Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-g7rbq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-29T00:09:37.975Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Claude Fauchet and his Library

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Urban T. Holmes  and
Maurice L. Radoff
Urban T. Holmes
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Gröber, in his history of Romance philology, recognizes Fauchet as the man who founded the study of mediaeval French literature “soweit es die ihm zugänglichen Hss. gestatteten.” England had to wait another two hundred years till Sharon Turner did her a like service with his History of England from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest (1795-1805). Fauchet was also a political historian of the mediaeval period, but in this field he had an illustrious predecessor, in the person of Jean Dutillet (d. 1570), lawyer and secretary to Henry II of France. This able man was commissioned by his king to investigate the trésor des chartres; the result was a six-volume report, La France ancienne, du gouvernement des trois estats en l'ordre de la justice de France avec les changements qui sont arrivés. This is the first modern history of a mediaeval period (the Capetian dynasty), and Dutillet followed it with treatises on the Albigensian Crusade and the Gallican Church, which were published after his death. Fauchet, following in Dutillet's footsteps, but on his own initiative, took as his province the first two dynasties of France. Before taking up the subject of his library it may be well to summarize what is known of Fauchet's life and work.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 1: American Bibliography for 1928 , March 1929 , pp. 229 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Note 1 in page 229 Grundriss d. rom. Phil., Strassburg 1888, I, 28.

Note 2 in page 229 Speculum, II, 201.

Note 3 in page 229 Biographie Universelle Ancienne et Moderne, Paris 1854, XII, 143 ff. Fauchet speaks of Dutillet and his brother as “L'Evesque et le Greffier, les plus sçavans en nos Antiquitez qui furent onques en France” and he adds “maistre Vincent de la Loupe, Lieutenant Criminel au Baillage de Chartres, et quelques autres doctes et sçavants personnages ont escrit de l'Origine desdicts Etats.” (Au Lecteur, in the Origines des dignitez et magistrats de France etc. 2nd ed. 1606).

Note 4 in page 229 The studies in which Fauchet has been discussed to any extent are quickly enumerated. The most complete is that of Simonet: Le Président Fauchet sa vie et ses oeuvres, in the Revue des Droits français et étrangers (1863). It is frequently lacking in detail. We shall have occasion to cite this at every hand. Another article of importance is Ernest Langlois' “Quelques Dissertations Inédites de Claude Fauchet” (Etudes Romanes dédiées à Gaston Paris, Paris 1891, pp. 97-112). For the sake of completeness we must mention Matzke's The Roman du Châtelain de Couci and Fauchet's Chronique, published in the Studies in Honor of A. Marshall Elliot, Johns Hopkins Press, and Servois' ed. of Guillaume de Dôle (or Roman de la Rose), Paris, 1893, p. I n.1, p. XXII n.1, (Soc. des A. T.). The Histoire Littéraire de la France has occasional references to Fauchet: XX, 605; XXIII, 81, 86, 140, 141, 154, 158, 174, 185, 262; XXVI, 39, 40; XXVIII, 386. These refer, for the most part, to his discussions on the fabliaux. We are informed that a student of M. Jean Plattard, M. Espiner, now lecteur d'anglais at the University of Paris, is engaged in a thesis on Claude Fauchet, of which the first volume will be a biography, the second an edition of some of the works. Certain documents in the Archives Nationales (Z1b 552-554, 556) contain information on Fauchet.

Note 5 in page 230 This is a summary of the biographical sketch in Simonet, op. cit., with some additions.

Note 6 in page 230 Langlois, op. cit., p. 98.

Note 7 in page 231 Catalogue Général des Livres Imprimés de la Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris 1897—; Brunet, Manuel du Libraire, 5th ed., Paris 1868-1880.

Note 8 in page 231 Fauchet's Antiquitez etc., L'Autheur au Lecteur.

Note 9 in page 232 Recueil de l'Origine etc., 1st ed. (1581), p. 98ff.

Note 10 in page 232 P. Jacob, Traité des bibliothèques, p. 552; L. Dorez in Rev. des Bibliothèques 1892, p. 129.

Note 11 in page 232 Longnon-Foulet, Oeuvres de François Villon (Class. frc. du m.â., no. 2, 3rd ed.), Paris, 1923, p. vii.

Note 12 in page 232 Thomas, La Chanson de Sainte-Foi d'Agen (Class. frç. du m.â., no. 45), Paris, 1925, p. xi.

Note 13 in page 232 Simonet, p. 459.

Note 14 in page 232 Ibid., pp. 458, 459.

Note 15 in page 232 E. Langlois, La Connaissance de la Nature et du Monde au m.â., Paris 1927, p. 148.

Note 16 in page 232 Léopold Delisle, Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions (1879) p. 99.

Note 17 in page 232 Långfors, Les Incipit de Poèmes français, Paris 1917, p. 340.

Note 18 in page 232 Romania, I, 365.

Note 19 in page 233 See George Stephens, Forteckning over de förnämsta brittiska och fransyska handskrifterna i.K. Bibliotheket i Stockholm, 1847. I wish to thank Dr. O. Wieselgren of the Royal Library at Stockholm for his cooperation.

Note 20 in page 233 Archives des missions scientifiques (1850), p. 249.

Note 21 in page 233 Villey, Les Sources et l'évolution des Essais de Montaigne, Paris, p. 271.

Note 22 in page 233 The MSS and books cited by Fauchet were noted down by Mr. Radoff. For the Antiquitez I also had at hand some slips prepared by Professor A. H. Schutz of the State University of Ohio. It was their intention at first to list every poem and prose work cited by Fauchet. This task became increasingly voluminous as time wore on. It did not even promise an accurate account of Fauchet's library for many of the writers he cites but once were only names to him. He had seen them referred to elsewhere. Accordingly a number of the minor citations from the Antiquitez and the Origines have been omitted. More accuracy has been attempted for the Recueil de l'Origine etc. which is of more literary importance. Several of his authorities are cited by Fauchet no less than ninety or a hundred times; e.g. Gregory of Tours. The majority occur six or seven times. In view of this it has seemed cumbersome to give page references, save in those cases where the identification is doubtful. Fauchet's spelling of proper names has been corrected. The Recueil etc. is always cited from the edition of 1581; the Origines des Dignitez and the Origine des Chevaliers, are cited from the combined second edition of 1606. The other works are referred to in Langlois' article or in the version of 1610.—U.T.H.

Note 23 in page 234 Recueil, pp. 109, 110.

Note 24 in page 234 Ibid., p. 36; MSS: B. N. fr. 12558, 1621: Arsénal, 165 Belles-Lettres.

Note 25 in page 234 Dignitez, p. 48.

Note 26 in page 234 For this epic see F. Lot's article on Girard de Roussillon in Romania LII, 274 ff.

Note 27 in page 234 Dignitez, p. 24. The identification is clear from the Grundriss, II1 719.

Note 28 in page 234 Recueil, p. 88.

Note 29 in page 235 Dignitez, p. 28. Fauchet was the first to use this name and not Roman de la Rose, to avoid confusion with the romance of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung; cf. Voretsch, Einführung in d. Studium d. altfr. Literatur, 2nd ed., p. 388.

Note 30 in page 235 Dignitez, p. 38.

Note 31 in page 235 That these romances were printed and not in MS is expressly stated by Fauchet, Recueil, p. 99.

Note 32 in page 235 Numbers in parentheses refer to Bédier's list of fabliaux in his Les Fabliaux, 4th ed., Paris 1925, pp. 436-440.

Note 33 in page 235 Recueil, p. 162.

Note 34 in page 236 Ibid., p. 181.

34a Fauchet was the first to identify this poet with Henry III of Brabant (1247-1261); cf. Mélanges Alfred Jeanroy, Paris, 1928, p. 525, n. 2, (Max Prinet).

Note 35 in page 236 Ibid., pp. 116 ff.

Note 36 in page 237 Ibid., p. 183

Note 37 in page 237 This was a great favorite with Fauchet; he cites it again and again. It is interesting to note that it was one of the five secular books in the possession of Louis le Hutin in 1285; cf. Franklin, Ecoles et Collèges, Paris 1892, p. 147.

Note 38 in page 237 Recueil, p. 179.

Note 38 in page 237 Ibid., p. 93. Långfors in Les Incipit, 1, refers to this as a poème de Thibaud de Marly, with no other title.

Note 39 in page 238 Fauchet avers that this MS was lent him by le sieur Pithou; Recueil, p. 67.

Note 40 in page 238 Recueil, p. 203.

Note 41 in page 238 Fauchet is the very first to designate this lady as Marie de France, in Recueil, p. 163. She states in the Epilogus to her Fables (v.4): Marie ai num si sui de France; that is, she was born in the Isle de France. This title, granted by Fauchet, has confused some into the belief that the poetess must have been of royal birth.

Note 42 in page 238 All printed editions are cited after Brunet, op. cit.

Note 43 in page 239 Borrowed from the Library of Sainte-Magloire at Paris, Antiquitez, ch. 6.

Note 44 in page 239 Antiquitez, ch. 19; Recueil, p. 64.

Note 45 in page 240 Antiquitez, ch. 8.

Note 46 in page 240 Ibid., ch. 10.

Note 47 in page 241 Ibid., ch. 12.

Note 48 in page 241 (fl. c. 540). He wrote the De Actibus Apostolorum.

Note 49 in page 242 Defense el Illustration de la Langue Françoyse, ed. Chamard, Paris 1904, p. 174.

Note 50 in page 242 Boileau, L'Art Poétique, Premier chant, vv. 117-118.

Note 51 in page 242 C. Morel, Les Plus Anciennes Traductions Françaises de la Divine Comédie, 2 parts, Paris, Welter, 1897.

Note 52 in page 242 3 vols., Paris 1596-97, in-12.