Brunhilde on Trial: Fama and Lydgatean Poetics

Mary Catherine Flannery

The Chaucer Review, Volume 42, Number 2, 2007, pp. 139-160 (Article)

Published by Penn State University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cr.2007.0029

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/221977

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BRUNHILDE ON TRIAL: FAMA AND
LYDGATEAN POETICS
by Mary C. Flannery

The concept of fama pervaded medieval life. Legal disputes, social and
political standing, and reputation were all affected or determined by fama.
Nevertheless, despite its ubiquity in the Middle Ages, this term possessed
multifarious definitions. It could mean rumor and idle talk; the things
people say; reputation; memory or memories; the things people
know; fame, or perhaps glory, as well as their opposites, infamy and
defamation.1 As these various definitions indicate, fama is both the
process of cultivating a particular reputation or name and the end result
of that process: reputation itself.
In this essay I will suggest a potential parallel between the function of
fama in medieval English law and the role played by fama in medieval
English literature, arguing that the influence of the medieval courts on a
persons fama may be read as similar to the late medieval English poets
power over the fama of his subject matter. An episode from John
Lydgates Fall of Princes (written between 1431 and 143839 at the request
of Humphrey duke of Gloucester) will serve as one example of the poet
acting as judge in two ways: first by determining a characters fama and
then by passing judgment on that characters testimony. My point is not
that Lydgate is using the discourse of law to explore the discourse
of poetry or poetics, but that the way his poem assesses and determines
reputation is remarkably similar to the way that medieval law made use of
and affected fama. In other words, both law and literature employ a
shared discourse of fama. Recognizing this parallel will not only open up
new ways of thinking about Lydgatean and Boccaccian poetics (particu-
larly in relation to Chaucerian poetics), but will also bring us to a clearer
understanding of the role of reputation in medieval society.
This essay will be divided into three parts. I will begin by briefly outlin-
ing the role of fama in medieval European and English law until the
fifteenth century, focusing on the ways in which fama shaped and was
shaped by legal procedure. I will then consider Lydgates depiction of
the confrontation between Brunhilde and Bochas in Book IX of the Fall
of Princes in the light of famas role as a social, legal, and cultural force.

THE CHAUCER REVIEW, Vol. 42, No. 2, 2007.

Copyright 2007 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
140 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

Finally, I will conclude by suggesting some ways in which the idea of fama
might affect our conception of late medieval poets and poetry.

Fama in the Courts

Medieval attitudes toward fama were rather different from ours today.
No modern reader familiar with TV courtroom dramas could fail to
acknowledge that the power of fama (in the sense of rumor or popu-
lar opinion) is strongly felt by modern-day judges, lawyers, and lawmak-
ers. We are, however, used to seeing this power excluded from the
courtroomvenues are changed if public opinion is thought to make
an objective judgment in a particular case impossible; judges are quick
to dismiss potential jurors who evince too fixed an opinion regarding
the appropriate outcome of a trial; and juries are (theoretically, at least)
cut off from the contagion of public opinion. Fama has been deemed
incompatible with the modern legal process. It may seem exceedingly
strange to us, then, that medieval law acknowledged the power of fama
by incorporating it into the legal system and even regulating its use in
legal disputes. As Thelma Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail have recently
pointed out in their collection of essays on medieval fama, although
medieval courts and jurists regarded fama with ambivalence, they
accepted it as one basis of proof and status:
[T]hirteenth-century jurists gave fama and its equivalents in
customary law a precise set of meanings (and thus the practical
application of such fama can readily be explored through the extant
proceedings of law courts). This was so even where vernacular
equivalents replaced the word fama, as in the customary legal system
of northern France in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries for
example, which featured words such as renomme (renown) or notaire
(notorious). [This] became a veritable jurisprudence of fama,
expressed both in statute law and juristic treatises.2

Fama determined the way individuals were treated during legal disputes
and often influenced the outcome of these disputes as well. In fact, it
could determine whether or not one was called before the judges at
all. Between the twelfth and the mid-fourteenth century, it was fairly
standard practice in England for itinerant justices (justiciae errantes,
justices in eyre), upon entering a town, to instruct the local authorities
to round up the usual suspects, which would usually include notorious
troublemakers and those accused by their enemies.
 MARY C. FLANNERY 141

These facts may not appear quite so surprising after consideration of

the function of fama in Roman law.3 Under Roman law, individuals who
were classed as infames (without reputation) or famosus (disgraceful)4
were denied legal rights and privileges enjoyed by other, better
respected Roman citizens. Catharine Edwards has noted, for example, that
actorswho were branded infames along with gladiators, prostitutes, and
condemned criminalshad only limited rights of postulation for others,
and that they were not accorded the same physical protection as other
Roman citizens.5 In ancient Rome fama not only expressed ones public
reputation, but also determined ones social and legal status.
As far as their respective treatments and use of fama and infamia are
concerned, the connections between Roman law and medieval English
law and between early medieval European law and medieval English law
demand a more nuanced account than I can provide here.6 Medieval
English canon law concerning defamation was certainly influenced by
papal decrees and laws, which themselves adapted elements of earlier
Roman laws.7 Similarly, although early English legal use of good and bad
fame probably had its roots in Germanic practice, it is likely that post-
Conquest English law was also influenced to some extent by legal
systems springing from other parts of Europe.8 The parallels between
fama in medieval English law and fama in law in the rest of Europe
indicate that, overall, legal attitudes towards rumor and reputation were
strikingly similar across medieval Europe. By the twelfth century, several
European legal systems recognized at least the type of the shameful
offender.9 Fama played a central role in English law from the Anglo-
Saxon period through the reign of Richard II. In his lengthy discussion
of the development of conceptions of truth in Ricardian England,
Richard Firth Green notes that medieval English society was predicated
on a system of honor, and a position in it was secured by those with an
unsullied reputation for standing by their word.10 He points out that
the West Saxon Laws of Ine (688726) and the first edict of King Alfreds
son Edward (899924) both indicate oath-worthiness as an important
precondition to allowing a man accused . . . to clear himself by compur-
gation.11 As had been the case under Roman law, those whose oaths
were proven falseor, in cases where an oath of innocence was verified,
the plaintiffswere branded perjurers and carried the stigma of noto-
rious perjurythe friendless, the much-accused, the ordeal-worthy.12
Green traces this abhorrence of perjury through the Norman Summa de
Legibus (ca. 1290) at least as far as the late-thirteenth-century Mirror of
Justices, which, he notes, puts perjurers at the top of a list [of infamous
individuals] which includes, among others, grave-robbers, brothel-keepers,
and corrupters of nuns.13
142 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

Medieval laws concerning trial by ordeal also reveal the importance of

fama in the legal systems of medieval Europe and England. Ones bona
fama could make all the difference between enduring the risky, and
painful, business of trial by ordeals such as cold water or red-hot iron
and the much more appealing option of trial by oath.14 The better ones
fama, the more worthy one was of being permitted to take an oath of
innocence. Fama could also determine which or how many ordeals one
would have to endure. According to Robert Bartlett in his book on
medieval trials by ordeal,
The laws of Canute make a distinction between trustworthy men
of good repute, who have never failed in oath or ordeal, who are
allowed to clear themselves by their own oath; untrustworthy
men, who require compurgators; and untrustworthy men who
cannot find compurgatorsthis last group go to the ordeal.
English law was finely attuned to this question of reputation,
[which] was composed of a mixture of status and previous
record. The ordeal . . . itself was gradated to the different cate-
goriesa triple ordeal, in which the [hot] iron weighed three
times the usual weight, was employed alongside the simple
ordeal. One of the laws of Ethelred the Unready specified that a
man of bad reputation should go to the triple ordeal, unless his
lord and two other thegns swore that he had not been accused
recently; then he could go to the simple ordeal.15

Such laws indicate that in medieval England, fama played a large role in
determining ones status and ones rights under the law. A man relied
on the words and opinions of others for his status. And here we see yet
another significant point regarding famas role in medieval law: a mans
fama was almost entirely out of his hands, which meant that his social
and legal standing was also.
Although it was a part of the medieval English legal system, fama was
by no means simply accepted at face value. The knowledge that fama was
not always accurate and did not always originate at disinterested sources
made medieval lawmakers wary of fama even as they incorporated it into
medieval legal practice.16 Medieval perceptions of fama were strongly
founded in mistrustful classical traditions that highlighted the dangers
of fama. As reputation, common knowledge, and public perception, it
was shifty and unreliable; as rumor, it moved swiftly and was beyond all
control.17 Simultaneously, fama was said to be more precious than
wealth. As Prudence tells her husband in Chaucers Melibee,
yow moste have greet bisynesse and greet diligence that youre
goode name be alwey kept and conserved. / For Salomon seith
 MARY C. FLANNERY 143

that bettre it is and moore it availleth a man to have a good name

than for to have grete richesses. (VII 163738)18
Ones reputation was considered so valuable that it had to be guarded
with care, and even violence was condoned in order to protect it.19
Medieval English law apparently concurred with this assessment: it
condemned barrators and scolds for attacking the fama of others, and
might punish them with a fine, by ducking them in a river or pond, or
through some form of public humiliation.20

The Poet as Judge

John Lydgates Fall of Princes suggests a variety of parallels between the

dynamics of late-medieval legal and literary fama. It is as much a collec-
tion of stories about fama as it is an encyclopedia of Fortunes triumphs
over great men and women. As part of their rise to prosperity and power,
Lydgates characters obtain good fame, and as part of their sudden fall
at the hands of Fortune, they lose it just as quickly. But no matter how
they meet their ends, and whether they are perceived as unfortunate but
virtuous characters or as cruel or immoral individuals who deserved to
get what was coming to them, every one of the Falls subjects is famous.
The term famous must here be understood to refer to reputation in
a neutral sense; in other words, it describes the possession of renown, but
not of good nor bad renown. In this respect, I am using these terms as
Giovanni Boccaccio does in his prologue to De mulieribus claris (written
in 136162), when he explains that his famous women are not
necessarily distinguished by their virtue: Instead, with the kind permis-
sion of my readers, I will adopt a wider meaning and consider as famous
those women whom I know to have gained a reputation throughout the
world for any deed whatsoever.21
The Fall of Princes is an English verse translation of the 1409 edition of
Laurent de Premierfaits French prose adaptation of Boccaccios De casi-
bus virorum illustrium, written between 1355 and 1360.22 The De casibus
was a collection of narratives describing the falls of famous men and
women from prosperity. Boccaccio wrote it in the hope that he might be
able to draw the great men of his age away from their vicious ways.23 In
the two centuries after its completion, the De casibus was translated into
(or imitated in) Italian, French, German, Spanish, and English.24
Lydgate derived his text from the second version of Premierfaits Des cas
des nobles hommes et femmes, which Patricia M. Gathercole has argued was
written in order to soften some of his [Premierfaits] cruel attacks on
144 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

the priests and kings of the time that are found in the introduction to
the 1400 version.25 Although Lydgates patron, Duke Humphrey,
appears to have owned a copy of the original Latin text of the De casibus,
there is no evidence that Lydgate ever consulted it.26
Near the beginning of Book IX of the Fall, Lydgate narrates the quasi-
dream-vision encounter between Bochas (the literary projection of
Boccaccio, who is recording the stories of the fallen) and the Frankish
queen Brunhilde, who has appeared to tell her story and to defend her
good name to the poet.27 Brunhildes entrance is one of the most qui-
etly moving stanzas of the Fall. Capturing the utter ruin of a former
queen, it depicts a woman who, once great, is now reduced to one
among scores of similarly devastated individuals forced to beg for the
attention of a poet:

She cam arraied nothing lik a queen,

Hir her vntressid; Bochas took good heed,
In al his book he had afforn nat seen
A mor woful creature in deede.
With weeping eyen, totorn[e] was hir weede,
Rebuking Bochas, he had lefft behynde
Hir wrechidnesse for to putte in mynde.
(IX.16268)

Here we see a queen reduced to the level of ordinary defendant,

disheveled and pleading. Moreover, as we discover, she comes before
Bochas already infamis; under medieval law, this would place her at a
distinct disadvantage in any sort of inquiry. She rebukes him miserably
although he has taken the time to write of Arsinoe, Cleopatra, and
Rosamond, he has neglected to tell her story (IX.17682). Bochas tells
Brunhilde that he is certain that, like most women, she will do her best
to tell her tale so that it shows her at her best:

And yiff ye shal telle your owne tale,

How ye be fall[e] fro Fortunis wheel,
Ye will vnclose but a litil male,
Shewe of your vices but a smal parcel
(IX.2047)
Brunhilde assures him that he is basing his skepticism on an inaccurate
idea of what women are likeThou hast of wommen a fals oppynyoun
(IX.212)and Bochas relents, telling her that he will do his best to do
her seruise with his pen (IX.223). Apparently ignorant of what she has
suffered (Lydgate writes: of cheer he wex riht sad, / Knowyng nothing
 MARY C. FLANNERY 145

of that she ded endure [IX.18384]), Bochas encourages her to tell him
of her fall, although he warns her that he will not be easy to convince.
After exhorting Bochas to ensure that he sticks to the truth of the matter,
she begins to tell her tale. What follows is remarkably evocative of a legal
deposition in which Bochas sits as judge of Brunhildes good name.
Bochass skepticism of the credibility of female testimony is probably
fairly typical of medieval attitudes towards women as witnesses.
Although Thomas Kuehn has noted that [m]uch of reputation rested,
in fact, on webs of gossip, which could be taken as a largely female occu-
pation,28 Chris Wickham, in his essay on fama and twelfth-century
Tuscan law, remarks on womens striking absence from nearly all
twelfth-century witnessing.29 He distinguishes between publica fama, a
gossip whose legitimating group was made up of males and which was
considered relevant and credible in public and legal spheres, and pri-
vata fama,
the rumor of the jurists, which might include female talkers,
was differently constructedless formal, less hierarchical, more
interestingbut [which] did not constitute the kind of common
knowledge that was legally acceptable.30

Similarly, Madeline H. Caviness and Charles G. Nelson note in their

study of pictorial depictions of women in the Sachsenspiegel (a German
law book completed between 1220 and 122427) that when women
are shown swearing, they do so only in instances where no second
party is involved, that is, only in matters concerning themselves as
oath-takers.31 With regard to the instance of the morning gift
(Morgengabe, the husbands gift to his bride after the wedding night),
they point out that
Ldr. I, 20, 8, states that a widow may substantiate her morning
gift by swearing on relics but hastens to add that her claim to
other property has to be supported by compurgators. . . . Such
persons are more like modern character witnesses than witnesses
who testify from knowledge of the truth of the matter. Thus
even the womans sworn word is suspect. Contrarily, there are
numerous circumstances when a man may swear and have his
word accepted without the necessity of such witnesses. In fact,
the power of the mans oath extends beyond the assumption of
his credibility, for it permits him to deny facts already in the
public domain (that is, his mala fama). . . . There is no
clearer example of the male appropriation of language or of the
devaluation of a womans speech.32
146 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

It would seem that, as witnesses, women in the Middle Ages were not
only limited in terms of their sphere of action, but also in terms of their
credibility under the law. Nevertheless, for the reader, it is initially rather
remarkable to see a mere poet expressing such skepticism of a woman
so far above his own station in life. Brunhilde herself seems somewhat
indignant as she sniffs haughtily: Thou myhtest haue maad an excep-
cioun / . . . / . . . of me, that was so gret a queen (IX.21517). After
admonishing him huffily to ensure that he does not waver in telling the
truth about her story, Brunhilde begins to describe the events that led to
her marriage to King Sigebert, but Bochas stops her abruptly:

Nay, nay, quod Bochas, I deeme it is nat so;

Tween you & me ther mut begynne a striff.
Beth auised; taketh good heed herto:
The first assuraunce of mariage in your lyff,
Of Chilperik ye wer the weddid wiff,
Cronicles seyn, what-euer ye expresse,
In this mateer wil bere with me witnesse.
(IX.26066)

This correction is surprising both because Bochas has already claimed to

know nothing of Brunhildes life and because it seems to be a correction
of a trifling error or slip of the tongue. The queen breezily dismisses his
correction:

Thouh summe bookis reherse so & seyn,

Lik as ye haue maad heer mencioun,
Ther rehersaile stant in noun certeyn.
(IX.26769)
Brunhildes remarks, and the many corrections that Bochas proceeds
to make to her story, may reflect conflicting accounts in the sources that
Boccaccio was using for his version of Brunhildes story. If this is the case,
it is possible that one of Boccaccios sources may have been Gregory of
Tours (539594). In his Historia Francorum, Gregory frequently mentions
Queen Brunhilde, but he does not depict her as the bloodthirsty schemer
Bochas describes. In fact, throughout the Historia Francorum, it is
Brunhildes sister-in-law, Fredegund, who is the chief mischief-maker.
Gregory implicates Fredegund rather than Brunhilde in the murder of
Sigebert,33 just as Brunhilde does in response to Bochass accusations:
It was nat I; for she that thou dost meene
Was Fredegundus, the lusti yonge queene.
(IX.37071)
 MARY C. FLANNERY 147

The Chronicle of Fredegar is also a likely source, and certainly depicts

Brunhilde in a highly negative light. Fredegar (or Pseudo-Fredegar)34
describes events that took place after Gregorys death, among them the
trial and execution of Brunhilde. The Chronicles fourth book describes
Brunhilde in her old age as an evil, scheming woman meddling in the
affairs of her grandson King Theoderic and giving him wicked
advice.35 It is also highly likely that Boccaccio took the details of
Brunhildes death from the Chronicles description.36
Brunhilde continues her tale, but Bochas interrupts her again just a
few stanzas later. When she claims regretfully that her son Clotaire was
the cause of much bloodshed, Bochas corrects her:

Nat so, quod Bochas, ye faillen of your date.

Who was cheef cause of [this] discencioun?
[] Sothli, quod she, to myn oppynyoun,
Amon[g] hem-silff, I dar weel specefie,
The cheef gynnyng was fraternal envie.

Keep you mor cloos; in this mateer ye faille.

Folwyng the tracis of your condicioun,
Ye halte foule in your rehersaille:
For of your owne imagynacioun
Ye sewe the seed of this discencioun
Among thes kynges, yif ye taken heed,
Bi which in France many man was ded.
(IX.31829)

What had previously appeared to be mere quibbling now resembles the

beginning of a hostile interrogation. Suddenly we see the prosecuting
attorney, who has been softly pacing the courtroom and coaxing testi-
mony from the defendant, stop abruptly to catch his witness in the act
of committing perjury. Brunhilde herself senses that the atmosphere has
changed, as her guarded reply indicates:

Than Brunnechild[e] gan to chaunge cheere;

To Bochas seide with face ful cruel,
Nat longe agon thou knew nat the maneer
Of my lyuyng but a smal parcel;
Me seemeth now thou knowest euerideel,
So that ye may withoute lenger striff
Sitte as a iuge, that knowe so weel my lyff.
(IX.33036)
148 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

Brunhildes reply is not mere sarcasm: it is disdain directed towards one

she had thought to be beneath her, but who, she has suddenly discov-
ered is in fact in control. The tables are turned. Brunhilde (and, very
likely, the reader) has been laboring under the misconception that
Bochas as a poet can be commanded, but we are brought abruptly up
against the truth of the matter: Bochas is not merely a poet whose pen
can be commanded. He sits as a iuge of Brunhildes testimony and of
her textual fatewill he find in her favor, or will he consign her to a
future of diffame?
Bochas does not cease to hector her. When Brunhilde claims that her
husband was slain when he tried to avenge his brothers death, Bochas
flatly contradicts her:

Sigibert was moordred in sothnesse

Oonli be occasioun of your doubilnesse.
(IX.34950)
At this, Brunhilde breaks down, half-confessing, but determined to
defend herself, as she complains, How knowist thou it, that wer nat ther
present? (IX.364).
The answer to Brunhildes question is, of course, fama. The rumor of
the queens life has been passed from text to text, from poet to poet, and
it now bears witness against her. In this outburst, Brunhilde hits upon
the power of the poet: although he may not have been present during
her life or a direct witness of her actions, he has textual access to her rep-
utation and can control the shaping and transmission of that reputation.
This access places Bochas at a critical juncture in the transmission
of fama. Confronted by a potentially conflicting tradition of stories
regarding a particular character,37 he is in a position to choose
which account he will accept (as more accurate, as more likely, as more
titillating) and record. He is in a position to pass judgment on those who
have become subject to the written text. Brunhilde is now under his
jurisdictionher good name is in his hands. Moreover, she is at a
distinct disadvantage: the texts that contain her story have defamed her,
and she must overcome the weight of their authority in order to
convince Bochas. In this respect, her condition is not unlike that of an
ordinary individual in the Middle Ages whose good reputation had been
lost. As one who has been textually branded infamis, Brunhilde is at the
mercy of the poet now assessing and recording her story.
Stubbornly, she continues to tell her version of events for almost a
hundred lines. But Bochas contradicts her again and again, until Brunhilde
finally cries out despairingly, lamenting the fact that, because Fortune
has caused her to lose her good name, no man yeueth credence to her
 MARY C. FLANNERY 149

testimony (IX.445). Abandoning all hope of convincing Bochas of her

innocence, she proceeds to describe her trial:

For my defautis foul & abhomynable,

Tofor the iuges of al the parlement
I was foriugid & founde also coupable,
Of euery crym convict be iugement,
Myn accusours ther beyng present,
Of oon & othir stondyng a gret route,
Markid with fyngris of folk at stood aboute.

For verray shame I did myn eyen close,

For them that gaured & cast on me er siht;
But as folk may be toknys weel suppose,
Myn eris wer nat stoppid half ariht.
(IX.45666)

This is the very moment in which Brunhilde first acquired infamia,

both under the law and in the judgment of literature. Before the iuges
of al the parlement, her guilt is published abroad. The final lineMyn
eris wer nat stoppid half arihthints at the growing murmur of
bystanders, the instant that the rumor of her defame took flight from
mouth to mouth, and later from text to text.38 Brunhilde closes by
recounting her horrible death, and then, praying Bochas to haue al
thyng in mynde (IX.475), she throws herself upon the mercy of
Bochass authorial court. Having listened to Brunhildes testimony,
Bochas (and Lydgate) must deliberate, and then pass judgment on the
queen. Lydgates envoy briefly recounts the facts of her case: she created
division within her country and plotted murders, so that

The fame aroos, how al that regioun

Bi hir falsnesse stood at dyuisioun.
(IX.49697)
Moreover, What she saide includid variaunce (IX.488). It contradicted
both her own testimony and the testimony of the chronicles, and this
must be kept in mind by those (poets) who will pass judgment on her,
now and in the future.
For the most part, Lydgate adheres closely to Premierfaits amplified
translation of Boccaccio.39 Both Boccaccio and Premierfait render
Brunhildes downfall and trial in detail, describing how she was accused
of treachery by her young son, tried, and executed. Although
150 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

Premierfait inflates Boccaccios language, details regarding legal

procedure do not vary much between the two accounts; likewise,
Lydgate does not deviate from his source material in this respect. As the
extent to which Boccaccio relied on his own source (or sources) for
legal details is unclear, it is impossible to say whether the narrative
describes Frankish or Italian legal procedure, but the concepts of legal
fama and infamia were pervasive enough in medieval Europe and
England that it is likely that neither Boccaccio, Premierfait, nor Lydgate
would have been entirely unfamiliar with them.
Both Premierfait and Lydgate include numerous interruptions by the
narrator (although Premierfaits Boccace interrupts Brunhilde more
frequently), and in both versions Brunhilde describes her interrogator
as her judge.40 And in all three versions of Brunhildes narrative, the
conclusion places emphasis on the public nature of her infamythe men
and women who were once her subjects surround her, pointing and
murmuring. But in what follows the conclusion, Lydgates version differs
from its predecessors. Boccaccio and Premierfait conclude with lines
intended to absolve themselves of responsibility for any inaccuracies in
Brunhildes narrative:
Dixerat. Ego quidem illi obsequiosus factus sum. Scribens / fateor
/ non satis digno testimonio vsus. Et ideo si quid minus verum
reperiri contingat: imputetur importunitati instantissime orantis.

Thus she had spoken, and, yielding to her wish, I have written her
story, writing, I confess, without using enough trustworthy evidence;
and so, if it is revealed that I have related something that is not true,
it should be laid to the great effectiveness of her speaking.41

Ie iehan boccace qui de brunichilde ay ainsi desc[r]ipt le cas / ie

confesse que ie nay pas vse de tesmoignaige assez digne de foy / car
les histoyres francoises attendue la prolicite du langaige qui est en
vulgar si confus sans art et sans auctorite ne sont pas conuenables
de estre repceues entre les hystoires dignes de foy. Pourtant se len
treuue en ce chapitre aucune chose que ne soyt assez vraye ie
requier que il soit impute a limportunite et contraingnant requeste
de brunichilde qui me pria que ie escripuisse ainsi son cas.

I, John Boccace, who have described the fall of Brunhilde, must

confess that I have not used fully trustworthy testimony, because the
French histories, in view of the prolixity of the language which in the
vernacular is so confused, without art, and without authority, are not
 MARY C. FLANNERY 151

suitable to be accepted among trustworthy histories. Nevertheless, if

anything is found in this chapter which is not true, I request that it
be imputed to the importunity and urgent request of Brunhilde,
who begged me that I should thus write down her story.42

By contrast, although Lydgate includes Premierfaits references to the

stori suspect (IX.516), he does not do so in order to displace respon-
sibility for the potential fallacies of his tale. Instead, he leaves the
question of his sources veracity open while at the same time depicting
Bochas as passing judgment. After Lydgates envoy, Bochas in maner
excusith the vorrching of Brunnechild.43 He speculates briefly as to
whether her story might in fact be truer than those he has read. To
Bochas, the most compelling points in favor of Brunhildes innocence
are, first, the implausibility that a woman sholde be so vengable
(IX.513), and, second, Brunhildes persistent pleas for Bochas to listen
to her account and to balance her misfortune and her finer
points against her disclaundres and hir diffame reportid in contres
(IX.522-23).44 He notes, however, that her story possesses [n]o verray
grounde founde in bookes olde (IX.524)in the end, her testimony
must be weighed against that of the texts he has read.

The Ramifications of Fama

The picture of Lydgatean fama that I have put forward is one that
envisions the poet as having a good deal of control over the fate of
tidings and reputations. Presented with conflicting evidence, poets are
charged with weighing the repute and accounts of texts, authors, and
characters. The authorial decisions they make affect the tales that are
transmitted to the reading public and to succeeding generations of
readers and writers. This reading of the Brunhilde episode sets the stage
for a reassessment of Lydgatean poetics as it is articulated within the Fall
of Princes and elsewhere in the Lydgate canon. At its core, the Fall is a
text that is fundamentally concerned with the fates of the famous.
Lydgates prologues and envoys suggest that, ultimately, the fates of
great men and women are in the hands of those who record their fame
in writing. Lydgates prologue to Book IV of the Fall, for example, lauds
writing as the force that preserves not only the memory of people and
events, but the very foundations of civilization:

Lawe hadde perisshed, nadde be writyng;

Our feith appalled, ner vertu of scripture;
152 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

For al religioun and ordre of good lyuyng

Takth ther exaumple be doctryn of lettrure.
For writyng causeth, with helpe of portraiture,
That thynges dirked, of old that wer begonne,
To be remembred with this celestial sonne.

God sette writyng & lettres in sentence,

Ageyn the dulnesse of our infirmyte,
This world tenlumyne be crafft of elloquence;
Canoun, cyuile, philosophiethese thre
Confermed fraunchises of many strong cite,
Couenauntis asselid, trouthis of old assured,
Nadde writyng been, myht nat haue endurid.

Dilligence, cheef triumphatrice

Of slogardie, necligence & slouthe,
Eek of memorye upholdere and norice
And registreer to suppowaile trouthe,
Hath of old labour (& ellis wer gret routhe)
Brouhte thynges passid, notable in substaunce,
Onli be writyng to newe remembrance.
(IV.2242)
In this prologue and elsewhere in the Fall, Lydgate also gestures toward
his own ambitions when he remarks that

Writyng caused poetis to recure

A name eternal, the laurer whan thei wan,
In adamaunt graue perpetuelli tendure.
(IV.6466)45
When viewed in the context of his treatment of fama in the Fall of
Princes, Lydgates references to his laureate ambitions are suggestive of
a departure from Chaucerian poetics. Although Lydgate articulates
these ambitions in a way that suggests he is following in the steps of his
master Chaucer,46 his poetic confidence is markedly at odds with the
underlying anxiety and uncertainty of Chaucers fullest exploration of
the poets position and responsibilities, the sources of his knowledge,
and the limits of his vision: the House of Fame.47 Most studies
of Lydgatean propaganda tend to focus on Lydgates anxiety over the
illegitimacy of the Lancastrian dynasty;48 but a more thorough
exploration of Lydgates treatment of fame in the Fall of Princes reveals a
poetic stance that contrasts with that described in Chaucers poem. This
 MARY C. FLANNERY 153

is particularly interesting when one considers that, although Lydgate

mentions the House of Fame five times in the Fall and uses the images of
Fames trumpets almost as often, on only one occasion does he refer to
the poem in a way that evokes some of the uncertainty of Chaucers
dream vision.49
As it is articulated in the House of Fame, Chaucers conception of the
poets ability to generate and preserve immortal fame is above all a
limited and anxious one. He presents his readers with imagery that
evokes a sense of impermanence and instability: the names of the
famous are carved into the sides of an ice-mountain, but half of them are
slowly melting away under the sun. Fame, the sister of Fortune
(154448), distributes her favors according to her whims rather than
according to the deserts of her suitors; and in the House of Rumor,
tidings flit hither and thither of their own volition, sometimes joining
together to form a completely new tale before escaping to the outside
world.50 The entire portrait is nightmarishly surreal: it is a universe in
which the dreamer-poet has virtually no control over his movements,
and although he has been told that this is the place where he will find
of Loves folk moo tydynges (675), he never even accomplishes this. He
is swept off to the place that is purportedly the origin of those tidings
that all poets need, and he so sorely lacks, and he finds only confusion
and chaos. It is out of this chaos that tidings and poetic matter appar-
ently spring. When the dreamer reaches the House of Rumor, the
narrator describes Aventure as the moder of tydynges, / As the see of
welles and of sprynges (198284).
When read in conjunction with the capricious distribution of favors in
Fames palace and the random movement of tidings in the House of
Rumor, this observation reinforces the poems general atmosphere of
uncertainty. No one but an unpredictable force is credited with the
ability to determine the course of famathe poet is only (and literally)
along for the ride. Aside from the fact that the dreamer-poets journey
to the House of Fame allegedly has a divine origin (Jupiter is said to have
commanded the eagle to collect him), poets do not appear to be very
different from any of the supplicants before Fames throne. If this is the
case, then Didos hand-wringing over the loss of her name in the House
of Famethough I myghte duren ever, / That I have don rekever I
never (35354)and Criseydes woeful predictions of her textual fate
in Troilus and CriseydeO, rolled shal I ben on many a tonge!
(V, 1061)might not be too far from expressing Chaucers own autho-
rial anxiety regarding his fame.51 Certainly the narrator of the House of
Fame recoils at the idea of his name being included in the houses of
Fame and Rumor. When someone asks if he has come hider to han
fame, he quickly responds:
154 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

Nay, for sothe, frend, quod y;

I cam noght hyder, graunt mercy,
For no such cause, by my hed!
Sufficeth me, as I were ded,
That no wight have my name in honde.
(187377)

Neither Lydgate nor Boccaccio would have considered such shrinking

from the prospect of acquiring fame to be appropriate to a poet.
Lydgate was nothing if not ambitious, and in Boccaccios Genealogie deo-
rum gentilium, his Italian predecessor described the desire for glory as
one of the preconditions conducive to the writing of poetry: places of
retirement, the lovely handiwork of Nature herself, are favorable to
poetry, as well as peace of mind and desire for worldly glory.52
Moreover, in both Genealogie and De casibus, Boccaccio introduces a
character (Donino and Petrarch, respectively) who insists that Boccaccio
must rouse himself in order to attain glory through his writing: Arise,
then, shake off this inertia, and gird up your good wits for the task. Thus
you will at once obey the King, and make for yourself a path to high
renown.53 These few statements suggest that there is still much to be
discovered about the relationships between Boccaccian, Chaucerian, and
Lydgatean poetics. Whereas Chaucer expressed uncertainty regarding
his ability to manage the fama of and within his own texts, Lydgate
embraced the Boccaccian vision of the poet as one naturally inclined to
seek fame and capable of controlling the transmission of textual fama.
In Chaucers House of Fame, fama and tidings were born of and transmit-
ted according to aventure. In the Brunhilde episodes of the De casibus
and the Fall, fama is decided by poets weighing textual evidence, rather
than by a fickle goddess. The confrontation between the Frankish queen
and the poet-narrator suggests that, had Lydgate or Boccaccio
composed their own versions of the House of Fame, they might have
depicted a poet sitting in the place of Chaucers capricious deity.

Pembroke College
Cambridge, United Kingdom
(mcf28@cam.ac.uk)

This essay is based on a paper presented at the Fortieth International Congress on

Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, in May 2005. I would like to
thank Helen Cooper and the two anonymous readers from The Chaucer Review for their
very helpful comments during my revision of this essay.
 MARY C. FLANNERY 155

1. Thelma Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail, Introduction, in Thelma Fenster and
Daniel Lord Smail, eds., Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe (Ithaca,
N.Y., 2003), 111, at 12.
2. Fenster and Smail, Introduction, 3.
3. See A. H. J. Greenidge, Infamia: Its Place in Roman Public and Private Law (Oxford,
1894); and Vincent Tatarczuk, Infamy of Law: A Historical Synopsis and a Commentary
(Washington, D.C., 1954).
4. Here I use the definitions for these terms put forward by Catharine Edwards, The
Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, U.K., 1993), 118, 124.
5. Edwards, Politics of Immorality, 124. Edwards elaborates on this last statement by
noting that Protection from corporal punishment was one of the hallmarks of Roman cit-
izenship. This protection marked off Roman citizens from non-citizens and, in particular,
it marked them off from slaves. Liability to corporal punishment was one of the most vivid
symbols of the distinction between free and slave in Rome (124).
6. See Edward Peters, Wounded Names: The Medieval Doctrine of Infamy, in
Edward B. King and Susan J. Ridyard, eds., Law in Mediaeval Life and Thought (Sewanee,
Tenn., 1990), 4389, for a particularly good account of the development of the medieval
doctrine of infamy, which traces its development from Roman law to later medieval law.
See also the introduction in R. H. Helmholz, ed., Select Cases on Defamation to 1600 (London,
1985), xi-cxi, for an account of the history of English defamation law and further details
regarding the role of infamia in English law. Helmholz locates the origin of English
defamation law in the 1222 Council of Oxford, which was convoked by Archbishop
Stephen Langton to promulgate the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and
to establish supplementary local rules (although he notes that the constitution dealing
with defamation had no immediate connection with the Lateran decrees [xiv]).
7. For example, early English defamation law (which was the province of the Church
until the mid-fourteenth century) adopted the Roman concept of iniuria, according to
which slanderous words were treated as one way a person might be injured (Helmholz,
ed., Select Cases, xix).
8. See Peters, Wounded Names, 56. Peters notes in particular the references to
Germanic shame culture in Tacituss Germania. For a discussion of the role of fama in
French law, which may also have influenced the development of late medieval English laws
relating to reputation and infamy, see F. R. P. Akehurst, Good Name, Reputation, and
Notoriety in French Customary Law, in Thelma Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail, eds.,
Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, N.Y., 2003), 7594.
9. Peters, Wounded Names, 61.
10. Richard Firth Green, A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England
(Philadelphia, 1999), 15. In his book on medieval trials by ordeal, Robert Bartlett has
remarked that sensitivity to reputation, as expressed in oath-worthiness, is found perhaps
most elaborately in English law (Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal
[Oxford, 1986], 31). See also Paul R. Hyams, Trial by Ordeal: The Key to Proof in the
Early Common Law, in Morris S. Arnold, Thomas A. Green, Sally A. Scully, and Stephen
D. White, eds., On the Laws and Customs of England: Essays in Honor of Samuel E. Thorne
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1981), 90126, at 1078. A number of anthropological studies have
been undertaken on honor: see, for example, J. G. Peristiany, ed., Honour and Shame: The
Values of Mediterranean Society (Chicago, 1966); and Frank Henderson Stewart, Honor
(London, 1994). Literary studies include D. S. Brewer, Honour in Chaucer, in Essays and
Studies 26 (1973): 119; Mara Rosa Lida de Malkiel, La Idea de la Fama en la Edad Media
Castellana (Pnuco, Mex., 1952); George Fenwick Jones, Lovd I Not Honour More: The
Durability of a Literary Motif, Comparative Literature 11 (1959): 13143; and Curtis Brown
Watson, Shakespeare and the Renaissance Concept of Honor (Princeton, 1960). Despite the fact
156 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

that the definitions of honor and fame occasionally overlap, there are clear differences.
Honor is frequently perceived as having a bipartite quality, in that it can be internal (one
can perceive oneself to have honor) or external (others can perceive one as honorable).
Thus, honor is only partly a function of talk or of the opinions of others, whereas fame
is composed entirely of both. Brewer discusses the inextricable bond between the internal
and external concepts of honor in English literature in his Honour in Chaucer, 119.
11. Green, A Crisis of Truth, 62. Trial by compurgation consisted of an oath taken by
the accused, supported by the oaths of a stipulated number of respectable individuals from
the community (compurgators); see R. H. Helmholz, Crime, Compurgation, and the
Courts of the Medieval Church, Law and History Review 1 (1983): 126.
12. Green, A Crisis of Truth, 96. See also Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water, 3031; and
Hyams, Trial by Ordeal, 1078.
13. Green, A Crisis of Truth, 64. See William Joseph Whittaker, ed., The Mirror of Justices
(London, 1895), 13334. The list also includes those who bring attaints and cannot prove
the perjury, and thus bring slander on lawful jurors; also those who wrongfully indict or
appeal an innocent man to the blemishment of his repute for any crime or other infamous
personal trespass (ceux aussi qi portent atteintes e ne poent mie prover le perjurie par
unt loiaux jurours sunt esclaundre; e ceux qi enditent ou appellent homme innocent de
crim en blemissement de sa fame ou dautre personel trespas infamant a tort [134]).
14. Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water, 30.
15. Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water, 31; see also Hyams, Trial by Ordeal, 1078. Oaths
of innocence could be taken with or without compurgators, depending on the seriousness
of the crime committed and the reputation of the accused.
16. See Lydgates chapter reproving all thunstabilnes of Princis & oir persones at
3eve hasti credence to euery report with-out preef, in which he criticizes princes for
unquestioningly making use of rumor and infamia facti while failing to recognize the
problems inherent in doing so (Henry Bergen, ed., John Lydgates Fall of Princes, 4 vols.,
EETS e.s. 121, 122, 123, 124 (London, 192427), 1:12732, at 127 (I.45584718). All
references to Lydgates poem are taken from this edition and shall henceforth appear in
the main body of this essay, cited by book and line number.
17. This tradition is most familiarly illustrated by Virgils depiction of Fame in Book
IV of the Aeneid (IV.17397), in which he describes Fama/Rumor as malum qua non aliud
velocius ullum. / . . . / cui, quot sunt corpore plumae, / tot vigiles oculi subter (mirabile
dictu), / tot linguae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit auris. / nocte volat caeli medio
terraeque per umbram, / stridens, nec dulci declinat lumina somno; / luce sedet custos
aut summi culmine tecti, / turribus aut altis, et magnas territat urbes, / tam ficti pravique
tenax quam nuntia veri (of all evils the most swift, . . . who for the many feathers in her
body has as many watchful eyes beneathwondrous to tellas many tongues, as many
sounding mouths, as many pricked-up ears. By night, midway between heaven and earth,
she flies through the gloom, screeching, nor droops her eyes in sweet sleep; by day she sits
on guard on high roof-top or lofty turrets, and affrights great cities, clinging to the false
and wrong, yet heralding truth) (H. Rushton Fairclough, ed. and trans., Virgil I:
Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid IVI, 2nd edn., rev. G. P. Goold [Cambridge, Mass., 1999], 43435
[IV.174-88]). While Ovid also depicts Fame in a negative light, he focuses more on the
disorder and constant activity of her house than on her monstrous qualities (see Frank
Justus Miller, ed. and trans., Ovid: Metamorphoses II, 2nd edn. [Cambridge, Mass., 1916;
repr. 1968], 18285 [XII.3963]).
18. The quotation drawn from Proverbs also appears in Book VIII of the Fall of Princes,
when Lydgate remarks that a good name whan it is lefft behynde / Passeth al richesse, yif
it be weel disserued, / And al gold in coffre lokkid & conseruyd (VIII.4043).
 MARY C. FLANNERY 157

19. Akehurst, Good Name, Reputation, and Notoriety, 8687. This medieval tolerance
of violence in the defense of ones good name anticipates the duels over honor so frowned
upon (yet so frequent) in later centuries.
20. Sandy Bardsley, Sin, Speech, and Scolding in Late Medieval England, in Thelma
Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail, eds., Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval
Europe (Ithaca, N.Y., 2003), 14564, at 14952 and 15461). As Bardsley and others have
noted, these laws had their roots in clerical discourse on Sins of the Tongue (14552); see
also Edwin D. Craun, Fama and Pastoral Constraints on Rebuking Sinners: The Book of
Margery Kempe, in Fenster and Smail, eds., Fama, 187209; and Edwin Craun, Lies, Slander,
and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker
(Cambridge, U.K., 1997).
21. [Q]uin imo in ampliorem sensumbona cum pace legentiumtrahere et illas
intelligere claras quas quocunque ex facinore orbi vulgato sermone notissimas novero
(Giovanni Boccaccio, Famous Women, ed. and trans. Virginia Brown [Cambridge, Mass.,
2001], 1011).
22. Although a revised version of the De casibus was produced around 1373,
Premierfait used the earlier text for his translation (Bergen, ed., Fall of Princes, 1:x).
23. See Bergen, ed., Fall of Princes, 1:xlvii, for Boccaccios preface to the De casibus, in
which he outlines his project.
24. See Willard Farnham, The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy (1936; repr.
Oxford, 1970), 7071, where Farnham remarks that, for readers in the late Middle Ages,
the De casibus was Boccaccios greatest book, greater even than the Decameron. Louis
Brewer Hall has produced both a facsimile of the De casibus and an abridged translation of
it: De casibus illustrium virorum: A Facsimile Reproduction of the Paris Edition of 1520
(Gainesville, Fla., 1962), and The Fates of Illustrious Men (New York, 1962). More useful (but
also more difficult to find) is the Latin-Italian parallel-text edition published in
Boccaccios complete works: Vittorio Zaccaria, ed., De casibus virorum illustrium, vol. 9, in
Vittore Branca, gen. ed., Tutte le Opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, 12 vols. (Milan, 196498).
25. P. M. Gatherole, ed. and trans., Laurent de Premierfaits Des cas des nobles hommes et
femmes, Book I, Translated from Boccaccio: A Critical Edition Based on Six Manuscripts (Chapel
Hill, N.C., 1968), 29. Bergen includes substantial extracts from both Premierfaits and
Boccaccios texts in the fourth volume of his edition of the Fall of Princes (cited in note 16
above). Bergen characterizes Boccaccio as rude, Premierfait as servile, and Lydgate as
a man of the world, an aristocrat and courtier, whose contempt for the political capacity of
the people was exceeded only by Boccaccios scorn for the political and moral accomplish-
ments of their sovereigns (Fall of Princes, 1:xx). Although much more comparative work
needs to be undertaken on the De casibus, the Des cas, and the Fall, Nigel Mortimer has made
an admirable start with John Lydgates Fall of Princes: Narrative Tragedy in Its Literary and
Political Contexts (Oxford, 2005).
26. See Alessandra Petrina, Cultural Politics in Fifteenth-Century England: The Case of
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (Boston, 2004), 201, which lists the De casibus as among the
Latin works of Boccaccio that Humphrey owned, and Bergens assertion that he had
found no evidence that Lydgate made use of the Latin original (Fall of Princes, 4:137).
See also Mortimers suggestion that it is possible that it was as a result of the greater
abundance of copies of Laurents translation that Lydgate based his verse translation
on the French Des Cas rather than on the Latin original (John Lydgates Fall of Princes,
32). The best study of Humphreys library is Alfonso Sammut, Unfredo duca di Gloucester
e gli umanisti italiani (Padova, 1980).
27. Brunhilde (d. 613) was a Frankish queen who was married to King Sigibert. Much
of her story is recorded in Gregory of Tourss Historia Francorum, although Gregory did not
live to see the queen killed by Lothar II, son of Chilperic and Fredegund, who had her
158 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

dragged along the ground by an untamed horse until she expired (Lewis Thorpe, trans.,
The History of the Franks [London, 1974], 222n45). David Wallace has named Paolino da
Venezia as the source for the Brunhilde episode in the De casibus (see Chaucerian Polity:
Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy [Stanford, 1997], 306), but,
as I discuss below, Bochass constant references to a version of events that is almost totally
contradictory to Brunhildes account suggests that Boccaccio may have been aware of a
history of conflicting traditions.
28. Thomas Kuehn, Fama as a Legal Status in Renaissance Florence, in Thelma
Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail, eds., Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval
Europe (Ithaca, N.Y., 2003), 2746, at 34. For recent work on women and gossip, see Karma
Lochrie, Covert Operations: The Medieval Uses of Secrecy (Philadelphia, 1999); Jrg R.
Bergman, Discreet Indiscretions: The Social Organization of Gossip, trans. John Bednarz, Jr.
(New York, 1993); Lynda E. Boose, Scolding Brides and Bridling Scolds: Taming the
Womans Unruly Member, Shakespeare Quarterly 42 (1991): 179213; and Patricia Meyer
Spacks, Gossip (New York, 1985). See also Susan E. Phillips, Transforming Talk: The Problem
with Gossip in Late Medieval England (University Park, Pa., 2007).
29. Chris Wickham, Fama and the Law in Twelfth-Century Tuscany, in Thelma
Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail, eds., Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval
Europe (Ithaca, N.Y., 2003), 1526, at 25. See also Chris Wickham, Gossip and Resistance
among the Medieval Peasantry, Past and Present 160 (1998): 324, at 1516.
30. Wickham, Fama and the Law, 25.
31. Madeline H. Caviness and Charles G. Nelson, Silent Witnesses, Absent Women,
and the Law Courts in Medieval Germany, in Thelma Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail, eds.,
Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, N.Y., 2003), 4772, at 62.
32. Caviness and Nelson, Silent Witnesses, Absent Women, 6263. See Green for a
description of Queen Fredegonds trial by compurgation in 585, in which the queen was
supported in her oath by three bishops and three hundred other dignitaries (A Crisis of
Truth, 102). Although he notes that, [of] the three hundred and four people swearing to
Fredegonds innocence that day, only one could have known the actual facts, Green
argues that, Since what was really on trial here was the queens reputation, her honor, and
since this was itself a function of communal attitudes toward her, it is entirely fitting that
she should have sought to exonerate herself by a public demonstration of the communitys
confidence and that her accuser should have been satisfied with such a demonstration.
For womens rights under medieval English law, see Christopher Cannon, The Rights of
Medieval English Women: Crime and the Issue of Representation, in Barbara A. Hanawalt
and David Wallace, eds., Medieval Crime and Social Control (London, 1999), 15685.
33. Thorpe, trans., History of the Franks, 248.
34. There is much dispute as to who is the author of the text that the sixteenth cen-
tury attributed to Fredegar (see J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, ed., The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of
Fredegar, and Its Continuations [London, 1960], xiv-xxviii). Wallace-Hadrill, the texts most
recent editor, believes it to have had three authors (xx-xxi).
35. See Wallace-Hadrill, ed., Chronicle of Fredegar, 1235, at 21. At one point, the chronicler
refers to Brunhilde as that second Jezebel (2324). For more on the tarnishing of
Brunhildes good name, see Janet L. Nelson, Queens as Jezebels: Brunhild and Balthild in
Merovingian History, in her Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986), 148.
36. Boccaccios account of Brunhildes death is succinct: Seminuda in turpissimam
mortem rapior. Nam pede vno & manu altera crinibusque caudis validorum equorum
adligata adque discerpenda permittor. Et dum in varia tenderent equi: membratim distrahor
sanguine cuncta foedans. Et sic inter cruciatus importabiles expiraui animam per omne scis-
sum corpus emittens (Naked, I suffered the most disgraceful death. I was tied to the tails of
strong horses by a foot, a hand and my hair. The horses were spurred in different directions,
 MARY C. FLANNERY 159

and I was torn apart. My name was dishonored, and among so many unbearable torments,
my soul left my torn body) (Latin text from Bergen, ed., Fall of Princes, 4:353n1; English trans-
lation from Hall, ed., The Fates of Illustrious Men, 22526). The Chronicle of Fredegar describes
Brunhildes death thus: Finally she was tied by her hair, one arm and one leg to the tail of
an unbroken horse, and she was cut to shreds by its hoofs at the pace it went (Wallace-
Hadrill, ed., 35). The description in Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes is almost identical: ie
fuz a moitie desuetue & fuz happee pour mettre a treslaide mort / car par vng pie et par vne
main et par les cheueulx ie fuz lyee aux queues de trois cheuaulx effrayez & legiers et fuz
habandonnee a despecer par les detiremens des cheuaulx qui tiroyent lung de ca lautre dela,
et ie fuz despecee par membres / et par mon sang ie ordoye tous les lieux par ou ie fuz
traynee / et par ainsi ie mis hors mon ame par toutes parties de mon corps detrenche / et
ainsi ie mouruz entre les griefz tourmens (Bergen, ed., Fall of Princes, 4:35253). One man-
uscript of the Des cas (London, British Library Royal 18 D.vii) contains a small illuminated
illustration of the death of Brunhilde on fol. 203v, which depicts her tied by the hair, by her
left wrist, and by her right foot to three horses.
37. See note 27 above.
38. Once again, Lydgates text touches on the inherently public nature of trial and
punishment in the Middle Ages (see Peters, Wounded Names, 8384).
39. Bergen has included most of Boccaccios and Premierfaits texts at Fall of Princes,
4:34553. For an abridged English translation of Boccaccios rendition of the Brunhilde
episode, see Hall, ed., The Fates of Illustrious Men, 21926. For discussion of Lydgates
borrowings from his French source, and the relationship of Premierfaits text to
Boccaccios, see Mortimer, John Lydgates Fall of Princes, esp. 2550.
40. Paulo ante nunquam me nouerat iste: adeo repente mei ingenii censor factus
(A little while ago . . . this man did not know my name, and now suddenly he is judge of
my nature) (Latin text from Bergen, ed., Fall of Princes, 4:348n1; English translation from
Hall, ed., The Fates of Illustrious Men, 222). Similarly, in Premierfaits text, Brunhilde
marvels that, after claiming to know so little of her story, Boccace is acting like a vray iuge
de mon Engin et de mes meurs naturelz (Fall of Princes, 4:348).
41. Latin text from Bergen, ed., Fall of Princes, 4:353n1; English translation from Hall,
ed., The Fates of Illustrious Men, 226.
42. French text from Bergen, ed., Fall of Princes, 4:353; my translation.
43. Bergen, ed., Fall of Princes, 3:932.
44. Although the MED does list defamation as one of the definitions of sclaundre,
it also defines it as (a) Uttering a falsehood to discredit someone, calumny, misrepresenta-
tion; (b) a false accusation, a malicious lie about someone. Defame, on the other hand, does
not appear to carry as much of an implication of falsehood or malice, as it most frequently
means simply bad reputation, disgrace, dishonor, shame, and is only defined secondarily
as a calumny, slander; also, the act of defaming or slandering (MED, s.v. defame).
45. Lydgates lengthiest discussion of the preservative power of poetry is in the
prologue of Book IV, lines 1210, but he also makes mention of several poets who are
employed specifically to record the deeds of their patrons in writing; see VI.220612,
VIII.27802842, and IX.11319. Fame is also described as one of the poets natural
objectives in the prologues to Books VI and VIII (VI.22531, VIII.2228).
46. Seth Lerer, Chaucer and His Readers: Imagining the Author in Late-Medieval England
(Princeton, 1993), esp. 2256. See also the chapter entitled Laureate Lydgate in Derek
Pearsall, John Lydgate (London, 1970), 16091.
47. John M. Fyler, The House of Fame, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson,
3rd edn. (Oxford, 1988), 34748, at 348.
48. See Alan S. Ambrisco and Paul Strohm, Succession and Sovereignty in Lydgates
Prologue to the Troy Book, Chaucer Review 30 (1995): 4057; Paul Strohm, Hoccleve,
160 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

Lydgate, and the Lancastrian Court, in David Wallace, ed., The Cambridge History of Medieval
English Literature (Cambridge, U.K., 1999), 64061; and Paul Strohm, Englands Empty
Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 13991422 (London, 1998), esp. 14142,
where Strohm remarks in his discussion of Lydgate and Hoccleve, The place of the
Lancastrian king was one of profound doubt and unease, marked by guilty concealment
and by fitful hope of definitive self-legitimation. And do not these terms also describe the
place of the Lancastrian poet? No serene guarantor of the symbolic, the earlier fifteenth-
century poet was beset by doubts about legitimacy and mandate, and bedeviled by the need
for secure insertion in a legitimate and legitimizing literary succession. A. C. Spearing also
sees Lydgate as inherently anxious about his ability to follow in Chaucers footsteps
(Medieval to Renaissance in English Poetry [Cambridge, U.K., 1985], 88110).
49. This reference occurs in the prologue to Book VI, line 109, when Fortune refers
to myn hous callid the Hous of Fame. Fortunes words recall Chaucers description of
Fame as Fortunes sister, although the goddess Fame is here entirely supplanted by the
figure of Fortune. Lydgates other direct references to HF occur at IV.122 (in his prologue
on writing), V.420, VI.3093, and VIII.26 (in reference to Bochass poetic ambitions).
50. The definitive work of scholarship on HF is Piero Boitanis Chaucer and the
Imaginary World of Fame (Cambridge, U.K., 1984). For a more in-depth discussion of
Chaucers attitude towards his sources and his art, see Sheila Delany, Chaucers House of
Fame: The Poetics of Skeptical Fideism (London, 1972).
51. In these excerpts, Dido and Criseyde are, of course, articulating very real
concerns regarding the vulnerability of female honor in the Middle Ages. As Brewer
notes, medieval men established their good names through aggression and action in the
public sphere; medieval women, on the other hand, were expected to preserve their good
fame rather than to earn it: Honour for ladies resides primarily in their chastity, the
biologically determined defensive or recessive virtue that characterizes, or used to charac-
terize, women, to complement the biologically natural aggressive virtue of men (Honor
in Chaucer, 11).
52. Preterea delectabiles nature artificio solitudines oportune sunt, sic et tranquilli-
tas animi et secularis glorie appetitus (English translation from Charles G. Osgood, ed.,
Boccaccio on Poetry [Princeton, 1930], 40; Latin from Giovanni Boccaccio, Genealogie deorum
gentilium, ed. Vittorio Zaccaria, in Vittore Branca, gen. ed., Tutte le Opere di Giovanni
Boccaccio, 12 vols. [Milan, 196498], 8:11521583 (Book XIV, 1400).
53. Surge igitur, et inertiam hanc pelle, et ad opus ingenti accingere animo, ut regi
pariter pareas et tuo nomini ad inclitam famam viam facias! (English translation from
Osgood, ed., Boccaccio on Poetry, 10; Latin from Boccaccio, Genealogie deorum gentilium, ed.
Zaccaria, 7:441151 (Book I, Proem I, 56). In the prologue to Book VIII of the De casibus
illustrium virorum (Hall, ed., 18588) and the Fall of Princes, Petrarch urges Boccaccio to
shake off his sloth and earn fame through his writing: As I seide erst, yit lefft[e] up thi
look, / Forsak thi bed, rys up anon, for shame! / Woldestow reste now on thyn seuent
book, / And leue the eihte? in sooth thou art to blame! / Proceede forth and gete thi-silf
a name. / And with o thyng do thi-silf conforte: / As thou disseruest, men aftir shal
reporte (Fall of Princes, VIII.11319). For discussion of the prologue to Book VIII of the
Fall of Princes, see Lerer, Chaucer and His Readers, 3444.