Rutebeuf

Rutebeuf (or Rustebuef) (fl. 1245 – 1285), a trouvère, was born in the first half of the 13th century, possibly in Champagne (he describes conflicts in Troyes in 1249); he was evidently of humble birth, and he was a Parisian by education and residence. His name is nowhere mentioned by his contemporaries. He frequently plays in his verse on the word Rutebeuf, which was a nom de plume, and is variously explained by him as derived from rude boeuf and rude oeuvre ("coarse ox" or "rustic piece of work"). Paulin Paris thought that he began life in the lowest rank of the minstrel profession as a jongleur (juggler and musician). Some of his poems have autobiographical value. In Le Mariage de Rutebeuf ("The Marriage of Rutebeuf") he says that on the 2 January 1261 he married a woman old and ugly, with neither dowry nor amiability. In the Complainte de Rutebeuf he details a series of misfortunes which have reduced him to abject destitution. In these circumstances he addresses himself to Alphonse, comte de Poitiers, brother of Louis IX, for relief. Other poems in the same vein reveal that his own miserable circumstances were chiefly due to a love of play, particularly a game played with dice; which was known as griesche. It would seem that his distress could not be due to lack of patrons; for his metrical Life of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary was written by request of Erard de Valery, who wished to present it to Isabel, queen of Navarre; and he wrote elegies on the deaths of Anceau de l'Isle Adam, the third of the name, who died about 1251, Eudes, comte de Nevers (died 1267), Theobald II of Navarre (died 1270), and Alphonse, comte de Poitiers (d. 1271), which were probably paid for by the families of the personages celebrated. In the Pauvreté de Rutebeuf ("The Poverty of Rutebeuf"), he addresses Louis IX himself.

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