[See also: AGRICULTURE; CONVENIENTIA; FAMILY AND GENDER
(PEASANTRY); FEUDALISM; GRANGE; POPULATION AND DEMOGRAPHY;
SERFDOM/SERVITUDE/SLAVERY; VILLENEUVE]
Bloch, Marc. French Rural History: An Essay in Its Basic Characteristics, trans. Janet Sondheimer.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.
Duby, Georges. Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West, trans. Cynthia Postan.
Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968.
——. The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the
Twelfth Century, trans. Howard B.Clarke. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979.
Herlihy, David. Medieval Households. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.
Jordan, William C. From Servitude to Freedom: Manumission in the Sénonais in the Thirteenth
Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.
RUTEBEUF
(fl. 1248–85). The Parisian Rutebeuf composed works in a greater variety of genres than
any other medieval poet. Known from a dozen manuscripts, his fifty-five extant pieces
illustrate the range of medieval urban poetry. Rutebeuf composed in every vernacular
genre except those especially cultivated in the provincial courts of 13th-century France:
chivalric epics, romances, and songs of courtly love. At a time when manuscript
compilations grouped lyric, dramatic, and narrative pieces separately, Rutebeuf, like his
contemporary Adam de la Halle, imposed such a vivid and coherent poetic identity on all
his compositions that they were gathered as a corpus in three contemporary compilations.
Unlike the vagabond Goliards or jongleurs who traveled from castle to court, Rutebeuf
remained in Paris, where he wrote to please many patrons—the royal family, the
university, the higher clergy, the papal legate—and to amuse a public in city streets and
taverns. While the aristocratic provincial courts were attuned to the refined art of the
chanson and the idealizing fantasies of Arthurian romance, Rutebeuf’s heterogeneous
urban public relished topical works that spoke to issues of the day, such as the Crusades
and the proliferation of mendicant orders in Paris. Rutebeuf’s political verse follows
historical events closely and presupposes familiarity with Parisian topography,
personalities, and issues. The notable variety of genres and the historical content that
characterize Rutebeuf s poetry are inseparable from Paris, the city that was its essential
and nurturing environment, and from the colorful figure of the poet himself.
Although no document preserves any record of Rutebeuf’s life, his poems reveal much
about his background, training, and relations with patrons. He may have come from the
region of Champagne; his earliest polemical poem, the Dit des Cordeliers (1249), favors
the rights of Franciscan monks in Troyes. Throughout his career, Rutebeuf composed
eulogies of nobles from Champagne, although mostly in connection with his role as a
Parisian propagandist of papal crusade policy, as in his complaintes for Count Eudes de
Nevers (1266) and Count Thibaut V of Champagne (1279). Rutebeuf’s Vie de sainte
Elysabel (ca. 1271) was commissioned for Isabelle, daughter of King Louis IX and wife
of Thibaut V.Rutebeuf’s most prominent benefactors were members of the royal family,
such as Alphonse of Poitiers, brother of Louis IX, whom he addresses in his request
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1566