L’oultré d’amour pour amour morte (The Lover’s Lament over the Death of his Love)

L’oultré d’amour pour amour morte (The Lover’s Lament over the Death of his Love)

This short, rhymed work in French by the Burgundian chronicler and poet Georges Chastellain (ca. 1402/1415–75) is entitled L’oultré d’amour pour amour morte, or “The Lover’s Lament over the Death of his Love” in English. Chastellain was a prominent figure at the Burgundian court, serving dukes Phillip the Good and Charles the Bold with distinction. This copy was likely produced in Western France in the 1460s or 1470s, possibly dating from Chastellain’s lifetime. Given the popularity of this text in Renaissance France, this manuscript is especially notable because of its subsequent presence in an important humanist library, that of Jacques Thiboust (1492–1555), a noted book collector in early sixteenth-century France who served as a notary and secretary to King Francis I and his sister Marguerite de Valois.

Author: Georges Chastellain

ca. 1470

Manuscript on parchment, 37 fols.

The Rosenbach Library and Museum, MS 443/21

Angers (?), France