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Gace Brule

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GACE BRULE (d. c. 1220), French trouvere, was a native of Champagne. It has generally been asserted that he taught Thibaut of Champagne the art of verse, an assumption which is based on a statement in the Chroniques de Saint-Denis: " Si fist entre lui [Thibaut] et Gace Brule les plus belles chansons et les plus delitables et melodieuses qui onque fussent oies." This has been taken as evidence of collaboration between the two poets. The passage will bear the interpretation that with those of Gace the songs of Thibaut were the best hitherto known. Paulin Paris, in the Histoire litteraire de la France (vol. xxiii.), quotes a number of facts that fix an earlier date for Gace's songs. Gace is the author of the earliest known jeu parti. The interlocutors are Gace and a count of Brittany who is identified with Geoffrey of Brittany, son of Henry II. of England. Gace appears to have been banished from Champagne and to have found refuge in Brittany. A deed dated 1 212 attests a contract between Gatho Brusle (Gace Brule) and the Templars for a piece of land in Dreux. It seems most probable that Gace died before 1 220, at the latest in 1225.

See Gedeon Busken Huet, Chansons de Gace Brule, edited for the Societe des anciens textes frangais (1902), with an exhaustive introduction. Dante quotes a song by Gace, Ire d'amor qui en mon suer repaire, which he attributes erroneously to Thibaut of Navarre ( De vulgari eloquentia, p. 151, ed. P. Rajna, Florence, 1895).