in order to sustain themselves. The staples of this diet were probably bread, beer or wine,
stewed vegetables (especially onions, leeks, cabbages), local fish, and some meat
(especially chicken and pork). The full details of this diet and its nutritional value are still
being studied, but we may assume that the foods of the poor varied according to the
times.
Terence Scully
[See also: BANQUETING; BEVERAGES; BREAD; COOKING; FOOD TRADES]
Gottschalk, Alfred. Histoire de l’alimentation et de la gastronomie depuis la préhistoire jusqu’à
nos jours. 2 vols. Paris: Hippocrate, 1948, Vol. 1, pp. 257–352.
DIGULLEVILLE, GUILLAUME DE
(1295–1358) Guillaume, son of Thomas of Digulleville (Degulleville or Deguileville),
Normandy, lived as a monk in the Cistercian abbey of Chaalis, Île-de-France, from 1326
until his death. He is known for his dream-allegory moral poems. Inspired by Jean de
Meun’s Roman de la Rose and perhaps by other allegories, he created a trilogy on the
Piligrimage of Life theme, in which divine grace, nature, and the virtues and vices are
personified. He composed the Pèlerinage de vie humaine in a first version in 1330–31,
with a recension in 1355, and the Pèlerinage de l’âme between 1355 and 1358. He wrote
a summary of both the second version of the Pèlerinage de vie humaine and the
Pèlerinage de l’âme that survives in its entirety in only one manuscript. In 1358, he wrote
the third part, the Pèlerinage Jhesucrist. He also composed a series of Latin poems
intended for inclusion at the end of the Pèlerinage de l’âme, but these remain
unpublished, as does the 1355 recension of the Pèlerinage de vie humaine. He wrote a
further allegorical poem in French, the Roman de la Fleur de lys. This last work, which
survives in two manuscripts, explains the origins and symbolism of the arms of France as
a defense of the French royal dynasty against the claims of Edward III. Digulleville’s
popular pilgrimage trilogy, surviving in more than seventyfive manuscripts, inspired
Chaucer, Lydgate, and Bunyan. The poems show the way to salvation through obedience
to the church, its sacraments, and its principles. The first work takes a Pilgrim-monk from
a prenatal vision of the New Jerusalem to his death, with authorial digressions of an
encyclopedic nature along the way. In the second pilgrimage, the Pilgrim’s soul visits the
places on earth where he had sinned, the cemetery where his body rots, and Hell with its
torments of the damned, ending in Purgatory. The third part is a life of Christ.
Joan B.Williamson
[See also: DUPIN, JEAN; PURGATORY]
Digulleville, Guillaume de. Le pèlerinage de vie humaine, Le pèlerinage de l’âme, Le pèlerinage
Jhesucrist, ed. Jacob Stürzinger. 3 vols. London: Roxburghe Club, 1893, 1895, 1897.
Faral, Edmond. “Guillaume de Digulleville, moine de Chaalis.” Histoire littéraire de la France.
Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1962, Vol. 39, pp. 1–132.
Huot, Sylvia. The Romance of the Rose and Its Medieval Readers: Interpretation, Reception,
Manuscript Transmission. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 207–38.
Piaget, Arthur. “Un poème inédit de Guillaume de Digulleville: Le roman de la Fleur de lys.”
Romania 63(1936):317–58.
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