Eustace the Monk – A New Translation of the Romance

Posted by Robert Fortunaso on 6/11/2024

Eustace the Monk (1170?-1217) was an outlaw, a sea captain and a pirate, and in his earlier days, a Benedictine monk. Some of his adventures are similar to those found in a Gest of Robin Hood and Robin Hood and the Potter. He was born in the Boulonnais region of northern France, and is also known as Eustache, but in other variants of the name in Old French, it is spelt as Witasse, Wistace, Wistasces, Uistasces and Uistasses. He was the son of Bauduin Busquet who was said to be a peer of the Boulonnais, and an expert in legal matters. In his youth, Eustace may have received training as a knight; the Histoire des Ducs de Normandie refers to him as a ‘chevaliers de Boulenois’. Eustace has been called the most famous pirate of his day. In the early thirteenth century, he was feared by the English Channel seamen, and he supposedly possessed magical powers.

Eustace is the subject of a romance, written in lines of eight-syllable rhyming couplets, in Old French, with traces of the Picard dialect. I have also discovered a substantial number of lines in the Catalan Romance language. This, and the fragmented nature of the text, has led me to believe that the Romance was composed by more than one person. Li Romans de Witasse le Moine has survived in a single manuscript in a text of 2307 lines (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fr. 1553, ff. 325v, col. b – 328v, col. b.). The date of composition is uncertain, but between 1223 and the early 1230s is likely, although a date as late as 1284 has not been ruled out. Two other versions of the Romance existed at one time, but they have not survived. Denis Conlon has suggested Gerbert de Montreuil as the possible author; he is known as the author of the Roman de la Violette, the text which immediately precedes The Romance of Eustace the Monk in the existing manuscript. However, one of the lost versions of Li Romans de Witasse le Moine was next to the Escanor of Girart d’Amiens. Unless new discoveries come to light, the author/authors will remain anonymous.

The Romance is not the only evidence concerning Eustace. There are references to him and his activities in close rolls, patent rolls, and charters. There are more notable accounts written after his death, particularly those in the chronicles of Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris, written in Latin, the Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, written in French verse, and the Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre, written in French prose. The two French texts give us a good account of Eustace’s death at the Battle of Sandwich, that took place in the Strait of Dover on 24 August 1217. Eustace was in command of the French fleet that was defeated in the battle; his flagship was surrounded and captured by an English force commanded by Hubert de Burgh. Eustace was discovered hiding in the ship’s bilges. He offered large sums for his life, but hated as he was, he was given only one choice: either having his head cut off on the ship’s rail or on the side of the trebuchet that was being brought as deck cargo to England. His head was placed on a lance and taken to Canterbury; later it was paraded in triumph throughout southern England.

His adventures in the Romance are numerous, but in many instances, it is impossible to separate fact from fiction, and there are influences from other tales, such as the Romance of Reynard the Fox or Roman de Renart, and the Anglo-Norman romance Fouke le Fitz Waryn. His main antagonist is Renaud de Dammartin, Count of Boulogne, who is portrayed in the Romance as being incredibly dumb; he fails to recognize Eustace in his several disguises, and the count is outwitted at every turn.

The Romance was first edited by Francisque Michel, and to his edition I have added my English translation, with the aid of online resources. As a guide, I have consulted the version by Glyn S. Burgess.* Apart from capital letters, full stops and commas, I have resisted adding question marks, colons and semi-colons, exclamation marks and quotation marks, thus providing a more authentic view. The rhyming pattern is lost in the translation, resulting in a text that does not flow. However, my aim has been to present as close as possible to the medieval text, my interpretation of the sense and meaning.

*Two Medieval Outlaws: Eustace the Monk and Fouke Fitz Waryn, Glyn S. Burgess, D. S. Brewer, Cambridge, 1997, pp. 50-78.

Other editions: Denis J. Conlon, Li Romans de Witasse le Moine: roman du treizieme siecle, edite d’apres le manuscrit fonds francais 1553 de la Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press (University of North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 126), 1972, 142 pp.

Wendelin Foerster, and Johan Trost. Witasse le Moine: altfranzosischer Abenteuerroman des XIII. Jahrhunderts, nach der einzigen Pariser Handschrift von neuem herausgeben. Halle: Niemeyer (Romanische Bibliothek, 4), 1898, xxxi + 88 pp, reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1976.

This page contains information found in Two Medieval Outlaws: Eustace the Monk and Fouke Fitz Waryn, Glyn S. Burgess, D. S. Brewer, Cambridge, 1997. Introduction, pp. 3-49 and pp. 79-87; Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren. Teams Middle English Texts Series, Medieval Institute Publications, 1997. Other Outlaw Tales in Prose Translation. From Eustache the Monk, translated by Thomas E. Kelly, pp. 668-686; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, H. C. G Matthew and Brian Harrison, Vol. 18, Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 653-4.