L

LA VIGNE, ANDRÉ DE

(ca. 1457–ca. 1515)
Late-medieval poet and playwright. Born between 1457
and 1470 in the port city of La Rochelle, La Vigne was
in the service of Marie d’Orléans from ca. 1488 until
her death in 1493, when he became secretary to the
duke of Savoy. In 1494, in an effort to attract a more
powerful protector, he presented a work to King Charles
VIII, the Ressource de la Crestienté. This poem is a
dream allegory in which the king, in the personage of
Magesté Royalle, is shown as the protector of Dame
Crestienté, who is in peril. Impressed with La Vigne’s
talents, Charles appointed him historiographer of his
military expedition into Italy to conquer the kingdom
of Naples (1494–95). The resulting chronicle, the Voy-
age de Naples, is an eyewitness record of the events of
the Italian campaign. Like the Ressource, it is written
in alternating verse and prose.
In May 1496, La Vigne was invited to the town of
Seurre in Burgundy, where he was commissioned to
write a play on the life of St. Martin, patron of the town.
Within fi ve weeks, he had completed not only the Mys-
tère de saint Martin, comprising more than 10,000 lines
of verse, but also a comic morality play, the Aveugle
et le boiteux, and a farce, the Meunier de qui le diable
emporte l’âme en enfer. The mystery play was writ-
ten to edify the people with scenes from the holy and
devout life of their patron saint. To this end, there are
sermons, miracles, and conversions, as well as scenes
set in Heaven and Hell. The play is also a rich tapestry
of daily life, showing people of all sorts and condi-
tions engaged in their daily tasks. La Vigne portrays
this milieu from a variety of stylistic perspectives. He
sympathetically treats family diffi culties and explores
the psychology of suffering; he satirizes the abuses of
the powerful, the faults of the clergy, and the venality of
the merchant class; he depicts the bombast of braggart

soldiers and the antics of drunken messengers. All these

strands are woven together in a seamless dramatic action

in which the playwright deftly alternates affective and

comic scenes for maximum effect.

Toward the end of the century, La Vigne collected a

number of his early works in the Vergier d’honneur. In

1504, he brought suit against Michel Le Noir, a Parisian

printer, to stop an unauthorized edition of this work;

the Parlement de Paris issued the injunction. Before

the death of Charles VIII in 1498, La Vigne had been

appointed secretary to the queen, Anne of Brittany. He

remained in this capacity until her death in 1514. His

later works included epitaphs for his patrons and other

panegyric poems. He wrote two other plays, the Sotise

à huit personnages, attacking the abuses of his day, and

the Moralité du nouveau monde against the abolition of

the Pragmatic Sanction, as well as political poems. In

the Louenge des roys de France, for example, he sup-

ported Louis XII in his quarrel with the pope. Francis

I in the year of his accession (1515) named La Vigne

his historiographer and charged him with writing the

history of his reign. Since only a few pages of the

chronicle were completed, La Vigne is thought to have

died shortly after.

Further Reading

La Vigne, André de. Le mystère de saint Martin, 1496 , ed. André

Duplat. Geneva: Droz, 1979.

——. Le voyage de Naples, ed. Anna Slerca. Milan: Pubblicazioni

della Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 1981.

Brown, Cynthia Jane. The Shaping of History and Poetry in Late

Medieval France: Propaganda and Artistic Expression in

the Works of the Rhétoriqueurs. Birmingham: Summa,

1985.

Duplat, André. “La Moralité de l’aveugle et du boiteux d’Andrieu

de la Vigne: étude littéraire et édition.” Travaux de linguistique

et de littérature 21 (1983): 41–79.

André Duplat