Guillaume d’Angleterre emulo di Sant’Eustachio. Verso una santità laica

VIRDIS, MAURIZIO

2016-01-01

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Abstract

The novel of Guillaume d’Angleterre, as well known, follows, in the most part, the story told in the hagiographic legend of Saint Eustace; however, for many aspects, it drift apart from it. This has been interpreted an inability to manage the story by its author Crestiiens (it has been discussed whether or not he was the well known Chrétien de Troyes). However, our novel is a particular text that summarizes in itself the semiosis of the adventure novel, the royal epic and the hagiography; it is a plurivocal and polyphonic text: a real novel. King Guillaume, who is not a Saint, neither he becomes a Saint, in this story turns into a figura Christi, in order to redeem a social figure: the merchant, poorly considered within the medieval society. That was because the social and economic structures of the late Middle Ages could no longer be governed by a purely feudal order, but they needed the contribution of the merchant bourgeoisie and money. Hence the need to “adopt” the merchant within the aristocratic class and to raise him to government functions. This required, in turn, the “sacrifice”, and the re-consecration of a saint king: of a “king-saint”.