() is an
Old French
Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...
work about the birth and youth of
Constantine the Great
Constantine I ( , ; la, Flavius Valerius Constantinus, ; ; 27 February 22 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337, the first one to Constantine the Great and Christianity, convert to Christiani ...
.
It survives in a verse and in a prose version. The verse version has 630 octosyllabic rhyming lines. It survives in a single manuscript,
Det Kongelige Bibliotek
The Royal Library ( da, Det Kongelige Bibliotek) in Copenhagen is the national library of Denmark and the university library of the University of Copenhagen. It is among the largest libraries in the world and the largest in the Nordic countrie ...
, GKS 2061 4°, foll. 149vb-154ra (ed. Wesselofsky, 1877).
The prose version is from BNF français, 24430.
A critical edition of both versions was published by Coveney (1955).
Dated to the second half of the 13th century, the work redeploys the motif of the "swan-children" known from earlier romances, as well as a number of episodes known from the ''
Roman de Silence''. It is the earliest known representative of the medieval cycle of legends attached to Constantine the Great.
[Jacques Merceron, ''Le message et sa fiction: la communication par messager dans la littérature française des XIIe et XIIIe siècles'', Volume 128 of Modern Philology, University of California Press, 1998]
p. 163
The narrative follows the following lines: Prophesy to the emperor announcing the wedding of his newly-born daughter with the newly-born son of a commoner, opposition of the emperor against this dishonorable union, attempted infanticide, abandonment and fostering of the child, rediscovery of the young Constantine, renewed attempt at having Constantine killed by sending him as a messenger bearing a "treacherous letter" (advising the recipient to kill the bearer, as in
Bellerophon
Bellerophon (; Ancient Greek: Βελλεροφῶν) or Bellerophontes (), born as Hipponous, was a hero of Greek mythology. He was "the greatest hero and slayer of monsters, alongside Cadmus and Perseus, before the days of Heracles", and his ...
and
Amleth
Amleth (; Latinized as ''Amlethus'') is a figure in a medieval Scandinavian legend, the direct inspiration of the character of Prince Hamlet, the hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy ''Hamlet, Prince of Denmark''. The chief authority for the l ...
), chance meeting with the emperor's daughter in the imperial gardens, substitution of the traitorous letter with one advising the marriage of the bearer to the princess, and finally the marriage of the hero and his inheritance of the realm.
Translations
*E. M. Wilmot-Buxton, '' Stories from Old French Romance'', New York, Stokes, (no date) pp. 22-29.
*Eugene Mason, '' The Story of King Constant'', Cambridge (Ontario), 2001.
Notes
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Bibliography
*Raynaud de Lage, Guy, et Christine Ruby, « Empereur Constant », Dictionnaire des lettres françaises: le Moyen Âge, éd. Geneviève Hasenohr et Michel Zink, Paris, Fayard, 1992, p. 405.
*Wesselofsky, A. N., « Constantinische Sagen », Russische Revue, 6, 1875, p. 178-207.
*Wesselofsky, A. N., « Le dit de l'empereur Coustant », Romania, 6, 1877, p. 161-198.
*Taylor, Steven M., « Constantine the Great: folk hero of the fourth crusade », ''Neophilologus'', 64, 1980, p. 32-37.
* L. Moland, C. d'Héricault (eds.), ''Nouvelles françoises en prose du XIIIe siècle publiées d'après les manuscrits'', Paris, Jannet (Bibliothèque elzévirienne), 1856, pp. 3-32.
*James Coveney, ''Édition critique des versions en vers et en prose de "La légende de l'empereur Constant" avec une étude linguistique et littéraire'', Paris, Les Belles Lettres (Publications de la Faculté des lettres de l'Université de Strasbourg, 126), 1955.
Old French texts
13th-century books
Cultural depictions of Constantine the Great