W
WACE
(ca. 1100-after 1174). Born on the island of Jersey, Wace received his training first at
Caen, then at Paris or, less likely, at Chartres; the influence of Hugh of Saint-Victor on
his work is evident. Early in the 1130s, maistre Wace returned to Caen, where he
occupied the position of clerc lisant (this term, used by Wace himself, most likely meant
“reader of the lessons in the church service”); between 1165 and 1169, King Henry II of
England rewarded him for his literary work with the prebend of a canon at Bayeux. He
must have sojourned in England, since he knew the English language and gives precise
geographical details of that country, especially of the Dorset area. Charters at Bayeux that
bear his signature are not helpful in more precisely dating his life, which is known
exclusively from personal remarks in his Roman de Rou.
Wace began his literary career with a series of hagio-graphical poems, of which three,
signed by him, are preserved. From his stay in England, the center of St. Margaret’s cult,
he probably brought back a Vie de sainte Marguerite (742 lines), the first and stylistically
by far the best of thirteen verse adaptations of this legend into French. His Conception
Nostre Dame (1,810 lines) was designated as propaganda in favor of the establishment of
the feast of the Immaculate Conception, as furthered by Abbot Anselm of Bury-Saint-
Edmunds (r. 1121–46) against formidable opposition, especially from St. Bernard of
Clairvaux. As a Norman, Wace would have had great interest in the life of the Virgin, for
the Normans were among the first in France to establish the feast of the Immaculate
Conception, which was often called the fête aux Normands. In the Conception Nostre
Dame, Wace introduces the technique of grouping different episodes in one poem, in this
case five that lead from the establishment of the feast to the Assumption of the Virgin.
The same technique is found in his Vie de saint Nicolas (1,563 lines), written probably
for a citizen of Caen, Robert, son of Tiout; containing twenty-three independent episodes,
without any advancement in time, it testifies to the popularity of the saint in Normandy in
the first half of the 12th century. The three poems, all in rhymed octosyllabic lines, can
be dated ca. 1135–50.
Wace’s reputation as an adapter of Latin works on popular topics might have brought
him the commission by Eleanor of Aquitaine, newly wed to Henry II, to “translate”
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae (ca. 1136). Wace could not
immediately locate a copy of this text and consequently based most of his adaptation on
the Britannici sermonis liber vetustissimus (possibly by the archdeacon Walter of Oxford,
a close friend of Geoffrey of Monmouth who is mentioned by Geffrei Gaimar), written in
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1832