HELDRIS DE CORNÜALLE
(fl. late 13th c.). Otherwise unknown, Heldris de Cornüalle is the author of the Roman
de Silence (6,706 octosyllabic lines), which survives in a single manuscript (University of
Nottingham Mi. LM. 6). The story is of a count of Cornwall who names his daughter
“Silence” to hide her gender, since only sons may inherit property. Nature and Nurture
debate, and Silence leaves home disguised as a jongleur; returning, (s)he attracts the
unwanted sexual advances of Queen Eufeme. Through Merlin’s intervention, the
unfaithful Eufeme is executed, and Silence, recognized as female, becomes the new
queen of England. The ambiguity of the heroine’s gender and its relationship to the
power of language have attracted critical attention since Thorpe’s edition appeared.
Peter L.Allen
Heldris de Cornüalle. Le roman de Silence: A Thirteenth-Century Arthurian Verse Romance by
Heldris de Comüalle, ed. Lewis Thorpe. Cambridge: Heffer, 1972.
——. Roman de Silence, trans. Regina Psaki. New York: Garland, 1990.
HÉLINANT DE FROIDMONT
(1160?-1230?). Before becoming a monk at the abbey of Froidmont in Beauvaisis in
1183, Hélinant studied at Beauvais and was a trouvère at the court of King Philip II
Augustus. After his conversion, he composed a Latin semiautobiographical chronicle, as
well as a series of sermons and letters in Latin. But he is remembered today for his Vers
de la Mort, written between 1193 and 1197. This popular poem of fifty stanzas, each of
twelve octosyllabic lines, uses the rhyme scheme AAB AAB BBA BBA, which Hélinant
is reputed to have invented. This meter became popular among other 13th-century poets
writing in a similar didactic vein, such as Barthélemi, a recluse at the abbey of Saint-
Fuscien-au-Bois, who composed a Charité and a Miserere, and Robert le Clerc, who also
wrote a poem titled Vers de la Mort (Arras, 1269–70). Over sixty works are known to
have imitated this meter. Hélinant’s message is simple yet powerful. He attempts to
convince humankind to abandon, as he has, secular trappings and to think about
salvation. Death, he reminds us, is the great equalizer that works ceaselessly at
transforming happiness into sorrow. Hélinant then asks Death to go greet the living. The
princes of the church and those of secular realms appear in a sort of danse macabre.
Hélinant enjoins his readers to reject the teachings of ancient philosophers who profess
that there is no afterlife. He suggests that humankind, if deprived of hope of a life after
death, is no different from the animals. There has to be an afterlife, he concludes, to
remedy the lack of justice in the world.
Claude J.Fouillade
[See also: PLANH/COMPLAINTE]
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 840