New York: Braziller, 1975. [Reproduces sixteen illuminations
attributed to René.]
Des Garets, Marie Louyse. Un artisan de la Renaissance fran-
çaise du XVe siècle, le roi René, 1409–1480. Paris: Éditions
de la Table Ronde, 1946.
Lyna, Frédéric. Le mortifi ement de vaine plaisance de René
d’Anjou: étude du texte et des manuscrits à peintures. Brus-
sels: Weckesser, 1926.
Janice C. Zinser
RICHARD DE FOURNIVAL
(1201–before 1260)
Poet, canon, and chancellor at Amiens cathedral and
canon of Rouen, Richard de Fournival produced a rich
and varied corpus, composing songs in the trouvère style,
the prose Bestiaire d’amours and its fragmentary verse
redaction, and the Latin Biblionomia, the catalogue of
his remarkable library. Three other prose treatises, the
Commens d’amours, the Consaus d’amours, and the
Poissance d’amours, are of questionable attribution.
It is for the Bestiaire d’amours that Richard is chiefl y
known. In this adaptation of the bestiary format, birds
and animals represent aspects of the love experience.
The text, immediately popular, has been transmitted in
numerous manuscripts, richly illuminated. It inspired
several literary responses, all anonymous. The earliest is
the Response au bestiaire, in which the lady to whom the
Bestiaire d’amours was addressed supposedly replies,
turning each of the bestiary examples into an illustration
of her need to take care to protect herself against male
sexual advances. A verse adaptation, different from
the fragmentary verse redaction apparently by Richard
himself, also survives; although the author gives his
name, he does so in an anagram of such complexity that
it remains unsolved. In two 14th-century manuscripts,
the Bestiaire d’amours is given a narrative continuation,
in which the lover captures the lady and receives from
her a red rose. In another 14th-century manuscript, the
Bestiaire and its Response are embedded in a sequence
of prose texts that form a dialogue between lover and
lady; although none is a bestiary, all refer to the Besti-
aire, which clearly inspired the sequence.
We know from the Biblionomia that Richard owned
some unusual books, including the only known com-
plete copy of the poems of Tibullus. At his death, his
library passed to Gérard d’Abbeville and then to the
Sorbonne.
Further Reading
Fournival, Richard de. Le bestiaire d’amour rimé, ed. Arvid
Thordstein. Lund: Ohlssons, 1941.[The anonymous verse
adaptation of the Bestiaire d’amours.]
——. Li bestiaires d’amours di maistre Richart de Fornival e
Li response du bestiaire, ed. Cesare Segre. Milan: Riccardi,
1957.
——. Biblionomia, ed. Léopold Delisle. Cabinet des Manuscrits
2 (1874): 520–35.
——. Richard de Fournival. I’oeuvre lyrique de Richard de
Fournival, ed. Yvan G. Lepage. Ottawa: University of Ot-
tawa Press, 1984.
Sylvia HuotRICHARD I (1157–1199; r. 1189–99)
Son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Richard the
Lionheart was already duke of Aquitaine in right of his
mother and heir-apparent to the English throne upon
the death of his elder brother, Henry “the Young King,”
in 1183. His nickname, “the Lionheart” (Fr. “Coeur
de Lion”), can be traced back to Gerald of Wales (d.
ca. 1223), who compared the king to a lion, and can
already be found circulating in a 13th-century romance
of Richard’s life.
Just as his late brother would have been a disastrous
king, Richard could have been a great one had he spent
his reign in England rather than on crusade and in the
Angevin lands across the Channel. Although a man of
knightly prowess, a writer of courtly poetry, patron of
culture, cunning politician, and diplomat, Richard ex-
hibited qualities regarded today as repulsive. Even by
contemporary standards he could be less than humane,
vengeful and beastly; however, he was the ideal martial
king and a masterful leader of men. A recent study (by
Gillingham) has refuted the view that Richard was ho-
mosexual. His reign is most conveniently examined by
looking at his role in Angevin politics on the Continent, at
his conduct of the Third Crusade, and at the governance
of England during his nine-and-a-half-year absence.
Filial piety was not a characteristic of Richard’s
personality. Henry II sought to maintain the territorial in-
tegrity of his lands in France, fi ghting a doomed struggle
against Louis VII (1137–80) and Philip II (1180–1223),
a struggle that, under Richard’s youngest brother, John,
would result in the loss of all English holdings north
of the Loire. Richard, desiring effective control of his
inheritance, revolted against his father in 1173–74 and
again in 1188–89, both times in alliance with the king
of France. The warfare was not only patricidal, but
fratricidal as well—as John and his brother Geoffrey of
Brittany fought against both Henry II and Richard.
Although the confl ict was not resolved before the
death of Henry, after his return from crusade the fi ghting
decisively favored the Lionheart. The promising course
of the wars ended with Richard’s death, while fi ghting
a contumacious vassal in Aquitaine: an engagement
waged over political issues, not over treasure trove (as
some romantic versions of the story have it). Perhaps
the greatest tragedy of Richard’s early death was not the
coming frustration of English ambitions on the Conti-
nent but the opportunity denied him to demonstrate his
potential greatness as king of England.RENÉ D’ANJOU