Chambers, Frank M. “Imitation of Form in the Old Provençal Lyric.” Romance Philology 6(1952–
53):104–20.
——. An Introduction to Old Provençal Versification. Philadelphia: American Philosophical
Society, 1985.
Rieger, Dietmar. Gattungen und Gattungsbezeichnungen der Trobadorlyrik: Untersuchungen zum
altprovenzalischen Sirventes. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1976.
Riquer, Martin de, ed. Los trovadores: historia literaria y textos. 3 vols. Barcelona: Planeta, 1975,
Vol. 1, pp. 53–59.
Thiolier-Méjean, Suzanne. Les poésies satiriques et morales des troubadours du XIIe siècle a la fin
du XIIIe siècle. Paris: Nizet, 1978.
SLUTER, CLAUS
(ca. 1345–1405/06). Artist who also achieved prominence as one of Philip the Bold of
Burgundy’s valets de chambre, a position he acquired after the death of his master, Jehan
de Marville. Sluter was born in Haarlem in Holland; after working in Brussels from 1379
to 1385, he became an assistant to Marville, then valet de chambre to Philip, in Dijon.
The Chartreuse de Champmol in Dijon, a project begun by Marville and his workshop,
features one of Sluter’s and the workshop’s finest accomplishments, the Well of Moses
(ca. 1395–1406). Sluter also finished the tomb of Philip the Bold, now in the Musée des
Beaux-Arts in Dijon, which had been begun by his predecessor. His primary achievement
in his art was to free sculpture from its purely structural function, enabling the figures to
dominate the architectural setting. Sluter infused his work with energy and an emotive
quality unsurpassed by his contemporaries.
Michelle I.Lapine
[See also: DIJON]
Morand, Kathleen. Claus Sluter: Artist at the Court of Burgundy. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1991.
Snyder, James. Northern Renaissance Art. New York: Abrams, 1985.
SOISSONS
. An important center during the Merovingian period, Soissons (Aisne) was the site of a
key battle in which Clovis I defeated the Romans under Syagrius in 486. Clovis’s son
Clotar I made it his capital, as did Chilperic, the king of Neustria and husband of the
notorious Fredegunde. And it was in Soissons that Pepin III the Short was proclaimed the
first Carolingian king in 751.
Soissons was a bishopric in the archdiocese of Reims by the 5th century, but the
history of its early cathedrals is unknown. A cathedral was built in the 12th century,
beginning with a Romanesque nave in the 1130s or 1140s, and an Early Gothic choir in
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