ÉCHANSON/ÉCHANSONNERIE
. The Old French title échanson was given to the members of the household of a lord who
were charged with serving drinks at the lord’s table. The closest equivalent title in
English is “cupbearer.” In the royal household, servants bearing the title scancio (from
Frankish *skanjo ‘drink-giver’) or pincerna (a Late Latin word, from a Greek expression
meaning “to mix for drinking”) appeared under the early Merovingians, and their
successors continued to function throughout the medieval period and beyond. The
vernacular word was derived from the former title, but in official Latin the title pincerna
prevailed from the time of the accession of Hugh Capet. Under the Merovingians, the
cupbearers were placed under the authority of a princeps pincernarum, but under the
early Capetians they seem to have been placed under the authority of the bouteiller, or
butler, and their corps may have formed his whole department. In the ordinance of 1261
governing the royal hostel or inner household, the first document to describe the
organization of the royal household of the Capetians, the échansonnerie or corps of
échansons constituted one of the six ministeria or mestiers of the hostel, and it retained
that standing thereafter. In 1291, the official staff of the échansonnerie consisted of five
échansons (including the grand échanson, or head of the corps); four bouteillers, or
butlers; four barillers, or coopers; two portes-barils, or barrel bearers; and one potier, or
potter, but the number of officers tended to grow over time. The échansons and
bouteillers probably served in rotation, as their successors cetainly did, and one was
always in the personal service of the king.
D’A.Jonathan D.Boulton
[See also: HÔTEL DU ROI]
Lot, Ferdinand, and Robert Fawtier. Histoire des institutions françaises au moyen âge. 3 vols.
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957–62, Vol. 2: Institutions royales (1958).
Luchaire, Achille. Histoire des institutions monarchiques de la France sous les premiers Capétiens
(987–1180). Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1883.
Tardif, Jules. Études sur les institutions politiques et administratives de la France: période
mérovingienne. Paris: Picard, 1881.
ÉCHECS AMOUREUX
. A commentary in French on an allegorical poem of the same name in the manner and
tradition of the Roman de la Rose. This lengthy romance (some 30,000 octosyllabic
lines), was composed by a layman between 1370 and 1430 and is extant in five
manuscripts of the Bibliothèque Nationale. Built on a personified chess game, the Échecs
contains a complete world-view—an informative mythography—that makes frequent
references to the Rose. Close in time to writers following in the wake of the Rose, such as
Chaucer, Deschamps, and Machaut, the mythography gives a reading that bears witness
to its time, is not religiously motivated, and is the only complete explication of any poem
in the tradition of the Rose. The unknown secular poet drew on many of the same sources
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