A Lost Copy of the Old French Vie (or Chanson) de Saint Alexis (Alexandrine Quatrain Version)

Abstract

The Municipal Library of Tournai was struck in an air raid during the Second World War. Among the valuable manuscripts that were lost was Bibliothèque de la ville de Tournai MS 129, a fragmentary manuscript containing the alexandrine quatrain version of the Old French Vie de Saint Alexis. This poem, also known as the Chanson de Saint Alexis, represents one of the oldest surviving poetic traditions in French and enjoyed considerable popularity during the centuries after it was produced. Despite considerable scholarship on the Vie de Saint Alexis, the Tournai MS has gone largely unnoticed and is not mentioned in editions of the decasyllabic version of the Vie, nor is it mentioned in the only edition of the quatrain version. Thankfully, a nineteenth-century transcription of the lost Tournai copy survived the war. This article compares this transcription to surviving versions of the Vie de Saint Alexis to explore how the lost Tournai text intersects with, and illuminates, the broader tradition of the poem.