Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence

Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence, also known as Garnier, was a 12th-century French scribe and one of the ten contemporary biographers of Saint Thomas Becket of Canterbury.

All that we know about Guernes is what he tells us, directly or indirectly, through his sole text, Vie de Saint Thomas Becket. He was born in the little French town of Pont-Sainte-Maxence, and was a wandering Christian cleric with good command of Latin. Shortly after Thomas Becket's death in 1170 Guernes set out to compose a vernacular-French, biographical poem of Becket's life. He completed his first draft in 1172, working from Europe, but it was stolen before he could correct it. This first draft was compiled only from secondary sources and drew mainly on an earlier biography by Edward Grim, who witnessed Becket's Death first hand and was wounded trying to save him. Guernes immediately started working on a second draft and, being a wandering cleric, left Europe to interview the eyewitnesses of Becket's death in the Canterbury area. Guernes completed the text, in 1174, drawing primarily on Edward Grim and William of Canterbury, and consulting Benedict of Peterborough and William Fitzstephen. Although Guernes did not personally know Becket, he tells us he saw him numerous times riding against the French.

Guernes's work is the earliest-known life of Becket written in French, and the earliest known verse life of Becket. There are six manuscripts of the second draft, all of them are Anglo-Norman and none of them older than the 13th-century. In 1977, Ian Short examined a fragment of the first draft which was assumed lost and noted that the second draft was far less influenced by Grim.

The poem is composed of 6,180 lines grouped in 5-line, mono-rhymed stanzas, and the form is of a "dignified and serious alexandrine." It is written in vernacular French, slightly affected by Picard and Anglo-Norman. The Picardism comes from Pont-Sainte-Maxence’s close proximity to Picardy, which Guernes downplays by highlighting that Pont-Sainte-Maxence is within France’s boundaries, therefore his language is good. The poem is further coloured with hints of Anglo-Norman because it was copied by Anglo-Norman scribes. Guernes’s language is relatively free of dialectical traits, and it has therefore been concluded that he wrote in the literary language of the period.

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