France remained unrecorded. By the mid-15th century, the need for an official record of
every regional custom led Charles VII to order baillis and seneschals to compile
custumals for their districts in order to avoid uncertainty about what the law was and
consequent delays in legal process (1454). Progress was at times slow, but by the late
16th century the task had been accomplished. The products of this second wave of
redaction, often known as coutumes réformées, remained in force, with few
modifications, until the Revolution replaced regional customs with a national code based
on Roman law.
Emily Z.Tabuteau
[See also: BEAUMANOIR, PHILIPPE DE REMI, SIRE DE; DOWRY;
HISTORIOGRAPHY]
Philippe de Remi, sire de Beaumanoir. Coutumes de Beauvaisis, ed. Amédée Salmon. 2 vols. Paris:
Picard, 1899–1900. [trans. by F.R.P.Akehurst. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1992.]
Tardif, Ernest Joseph, ed. Coutumiers de Normandie. Rouen Cagniard, 1881.
Besnier, Robert. La coutume de Normandie: histoire externe. Paris: Sirey, 1935.
Caswell, Jean, and Ivan Sipkov. The Coutumes of France in the Library of Congress. Washington,
D.C.: Library of Congress, 1977.
CUVELIER
(fl. late 14th c.). The author of the Chronique de Bertrand du Guesclin (ca. 1385), a
24,346-line French poem, Cuvelier is otherwise unknown. His subject, Du Guesclin (ca.
1324–1380), a minor Breton nobleman, rose through military service during the Breton
wars of succession, campaigns in Spain, and the Hundred Years’ War to become
constable of France. Cuvelier’s Bertrand is an epic hero: physically ugly but noble in
character, fearless and cunning in war but generous to the common people.
Though unreliable, the Chronique was popular; thirteen manuscripts survive,
including those of a prose epitome done in 1387 for Jean d’Estouteville.
Leah Shopkow
[See also: COMPOSERS, MINOR (14TH CENTURY); GUESCLIN, BERTRAND
DU; HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR]
Cuvelier. La chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin de Cuvelier, ed. Jean-Claude Faucon. 3 vols.
Toulouse: Éditions Universitaires du Sud, 1990–91.
Faucon, Jean-Claude. “Un imagier de la guerre de cent ans.” Littératures (Toulouse) 9–
10(1984):13–22.
Levine, Robert. “Myth and Antimyth in La vie vaillante de Bertrand du Guesclin” Viator
16(1985):259–75.
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