Authorship

This is an extract from a letter by Jehan Lefèvre de Saint-Remy – otherwise known as ‘Golden-Fleece’, King of Arms of the Burgundian order of chivalry, the Order of the Toison d’Or – written to Jacques's father following the young knight's dramatic death, of which more anon. It is a letter of surprising length, full of heartfelt admiration – and, one senses, affection – for Jacques, and contains detailed, eyewitness accounts of many of his most memorable exploits. Given Lefèvre's status and reputation for integrity, it leaves little reason to doubt that Jacques de Lalaing was a genuinely exceptional knight, fit to be memorialised as an object of outstanding pride for Burgundy, and indeed a model of ideal knighthood. Moreover, the letter gives such clear indications of how The Book of the Deeds of Jacques de Lalaing came to be written that it is more than a little strange that there should have been for a long while doubts and confusion about its authorship.

In short, the first (17th-century) edition attributed The Book of the Deeds to the Burgundian chronicler Georges Chastellain, on the flimsiest of bases that the writer's name which appears at the very end – in the last line of the verse epitaph for Jacques – is ‘Jorge’.

The Book of the Deeds of Jacques de Lalaing has survived in thirteen manuscripts. This is a translation of the text as it appears in the earliest complete copy, dating from the late 1470s or early 1480s: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS fr. 16830. Beautifully illuminated – though less sophisticated in style than the magnificent manuscript of c. 1530, now in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles – and copied with great care, it has few obvious errors or accidental omissions; on the rare occasions when these occur (all indicated in footnotes), I have referred to the text of Lettenhove's edition (Volume VIII of his Oeuvres de Chastellain, Brussels, 1866), which was based on a late 15th century manuscript belonging to the comte de Lalaing and another from the late 15th or early 16th century: Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 665. The Paris MS 16830 is accessible on line: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10537591f/f11.item. Chastellain's edition is also accessible on line: https://archive.org/details/oeuvrespubparleb08chasuoft/page/n5/mode/2up.

Anyone who knows what's right should say it. Those who don’t, I’d struggle to vouch for them on Judgement Day before the King who judges all. He's said He’ll reward with eternal bliss those who’ve performed good works, while the wicked will boil in the stinking depths of Hell. That's bad news for this world! – it's full of wickedness in every vale and plain, thanks to Envy, provoker of all wrongs. And Covetousness has built a bridge into this world and lures our leaders up and over; and as they cross in the rush for worldly wealth they distance themselves ever more from God – for riches, as is plainly seen, lead to Pride: tell me, am I right? That bridge is the downfall of king and count and prince and lord:1 they’re only too keen to clamber over, but in return for their covetousness and envy of others, God denies them health and life – He soon gets the measure of every king and count. And if they’ve hoarded riches in this world no cleric, bishop, priest or abbot is safe, much as they may wish for a long life. But none of that stops them doing wrong! The world's beset by wickedness, lies and trickery. Hearts are ever filled with foxlike cunning.

And since the spirit of Reynard is spreading so, I’d like to tell you a story from which many may learn if they’ve any sense. [40]

In May, when trees are green and meadows decked with flowers, making wood and forest so fair to behold, and the birds trill and the amorous heart makes new songs, King Noble the lion held a court of great solemnity on his birthday. It was Rogation Day, and present were many princes and barons, all manner of beasts: you could see nothing but heads for four leagues all around – I couldn't give you a number in hundreds or thousands. What a gathering of beasts it was: Dame Proud was there, Lord Noble's wife, seated on the throne in majestic style beside the king who loved her truly, and at her feet sat her three sons, disdaining lesser beings. The eldest was named Pride after his mother, the second Noblet after his father, and a noble youth he was indeed, and the third was named Lionel – the youngest and most handsome. All three were dressed as befitted royal sons.

The noble chivalry of the worthy and valiant William, formerly count of Flanders, once so lauded in France and throughout the isles of Britain, England, Germany, the whole Empire and kingdom, his mighty reputation scandal-free, with no base word of him ever heard or spoken: it is that, his chivalry, which drives and inspires me to write. He was so wise, so generous, so valiant, so courteous that he should rightly have been king – and so he would have been had Death not taken him, committed as he was to what Death hates and scorns.

And let me make it quite clear why I’ve chosen him in relation to my theme. Such is the way of this present time that no one makes much effort, truth to tell, to do anything but seek wealth. For anyone who amasses riches has the whole land right behind him! If he gets a hoard of gold together he’ll soon have a horde of friends! Ah, Wealth, once you’re well piled up, you bring friends flocking to you! Then again, you just as soon divide them, too: one minute, Wealth, you’re fondly acclaimed and have friends galore – oh, how you’re loved! – but there's no faith or love in you: all you cause is turmoil. People may fall in love with you, but in the end you turn all to confusion. Many know that to be true: Confusion's very home is Wealth! No sooner have people piled it up than they find they’re parted from it. Like it or not, they have to share it out: there's no holding on to wealth – all come baying in pursuit of it, praising its owner to the skies as if he were Hue who took the lady's veil, as the story tells.

But the one I speak of wasn't so acclaimed: rather he was mourned more than Sir Gawain ever was, for he died before Wealth had come to be held in prime esteem. And I’ve taken him in my story as a model of honour for all his line: they have the flower of all the world among their number, and should be aware of how refining is the renown of that good count, who wished to hear no word of his house being committed to anything but Largesse and Honour.

Rarely can a medieval work have resonated with the mood of the present as uncannily as do these three satires. Acerbic, raging and finally apocalyptic, these poems from the second half of the thirteenth century express a vision of the world and its descent into corruption and disaster which mirrors our own state of rampant alarm. At the time of writing this translation, we have government heads in multiple nations trying to circumvent democratic process, dangerously undermining parliamentary and congressional standards and procedures: democracy is under threat worldwide. Deception reigns. Misinformation, otherwise known as falsehood, otherwise known as lying, is a pandemic flourishing at the same time as a much-mutating global virus. There is wealth, ever more stratospheric, being channelled into the hands of tiny numbers while poverty is ever more widespread and acute. War crimes and destruction on a monstrous scale are being inflicted over great swathes of Ukraine; massive China and the United States are glaring at each other over Taiwan; the danger of conflagration is real. And when it comes to conflagration, firefighters worldwide are battling wildfires generated by a climate crisis which governments are barely addressing. Ice-caps melt; sea levels rise; environmental collapse and the extinction of our species appears to be a more than plausible prospect. A sense of impending apocalypse deepens.

And that is what we have in these three satires centred on the Fox: the poet Rutebeuf's Renart le Bestourné (‘Reynard Transformed’), the anonymous Le Couronnement de Renart (‘Reynard Crowned’) and Renart le Nouvel (‘The New Reynard’) by the probably pseudonymous ‘Jacquemart Gielée’.

Characterising people as animals – and depicting beasts as acting like people – is hardly novel (or entirely unsound when humans are of course apes), so there was nothing outlandish when, for instance, in 2022, with British Prime Minister Johnson under threat of being ousted in the wake of his lying to Parliament, his supporters launched a campaign to ‘Save Big Dog’. In the same year the Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo satirised the fall of Robert Mugabe in Glory, a novel inspired by Orwell's Animal Farm and set in the animal kingdom of Jidada, where after a forty-year rule the “Old Horse” is ousted in a coup along with his despised wife, a donkey named Marvellous.

Dreams are of course illusory, they’re fictions; but if it’s possible for them to come true I know it happened in my case. While dreaming a dream the urge came upon me to go on a pilgrimage. So I got myself ready and set off – straight for the city of Hell.

On and on I pressed, right through Lent and the whole of winter, and in due course I got there. But I’m not going to say a word about the people there I recognised – not until I’ve told you what befell me on the way.

Those who go looking for Hell will find it’s a lovely route, a delightful road that takes them there. But I don’t want to drag the story out and bore you: the first night after I left my land I came to the city of Greed. It stands in the land of Disloyalty, does that city. It was a Wednesday I arrived, and I took lodging at Envy’s house – and what a fine time we had there! For truly, Envy’s the lady of the town and she was so hospitable: with us dined Trickery, the sister of Grab, and her cousin Avarice came with her, all of them paying me a visit. They all dropped in and were very pleased to see me in those parts. Avarice didn’t beat about the bush: she was straight in, plying me with questions about the mean and grasping, wanting to know about their doings and how they were getting on, asking me about each of her family in turn. So I told her a tale that delighted her: I told her how her kinsfolk had driven Largesse from the land, so effectively that Largesse had no tower or refuge left and didn’t know how she could survive. Largesse is on her last legs, in such a wretched state that the rich won’t give her house-room. When I told her this, how chuffed she was!

Then Trickery was straight in after, asking me for news of the tricksters: did I know how her devotees were faring?