Merlin as a prophet in the manuscripts of the Chroniques des Bretons and Jean de Wavrin’s Chroniques d’Angleterre (15th c.)

This paper highlights the central importance of the Matter of Britain in medieval culture, especially the remarkable and widespread influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Merlin’s prophecies, through histories of Britain written in the kingdom of France claiming to be histories rather than romances. The late medieval French adaptations of Merlin’s prophecies, which have been little studied so far, raise important issues of translation, interpretation and reception. These translations survive in two tight clusters of sometimes quite closely related manuscripts, the Chroniques des Bretons, an anonymous translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, produced in Burgundian circles at the beginning of the 15th century, which survives in four manuscripts and Jean de Wavrin’s Recueil des Cronicques et Anchiennes Istoires de la Grant Bretaigne, which survives in several manuscripts, three of which were illuminated by the Master of the Chronique d’Angleterre around 1470-80. In this paper, I examine how Merlin’s prophecies are textually and visually integrated into French adaptations of the history of the kings of Britain circulating in 15th century Burgundy. While the paratextual apparatus adopted in the French text remains relatively stable, the adaptor offers a didactic interpretation of Merlin’s prophecies whose iconography varies considerably, even in copies illustrated by the same artist. This study of the translation and interpretation of Merlin’s prophecies in the illuminated manuscripts of the Chroniques des Bretons and of the Chroniques of Jean de Wavrin enlighten the practice of adaptation and historical writing at the court of Burgundy and its bibliophile culture.