La Belle Hélène de Constantinople (or L'Ystoire de Helayne) is élèa Middle French chanson de geste of the 14th century combining features of epic, romance and hagiography. It exists in both verse and prose versions.
Manuscripts and versions
There are three manuscripts in verse and four in prose. The most extensive verse version, found in a manuscript of Arras, has almost 15,500 alexandrines divided into 399 laisses each with its own end rhyme.
In 1448, Jehan Wauquelin made a prosification for Duke Philip the Good. It survives in the manuscript Royal Library of Belgium MS 9967, illuminated with 26 miniatures by Loyset Liédet between 1460 and 1467. This copy was probably produced to invigorate the declining spirit of crusading.
Synopsis
The main story of La Belle Hélène, although embellished by numerous subplots and action sequences, is of the same type as Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale" and to the folk legend of the Handless Maiden. Although the author describes it as "histoire moult vraie" ('history most true'), it is in fact historical fiction with elements of fantasy.
The anachronistic story appears to be set in Middle Ages, although explicit references point to the reign of Pope Clement I (88–97), the life of Saint Martin of Tours (316–397) or the reign of King Clovis I (481–511). The title character is the daughter of King Antoine of Constantinople. Her mother is a niece of Pope Clement given to Antoine in reward for his bravery against the Saracens. She dies giving birth and her daughter is named after Helena of Constantinople. When she is thirteen years old, Antoine falls in love with her and asks Clement for a dispensation to marry her. The pope agrees only after an angel assures him the union will never be consummated. Antoine successfully defends Rome from the Saracens, but when he returns his daughter has fled to a monastery in Flanders.
When the Saracen king of Flanders falls in love with her, Hélène flees by ship but is captured by pirates. When the pirate captain tries to rape her, she prays to the Virgin Mary, who sends a storm that causes a shipwreck of which Hélène is the sole survivor. Stranded on the coast of England, she is found by King Henry, who marries her against his mother Marguerite's advice. When he goes off to defend Rome from the Turks, leaving his pregnant wife in the care of the earl of Gloucester, his mother tries through fraud to have Hélène and her newborn twin boys executed. The earl, however, only amputates her right arm. He then executes his own sister, Marie, whose death by fire was prophesied at her birth, in Hélène's place. She and her children are set adrift at sea in a rudderless boat.
Hélène and the boys land on the island of Constance (ever since called Scotland), where the children are taken by a wolf and a lion. Believing them dead, Hélène sails for France. The boys are rescued by a hermit named Felix, who names the one Lion and the other Brac, because he is holding his mother's arm (French bras). In Rome, the hundred-year-old pope and King Henry defeat the Turkish king Butor and Henry adopts his crest of three leopards as his own. It is the coat of arms of England down to the present.
Meanwhile, Antoine, still searching for his daughter, exorcises an evil spirit from Graibaut, king of Bavaria, who had fallen in love with his daughter, Clariande. Graibaut retires to a hermitage, leaving Bavaria to Clariande. Antoine goes to Flanders, where he repents of his incestuous desires. In England, he meets a distraught King Henry and the two realize they are in-laws. When the fraud perpetrated by Marguerite is revealed by Antoine's ruse, Henry has her burned to death. Gloucester then reveals that he burned his sister in place of Hélène. The two kings are joined by a third, Amaury of Scotland, exiled by his people on account of his conversion to Christianity.
When they reach the age of sixteen, Lion and Brac go searching for their mother. They come to the court of Clariande, who has recently married the earl of Gloucester, but they must flee when she falls in love with Lion. In France, they are baptised by an archbishop of Tours named Martin. Lion and Brac are christened Martin and Brice. Throughout, their good deeds to the poor are emphasised.