various forms of courtly verse. He has been identified with a certain “magister
Dionisius,” a monk of St. Edmund’s abbey mentioned in documents between 1173 and
- Denis’s work on Edmund (king of East Anglia, martyred 870) was commissioned
by the “segnur” of the abbey for which Edmund was patron saint. It recounts, in about
4,033 octosyllabic lines, the saint’s early life as well as his death and miracles and
combines elements of hagiography, history, and romance. Denis’s version seems
independent of the other versions of the legend, that of Gaimar, the anonymous quatrain
redaction, and the continental prose life.
Glyn S.Burgess
[See also: SAINTS’ LIVES]
Piramus, Denis. La vie seint Edmund le rei: poème anglo-normand du XIIe siècle, ed. Hilding
Kjellman. Göteborg: Wettergren and Kerber, 1935.
Loomis, G. “The Growth of the Saint Edmund Legend.” Harvard Studies and Notes 14(1932):83–
Saxo, Henry E. “Denis Piramus: La vie seint Edmunt” Modern Philology 12(1915):345–66, 559–
DESCHAMPS, EUSTACHE
(ca. 1346–ca. 1406). Born near Reims at Vertus, in the family home burned in 1380 by
the English, Deschamps says that he long applied himself to grammar and logic. He later
studied law, probably at Orléans. From 1360, Deschamps was in the service of high
nobility, and in 1367 he joined the king’s retinue. For most of his life thereafter, he was
attached in various capacities to Charles V, and to Charles VI and his brother Louis
d’Orléans, as well as to other great personages. From 1375, his name appears in the
records as bailli of Valois; he became bailli of Senlis in 1389. Married ca. 1373, he had
two sons and a daughter, his wife dying in childbirth, probably in 1376. He did not
remarry.
Until his final years, Deschamps associated with a wide circle of nobility and
important figures, and much of his poetry deals with current political and social events.
His works also show that he knew many poets of the time: he writes of a joke that Oton
de Granson played on him, composes a ballade in praise of Chaucer and another poem
praising Christine de Pizan (in response to a poem of praise from her), and in other works
speaks of Philippe de Vitry, Jean de Garencières, and most of the poets of the Cent
ballades. But his most important literary association was with his fellow Champenois
Guillaume de Machaut, who figures prominently in several of his works and whose death
he laments in a double ballade with the refrain, La mort Machaut, le noble rethouryque.
He may have been a nephew of Machaut, whom he credits with “nurturing” (educating?)
him. Accordingly, his poetry is mostly in the fixed forms that Machaut popularized. But
Deschamps writes more on moral and topical subjects than on his mentor’s
predominating subject, love, and he did not write long dits amoureux comparable with
Machaut’s.
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