ROMANCE OF THE ROSE 193 
Jean le Févre under the title Les Lamentations de Matheolus.! Matheolus 
(or Mahieu as he was called in the dialect of his own district) looked at 
marriage from the standpoint of one who had suffered much from that 
institution. He was deprived of the privileges of the clerical order 
because he had married a widow, and failed to find in the latter’s society 
sufficient compensations for this sacrifice. The Lamenta, inaccessible 
to the multitude, as had been indeed the sayings of the great Latin 
writers before they were put into popular form by Jean de Meung, 
became very widely read in the French translation made by Jean le 
Févre. It is interesting for us to note as chief sources of Matheolus’ 
work: the De Nuptiis of Theophrastus, the De Planctu Nature of Alain 
de Lille, the collections of Exempla, and possibly the Roman de la Rose 
itself. 
Jean le Févre, however, surprised at the success of the Lamentations 
in strengthening the hold of the philosophy of life taught in the Roman 
de la Rose, or feeling that this vivid presentation of the evils of the 
married state was considerably overdrawn, tried to stem the tide of 
feeling by writing a refutation of the Lamentations, which he called the 
Livre de Leesce.? This praiseworthy attempt failed completely, and the 
book against which it was directed, in spite of the attacks of Christine 
de Pisan,* who saw its real character, became more and more popular. 
The influence of the Roman de la Rose is evident in the Roman de 
Fauvel* (which is likewise composed of two independent parts) particu- 
larly in its satires on the different classes of society and in its general 
pessimistic outlook upon life; and is still more strongly seen in the Re- 
gistre of Gilles li Muisis.° 
This Benedictine abbot was a great admirer of the famous romance, 
and traces of the thought contained therein may be plainly seen in his 
long arraignment of conditions then existing, as compared with the 

1 Printed several times. Ci. Le Livre de Matheolus, poème français du XIVe 
siècle, par Jean le Févre, Brussels, A. Mertens et fils, 1864. M. A. Piaget quotes 
from the edition of Ol. Arnoullet, Lyons (Bib. Nat. Rés. Y, 4420). For a critical 
edition of both Latin and French texts cf. A. G. Van Hamel, Les Lamentations de 
Matheolus et le Livre de Leesce de Jehan le Fèvre, Paris, 1892-1905. Cf. also Ch.-V. 
Langlois, La Vie en France au moyen-âge d’après quelques moralistes du temps, Paris 
1908, and Ed. Tricotel’s analysis in the Bulletin du Bibliophile 32e année, 1866, pp. 
552 sqq. I have not been able to consult V.-J. Vaillant, Maistre Mahieu, 
satirique boulonnais du XIIIe siècle. 
? Ed. Michel LeNoir, Paris, 1518 (Bib. Nat. Rés. Y. 4421.) 
3 Cf. La Cité des Dames, as yet unpublished. 
4 Called the Roman de Fauvel et Fortune, dated 1314. Bib. nat. fr. 571. Pu- 
blished at St. Petersburg, 1888, by A. Bobrinsky and Th. Batiouchkof. Cf. C.-V. 
Langlois, op. cit. p. 277 sqq. 
5 Poésies de Gilles li Muisis, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, Louvain, 1882. The 
Registre was written probably in 1350. 
Sec. II., 1910. 13. 
