The founding mother of the Lusignan line, the fairy Mélusine, whose name derives
possibly from “mère des Lusignan,” has been cursed by her mother to become a serpent
from the waist down on Saturdays. Concealing the secret from her husband, Raimondin,
who promises never to see his wife on that day, Mélusine bears him ten sons, eight of
whom are marked with a fantastic trait, and brings the family great prosperity; she builds
the Lusignan’s castle in Poitou. But Raimondin breaks his promise and learns Mélusine’s
secret, remaining silent at first. When he learns that his son Geoffrey has burned the
abbey of Maillezais, thus killing one of his sons, he furiously blames his wife and curses
her. His betrayal turns Mélusine forever into a huge serpent, who leaves her family but
returns periodically to haunt the castle.
Roberta L.Krueger
[See also: LUSIGNAN]
Arras, Jean d’. Mélusine: roman du XIVe siècle par Jean d’Arras, ed. Louis Stouff. Dijon:
Bernigaud and Privat, 1932.
Coudrette. Le roman de Mélusine ou Histoire de Lusignan, ed. Eleanor Roach. Paris: Klincksieck,
1982.
Harf-Lancner, Laurence. Les fées au moyen âge: Morgane et Mélusine. La naissance des fées.
Paris: Champion, 1984.
Perret, Michèle. “Le lion, le serpent, le sanglier....” In Jean d’Arras, Le roman de Mélusine ou
l’histoire des Lusignan, trans. Michèle Perret. Paris: Stock, 1979, pp. 313–32.
ARRIÈRE-BAN
. Just as the word ban sometimes referred to a military summons of the king’s vassals, so
the arrière-ban (Lat. retrobannum) conveyed a summons to his rear vassals—those
owing service to an intermediate lord rather than to the king directly. In actual fact, when
Philip IV and his successors used the arrière-ban, it went well beyond the world of
purely feudal relations and called to service all men able to bear arms. In principle, it was
a somewhat archaic device for mustering substantial numbers of fight-ing men in an
emergency. The arrière-ban never completely lost this connotation, but if applied to
more than a very local area it would have produced a horde of untrained, ill-equipped
people. Its real purpose was largely fiscal. During its period of greatest use, the first half
of the 14th century, it was used to impress people with a sense of emergency and to
facilitate the collection of money in commutation of actual military service.
John Bell Henneman, Jr.
[See also: BAN/BANALITÉ]
Henneman, John Bell. Royal Taxation in Fourteenth Century France: The Development of War
Financing, 1322–1356. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971.
Strayer, Joseph R., and Charles H.Taylor. Studies in Early French Taxation. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1939.
The Encyclopedia 133