International Medieval Society, Paris
Société Internationale des Médiévistes, Paris

Symposium 2005 Abstracts

The monk-trouvère Gautier de Coinci (1177/78-1236) is justly celebrated for his large narrative collection of Marian miracles, Les Miracles de Nostre Dame. This work was so influential during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that almost eighty manuscripts of the Miracles survive today. Gautier interpolated twenty-two chansons within his large narrative, and the music for these chansons survives in twelve of the manuscripts.

Most of Gautier’s chansons pieuses are contrafacta of other musical works from a variety of sources: models for Gautier’s songs include contemporary conductus from the cathedral of Notre-Dame-de Paris and secular courtly lyrics by trouvères from the region of Picardie, where Gautier spent most of his life. Gautier’s contrafacta were no mere metrical exercises; rather, they demonstrate an extraordinary musical and literary sophistication in the reshaping of borrowed materials into new lyric creations whose resonances with their models add to their artistic depth.

This paper explores two interconnected images in the chansons: the image of Mary in the court of heaven, and the image of Gautier as minstrel in Mary’s court. Although all nineteen of Gautier’s marian chansons will be considered, I focus on two chansons in particular: Royne celestre, Gautier’s lengthy lai in honor of Mary as queen in her royal court, and Ma viele viëler veut un biau son, in which Gautier uses images and vocabulary of minstrelsy. As we look anew at medieval images of the courts, considerations of their parallel heavenly court as another model may well prove beneficial.