The French Works of Jofroi de Waterford

The three French works of Jofroi de Waterford, copied by the Walloon scribe, Servais Copale, have been known since the eighteenth century. Jofroi's adaptations of the 'De excidio Troiae' of Dares Phrygius, the 'Breviarium Historiae Romanae' of Eutropius, and the 'Secretum Secretorum' of the Pseudo-Aristotle are preserved in a single manuscript (Paris, Bnf, francais 1822), with a small fragment of a second copy of the 'Secret'. The recent discovery that Jofroi and Servais worked together in Waterford, and not Paris (as had always been wrongly assumed), adds these texts to the small corpus of French written in medieval Ireland. They illustrate the French-language culture of Waterford at the end of the thirteenth century and beginning of the fourteenth. The cooperation between Jofroi (a Dominican monk) and Servais (a tax-collector and merchant) is highly unusual but exemplifies the nature of Waterford as a cosmopolitan European city of the time when people and books circulated freely. In addition to the first critical edition of the three texts, Keith Busby's introduction includes a study of Jofroi and his relationship with Servais, an analysis of Jofroi's translation and adaptation techniques, a close codicological examination of the Paris manuscript, and a study of the authorial and scribal features of the language. The texts are complemented by textual notes and a glossary.