W

WACE (ca. 1100–after 1174)
Born on the island of jersey, Wace received his training
fi rst at Caen, then at Paris or, less likely, at Chartres;
the infl uence of Hugh of Saint-Victor on his work is
evident. Early in the 1130s, maistre Wace returned to
Caen, where he occupied the position of clerc lisant (this
term, used by Wace himself, most likely meant “reader
of the lessons in the church service”); between 1165 and
1169, King Henry II of England rewarded him for his
literary work with the prebend of a canon at Bayeux.
He must have sojourned in England, since he knew the
English language and gives precise geographical details
of that country, especially of the Dorset area. Charters at
Bayeux that bear his signature are not helpful in more
precisely dating his life, which is known exclusively
from personal remarks in his Roman de Rou.
Wace began his literary career with a series of ha-
giographical poems, of which three, signed by him, are
preserved. From his stay in England, the center of St.
Margaret’s cult, he probably brought back a Vie de sainte
Marguerite (742 lines), the fi rst and stylistically by far
the best of thirteen verse adaptations of this legend into
French. His Conception Nostre Dame (1,810 lines) was
designated as propaganda in favor of the establishment
of the feast of the Immaculate Conception, as furthered
by Abbot Anselm of Bury-Saint-Edmunds (r. 1121–46)
against formidable opposition, especially from St. Ber-
nard of Clairvaux. As a Norman, Wace would have had
great interest in the life of the Virgin, for the Normans
were among the fi rst in France to establish the feast of
the Immaculate Conception, which was often called the
fete aux Normands. In the Conception Nostre Dame,
Wace introduces the technique of grouping different
episodes in one poem, in this case fi ve that lead from
the establishment of the feast to the Assumption of the
Virgin. The same technique is found in his Vie de saint
Nicolas (1,563 lines), written probably for a citizen of

Caen, Robert, son of Tiout; containing twenty-three

independent episodes, without any advancement in time,

it testifi es to the popularity of the saint in Normandy in

the fi rst half of the 12th century. The three poems, all in

rhymed octosyllabic lines, can be dated ca. 1135–50.

Wace’s reputation as an adapter of Latin works on

popular topics might have brought him the commission

by Eleanor of Aquitaine, newly wed to Henry II, to

“translate” Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historic reg’um

Britanniae (ca. 1136). Wace could not immediately

locate a copy of this text and consequently based most

of his adaptation on the Britannici sermonis liber

vetustissimus (possibly by the archdeacon Walter of

Oxford, a close friend of Geoffrey of Monmouth who

is mentioned by Geffrei Gaimar), written in the early

1130s with the intent of ingratiating the Celtic part of

the population with the new Norman rulers by stressing

the Britons’ claim to Britain, tracing its history back

to the Trojans, in particular to Aeneas, with the help

of early Welsh chronicles and Nennius. According to

these sources, Brutus (folk etymology of Brytt ‘Briton’),

Aeneas’s great-grandson, led the Trojans out of Greek

captivity to Britain; the Liber vetustissimus then de-

picted the legendary history of Brutus’s descendants

on this island through the 8th century, when the Celts

had to abandon all hope of reconquering the country

from the Anglo-Saxons. It was this text that Geoffrey

reedited and brought to renown thanks to the interest

of the Norman dynasty in the predecessors of the An-

glo-Saxons, renown that also had its repercussions on

Wace’s Roman de Brut, or Geste des Bretons (1155),

since scribes of later manuscripts constantly altered the

text by increasingly modeling it on Geoffrey’s work.

In the critical edition, the Roman de Brut is narrated

in 14,866 octosyllabic verses; the manuscript Durham

Cathedral C. iv. 1 (Anglo-Norman; 13th c.) inserts

670 decasyllabic verses containing the prophecies of