The Transformer - Marie De France

1140–1220

She was probably the most famous writer of her time, but we know next to nothing about her. Her stories and poems were quite popular among the nobles of twelfth-century Europe, yet her biographers have to resort to guesswork. In one poem, she wrote, “My name is Marie and I am from France,” and so history knows what to call her.

She had three major works, all very different in character. There’s a collection of 103 fables that she translated from English, known as the Ysopet (you can hear the name Aesop in that title). Her Purgatory of St. Patrick, translated from a Latin original, tells of an Irish knight who visits the underworld à la Orpheus or Dante. But she is best known for her Lais, fifteen love poems expressing medieval chivalry.

Her style is sweet and simple, not the overly flowery language you might expect from French romance. As she writes in Purgatory:

I want to disclose

This writing very carefully

And to put effort and care into it for the sake of God,

In order to improve the simple folk.

There is a Christian sensibility to her work, but she’s not preachy. She clearly comes from a Christianized culture, but she celebrates folk wisdom and romantic love as well as piety. In fact, her Lais were sometimes criticized by church leaders for their treatment of adulterous love affairs. (She didn’t promote them, but she didn’t always condemn them either.)

Looking over the whole collection of this mysterious writer’s work, we can’t help but notice that she really didn’t create much from scratch. She translated other writings into French, and she recomposed love songs she had heard. Still, she put her unique stamp on everything she covered. She took fables and legends and ballads and transformed them into masterpieces. Her world was better for it.

So, what have you transformed lately? Are you taking the pieces of your life and creating beauty from it—in your relationships, in your art, in your witness? Our God is not only a creator, but a transformer, and he invites us to join him in that task.

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Romans 12:2