In his Art of Courtly Love (ca. 1180–1290), ANDREAS
CAPELLANUS several times refers to Marie de Champagne. She was the daughter of ELEANOR OF
AQUITAINE (1121–1204, daughter of Guillaume X,
duke of Aquitaine, and granddaughter of the first
troubadour, GUILLAUME IX) and King Louis VII of
France (1120–1180). Eleanor’s second husband,
King HENRY II (1133–1189) of England, demonstrated, like his wife, great interest in courtly poetry. Eleanor’s daughter Marie married Henry I,
count of Champagne (1127–1181), also known as
“the Liberal,” who transformed his territory from a
fairly backward country into one of the richest and
strongest French principalities. Their court at
Troyes became a center of literary patronage. After
Henry’s death on a crusade, Marie ruled as a fairly
independent regent from 1181 until 1187 when
her son Henry II of Champagne (1166–97) assumed his inherited authority (he also became
king of Jerusalem in 1191 through marriage with
Isabella, the daughter of Amalric I of Jerusalem;
Henry died under mysterious circumstances in
1197).
From a variety of accounts we know that
Marie was a highly learned person to whom
lovers appealed, asking for a judgment in contested cases of love. Andreas might have made up
this story, but the historical circumstances suggest
that Marie, along with her mother, Eleanor, with
whom she seemed to have enjoyed a friendly relationship, had established a literary center at her
court in Troyes and was considered an authority
in the area of COURTLY LOVE. In Andreas’s treatise
Marie consistently argues that true love is possible only outside of marriage. Both Marie and her
mother Eleanor obviously exerted a considerable
influence on the standard, formalistic image of
fin’ amors prevalent at the French courts of their
time. CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES (fl. 1165–91) seems to
have created several of his courtly ROMANCES on
behalf of Marie de Champagne. Above all in the
prologue to LANCELOT, The Knight of the Cart,
Chrétien credits Marie for having provided him
with both “the matter and the meaning” of his romance, but he seems to have disagreed with the
idealization of adultery in the tale, leaving his text
as a fragment, which then was completed by
Godefroi de Leigni. Many other 12th-century
poets, such as RAIMBAUT D’ORANGE and Gautier
d’Arras, frequented Marie’s court where they received her patronage. It seems very likely that another TROUBADOUR, BERTRAN DE BORN, spent time
at Marie’s court and dedicated some of his poems
to her, and so did CONON DE BÉTHUNE, GACE
BRULÉ, and Aubouin de Sézanne. We can also
infer from a variety of literary sources that the
famous troubadour BERNART DE VENTADORN (ca.
1147–ca. 1170) wrote some of his poetry for
Marie de Champagne. The troubadour Rigaut de
Barbezieux’s (fl. 1175–1215) poem “Pros
comtess’e gaia, ab pretz valen,/que tot’avetz Campaigna enluminat” has traditionally been associated with Marie de Champagne, who served as his
patron. However recent scholars have seriously
questioned this connection.
Marie was also interested in religious literature
and asked Evrat, cleric at the Church of SaintEtienne, for a verse translation of the Old Testament book Genesis into French. Although the first
part seems to reconfirm traditional male misogyny, in the second part, which might have been influenced by Marie herself, the role of women is
painted in much more positive terms.
Bibliography
Andreas Capellanus. The Art of Courtly Love. With introduction, translation, and notes by John Jay
Parry. 1941. Reprint, New York: Norton, 1961.
Hall-McCash, June. “Marie de Champagne and
Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Relationship Reexamined,” Speculum 54 (1979): 698–711.
———. “Marie de Champagne’s ‘Cuer d’ome et
cors de fame’: Aspects of Feminism and Misogyny in the Twelfth Century.” In The Spirit of the
Court: Selected Proceedings of the Fourth Congress
of the International Courtly Literature Society,
Toronto 1983, edited by Glyn S. Burgess and
Robert A. Taylor, 234–245. Cambridge, U.K.:
Brewer, 1985.
Henderson, Jane Frances Anne. “A Critical Edition of
Evrat’s Genesis: Creation to the Flood.” Ph.D. diss.,
University of Toronto, 1977.
Albrecht Classen