Talbot Shrewsbury Book
The Talbot Shrewsbury Book (London, British Library Royal 15 E vi) is a very large richly-illuminated manuscript made in Rouen (Normandy) in 1444/5.
It contains a unique collection of fifteen texts in French, including chansons de geste, chivalric romances, treatises on warfare and chivalry, and finally the Statutes of the Order of the Garter.
The work is an excellent example of book production in Rouen in the mid-fifteenth century and provides a rare insight into the political views of the English military leader and close confidant of the crown, John Talbot.
Following the two-page presentation miniature and dedication, tales of heroes and heroines of the past, both real and imaginary, in the form of chansons de geste (verse epics), and chivalric romances fill two-thirds of the volume.
5-24v) is a thirteenth-century French version[1] of the Historia de preliis (a Latin translation of the original Greek legend of Alexander, falsely attributed to Callisthenes).
[2] Alexander the Great is portrayed as the ultimate hero who conquers the known world, battles flying dragons, meets Amazonian women and horned men, and is lowered into the sea in a cask.
The following five tales are set in the time of Charlemagne, the great military hero and Holy Roman emperor, whose reign provides the background to a huge epic cycle involving a plethora of subsidiary characters.
Ogier, the Danish hero and enemy of Charlemagne, marries an English princess and becomes King of England, bearing a son by Morgan le Fee while he is shipwrecked on Avalon.
He is taught chivalry by his foster-father, Heraud, and embarks on a series of successful adventures, but later comes to regret his violent past and goes on a crusade, then retires to a hermitage.
The last romance in the collection is a chanson called Lystoire du chevalier au Cygne,[11] an abridged version of part of the vast Crusade cycle.
The remainder of the manuscript (from folio 293 onwards) contains texts which are more didactic in nature, perhaps intended for the instruction of Margaret of Anjou or of her future sons and heirs.
Larbre des batailles is a treatise on war and the laws of battle, written for a wide audience in the style of a scholastic dialogue; a question is posed, both sides are debated and a conclusion follows.
It begins in the time of the legendary Aubert and his son Robert le Diable, during the reign of Pepin, father of Charlemagne, the early part up to 1189 being a prose version of Wace's Roman de Rou.
The dedication poem beneath begins 'Princesse tres excellente / ce livre cy vous presente / De schrosbery le conte'; the royal arms of England and Anjou are included in the borders of this and many of the full-page images which precede the texts as are daisies (marguerites) referring to her name.
The common theme of the contents is the art of chivalry, a fitting subject for a military commander such as the Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, who commissioned the work, but perhaps not entirely suitable for a Queen.
For further information on the individual texts, i.e. authors, bibliography and lists of surviving manuscripts see ARLIMA: Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge.
