Der leken spieghel, Jan van Boendale mentions a certain
“Van Bruesele Heyne van Aken” (Book III, cap. 17, 1.
91). This line has been used to argue that the translator
of Die Rose is Hein van Aken, but the argument is not
convincing.
Two other Middle Dutch texts have wrongly been
attributed to Hein van Aken: the second part of an ad-
aptation of Li miserere by the Renclus de Moiliens (in
which the Christian name Heinrec is mentioned), and the
Vierde Martijn, a stanzaic poem following the Martijns
by Jacob van Maerlant, which a modern editor supposed
contained a reference to Saladijn.
The Roman van Heinric ende Margriete van Lim-
borch (Tale of Heinric and Margriete of Limborch)
is very colorful and long epic text (ca. 22,000 lines in
twelve books). The entire text has come down to us in
two codices, presently in Brussels and Leyden. The lat-
ter codex contains an epilogue in which the poet calls
himself Heinric. The notion that Heinric is identical
with the translator of Die Rose, is a proposition that has
never been proven. Margriete van Limborch was prob-
ably written between 1291 and 1318 and was meant for
the Brabantine court. The work is an original Middle
Dutch composition into which a large number of well-
known medieval literary motifs have been incorporated.
Margriete, the daughter of Duke van Limburg, gets lost
during a hunt and eventually fi nds herself at the court
in Athens where the count’s son, Echites, falls in love
with her. After many adventures, the couple marries. A
number of subplots are interwoven into this basic story,
including one which deals with Margriete’s brother
Heinric, who travels around from place to place looking
for his sister. A tale about Evax, who seeks Echites, and
descriptions of entire sieges and wars are also included
in the epic.
See also Jacob van Maerlant; Jan van Boendale
Further Reading
Asselbergs, Willem J. A. “Het landschap van de Vierde Martijn,”
in Asselbergs, Willem J. A. Nijmeegse colleges. Zwolle:
Tjeenk Willink, 1967, pp. 43–91.
de Keyser, P., ed. Hein van Aken, Va n den coninc Saladijn ende
van Hughen van Tabaryen. Leyden: Brill, 1950.
De Wachter, Lieve, “Een literair-historisch onderzoek naar de
effecten van ontleningen op de compositie en de zingeving
van de Roman van Heinric en Margriete van Limborch.” Dis-
sertation University of Brussels, 1998.
Hegman, Willy A., ed. Hein van Aken, Vierde Martijn. Zwolle:
Tjeenk-Willink, 1958.
Janssens, Jozef D. ‘Brabantse knipoogjes’ in de Roman van
Heinric ende Margriete van Limborch, Eigen schoon en de
Brabander 60 (1977): 1–16.
Leendertz, Pieter, ed. Het Middelnederlandsche leerdicht Rinclus.
Amsterdam: Jan Leendertz en Zoon, 1893.
Lievens, Robrecht. “De dichter Hein van Aken.” Spiegel der
Letteren 4 (1960): 57–74.
Meesters, Rob, ed. Roman van Heinric ende Margriete van Lim-
borch. Amsterdam/Antwerpen: Wereldbibliotheek, 1951.
van Uytven, Raymond. “Historische knipoogjes naar ‘Heinric
ende Margriete van Limborch.’” Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis
66 (1983): 3–11.
Verwijs, Eelco, ed. Heinric van Aken, Die Rose. 1868; rpt. Utre-
cht: HES, 1976.
Dieuwke van der PoelHEINRICH DER GLÎCHEZÂRE
(fl. late 12th c.)
Heinrich, the Alsatian author of Reinhart Fuchs (Rey-
nard the Fo x, last decade of the twelfth century), was the
fi rst to utilize myriad tales about the adventures of the
clever fox and his opponents already treated satirically
in the Latin poem Ysengrimus and the various branches
of the French episodic narrative Roman de Renart,
several of which were his principal sources, to form an
extended animal epic. The appellation often attached
to his name in scholarship, Glîchezâre (hypocrite), was
surely intended by him to refer to Reinhart, as a fragment
of the work from the beginning of the thirteenth century
makes clear, but in the two very similar manuscripts,
both written between 1320 and 1330, that preserve the
whole work (with a small lacuna, or gap) it seems to
be part of his own name. Several brief German didactic
poems witness that Heinrich’s version continued to be
read to some extent in later centuries, but the French
branches were independently shaped into a longer nar-
rative in French and in Dutch, and the Dutch version(s)
became the basis for the Low German Reynke de Vo s
and the Middle English Reynard the Fo x.
The lacuna in Reinhart Fuchs is intentional; the nar-
rative breaks off (in one manuscript with the words et
cetera) just before Ysengrin the wolf is castrated, and
picks up again with his laments. Heinrich, however, was
not as prudish as a later medieval editor. His explicit
account can be reconstructed from a didactic song at-
tacking false oaths by Der Marner that clearly utilizes
it. In a way, such explicitness is unusual; such details
are generally hinted at rather than stated. Nevertheless,
it was apparently his own invention—his known sources
do not contain the episode, though Reynke de Vo s has a
distant parallel, as does its source.
All versions of the material utilize beasts in two
ways: essentially, in that animals behave according to
their nature (as understood in the Middle Ages), and
allegorically, in that the animals portray human vices.
Even where allusions to human institutions and actions
are clear, the animals are never totally anthropomor-
phized. But, they all can speak, and they interact as
if their differences were less consequential than their
similarities. Almost all the versions, although perhaps
not all branches of the Roman de Renart, criticize theHEINRICH DER GLÎCHEZÂRE