Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 August 23

= August 23 =

Help with Medieval French for Margiris
Hello, any French speakers here? I want to verify this sentence chronicles mention only Margiris' son, who went to France after 1329 and whose wife was countess of Clermont from Margiris. It was added by an IP some years ago and has spread around the Internet. I found where (I think) it is coming from: https://ia600400.us.archive.org/31/items/LyMyreurDesHistors6/Ly_myreur_des_histors_6.pdf (towards the bottom of page 416). Count of Clermont is a disambiguation page but by process of elimination would seem to indicate Counts of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis, which would be a big deal. And I can't find anything anywhere else about it. Since it is written in Old French, Google translate is of no help. Can anyone verify what this paragraph is actually saying? (I tried fixing all the scanning errors, but pardon if I left something) "Quant Ii soldans oiit chu, se li changat la coleur, et dest à la pucelle qu’elle estoit digne d’aistre rayne de Franche, mains por riens ne poroit brisier sa loy. Atant commenchont douchement à sonneir ches menestreis; et apres le grant disneir, si montat li roy soldans Margalis, et li roy le fist convoier aveque l grant quantiteit de chevaliers de Prusse et d’altres gens; mains ilh ne passat gaire apres qu’ilh morut, et fut soldans son fis, qui oit la fìlhe le conte de Clermont en Franche."

Thank you!! Renata (talk) 01:50, 23 August 2016 (UTC)


 * That is what it says, "...but not long after he died, and his son became sultan, who had the daughter of the Count of Clermont in France." "Sultan" is presumably this author's way of describing any foreign king, since Lithuania didn't actually have sultans. "Had" is also short for "had...as a wife", which is a common thing to say in Old French. That would indeed be a big deal though! The author is Jean d'Outremeuse, who does not seem to be very trustworthy, according to our article. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:15, 23 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Or any non-Christian king? Since from the beginning of the passage (which was not transcribed) it seems to me Margalis was not Christian. At least there's a young lady who at a banquet tries to convince him to accept the "law of Jesus Christ" and if he did she says she would be "sa douce amie". The king of Bohemia hears that and says, may it please God, if that happened he would give her the whole of the duchy of Luxembourg. But Margalis answers that although she would be worthy to be queen of France he could not give up on his religion ("briser sa loi") for nothing. When did Lithuania become Christian? Contact Basemetal   here  03:35, 23 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you, User:Adam Bishop and User:Basemetal. This is very helpful. But can you tell me how, according to the book, Margalis (i.e. Margiris) ended up in a banquet with a young lady and King of Bohemia? Margiris was indeed a pagan (Lithuania converted in 1387) and there was the whole Lithuanian Crusade going on. He had a duel with the King and had to pay ransom, so I could imagine them having a feast somewhere, but I cannot imagine that a Christian lady would be dragged into the crusade... Renata (talk) 23:28, 23 August 2016 (UTC)


 * The King of Bohemia here is John of Bohemia, who was the son of the Holy Roman Emperor. He was also Count of Luxembourg and King of Poland and basically wandered around fighting battles. He was at the Battle of Cassel in 1328, then went to Prussia to fight the Lithuanians, which is where this story takes place. He and Margiris fought a battle that turned into a one-on-one duel, which Margiris lost because his men came to help him, which was against the rules. But apparently John liked him and took him into his company. The story of the banquet takes place after the duel in Prussia, presumably in Konigsberg although it doesn't really say where in Prussia in the text. John was trying to convince Margiris to convert to Christianity, and seems to have tempted him with a beautiful noblewoman, who was the daughter one of John's men, Thierry d'Orge - I don't know who that is or what "Orge" is supposed to be, but he was probably one of John's vassals in Luxembourg (where you would be most likely to find someone named Thierry). The lady said she would marry Margiris if he converted, and Margiris wanted to convince her to stay and marry him even though he refused to convert. John hosted this dinner with both of them, but Margiris still wouldn't convert, then apparently he died. Unfortunately the bit about Margiris' son and the daughter of the Count of Clermont is a single line at the end of this long story, and historians seem to consider the whole story more literary than historical. I can understand why there would be women and families there - Prussia was more or less a regular medieval state, and there was more going on than just crusades and warfare. But at the same time, it's possible that Jean d'Outremeuse made the whole thing up, and that neither of these women really existed. Adam Bishop (talk) 00:33, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
 * The Orge is a tributary of the Seine, and Thierry is a distinctly French name as well; in Luxembourg the speak Luxembourgish, which is one of the High German languages; if he were a native of Luxembourg he'd likely have had the name Dietrich or similar. I suspect that Thierry d'Orge is from France somewhere.  There was a French crusader named Thierry d'Orgue, but he's from a century and a half earlier.  -- Jayron 32 01:36, 24 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Margalis had payed ransom (20000 "florins al ecut d'Allemangne"), even though according to the chronicler the king of Bohemia had waived it, but Margalis insisted on paying. Anyway, Margalis was free to go but for some reason he decided to stay for a while with the king of Bohemia where he was honored and as he was staying with him they kept asking him to become Christian but he always kept refusing. Then the king of Bohemia had a brainstorm: he would have Margalis fall in love with a Christian girl and have him convert for the love of the girl. "Et li roy de Bohemme se volt aviseir que amour de femme faisait toute faire" ("And the king of Bohemia remembered that love of woman makes [one] do anything"; I'm not sure about the exact translation of "se volt aviseir", Adam?, but the general meaning is not in doubt), so he asked for the most beautiful young girl known "al-dechà meire", i.e. I suppose in Europe, if "beyond the sea" means outside Europe, and she was, as Adam says, the daughter of Thierry d'Orge. The chronicle does not say where Thierry d'Orge's daughter had to be brought from but it seems it was all the way from France (if Jayron is right, although I'm not convinced by his argument of Thierry vs Dietrich: it used to be very common in French, and in other European languages, for writers to naturalize first names into the language they were writing in: even today the queen of England, Elizabeth to you and me, is called "Isabella" in Spain) which is kind of a long way, especially in the 14th century, but to think that Thierry d'Orge had brought his family to the Crusade would be even more astonishing. On the other hand Adam may be right that they could have brought their families to Prussia. However when the whole thing fails she asks to be brought back to her country. I wonder what "her country" means. In any case, before she left they had this banquet where she tried one last time. This is in any case what the chronicle says. Whether that has any chance of being historically plausible is another matter. Finally I noticed that the Lithuanian pagans are called "Saracens" which is another indication that this chronicler uses terminology that was more commonly used for Muslims. Hence the use of "Sultan". Contact Basemetal   here  01:46, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I was thinking that out of all the lands John ruled, someone named Thierry would most likely be from Luxembourg (the County of Luxemburg was much larger than the modern country), but yeah, his name could have been Dietrich or Theodoric. Margiris says the lady is "worthy of being queen of France". "Se volt aviseir" looks like it should mean "wants to advise himself" - "se vouloir" in modern French means "claim" or "pretend" but that doesn't seem to be what means here. Could be an old French idiom, but the meaning is clear, he remembered, as you say. "Al-dechà meire" must be "au-deçà de la mer", so she came from "outremer", which probably just means she came from far away (from beyond the Baltic Sea, I suppose). Also I remember seeing documents from Hungary (in Latin) that referred to pagans as Saracens, maybe that was common in eastern Europe! (The pagans in that case were Cumans, I think.) Adam Bishop (talk) 11:21, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
 * To me (native French speaker), "se volt aviseir" just means "se veut avisé", in the sense of "se considère lui-même avisé", in the sense of "considers himself wise enough to state that love of woman makes [one] do anything". Un homme avisé = un homme sage, un homme intelligent. Akseli9 (talk) 13:34, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Our article, Christianization of Lithuania, says: "Even after becoming a Catholic, King Mindaugas did not cease sacrificing to his own gods. After Mindaugas repudiated Christianity and expelled all the Christians from Lithuania in 1261, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania lost its status as a Western Christian state" and "...on 15 August 1351... Kęstutis obliged himself to accept Christianity." So it seems that Lithuania was still officially pagan in the 1320s. Alansplodge (talk) 09:39, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
 * "Beyond the seas" does indeed mean "outside Europe".  Outremer are the territories which are part of France but not part of mainland France.   The Portuguese used the corresponding term o ultramar to identify their colonies in Africa (Angola, Mozambique etc.), China (Macao), India (Goa, etc.), and Oceania (Timor). 213.107.114.104 (talk) 11:49, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
 * For me, "Outremer" usually means the crusader states in the Holy Land - from the perspective of France and the rest of western Europe, they were indeed "beyond the sea". But from the perspective of the people who lived in the crusader states, France was "Outremer"! It could also be used for much shorter distances and smaller bodies of water - Louis IV of France was called "Louis d'Outremer" because he had been exiled...but only as far away as England. Adam Bishop (talk) 16:58, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes Adam, but the text has "au-deçà mer". Now the question is: is (or was) "au-deçà" equivalent to modern "en-deçà" or to modern "au-delà". If the former the text then means exactly the contrary of the most beautiful beyond the sea, it means the most beautiful that is not beyond the sea. I tried to find out what "au-deçà" meant but couldn't find a clear définition. All I could find is that Pascal's famous maxim from Pensées "Vérité en deçà des Pyrénées, erreur au delà" is at least once quoted as "Vérité au deçà des Pyrénées, erreur au delà". But was that a typo? So, knowledgeable French speakers out there: What does "au deçà" mean? (And if you have more time on your hands: what is the original unadulterated form of Pascal's famous quote?) Contact Basemetal   here  18:03, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Confirmed:  en-deçà = au-deçà. Please refer to deçà in cntrl (III A, III B). Pascal quotation: Verité au deça des Pyrrenées, erreur au delà. in Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion et sur quelques autres sujets, qui ont esté trouvées après sa mort parmy ses papiers (Guillaume Desprez (à Paris) ed. 1670, p.190) . Sorry cannot find a link to the manuscript(s) ("original unadulterated form"). — AldoSyrt (talk) 14:22, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you AldoSyrt. So it does seem the chronicler says that they looked for the most beautiful "this side of the sea". What that might mean is another question. Contact Basemetal   here  14:51, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Wow, guys, thank you! This is very fascinating. All the things history textbooks skip. I will try to update the article accordingly. Thanks again, Renata (talk) 02:01, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

A quick note about the languages of the ancient duchy/county of Luxembourg
Since the question came up and I've found this nice map on WP I'll take advantage of the situation and clear up some stuff. As Adam pointed out ancient Luxembourg was much larger than the current state of Luxembourg. Historically a larger part of its territory lied in a Romance speaking area (specifically Walloon, so "French" in a broad sense) than in a Germanic speaking area. It is only since 1839 when the Walloon speaking part of the grand-duchy went to Belgium to form the Belgian province of Luxembourg, that Luxembourg has been an essentially Germanic speaking area. Or (depending how you wanna look at it) you can describe it like this: the Germanic speaking part of the Belgian province of Luxembourg was taken away from Belgium to form a smaller independent grand-duchy (as opposed to the former grand-duchy established in 1815). The situation is a bit complicated: from 1830, when Belgium seceded from the Netherlands, to 1839, the grand-duchy was effectively part of the new kingdom of Belgium but also an entity that was part of the German Confederation and whose head, the grand-duke, was also the king of the Netherlands, from whose rule Belgium had just seceded. In 1839 it was decided to split the grand-duchy and to leave the western, Walloon speaking part, with Belgium, while the eastern, "Luxembourgish" speaking part would become an independent smaller grand-duchy, the present day state of Luxembourg (see Treaty of London (1839)). Luxembourg remained in personal union with the Netherlands until around 1890 when the Netherlands got a queen but since female grand-dukes were not allowed in the German Confederation they had to find someone else to be grand-duke. The two countries still share the same dynasty though (Orange-Nassau). All this to say that in the Middle-Ages a Luxembourg fief was as much if not more likely to lie in a Romance speaking area. So much for Thierry having necessarily to have been Dietrich, if that guy was indeed to begin with a vassal of John of Bohemia in his capacity as count of Luxembourg. (Yeah, count of Luxembourg but oddly in the above mentioned chronicle John says he is ready to give the lady, if she manages to convert that Lithuanian fellow, the duchy of Luxembourg. Go figure.). Contact Basemetal   here  18:34, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

An even quicker note on Luxembourgish. That "language" had no official status at all in Luxembourg until 1984. Even today most of the press is in standard German, while Luxembourg's law is in French. Primary school is in standard German. Secondary school in French. The situation is no different from other parts of Germany, Switzerland, etc. where the kid who begins primary school encounters on the first day of school a language that is quite different from the language spoken at home. The distance between Luxembourgish and standard German is no greater than the distance between say Swiss German, or Alsatian, or other High German dialects spoken in Germany, and standard German. Contact Basemetal   here  18:34, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

What does he say?
It is Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. speaking about composer Arthur Sullivan. AllBestFaith (talk) 16:06, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
 * "And in The Yeomen of the Guard, set within the grim walls of the Tower of London, Sullivan's patriotic scenes stir us with memories of nine hundred years of British history." Deor (talk) 16:21, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. AllBestFaith (talk) 19:34, 23 August 2016 (UTC)