are forced into rebellion or civil war. Although selfish, vindictive barons are criticized as
much as the king, the author takes the side of the aristocracy; and the poor, exiled count
or duke, who in the end wins (back) prerogatives and land, is perhaps a projection of the
landless petty nobility, the povres bachelers, whose aspirations are not at all the same as
those of the great barons and the king. The enthusiasm and spontaneity that it was
possible to idealize in the Chanson de Roland became dangerous in the context of a more
complex national society. Valor, so prized in older epics, can be exercised only against
one’s own people, and good in the individual becomes a social curse, for individual and
group interests enter into conflict.
The solutions arrived at by the epic poets are more than a little ambiguous. In most of
these texts, the rebel yields to the king even though he is in the right, then sets out on a
crusade or pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He fails because the ultimate lesson of the
chanson de geste is one of order and harmony, an all-inclusive peace that goes beyond
individual, family, and feudal honor to preach submission to authority. Even in Raoul de
Cambrai and the Lorraine Cycle, although the emperor is humiliated, his life and office
remain sacrosanct. None of the rebels could have dreamed of abolishing the kingship,
assassi-nating the king, or even forcing him to abdicate. Rebellion results in no program
for reform. The poet asks questions; he provides no easy answers.
William C.Calin
[See also: CHANSON DE GESTE; CHEVALERIE OGIER; GIRART DE
ROUSSILLON;LORRAINE CYCLE; QUATRE FILS AYMON; RAOUL DE CAMBRAI]
Bender, Karl-Heinz. König und Vasall: Untersuchungen zur Chansons de Geste des XII.
Jahrhunderts. Heidelberg: Winter, 1967.
Calin, William. The Old French Epic of Revolt: Raoul de Cambrai, Renaud de Montauban,
Gormond et Isembard. Geneva: Droz, 1962.
De Combarieu du Grés, Micheline. L’idéal humain et l’expérience morale chez les héros des
chansons de geste, des origines à 1250. 2 vols. Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1979.
RECLUS DE MOLLIENS
(fl. early 13th c.). Identified as Barthélémy, monk of the abbey of Saint-Fuscien-au-Bois
who went into seclusion at the church of Sainte-Marie de Molliens-Vidame, the Reclus
de Molliens wrote two didactic poems in the first third of the 13th century, the Roman de
carité and Miserere. Twenty-one manuscripts and six fragments are extant for Carité,
twenty-six complete and ten partial manuscripts for Miserere. The poems have
octosyllabic twelve-line stanzas, rhyming aab/aab/bba/bba, a form found earlier in
Hélinant de Froidmont’s Vers de la Mort. Carité (ca. 1224) recounts in 242 stanzas the
poet’s abortive quest for Charity amid all the social orders in Christendom. Miserere (ca.
1230), in 273 stanzas, adopts the mode of catechism to expound upon the Deadly Sins
and the five senses, among other questions. Skillful alle-gorization, alliteration,
assonance, and word play enliven the Reclus de Molliens’s stern condemnation of human
foibles. In 1360, the city of Amiens offered a copy of both poems as a gift to King
Charles V.
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