de saint Nicolas, a semiliturgical drama produced during
the grand siège, or convention, of the Arras brotherhood,
between 1194 and 1202. As in the Chanson des Saisnes,
the background is the war of Christians and heathens.
After an initial victory by the king of Africa’s Saracens,
the only survivor of the Christian host eventually ensures
the triumph of his party, thanks to the protection of the
saint; the king and his men convert to Christianity. The
Jeu is a chanson de geste in miniature. Yet once more, the
narrow frame of the genre, the dramatized miracle play,
bursts under the poet’s creative power. “Throughout the
play,” Albert Henry writes, “sacred and profane, sublime
and comic, marvelous... and realistic elements are to
be found side by side.” In this powerful and original
work, a masterpiece of medieval dramatic literature, is
refl ected the multifarious personality of an author who
showed as much sincerity in praising Auxerre wine as
in extolling the crusade.
Disease turned Jehan into one of our great lyric
poets. When obliged to withdraw from the society
of his contemporaries, he wrote a long supplication
to his friends and benefactors in his farewell poems
(Congés), composed in 1202. Taking up the stanzaic
form of Hélinant de Froid-mont’s Ve r s de la Mort, he
bade a pathetic farewell to the world in forty-fi ve oc-
tosyllabic stanzas. The regret of bygone joys, rebellion
against and resignation to his misfortune, faith in God,
gratitude to those who harbored him “half sound and
half rotten”—all the themes of a new genre are to be
found here. A work of harrowing sincerity, the Congés
stand, in the early 13th century, as the fi rst example of
“ordeal lyricism” to be found in so many poets from
Rutebeuf to Verlaine.
A teller of spicy stories, the author of a chanson de
geste, a skillful dramatist, a lyric poet, and a critic (in the
prologue to the Chanson des Saisnes, he puts forward a
classifi cation of the three principal poetic genres), Jehan
Bodel tackled most contemporary forms and achieved
creativity in each.
Further Reading
Bartsch, Karl, ed. Altfranzösische Romanzen und Pastourellen.
Leipzig: Vogel, 1870, pp. 287–91. [Based on MS F (B.N. fr.
12645).]
Berger, Roger, ed. La nécrologie de la confrérie des jongleurs
et des bourgeois d’Arras (1194–1361): texte et tables. Arras:
Imprimerie Centrale de 1’Artois, 1963.
Bodel, Jehan. La chanson des Saisnes, ed. Annette Brasseur. 2
vols. Geneva: Droz, 1989.
——. La chanson des Saxons, trans. Annette Brasseur. Paris:
Champion, 1992.
——. Le jeu de saint Nicolas de Jehan Bodel, ed. Albert Henry.
Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1980. [Based on MS V (B.N.
fr. 25566).]
——. Les fabliaux de Jean Bodel, ed. Pierre Nardin. Paris: Nizet,
- [Based on MS A (B.N. fr. 837).]
——. Les congés d’Arras (Jean Bodel, Baude Fastoul, Adam
de la Halle), ed. Pierre Ruelle. Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France, 1965, pp. 83–104. [Based on MS. A (Arsenal
3142).]
Brasseur, Annette. Étude linguistique et littéraire de la “Chanson
des Saisnes” de Jehan Bodel. Geneva: Droz, 1990.
——. “Index des rimes de Jehan Bodel.” Olifant 15 (1990):
211–336.
Foulon, Charles. L’œuvre de Jehan Bodel. Paris: Presses Univer-
sitaires de France, 1958.
Annette BrasseurJIMÉNEZ DE RADA, RODRIGO
(ca. 1170 – 1247)
Jiménez was born about 1170 in Puente la Reina in Na-
varre, to a family of the minor nobility. His father was
Jimeno Pérez de Rada, and his mother, Eva de Finojosa.
His uncle, Martín, was abbot of the monastery of Santa
María ais de la Huerta. Family connections probably
led to a stay at the royal court of Navarre before his
departure to secure a higher education at the Universities
of Bologna and of Paris. The dates of his stay at those
institutions are unknown, although it appears that he
was in Paris in 1201. He had returned to Navarre and
the court of Sancho VII well before 1207. In that year
he participated in the negotiation of a peace between
Sancho and Alfonso VIII of Castile. His ambition and
talent must have recommended Rodrigo instantly to the
latter, to whom he became a major adviser and confi dant
for the rest of his reign.
Their relationship had become so strong by 1208 that
Jiménez, not yet an ordained a priest, was nominated
by Alfonso to the see of Osma, although he was never
consecrated to it. Instead, further royal favor propelled
him in that same year into the primatial see of Toledo.
In that capacity he toured western Europe in 1211, so-
liciting aid for a crusade against Muslim Andalusia. In
July 1212 he was present in the army of Alfonso VIII
when the great victory over Muslim forces from North
Africa was won at Las Navas de Tolosa.
During the next few years the debility of the king and
realm prevented any immediate exploitation of that vic-
tory, but Jiménez was active in consolidating the resul-
tant territorial gains of the kingdom and of his see in La
Mancha. He was a major political fi gure in the brief reign
of Enrique I (1214–1217) and again during the minority
of Fernando III. When the latter reached his majority,
Jiménez became a royal confi dant and one of the chief
royal advisers as Fernando ruled Castile (1217–1252)
and then León (1230–1252) after the reunion of the two
realms, In those capacities he assisted the king in the
campaigns that saw the defi nitive conquest of eastern
and central Andalusia—Baeza (1225), Úbeda (1233),
and Córdoba (1236)—although he did not live to see
the conquest of Seville (1248).
Jiménez’s tenure as archbishop also saw the territorialJIMÉNEZ DE RADA, RODRIGO