An aphorism holds that history is written by the victors. In the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, the opposite held true. The routed set themselves to the task of laying the groundwork for composing literary history. During the opening decades of the Third Republic, the investigation of medieval French culture became a kind of civic virtue: it was foundational in the national rebranding that France imposed upon itself.
Study of the Middle Ages became a pastime of patriots. By transference, neglect of
it looked like the lot of recreants. Many fields of academic inquiry have heroic early phases. They are constituted in a paroxysm of energy, confidence, and innovation. This period witnessed just such an effusion of high-brow derring-do. While it would be a misrepresentation to suggest that no spadework had been conducted previously, the numbers of professors, teachers, students, and pupils surged dramatically. That rise was matched by the proportional hike in quality of scholarship, as well as in positions and institutions to support its furtherance. Between 1870 and 1900, the specialization of Old French established itself as an autonomous and legitimate intellectual pursuit within the universities of France. French philology became prestigious, even chic.
The exaltation of medieval language and literature stands out in the often nationalistic and even implicitly xenophobic reception of the epic poem The Song of Roland and in the rallying around the story of Joan of Arc. The fight-to-the-death account of the epic’s title character lent itself ideally to the nationalist needs of France at the time. Probably composed in versions between the mid-eleventh and early twelfth centuries, the poem recounts a story of tragic heroics. It is based on a military campaign that played out in 778. The decisive event transpired during the reign of Charlemagne. The key place was Roncevaux, a pass in the Pyrenees, a mountain range between France and Spain. In the legend, the combatants are the Frankish army and the Muslims in Spain. The Islamic side waylays the hindmost of Charlemagne’s men, who are led valiantly by his nephew Roland in a suicidal last-gasp defense. The Franks do make good their loss, but not before the tragic hero has been slain.
The medieval poem relates a demoralizing thrashing that led the way to a stunning turnabout and triumph—much as the debacle of the Franco-Prussian War would set the stage for the hollow victory of World War I. As noted, nationalism cannot exist without a narrative: here, patriotism and philology were partnered, in what could be called French national philology. In this case the tale had to be constructed on the basis of a remote past by applying both historiography and philology. In December of the ghastly year 1870, Gaston Paris himself composed and delivered at the Collège de France a lecture entitled “The Song of Roland and French Nationality.”
The French philologist Léon Gautier (see Fig. 1.19) performed a patriotic and not merely a philological service in producing new editions of the medieval poem in the aftermath of the trouncing. In 1872, he brought out two volumes that lavished upon the epic an extensive introduction headed “History of a National Poem,” text and translation on facing pages, notes and variants, glossary, and index. In 1892, looking back at this turn to the Middle Ages, he reported reflectively of the chanson de geste:
It took the war of 1870 to grant us understanding and love of it. Sedan made us understand Roncevaux…. [T]he enemy had not yet left our lands when we were already turning in tears toward these two luminous figures, Roland and Joan of Arc, asking of them simultaneously solace and hope.
Gautier was flanked by others, not the least Gaston Paris, in putting his knowledge of medieval French language and literature at the behest of the nation. Revanchists took to heart the poem of Roland, which showed how an initial catastrophic failure of the military could be overcome in an ultimate victory. It gave them an origin story that conveyed guidance and pride. The oldest manuscript of The Song of Roland had been discovered at Oxford and edited in 1837. Thereafter the epic became a source of inspiration for a veritable rainbow of cultural products, such as the play The Daughter of Roland. The theatrical work enjoyed a major triumph when produced in January 1875. The star-studded cast spotlighted the equally glorious and notorious actor Sarah Bernhardt (see Fig. 1.20). From that inflection point on, the piece became entrenched in broader culture, even in school productions, through the end of World War I.
Fig. 1.19 Léon Gautier. Photograph, before 1897. Photographer unknown. Paris, Archives nationales. Image courtesy of the Archives nationales, Paris. All rights reserved.
The direct influence of The Song of Roland can be seen when in 1880 it was made a set text prescribed for the examination administered to candidates who sought to qualify as secondary-school instructors. Then, in 1885, medieval literature was introduced into the scholastic curriculum for students as well. As a consequence, the epic was presented in a blizzard of scholarly and popular editions. Working alone, Léon Gautier disgorged a gush of such scholarship that began not insignificantly in 1872. The spate coincided with his involvement in task forces to promote medieval literature for patriotic reasons within national education. Speaking to the divine support for French
revanchism, in the face of battlefield losses, is the frontispiece of his inaugural edition, and the title page points to the art and labor by which redemption might be attained (see Figs. 1.21 and 1.22). How does this nationalistic literary activity relate to Our Lady’s Tumbler? Granted, the medieval verse could not be retailed as a French Iliad as The Song of Roland was. For decades, the latter proved to be irreplaceable in mustering young men to be soldiers. Within a stirringly heroic narrative about crusading, it celebrated qualities of spirit that were felt to be inherently and inspirationally Gallic.
The tale of the jongleur differed deep down, having nothing to do with Crusades, warfare, or valorous masculinity. Its central figure is not an emperor’s nephew like Roland nor a female saint like Joan of Arc. Does that make the tumbler anti-heroic, pre-heroic, para-heroic, or something else altogether? Can a character so humble stand at the center of a hero cult? In any case, the Picard-French poem floated by itself and possessed its own distinct potential to serve as a cultural rallying point. Set alongside The Song of Roland and Joan of Arc, it may have had only a small role to perform—but it played it well.
With the language and literature of the French Middle Ages so very much at center stage, the rediscovery of a text regarded as a hidden jewel of poetry from medieval France would have seemed almost providential. Although no one sought to equate the poem of the jongleur with any work of ancient Greek literature, the Greek poet Sappho’s devotion to the goddess Aphrodite offers a few niggling and nugatory parallels to the jongleur in his dedication to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Yet Sappho’s gender, sexuality, and society render her ineligible as a prospect for side-by-side comparison. The notion of characterizing Our Lady’s Tumbler as the medieval equivalent of a Homeric hymn is tantalizing, but uncalled for. The whole point was that no authorization from antiquity was required: instead, people wanted ratification from the Middle Ages.