BEAUMANOIR, PHILIPPE DE REMI,
SIRE DE (ca. 1250–1296)
Jurist, author, and royal offi cial, Beaumanoir came from
the village of Remy, near Compiègne, where his family
held a fi ef from the abbey of Saint-Denis. He was the
second son of Philippe de Remi (ca. 1205–ca. 1265),
who served as bailli of Gâtinais for Robert, count of
Artois, from 1237 to 1250. By 1255, the father had
apparently built a manor house on the property, for he
then styled himself “lord of Beaumanoir,” a title that
passed to his heir, Girard, then to the younger Philippe
at Girard’s death. Beaumanoir fi ls began his administra-
tive career in 1279 as bailli of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis
for Robert, count of Clermont. In 1283, he completed
the Coutumes de Beauvaisis, a systematic treatise on
customary law composed in Francien prose with strong
traces of Picard. Beaumanoir declares in his prologue
that it is essential to write down the legal customs of the
region so that they can be maintained without change
“because, since memories are fl eeting and human lives
are short, what is not written is soon forgotten.” His
book was widely copied in the Middle Ages (thirteen
manuscripts extant, ten or eleven other copies known
to be lost) and is today considered the most signifi cant
work on French customary law of the 13th century. In
1284, Beaumanoir was knighted and entered royal ad-
ministration; he served as seneschal of Poitou (1284–87)
and Saintonge (1287–89), then as bailli of Vermandois
(1289–91), Touraine (1291–92), and Senlis until his
death (1292–96).
Since the 1870s, a substantial body of narrative
and lyric poetry has been attributed to the author of
the Coutumes: two romances in octosyllabic verse, La
Manekine (8,590 lines) and Jehan et Blonde (6,262
lines), both signed Phelippe de Remi; at least three
chansons courtoises, two naming the poet Phelippe de
Remi; a moralistic fabliau, Fole Larguece; and several
shorter poems, including a Salu d’amours signed Phe-
lippe de Beaumanoir, two fatrasies, and an Ave Maria.
Traditional scholarship holds that Beaumanoir com-
posed most of these works as Philippe de Remi while
in his twenties, between 1270 and 1280, and assumed
the name Philippe de Beaumanoir only in 1279, when
he turned his energies to law and administration. Some
recent scholars, troubled by the unusual productivity of
such a young man and by the disparity between courtly
and legal subjects, prefer to attribute all the poetry to the
father and date it between 1237 and 1262. A major factor
underlying the revisionist attribution is the revival of a
turn-of-the-century Germanist argument that Rudolf von
Ems used both romances as sources for his Willehalm
von Orlens, completed before 1243. Attribution and
dating of the poetry remain open questions.
La Manekine is a pious adventure romance based
on the folklore motif of “The Maiden Without Hands,”
also treated in the somewhat later Belle Helaine de
Constantinople and Lion de Bourges. A Hungarian
princess who cuts off her right hand rather than marry
her father incestuously is set adrift and lands in Scotland,
where she marries the king, only to be betrayed by his
mother; set adrift again, she lands in Rome, where she
is miraculously healed, reunited with her husband, and
reconciled with her father. Jehan et Blonde, perhaps
based in part on the Roman de Horn and deeply infl u-
enced by the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, tells the
story of an impecunious French knight, Jehan, who rises
in the world by serving as squire to the Count of Oxford
and winning the love of Blonde, the count’s daughter; it
can be read as a how-to manual for success at court and
for moral behavior by lordly vassals. The 15th-century
prose romance Jehan de Paris is a free adaptation of
Jehan et Blonde.Further Reading
Philippe de Remi, sire de Beaumanoir. CEuvres poétiques, ed.
Hermann Suchier. 2 vols. Paris: SATF, 1884–85, Vol. 1: La
Manekine, Vol. 2: Jehan et Blonde; poésies diverses. [Based
on the unique MS (B.N. fr. 1588).]
——. La Manekine: roman du XIIIe siécle, trans. Christiane
Marcello-Nizia. Paris: Stock, 1980. [Modern French.]
——. Philippe de Remi’s “La Manekine,” ed. and trans. Irene
Gnarra. New York: Garland, 1990.
——. Jehan et Blonde de Philippe de Rémi: roman du XIIIe
siècle, ed. Sylvie Lécuyer. Paris: Champion, 1984. [Modern
French trans., 1987.]
——. “Les chansons de Philippe de Beaumanoir,” ed. Al-
fred Jeanroy. Romania 26 (1897): 517–36. [From B.N. fr.
24406.]
——. Coutumes de Beauvaisis, Vol. 1 and 2: ed. Amédée Salmon.
Paris: Picard, 1899–1900 [English trans. by F.R.P. Akehurst.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992]. Vol. 3:
Commentaire historique et juridique par Georges Hubrecht.
Paris: Picard, 1974.
Dufournet, Jean, ed. Un roman à découvrir: “Jean et Blonde” de
Philippe de Remy (XIIIe siècle). Paris: Champion, 1991.
Gicquel, Bernard. “Le Jehan et Blonde de Philippe de Rémi
peutil être une source du Willehalm von Orlens?” Romania
102 (1981); 306–22.
Shepherd, M. Tradition and Re-Creation in Thirteenth-Century
Romance: “La Manekine” and “Jehan et Blonde” by Philippe
de Rémi. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990.
Mary B. SpeerBECKET, THOMAS (1120–1170)
England’s best-known saint and martyr. Archbishop
Thomas was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on 29
December 1170 by four household knights of Henry II.
He subsequently became one of the greatest medieval
cult fi gures and Canterbury one of Europe’s greatest
pilgrimage centers.
Thomas, son of a respectable, moderately wealthy
London merchant, was educated in an AugustinianBECKET, THOMAS