Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, in William of Jumièges,
Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, The Gesta Normannorum
Ducum, 2 volumes, ed. & trans. Elisabeth M. C. van
Houts, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992-1995):
1:xxviii-xxix. ©1992, Elisabeth M. C. van Houts.
— xxviii —
The earliest possible literary composition [at Jumièges
after its refoundation] may have been the Lament on the
Death of William Longsword. The planctus was written
after 942 when the Norman William was murdered, but before 963,
the year of the death of William III of Aquitaine, who is mentioned
as being still alive. Its composition should probably be dated
shortly after December 942.41 Although its two manuscripts
are of non-Norman origin,42 the
— xxix —
poem itself is a contemporary source for the refoundation of
Jumièges by William Longsword, the arrival of Abbot Martin
from Poitiers, William's wish to become a monk at Jumièges,
and the gruesome details of his death. It ends with an apostrophe
to Richard I. The most likely place where all this information
would have been known was of course Jumièges, though
the references to Abbot Martin and William III do not exclude
the possibility that the poem might have been written at Poitiers.43
NOTES
41. Editions by J. Lair, Bibliothèque de l'École
des Chartes, xxxi (1870), 392-40; P. Lauer, Le Règne
de Louis IV, pp. 319-23; and P. A. Becker, 'Der planctus
auf den Normannenherzog Wilhelm Langschwert (942)', Zeitschrift
für französische Sprache und Literatur, lxiii
(1939), 190-7. For its genre, see C. Thiry, La Plainte funèbre
(Turnhout, 1978); J. Yearly, 'A bibliography of planctus', Journal
of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, iv (1981),
12-52, at p. 21. no. L80. Lauer's edition is the best. For Count
William III, see Lauer, p. 323: 'al[ter] quoque adhuc fulget
pictaue[n]sis'. The wild conjecture of Becker in str. xv (see
his edn., pp 195, 197 n. 1) should be rejected.
42. Clermont-Ferrand, BM 240, fo. 45r; see also
G. de Poerck's detailed discussion of this manuscript, 'Le Ms
Clermont-Ferrand 240...', Scriptorium, xviii (1964),
11-33, at p. 25. It was written about the middle of the 10th
c. at the cathedral of Clermont; the planctus is one
of four poems added slightly later. In the second slightly younger
manuscript, Bibliotheca Mediceo-Laurenziana 30, fos. 21v-22v,
the planctus is an early 11th-c. addition; see de Poerck,
p. 25 no. 2.
43. Abbot Anno of Jumièges and Micy (d. 973) may well
have been the author.