BENOIT DE

This article appears in Volume V03, Page 744 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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BENOIT DE SAINTE-MORE, or SAINTE-MAURE, 12th century French trouvere, is supposed to have been a native of Sainte-Maure in Touraine. Very little is known of his personal history. The maitre prefixed to his name implies that he had graduated at the university, but there is nothing to show whether he was a simple trouvere by profession or belonged to the clergy. He was a loyal subject of

Henry

II. of England, to whose court he was attached, and when he speaks of the French, it is as " they." Wace had begun a history of the dukes of Normandy in his Roman du Ron. This he brought down to the reign of

Henry

I., but here Henry II. seems to have withdrawn his patronage, and at the end of his poem Wace refers to a maistre Beneeit who had received a similar commission. There is no other contemporary poem extant dealing with the subject except the Chronique des dues de Normandie, and it would seem reasonable to assume the identity of Wace's rival with Benoit de Sainte-More, whose authorship of the chronicle has, nevertheless, been often disputed. But a comparison of the Roman de Troie, which is certainly Benoit's

work

WORK

, with the Chronique, confirms the supposition that they are by the same author. The poem contains over

forty

FORTY

thousand lines, and relates the history of the Norman dukes from Rollo to Henry I., with a preliminary sketch of the Danish invasions and the adventures of Hastings and his companions. It has no claims to be considered an

original

ORIGINAL

authority. Benoit drew his information from the De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum of Dudon de Saint Quentin as far as r0o2, following his model very closely. From that time he avails himself of the chronicle of William of Jumieges, also of Ordericus Vitalis and others. The Chronique probably

dates

DATES

from about 1172 to 1176. In the Roman de Troie, written about 116o, Benoit expressly asserts his authorship. He mentions " Omers " with

great

GREAT

respect as li clers merveillos, but his authority for the story is naturally not Homer, of whom he could have no first-hand knowledge. He follows the apocryphal Historia de excidio Trojae of Dares the Phrygian and the Ephemerides belli Trojani of Dictys of Crete. The poem runs to about 30,000 lines. The personages of the classical story are converted into heroes of romance. They have their castles and their abbeys, and act in accordance with feudal custom. The supernatural machinery of Homer is missing both in Benoit's

original

ORIGINAL

and his own narrative. The story begins with the capture of the Golden Fleece and comes down to the return of the Greek princes after
the fall of Troy. Benoit diverges very widely from the classical tradition, and M.

Leopold

LEOPOLD (M.H. Ger. Liupolt; O.H. Ger. Liupald, from hut, Mod. Ger. Leute, " people," and paid, " bold," i.e. " bold for the people ")

Constans

sees

SEES

reason to suppose that the trouvere founded his poem on an amplified version of the Dares narrative that has not come down to us. In the Roman de Troie first appeared the episode of Troilus and Briseida, that was to be developed later in the Filostrato of Boccaccio, which in its turn formed the basis of Chaucer's Troilus and Creseide. The Shakespearian play of Troilus and Cressida is also indirectly derived from Benoit's story.
On the strength of a certain similarity of treatment Benoit has sometimes been credited with the authorship of the anonymous Roman d'Eneas and of the Roman de Thebes, a romance derived indirectly from the Thebais of Statius. M. Constans is inclined to negative both these attributions. It is not even certain that the Benoit who chronicled the deeds of the Norman dukes for Henry II. between 1172 and 1176 was the Benoit de Sainte-More of the Roman de Troie.
The Chronique des ducs de Normandie was edited by Francisque Michel in 18361844; the Roman de Troie by A. Joly in 187o1871; the Eneas, by J. J. Salverda de Grave in H. Suchier's Bibliotheca Normannica in 1891; the Roman de Thebes for the Societe des anciens textes frangais, by M. L. Constans in 189o. See E. D. Grand in La Grande Encyclopedie; L. Constans in Petit de Julleville's Hist. de la langue et de la lift. francaise (vol. i. pp. 171-225). where the three romances are analysed at length. The prefaces to the editions just mentioned discuss the authorship of the romances.

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