¹ The research for this study was sponsored by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, for which I wish to express my gratitude here. A preliminary version of this essay was presented at the Northeast Modern Language Association Convention at Burlington, Vt., 9 April 1976 (Section: Saints in Medieval Literature).

² All citations of the Alexis are to Christopher Storey, ed., Textes Littéraires Français (Paris: Droz, 1968), line numbers are given parenthetically in text; translations are mine. Although an early twelfth-century date has been proposed for the Alexis (by Storey and others), the consensus of scholarly opinion still appears firmly in favor of a mid-eleventh-century dating.

³ Sémantique structurale (Paris: Larousse, 1966), pp. 172-91. Greimas has further expanded on this terminology in various of his other works.

⁴ See my “Narrative Analysis of Medieval Texts: La Fille du Comte de Pontieu” (Modern Language Notes, 92 [1977], 645-90).

⁵ See, e.g., Sémantique structurale, pp. 180-82. Greimas ordinarily represents the “desire” relationship with an arrow (Objet Sujet) or a line (Sujet/Objet Héros/Saint). Graal

⁶ English trans. by Sister Penelope (London: Mowbrays, 1950). This work was composed c. 1126. Many of the points that Bernard makes (in particular, the ones to which I am referring) are not exclusively Christian, but could be made by a Jewish or an Islamic writer just as well.

⁷ This plot summary follows closely that provided by Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr., in A History of Old French Literature, from the Origins to 1300, 2nd ed. (New York: Russell and Russell, 1962), pp. 30-31.

⁸ Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, ed. Five German Academics, Vol. i, Pt. i (Leipzig: Teubner, 1910), 1175, s.v. diligo.

⁹ Holmes, e.g., says of the Alexis: “This narrative is somewhat unpleasant to the modern reader because of the utter selfishness of its asceticism—a disregard of the second great commandment, man's duty towards his neighbor. Alexis sees his mother and father, not to mention his wife, sorrowing unceasingly, and yet he keeps his silence to the last” (History, p. 31). This tendency to side with Alexis' family, against Alexis—to be sensitive to the intense human dimension of the work more than to its ascetical and theological dimensions—is, I think, a typically modern reaction.

¹⁰ As I pointed out above (n. 2), there is disagreement about the date of composition of the Alexis. I do take it to be a mid-eleventh-century work, but should it be in fact a twelfth-century text (which is possible), then it has a very archaic flavor indeed.

¹¹ See, e.g., the New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), xii, 352-53, 972; A Vacant and E. Mangenot, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, xiv (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1939), 843.

¹² It must be said, of course, that Alexis is never represented as feeling tempted. In this text, to be saintly, to be superhuman, is functionally much the same as to be inhuman, antihuman. Alexis is “hard of heart.” There is no suggestion, in the letter of the text, that he might have thought, for example, that a soft, warm bed might feel better than his hard and damp pallet. In short, temptations exist for Alexis only in an external sense and only to be overcome.

¹³ We are not invited, at any point in the text, to emulate Alexis; we are exhorted, not to be saints, but to pray to this saint.

¹⁴ Although I have referred to this work as a text, it is really a song (chanson), consisting of 125 strophes, each composed of decasyllabic lines. It was apparently written to be sung in church on the feast of Saint Alexis.

¹⁵ There are also hagiographical texts (or representations of saintly characters in other works) in which the Devil or evil men are extensively developed as Subjects. They often make highly satisfactory Subjects— more so than the saint himself, who may be very “undynamic,” whose only Object may be “not to abjure” before being martyred. A case in point is the Cantilène de Sainte Eulalie.

¹⁶ There is probably another factor operating in the positive development accorded to the spuse in this text. This bride, yearning for her bridegroom, grieving but ever faithful, could not fail to remind Christians of the Bride of the Christian tradition: the church, Christ's Sponsa.

¹⁷ It is thus that Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence, for example, refers to his work on the life of Saint Thomas à Becket: La Vie de Saint Thomas Becket, ed. Emmanuel Walberg, Classiques Français du Moyen Age (Paris: Champion, 1936), 11. 22, 6156.

¹⁸ The superego has received short shrift from modern psychology. Like the id, it is seen as largely unconscious and as part of the individual: in no way is it thought of as transcendent, or even as truly “above” the ego.

¹⁹ It is also disconcerting in that it is hard to tell when such forces are really present in the text. Is there a single medieval work in which God's name and pleasure are not mentioned? A Dieu ne plaise! When is God truly an invisible actor, and when is he merely a figure of speech or a figment of the imagination of a character?

²⁰ As Augustine put it: “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You” (Confessions, Bk. i, Ch. i).

²¹ I am distinguishing here between the author (collective or individual, human or divine) who made the characters and the story, and the narrator who tells the story. In some works, of course, these different functions are combined.

²² I am grateful to more friends and colleagues than I can enumerate here for their helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. I am also indebted, very greatly, to my husband, Paul C. Vitz.