A Benedictine abbey was founded at Bernay in the beginning of the 11th century by
Judith de Bretagne, wife of Richard II, duke of Normandy. Constructed in stone, the
abbey church included a nave, seven bays with aisles,
Bernay (Eure), plan of abbey church.
After Musset.
a transept, a choir of two bays that culminated in an apse in cul-de-four (vaulting formed
by a semicupola). The choir is flanked by two aisles with apsidioles. Fragments from
Gallo-Roman constructions were used for the foundation. Despite modifications and
attempts at destruction and reconstruction, this abbey church of Bernay is one of the most
interesting monuments of Romanesque architecture in Normandy.
E.Kay Harris
Porée, A. Notice in Congrès archéologique (Caen) (1908).
——. “Nouvelles observations sur l’église abbatiale de Bernay.” Bulletin monumental (1911).
BÉROUL
(fl. late 12th c.). Nothing is known of Béroul other than that he was the author of a late
12th-century Tristan verse romance. He twice names himself in his surviving text. Owing
to certain stylistic inconsistencies and even factual contradictions within the poem, some
scholars have concluded that his Tristan is the work of two authors, or even more. Such
suggestions remain unproved, however, and a good many scholars have argued the case
for single authorship.
Béroul clearly composed the poem during the second half of the 12th century, but the
date or even decade remains in question; some have contended that it was as early as
1165, while others, concluding that line 3,849 of the poem refers to an epidemic that
attacked the Crusaders at Acre in 1190–91, assign the poem to the last decade of the
century. The Tristan is preserved in fragmentary form in a single manuscript (B.N. fr.
2171) that was copied during the second half of the 13th century. The beginning and end
of the poem are both missing, leaving a single long fragment of nearly 4,500 lines of
octosyllabic narrative verse; in addition, the manuscript contains a number of lacunae,
and the text is obviously defective in many passages.
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