17 Gillmeister.indd

What Literary Works Can Tell
Us about Sports and Games:
A Fifteenth-Century Example
Heiner Gillmeister
In the absence of any explicit records, one of the approaches to investigating
medieval games is the analysis of literary works. For this essay, a poem by
Jean Molinet has been singled out for this purpose. Written in the early 1490s
in the Picard dialect, it celebrates the victory of Maximilian, then archduke of
Austria and husband of the duchess of Burgundy, over the rebellious city of
Ghent, an ally of the French.
Molinet was born in Desvres halfway between Saint Omer and
Boulogne-sur-Mer in Artois in 1435 and died, aged 72, in Valenciennes in
Hainaut. Both places belonged at the time to the duchy of Burgundy, and
indeed his allegiance to this duchy was a lifelong one. After studies in Paris
where he obtained a master’s degree, Molinet in 1475 became the successor
of the famous Burgundian court historiographer Georges Chastellain. In
this capacity, he was, of course, a champion of the Burgundian cause in its
struggle with the French king Charles VIII and his allies. One of these was the
Flemish city of Ghent, and when Maximilian in 1492 eventually succeeded in
capturing it, Molinet felt obliged to celebrate his master’s triumph in a ballad.
The poem is part of a poetic tradition first instanced at the beginning
of the fifteenth century in an English poem titled The Batayle of Agincourt,
in which Henry V’s victory in the battle of Agincourt was described by an
unknown English poet in terms of a contemporary tennis match. Here the
canon balls hurled on the French Channel port of Harfleur are likened to the
balls used in a tennis match, the guns — which all have names (very funny
ones such as the King’s Daughter, Messenger etc.)1 — act as players who for the
first time in history make use of the strange method of counting by fifteens
1
Guns have been named throughout history and those recorded in the Agincourt
ballad seem to be the earliest known so far. The Dicke Berta, “Big Bertha,” the 42cm German howitzer of World War I, was so called after Berta Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach,
the manufacturer’s wife.
365
366 Sport and Culture in Early Modern Europe
(Gillmeister 1997, p. 113). The motif of the tennis match as an allegory of a real
battle was, as is well known, adapted much later by Shakespeare in his Henry V,
but there are further examples of the genre in sixteenth-century Holland, e.g., a
poem on the attack of the French on the city of Antwerp by Jeronimus van der
Voort (1583), and another titled “Het Kaetspel van syne Excellentie” (1591) in
which Cornelis van Nierwant, gunner in the Stadholder’s army, rejoices over
the military triumphs of Maurits of Nassau over his papist enemies (Gillmeister
1997, p. 127; de Bondt, p. 69).2
Molinet belonged to the notorious school of the Rhetoricians, the
literary output of which was characterized by an excessive use of wordplay.3
Molinet’s poem on the capture and subjugation of Ghent (described, as in the
Agincourt ballad, in terms of a tennis match) is no exception. But although
this device normally makes the reading of his and his contemporaries’ literary
output extremely difficult, it is a blessing in this case. In order to bring his
message home, Molinet had recourse to a real plethora of tennis terms. Not all
the linguistic intricacies of the text will be dealt with here, only the particularly
interesting ones which shed new light on the evolution of the tennis game will
claim our attention.4 For the remainder, the reader is referred to the annotations
to the poem in the appendix to this article.
The whole poem is centred on an ingenious idea, that of the homonymy
of the French words Gand, the name of the city of Ghent, and gant, denoting the
precursor of the racquet, the glove. Hence, for instance, the double entendre in
the first stanza: “l’archiduc d’Austrisse a Gand en main,” the archduke of Austria
has Ghent in his hand, or has put on a glove. The wordplay itself, intriguing as it
may be for the literary scholar, is of a special significance for the sports historian.
In the fourth stanza, it is said that tennis at the time was played over a line which
spanned the centre of the court. It has always been thought that the line (which
2
De Bondt’s source is Leendertz, 2, 30–34.
3
Cf. http://95.1911encyclopedia.org/M/MO/MOLINET_JEAN.htm 5 September 2004:
“He is noteworthy as the head of the vicious [sic] Burgundian school of poetry known as the
rhétoriqueurs, characterized by the excessive use of puns and of puerile metrical devices.”
His friend Jean Lemaire des Belges called him “le chef et souverain de tous les orateurs et
théoriciens de notre langue gallicane […] renommé par tous les quartiers d’Europe où ladite
langue a lieu.”
4
A more comprehensive analysis of the poem (in German) has appeared in a festschrift
dedicated to Rolf Lessenich, published by Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, Trier, Germany. A century after Molinet, Henri Estienne commented on the ways in which the vocabulary of tennis
had penetrated ordinary French discourse (Estienne, pp. 135–137).
What Literary Works Can Tell Us 367
constitutes an early form of the net) did not come into being before the 1530s
and thus decidedly after the invention of the racquet which took place at the
turn of the century (Gillmeister 1997, p. 49). Molinet now informs us that the
line was apparently introduced well before the racquet: surprisingly, the players
of his time still availed themselves of the good old glove, but disposed of a line!
Another intriguing term is Molinet’s reference to coppenolles in the
third stanza. On the literal level of the tennis game, the term denoted a silver
coin, officially known as the double gros d’argent au lion de Flandre. The man in
the street called it a coppenole after Jean Coppenole, a citizen from Ghent, who
had been granted the right to coin it by the king of France.5 The coin was worth
two gros deniers, and the gros denier, in turn, fifteen deniers or pence. Molinet in
his poem testifies to the fact that in his days at least the great penny was staked in
tennis, and this supports the theory that the strange counting method in tennis
goes back to a specific French coin, the gros denier tournois, the great penny of
Tours (Gillmeister 1997, pp. 123–125).
In the first line of the fourth stanza, we find the phrase en mont et en
vallee, which, of course, seems to make little sense unless one thinks of battles
which can be fought on a hillside as well as in a valley. In a tennis match,
however, a reference to hill and dale would seem irrelevant. Initiates to medieval
and traditional tennis games, however, might know that in these games a
terminological distinction was made between the party defending the so-called
dedans, the gallery to the rear of the server, and their opponents, the former
being referred to as playing upwards, the latter as those playing downwards
(uppe and unne respectively, for example, in the oldest known tennis game,
that of Germany’s Saterland). What we here have before us is, perhaps, the
oldest terminological layer of competitive ball games reminding us that they
all took as their model the medieval chivalric tournament. Here, in the subdiscipline of the passage of arms, the defenders of the castle gate used to be
called those de amont, from above, the attackers as those de aval, from below.
From the tournament, the terms were adopted into medieval football (there are
notable instances of this usage from Italian calcio, the French game of soule and
from traditional football in England).6 From football they found their way into
5
On the brothers Coppenole see Molinet, 3, 981, note to p. 255 (17); cf. also Dupire 1932,
p. 243.
6
Cf. again Gillmeister 1997, pp. 88–96, and 2002b, pp. 111 and 113. Recently, yet another
example of the old distinction between the upwards and downwards positions has come to
light from Italian calcio, cf. Busetto, p. 234, who refers to a late 18th c. painting by Gabriel
368 Sport and Culture in Early Modern Europe
medieval tennis, that brand of football initially played by monks in the
seclusion of their monasteries.
Not only does Molinet avail himself of the terminology of tennis, he
also draws upon that of skittles and chess.7 Chess allegories were very popular
in the Middle Ages. Medievalists in general will be aware of Caxton’s attempt
at writing one, and those familiar with Chaucer will recall his Book of the
Duchess where the Black Knight complains about the loss of his Queen.8 The
game of chess is another example of how the warfare of old gave rise to the
invention of games, in much the same way as was the case with the medieval
sham battle, the tournament. Chess originated in ancient India where it was
called by a Sanskrit term caturanga meaning “consisting of four elements.”
(Syed, pp. 13f.). These were the four divisions of the Indian army: division
one, the king and his counsellor, occupied the centre and was flanked on
either side by war chariots, elephants, and mounted knights (Syed, p. 47).
Each of these divisions of elite fighters was, in turn, supported by ten foot
soldiers (the pawns on our chessboards are what remains of them).
The English noun chess goes back to the plural of Medieval French
eschec (eschecs) (Gillmeister 2002a, p. 67). And this French plural is exemplified
in the first line of stanza 8, although Molinet again could not refrain from
creating another wordplay which was at least understood by those scribes
who wrote jeu d’exés rather than jeu d’eschecs. The French, Molinet wants to
insinuate, played their wicked game “excessively.”9
Of course, continuing his chess allegory Molinet is not quite correct:
even in those days only one king held sway on the chessboard. Molinet
however has a surplus of three, namely Frederick III who was both king of
Bella, Il gioco del calcio a Sant’Alvise, that reproduces an engraving from Giacomo Franco’s
Habiti d’huomeni e donne venetiane (Venice, 1610). Busetto comments on the fact that the
two teams were baptized “del monte” and “del piano.”
7
For an example of a late medieval skittles allegory see Gillmeister 1985, pp. 12 f. and
fig. 3. The latter is a woodcut of 1522 depicting Luther in the company of the Pope and
clerics and the Emperor with knights and his entourage; Luther is holding Holy Scriptures
in the shape of a skittle ball in his left hand. The skittle alley represents “this earthly vale of
tears” at the end of which laymen (the skittles) await their being knocked over. The wager
at stake is life eternal.
8
9
On medieval chess allegories see Petschar, passim.
This instance of wordplay apparently escaped the scribe who penned the variant
“BC j. d’esches” = jeu des esches, cf. Dupire’s different reading of line 57.
What Literary Works Can Tell Us 369
the German-Roman Empire and of Hungary, and his son Maximilian who
had been crowned Roman king in Aachen in 1486.
An interesting terminological development can be observed in the
same stanza. In the Indian and later in the Persian and Arabic game, the
“queen” was male, the king’s counsellor. Hence the medieval French name
fierce, Middle English fers, the term used by Chaucer in his Book of the Duchess,
both derived from Arabic.10 However, the fact that in Chaucer’s poem the fers
on the allegorical plane clearly denoted a woman, namely Blanche, the Black
Knight’s lady, may have paved the way for the introduction of the term queen,
or in this case Molinet’s belle roynette, the ‘beautiful little queen’ referred to
in stanza 8.
In Molinet’s allegory, the beautiful little queen referred to is Anne
de Bretagne, who had been married by proxy to Maximilian. In an act which
caused an outcry in the German Empire,11 Charles VIII had abducted her in
1491 and married her on 6 December at Langeais Castle. Molinet’s hopes that
Maximilian might snatch her away from Charles never materialized, however.
But still his poem in a way proved to be prophetic. On 7 April 1498, when
Charles wanted to show his spouse an interesting tennis match which was in
progress in the moat of his castle of Amboise, and in a hurry to watch it, he
crashed his forehead into a lintel and died as a result (Gillmeister 1997, pp. 21
and 308, n. 52).12 So in a literal sense he met his fate as a result of a tennis match.
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
10
Cf. The Book of the Duchess, vv. 651–654: “At the ches with me she [Fortune] gan
to pleye; / With hir false draughtes dyvers / She staal on me and tok my fers” (Chaucer, p.
338). According to Chaucer, v. 663, chess was invented by Attalus III, king of Pergamos,
who was described as its inventor in the thirteenth c. French Roman de la Rose, to which
Chaucer is indebted here (Chaucer, p. 972, note).
11
12
Cf. Angermann, vol. 1, col. 656 f.
Why the tennis match should have been staged in the castle moat remains a mystery. There existed fully-fledged tennis facilities in the castle proper. Cf. Androuet du Cerceau, who started his expeditions to the monuments he described and his research around
1550 (p. iii). In his description of the castle located above the banks of the river Loire he
states, somewhat misleadingly, the following (p. 2): “Il y a un jeu de paulme en l’une des
courts, pris dans terre comme en un fossé” [?]. Both his ground-plan (plate 6) and his
aerial view (plate 8: “Face du coste de la riviere de Loire”) show a roofless court near the
outer wall on the left and inside the plateau. There is a dedans supported by five pillars, a
side gallery to its right running towards the viewer, and a sagging cord — precursor of the
net — crossing the middle of the court.
370 Sport and Culture in Early Modern Europe
Appendix
Jean Molinet, “Le jeu de palme”
(after July 1492) 13
Vous qui vollés d’honneur porter le palme
Et querir bruit soubz le sceptre romain,
Venés esbattre et jouer a le palme,
Car l’archiduc d’Austrisse a Gand en main,
Qui estoit dur, rude, fort inhumain,
A la main gauche et de fachon estroite,
Mais aujourdhuy, sans attendre a demain,
Est retourne a la bonne main droite.
Gand, endurcy en sa vaine follie,
A tant este frotté et manïet
Qu’il s’est trouvé le peau fort amollie
Par gens qui n’ont le bon sang regnïet
You, who want to wear the palm of honour,
and to seek fame under the Roman sceptre,
Come to be edified and to play tennis,
For the archduke of Austria14 has a glove15
on his fist/Ghent in his hand,
Which had in a hard and inhuman manner
been trussed up in the left hand, but has
today without waiting until tomorrow
returned to the good right hand.
Et s’on lui a les doictiers racourchiet
Nouvellement, par ung trenchant ciseau,
Ghent/the glove, stubborn in her folly,
has been so much chafed and cudgelled
that she now finds that her skin is rather
softened by people who have not denied
their good blood,
and if she has had her fingers curtailed
recently, with a sharp pair of scissors,
C’est pour le mieux: il est sy radouchiet
then this is all the better: she has been
Que l’on y entre ainsy qu’en ung houseau.
made so supple that one slips into her
[Ghent/the glove] as into a stocking. [or
the ‘greave’ or leg-piece of a knight’s armour].
Quand on a mis en jeu les coppenolles,
Gaigniet avons quarante cincq pour trente;
Ceux qui s’y sont rompus col et canolles,
Pour nous grever ont receut povre rente;
Joueurs avons de puissance excellente,
Bons enseigneurs, gens qui gardent les
For when the double silver groats were staked,
we had the lead by 45 points to thirty;
those who broke their neck and windpipe16
Trying to harm us have had little gain;
we have players in excellent shape,
good coaches, people who guard the
13
Quoted from Molinet 1, 254–257 for the date of the poem see Dupire 1932, p. 32.
14
Maximilian I who had married Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles the Bold.
15
Wordplay on gant, ‘glove’ and the French name of the Flemish city of Ghent.
16
Allusion to the fact that the brothers Coppenole were either hanged or beheaded;
cf. Molinet, Glossary, p. 1064 .
What Literary Works Can Tell Us 371
gaiges
wagers 17
Et racacheurs qui n’ont coeur ne bras lentes, and volleyers whose courage and arms are
Pour enverser Franchois plains de
not slow to give the French braggarts a good
langaiges.
hiding.
Dessus la corde, en mont et en vallee,
En plains guillés18 ou en jeus fort estrois,
Tant a revers, de bont que de vollee,
Prestz de jouer sommes trois contre trois:
Nous esperons que verrons les trois roix
Prendre l’estoeuf au roialme de France,
Pour tapper ens coups si puissans et rois
Que Francillons auront griefve souffrance.
Franchois, Gantois, Liegois et
Brabenchons,
Par mal entendre au compte et faultes
grandes,
Ont contre nous perdus plusseurs
parchons,20
Dont maintenant recepvons leurs
offrandes;
Se les Franchois ont mengie nos vïandes
Over the line, serving and receiving,
on flat skittle alleys or in very narrow
courts, backhand, on the [first]
bounce as well as on the volley,
we are ready to play, three against
three; we hope to see the three kings19
snatching the ball away from the
kingdom of France,
to hit it there so powerfully and hard
that the Frenchies will really suffer.
Frenchmen, people from Ghent, Liège
and Brabant,
by misunderstanding the score and
major faults,
have lost against us several games
Par fin malice, ainsy qu’ilz font tousjours,
Pour les ravoir avons les mains friandes:
and that is why we now receive
their reparations;
if the French, by their ignominious
perfidy, have eaten up our provisions
the way they always have done,
then we are itching to get them back:
Le coeur fait l’oeuvre et non point les longs
jours.
the (bold) heart completes the task
and not sluggishness.
Par cy devant avons eu plusseurs faultes
Sans riens gaignier, et sur nos propres
thois;21
That is why we had many disadvantages,
winning nothing, even in our home courts.
Thus it is only proper for us
17
Greimas paraphrases garder les gaiges as ‘demeurer simple spectateurs du combat,’
sitters on the fence, onlookers.
18
Molinet, Glossary, p. 1106 : guillet, plur. guillés, jeu de quilles, i.e., bowling.
19
See above p. 368–369.
20
Subdivisions of a game of jeu de la paume (Molinet, Glossary, p. 1131).
21
Mod. French toits, roofs, meaning here the slanting side roof of an indoor court
onto which the serve was made; thus a metonymy for the court itself.
372 Sport and Culture in Early Modern Europe
Se nous convient retourner sus les haultes to return to the elevated strongholds
Fortes maisons de Bourgonne et d’Arthois. roofs of the courts] of Burgundy and Artois.
Se nous bouttons avec les quatre dois
If we serve with four fingers, while the
Le pauch 22 en gand et le main avons saine, thumb is in the glove [while we have
Ghent under control], having a healthy
hand into the bargain,
Tel coup d’estoeuf tapperons en lourdois,
we will strike the ball so powerfully that
Que l’envoirons dela Paris sus Seine
we will send it beyond Paris on the Seine.
Franchois ont eust beau jeu longue saison,
Mais s’il plaist Dieu, nous arons l’avantaige
The French have long had an easy game,
but if it please God we will have the
advantage at last and win the match,
Et gaignerons le jeu, car sans raison
for without reason they come to play in
Ils vont jouant, sur nostre carpentaige,
our own court [lit. carpentry]23
De nos estoeus et en nostre heritaige,
and with our balls and in our heritage,
Et s’ont promis, affin que ame n’y rue,
and have indeed promised (in order
that nobody might strike back)
De restaurer tout, mais pour tout potaige
to restore everything; but instead of
paying for the drinks [which the losing
Ce n’est que vent: tout vient a riens sur rue. party was obliged to] there is only a gust
of wind and nothing comes of it in the street
[i.e., when they have left the indoor
tennis court].
Franchois expers au fait du jeu d’exés
Samblablement ont mattés les Bretons,
Mais nous, par force et sans nuls mauvais
ghés,24
Au droit du jeu, nos palmes aprestons;
Ils ont remy rocq, chevalier, pions,
Et retenu la belle roynette,
Mais nous avons roix, rocq et champions,
Qui l’amenront en nostre maison nette.
Prince puissant, rice fleur de noblesse,
22
The French are experienced in the game
of chess/excess [see above, p. 368],
in the same way they have checkmated
the Bretons,
but we will, by strength and not by bad tricks,
On the right side of the court, get our
hands ready. They have restored castle,
knight, and pawns, and kept the
beautiful little queen; but we have kings,
castle and champions to restore her to
our stately mansion.
Powerful Prince, precious flower
Mod. French pouce, thumb.
23
There is every likelihood that the noun carpentaige denotes the roof of the gallery,
the penthouse in Real Tennis, and does not simply mean ‘building’, ‘residence.’
24
Ghet, guet, embûche, ‘ambush’ (Molinet, Glossary, p. 1103).
What Literary Works Can Tell Us 373
Qui Gand avés attrapet a vos filz,
Livrés en jeu de celluy qui nous blesse,
Servés25 le roy et l’archiduc son fils;26
Droit est pour nous, j’en suis bien assoufis,
of nobility, who did seize Ghent
for your sons, given as a stake to him
who hurts us, serve the king and his son,
the archduke; the right is with us, that is
something I am convinced of;
Tappés grandz cops, le parchon vaille deux; may you hit magnificent strokes, may
the game count for two;
Les Franchillons vallent que desconfis;
the Frenchies are worth being discomfited;
L ‘estoeuf vous quiert et il s’eslonge d’eulx. the ball seeks you, and avoids them.
Works Cited
Androuet du Cerceau, Jacques (1579) Le second volume des plus excellents
bastiments de France. Paris: Gilles Beys; new enlarged ed. Paris: A.
Lévy, 1870.
Angermann, Norbert, et al., eds. (1980–1999) Lexikon des Mittelalters. 9 vols.
Munich: Artemis Verlag.
Busetto, Giorgio (1995) Cento scene di vita veneziana. Pietro Longhi e Gabriel
Bella alla Querini Stampaglia. Venice: Fondazione Scientifica Querini
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Chaucer, Geoffrey (1987) The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson. 3rd ed.
New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Cockburn, J. S. (ed.) (1979) Calendar of the Assize Records. Kent Indictments
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Cornwallis, Sir Charles (1641) A Discourse of the most Illustrious Prince Henry,
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De Bondt, Cees (1993) Heeft yemant lust met de bal, of met reket te spelen
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Dupire, Noël (1932) Jean Molinet, La vie — les œuvres. Paris: Librairie E. Droz.
25
This may well bet he first occurrence of the term servir used for the opening stroke
in tennis.
26
Frederick III, who died in 1493, and his son Maximilian I. Who then is the Prince
addressed in the first line? It could be Frederick again, and servés could be a summons to
the common people to support him and his son.
374 Sport and Culture in Early Modern Europe
________ (1939) “Mots rares des Faictz et Dictz de Jean Molinet.” Romania
65, 1–38.
Estienne, Henri (1896) La precellence du langage françois, éd. E. Huguet.
Paris: Armand Colin; orig. ed. Paris: Mamert Patisson, 1579.
Gillmeister, Heiner (1985) “Trousser son sac et ses quills. Petite histoire
du jeu de quills” in Kegel und Kugel [exhibition catalogue]. Basel:
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________ (1990) Kulturgeschichte des Tennis. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
________ (1997) Tennis. A Cultural History. London: Leicester University
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________ (2002b) “Les sports et les jeux: origines et diffusion” in: Jean-Marc
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Greimas, A. J. (1968) Dictionnaire de l’ancien français jusqu’au milieu de XIVe
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Leendertz, Pieter (ed.) (1924–25) Het Geuzenliedboek; Naar de oude drukken
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Molinet, Jean (1936–1939) Les faictz et dictz, ed. Noël Dupire. 3 vols. Paris :
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Petschar, H. (1995) “Das Schachspiel in der Literatur; Schachbücher,
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Syed, Renate (2001) Kanauj, die Maukharis und das Caturanga. Der Ursprung
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What Literary Works Can Tell Us 375
Figure 19.1: A fifteenth-century tennis-court with its carpentaige, the slanting roof onto which the ball had to be sent by an underarm stroke in order
to start a rally. A marker is standing in the doorway, his job being to indicate
a chase by means of a wooden tablet on the pitch. On the far left, swinging
a purse filled with coppenolles, a fan demonstrates that money was staked in
medieval tennis. Strangely enough, the woodcut was designed by the Master of Anne de Bretagne, the “little queen” of Molinet’s poem. Simon Vostre,
Hore beate marie virginis secundum Vsum Romanum, Paris, c.1510 (Month
of November). Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich, Im. mort. 37. On the
provenance of this miniature see Wieck, p. 33.