was the second son of Philippe de Remi (ca. 1205-ca. 1265), who served as bailli of
Gâtinais for Robert, count of Artois, from 1237 to 1250. By 1255, the father had
apparently built a manor house on the property, for he then styled himself “lord of
Beaumanoir,” a title that passed to his heir, Girard, then to the younger Philippe at
Girard’s death. Beaumanoir fils began his administrative career in 1279 as bailli of
Clermont-en-Beauvaisis for Robert, count of Clermont. In 1283, he completed the
Coutumes de Beauvaisis, a systematic treatise on customary law composed in Francien
prose with strong traces of Picard. Beaumanoir declares in his prologue that it is essential
to write down the legal customs of the region so that they can be maintained without
change “because, since memories are fleeting and human lives are short, what is not
written is soon forgotten.” His book was widely copied in the Middle Ages (thirteen
manuscripts extant, ten or eleven other copies known to be lost) and is today considered
the most significant work on French customary law of the 13th century. In 1284,
Beaumanoir was knighted and entered royal administration; he served as seneschal of
Poitou (1284–87) and Saintonge (1287–89), then as bailli of Vermandois (1289–91),
Touraine (1291–92), and Senlis until his death (1292–96).
Since the 1870s, a substantial body of narrative and lyric poetry has been attributed to
the author of the Coutumes: two romances in octosyllabic verse, La Manekine (8,590
lines) and Jehan et Blonde (6,262 lines), both signed Phelippe de Remi; at least three
chansons courtoises, two naming the poet Phelippe de Remi; a moralistic fabliau, Fole
Larguecel and several shorter poems, including a Salu d’amours signed Phelippe de
Beaumanoir, two fatrasies, and an Ave Maria. Traditional scholarship holds that
Beaumanoir composed most of these works as Philippe de Remi while in his twenties,
between 1270 and 1280, and assumed the name Philippe de Beaumanoir only in 1279,
when he turned his energies to law and administration. Some recent scholars, troubled by
the unusual productivity of such a young man and by the disparity between courtly and
legal subjects, prefer to attribute all the poetry to the father and date it between 1237 and
- A major factor underlying the revisionist attribution is the revival of a turn-of-the-
century Germanist argument that Rudolf von Ems used both romances as sources for his
Willehalm von Orlens, completed before 1243. Attribution and dating of the poetry
remain open questions.
La Manekine is a pious adventure romance based on the folklore motif of “The
Maiden Without Hands,” also treated in the somewhat later Belle Helaine de
Constantinople and Lion de Bourges. A Hungarian princess who cuts off her right hand
rather than marry her father incestuously is set adrift and lands in Scotland, where she
marries the king, only to be betrayed by his mother; set adrift again, she lands in Rome,
where she is miraculously healed, reunited with her husband, and reconciled with her
father. Jehan et Blonde, perhaps based in part on the Roman de Horn and deeply
influenced by the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, tells the story of an impecunious
French knight, Jehan, who rises in the world by serving as squire to the Count of Oxford
and winning the love of Blonde, the count’s daughter; it can be read as a how-to manual
for success at court and for moral behavior by lordly vassals. The 15th-century prose
romance Jehan de Paris is a free adaptation of Jehan et Blonde.
Mary B.Speer
[See also: BELLE HELAINE DE CONSTANTINOPLE;
CUSTUMALS/COUTUMIERS; FATRAS/FATRASIE; JEHAN DE PARIS, ROMAN DE;
The Encyclopedia 195