was associated with Philip’s in important acts, and
she accompanied him on his grand tour of the Midi in
1303–04. She showed independence in supporting the
Franciscan Bernard Délicieux and accepting gifts from
citizens of Béziers, whose orthodoxy and loyalty were
suspect. She pressed the prosecution of Guichard, bishop
of Troyes, accused of cheating her and her mother (and
later charged with killing Jeanne by sorcery). A woman
of considerable culture, she commissioned Joinville’s
Vie de saint Louis; Ramon Lull and her confessor Du-
rand de Champagne dedicated works to her, and Ray-
mond of Béziers began for her his translation of Kalila et
Dimna. She was godmother of Enguerran de Marigny’s
wife, and Enguerran was the offi cer in charge of Jeanne’s
pantry before joining Philip’s service in 1302.
Jeanne bore Philip four sons and a daughter before
dying on April 2, 1305. In her lavish testament, she
used 40,000 livres parisis and three years’ revenues of
Champagne, assigned her by Philip, to endow a hospi-
tal at Château-Thierry and the Collége de Navarre in
Paris. Having rejected burial at Saint-Denis, the royal
mausoleum, she was interred at the Franciscan church
in Paris.
See also Llull, Ramón; Philip IV the Fair
Further Reading
Arbois de Jubainville, Henry d’. Histoire des ducs et des comtes
de Champagne. 7 vols. Paris: Durand et Lauriel, 1859–69.
Brown, Elizabeth A.R. The Monarchy of Capetain France and
Royal Ceremonial. London: Variorum, 1991.
Favier, Jean. Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel: Enguerran de
Marigny. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963.
Lalou, Elisabeth. “Le gouvernement de la reine Jeanne, 1285–
1304.” Cahiers Haut-Marnais 167 (1986): 16–30.
Elizabeth A.R. Brown
JEHAN BODEL (d. 1210)
A trouvère from Arras in the second half of the 12th centu-
ry and one of the most prominent writers of his time. Jehan
Bodel’s life is only sketchily known—neither the date nor
the place of his birth has been established with accuracy.
Jehan Bodel had strong links with the city of Arras
and its surroundings. He introduces himself as a minstrel
in his Congés: he was a member of the Arras minstrel
and burgher brotherhood and contributed to the rapid
expansion of this society. Stanza 40 of the Congés sug-
gests that he was a familiar of the Arras échevinage, or
town council, to which he was presumably attached.
Elated by Foulque de Neuilly’s preaching, he was about
to follow Baudouin of Flanders, the future conqueror
of Constantinople, to the Holy Land, when he began to
suffer from the fi rst signs of leprosy. In 1202, he with-
drew to a leprosarium in the Arras region, most likely
at Grant Val near Beaurains, where he died, according
to the death-roll of the brotherhood, between February
2 and June 16, 1210.
Jehan’s work has only gradually unveiled its secrets.
Long underestimated, it now appears as one of the
richest, most original œuvres in medieval literature.
Because he tackled various genres simultaneously, the
chronology of his works is diffi cult to establish. He
is one of the earliest writers of pastourelles in langue
d’oïl; fi ve have been ascribed to him. Such narrative
lyrics had already been composed by troubadours, but
the Arragese minstrel left his mark upon the genre.
Within a conventional framework, he proved original
in his skilled composition in a wide range of prosodic
structures and in the impression of truthfulness he gives
due to subtle characterization and concrete details taken
from peasant life.
Slightly different in inspiration were his one fable
and eight fabliaux, those merry tales that give full scope
to the imagination of an artist aiming at entertaining
a noble audience at the expense of the middle class,
peasants, women, and churchmen. If not as incisive as
Gautier le Leu’s, Jehan’s fabliaux evince acute observa-
tion and a rich experience of the life of Picard peasants
and merchants. The genre, free enough to encompass
risqué tales and cautionary fables, appealed to this story-
teller keen on Gallic mirth: Jehan Bodiax, un rimoieres
de fl abiax, as he called himself.
His versatility led him to widen the scope of his writ-
ings. A connoisseur of chansons de geste, he soon real-
ized that the Saxon wars, a landmark in Charlemagne’s
reign, were a fi t subject for a vast epic, and by 1180 he
undertook the composition of the Chanson des Saisnes,
which his disease prevented him from completing. Four
drafts of this work are extant, the shortest one known
as A (4,337 lines) and the longest as T (8,019 lines).
Analysis shows that later writers tried to bring the un-
fi nished poem to completion after the 12th century. The
fi rst 3,307 lines of A provide us with a text as close as
possible to what Jehan’s original work may have been.
Here, we can recognize the innovator at once by his
art and literary theories as well as his idea of history.
In keeping with the Roland tradition of the chanson de
geste, he foregrounds Charlemagne but also humanizes
the God-chosen emperor, whose character underwent
further transformation with the continuators. Nor is
Jehan’s inspiration purely epic: with the amours of
Baudouin, the young Frenchman, romance is woven
into the martial narrative, while the comedy peculiar
to fabliaux creeps into the episode of Saint-Herbert du
Rhin. The poem synthesizes all the components of the
author’s craftsmanship: a scholarly minstrel, fascinated
by history and committed to his times, both an observer
of reality and a visionary, but fi rst and foremost a poet
capable of breathing life into whatever he portrayed.
Jehan dealt once more with an epic subject in the JeuJEANNE OF NAVARRE