Grimoult. This wording conforms to Wace’s designation of himself as ‘Maistre / Mestre Wace’.10

  In terms of Wace’s links to known individuals or families, in the Rou he makes a reference to his father, whom as a boy he heard say that the number of ships that set off from Saint-Valéry, in preparation for the invasion of England, was seven hundred less four (III, vv. 6423–8). Was he then the son or grandson of a shipbuilder who worked on William’s invasion fleet? Or did his father just hear this information from someone who was involved in the crossing? Also, does Wace say that his maternal grandfather or great-grandfather was Turstin [or Thurstan], chamberlain to William the Conqueror’s father, Robert the Magnificent of Normandy (1018–35) (Roman de Rou, III, vv. 3223–5)? Rou MS B (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 375) reads: ‘De par sa mere fu mis auves’ (‘was my ancestor through his mother’). This led literary historian Gaston Paris to suggest emending the line to read ‘de par ma mere fu mi aives’ (‘was my ancestor through my mother’).11 Whether Wace was related to Turstin, as grandson or great-grandson, must remain speculation.

  Wace could have been connected to the Wac/Wach/Vac family that held lands not only in Jersey and Guernsey, but also in the Bessin, the Cotentin, and parts of England. One member of this family was a Roger Wac, who in 1154 held lands in St Jean des Chênes in Jersey from the abbey of Saint-Sauveur in the Cotentin and has previously been noted as possibly connected to Wace.12 Also named in earlier studies is a later canon of Bayeux, Richard Wace.13 Canon Richard, whose name occurs in the form ‘Ricardus Wacii’ (‘Richard son of Wacius’), could have been the poet’s son (or nephew); for if Wace were in lower (secular) orders, he would have been able to marry and have children.14

  It would seem that Wace began to compose vernacular works after his return from France to Caen. In the Rou he twice mentions writing sirventes (lyric poems not concerning love), but these have either not survived or have not yet been identified in any manuscript (II, v. 4148; III, v. 153).15 Rather than lyric poems, Wace appears to have preferred what he calls romans, that is lengthier works in the vernacular language, translated and adapted from Latin sources (including his religious narratives). Moreover, in spite of their modern titles containing the word roman, the Brut and the Rou still rely heavily on Latin histories as sources, and they are fundamentally chronicles composed en romanz, rather than stories of love and chivalry as in the case of the romances of Chrétien de Troyes and other contemporaries.

  As far as the end of Wace’s career is concerned, we know that he began the Rou in 1160 (Chronique Ascendante, vv. 1–4).16 At some stage, perhaps around the early or middle 1160s, he stopped working on it, only resuming his task somewhat later, perhaps around 1170. The Chronique (v. 62) mentions the Siege of Rouen, a historical event that took place in 1174 and, although we have no precise confirmation of this, Wace could have abandoned the Rou at around this date. In the final lines of the Rou, he tells us that King Henry II withdrew his patronage and commissioned a new version by a Maistre Beneeit, probably the Benoît de Sainte-Maure, who a few years earlier had composed the Roman de Troie (Rou, III, vv. 11420–4). We do not know why Henry chose to act in this way.17 At this stage Wace had probably been composing vernacular works for well over forty years, yet he clearly still thought he had more output left in him. By the time he finished writing, romance as a genre was in full swing, and he himself had had a significant influence on it,18 saints’ lives were enjoying great popularity and, following in the footsteps of Geffrei Gaimar, who had written his now-lost Estoire des Bretuns in the 1130s, the earliest extant Old French chronicle,19 he had completed two lengthy historical works. Thus, Wace’s range is extraordinary, having been a clerc lisant, a recognized author for nearly a half-century, and a pioneer in at least two major genres: hagiography—including enfances, passio, and miracle narratives—and chronicles. We also learn that Wace participated in important political events—in connection with recent Norman history, not just the history of the Britons—such as the moving of the remains of dukes Richard I and Richard II to a more elevated position behind the main altar at Sainte-Trinité in Fécamp, in 1162, in the presence of Henry II (Rou, III, vv. 2241–6).

  The Rou is also important for our understanding of the Roman de Brut, given the amount of self-reflective material Wace includes.20 For example, in the Rou Wace tells us that he travelled to the forest of Brocéliande in Brittany to see ‘Arthurian sites’ for himself, and felt like a fool for having done so since he didn’t find any:

  Issi soleit jadis ploveir Thus in days past, it used to rain

  En la forest e environ, In the forest, and around,

  mais jo ne sai par quel raison. But I don’t know why.