[In the following essay, Hunt reevaluates Bodel's intent in writing Jeu de Saint Nicolas.]

Whilst the multiformity of Bodel's dramatized miracle has always secured recognition, the idea of a unified point of view informing its apparently incongruous components has been less easily accepted. Robertson has detected a comic intention throughout,¹ whilst Payen has emphasized the crusading appeal.² Adler sees in the play the pursuit of an ideal social harmony based on by which the miracle becomes >,³ whilst Heitmann argues that Bodel, far from being aristocratic in attitude as Payen would have it, gives expression to a , which confronts the audience with

ein einziger Geist, der der eigenen niederen Wirklichkeit, der es in diesem Stück unternimmt, das, was in der Realität unerreichbar über ihm liegt, zu 'degradieren', zu sich herunterzuholen, sich anzupassen, und zwar im wesentlichen auf dreifache Weise: indem er das hohere der beiden Milieus vulgarisiert, indem er es parodierend nachahmt und indem er es nicht anders als durch sein Prisma gebrochen erscheinen lasst.⁴

It is thus clear that there is as yet no generally accepted view of Bodel's didactic aims vis à vis his audience. It seems to me that any firm conclusion concerning these aims can only be obtained after reexamination of four individual problems in the text, namely,

1. the function of the crusade scene within the play as a whole;
2. the function of the tavern and its inhabitants;
3. the didactic significance of the pagan king's willingness to test the statue;
4. the significance of the recalcitrant Amiraus d'outre I'Arbre Sec.

If these four problems can be meaningfully related to each other, Bodel's purpose may emerge with greater clarity.

The function of the crusading theme is perhaps the most contentious of the play's features. Heitmann minimizes its importance, noting that it is ≪fast gänzlich auf eine kurz hingeworfene Expositionsszene beschränkt>> (p. 314), whilst Payen says of the angel's speech and declares that > (p. 498). Robertson sees humour and burlesque even in these scenes. The essential here, I think, is to make a simple distinction. In the Dialogues Gregory I states,

Sed haec … infirmis veneranda sunt, non
 imitanda.⁵

I do not think that the seriousness and solemnity of the crusade scene can be convincingly called into doubt, but the inference that Bodel is exhorting the bourgeois of Arras to join the crusade is by no means a logical one. I should claim that the crusader's faith and sacrifice are here held up for admiration but not for imitation. The crusading credo presented here may be compared with that found in St. Bernard's De Laude Novae Militiae, as Payen rightly remarks. But it is highly unlikely that Bodel imagined that he could persuade the wealthy bourgeois of Arras to take the cross.

There is abundant evidence of the ways in which such people sought to resist crusading appeals and to claim immunity.⁶ What is much more likely is that Bodel hoped, by evoking admiration for the crusading ideal, to encourage monetary donations to the cause, a purpose which can be harmonised, as we shall see, with the role of money in the play. One of the commonest methods of securing release from crusade vows was the donation of money as a subsidy for the crusade army (e.g. for the hiring of mercenaries) or as a contribution to some other religious cause.⁷ Quite apart from the money raised by commutation and redemption of crusade vows, there was naturally enough a tendency to satisfy the individual conscience, in avoiding crusade vows, by making donations. In literature of the period crusaders are often depicted receiving gifts and money towards their enterprise.⁸ The most widespread reason for the avoidance of crusade vows was fear for the crusader's property during his absence. The planned predations of the thieves in the play (11. 1355ff) could only reinforce such anxieties. It may therefore be suggested that the purpose of the crusade scene is not to exhort the wealthy bourgeoisie of Arras to abandon wealth and property in order to take the cross, but rather, in admiration of the example set before them, to make available some of their wealth to the Church, analogously to the way in which the pagan king exposes his treasure in dependence on St. Nicolas and finds his benefits multiplied. The play as a whole may thus teach that wealth and faith need not be opposed to each other.

This leads us to a consideration of the tavern setting. Far from being considered a sub-plot, or a parallel plot, the actions of the thieves might be seen as constituting a counterplot. The first point to emphasize here is the complete abstraction of religious issues from the world of the tavern. Bodel resists the temptation either to convert or to punish the thieves. The religious issue just doesn't seem to arise. The thieves have no role to play in any movement of religious resurgence which Bodel may be commending to the bourgeois, and, paradoxically, their relevance to the play may reside precisely in their irrelevance to the religious theme. The world of the tavern is a world of shabby dishonesty, a world in which the mercenary propensities of the Arras bourgeois are parodied as self-defeating, lower-class pursuits, in place in the low-life setting of down-town Arras.⁹ The inhabitants of the tavern gain little or nothing. Paradoxically, in stealing the pagan king's treasure the thieves succeed only in multiplying it and furthering the Christian cause. The delicate ambivalence of the thieves, who combine features from both the Christian and the pagan worlds, symbolizes the universal human temptation to venality in contrast to the more high-minded attitude to wealth which Bodel wishes to convey to his audience. The tavern scenes thus illuminate the didacticism of the play ex negativo, in other words through the absence of the theme of wealth complemented by faith, which is crystallized in the miracle plot itself. The possession of wealth may be productive, earning interest for the spiritual account, but the pursuit of wealth is destructive, standing as a positive obstacle to prosperity and salvation. This seems to be Bodel's argument in the play.

Thus, neither the crusaders nor the thieves represent the agents of Bodel's message or the groups with which the audience was likely to identify.

Let us turn now to the pagan court and the conduct of the pagan king, who, symbolically, omarchissoit as crestïens>> (1. 10). Here we find a world not so far removed from the world of the bourgeois, with human reflexes of a sympathetic kind. The main problem is the motivation and significance of the king's crucial decision to grant the preudom respite and to allow him to risk a demonstration of his saint's power. The difficulties begin with the prologue. Here, in contrast to the play itself, the preudom reveals Saint Nicolas's power not merely to safeguard but to increase whatever is entrusted to his care (11. 37-9). The king's reaction is not easy to interpret:

—Vilains, je te ferai larder,
S'il ne monteploie et pourgarde
Mon tresor; je li met en garde,
Pour ti sousprendre a occoison.
11. 40-43¹⁰

Whitehead was possibly right to propose that the last line means 11 though the sense is, perhaps, more precisely, <12 This sadistic note—the king says he will entrust his treasure to the statue in order to catch out the preudom (i.e. catch him allowing the treasure to escape)—is perhaps no more than an expression of incredulity, a sceptical challenge to the preudom. In the play, however, the preudom details the more religious virtues of his saint (11. 518ff) and affirms only that Saint Nicolas will keep safe any treasure given into his keeping (11. 526ff). This time the king's reaction is much more agnostic:

Vilain, che sarai jou par tans.
Ains que de chi soie partans,
Tes nicolais iert esprouvés:
Mon tresor commander li vœil.
Mais se g'i perç nis plain men œil,
Tu seras ars ou enroués.
11. 532-7

When the seneschal dreams that the treasure has disappeared he offers the king little comfort for his > error:

Roys, tu iés povres et mendis,
Mais ne le dois nullui requerre,
Quant le grigneur avoir qui fust
Commandas un home de fust.
Ves le la ou il gist a terre.
11. 1197-1201

The pagan king's willingness to Saint Nicolas is thus problematic. When, after a second dream, the treasure is restored, multiplied, the king promptly acknowledges <> (1. 1400), but his admission only reinforces our difficulty:

Assés sont li miracle apert,
Puisqu'i fait avoir che c'on pert.
Mais je n'en creïsse nului!
11. 1432-34

Why did the king, then, grant the preudom respite and test his saint? It seems to me that within the conventions governing the depiction of pagans the king's reasonableness and tolerance are exceptional and intended to be exemplary. In defending elsewhere¹³ the authenticity of the prologue, I have suggested that, whereas Bodel wished to reveal to his audience that Saint Nicolas actually increased the treasure, as a sort of moral prolepsis,¹⁴ he did not wish the pagan king to be motivated by such knowledge, since it was part of his didactic purpose to show that the king's faith, or his willing suspension of disbelief, is rewarded. It would have detracted from the ethical force of the miracle if the king had been won for Christianity by bribery or greed, but this is not the case. The king, whose wealth is dear to him, voluntarily exposes it to the danger of misappropriation. This may lead us to consider whether Bodel has not located in the conduct of the pagan court the essence of his message to the bourgeois of Arras; whether, in fact, the pagan court does not represent a literary transposition of the Arras patriciate, a portrait of all those foibles of a weak faith found among some of the casually impious citizens of Arras. The essence of the pagan dilemma is that their wealth is misplaced.

The king considers having the useless Tervagan melted down (11. 140-3). He is reproached by his seneschal for lack of respect for his gods and acknowledges to Tervagan his impiety.¹⁵ There is in the pagan court a widespread lack of confidence. The king is critical of Tervagan, whilst the seneschal is wary of the king (11. 198ff). Tervagan's prediction that he will be abandoned (1. 212) is neatly ambiguous, for we have already observed the king's impatience with him and it is by no means clear that a Christian conversion is intimated. The king's messenger, Auberon, is highly unreliable, in complete contrast to the angel, li messagiers Nostre Seigneur. The pagan court is thus essentially, in the preudom's terms, desconsillié (1. 519) and desvoié (1. 522). The king is seized with curiosity at the sight of the preudom. His mind is not completely closed and he is by no means half-hearted in the measures he takes to ensure that his treasure >. Even when all his expectations seem frustrated he a second time grants the preudom respite on the strength of the latter's assurance that the loss is not irretrievable. As soon as the treasure is restored and multiplied the king quickly perceives the consequences for his faith (11. 1418ff). The conversion is prompt:

Senescaus, que vaurroit mentirs?
En lui est mes cuers si entirs
Que jamais ne querrai autrui.
11. 1435-7

Faith and wealth are no longer dissociated. The pagan court's vacillating faith was accompanied by the expenditure of wealth on Tervagan. This wealth was misplaced, but by grace (cf. 11. 1438ff) the king is motivated to test the preudom and thereby to effect the symbolic transfer of that wealth to Saint Nicolas (cf. 11. 526ff). Saint Nicolas not only safeguards the wealth entrusted to him, but multiplies it and, further, brings his creditors to the true faith. The bourgeois of Arras surely saw here, and were meant to see, a fictional transposition of their own spiritual condition and an invitation to make an act of faith with an appropriate financial gesture, in the assurance that they would henceforth lack neither true religion nor worldly goods, that the former was, as it were, a guarantee of the preservation of the latter.

The above view of the play's purpose must now be brought into harmony with its conclusion, which does not possess the satisfying finality which some might wish for it. The problem centres on the figure of the recalcitrant Amiraus d'outre l'Arbre Sec. Amidst the rejoicing of the king and his seneschal and the obedience of his emirs this figure sounds a discordant note. To the concerted chorus of the pagan barons he opposes a defiant speech:

Segneur, onques ne m'i contés,
Car je n'oç goute a cheste oreille.
Maudehait qui che me conseille
Que je deviegne renoiés!

Garde de moi, je te deffi
Et ren, ton hommage et ton fief.
11. 1477-80 - 1487-8

Coercion secures only lip service to the new faith:

Sains Nicolais, c'est maugré mien
Que je vous aoure, et par forche.
De moi n'arés vous fors l'escorche:
Par parole devieng vostre hom,
Mais li creanche est en Mahom.
11. 1507-11

Some critics have seen in Bodel's conclusion a similarity to the ending of the Chanson de Roland with its intimations of battles still to be won, the crusader's task being never completed. Others have seen a victory of realism over didacticism. It seems more likely, however, that the amiraus is ridiculed for his stupidity in refusing to convert in the face of incontrovertible proof of God's power. Thus the preudom declares,

Sire, faus est qui te mescroit
Et qui de toi servir recroit,
Car te vertus reluist et pert.
11. 1447-9

Despite miracle apert, the emir clings to his gods (11. 1501ff) as rigidly as Pangloss clings to Leibnizian Optimism. His protestation of faith to his god is answered with gibberish and Tervagan, wholly discredited, is unceremoniously tipped down the stairs in mock fulfilment of his own prophecy. The Amiraus d'outre l'Arbre Sec has already been presented in a comic light, as when, for example, he is unable to support the king with gifts of riches to finance the expedition against the Christians, since he comes from a land where only millstones correspond to cash (11. 375ff). There is surely an intended comic irony here. Precisely that pagan refuses to convert, who has rendered no pecuniary service to the king in any case.

We can, perhaps, now see more clearly the injunction which Bodel seeks to convey to his audience. Just as the pagans divert their wealth to the financing of a military expedition against the Christians and paradoxically are thereby brought to both salvation and greater prosperity, so the bourgeois of Arras are urged to direct some of their wealth towards the crusades. Moved by the spectable of Christian martyrdom, impressed by the interest rendered by Saint Nicolas as a sort of spiritual banker, they are encouraged to employ some of their wealth in support of the Church and, specifically we may assume, in aid of the crusade. Those who pursue the true faith and mortgage their wealth on it, will not go short of worldly goods, but will be provided for, whilst those who ardently pursue wealth shall lose it. The tavern scenes thus play an important monitory role in illustrating an unstable and unproductive materialism which is shown to issue in stalemate. Bodel was a realist and knew that the self-sacrifice of the crusader was not the only way of entering the kingdom of Heaven. Had it been so, the citizens of Arras might as well have addressed themselves to the pleasures of the ungodly life. The preudom is a non-combatant and symbolizes faith. It is faith, not suicide or martyrdom, that Bodel seeks to commend to his bourgeois audience. At the same time, Bodel did not admire the exclusive cult of worldly goods and criticized it by portraying it as the activity of the lower classes, untouched by religion, dishonest and unrepentant.¹⁶ In the social hierarchy of the play the crusaders are placed at the top, to be venerated not imitated, the pagan court and the bourgeois audience occupy the central position, and a stylized proletariat comes at the bottom. The crusaders, the preudom and Saint Nicolas appear as powerful representatives of faith, whilst the converting pagans and the recidivist thieves show the contrasting functions of pecuniary profit, associated with or dissociated from religion. The Jeu de Saint Nicolas is quite simply an appeal for investment by the citizens of Arras in the work of the Church Militant. In such an aim all the different features of the play can be harmonized, as I hope to have shown.

Notes

¹ H. S. Robertson, Structure and Comedy in "Le Jeu de S. Nicolas", Studies in Philology, LXIV, 1967, pp. 551-63.

² J.-Ch. Payen, Les éléments idéologiques dans "Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas", Romania, XCIV, 1973, pp. 484-504.

³ A. Adler, Le "Jeu de Saint Nicolas", édifiant, mais dans quel sens?, Romania, LXXXI, 1960, especially pp. l19f.

⁴ K. Heitmann, Zur Frage der inneren Einheit von Jehan Bodels "Jeu de Saint Nicolas", Romanische Forschungen, LXXV, 1963, pp. 289-315, quotation from p. 314.

⁵ Migne, Patrologia Latina, LXXVII, col. 157A.

⁶ See G. B. Flahiff, "Deus non vult": A Critic of the Third Crusade, Mediaeval Studies, IX, 1947, pp. 162-88.

⁷ J. A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Milwaukee and London, 1969, p. 132.

⁸ See W. H. Jackson, "Prison et croisie ": Ein Beitrag zum Begriff "arme Ritter", Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, CI, 1972, pp. 105-17.

⁹ On the social background see M. Ungureanu, La Bourgeoisie naissante: société et littérature bourgeoises d'Arras aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, Arras, Impr. centrale de l'Artois, 1955 and the critical remarks of H. Roussel, Notes sur la littérature arrageoise du XIII' siècle, Revue des sciences humaines, fasc. 87, 1957, pp. 249-86.

¹⁰ Quotations are drawn from Professor Henry's edition, Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas de Jehan Bodel, deuxiéme édition revue, Bruxelles, Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, 1965.

¹¹ See Whitehead's review, Medium Aevum, XXI, 1952, p. 73.

¹² See the Old French dictionary of Tobler-Lommatzsch, VI, p. 967 and Bodel, line 97 seems to me absolutely convincing.

¹³The Authenticity of the Prologue to Bodel's "Jeu de Saint Nicolas", Romania, XCVII, 1976.

¹⁴ This information is given only in the preudom's speech to the king (lines 37ff) and is not reported in lines 91ff. There seems little doubt that Bodel did not wish to give too great a prominence to the motif of the multiplication of the treasure and that the motif is employed to encourage the audience rather than the pagan king and his court.

¹⁵ The solution to the problem of lines 169-70 proposed by Professor T. B. W. Reid and referred to by Henry in his note to these lines seems to me absolutely convincing.

¹⁶ For a view of the poor consuming their wages in drink see A. Murray, Religion among the Poor in Thirteenth-Century France: The Testimony of Humbert de Romans, Traditio, XXX, 1974, especially p. 313f.