BENOIT DE SAINTE-MORE

benoit de sainte-more, or sainte-maure, 12th century french _trouvere_, is supposed to have been a native of sainte-maure in touraine. very little is known of his personal history. the _maitre_ prefixed to his name implies that he had graduated at the university, but there is nothing to show whether he was a simple _trouvere_ by profession or belonged to the clergy. he was a loyal subject of henry ii. of england, to whose court he was attached, and when he speaks of the french, it is as "they." wace had begun a history of the dukes of normandy in his _roman du rou_. this he brought down to the reign of henry i., but here henry ii. seems to have withdrawn his patronage, and at the end of his poem wace refers to a _maistre beneeit_ who had received a similar commission. there is no other contemporary poem extant dealing with the subject except the _chronique des ducs de normandie_, and it would seem reasonable to assume the identity of wace's rival with benoit de sainte-more, whose authorship of the chronicle has, nevertheless, been often disputed. but a comparison of the _roman de troie_, which is certainly benoit's work, with the _chronique_, confirms the supposition that they are by the same author. the poem contains over forty thousand lines, and relates the history of the norman dukes from rollo to henry