Contenu du sommaire

Ph. LOGIÉ, Forgetting Hesione, or a fatal blindness : the game of right and wrong in Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie. Benoît does indeed follow the mythological tradition when he has Helen as a major cause of the Trojan war. Yet he adds the game of right and wrong to the reasons for the sack of Troy : Troy was destroyed because Priam could not stay on the right side. The fate of Hesione, Priam's own sister, plays an essential part in this failure. Indeed Priam is in the right as long as he wants to takes his sister away from Telamon : this even justifies Paris' expedition since it follows upon Antenor's embassy when he tried to get Hesione back. But then Pâris abducted Helen instead, in whom Priam first saw a bargaining prize. Unacccountably, though, Priam allowed Paris to marry Helen, thus forgetting all about his sister and stepping on the side of wrong. Agamemnon used the deception of a mock embassy to profit by this mistake, which led to the fall of Troy and the death of Priam.

J.L. LEFEBVRE, Prud'hommes and bonnes gens in Late Medieval Flemish and Walloon sources, or eligibility to public charges in the Middle Ages (Part 1) While the School of Savigny claims that prud'hommes and bonnes gens were well- defined legal categories, the French school maintains that they were merely notable people in their communities. Now, late medieval Walloon and Flemish sources make it possible to establish that prud'hommes were first and foremost free men who could freely commit themselves to an oath of allegiance by which they vowed to devote themselves to truth and loyalty. However, not all free men who had sworn this oath were de facto prud'hommes, the label only applied to those who were known for their moral valour and for always keeping their word, and were consequently elected by their peers to public charges, which involved repeating their oath. Medieval sources record the various testimonies involved in this very Latin election to public charges.

J.L. PICHERIT, Hostelry and inn-keepers in some late medieval works. The present study is about inns or hostels and inn-keepers as represented in the French literature of the late Middle Ages. Inn-keepers' behaviour is often depicted as reprehensible – as evidenced by a number of documents from the time –, but sometimes they are also presented in a favourable light. Some of them display a rather complex personality and play diverse roles. The female inn-keepers are not insignificant characters. They reveal a strong personality and express opinions of their own. Along with lodgings, the hoteliers of the Middle Ages – who often belong to the bourgeoisie and sometimes to the aristocracy – provide a number of additional services (they are bankers, providers of mounts, weapons, etc.). Those hoteliers who are close to the nobility sometimes manage to escape their social condition.

P.V. CLAVERIE, The succession to archbishop Giles of Nicosia (1268-1269). The Eastern Latin clergy has hardly been sufficiently researched in spite of recent studies. Thanks to a so far unpublished testamentary will to be found in the « Archives Nationales de France » we can find out more about the career of a Cypriot prelate of the time, namely Archbishop Giles of Nicosia (1267-1268). It appears that this friend of Popes Urban IV and Clement IV was born in Picardy, then grew up in the area in the north of France called Thierache before going through an outstanding university career, all in the first half of the 13th century. Giles bought a house in Paris while officiating in the cathedral chapters of Cambrai and Rouen. Though his fortune was limited he could still bequeath part of it to a great many religious establishments, among which the Sorbonne college. His death at Viterbe on 27 July 1268 led to a succession settlement that was ratified by the religious tribunal (« officiality ») in Paris in January 1269.