Häpke, R. Brügges Entwicklung zum mittelalterlichen Weltmarkt. Berlin: Curtius, 1908.
Prevenier, Walter, and Willem Blockmans. The Burgundian Netherlands. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985.
van Houtte, Jan A. Bruges: essai d’histoire urbaine. Brussels: Renaissance du Livre, 1966.
BRUN DE LA MONTAGNE
. An incomplete 14th-century verse romance preserved in a single manuscript (B.N. fr.
2170), Brun de la Montagne recounts in ca. 4,000 lines the adventures of Brun, whose
destiny is foretold at his birth by three fairies. The first predicts his beauty; the second,
his prowess. The third announces that he will be irremediably hapless in love (and,
indeed, he is called “Tristan” for this reason). Much of the story of Brun, before it breaks
off, is occupied by lengthy accounts of adventures and combat. The text offers a number
of Arthurian echoes in addition to the Tristan agnomen, but it is fundamentally a non-
Arthurian composition.
Norris J.Lacy
Meyer, Paul, ed. Brun de la Montagne. Paris: Didot, 1875.
BRUNETTO LATINI
(ca. 1220–1294). Brunetto Latini was active in Florentine public life as a notario, or
lawyer, by 1254. In 1260, he was sent as ambassador by the Florentine commune to King
Alfonso X the Wise of Castile, with the aim of enlisting this Guelf monarch in the
struggle against Manfred and the Ghibellines. According to his Tesoretto (11. 123–62),
Brunetto was returning from this embassy when he met a student from Bologna in the
Pass of Roncevaux who told him of the Guelf defeat at Montaperti (September 4,1260).
Brunetto then spent six years of exile in France until the defeat and death of Manfred at
Benevento (February 28, 1266). On returning to Florence, he held a series of important
public offices and was frequently consulted by the Florentine government. While in
France, Brunetto had written his Rettorica, a translation of and commentary on the first
seventeen chapters of Cicero’s De inventione. He later continued this effort at public
education by translating a number of Ciceronian orations into Italian and composing his
Sommetta, a collection of letters for teaching ars dictaminis. Brunetto died in 1294 and
was buried at Santa Maria Maggiore, Florence.
During his years of exile in France, Brunetto visited friars at Montpellier (according to
Tesoretto, ll. 2,539–45) and wrote notarial letters at Paris (September 1263) and Bar-sur-
Aube (April 1264) that are probably to be associated with the commercial fairs that drew
many Italians on business. He may have lived in Paris, but it seems more likely he lived
among Italian notaries and moneylenders in Arras: his encyclopaedic Tresor was
The Encyclopedia 287