In Sir Walter Scott's "Essay on Romance," when he speaks of the new mould
in which the subjects of the old metrical stories were cast by the school
of prose romancers which arose in the 13th century, we find the following
words:
-
"Whatever fragments or shadows of true history may yet remain hidden
under the mass of accumulated fable which had been heaped upon them
during successive ages, must undoubtedly be sought in the metrical
romances.... But those prose authors who wrote under the imaginary names
of RUSTICIEN DE PISE, Robert de Borron, and the like, usually seized
upon the subject of some old minstrel; and recomposing the whole
narrative after their own fashion, with additional character and
adventure, totally obliterated in that operation any shades which
remained of the original and probably authentic tradition," &c.[6]
Evidently, therefore, Sir Walter regarded Rustician of Pisa as a person
belonging to the same ghostly company as his own Cleishbothams and
Dryasdusts. But in this we see that he was wrong.
In the great Paris Library and elsewhere there are manuscript volumes
containing the stories of the Round Table abridged and somewhat clumsily
combined from the various Prose Romances of that cycle, such as Sir
Tristan, Lancelot, Palamedes, Giron le Courtois, &c., which had been
composed, it would seem, by various Anglo-French gentlemen at the court of
Henry III., styled, or styling themselves, Gasses le Blunt, Luces du Gast,
Robert de Borron, and Helis de Borron. And these abridgments or recasts
are professedly the work of Le Maistre Rusticien de Pise. Several of
them were printed at Paris in the end of the 15th and beginning of the
16th centuries as the works of Rusticien de Pise; and as the preambles and
the like, especially in the form presented in those printed editions,
appear to be due sometimes to the original composers (as Robert and Helis
de Borron) and sometimes to Rusticien de Pise the recaster, there would
seem to have been a good deal of confusion made in regard to their
respective personalities.
From a preamble to one of those compilations which undoubtedly belongs to
Rustician, and which we shall quote at length by and bye, we learn that
Master Rustician "translated" (or perhaps transferred?) his compilation
from a book belonging to King Edward of England, at the time when that
prince went beyond seas to recover the Holy Sepulchre. Now Prince Edward
started for the Holy Land in 1270, spent the winter of that year in
Sicily, and arrived in Palestine in May 1271. He quitted it again in
August, 1272, and passed again by Sicily, where in January, 1273, he heard
of his father's death and his own consequent accession. Paulin Paris
supposes that Rustician was attached to the Sicilian Court of Charles of
Anjou, and that Edward "may have deposited with that king the Romances of
the Round Table, of which all the world was talking, but the manuscripts
of which were still very rare, especially those of the work of Helye de
Borron[7] ... whether by order, or only with permission of the King of
Sicily, our Rustician made haste to read, abridge, and re-arrange the
whole, and when Edward returned to Sicily he recovered possession of the
book from which the indefatigable Pisan had extracted the contents."
But this I believe is, in so far as it passes the facts stated in
Rustician's own preamble, pure hypothesis, for nothing is cited that
connects Rustician with the King of Sicily. And if there be not some such
confusion of personality as we have alluded to, in another of the
preambles, which is quoted by Dunlop as an utterance of Rustician's, that
personage would seem to claim to have been a comrade in arms of the two de
Borrons. We might, therefore, conjecture that Rustician himself had
accompanied Prince Edward to Syria.[8]
[Sidenote: Character of Rustician's Romance compilations.]
40. Rustician's literary work appears from the extracts and remarks of
Paulin Paris to be that of an industrious simple man, without method or
much judgment. "The haste with which he worked is too perceptible; the
adventures are told without connection; you find long stories of Tristan
followed by adventures of his father Meliadus." For the latter derangement
of historical sequence we find a quaint and ingenuous apology offered in
Rustician's epilogue to Giron le Courtois: -
"Cy fine le Maistre Rusticien de Pise son conte en louant et regraciant
le Pere le Filz et le Saint Esperit, et ung mesme Dieu, Filz de la
Benoiste Vierge Marie, de ce qu'il m'a done grace, sens, force, et
memoire, temps et lieu, de me mener a fin de si haulte et si noble
matiere come ceste-cy dont j'ay traicte les faiz et proesses recitez et
recordez a mon livre. Et se aucun me demandoit pour quoy j'ay parle de
Tristan avant que de son pere le Roy Meliadus, le respons que ma matiere
n'estoist pas congneue. Car je ne puis pas scavoir tout, ne mettre
toutes mes paroles par ordre. Et ainsi fine mon conte. Amen."[9]
In a passage of these compilations the Emperor Charlemagne is asked
whether in his judgment King Meliadus or his son Tristan were the better
man? The Emperor's answer is: "I should say that the King Meliadus was the
better man, and I will tell you why I say so. As far as I can see,
everything that Tristan did was done for Love, and his great feats would
never have been done but under the constraint of Love, which was his spur
and goad. Now that never can be said of King Meliadus! For what deeds he
did, he did them not by dint of Love, but by dint of his strong right arm.
Purely out of his own goodness he did good, and not by constraint of
Love." "It will be seen," remarks on this Paulin Paris, "that we are here
a long way removed from the ordinary principles of Round Table Romances.
And one thing besides will be manifest, viz., that Rusticien de Pise was
no Frenchman!"[10]
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