Abell Spiritual and Material Boundaries in Old French Verse

Contemplating the Walls of the Earthly Paradise
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-5015-1427-2
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 37, 131 Seiten

Reihe: Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

The Earthly Paradise was a vibrant symbol at the heart of medieval Christian geographies of the cosmos. As humanity’s primal home now lost through the sins of Adam of Eve, the Earthly Paradise figured prominently in Old French tales of lands beyond the mundane world. This study proposes a fresh look at the complex roles played by the Earthly Paradise in three medieval French poems: Marie de France’s The Purgatory of St. Patrick, Benedeit’s Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot, and Guillaume de Lorris’s The Romance of the Rose. By examining the literary, cultural, and artistic components that informed each poem, this book advances the thesis that the exterior walls of the Earthly Paradise served evolving purposes as contemplative objects that implicitly engaged complex notions of economic solidarity and idealized community. These visions of the Earthly Paradise stand to provide a striking contribution to a historically informed response to the contemporary legacies of colonialism and the international refugee crisis.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Abell, Jacob

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Lyrik und Dichter
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Romanische Literaturen Französische Literatur

Leseproben

Chapter 1 Apocalyptic Solidarity and Worthless Gems in Benedeit’s Voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot
Deu en prïet tenablement / Cel lui mustret veablement (He prayed to God about it persistently / That He would show him Paradise for his own eyes).32 —The Voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot The Anglo-Norman Voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot was one of many vernacular adaptations of an older Latin story—the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis—originally composed in the eleventh century. The title specifies the story’s subject as one of Ireland’s great patron saints: Brendan, the Benedictine abbot who became a legend for his prominent role in the development of early Irish monasticism. Eventually canonized, Brendan died in the sixth century. Half a millennium later, Brendan’s star had not waned in the medieval imagination. After the Latin Navigatio was composed, translations and adaptations sprung up in a range of languages from Catalan to Dutch. Among these adaptations was the Anglo-Norman Voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot.33 Composed in rhyming couplets, the Anglo-Norman version of the tale follows its Latin predecessor in describing the perilous oceanic quest that Brendan undertakes with a small band of fellow monks. Their destination is the Earthly Paradise. Brendan displaces himself from the monastery to seek this land for the spiritual edification he anticipates upon arriving. As an expression of his exemplary piety and devotion to God, Brendan is said to pray that God Lui mustrast cel paraïs U Adam fu primes asis Icel qui est nostre héritet Dun nus fumes deseritét. [Should show him that Paradise Where Adam was first seated That which is our heritage And from which we were disinherited]. (lines 49–52) Thus, Brendan’s pious desire expresses three theological associations with the Earthly Paradise: it is the land that was humanity’s ancestral home, a home that humanity lost, and which is perhaps a home to which humanity may hope to return. Through the elaboration of Brendan’s piety, Benedeit’s presentation of the Earthly Paradise manages to telescope the primal and the ultimate, ancient pasts and distant futures. The entire narrative of Christian salvation is, from Brendan’s point of view, implicit in the Earthly Paradise. The Irish monk also formulates an associated (and troubling) motive for his quest. In addition to his pious wish to contemplate humanity’s once (and possibly future) home, Brendan formulates a conjoined desire to perceive the torments of the damned. On this score, the poet does not spare us the grim bluntness of the abbot’s wishes: Enfern priëd vetheir ovoec, E quels peines avrunt iloec Icil félin qui par orgueil Ici prennent par eols escuil De geurreer Deu e la lei, Ne entre eols nen unt amur ne fai. [He wanted to see Hell as well And what torments will suffer there Those wicked people who because of their pride Here on their own accord rush To wage war on God and the law And who among themselves have neither love nor faith]. (lines 65–70) We will revisit this disturbing dimension of Brendan’s motives in the fourth and final chapter. For now, it suffices to observe that the journey to Paradise exacts a toll on both Brendan and his company. From riding the backs of whales to witnessing cosmic battles between dragons, the monks pass through all manner of fantastic challenges and obstacles before finally arriving at the place whose alleged holiness first set Brendan’s mind away from Ireland. The Many Meanings of Gems: Lapidary Texts and the Earthly Paradise
When Brendan finally arrives at the Earthly Paradise, he and his monks have endured the loss of companions, visions of Hell, and the terrors of the ocean. After many tribulations, the journey’s first sign of relief is the sight of a gem-encrusted wall: the gates of the Earthly Paradise. The monks’ encounter with the wall is a passing moment in a long poem, a transition between the quest and its true conclusion inside the Earthly Paradise. And yet this wall and its gems refract—literally and poetically—many of the text’s most important narrative and theological concerns. The entire episode of the Earthly Paradise is a narrative innovation on the part of Benedeit, the translator of the Anglo-Norman version of the poem; Benedeit’s Latin predecessor describes no such moment in the Navigatio.34 In the Anglo-Norman Voyage, this episode begins with a lengthy description of the several gems and jewels that Brendan and his company behold as they arrive on the shores of the Earthly Paradise: Tut en primers uns murs lur pert, Desque as nües qui halcez ert; N’i out chernel ne aleür Ne bretesche ne nule tur. Nuls d’els ne set en feid veire Quel il seit faiz de materie, Mais blancs esteit sur tutes nefs: Faistres en fud li suverains reis. [First of all a wall appears to them, Which was built up right to the clouds; There was neither battlement nor gallery Nor parapet nor tower. None of them knows with certainty What material it might be made of, But it was whiter than any snow, The maker was the Sovereign King]. (lines 1675–82) The monk’s ignorance of the wall’s origins only heightens the superlative quality of its impressive physical dimensions. Only God could possibly have made this imposing sight. As the next lines make clear, the walls of the Earthly Paradise are doubly impressive owing to their distinctive material beauty: As gutes d’or grisolites Mult i aveit d’isselites; Li murs flammet, tut abrase, De topaze, grisopase, De jargunce, caldedoine, De smaragde e sardoine; Jaspes od les amestistes Forment luisent par les listes; Li jacintes clers i est il Od le cristal e od le beril; L’un al altre dunet clartét Chis asist fud mult enartét. Luur grande s’entreportent Des colurs chi si resortent. There were many exquisite chrysolites Containing drops of gold; The wall blazes, all is on fire, With topaz, chrysoprase, With jacinth, chalcedony, With emerald and sardonyx; Jasper along with amethysts Shine brightly around the edges; The jacinth there is bright With crystal and beryl; The one gives brightness to the other. The person who set them was very skilled. They convey great light to each other From the colours which thus flash back. (lines 1687–1700) In this passage, Benedeit’s Anglo-Norman verse elaborates eleven precious stones on the edifice of the Earthly Paradise: topaze, grisopase, jargunce, calcedoine, esmaragde, sardoine, jaspes, amestistes, jacintes, cristal, and beril. This specific list of gems has led Ian Short and Brian Merrilees to entitle this portion of the poem “Le lapidaire divine” (The divine lapidary).35 The title is apt. As a medieval textual genre, lapidaries elaborated the extensive properties associated with gems, jewels, and precious stones. Yet despite Short’s and Merrilee’s suggestion, no scholarly treatment of the Voyage has investigated medieval lapidaries to consider how the accounts of gems developed in such texts may have interacted with Benedeit’s literary description of Paradise’s walls. If the Earthly Paradise is a holy lapidary, then we can expect to identify enlightening intertextual resonances between Benedeit’s presentation of precious stones and similar treatments found in lapidary texts. Among those lapidaries dated to the early second millennium, none was so celebrated, copied, and translated as the Latin De lapidibus of Bishop Marbode of Rennes. The impressive popularity of the text is evident in the 160 extant manuscripts that informed a recent critical edition of the De lapidibus compiled by Maria...

Über Autor(innen)

Jacob Abell is a medievalist at Baylor University where his work focuses on ecocriticism, religious studies, and the digital humanities. His most recent publication focuses on the poetics of trauma in Dante and the Caribbean poet Aimé Césaire.