style. In the enormously popular Apocalypse, on the other hand, text and commentary are
subservient to the sumptuous illustrations.
On the Continent, the 12th century saw the translation of a different selection of
individual books, with enough commentary to place them in an exegetical tradition.
Evrat’s Genèse (1198) includes symbolic explanations and moral applications. Landri de
Waben’s Cantique des cantiques (1176–81) is a poetical paraphrase of the Latin text with
interpretations according to the four senses of Scripture. The anonymous Exodus and the
French version of the psalm Eructavit sometimes attributed to Adam de Perseigne are
both allegorical in nature. In the latter part of the century, Herman de Valenciennes made
the first attempt at an “integral text” of the Bible. His Roman de Dieu et de sa mère (also
called Roman de sapience), is a poem in epic laisses that draws on both testaments and
incorporates much legendary material about the life of Mary, drawn from apocryphal
accounts of her childhood, marriage, and assumption. His work survives in over thirty-
five manuscripts.
Biblical translation flourished in the 13th century, which saw the appearance of no
fewer than five verse renderings as well as the scholarly prose version known as the
“Thirteenth-Century Bible” or the “Paris Bible.” This last was produced under the aegis
of the University of Paris toward the middle of the century. It was the work of several
translators and was not entirely original, for it incorporated earlier versions of Psalms and
the Apocalypse. At the end of the century, its text was combined with Guyart des
Moulins’s Bible historiale (a translation of Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica) to
form the Bible historiale complétée. This text, used in many illustrated Bibles, provided
the basis for the Bible historiale figurée and for the 14th-century Bible moralisée.
Most of the biblical works in verse are more properly described as adaptations. The
first successors to Herman de Valenciennes’s version were two anonymous renderings
written in the early 13th century. One of these (B.N. fr. 763) is fairly faithful to the
Vulgate for the Old Testament but incorporates legendary material in the New and ends
abruptly with a brief account of the Passion. The other poem (B.N. fr. 898 and 902),
written in epic style, covers only the Old Testament, but a prose version of this text (B.N.
fr. 6260 and 9562) is virtually complete. Geoffroi de Paris’s Bible des sept estats du
monde (B.N. fr. 1526; ca. 1243) is quite different in character, consisting of a collage of
independent texts, many of them apocryphal, arranged in sequence to constitute a sort of
biblical legendary. Jean Malkaraume’s Bible from the middle of the century is generally
more faithful to the Vulgate, but it incorporates extraneous material as diverse as Piramus
et Thisbé, the Roman de Troie, and the apocryphal genealogy of the Virgin. The last,
longest, and most nearly complete of the verse Bibles was produced by Macé de la
Charité between 1283 and the early 14th century. Like its principal source, Peter of
Riga’s Aurora, this version stresses the allegorical meaning of the biblical text. With the
later addition of an allegorical exegesis of the Apocalypse, the whole runs to some 43,000
octosyllabic lines and is preserved in a single manuscript (B.N. fr. 401).
Alongside the “integral texts,” individual books of the Bible continued to draw
translators’ attention. Guillaume le Clerc produced his verse Tobie at the beginning of the
13th century. Near the middle of that century, Gautier de Belleperche rendered the Book
of Maccabees in epic style, producing the 23,000-line octosyllabic Roman de Judas
Machabée. His poem was completed in 1280 by Piéros du Riés, who may also have
written a second, shorter version of the same book in 1285, the Chevalerie de Judas
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