Hugo of Mâcon

Hugo von Mâcon (Hugo Matisconensis) is a French author of the 13th century who wrote a cycle of several thousand verses of knight stories in the Middle Latin language. This only work so far ascribed to him, entitled Gesta militum, served for a time in Burgundy as a textbook for the urban nobility and the early bourgeoisie.

Life

Hugo von Mâcon was born around 1220 or earlier. He was given the nickname “von Mâcon” because he was either born in the Burgundian Mâcon or lived there in later years. Between about 1240 and 1245 he studied fine arts , presumably at the University of Paris , and completed his studies with a Magister Artium . After completing his studies, he probably initially held a professorship at the Artes Faculty, in order to later settle down as a teacher, either at an episcopally licensed private school, as it has been since Pope Innocent III. can be proven in different cities, or at a cathedral or cathedral school, which should employ grammar teachers according to the provisions of the Fourth Lateran Council . There are no primary sources about his life. Clues can only be drawn from his work, the “Gesta militum”, and from its tradition. The two complete manuscripts of the Gesta militum name the author, Hugo von Mâcon. Guido de Grana , who commented on the work for school lessons, describes Hugo von Mâcon as a master's degree . The British historians John Bale and John Pits note that Hugo von Mâcon was associated with a court and wrote the Gesta militum as a young man. He was also an Englishman and wrote other works. Johann Albert Fabricius also localized the author in England, but only around the year 1490. Aspects inherent in the text indicate that Hugo von Mâcon also studied theology in addition to studying the liberal arts or was himself a cleric : the general theological discourse, the tradition - and the historical proximity to the work of the important preacher Etienne de Bourbon , the pronounced misogyny and the intensely propagated asceticism . Possibly he had connections to the Dominican or Cistercian order , since all the handwritings of the Gesta militum originated in Clairvaux .

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Structure of the Gesta militum

The Gesta militum are a cycle of miniature verse narratives from the middle of the 13th century. Shortly after their creation, Guido de Grana commented on them for school lessons. Since medieval literature has no obligatory titles, the work is referred to with the formulation “De militum gestis memorabilibus” or, for short, Gesta militum , which comes from the commentator Guido de Grana.

The text, consisting of approx. 3000 elegiac distiches , is divided into nine books, which are dedicated to the nine muses . Each book tells a complete knight story . A framework story embeds the individual stories and provides information on the interpretation of the entire cycle. The prologues to the nine books each contain a call to the muses , a humility formula from the poet and the announcement of a new story. The last book concludes a doxology of the Trinity . The framework story tells how the poet wants to drink Hippocrene from the Muses' spring , but is rejected by the Muses because he is still too inexperienced. To test his talent, he has to tell each muse a story according to the principle of the Arabian Nights or the Decameron , until all nine muses are finally satisfied and let him drink. This secured his fame as a poet and concluded the cycle.

Contents of the Gesta militum

first book

The first book tells the story of a knight who, through virtue, becomes the confidante of the French king, but is slandered by a rival. When the latter accuses him of adultery with the queen, the king withdraws his trust. During a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela , the knight defeats a usurper who wants to appropriate the domain of a widowed princess. Returning to Paris , he beats his opponent in a duel. As a token of loyalty, he also has to face a lion unarmed. Although his honor is restored with the victory over the beast, he leaves the royal court and moves to the Holy Land as a crusader .

second book

The protagonist of the second book is an evil robber baron who stabs a priest in emotion. His pious wife asked him to repent. He confesses to a bishop who, as an exercise of penance, instructs him to spend a night in a chapel and not speak. That night he was visited three times by the devil , once in the form of his wife, once as a merchant, and once with the face of the bishop. But the knight is not deterred and from then on leads a godly life.

Third book

The third book focuses on a knight whose wife has succumbed to the mortal sin of vanity. After her sudden death, she appears to her husband as a revenant without a head. She invites him to marital intercourse. The god-fearing knight doubts her identity and calls on two Dominicans to help her, who involve her in a philosophical dispute. Scholastic argumentation strategies and knowledge expose the ghost as the devil . After the exorcism , the knight now lives in celibacy .

Fourth book

Like the first book, the fourth book also tells of a knight whom the king first makes his confidante, but who is then accused of adultery with the queen by a rival. Under a pretext, the king sends the knight to the lime distillery , where the lime burner is supposed to push him into the fire. Since the knight before his departure St. Attending mass, he is late. Because of this delay, his rival, who believes he is pursuing him, gets ahead of him and is killed instead. Saved by this coincidence, the knight leaves the royal court and goes to the emperor's court. Again he is slandered. He defeated his recent adversary in a duel. On the order of the emperor he has to jump from a high rock face as a proof of loyalty. He miraculously survives and continues his life as a hermit .

Fifth book

The fifth book is about the long-distance love of a knight for a countess from Cyprus . At the Cypriot court, the knight appears as a traveling singer and woos the married countess. As a token of love, he wins the tournament and she shows him her favor. When a riot breaks out in his homeland, he leaves. At home he wed a young woman who soon died. The ghost of the dead wife appears to him one night on a hunting excursion in a group of dancing women and men. He kidnaps the revenant and enters into a marriage with her. The ban on telling him is broken only by their son. She then disappears for good and the knight atones for his offenses with many alms for life.

Sixth book

The sixth book introduces a knight who commits adultery. In order to get rid of the rival, the betrayed husband pretends that he wants to take part in a crusade accompanied by his wife . The lover then travels to the Holy Land . In Jerusalem he joins the Templars and is badly wounded in a battle against the Saracens . An angel heals his wounds and no longer leaves his side. But his behavior puzzles the knight: the angel kills the son of a pious family, steals a hermit's silver cup and gives it to a greedy rich man. After the angel has explained the deeper meaning of these deeds, the knight withdraws from the world as a hermit .

Seventh book

Like the sixth book, the seventh book also depicts a knight who commits adultery. The betrayed husband forces him to leave. On the way to Santiago de Compostela , the knight spends a night in a ghost castle. The daughter of the monstrous landlord asks him to free a captured maiden and her brother from her father's custody. Together with the prisoners and the daughter, the knight manages to escape. Another terrible night in another haunted castle follows. The next day the knight seeks out a hermit whose words impress him deeply. He continues his journey and stays in Santiago de Compostela for the rest of his life.

Eighth book

The eighth book again describes a knight's love for a married woman. One day he leaves for a tournament without saying goodbye. The woman begins to doubt his love and sends him a white robe that he should wear in the tournament instead of his armor. The knight temporarily loses his mind in despair and wanders around the forest. But then he fulfills her request and is seriously injured in the fight. He sends the bloodstained robe to his beloved as proof, with the request that she also wear it, in front of everyone in the church. When she does, she is confronted by her husband. The recovered knight makes confession, renounces his love and leads a life of penance.

Ninth book

The ninth book is the only one that begins with a childhood story. A foundling of noble descent grows up with a peasant woman and dreams of being a knight . A nymph seduces the boy and explains his origins to him. Thereupon he travels to his biological uncle, who wants to keep him away from his inheritance. So the young knight searches for Âventiure in a foreign country. First, he frees a virgin from the power of two giants. Then he helps a young king in the war against the Gentiles. He is wounded, set sail and stranded on an island inhabited by monkeys. There he is captured by pirates and sold as a slave to a pagan queen. The knight offers her his help against a strange usurper and defeats him after long battles. He renounces his marriage to the queen and moves to Nazareth , where he ends his life as a hermit .

Intertextuality and literary historical importance

Motifs, fabrics and narrative patterns of the Gesta militum originate on the one hand from Latin epics such as the Anticlaudianus of Alanus from Insulis , from collections of examples and legends , on the other hand from old French and Middle High German novels, Fabliaux and fairy tales . In addition to orally transmitted material, the author used almost the entire spectrum of sacred and secular literature of his time as a source of inspiration. As in medium-Latin usual literature references are to the ancient, biblical and patristic texts clearly, especially to the Metamorphoses of Ovid .

The hybrid that the author created is an example of how Latin authors of the later Middle Ages took up themes and narrative patterns from the flourishing secular narrative literature and redefined them both aesthetically and morally. The tournaments described , encounters with giants and monsters, and courtiers of love come from the repertoire of the courtly novel , and the popular theme of adultery comes from the Fabliaux . In addition, the protagonists experience éventiures modeled on the French Arthurian epic , some of which even merge into a double cursus. However, while in the courtly novel the Âventiure itself is the path to perfection and bliss, the knights of the 'Gesta militum' recognize a wrong path after the end of the Âventiure. As an alternative to chivalrous virtue, they choose the path of asceticism . Asceticism protects them from deadly sins , their own or those of others. All seven deadly sins are exemplified in detail in the individual stories, so that one can also see a narrative variant of certain collections of examples in the cycle , which were based on the model of vice catalogs and were extremely common.

Didactically, the work aims to propagate a radical amateur asceticism . The collective courtly ethics is rejected and replaced by a modern individual ethic in the tradition of Abelard . With their open offer of identification, it is precisely the exemplary and not very personalized figures that indicate the turn towards personal responsibility. This tendency is supported by the surprising subversion of the text, which with the help of fantastic and ironic elements and narrative breaks consciously disrupts the rational flow and the realism of the narratives typical of the time. On the one hand, it disguises the ostensible intention of edification, on the other hand, it puts the reader in a status of critical sovereignty that elevates one's own conscience to the most important judicial authority. The Gesta militum are a formal experiment with high didactic standards. The author's skill in working out individual motifs into extensive narratives, a process that Giovanni Boccaccio perfected a hundred years later , points to the future of narrative prose despite the conventional metric form.

Dating and tradition

Guido de Grana , who must have written his commentary before 1278, dates the publication of the Gesta militum to the time of the General Council in Lyons under Innocent IV in 1245. This date corresponds to textual and intertextual dating references, for example three similas with the epic De triumphis ecclesie of the professor at the Paris Artes Faculty, Johannes de Garlandia , which graduated in the same year. The Gesta militum are completely handed down in two manuscripts of the Bibliothèque municipale in Troyes with the call numbers 906 and 2139. Both were made in Clairvaux in the 15th century (first quarter or 1482) and contain no other text except for a single sheet with a fragment of Fabliau de Richeut in Ms. 2139. This younger manuscript gives the name of the scribe, Johannes de Vepria , Prior in Clairvaux. In addition, in Paris, Sainte-Geneviève, there is a Florileg under the signature 3196 , which was also made in Clairvaux around 1500 and has survived 824 verses from the Gesta militum . The verses are rubricated and can be found between works by Petrus Riga and Francesco Petrarca . At least three other Gesta militum manuscripts have been lost: one from the West Flemish Cistercian monastery Ten Duinen , one from Évreux and one from the Syon monastery in Twickenham .

bibliography

Edition

Hugo von Mâcon, Gesta militum , ed. Ewald Könsgen (Middle Latin Studies and Texts 18), 2 volumes, Leiden / New York et al. 1990. Reviews: Pascale Bourgain in: Bibliotheque de l'école des Chartes . Volume 149, 1991, pp. 451-453; Wolfgang Maaz in: Fabula . Volume 33, 1992, pp. 146-149; Christopher J. McDonough in: Middle Latin Yearbook . Volume 28, 1993, pp. 186-193.

literature

• Karoline Harthun: Aventure and asceticism. Hugo von Mâcon's “Gesta militum” . Hildesheim 2005
• Ewald Könsgen: Hugo von Mâcon . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Volume V, 1991, col. 172-173
• Jean-Marc Pastré: A nouvelle version of the “Tresces” et du “Chainse” ou l'utilisation des fabliaux dans les “Gesta militum” de Hugues de Mâcon . In: Brian Levy and Paul Wackers (eds.): Reinardus. Yearbook of the International Reinardus Society . Amsterdam and Philadelphia 1994, pp. 103-112.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hugo von Mâcon in the catalog of the German National Library