Lemarignier, Jean-François. “La dislocation du pagus et le problème des consuetudines: Xe–XIe
siècles.” In Mélanges d’histoire dédies à Louis Halphen. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1951.
——. “Political and Monastic Structures in France at the End of the Tenth and the Beginning of the
Eleventh Centuries.” In Lordship and Community in Medieval Europe, ed. Fredric Cheyette.
New York: Holt-Rinehart-Winston, 1968, pp. 100–27.
COUVIN, WATRIQUET BRASSENIEX
DE
(fl. 1319–29). Attached to the households of Gui de Châtillon, count of Blois, and his
great-uncle Gaucher de Châtillon-sur-Marne, the minstrel Watriquet de Couvin left
thirty-three poems, most dated between 1319 and 1329. Most of his works are occasional
pieces composed for noble households, moral treatises, and allegorical dits in the
tradition of the Roman de la Rose, but included in the extant corpus are two fabliaux and
an obscene fatras. The titles of these pieces frequently indicate clearly their didactic bent:
Mireoirs as princes, De loiauté, Li despis du monde, De haute honneur, De Fortune, and
so on. Watriquet took much pride in his profession and was among the first writers in
French to compile collections of his poems to be offered to various noblemen.
Deborah H.Nelson
[See also: DIT; FATRAS/FATRASIE]
Couvin, Watriquet Brasseniex de. Dits de Watriquet de Couvin, ed. Auguste Scheler. Brussels:
Devaux, 1868.
Huot, Sylvia. From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical
Narrative Poetry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987, pp. 224–32.
Langlois, Charles-Victor. “Watriquet, ménestrel et poète français.” In Histoire littéraire de la
France. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1921, Vol. 35, pp. 394–421.
CRAMAUD, SIMON DE
(1345–1423). Archbishop and cardinal. The son of a petty seigneur from the Limousin,
Simon de Cramaud became one of the most influential French prelates of the later Middle
Ages. Educated in law at Orléans, he began teaching canon law at Paris when he was
about thirty years old. A member of the royal household and council in the late 1370s, he
entered the service of John, duke of Berry, after Charles V died in 1380. He served as
bishop of Agen (1382–83), Béziers (1383–85), and Poitiers (1385–91, 1413–23). He
became patriarch of Alexandria (1391–1409) and archbishop of Reims (1409–13) and
was named a cardinal in 1413. He was Berry’s chancellor for five years (1386–91) and
spent many years on the council of Charles VI. Politically, he followed his patron in
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