standing Virgin and Child (14th c.), the vault boss depicts a king with what may be
Wisdom and Folly, and over the cloister entrance the badly damaged tympanum features
the Coronation of the Virgin, with bishops and abbots in the voussoirs.
North of the abbey, the chapel of Saint-Saturnin retains its early 11th-century pre-
Romanesque plan, rectangular with a trefoil-shaped east end. At the crossing, fantastic
carved creatures inhabit the impost capitals.
Stacy L.Boldrick
Aubert, M.Marcel. “Saint Wandrille.” Congrès archéologique (Rouen) 89(1926):550–72.
Musset, Lucien. Normandie romane. 2 vols. La Pierre-qui-vire: Zodiaque, 1974.
SAINTE EULALIE, SÉQUENCE DE
. A composition in twenty-nine lines commemorating the passion of Eulalia of Mérida, in
Spain, a 4th-century martyr. The heroine, refusing to abjure Christianity, is decapitated
by the Romans. Her soul ascends to Heaven in the form of a dove. Composed ca. 878–82
in northeast France, Eulalie is the earliest surviving saint’s life in the vernacular.
Thelma S.Fenster
[See also: SAINTS’ LIVES; SEQUENCE (EARLY)]
Aspland, Clifford W., ed. “Sequence of Saint Eulalia.” In A Medieval French Reader. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1979, pp. 4–6.
Wagner, Robert Leon. Textes d’étude. Geneva: Droz, 1964.
SAINTE FOY, CHANSON DE
. A melody for this Occitan saint’s life, composed ca. 1060 in the Cerdagne/ Roussillon
region (between Narbonne and the Pyrénées), is preserved with the text in a single
manuscript (University of Leiden, Cod. Vossianus Lat., in Octavo, No. 60, ca. 1100).
With 593 octosyllabic lines in fifty-five rhymed laisses, the Chanson has great linguistic
and literary importance as one of the earliest surviving narratives in the Langue d’oc, and
the first rhymed poem in the vernacular in France.
The opening lines name oral and written sources: first, “a Latin book” read “under a
pine-tree”; second, a song with a melody “fine for dancing,” a “Spanish story,” and a
“French style”; and third, a written “Passion.” The narrator’s references to himself
singing and to the audience listening give immediacy to the song.
He recounts Fides’s comfortable early life at Agen, her choice of poverty and piety,
then her eloquent refusal to worship Roman gods. Broiled alive and decapitated, with
angels attending, her remains give eyesight to the blind and speech to the mute. Her
pagan persecutors end by destroying themselves.
Amelia E.Van Vleck
The Encyclopedia 1605