form of a complete romance. Although Eilhart’s German text abridges or omits some
episodes found in Béroul’s, the two works appear to have at very least a common source,
and it has sometimes been suggested that Eilhart adapted the story directly from Béroul’s
account of the lovers.
Norris J.Lacy
[See also: FOLIES TRISTAN; PROSE TRISTAN; THOMAS D’ANGLETERRE]
Béroul. Le roman de Tristan, ed. Ernest Muret. Paris: Didot, 1913, 4th rev. ed. L.M.Defourques.
Paris: Champion, 1962.
——. The Romance of Tristran, ed. and trans. Norris J.Lacy. New York: Garland, 1989.
Walter, Philippe and D.Lacroix, trans. Tristan et Iseut: les poèmes français, la saga norroise. Paris:
Livre de Poche, 1989.
Raynaud de Lage, Guy. “Faut-il attribuer a Béroul tout le Tristan?” Moyen âge 64(1958):249–70;
67 (1961):167–68; 70(1964):33–38.
Reid, Thomas Bertram Wallace. The “Tristan” of Béroul: A Textual Commentary. New York:
Barnes and Noble, 1972.
BERRY
. The region just south of the Loire and to the west of Burgundy originally inhabited by
the people known as the Bituriges Cubi, Berry englobes the modern departments of the
Cher and Indre and includes neighboring parts of Loiret, Indre-et-Loire, and Creuse. It
formed part of the Roman imperial province of Aquitania Prima, of which its chief
civitas, Bourges, became the capital. According to legend, St. Ursinus founded an
archbishopric in Bourges during the 3rd century.
On the fall of the western Roman Empire, Berry became a part of the Visigothic
kingdom and then of the Frankish subkingdom, later the duchy, of Aquitaine. In 926,
King Raoul suppressed the countship of Bourges, after which no major feudal power
emerged to complement that of the town’s archbishops. This lack resulted in
encroachments by the dukes of Aquitaine and the counts of Anjou and Blois.
In 1101, Eudes Harpin de Dun, viscount of Bourges, sold his office to King Philip I,
who reasserted the royal presence, but the royal holdings in Berry were granted in 1137
to Eleanor of Aquitaine as a dowry upon her marriage to the future Louis VII. In 1152,
she carried them with her when she married the future Henry II of England. French royal
presence returned in 1200, when King John of England returned the holdings to Philip II,
who, in 1201, having appointed a royal bailli for the region, granted them to Eleanor’s
granddaughter, Blanche of Castile, upon her marriage to the future Louis VIII. Royal
control increased from that time on.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, Berry increased in importance to the monarchy.
Declared a duchy in 1360, it was given in apanage to John (d. 1416), third son of John II
and a famous patron of the arts.
From 1418 to 1436, with Paris in hostile hands, the province sheltered the royal
government of Charles VII, “le roi de Bourges.” On the death of Duke John’s daughter,
Marie, in 1434, the duchy was rejoined to the crown, only to be granted out again in 1461
by Louis XI to his brother, Charles, who exchanged it for Normandy at the end of his
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