Historians' devotion to primary sources is unquestioned. We urge them on our students hoping to entrance them with eyewitness accounts. They hold pride of place in our bibliographies. Our training has cautioned us against trusting them, and we interrogate them for silences as well as not-so-hidden agendas. But do we fully realize their hazards or comprehend their own multi-layered source bases? Livia Visser-Fuchs's meticulous study of Jean de Wavrin's Recueil des croniques et anchiennes histoires de la Grant Bretaigne a present nomme Engleterre provides an exemplary analysis of a fifteenth-century chronicle often relied upon today but never before so seriously examined, not only for its own veracity but for the world of late medieval Burgundian culture it reflects.
The preface, contributed by David Morgan, focuses on English royal library collections of histories and the reasons behind their presentations. While possible to connect them to the political and military events of their dates of presentation, and to see them as diplomatic instruments, the pure pleasure such writings gave to readers cannot be dismissed. It is in these early pages that we are introduced to the creative spark that brought forth the Recueil, namely a 1446 conversation between two members of the duke of Burgundy's court. Returning crusader Walerand de Wavrin and his retired soldier uncle Jean pondered the lack of a proper, full-length history of England, an observation that would set the older man on a project lasting the next quarter century, of compiling and composing an anthology of historical materials.
Visser-Fuchs's introduction, "Setting the Scene," provides a concise review of the tripartite relations involving France, England, and the duchy of Burgundy from the late fourteenth century. She is particularly interested in how the literary set in each realm viewed each other, and what drove Jean de Wavrin in particular to delve so deeply not only into English politics, but also national character, lifestyle, and habits as well. As soldier, writer, book collector, and admirer of chivalry, Wavrin wrote a book he and his peers wanted to read, one that informed pleasurably and kept one from the sin of idleness.
The first chapter examines what can be known of Wavrin's family and circle of friends. Born about 1400, Jean himself was an illegitimate member of a noble family of Picardy. Choosing the military as his career, he was present at the battle of Agincourt, where his father and elder brother were killed, and he campaigned all over Europe for twenty more years. By his late thirties, he had married a wealthy widow, become a trusted member of Duke Philip the Good's government as well as a solid citizen of Lille, and nourished his literary interests with book collection and writing. The 1460s saw him joining an embassy to ally with the pope and various Italian princes to organize a crusade against the Turks, a particular passion of Philip's but one the duke never joined in person. His participation in the Smithfield jousts of 1467 allowed him to visit England and assess the splendor of the Yorkist court for himself, perhaps also persuading him to expand the scope of hisRecueil beyond the early fifteenth century. Visser-Fuchs speculates that Wavrin could have been a part of Charles the Bold's intelligence service regarding relations with Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III and with the French king, but what is more certain is Jean's reputation for loyalty, trust, and discretion in affairs both foreign and domestic. Extended family and his circle of friends complemented his literary interests, being collectors and writers themselves, as well as counselors close to the Burgundian dukes.
Without a booklist or inventory of goods, a reconstruction of Wavrin's manuscript collection poses challenges detailed in the second chapter. This is a valuable section analyzing book production and circles of craftsmen and collectors. There exist twenty manuscripts, containing thirty texts, which Wavrin certainly owned, bearing his heraldic arms or signature. Nine are romances, and his own part in their composition remains unclear. He certainly favored rousing tales of chivalric action, crusading adventures, exotic travel, and stories featuring the sometimes mythical ancestors of famous contemporaries. His non-fiction collection includes texts with a religious or moral focus, reference books on both medicine and crusading, and the requisite military manuals such as a composite volume containing Vegetius's De re militari and parts of Frontinus'sStrategemata translated into French. Eleven of the twenty were illustrated, and Jean's interest in the lively, unconventional figures of the "Wavrin Master" which illustrate some of his romances was shared by Duke Philip himself. Readers are fortunate to have high quality color reproductions of scenes from several of Jean's manuscripts at the end of the text.
Chapter 3 begins the detailed examination of the Recueil, its sources, and Wavrin's method of compilation. Jean's prologue stated that the work was dedicated to his nephew Walerand Lord of Wavrin, as a result of the conversation mentioned above. Duke Philip, who tended to prefer more fictional works than historical accounts, neither patronized this work nor earned its dedication. Originally planned to be four volumes, concluding with the death of Henry IV, the work grew to six volumes ending with the events of August 1471. For the earliest section, from the founding of Britain to c.1400, Wavrin adapted sources ranging from a romance, French versions of Geoffrey of Monmouth and a Prose Brut, to the requisite Froissart. Wavrin's scribes sometimes copied from these sources blindly, repeating the original authors' asides or comments that by Jean's time would have struck readers as oddly anachronistic.
For the fifteenth-century material, most appealing and valuable to modern researchers, Visser-Fuchs dedicates the fifth and sixth chapters to detailed analysis of the sources. Beginning with chronicles, she notes Wavrin's reliance upon the works of Enguerrand de Monstrelet and King of Arms of the Order of the Golden Fleece Jean Lefèvre de Saint-Rémy. Reliance, and consultation, but not slavish copying: Wavrin made their material his own, embellishing their accounts with the kind of language and intimate knowledge of military affairs gained from a long career in the field. This is best seen in his account of the 1403 battle of Shrewsbury, seemingly taken from a very thin source, but fleshed out with descriptions straight from the prose romances on his library shelves.
The second part of the source analysis deals with newsletters, resources that rarely survive today yet appear to have been widely distributed and collected, forming the core of contemporaries' knowledge of events. His nephew Walerand, along with others in his group, reported on the mid-1440s expedition along the Danube to help the Hungarians fend off the Turks and prevent the sultan from destroying Constantinople. (Jean himself some twenty years later served with some of these men on his crusade embassy to Italy and no doubt heard their versions.) The account, as Jean presents it, contains lively and realistic details of combat in exotic locales. It has absolutely nothing to do with a history of England, but Jean defended its inclusion on the grounds that no other book had such an account. Its entertainment value and the inclusion of a family member would also have made it impossible to resist.
Visser-Fuchs spends the most time on newsletters concerning Richard Neville earl of Warwick, a figure Wavrin met in person and whose changing political alliances disturbed the Burgundian loyalist. Wavrin seems to have worked with a number of newsletters covering the end of Henry VI's reign, the rise of Richard duke of York and his family, and Warwick's role as enabler of the Yorkists, as well as more focused accounts of battles like Towton. But he was composing this part of the text when Warwick had abandoned Edward IV's cause and sought reconciliation with Henry VI and the French to restore the former to the English throne. Visser-Fuchs identifies one of Wavrin's sources as a kind of "apology" composed by Warwick's circle and circulated to assure foreign leaders that he was back in the Lancastrian fold. Other newsletters were much more hostile to Warwick's changes in allegiance, and Wavrin could not deny the facts, although he stressed his disappointment with the actions of one who had once behaved with bravery and chivalry.
The final chapter and the conclusion return to the person of Wavrin himself and what we can know of his attitude towards war, chivalry, and international relations. The sections on sources establish that he and other writers of his circle relied heavily not only upon the famous named chronicles, but also upon heralds' reports, ambassadors' speeches, princes' letters, and general newsletters, some of which were preserved in administrative archives but most too ephemeral to survive long. Although the Recueil is mostly about wars and battles, and Wavrin had experience in the field, his accounts are something more than an eyewitness's chronological accounting able to pass the reliability tests imposed by modern historians. His mosaic of sources provided depth and scope to his work, but what truly gave unity and a form beyond their individuality was the romance element that fleshed out events and delighted his readers. His work shared with the widely read and collected prose romances a celebration of "all contemporary values and brought to life all the dreams and preoccupations of the 'Burgundian' nobility, their taste, their culture, their savoir-vivre, and their convictions" (494).
Visser-Fuchs deserves high praise for her detailed and incisive study of the aims and methods of an intriguing figure. This review cannot do full justice to the analysis dedicated to the various manuscripts of the Recueil, and can only mention the inclusion of ten appendices filled with valuable information regarding genealogy, book ownership, and vocabulary analysis. Perhaps her most valuable contribution will be the unsettling awareness she instills in her readers that all of their primary sources deserve this level of interrogation and deconstruction.