On the evolution of toads in the French Renaissance*.

Symbolic toads, like real ones, must adapt to their environment or die. The evolutionary development of toads as symbols of monarchical power in France from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries demonstrates this principle as metaphoric bufones or crapaux flourish, adapt, or die according to their political context. According to a medieval legend, toads had been the insignia of the French monarchy before Clovis's conversion to Christianity, when they were converted into lilies. Because of their perceived ugliness, the toads were depicted as males bestes that contrasted with the beauty and virtue of the lilies. When the same toads appear in sixteenth-century treatises extolling the absolute power of the French king they have a very different meaning and appearance. In texts such as the Catalogus gloriae mundi (1529) by Barthelemy de Chasseneuz (1480-1544), and the Regalium franciae (1538) by Charles de Grassaille (1495-1582), in which the king's power is described as without equal, toads curiously become symbols of good governance. However, the toads' appearance as symbols of monarchical power was short-lived. Throughout the rest of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the toads became an endangered species in France as political power was increasingly associated solely with the person of the king. At the same time as the toads were dying out in France, they flourished in more politically propitious environments beyond the borders of France, where their association with the king was viewed as a powerful polemical tool that could be deployed against the French monarchy. As these cases show, symbolic forms must adapt or die in shifting political environments, much the same way that species in the natural world must adapt to new environmental variations or risk extinction.

1. THE JOYENVAL LEGEND IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The story of the toads is long and well-documented. Very grossly put, the story claims that, before Clovis's conversion to Christianity, toads or crescents, rather than lilies, were the symbols of the French monarchy: these symbols appear to have taken form initially in the thirteenth century. Although various versions of the legend feature different sequences and some different characters, a fourteenth-century Latin poem contains, in general, the essential elements of the story. (1) The poem depicts Clovis (ca. 466-511) as a pagan king worshipping Jove and Mercury. The kingdoms of Clovis and of another pagan king, Conflac, are described in terms of mutual error, mutual distrust, war, and waste. (2) It is only through the good offices of his Christian (and Burgundian) wife, Clotilde, that Clovis finds redemption, and that the negative attributes of power are transformed into positive ones. The basic elements of the transformation found in this fourteenth-century poem are the same in most of the French versions of the legend. The poem recounts how one day, when Clovis goes out to do battle with Conflac (the Battle with the Alamans, 496), he realizes that the crescents that had been the insignia on his battle shield have been transformed into lilies. Unable to change them, he goes off to do battle, and is victorious. When he gets back home, he discusses the victory and the mysterious meaning of the three fleurs de lis with his wife. (3) Clotilde tells him that it was the Holy Trinity who had given him the victory, and Clovis proceeds to reject the ydola vana and proclaims his faith in Jesus Christ. Saint Remi then baptizes Clovis at Reims and they all live a vita honesta ever after (97.93-100).

The actual conversion of the crescents into lilies owes more than just a little to the intervention of Clotilde. The poem explains that before Clovis's conversion, a pious hermit who lived nearby, next to a source where the monastery of Joyenval would later be located, used to pray with Clovis's wife. (4) One day when they were praying, an angel appeared to the hermit with a shield featuring three fleurs de lis. When Clotilde heard about the monk's vision, she scratched the crescents off Clovis's shield and replaced them with the lilies. This is when Clovis won his battle against Conflac (99.151-52). Following this victory, a new era of peace and harmony came to all of France. (5) Perhaps the biggest payoff for the French monarch from this conversion was the increase and solidification of his own power. No longer a source of discord, enmity, and waste, the French king was now a source of peace and harmony.

The symbolic associations of the crescents and the lilies are clear. As Marc Bloch points out in Les Rois thaumaturges, paganism was often confused at this time, consciously or not, with Islam. (6) And even if, as F. Chatillon points out, we should not be too quick to assume that the Premonstratensians (Norbertines) of Joyenval associated the crescents with Islam, it is clear that the crescents had pagan value for the author of the poem. (7) The crescents were associated with Jove, Mercury, error, venomous zealots of discord, lack of peace, and frivolous waste. The lilies were associated with a cerulean sky, peace, concord, harmony, and a durable reign. This legend would take on considerably more importance during the dynastic crisis of the fourteenth century. The accession to the throne of Philippe de Valois in 1328 broke the uninterrupted Capetian chain of power and necessitated a dynastic guarantor. The fleur de lis, which had increasingly become the symbol of the French king throughout the thirteenth century, admirably filled this need. (8)

Typical of this fourteenth-century adaptation of the Clovis legend is La Belle Helene de Constantinople, in which the story is transposed to Italy, where Clovis is represented fighting a Sarrazin king near the town of Castres (modern day Piacenza). (9) In this version, it is Jesus Christ who sends the angel with the shield directly to Clovis after he prays to the Virgin Mary. This version also places toads, rather than crescents, on Clovis's shield. The angel transforms the shield directly before Clovis:

  Ung angle beneoit de se gloire aduree
  Qui la endroit ly a sa targe transmee
  Qui fu de fin asur comme elle est figuree,
  A.III. serpentiaux d'or a fachon desguisee,
  C'estoient .III. crapaux ouvre d'euvre doree.
  Mes Dieux vault qu'il neuist plus tel targe portee,
  Enchois ly envoia par miracle ordenee,
  Ou lieu des males bestes dont j'ay fait devisee
  .III. fleur de ly sur campaigne asuree.
  De par Jhesus ly fu celle enseigne donnee ... (10)

  An angel blessed with His durable glory
  Transformed the front of his shield
  Which was made of fine blue as it is figured,
  With three serpent-like beasts worked in gold disguise,
  Three toads worked in gold.
  But God did not want him to bear such a shield any longer
  Thus he sent him by miracle,
  Instead of the evil beasts which I have described
  Three fleurs-de-lys on a blue field.
  This sign was sent to him by Jesus

The symbolic contrast in this version is perhaps even stronger than in the Latin poem, since the toads have an even greater symbolic force than the crescents. Such a repugnant animal represented the perfect antithesis of the virginal and immaculate lily. (11) It also helped emphasize how only divine intervention could possibly effect the change from hideous toad to virtuous lily. The toad represented, even more than the crescent, the binary opposite of the goodness associated with the lily. The toad's semiotic power, almost always associated with evil, nastiness, and ugliness, explains its constant reappearance in legends and tales of transformation. Throughout popular culture, in fairy tales and cartoons, the toad represents the antithesis of the good. (12) Toads, in fact, largely replaced the crescents throughout the fifteenth century; during a period of relative monarchical weakness and dynastic crisis, the miraculous power associated with the transformation of the males bestes into virginal lilies functioned as a guarantee of the king's power. (13)

One of the most important--and most noted--appearances of the Clovis legend is found in Raoul de Presles's prologue to his translation of Augustine's City of God (1372). Presles (1316-83), maitre des requetes under Charles V, adapted the Clovis story so that the angel sends the shield to the hermit after a battle with the enemy ruler, here called Caudat--taking place on the very hill where the monastery that will later come to propagate the legend is located. The basic symbolic elements of the story remain the same, with a monk telling Clovis to erase the heraldic crescents on his shield and replace them with the three lilies. (14) Another important manifestation of the Joyenval legend is found in the Songe du vergier which appeared in Latin in 1376 and in French two years later. This work, which promoted the power of Charles V in relation to both his English rival and the pope, used the fleur de lis as a symbol of the French king's uniqueness. The Songe clearly associates the fleur de lis with Salic Law in defense of the French monarch's power. It also contrasts the special powers of the French king, granted through his miraculous conversion to Christianity, with his former state by associating it with a crapaud:

  Laquelle chose nous appiert clerement pour la tres merveilleuse
  maniere de trouver primierement les armes lezquelles lez roys de
  France portent quant a present; car ainssi conme aucunes Cronyques
  racontent, lez roys de France soloient jadis, avant que ilz fusent
  convertis, en leurs armes porter troys crapaux, lesquelx furent par
  miracle en troys flour de lis, en l'oneur et remambrance de toute la
  Trenite, merveilleusement convertis. (15)

  (Which thing appears clearly to us by the very marvellous manner of
  finding the arms which the king of France bore until present, since
  just as certain Chronicles recount, the kings of France, before they
  were converted, used to bear three toads on their arms which were by
  miracle converted into three fleurs-de-lis, in honor and remembrance
  of all the Trinity.)

The Songe set the tone for the rest of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, during which, as was already mentioned, the stronger image of the toad largely supplanted the crescent as royal apologists sought to emphasize the divine nature of the French king. As in La Belle Helene de Constantinople, the toad represents the antithesis of the virginal and immaculate lily. The transformation from toad to lily demands a miracle that only the king of France would deserve. (16) The fleur de lis, if only by its miraculous nature, provided the perfect symbol of the uniqueness and the stability of the French monarchy. (17)

In the fifteenth century, the story of the transformation of the toads into lilies became part of popular legend. At the end of the century, the chronicler and diplomat Robert Gaguin (1425-1502) alluded to what he seemed to regard as the apocryphal nature of the legend. In his De origine et gestis francorum compendium (1491), Gaguin relates how Clovis's conversion to Christianity was due to a vow he had made in the middle of the battle with the Alemanos. He describes Clovis's baptism by Saint Remi and his founding of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Paris. It is only after he has described all this that he brings up the Joyenval legend as something believed by the hoi-polloi but never proven:

  Non preteribo huic loco addicere quod nullo certo auctore sed
  perseverante ad hanc meam etatem fama vulgatum accepi. Fuisse regibus
  francis buffones tris [sic] nobilitatis quidem insigne: sed Clodoneo
  Christianis sacris iniciato demissum celo esse id quod nunc reges
  gestant, lilia scilicet aurea quibus subest celi sereni color, / quem
  azurum Franci dicunt. Ad hanc rem michi astipulatur divi Bartholomei
  monasterium quod gaudium vallis appellatur, / ubi fons huius miraculi
  testis ab incolis ostenditur. (18)

  (I shall not omit adding here what I learned not from a specific
  author but from a popular legend that has persisted until our day,
  that the kings of France had three toads for their emblem, but that
  at the time of Clovis's conversion to the Christian religion, the one
  that the kings use today was sent from the heavens. Whence the golden
  lilies under which is seen the color of a serene sky, which the French
  call blue. Regarding these things, I refer to the monastery holy
  Bartholomew that is called Joyenval, where the source of this miracle
  was witnessed.)

Gaguin does not seem to think that the toad story has much value. Bearing out what Gaguin said about the popular nature of the Joyenval legend, it is only in those versions of the Compendium written in French that woodcuts depict the toads' conversion into lilies (fig. 1). In Latin versions, there are no woodcuts and it is Gaguin's allusion to the uncertain nature of the legend that comes out strongest. (19) These French versions also emphasize how Clovis's enemies belong to the Holy Roman empire by depicting them with the imperial eagle or the letters S.P.Q.R. on their standards. And in many of these woodcuts from French versions, Clovis's Frenchness is underlined by the "Francorum rex" that is written across the blanket draping his horse. That these woodcuts tend to appear only in the French versions and not in the Latin ones seems to support Gaguin's assertion about the Joyenval legend belonging to popular tradition, unauthorized by more scholarly sources: when the story is told in French, the image of the toads' conversion into lilies is used to illustrate quite graphically the text, which actually seems to disprove the legend itself. When the story is told in the more scholarly Latin, the illustrations disappear.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

A final avatar in this medieval understanding of the toad legend is found the Chronologie ou tableau synoptique de l'histoire universelle which dates from around 1520. (20) The Chronologie shows scenes from the Joyenval legend, such as Clovis receiving the shield with the lilies from Clotilde and doing battle with the Germans (figs. 2-3). In both of these scenes, Clovis is wearing toads on his tunic. Interestingly, the soldier with whom Clovis is doing battle (fig. 3) is also wearing toads on his shield; Clovis, though still with toads on his tunic, already bears lilies on his shield. The transformative power of the conversion is made clear: it is by accepting Christianity that Clovis overcomes the pagan past which he shared with his enemy Conflac. The transformative function of the conversion is made even clearer on the pages devoted to the chronology of the French kings. The line delineating this chronology from the first scene, in which the Sicambrians are seen leaving the city of Sicambre, through all the depictions of the reigns of Marcomir (fourth century), Pharamond (fifth-century legend), Merovis (448-57), and Childeric (457-81), is marked by toads (fig. 4). It is only when the line arrives at Clovis, who is depicted being baptized by St. Remi, that the toads disappear and are replaced by lilies, which then continue to mark the chronology of the following French monarchs (fig. 5).

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

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The transformation of the toads into lilies in the Chronologie functioned symbolically as a negative contrast to the victorious and Christian lilies, as it often had throughout the Middle Ages. The toads existed as negative counterexamples to the virtuous lilies. Both toads and lilies coexisted as two parts of the same symbol of French monarchy. They enjoyed a comparative relationship, each corresponding to the symbolic strength of the other: the ugliness of the toad was enhanced by the beauty and virtue of the lily and vice-versa. Neither toad nor lily could exist independently of the other. The power of the French monarch was symbolized neither by the lily nor the toad alone: both were needed to signify the divine nature of his power through the miraculous transformation of the ugly into the beautiful and the earthly and repugnant into the heavenly and virtuous.

2. THE LILIES AND TOADS IN CHASSENEUZ AND GRASSAILLE

Both of the texts by Chasseneuz and Grassaille were written at a time when the nature of political power in France was undergoing a radical change. As is well known, the diffused power of late-medieval feudalism was being converted to the much more centralized and absolutist monarchy that would come to define Renaissance France. This shift was profound and far-reaching. Throughout the fifteenth century, political treatises, such as Jean Gerson's Vivat Rex (1405) and Philippe de Commynes's Memoires (1464-98), and political poems, such as Jean Meschinot's Les Lunettes des princes (after 1461), had constantly expressed the desire to limit the volonte of the king, articulating the fear that any accumulation of political power in the hands of one individual would inevitably lead to a disequilibrium of the delicate balance of power based on the "mutual obligation" of king and subject. Gerson (1363-1429), acting as chancellor of the University of Paris, admonished the king for attracting too much of the "blood" of the political body to himself. (21) The memoirist Commynes (1445-1509) expounded a theory of counter weights which held that power consisted in a complex series of relationships between parts of the body politic, each offering a "counter-weight" to another. (22) And Meschinot (ca. 1420-91), a poet closely attached to the house of Brittany, advised the king to submit himself to his own laws. (23) The Journal des etats generaux de France tenus a Tours en 1484 also bears testimony to the mutuality of power in this period (if more in theory than in practice). It explained, much as Gerson had, that without the necessary participation of the people through the office of mutual obligation, the body politic was nothing more than an inert corpse with the head separated from the trunk. (24)

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]

Political and juridical commentaries of the sixteenth century often construed political power very differently. Many officials in the administration of Francis I and Henry II, imbued with the principles of Roman law, emphasized strong personal rule by the monarch. (25) Regalian legists such as Chasseneuz and Grassaille played a crucial role in the process by which the king was understood not only as a roi justicier, but also as a roi legislateur. (26) As William Farr Church explained, the union of legislation and adjudication in the concept of rulership was one of the most important characteristics of the political thought of the day. By attributing these prerogatives to the ruler, legists encouraged the development of the concept of kingship from the medieval idea of the monarch as primarily a judge to the later understanding of the monarch as a law-making sovereign. (27) Treatises by legists such as Chasseneuz and Grassaille mark an important point in the development of monarchical politics from the diffused power noted in treatises such as Gerson's Vivat Rex to the voluntarist sovereignty of Bodin. (28)

Chasseneuz, Grassaille, and other legists such as Charles Du Moulin, tried to legitimate the French monarchy by searching history for precedents of royal prerogatives and privileges. (29) One of the privileges of the French king noted by Chasseneuz, for example, was that he had the right to call himself an emperor in his own realm (imperator in suo regno). (30) Quoting the opinion of "all the doctors teaching in Orleans," he says that the emperor was not really the lord of the whole world, but only of that part brought under the domination of the Roman armies. (31) The French king, based on this sort of example, was able to attain the privileges and powers of the emperor without the troubling presence of the emperor himself. (32) As they described the power of the French king in increasingly absolute terms, legists like Chasseneuz and Grassaille had to create a political imagery which was the metaphorical equivalent of that power. Chasseneuz's Consuetudines ducatus burgundiae, fereque totius galliae commentariis D. Bartholomaei a chassenaeo (1517) and his Catalogus gloriae mundi, which he undertakes saying he needed something to keep himself busy now that he'd finished the Commentary, are chock-full of images describing the king's nearly indescribable power. (33) Quoting from Baldus, he explains in the Catalogus, for example, that just as the king of France is said to be the emperor in his realm, he is like the morning star in the midst of the southern clouds. (34) Grassaille's Regalium, which makes the French king even more powerful than he had been in Chasseneuz's Catalogus, is also ripe with symbols representing the king's increasing power. (35) If Roman law was used in France, Grassaille says, it was only because the French king and his people had decided to use it; the French king was not, and never had been, a subject of Justinian or Frederick. (36) In this political context, it is only natural that Grassaille would describe the whole world as being in the French king's shadow or the French king as a second sun above the Earth. (37) Just as the king's power is defined in increasingly absolutist terms, so too the symbols representing his power function as superlative or absolute adjectives; the king is described in both Chasseneuz and Grassaille's treatises as the most pure, the most powerful, and the most divine. (38)

When Chasseneuz and Grassaille appropriate the Joyenval legend as part of their historical collage, the toads need to reflect the greater power of the king. In a treatise in which the king is described as ruling over other rulers like the sun shining over clouds, any symbol--even one such as the toads--must reflect this kind of power. This political context helps explain the rather curious appearance of toads in Chasseneuz and Grassaille. They have simply adapted to the political environment. The dilemma of figuring an entity increasingly construed in terms of absoluteness with comparative figures produces the odd situation in which the males bestes become as good--or nearly as good--as the lilies. In chapter 5 of Chasseneuz's Catalogus, French kings are described as being very much like the toads that heretofore had been the exemplars of evil and bad government:

  Dico quod claritas, nobilitas, & excellentia Regum Franciae ex multis
  supra omnes alios reges perpendi & cognosci potest ultra superius
  dicta, maxime ex scuto coelitus demisso, in quo plura comprehenduntur,
  quoniam, perseverante usque ad hanc aetatem fama, vulgo dicitur quod
  olim reges Franciae pro scuto tribus buffonibus utebantur, quod tamen
  non erat sine ministerio [sic]; & hoc credo fuisse, eo quia sicut de
  natura buffonis est, in quacunque parte terrae sit, semper se
  collocare in meliori & pinguiori loco; & ideo, cum rex Franciae ex
  universali mundo meliorem, pinguorem, & utiliorem terram teneat &
  habeat. Ideo insequendo naturam buffonis pro armis assumpserant reges
  Franciae ante Christianitatem tres buffones, habendo respectum ad ea
  quae magis naturaliter conformabantur circa eius naturam in aliquibus.
  Nunc vero, tempore Christianitatis & a tempore quo reges Franciae
  effecti fuerunt Christiani, mutata est natura, quia insequendum est id
  quod tendit ad finem & effectum illius Christianitatis cuius nomen,
  fidem, & protectionem assumpsit: quod deus advertens & volens illi
  providere secundum quod decens erat, postquam Clodoveus Christianus
  effectus fuit, demissum fuit ei e coelo scutum, id quod reges Franciae
  nunc gestant, continens tria lilia aurea, quibus subest coeli sereni
  color, quem azuri Franci dicunt. (39)

  (I say that the celebrity, nobility, and the excellence of the Kings
  of France can be judged and known by many ways, to be better than that
  of all other kings beyond what has been said above, especially by his
  shield which was sent from the heavens and in which many things are
  understood: since it is said by the people, in a rumor that has
  persisted until our day, that long ago the kings of France used three
  toads as a shield, which is not without mystery. And I believe that it
  was because, as it is in the nature of the toad, in whatever part of
  the Earth that he is, to find always for himself the best, the most
  fertile, and the most useful place. And it is for this reason the king
  of France possesses and occupies the best, the most fertile and the
  most useful land in the world. Thus, following the nature of the toad,
  the kings of France took for their arms, before they converted to
  Christianity, three toads, keeping in mind the things that were more
  naturally adapted to their nature in other things. At present,
  however, in the era of Christianity, and since the time when the kings
  of France became Christians, this nature has changed, since it is
  necessary to follow that which tends toward the end and effect of that
  Christianity whose name, faith, and protection Clovis took. Because
  God saw this and wanted to provide for him fittingly after he became
  Christian, he had sent to him from Heaven the shield that the kings of
  France still carry today, containing three golden lilies against a
  background the color of serene sky, which the French call blue.)

Chasseneuz's account radically transforms the basic underlying symbolic relationships of the toads and lilies from that found in prior French versions mentioned here. Where the toads previously had been considered males bestes, they are now considered the very paragons of monarchical power. It would seem that as the nature of the French monarchy evolves and is defined in terms of the king's all-powerful will, the comparative nature of the toads becomes more hindrance than help. As the toads are drawn into the gravitational pull of the king's absolute goodness they must become good themselves. The oppositional relationship of toads and monarchical power is replaced by one of likeness. Where the toads previously had represented French government before Clovis's conversion and the beginning of buon governo, now the toads and the French kings are essentially alike. Instead of being the antithesis of what the French monarchy was supposed to be, the toads become metaphors of good governance.

Like all the other symbols of monarchical power, they represent attributes of power defined by the person of the king himself. Chasseneuz and Grassaille are both adamant that the insignia the king wears cannot be worn by others, since others do not possess his virtues. All the symbols associated with the king--especially the lilies--must be good, since the king, by definition, is good. If the toads are used to symbolize the king, they too must be signs of goodness. Since, as Chasseneuz says, it is the very nature of French kings to take and possess the best, most fertile, and most useful land, it is only logical for the French kings consequently to take the toads as their device, since toads also choose and possess the best, most fertile, and most useful land. Even if Chasseneuz does admit that the nature of the French king was changed by Clovis's conversion to Christianity, the transformation of the toads into a symbol of empowerment remains striking. Chasseneuz takes the toads as a symbol of evil and bad governance and transforms them into a symbol of good. The terms associated with the toads--the best (meliorem), most fertile (pinguorem), and profitable (utiliorem)--are all positive. As Anne-Marie Lecoq has described in her Francois Ier Imaginaire, it was necessary to show that the king, by his good government and example, created the most favorable conditions possible for his subjects. (40) The toads in Chasseneuz have become symbols of this kind of good government. The toads had to take on a more positive meaning since any symbol associated with the king needed to reflect good government and increasingly absolute power.

This process of making the toads a symbol of monarchical power undergoes a further evolution in Grassaille's Regalium. In this text, the toads and the lilies both find themselves symbolically associated with a royal and absolute will. Grassaille describes the divine insignia as the second ius or privilege of the French king:

  Secundum ius altum & praecipuum sacrae coronae Franciae divinum est
  insigne, scilicet, arma regalia trium liliorum Clodoveo Regi a coelo
  demissa, trium buffonum seu ranarum silvestrium, quibus prius pro
  nobilitatis insigni utebatur, loco; & ut aliqui asserunt, potuit esse
  ratio: q. natura buffonis est pinguiorem & meliorem terram sibi
  eligere. Quare, cum illust. Rex Francorum meliorem terram de mundo, ut
  inferius probabitur in ultimo iure, teneat & possideat, per quandam
  conformitatem naturalem buffonibus pro scuto utebatur. Nunc equidem
  post fidem Catholicam assumptam, tria lilia aurea, quibus subest coeli
  sereni color, pro scuto regio gestat. De quo, Guagui. (41)

  (The second of the ancient and special rights of the sacred crown of
  France is the divine insignia, namely the royal arms of three lilies
  sent from the heavens to King Clovis in the place of the three toads
  or tree frogs that he used before as an emblem of nobility. And as
  some people have said, the reason might have been this: since the
  nature of the toad is to choose for himself the best and the most
  fertile land. For this reason, since the illustrious King of the
  French possesses and occupies the best land in the world, as it will
  be shown later, in the last right, by a certain natural resemblance,
  they used the toads as an emblem. Now in fact, after he became
  Catholic, he wore the three golden lilies on a color of a serene sky.
  About which, Gaguin....)

Here, as elsewhere in the Regalium franciae, Grassaille makes an obvious allusion to Chasseneuz without mentioning him by name. (42) The terms pinguorem and meliorem terram are clearly lifted from Chasseneuz and do not appear in Gaguin, whose work Grassaille does mention. And here, as in Chasseneuz, the toads are cast in a very positive light. The addition of the frogs is interesting, if only as an anecdotal early sighting of the infamous French grenouilles so appreciated by Anglo-Saxon culture. The opening up and enriching of the semantic field associated with the toads is equally notable. Previously, when the toads or crescents had negative associations, they received little or no treatment or development. The emphasis was placed on the positive values of the lilies that were enhanced through negative comparison with the toads or crescents. Their value was nearly uniquely comparative and did not possess much inherent symbolic value. Here, however, we see that the toads, as in Chasseneuz, have a more extensive referential ground. They are given the ability to react and choose for themselves, and--even more--they choose wisely, becoming paragons of good governance, much differently from the symbolic importance of the earlier crescents and toads appearing in texts analyzed here. (43)

Perhaps even more curious in Grassaille's version is the concessive nature of the later conversion; he concedes that the king now wears three golden lilies for his royal shield after having chosen the Catholic faith. The concessive nature of the phrase is necessitated by the positive nature of the preceding discussion of the toads. In earlier versions, a rupture was placed between the toads or crescents and the lilies. Gaguin said that the king had the toads on his shield but that they had been changed. La Belle Helene also said that Clovis had three toads on his shield but that God did not want him to wear such a shield. In these earlier versions, there is a causal relationship between the change to lilies and better governance that is marked syntactically, grammatically, or visually, as in the Chronologie synoptique. The two terms of the equation are opposed: good versus bad, toad or crescent versus lily. Because Clovis changed from paganism to Christianity (through divine intervention), things got better. In Grassaille, the relationship becomes concessive, since there is no qualitative change between the before and after. The difference between bad versus good had been erased by the French king's absolute power. The equation is one of good versus good, toad versus lily. The French king had been, was, and always would be, good. Chasseneuz and Grassaille had effectively transformed the image of the toads to fit the new reality of the French king without its unfortunate negative connotation.

The curious appearance of the toads in Chasseneuz and Grassaille marks the midpoint of this evolutionary history. Their original political environment was one of relatively weak monarchical power. The toads helped construct an image of divine power by functioning as the term of the comparison that needed to be transformed into something better. The symbolic associations of the toads (ugliness, dirt, sorcery, etc.) made the comparative image of the lilies seem all the brighter. Once the power of the king was described in absolute terms in Chasseneuz and Grassaille, this comparative aspect had to be abandoned and the toads became a much more positive image. Now they had an associative value: since they were associated with the goodness of the king, they needed to be good themselves. They participated in this goodness. This oddly hybrid form of toad would not last long, however, as the political context changed. In this new environment, which was hostile to any symbol that would denigrate the king, the toads become an endangered symbolic species.

3. THE TOADS IN THE LATE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES IN FRANCE

As political power centralized ever more in the hands of the king, the Joyenval legend tended to disappear in France. Even in the context of an absolute monarch, it was difficult to use toads as a paradigm of royal power. A more common reaction in the sixteenth century was simply to refute the historical veracity of the Joyenval legend, and--perhaps not quite so coincidentally--to eliminate the toads from French history. The power of the French king no longer required the sort of transformation implied in the Joyenval legend, and if images of Clovis's baptism were seen regularly in paintings throughout French history, the toads tended to disappear. (44) Throughout much of the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth the toads came up infrequently in discussions of Clovis; when they did, they were usually rejected as historically inaccurate. When the printer and bookseller Gilles Corrozet (1510-68) broached the subject of Clovis in La Fleur des antiquitez de Paris (1533), even before Grassaille's Regalium was published (1538), he did so sans toads. (45) Bernard de Girard, seigneur Du Haillan (1535-1610), the historiographer of Charles IX, alludes to the story of the transformation of the toads into lilies in his De L'Estat et succez des affaires de France (1570), but considers it an "ancienne creance des Francois qui n'est tesmoignee par aucun autheur veritable" (old belief of the French which is accounted for by no true author). (46) He also mentions the Joyenval legend in his Histoire generale des roys de France (1576), but discounts its historical truth, explaining that "some chronicles want us to believe that in olden days the kings of France wore three toads, others say three crescents." (47) In both studies, the seigneur Du Haillan gives little weight to the story.

In his Recueil des roys de France, leurs couronne et maison (1580), Jean du Tillet (d. 1570), greffier (clerk) at Parlement, labelled the Joyenval legend about the toads and the lilies a "fable" invented in the time of Charles VI. (48) Estienne Pasquier (1529-1615), jurist and historian, alludes to the legend of the lilies and the toads twice in his Recherches de la France. In book 2, chapter 17 (1565), he mentions that different authors explain that the French had at least six different royal arms before Clovis's conversion to Christianity. (49) Pasquier implies that this "diversite d'opinion" proved that the story of the toads was no more believable than the other stories. In book 8, chapter 21 (1596), Pasquier dismisses the invention of the fleurs de lys as having been accredited by no "autheurs anciens." Stories such as these, he says, are believed simply because it is fitting for all citizens to do so, since it increases the majesty of an empire. (50)

Claude Fauchet (1530-1601), historiographer of Henry IV, rejects the Joyenval legend in Les Antiquitez et histoires gauloises et francoises (1599) as historically inaccurate, saying that the Abbey of Joyenval, which was founded in memory of the miracle, was founded much later and that he had not seen any auteur de marque who believed in this story. (51) An exception to this late-sixteenth-century tendency to deny the validity of the Joyenval legend is found in Ronsard's Franciade (1572), in which Clovis's shield is described as having been "deshonnore de trois/Crapaux boufis." (52) Other than occasional sightings, such as that in Ronsard's mythopoetic version of French history, the toads begin to fade into historical extinction in France, and even toads like those in the Franciade are far from bringing glory to the French monarch the way they had in Chasseneuz and Grassaille.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century, French authors were able to dismiss the Joyenval legend simply by referring to the critical history debunking the myth. Claude Fauchet explained in Origines des chevaliers, armoiries, et heraux (1600), that the toads were "fake coats of arms" according to the opinion of the masters of the trade," and that "the Flemish and those of the Low Countries, by disdain, and for this reason call us French toads." (53) Scevole and Louis de Sainte-Marthe (1572-1650 and 1656), brothers and historians, explicitly followed the lead of previous authors, saying in their Histoire genealogique de la maison de France (1619) that some believed Clovis crowned himself with fleurs de lis after his victory over the Alemans, but that this was not "atteste par les anciens Autheurs." Likewise, the Sainte-Marthe brothers rejected the version in which the lilies were presented to Clovis by an angel since "les Sieurs du Tillet, Fauchet, & autres bons Historiens n'approuvent." (54) Although the geographer and official historian of the king, Andre Duchesne (1584-1640), includes book 2 of Gregory of Tours's Historiae francorum in his own Historiae francorum scriptores coaetanei, ab ipsius gentis origine, ad pipinum usque regem (1636-49) with a long section on Clovis and his conversion, he says not a word about the toads, the fleur de lis, and the rest. (55) In 1659, the heraldist Claude-Oronce Fine de Brianville (d. 1675) dismisses "tout ce qu'on dit des crapauds" as "fabuleux sans credit" in his Ieu d'armoires de l'Europe pour apprendre Le Blason, La Geographie, Et L'histoire curieuse. (56)

An exception to the French tendency to deny the validity of the toads and lilies story for historical reasons is found in F. Jean Testefort's retelling of the lilies in association with "mystical roses." In his Les Roses du chappellet envoyees du paradis, pour estre ioinctes a nos Fleurs de lis, marque du bon heur de nostre France, & de celuy des Fideles (1620), the "frere precheur" extols the "immaterial quality" of the lilies and roses, which are not those found in your common garden. (57) Testefort's religious treatise harks back to the comparative opposition between bad toads and good lilies found in the earlier medieval versions of the Joyenval legend. Teste-Fort makes a distinction between the idolatrous past and the virtuous present. He says that in the past "idolatry, the source of all evil, was proud to put toads on its arms," but that now, "the Sun of justice shines its rays on France, which has become beautiful, and clear ... [and] the cesspools have been metamorphosed into an earthly paradise." (58) Testefort's text is decidedly mystical in nature and antihistorical, dismissing in fact the seigneur Du Haillan's "historical" critique of the story about Clovis and the "ampoule," the sacred chrism that was believed to have been brought from heaven by a dove. (59) This religious text recalls the dematerialized and allegorical meaning of the lilies found in medieval versions of the legend, which the "historical" texts from the seventeenth century go out of their way to reject. Testefort's allusion to the medieval version of the Joyenval legend remains an exception in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in France, when historians were busy attacking it. for historical reasons.

By and large, with rare exceptions such as Testefort, the toads disappear as emblems of royal power in seventeenth-century France. As the political environment demands that images of royal power depict the absoluteness of the king's goodness and sovereignty, the toads prove themselves incapable of surviving as a species of monarchical symbol. When political treatises such as Jean Bodin's Six Livres de la Republique describe shared sovereignty as no sovereignty at all, images such as the toads have difficulty adapting and tend to die out. If the king's power has no comparison, then images that compare him with lowly animals such as toads will have little luck in competition with other symbols such as the sun or Jupiter. However, at the same time that the toads tend to die out in France, they flourish in countries politically opposed to the French. This evolution shows how the toads, whose intrinsic symbolic value has not changed and who were not able to adapt to the emergent political environment in France, were able to find refuge in lands more amenable to their particular symbolic traits.

4. POLEMICAL TOADS

As Du Tillet and others noted, the toad story provided powerful fodder for France's enemies, who wished to find ways of demeaning the French monarch. In response to this development, Jean Tristan de Saint-Amant (ca. 1595-1656), numismate and gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre du roi, composed the Traicte du lis (1656). Tristan de Saint-Amant's treatise only mentions the toads in passing as part of a "defense of the lily, symbol of hope, of truth, against the insult and slander of the king's enemies who were afflicted by jealousy for the French king" (fol. A2r-v). He singles out for specific criticism a certain "Flemish writer" (fol. A3r) who had presumed to substitute for the "LILIES, the ridiculous effigies of some puny little flies (Biting insects, scum of corruption) found in the sepuchral or infernal Tomb of a Pagan King, and of his Horse." (60) This "Flemish writer" is Jean-Jacques Chifflet (1588-1673), originally from the Franche-Comte, and the official doctor of the Spanish archduchess Isabelle-Claire Eugenie and the Spanish king Philip IV.

Chifflet was nicknamed the Vindex Hispanicus because of his ability to defend the interests of the Habsburgs, the Spanish crown, and the governor of the Spanish Netherlands and Franche Comte. (61) France remained at war with Spain--and thus with the Spanish Netherlands until 1659--and Chifflet's attacks against the French lilies in works such as the Anastasis Childerici primi Francorum Regis (1655), which so rankled Tristan de Saint-Amant, played a curious but perhaps significant role in Spain's bellicose efforts against the French. (62) Chifflet's resurrection of Childeric is a masterful reconstruction of French history. Chifflet claimed that relics found in 1653 in Tournai, Belgium, proved that Childeric had been buried according to the "ethnici moris ac ritus" (custom and rite of the pagans). (63) He explains that the insignia of Childeric included a bull's head and bees. He links these symbols to Egyptian and other decidedly non-Christian traditions and cites Varro and other sources to prove that bees are born in part from other bees and in part from the rotting bodies of dead cows. (64) Chifflet uses this evidence to prove that the earliest symbols of the French kings were "neither toads, crescents, crowns, lilies, irises nor symbols of hope nor lance spikes, but were golden bees" (164-71). The "Spanish Avenger" lands a polemical blow against the French monarchs by proving that Childeric had certainly worn golden bees as his symbol and that the French fleurs de lis had come from Chifflet's bees. (65)

Tristan de Saint-Amant is fairly beside himself when he considers Chifflet's argument about the lilies and the bees. He comes back time and again to how Chifflet had "tried to degrade the LILY of its glory, in favor of a swarm of flies, troublesome scum of the carcass of a dead cow." (66) When he does get to the story of the toads, he treats it as a development of Chifflet's fable about the flies found in the rotting carcass of a cow. He says:

  Il nous fait assez cognoistre, que c'est par vanite, & pour complaire
  a ses Flamands amateurs de nouveautez, qu'il en accumule tant sans
  necessite. Ces gens la d'ailleurs, estans tombez dans l'erreur, du
  rapport imaginaire des LIS avec ces Mousches, s'y estans quelques-uns
  laissez embourber, d'autant plus facilement, que Chiflet vouloit
  imprimer dans leurs esprits plus grossiers, & sur tout des Paisans,
  une autre croyance, que celle qu'ils avoient eue de longuemain, que
  nos fleurs de LIS fussent des Crapaux. Car si nos LIS passoient plus
  longtemps dans leur opinion, pour estre ces impurs animaux, & d'une si
  prodigieuse & si honteuse difformite. Il n'y auroit plus de moyen, de
  leur pouvoir persuader, que l'on auroit peu avoir change en France les
  Mousches de Childeric en des fleurs de LIS, qui est la fin, a laquelle
  tend artificieusement le dessein de Chifflet. Nous enviant l'honneur
  d'une si glorieuse & si divine fleur en nostre Escu de France. (60-61)

  (He makes us understand that it is through vanity, and to please the
  Flemish, who are amateurs of latest fashions, that so many are
  needlessly accumulated. What is more, these people fell into the error
  of believing the imaginary relationship between the LILIES and these
  flies, some of them being taken in all too easily, because Chifflet
  wanted to impress on their more vulgar spirits, and especially those
  of the Peasants, another belief than that which they had had from
  afar, that our LILIES had been toads. For if our LILIES were thought
  for so long in their opinion to be these impure and so prodigiously
  and hideously deformed animals, it would be impossible to convince
  them that Childeric's Flies could have been changed into the LILIES
  in France, which is the aim of Chifflet's artful maneuvering, envious
  as he was of the honor of such a glorious and divine flower in our
  shield.)

Tristan de Saint-Amant's remarks clearly show how the legend of Joyenval is considered as pure folklore. The Flemish have fallen easily for the story about the flies just as they had fallen for the story about the toads. His defense of the lilies only underlines the negative aspect of the toads, described as "impure and so prodigiously and hideously deformed animals." The toads have been relegated to a malicious and ingenious imagination that has spawned an equally pejorative history of the development of the fleur de lis. Tristan de Saint-Amant's toads, related as they are to mouches and charogne, and thus closer to their customary symbolic associations, also show just how difficult it would be for the French to continue to make the toads a symbol of political power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (67)

Chifflet's response to Tristan de Saint-Amant is quick and lands a solid and highly partisan blow to the latter's defense of the French lilies. It also adds yet another twist to the toad story. Chifflet's Lilium francicum, veritate historica, botanica, et heraldica illustratum, published in Brussels in 1658, claims to be an objective "defense of French lilies from vain and puffed up fables." (68) The highly partisan nature of Chifflet's text, however, becomes readily apparent. This book is a an example of how the writing of history and scholarship can be as effective as more deadly arms in war. (69) Dedicated to Don Juan of Austria, son of Philip IV and governor-general of the Spanish Netherlands and Franche-Comte, Chifflet's text wastes little time dismissing the Joyenval legend as fantastic and something that should be rejected out of hand. In chapter 5, devoted to renouncing the celestial origins and antiquity of the French lilies ("De caelesti origine, & antiquitate Liliorum Francicorum, fabulosae narrationes explosae"), Chifflet dismisses the Joyenval legend and Tristan de Saint-Amant's Traicte du lis as delirious, using the historical arguments of Fauchet, Du Tillet, and others, as well as a botanical analysis of the lilies. (70) If the toads enjoyed an abhorrent appearance in Tristan de Saint-Amant, they now become simply ridiculous.

Chifflet describes how Laurent Bouchel, a lawyer in the Parlement of Paris, had discovered in an old book dug up in a library in Brussels that the first French kings had used the toad insignia. He also alludes to the Dutch and Belgian understanding of the toads found in Fauchet:

  Affirmat Laurentius Bouchellus se reperisse in vetere quodam libro
  manu exarato bibliothecae Regiae, prima regum Franciae insignia fuisse
  bufones tres vel ranas aureas in campo nigro. Fauchetus Praeses: Les
  Flamans, & ceux du Pays bas, par desdain, & pour ceste cause, nous
  appellent crapaux franchos. Et Nostradamus in Centuriis, Francorum
  Regem vocat bufonum heredem. l'heritier des crapaux. (71)

  (Laurent Bouchel claims to have seen in an old manuscript in the Royal
  Library, that the first insignia of the King of France were three
  golden toads or frogs on a black field. President Fauchet said: the
  Flemish, and those of the Low Countries, by disdain, and for this
  cause, call us French toads. And Nostradamus, in the Centuries, calls
  the King of the French the descendent of toads.)

The toads have come a long way from being the paragons of good government that they had been in Chasseneuz and Grassaille. The semantic field associated with the toads is just as negative as it had been in earlier medieval versions, in late sixteenth-century texts, and in Tristan de Saint-Amant's Traicte. But where the association with bad government in these other texts had been contrasted with good French government, the negative spin is now associated with the French. The toads now symbolize the milieu in which the French monarchs live. Obviously, here, that milieu is not considered as bringing much glory to the French. Chifflet is not trying to pay the French a compliment by calling them "French toads" and labelling the French king the "descendant of toads." (72) Chifflet tries to associate the negative value of the toads with the French king. Tristan de Saint Amant's fury at Chifflet is due to the latter's sullying the "absolute goodness" associated with the French lily, which--according to him--had no compare.

The illustration accompanying this passage demonstrates the toads' remarkable powers of adaptation. Chifflet explains that there was in his time an old tapestry in the Royal palace in Brussels that described Clovis going off to war against the Germans. The illustration shows the king mounted on a horse in light armor with an iron cap on his head, accompanied by an aging standard-bearer carrying a flag with the three toads. Chifflet draws attention to the king's rather odd headgear (fig. 6):

  Ibi cernitur ipse Rex cataphractus, qui galleae loco tectus est pileo
  ferreo, quem aperta ex auro corono cingit. Regem sequitur Signifer,
  qui vexillum gestat aureum tribus impressum bufonibus nigris: d'or a
  trois crapaux de sable. Precedit Regem Fecialis cum eadem supra pectus
  tessera. Textum creditur illud aulaeum aetate Philippi Burgundiae
  Ducis, hoc est ante annos ducentos & quinquagenos (Chifflet, 1658,
  32-33: italics in original).

  (Where the King clad in armor, instead of a helmet, wears an iron cap,
  encircled by an open crown. Following the king, a standard-bearer
  carries a flag on which are imprinted three black toads: d'or a trois
  crapaux de sable. Preceding the King, a page has the same toads on his
  breast. It is believed that this curtain was woven in the time of
  duke Philip of Burgundy, which means two hundred and fifty years ago.)

The image of Clovis in Chifflet's Lilium francicum is remarkable for several reasons. The most apparent feature in the image--other than the frogs on the royal insignia--is the rather odd hat the king is wearing, which Chifflet specifically brings to the reader's attention. He explains that the armored king is wearing an iron cap (pile[us] ferre[us]) instead of the usual helmet. Why Clovis would wear such a thing when going into battle is not explained. What is clear is the association being created by the toads and the iron cap. Clovis appears as a ridiculous figure and the toads end up symbolizing metonymically the king's besmirched power. This image of Clovis in Chifflet's Lilium francicum demonstrates the toads' remarkable powers of adaptation; at the same time that they have become extinct for all intents and purposes in France, the toads have flourished in the Spanish Netherlands. Here they have been associated with the French king, yet unlike what happens in Chasseneuz and Grassaille, they do little to increase the king's symbolic worth. The toads' negative connotation in an age of royal absolutism could sully the king's image quite dramatically--hence their disappearance in France and their success in the Spanish Netherlands. (73)

[FIGURE 6 OMITTED]

The toads' adaptation to the political environment of the Spanish Netherlands in the seventeenth century is noteworthy if only as a counterexample to their inability to adapt to the French political environment during the same period. At the same time that they disappear from France, they appear in great health over the political border. Much as real toads might adapt to one environment as they die off in another when food sources and climatic conditions change, the symbolic toads flourish in the Spanish Netherlands at the same time they disappear from France when the political environment changes. In a political context in which power is defined in increasingly absolute terms, the toads become extinct in France, where their associations can only reflect badly on the king, while in the Spanish Netherlands the same symbolic characteristics allow them to flourish.

5. CONCLUSION: POLITICAL POWER AND THE MEANING OF THE TOADS

The evolution of the toads during the Middle Ages and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in France and the Spanish Netherlands shows how the political environment had an influence on symbolic forms, not much differently from the way that the natural environment influences living species in the wild. In France in the Middle Ages, the toads functioned symbolically as a comparative contrast to the good lilies. The lilies and the toads were contrepoids to each other, contrasting good with bad, light with dark, and victory with defeat. This is perhaps most graphically illustrated in the image from the Chronologie synoptique, which uses toads to illustrate the genealogy of French kings through Clovis's conversion and after it. The comparative nature of the toads could not be made clearer. Quite differently, when Chasseneuz and Grassaille declared the king's power as absolute, they denied it any comparison. Nothing could be used to symbolize the king in a comparative fashion since nothing was equal to the king. (74) In their treatises, the king's power was not contractual but absolute, and any symbol used to figure the king would need to reflect that "perfect" power. If Chasseneuz and Grassaille wanted to use the toads as symbols of monarchical power, they needed to adapt the comparative nature of the toads as they appeared in the Joyenval legend. Stuck with the toads and the lilies in contrastive opposition, Chasseneuz and Grassaille had to make these comparative symbols function within a political context in which there was no comparison to the king's goodness. In order to come to grips with this problem, they did the only thing they could do if they wanted to keep the toads: they made them less contrastive. The toads had to become good since the French king was good beyond compare.

The positive appearance of the toads in these political treatises marks a turning point in their symbolic evolution. As the power of the French king was described in increasingly absolute terms, the toads tended to disappear from France since they could only be associated with the French king's perfect goodness with great difficulty. The historical texts of Corrozet, the seigneur Du Haillan, Fauchet, and Du Tillet effectively banish the toads from France. By the time of the reign of Louis XIV, when the most effective symbol of monarchical power in France was the king's own portrait (as Louis Marin described in his Le Portrait du roi) the toads had become nearly extinct in France. (75) Like an unsightly blemish on a royal portrait, the toads needed to be painted out of the picture. The very same symbolic trait which guaranteed their demise in France allowed the toads to flourish in the Spanish Netherlands, where it was not a political liability to besmirch the reputation of the French king. The polemic between Tristan de Saint-Amant and Chifflet is emblematic of this change in environment: Tristan de Saint-Amant does all he can to eliminate the toads from French history, while Chifflet does everything he can to associate the French king with them. It is only for a brief moment in Chasseneuz and Grassaille's treatises that the toads appear as exemplars of royal behavior. This curious moment, however, cannot last, at least in France, since even absolute political power cannot make a toad into a prince.

* I would like to thank the many people who helped me research and edit this article. First and foremost, the late Myra Orth provided clues and references without which the project would not have got off the ground. Thanks also to Sue Farquhar, Elizabeth McCartney, Violet Halpert, and Anthony Di Battista for reading drafts and making suggestions to improve it. Thanks also to J.H.M. Salmon and to an anonymous reader at RQ for their detailed and most pertinent comments. All verse citations refer to the edition's page number followed by line numbers (e.g., 97.93-100 means page 97, lines 93-100). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

(1) See Bossuat, 94. For the Joyenval legend in particular and the history of the lilies in general, see Hinkle's book-length study and Lombard-Jourdan, 16-38. Lombard-Jourdan explains that the first twenty-one to twenty-three stanzas were composed in the twelfth century by a monk at Saint-Denis; later, another monk from Joyenval composed the second series of stanzas (21-22). See also Chatillon, 87-200, who dates the poem from after 1328 (190). Bullet sees the French royal "fleurs de lys" coming from the Celtic word "ly" (king) and not from real lilies, 212-39. See also de Bloys, who sees a possible Ukrainian origin for the fleur de lis (357-70). Marc Bloch analyzes the Joyenval legend in relation to the tradition of medical powers of the French king (229-34). Notes from Bloch's discussion have been very helpful to this article.

(2) Bossuat: "Erant ambo inimici inter se preliatores / Et verebantur deici ab invicem per errores; / Dilectionem elici nolebant ad sacros mores, / Sed venenosos effici discordie zelatores" (94.17-20) and: "Gentes sub ipsis fuerunt per viciniam incole, Nullam pacem habuerunt, sed habitabant discole. / Fines depopulaverunt, viros, uxores cum prole; / Sata, messes combusserunt semper, ubique, frivole" (94.25-28).

(3) This is a wonderful scene, with the husband back from battle, talking about this miraculous victory and the wife explaining it all to him: "Tunc, reversus de prelio, loquebatur cum uxore / De trium florumlilio, de asurato colore, / Quid signaret misterio, quid inde venturum fore. / Per Jovem, inquid, nescio nec animo nec corpore. / Uxor responder: Ideo tibi dat sancta Trinitas / Victoriam, Clovodeo, ut trium florum unitas / Auri sint tuo clipeo, quod dabit perpetuitas / Ut dominatu aureo tu regnet auctoritas" (96.73-80).

(4) The Abbey of Joyenval (diocese of Chartres) was founded in 1221 by Barthelemi de Roie in the same place that an earlier chapel had been consecrated to the Virgin (Bossuat, 83).

(5) Bossuat: "Per omnes fines Francie valencior predicatus / Principibus provincie, victoriosus, amatus, / Cultor pacis, concordie, est populus conglobatus: / Insimul voluntarie est in rege instauratus" (100.165-68).

(6) Bloch, 233.

(7) Chatillon, 154-55.

(8) Bossuat notes that the Joyenval legend can be associated with the Chapel des fleurs de lis and the Roumant de la fleur de lis: "Il s'agit dans les trois cas, de soutenir indirectement la cause menacee des Valois en presentant l'embleme dont ils se parent comme le produit de la revelation" (85). See also Theis, 110-11. Colette Beaune remarks on the increasing number of allusions to Clovis in the fifteenth century (55). She also remarks on the symbolic value of the legend "meme si elle n'a plus grand-chose a voir avec l'histoire reelle" (59).

(9) The town of Castres is renamed Plaisanche (Piacenza) in the course of the chanson. See 618.12,720-24. For date of composition of La Belle Helene de Constantinople, see Claude Roussel's introduction, 87-96.

(10) Roussel, 1995, 493-94.9,532-41. See also Roussel, 1998, for an excellent analysis of the history of the Joyenval legend, particularly as it concerns La Belle Helene de Constantinople, but also more generally, 290-306. See also Koopmans, especially 132-34; and Verhuyck, 1972 and 1994. It is perhaps noteworthy that when Jehan Wauquelin composed his prose version of La Belle Helene de Constantinople for Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in 1448, he did not include this passage about the toads being transformed into lilies. See Crecy, liii-liv, and 276-77. See also Lewis, 317-20.

(11) For a very complete analysis of how malevolently toads have been interpreted in Western culture, see Boll. Lombard-Jourdan explains that the Latin term for toad, buffo, "eveille aussitot pour nous le souvenir de ces bufurdi, 'behourdis,' 'bourdis,' (espagnol et portugais boffordo), feux qu'on allumait traditionnellement en mars, lors de la fete equinoxiale." She adds that "Bufurdum devait avoir un sens voisin de crescens, 'croissant.' L'horreur qu'il inspirait aux chretiens provoqua un calembour facile: on decomposa le mot en bufo horridus," 35.

(12) See Boll, 129-35 and 157. The negative attributes of the toads are noted by Sterling, 1987, who explains that when the duke of Bedford commissioned the Master of Bedford to illustrate the Joyenval legend to promote the joining of the French and English crowns under Charles VI in 1429, he made sure not to show the three toads on Clovis's shield before his conversion: "Mais Bedford se garda bien de faire montrer qu'avant la conversion, l'ecu de Clovis etait charge de trois crapauds. C'eut ete ruiner tout l'effet de propagande que de rappeler aux Anglais qu'ils etaient maintenant les allies des 'frogeaters,'" 432. For Master of Bedford, see also Hinkle, 68-73, and pls. 26-28 and 30-31; Avril and Reynaud, 23-24, 35-36.

(13) See Theis, 112-18; Lewis, 317-20; and Contamine, 49-60.

(14) Presles: "Et en la reverence de ceste victoire / & de ce que ces armes nostre seigneur envoya du ciel par ung angle / et demonstra a ung hermite qui tenoit en icelle valle de coste une fontaine un hermitaige / en luy disant quil feist raser les armes des trois croissans que clovis portoit lors en son escu / et fist mettre en ce lieu les trois fleurs de lis / et en icelles se combatist / et il auroit victoire contre le roy caudat. Lequel le revela a la femme clovis qui reparoit audit hermitaige / et apportoit souvent audit hermite, sa recreacion. Laquelle les emporta & deffassa les croissans, & y mist les trois fleurs de lis," fol. A4r. See Hinkle, 32-39; Scheller, 1983, 91.

(15) Schnerb-Lievre, 133: emphasis added. The notes to this edition of the Songe du vergier, especially for pp. 449-50, have been very helpful in researching this article. Illustrations from the Grandes Chroniques de France from the end of fourteenth century shows troops with toads on shields and angel descending with lilies. See Hinkle, pl. 18.

(16) Theis, 116-17. Hinkle notes the demoniacal interpretation of toads in the Middle Ages, 38; see also pl. 8b.

(17) Theis, 121. Another allusion to the Clovis legend and the story of the crescents or toads and the lilies is found in Nicole Gilles's Annales et chroniques de France, in the year 1494. Gilles was a historian and comptroller under Charles VII. He says: "Et advint un iour que ledict hermite, estant en oroison, un Ange s'apparut a luy, en luy disant qu'il feist raser les armes des trois croissans, que ledict Clovis portoit en son escu (combien qu'aucuns dient que c'estoyent trois crapaux) & au lieu d'iceulx portast un escu dont le champ fust d'azur, seme tout de fleurs de liz d'or: & luy dist que Dieu avoit ordonne que les Roys de France portassent doresenavant telles armes. Ledict hermite revela a la femme dudict Clovis son apparition: laquelle incontinent feit effacer lesdictz trois croissans ou crapaux, & feist mettre lesdictes fleurs de liz," fol. 14v. Jean Bouchet will also keep this medieval paradigm of before and after Clovis's conversion: "Durans quinze ans que ie regnay sans foys / sur les francoys vivant selon leur loy / Conquis Soissons et mys en mes lyens le roy bissin et les thuringiens," fol. 44v and "Par sainct remy dun miraculeux cresm e / lan de mon regne environ le quinziesme / Et me donna le hault dieux sans merite / De tous escutz le seul choix leslite / Ce sont trois liz de pur or sur azur," fol. 50v.

(18) Gaguin, 1498, fol. 2v.

(19) This woodcut is by Pierre le Rouge and first appeared in La Mer des Histoires (1488); see Hinkle, 95-100, pls. 53-54. Woodcuts similar to fig. 1 appear in Les Croniques de France: excellens faictz et vertueux gestes / des treschrestiens Roys et princes qui ont regne audict pays (1516), fol. 6r; Les grandes croniques: excellens faitz / et vertueux gestes: des tresillustres/ treschrestiens / magnanimes et victorieux Roys de France (1519), fol. 6r; La Mer des cronicques et miroeur hystorial de france jadis compose en latin par religieuse personne frere Robert Gaguin En son vivant Minstre general de l'ordre de la saincte Trinite (1530), fol. 5v. The following Latin versions do not have any woodcuts showing the Joyenval legend: the 1498 edition cited; Roberti Gaguini ordinis sanctae trinitatis ministri generalis de origine et gestis francorumperquam utile compendium (1497) fol. 3r; Compendium de origine et gestis francorum (1499), fol. 4r, Compendium Roberti Gaguini super Francorum gestis: ab ipso recognitum & auctum (1500), fol. 5v; Compendium super Francorum gestis (1504), fol. 5v.

(20) This universal history features extensive illuminations by an anonymous artist; see Hurel. The manuscript rouleau dates from around 1520 (Bibliotheque Sainte Genevieve, ms. 523).

(21) Gerson, fol. 19r-v.

(22) Commynes, 211.

(23) Meschinot, 57.803-12.

(24) Masselin, 601-02.

(25) Church, 43; see also Reulos.

(26) Mortari, 29-30, 263.

(27) Church, 55; see also Lebigre, 29-34; and Petot, 59-100.

(28) The literature on Bodin is large and informative; see, for example, Franklin. For an excellent synopsis of the complexity of Bodin's ideas on sovereignty and their effect in France, Germany, and England, see Salmon.

(29) Kelley, 1970, 183-214, especially 195-201. For Du Moulin, see Thireau.

(30) Chasseneuz, 1546: "Trigesima consideratio. Rex Franciae in suo regno imperator dicitur, ut dicit Bal. in exemplo. C. de probatio. & est tanq. stella matutina in medio nebulae meridionalis, ut dicit Bal. in tit. de feudi alienatione per Federicum," fol. 127r.

(31) Ibid.: "Et conclusive tenet Alberi. loco quo supra, q. numquam imperator fuit dominus totius orbis, & hoc etiam tenetur a multis, maxime ob omnibus doctoribus Aurelianensibus & citramontanis contra sententiam glossarum iuris civilis, & canonici," fol. 123r. See Kelley, 1984, 262-63; ibid., 1997a, 70; and ibid., 1997b, 90. See also Lecoq, 217.

(32) Chasseneuz, 1546: "Ex quibus constat responsio generalis ad omnia iura dicentia, quod imperator est dominus totius orbis, & habet monarchiam: est verum, orbis, scilicet subiecti Romano imperio. Cum tempore quo translatum fuit imperium per populum in principem, transtulerunt ei omne imperium, quod habebunt in toto orbe. Cum ergo totus orbis universaliter non tunc subiieceretur ipsi populo Romano, sed tantum una pars, debet intelligi illa pars esse universaliter illum totum orbem, & non ultra," fol. 124r.

(33) Ibid., 1647. See also Pignot, 143; Chasseneuz, 1546, preface, fol. 1r. See McCartney, especially 191-200, for an extremely interesting discussion of the queen's prerogatives of office in both Chasseneuz and Grassaille. See also Scheller, 1985, 54-55.

(34) See note 30.

(35) Grassaille: "Septimum ius altum Christianissimi Francorum regis, quod ex praecedenti sequitur, est: ut legibus Romanorum Imperatorum, vel Iurisconsultorum subditus non sit: quae de necessitate non servantur in suo regno, sed prout bonae & aequae videntur, seu pro ratione a sapientibus Scriptoribus tenus relictae, & deficientibus suis ordinationibus," 94, and "Pariter, leges seu consuetudines feudorum non habent locum in Francia, quia imo quo ius succedendi, vendendi, testandi, seu transferrendi feuda, sunt redactae ad instar patrimoniorum," 106. The power of the French king is also noted in his ability to "alienate" a city with or without its citizens' approval (107) and in his ability to torture nobles (110).

(36) Ibid.: "plura alia iura Foederici & Iustinia servantur in regno Franciae, ex commissione regis, & beneplacito populi, non ex subjectione," 95. Thireau underlines the extremist position adopted by Grassaille: "Alors que des auteurs a tendance autocratique, dont le plus notable est sans doute Grassaille, s'attachent a exalter sans reserve la royaute, d'autres plus traditionalistes et plus moderes, cherchent avant tout a lui assigner des limites, a realiser unequilibre entre le pouvoir du prince et les droits et privileges des ordres qui composent la nation," 251-52. See also Ourliac, 129.

(37) Grassaille: "Supra vexilla invictissimi Regis Franciae, nemo praesumat honorem: sua enim umbra, totum orbem regit ... dicitur Rex Regum ... Et dicitur secundus Sol in orbe terrarum.... Regem ipsum Franciae in ordine praemittunt. Ex quo praerogativa honoris & praecellentia dignitatis demonstratur," 2-3.

(38) Chasseneuz, 1546: "Divinatio in labriis Regis est, & in iudicio non errabit cor eius. Prover. 16. Nutu enim dei agere praesumitur. Curt. consi. 49. col. 21. Et ideo tanta est eius celsitudo, quod non potest ei imponi lex in suo Regno, ut dicit Curt. in consi. 65. colum. 6. ad finem. Maxime in Regno Francorum, qui super omnes Reges est, quia tanquam stella matutina in medio nebulae meridionalis imminet," fol. 118r-v.; "Princeps est lex animata in terris, ut est tex. in auth. de consulibus ... Dixi in commentariis nostri ad consuetudines ducatus Burgundiae, tit. des iustices," fol. 119r.; Grassaille: "Praemittendo pro primo eius iure alto & praecipuo: q. primus & maior est inter totius orbis Reges & Principes fideles & infideles: Et tanquam dignior primo in loco sedet & collacatur: quia secundum Bald. in c. primo. [section]. primo de prohi. feud. alie. per Fede. in usi. feudo. Rex Franciae est inter alios Reges & Principes huius saeculi tanquam stella matutina in medio nebulae meridionalis: & super omnes Reges mundi, obtinet coronam libertatis & gloriae," 1-2; "quia ... sicut ipse Deus qui est Rex Regum, & dominus dominantium, Apocalip. cap. xix, quodammodo pro scuto habet coelum sidereum astris ornatum: sic, Rex Francorum Ecclesiae paranimphus, pro gloria Christi scutum fert nobilissimum: in quo, aurea lilia quasi astra in sereno coelo fulgere videatur: ut etiam ex coeli altitudine sue dignitatis regalis sublimitas dignoscatur," 21-22; "Ex alio etiam capite, Arma Christianiss. Regis sunt excellentissima, scilicet ex parte concedentis summi Dei, cum fuerint coelitus demissa," 24-25.

(39) Ibid., fol. 128v.

(40) Lecoq, 162-63. Lecoq mentions the story about the toads on pages 199-201; see also 192, 342, and 347-48 for more on lilies and Clovis. For similar problems associated with images of royal power later in the sixteenth century, see McGowan.

(41) Grassaille, 14-15. The passage continues as follows: "Tit. primo, c.viii. sic dicit: Nec praeteribo huic loco adiicere, quod perseverante ad hanc usque aetatem fama, vulgatum accepi, fuisse Gallorum Regibus buffones tres; nobilitatis quidem insigne, Clodoveo Christianis sacris initiato demissum e coelo esse hoc quod nunc Reges gestant, lilia aurea, quibus subest coeli sereni color, quem azureum dicunt. In cuius rei testimonium in monasterio divi Bartholomaei, quod Gaudium Vallis appellatur, fons ab incolis ostenditur: in quo scuto Regio, quelibet est res consideranda, sed prius unde Franci descendant, videndum est per. l. i. ff. de iusti. & iure."

(42) He does make an allusion to the first part of the Catalogus two pages later, but not to the fifth section where the long citation on the toads is found.

(43) Grassaille does allude to the transformative nature of the lilies but does not mention the toads and seems to forget that they were ever used: "Nunc ad propositum revertendo: Est primo considerandum, quod in praefato scuto, lilia depinguuntur ea de causa: quia sicut lilium plerumque de spinis oritur, sic Francorum Reges, licet ad infidelibus originem traxerint usque ad Clodovaeum: tamen postquam fides catholica illis nota fuit, nil dulcius habuerunt, quam illam tueri et protegere," 17.

(44) See Alemany-Dessaint.

(45) Corrozet, 55-57.

(46) Girard, 1609, 22.

(47) Ibid., 1615: "Quelques chroniques nous veulent faire croire, que paravant les Rois de France portoient trois Crapaux, les autres disent trois Croissans," 31.

(48) Du Tillet, 225-26.

(49) Pasquier: "Car voyant que tantost quelques Autheurs disent que les armoiries des Francois estoient trois crapaux, tantost trois Couronnes, tantost trois Croissans, tantost un lyon rampant, portant a sa queue un Aigle: Je ne puis penser d'ou procede cette diversite d'opinions, sinon que les Autheurs qui nous devancerent sur le milieu de nos Roys, trouverent quelques uns d'entr'eux porter en ses armes, l'un trois Croissans, l'autres [sic] trois Crapaux, et ainsi rapportans cette particularite a une generalite du pays (dautant que du temps d'iceux Autheurs les armoiries estoient ja faites perpetuelles) ils estimerent chacun en son endroit que les armoiries de France fussent les unes trois Couronnes: les autres trois Croissans: les autres le Lyon: les autres trois Crapaux, jusques a la venue de Clovis, lequel pour rendre son Royaume plus miraculeux, se fit apporter par un Hermite, comme advertissement du Ciel, les fleurs de Lys, lesquelles se sont continuees jusques a nous," 1:490-91.

(50) Ibid.: "Et de cette mesme facon avons nous presque tire entre nous, l'ancienne opinion que nous eusmes de l'Auriflamme, l'invention de nos fleurs de lys, que nous attribuons a la Divinite, et plusieurs autres telles choses, lesquelles bien qu'elles ne soient aidees d'autheurs anciens, si est-ce qu'il est bien seant a tout bon citoyen de les croire pour la majeste d'un Empire," 3:1585.

(51) Fauchet, 1611, 117: "[J]e n'ay point leu en pas un auteur de marque ceste revelation d'escu. Aussi les hommes de scavoir croient que les blasons & armoires hereditaires sont plus modernes."

(52) Ronsard, 1134, lines 1053-54: "dishonored by three puffed-up toads."

(53) Fauchet, 1611: "faux blasons, selon l'advis des maistres du mestier" and "les Flamans et ceux du pays bas, par desdain, & pour ceste cause nous appellent Crapaux Franchos," 17-18.

(54) Sainte-Marthe, Scevole et Louis de, 55-56. See also Pere Anselme, 76, who explains that Louis VII, and his son Philippe Auguste were the first to use the fleur de lis in 1120: he doesn't mention toads.

(55) Duchesne, 285-92.

(56) Fine de Brianville: "Tout ce qu'on dit ou des Crapaux, ou des trois Couronnes, ou des trois Croissants, ou Dragon estranglant de sa queue un Aigle; qu'on a voulu donner pour armes aux Francois avant Clovis, est fabuleux sans contredit: Sur tout l'usage des armoires estant de beaucoup plus recent que ce temps la," 5.

(57) Testefort, preface, no pagination.

(58) Ibid.: "trempoit dans l'Idolatrie, source de toutes meschancetes et de toutes vilainies, elle estoit comme un esgout de toute sorte d'impurete derivee des cavernes, & de l'eschole des Druydes et partant ce n'est pas merveille, si elle ... n'enfantait que des monstruosites et des saletez. Et faisoit trophee de mectre les crapaux en ses armes"; and further: "Mais depuis que le Soleil de iustice a darde ses rayons sur elle, elle est devenue belle, et claire ... voire d'un cloaque qu'elle estoit plus infectee ... metamorphosees en paradis terrestre," 54-56.

(59) Ibid., 46-47.

(60) Tristan de Saint-Amant: "avoir presume en sa faveur substituer aux Fleurs de LIS, des Effigies ridicules de quelques chetives petites mousches (Insectes picquantes, engeance de corruption) trouvees dans l'Antre Sepulcral, ou Infernal d'un Roy Payen, & de son Cheval," (fol. A3v).

(61) See Jacobs, 169.

(62) See Meester de Ravestein for more on the relationship of Jean-Jacques Chifflet and his brother Philippe with Spain and with France, 1-28.

(63) Chifflet, 1655: "Ethnici moris ac ritus etiam fuit extra urbem sepeliri, iuxta viam publicam ac militarem," 85.

(64) Ibid.: "Apud Varronem apes nascuntur partim ex apibus, partim ex bubulo corpore putrefacto," 157. (Varro De re rustic. c. 16 Lib. 3). Chifflet even draws a parallel between the different sorts of bees found on Childeric's tomb were like different kinds of people. He cites Aristotle and Livy to this effect: "Aristoteles: Differunt inter se apes parentibus natae urbanis, & quae rustico montanoque victu educatis prodierint. Sunt enim hae sylvestres horridores aspectu, & iracundiores, & minores, sed opere ac labore praestantiores. (Aristotle, De Hist. Animal. L. 9. c. 40) Quocirca respexerit Childericus ad populorum, quibus praeerat, diversa ingenia. 'Gentes aliae sunt iracundae,' inquit Livius, 'aliae audaces, quaedam timidae, in vinum, in venerem proniores aliae sunt' (Livy, Lib. 45). Ut hominibus singulis, sic populis suae laudes, suae labes; & in qua gente vitia certa increbuere, mores vocantur," 163. Bees are, of course, given a more positive interpretation elsewhere. They are often interpreted as an obvious metaphor for the ideal human society and the ideal state, namely the monarchy. See Scheller, 1985, 40.

(65) Chifflet, 1655: "Certum est Childericum I. Regem gestasse pro symbolis apes, eiusque militaris equi instructum apibus perspersum fuisse. Planum est etiam, Lilii flores a Merovingis Regibus numquam usurpatos, neque a Carlovingis, in quorum annulis & sigillis non apparent. Atque, ut ista deessent, apes Childerici Regis in lilia fuisse commutatas multa suppetent argumenta," 171. For Chifflet's nickname see Jacobs, 169.

(66) Tristan de Saint-Amant, 19 and 51-52.

(67) See Boll, 157 and elsewhere.

(68) Chifflet, 1658, unpaginated dedication found between pp. 8 and 9.

(69) See Jacobs, 170.

(70) Chifflet, 1658, 30 and following.

(71) Ibid., 31. Chifflet rejects the toads as historically inaccurate in the Anastasis (1655): "Ceterum qua ratione longoque saeculorum intervallo facta fit apum Francicarum in lilia commutatio, placet inquirere; & ad id lectorem meum iuvabant scutula quatuor, quae doctrinae gratia nummis subieci. Primum refert aureas apes, velut ab aethere deciduas, symbola childerici I. Regis, ethnici, & filii eius Clodovei, priusquam Christianis sacris initiaretur, hoc est, ab anno CDLXXXI. usque ad CDXCVI. Quo tinctus undis baptismi piacularibus, anile commentum est; eum tunc, abiectis bufonibus, lilia pro symbolo usurpasse, quae neque memorant antiqui scriptores neque ulla Regis monumenta subministrant," 177.

(72) Chifflet, 1658, 32. Modern scholars of French heraldry have noted the allure of the toads for France's political enemies. Maury notes: "Il est indiscutable que ces animaux repugnants figurent comme emblemes francais sur les documents, peu nombreux, il est vrai, et datant des XI[V.sup.e] et X[V.sup.e] siecles. On a voulu voir la une injure des Hollandais avec lesquels nous avons ete souvent en guerre. En effet, une histoire de France, traduite autrefois, dans leur langue montre en Frontispiece trois crapauds au lieu de lis dans l'ecusson d'azur," 329. Maury even shows a Dutch caricature from the time of Louis XIV in which three toads are skewered on a stick on a carriage carrying Marshal Vendome to battle (330). See also Chatillon, 175-78; Bloch, 234. Examples of the toads' later symbolic success cited by Lombard-Jourdan, 36-38, are also all from abroad. She mentions Chifflet, as well as German engravings by Hans Burgkmair and the mausoleum of Maximilian I in Innsbruck.

(73) Chifflet's allusion to the possible Burgundian origins of this image offers an interesting turn in the evolutionary story of the toads. A set of tapestries in the museum of the Palais de Thau in Reims resembles the aulaeum which Chifflet mentions as having been made during the early fifteenth century in Burgundy, and which was supposed to have been the model for the image of Clovis in the Lilium francicum. This set of six tapestries dating from the fifteenth century depicts Clovis surrounded by troops and flag-bearers carrying toad-adorned insignia. These tapestries were most probably made for the Burgundian dukes in Tournai or in Arras in the early part of the fifteenth century (Sartor, 58-60; Sterling, 1938, 15-16). The tapestries were transmitted to Emperor Charles V by Charles the Brave's daughter, Margaret of Burgundy. When Charles V was defeated at the siege of Metz by Henry II in 1552, he had to leave behind these massive tapestries (4.75 m. X 8.80 m. and 4.75 m. X 9.50 m. [Sartor, 62 and 64]) during his retreat. They became a part of the booty of the duke Francois de Guise, and were offered as a gift to the cathedral of Reims by Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine, in 1573. (Paris and Leberthais, 1: xiii-xv; Sartor, 59-60) Severely mistreated after the Revolution, only two of these huge tapestries made it through the nineteenth century. A remnant of the sixth tapestry, which was still legible in the nineteenth century, depicted the transformation of the toads into lilies as related by the Joyenval legend (Paris and Leberthais, 2:1083-85).

These Burgundian tapestries therefore depict the conversion of the toads into lilies in the closing episodes of the legend, after Clovis's battles rather than before. Hinkle remarks on the ambivalent and often confusing relationship of the Burgundians with the Valois kings (78). He shows parts of the Burgundian tapestries in his plates 44a, b, and c. He also explains that the heavenly gift of the fleurs-de-lis in the last tapestry placed a divine seal of approval on the king's earlier conquests (84, nn. 207-08). Wauquelin's suppression of the scene of the conversion of the toads into lilies in his prose version of La Belle Helene de Constantinople for the Burgundian duke Philip the Good also hints at the rather complicated meaning the legend might have had in Burgundy (see note 10). See also Roussel's (1998) note on these tapestries, 296.

It is impossible to ascertain if Chifflet or his illustrator had access to the Burgundian tapestries when they made the illustration of Clovis for the Lilium francicum, since the tapestries were supposed to have been in the hands of the French after the defeat of Charles-Quint at the Siege of Metz in 1552. The registry in the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, which published Chifflet's book, records that an engraver named J. van Werden made the image of Clovis with the toads for Chifflet. The museum still has the engraving with van Werden's signature at the bottom and which has been cut off in Chifflet's text. On page 23 of the Inventaris-Tekeningen of the Museum Plantin-Moretus, one reads under Inv. # 418, Cat. # 6912 (Nam van de kunstenaar), the following: "Een koning van Frankrijk. Ill. voor: Joan Jac. chiffletii Lilium Francicum. (J. van Werden f.) Plantin, 1658, in fol. [II. 56]." See also Jacobs, 169-70. Lombard-Jourdan refers to the image from Chifflet's Lilium francicum as being the Flemish tapestry itself. She does note how Clovis is "arme de facon parfaitement anachronique et coiffe d'un casque ceint d'une couronne ouverte," 36-37. The anachronistic armor and the odd helmet are possibly explained by the polemical nature of Chifflet's text, which Lombard-Jourdan does not bring up.

(74) See Thireau: "Au XV[I.sup.e] siecle, un changement radical se manifeste: par suite des progres de l'autorite royale, le monarque apparait comme le seul souverain. Le mot 'souverain' prend un sens absolu: il designe 'le caractere d'une puissance qui ne releve d'aucune autre et n'en admet aucune autre en concours avec elle; au lieu d'etre relative, la souverainetes' eleve aussi audessus de toute autre puissance dans l'Etat," 216.

(75) See Marin; Keohane, 17; and Mortari, 41.

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