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More on a friend of Philippe de Vitry: Johannes Rufi de Cruce alias Jean de Savoie

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 April 2019

Abstract

Who was Jean de Savoie, the clerk with whom the composers Jean Campion and Philippe de Vitry penned the jeu-parti Ulixea fulgens in 1350? This article uses Jean's hitherto unnoticed will and foundations at the church of Saint-Benoît-le-Bestourné, Paris, with other documentation, to bring together Jean's two identities in a unified biography (including a new date for his death, in 1354); to illustrate the close parallels between his own career and that of Philippe de Vitry, and to map the scope of opportunities for contact between them in and around the French royal court from the early 1320s onwards. Jean was also an artist and illustrator, and his career as one of the more prominent cartoonists of Philippe VI, king of France, throws light on potential contact with Vitry via the adoption by Louis I de Bourbon of the hitherto largely royal practice of charter illustration. In addition the properties acquired to support two chaplaincies endowed by Jean at Saint-Benoît demonstrate the extent to which he was professionally embedded in a network of royal councillors working in and around the Parlement in the 1330–50s, in which Vitry was also active. Also identified is a house acquired at Saint-Benoît by Gervès du Bus, author of the Roman de Fauvel.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2019 

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References

1 F-Pn, MS Lat. 3343, fol. 111v: see Pognon, Edmond, ‘Du nouveau sur Philippe de Vitry et ses amis’, Humanisme et Renaissance, 6 (1939), 4855Google Scholar; idem, ‘Ballades mythologiques de Jehan de Le Mote, Philippe de Vitry, Jehan Campion’, Humanisme et Renaissance, 5 (1938), 358–417; Robertson, Durant W., ‘The “Partitura Amorosa” of Jean de Savoie’, Philological Quarterly, 33 (1954), 19Google Scholar; Plumley, Yolanda, The Art of Grafted Song: Citation and Allusion in the Age of Machaut (Oxford, 2013), 261–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Paris, Archives Nationales [hereafter: F-Pan], S 895B (square-bracketed references are to earlier numbers on the dorse of each document); S 903.

3 For Jean as a charter illuminator, see Ghislain Brunel, ‘Entre art et pouvoir: l'illustration des chartes en France (fin du XIIIe – milieu du XVe siècle)’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes [BEC], 169 (2011), 41–77, at 71, 73; Images du pouvoir royal: les chartes décorées des archives nationales, XIIIe–XVe siècle (Paris, 2005), 84, 90, 91; Claude Jeay, ‘Images du pouvoir, pouvoir de l'image: la transmission des chartes des premiers Valois (V. 1320–1380)’, Le moyen-age à livres ouverts: Actes du colloque (Lyon, 24 et 25 Septembre 2002) (Paris and Lyon, 2003), 57–67. For this identification, also embodied in the signature Jean used as public apostolic notary, see Robert Barroux, ‘Procès des évêques de Mende avec la royauté (1336–1339), au sujet de la réparation du port d'Aigues-Mortes’, BEC, 85 (1924), 79–109, at 101.

4 Louis de Mas Latrie, Commerce et expéditions militaires de la France et de Venise au Moyen Age (Paris, 1879), 77–8.

5 Jules Viard, Les Journaux du Trésor de Charles IV le Bel (Paris, 1917), nos. 1648, 2024, 8708.

6 See F-Pan, KK 2, fols. 188, 198v; Brunel, ‘Entre art et pouvoir’, 73, n. 65, and ill. 26–7; Ghent, Stadarchief, reeks 94, no. 367, ed. in Prudent van Duyse and Edmond de Busscher, Inventaire analytique des chartes et documents appartenant aux archives de la ville de Gand (Ghent, 1867), 130; Georges Daumet, Étude sur l'alliance de la France et de la Castille au XIVe et au XVe siècles (Paris, 1898), 129 (from F-Pan, J 601, no. 35); Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum … complectens regum ac principum, aliorumque virorum illustrium epistolas et diplomata, vol. 1 (Paris, 1727), cols. 1381–2; Jacques Bernard, Recueil des traitez de paix, de trêve, de neutralité, de suspension d'armes, de confédération, d'alliance, de commerce, de garantie, et d'autres actes publics, vol. 1 (Amsterdam, 1700), 233.

7 Amédée Hellot, ed., Chronique anonyme Parisienne de 1316 à 1339, Mémoires de la Société de l'Histoire de Paris et de l'Ile-de-France, 11 (Paris, 1885), 157.

8 William J. Courtenay, Parisian Scholars in the Early Fourteenth Century: A Social Portrait (Cambridge, 1999), 9–27, 182, 240.

9 F-Pan, L 611, no. 12; L 606, no. 51.

10 Barroux, ‘Procès des évêques de Mende’; Jules Viard, Documents parisiens du règne de Philippe VI de Valois (1328–1350), 2 vols. (Paris, 1899–1900), 1: 306; M. le Chanoine Louis Pihan, Histoire de Saint-Just-en-Chaussée (Oise) (Beauvais, 1885), 436.

11 F-Pan, JJ 61, fols. 156rv, 12 June 1321. Those present included Louis's clerk, Guidomar de Mezle, for whom Vitry acted in 1323 (Châlons-en-Champagne, Archives Départementales de la Marne, G 1442).

12 Octave Morel, La Grande Chancellerie royale et l'expédition des lettres royaux de l'avènement de Philippe de Valois à la fin du XIVe siècle (1328–1400), Mémoires et Documents publiés par la Société de l’École des Chartes, 3 (Paris, 1900), 496.

13 See., e.g., F-Pan, JJ 81, fols. 238, 333v, 402, 418. For payments to Jean 1344–9, see F-Pn, MS n. a. lat. 184, fol. 8v; Jules Viard, Les journaux du trésor de Philippe VI de Valois, suivis de l'Ordinarium thesauri de 1338–1339 (Paris, 1899), 481, 612, nos. 2722 and 3533.

14 For this and what follows see Brunel, ‘Entre art et pouvoir’, 65, 71–3.

15 Brunel, ‘Entre art et pouvoir’, 72; Images du pouvoir royal, 90, 91, and for the 1332 charter (F-Pan, J 357A, no. 4 bis), 82–5. Hedeman (Elizabeth Morrison and Anne D. Hedeman, Imagining the Past in France: History in Manuscript Painting, 1250–1500 (Los Angeles, CA, 2010), 165) identifies the artist of J 357A, no. 4 bis with the illuminator of the Procès de Robert d'Artois in F-Pn, MS fr. 18437, and other works linked with this book by François Avril in Les fastes du gothique: Le siècle de Charles V (Paris, 1981), 312–5. For the 1326 charter see Images du pouvoir royal, 40.

16 ‘Entre art et pouvoir’, 61–2.

17 F-Pan, P 4632, no. 3178, now AE/II/343: Bourbon-l'Archambault, 22 February 1334; see Musée des archives nationales: documents originaux de l'histoire de France (Paris, 1872), 197–8. A copy is F-Pan, P 13762, no. 2711. See also Brunel, ‘Entre art et pouvoir’, 46, 60.

18 F-Pan, JJ 81, fol. 402 (no. 760); S. 895B [S. 893, no. 8]. For Martin's own monogram as imperial and papal notary, see F-Pan, S 895D, no. 18 (25 October 1341).

19 Revising the date given by Pognon: Auguste Longnon, Obituaires de la province de Sens, Recueil des historiens de la France (Paris, 1902), vol. 1/ii: 649: ‘magistri Ruffi de Cruce, alias dicti de Sabaudia, qui fuit quondam regis clericus notarius ac canonicus ecclesie Sancti Benedicti Parisius, cuius executores dederunt nobis triginta florenos auri ad scutum’.

20 Catherine Guyon, Les Écoliers du Christ: l'Ordre canonial du Val-des-Écoliers, 1201–1539, CERCOR Travaux et recherches, 10 (Saint-Étienne, 1998), 213–15, 248–304.

21 F-Pan, JJ 82, fol. 349v (no. 525); JJ 84, fols. 116v–17; S 895B [S 894, no. 14].

22 F-Pan, S 895B [S 895, no. 20], and for what follows. The third executor was Étienne Muete, citizen of Paris.

23 Arthur Långfors, ed., Le Roman de Fauvel par Gervais du Bus, Société des Anciens Textes Français (Paris, 1914–19), ll. 775–6. I am grateful to Karen Desmond for drawing this reference to my attention.

24 F-Pan, S 896B, liasse 2, no. 1 (17 May 1324), noting the sale for 18 livres de bons Parisis by Robert de Couchi, Jehan de Franconville and Jehan de Saint Benoist, executors, to Gervaise du Buc, archdeacon of Pontaudemer in the church of Lisieux, of ‘une meson assise a Paris en la terre Saint Benoist devant le viez semetiere de leglise Saint Benoist tenant dune part a la meson Geffroy le Normant et Gile sa fame qui jadis fu Gerveise le Chandelier et dautre part a une vielle ruelle close pres de la meson de la parroisse de la dicte eglise et par darrieres a la meson Raoul Perier maire de la dicte eglise’.

25 Tihon, Camille, Lettres de Grégoire XI (1371–1378): Textes et Analyses, Analecta Vaticano-Belgica, 25 (Brussels and Rome, 1964)Google Scholar, 3: 476, n. 3.

26 For Vitry and the Cardinal, see Wathey, ‘Philippe de Vitry, Bishop of Meaux’, Early Music History, 38 (forthcoming).

27 Pognon, ‘Du nouveau sur Philippe de Vitry et ses amis’, 53.

28 On Étienne Belin, president of the Chambre des Enquêtes in the Parlement from 1350, see Raymond Cazelles, Société politique, noblesse et couronne sous Jean le Bon et Charles V, Mémoires et Documents Publiés par la Société de l’École des Chartes, 28 (Paris, 1982), 471, 475; for appearances 1342–8, see Furgeot, Henri, Dillay, Madeleine, Clémencet, Suzanne and Laurent, Jean-Paul, ed., Actes du Parlement de Paris: Deuxième Série, 2 vols. (Paris, 1920–60)Google Scholar, 1: 401; 2: 13, 268.

29 Perhaps identifiable with the Chancellor of the University of Paris, 1370–c.80; Courtenay, William J. and Goddard, Eric D., ed., Rotuli Parisienses: Supplications to the Pope from the University III, 1378–1394 (Leiden and Boston, 2013), 108–9Google Scholar.

30 Chaplain to Johannes de Montibus, provost of Soissons and chancellor of Philippe Duke of Orléans (F-Pan, S 897A, no. 9; 14 June 1348).