As the high Middle Ages progress, a greater sense of specificity about prices and income emerges. The contrast may be observed in two versions of the tale of a noble twin girl left in an ash tree bough who falls in love with a prince. In Marie de France’s version, Le Frene (c. 1160-70), it is specified simply that the girl was left wrapped in a rich medallion-patterned Byzantine silk with a ring weighing an ounce and containing a “jagonce” stone to finance her care (lines 121-31). Fresne, the foundling heroine of Galeran de Bretagne (c. 1195-1225),40 written a generation later, is left with 500 bezants of gold in her cradle for her upkeep (lines 490, 988, 7194) and an embroidered cloth which, when she considers pawning it to finance her journey, she estimates to be worth from 60 to 100 marks (lines 3980-1, 6595). The abbess, her caretaker, has spent all the bezants by the time the girl is nubile. We are given to understand that this is a noble amount of money, but not enough for twenty years of expenses as well as a dowry. The considerable increase in amplification on the practical matter of finances coincides with economic changes occurring over this period, such as increased use and availability of coins, and the possibility of expressing annual income needs in concrete monetary terms.
Renart, Galeran de Bretagne.
When Fresne and Galeran finally do marry, for her dowry her newly rediscovered father, a landholder in Bretagne, proposes a forest, a thousand marks, and three of his castles. Galeran, now Gount of Bretagne, graciously refuses the dowry and proposes a dower instead (lines 7660-76). The heroine’s income is subordinate to the hero’s, but when she was penniless, there was no hope of marriage. Income is not as important or treated with great detail when the hero of the romance is from the highest echelon of society, for Galeran as for others such as the young emperors Conrad in Guillaume de Dole (c. 1209-28) or Alexandre in Cliges (c. 1176), or the King of Scotland in Philippe de Remi’s La Manekine (1225-29).41 For the young noble hoping to inherit, however, exact income sums become frequently employed descriptive elements in character development.
One of the most remarkable aspects of Jehan et Blonde (c. 1230-43) is its very exact depiction of the importance of money. Philippe de Remi gives precise and unexaggerated figures, in contrast with the “thousand marks” typical of earlier romances. This realistic cost-consciousness distinguishes the final wedding portrait of Blonde from other standard portraits of the genre.
Atant fu Blonde apparillie:
Cote de drap d’or bien taillie Avoit, et a son col mantel.
Bien en valoient li tassel,
Mien escient, quatorze mars.42
Then Blonde was dressed:
She had a well-cut cote of cloth of gold,
And a mantel at her throat.
The whole outfit was worth, in my estimation, fourteen marks.
Besides dwelling on her radiance, the narrator very pragmatically observes that her set of clothes was worth fourteen marks. Costly, but not in a fantastic way. Narratively, the portrait serves to advertise the improvement in Jehan’s status by his marriage.43 This is particularly evident both in the narrator’s comment on the improvement of Blonde’s beauty wrought by her hairdresser’s skill (“S’estoient ja tout entrataint,/ Plus biaus que je ne devisai/ Au premier, quant de li parlai,” Now that [her hair] was all dressed, it was more beautiful than when I first described it earlier, lines 4721-2) and in the portrait’s inventory of the wealth represented by her toilette. Whereas many romance writers ornament such descriptions with similes amplifying the lady’s beauty (for
Philippe de Remi, Le Roman de la Manekine:. on date, pp. 83-91.
Philippe de Remi, Jehan et Blonde, lines 4711-15.
43 On Jehan’s strategic use of marriage customs to improve his status, Gouttebroze, “De la strategie matrimoniale.” example, a “throat as white as snow”),298 Philippe de Remi focuses on the quality of workmanship that has contributed to producing her appearance. her hair is not fabulously golden or like a gleaming light: it was styled by a very skillful servant, “mie plains de perece” (not lazy in the least, lines 4716-19), whose work and presence at court is a sign of the couple’s new assets.
Blonde’s jeweled belt and bag were worth a hundred marks, again a significant figure, yet neither an astronomically mythical nor a vague one.
Ele eut ausmosniere et gainture.
En tant comme li siecles dure Ne fust sa pareille trouvee:
D’or et de pieres ert ouvree,
Et de pelles gros comme pois; qui la fist plus i mist d’un mois;
Cent livres, mien essient, vaut.299
She had an alms purse and belt.
Never in the history of the age
Could anything like it be found:
It was worked in gold and precious stones,
With pearls as big as peas;
Whoever made it must have taken a month;
It was worth a hundred pounds, I wager.
Beyond the boasted expense in this example, the aumoniere as a style is a highly significant accessory for this discussion of spending money. Appearing in texts in the mid-twelfth century and in the iconography at the end of the century,300 these bags foregrounded the possession of coins, carrying them in richly decorated pouches hanging from a belt at the front of the robe, making spending money (or alms money, as one chose to use it) a centerpiece of the toilette. Note that her bag was worth far more at a hundred pounds than her gown at fourteen marks.
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