JAUFRE RUDEL (fl. 1120–48)
The troubadour Jaufre Rudel, lord of Blaye in the Gi-
ronde, sang of earthly love infused by a mystical quest
expressed also through his participation in the Second
Crusade. Of his six surviving songs of certain authen-
ticity, Jaufre’s most successful canso is directed to his
love from afar, or amor de loing, which gives this lyric
its leitmotif and keyword. In this song and in Qan lo
rius, he voices his yearning for a distant love, diversely
interpreted by critics as a woman, the Virgin Mary, God,
or the Holy Land. Recent scholarship underlines instead
the deliberate ambiguity in jaufre’s fusion of linguistic
registers and love objects drawn from both profane and
sacred traditions. The legend of his love for the Countess
of Tripoli dates from the pseudobiographical vida and
earlier. It has been echoed in every century since the
13th by authors as varied as Petrarch, Stendhal, Rostand,
Browning, Heine, Carducci, Pound, and Döblin.
See also Petrarca, Francesco
Further Reading
Jaufre Rudel. The Songs of Jaufre Rudel, ed. Rupert T. Pickens.
Toronto: Pontifi cal Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978.
——. The Poetry of Cercamon and Jaufre Rudel, ed. and trans.
George Wolf and Roy Rosenstein. New York: Garland,
1983.
——. Il canzoniere di Jaufre Rudel, ed. Giorgio Chiarini. Rome:
Japadre, 1985.
Rosenstein, Roy. “New Perspectives on Distant Love: Jaufre
Rudel, Uc Bru, and Sarrazina.” Modern Philology 87 (1990):
225–38.
Roy S. Rosenstein
JEAN DE GARLANDE
(Johannes de Garlandia; ca. 1195–ca. 1272)
Born in England, Jean fi rst studied at Oxford shortly
after 1200 and went to Paris in 1217 or 1218, fi rst to
complete his studies and then to teach. At Paris, he lived
in the Clos de Garlande, from which he derives his name.
At the close of the Albigensian Crusade, the papal legate
Romain Frangipani commissioned him to teach at the
newly formed University of Toulouse (April 2, 1229),
together with the Dominican master Roland of Cremona.
Jean remained at Toulouse for only a few years. He may
have returned to England during the 1230s but in any
case was again teaching in Paris by 1241.
Jean’s interests ranged primarily over the fi eld of
literary studies: etymology, rhetoric, grammar, and
poetics. One of his earliest and best-known works, the
Parisiana poetria (ca. 1220; revised a decade later), was
a treatise on the art of poetry in the tradition of Matthieu
de Vendôme and Geoffroi de Vinsauf. In this work, he
stresses the place of both verse and prose composition
in the arts curriculum. From this same period comes
his Dictionarius, perhaps the fi rst word book to be so
entitled. Jean also wrote a brief verse commentary to
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Integumenta Ovidii, giving
interpretations sometimes moral, sometimes scientifi c
or historical, to the fables. Like many of his works, the
Integumenta presupposes a vast general knowledge of
the subject and is not intended for the novice.
Jean was also concerned about the moral formation
of his students and wrote several works with that aim,
among them the Morale scolarium (1241), an admoni-
tion on the values and habits of the ideal scholar, and the
Stella maris (ca. 1249), in praise of the Virgin Mary as
a paragon of Christian virtue and action. A later work,
De triumphis ecclesiae (ca. 1252), is a polemic against
pagans and heretics, based on his earlier experiences
in Toulouse.
Jean had a prominent reputation in the 13th century.
But though his promotion of lay piety was in keeping
with the contemporary mission of the Dominicans and
Franciscans, his resistance to Aristotelian studies and to
the new emphasis on logic in the curriculum bespeak a
conservatism more in keeping with the schools of the
12th century than with the universities of the 13th.
Jean must not be confused with the musician of the
same name.Further Reading
Jean de Garlande. Morale scolarium of John of Garland (Jo-
hannes de Garlandia), a Professor in the Universities of Paris
and Toulouse in the Thirteenth Century, ed. Louis J. Paetow.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1927.
Wilson, Evelyn Faye. The Stella maris of John of Garland. Cam-
bridge: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1946.
Mark ZierJEAN DE MEUN
(Jehan de Meung; 1235/40–1305)
Born at Meung-sur-Loire, Jean Chopinel (or Clopinel)
obtained the Master of Arts, most likely in Paris. He
dwelt for much of his adult life in the capital, where from
at least 1292 to his death he was housed in the Hôtel de
la Tourelle in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques. Jean’s works
exhibit a rich classical and scholastic culture. Among
the works he translated into French are Vegetius, De
re militari, dedicated to Jean de Brienne, count of Eu;
Boethius, De consolatione Philosophiae, dedicated to
Philip the Fair; and the correspondence of Abélard and
Héloïse. He also claims two additional translations,
which are not extant, versions of Giraldus Cambrensis,
De mirabilibus Hiberniae, and of Aelred of Rievaulx,
De spirituali amicitia. More likely than not, Jean was
also the author of the satirical Testament maistre Jehan
de Meun and Codicile maistre Jehan de Meun.
But Jean is best remembered as the second author ofJAUFRE RUDEL