In the commune now known as Saint-Sulpice-la-Fôret stand the impressive ruins of the abbey of Nôtre Dame du Nid de Merle (Our Lady of the blackbird’s nest) romantically renamed in 1127 from the nearby discovery by a young shepherd of a statuette of the Virgin Mary in a blackbird’s nest. This was considered enough of a miracle to warrant changing the original name of the abbey, which had been founded in 992 as Saint Sulpice des Bois (Saint Sulpice of the woods). The institution was enlarged in 1112 to become a double abbey within the Benedictine order, housing both monks and nuns. The monks were responsible for spiritual direction, manuscripts and religious services, and the nuns for house-crafts such as sewing, weaving, cooking and herbal medicines, the usual division of labour in olden times.
Chrétien de Toyes
But there is an often-forgotten financial side to religious foundations, especially where numerous establishments are linked under the control of a mother house or within a monastic order. They needed the equivalent of present-day company accounts departments and annual audits. This was not the province of spiritually-minded monks, so the auditor was a layman, often given the rank of canon so that he could be received into the inner world of the abbey, but never housed with the monks or participating in their frequent services.
In the years from 1170 to 1180 the regular auditor sent by the Benedictine order to Saint-Sulpice was a young man of the lesser gentry named Chrétien who was a canon of the abbey of Troyes.
Auditing wasn’t the way to make a fortune, but he’d already hit on a way of making money on the side. In those days without radio or television, one source of entertainment was recounting stories. There were travelling storytellers and increasing numbers of noble houses buying manuscript novels. Wealthy influencers would pay good money for a new book to be read aloud at their entertainments, and Chrétien had already had some success with stories translated from Latin authors, but what he needed was a series of stories no-one had heard before.
When he arrived in Saint-Sulpice for the first time, he worked during the day, and in the evening sought out the only entertainment going, the village pub, where the local storytellers entertained the populace by recounting stories unknown to anyone in Paris or at the court of France. Chrétien didn’t hesitate. He wrote down a French version of what he heard and published it. It was a good story; it sold well. But more important it was set in a historic period and place previously unknown to French readers. Whenever he visited Saint-Sulpice Chrétien picked up a more stories, embellished them and sold them – the tales of the Round Table, the court of King Arthur. It was the first time these stories of the British king had been written down, and buyers couldn’t get enough of them.
Chrétien de Troyes didn’t invent King Arthur, though he may have invented his name – which is probably the title High King, Arth Rui, in the local dialect – but he did invent the round table, the sword in the stone and the knight Lancelot. These don’t figure in original legends. He also mixed into his Arthurian stories elements of other Breton tales which had no connection to the British military genius Arth Rui, such as the wizard Merlin and the fairy Vivienne from the folklore of the Brocéliande forest, and the historical romance of Tristan and Iseult at the court of Marc king of Cornouaille in Brittany.
Three hundred years later an Englishman, Sir Thomas Malory, translated Chrétien’s stories from the French. Malory’s book, in English but titled Le Morte d’Arthur, became the inspiration of all subsequent English retellings of the Arthurian legend. It was considered so important that it was one of the first books printed by Caxton in 1485.
And all that started with an evening’s entertainment in Saint-Sulpice…….
Comments