Bodel, Jean - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. II, p. 1005

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

BODEL, JEAN. — French poet from Arras, who lived between the end of the 12th century and the beginning of the 13th, whose writings are highly varied in character.

Of his works, there are a short poem on Charlemagne’s war against the Saxons (historically based, but with extensive and personal reworkings of the earlier sources), five pastorelle, a religious drama, and a kind of sorrowful and resigned farewell to the world, in verse, written around 1202, when B. was stricken with leprosy (Li Congiè) and later much imitated by other poets, who made it the prototype of a “literary genre.” The sacred drama, Jeu de st Nicolas, revolves around the conversion of a pagan king through the agency of the Saint, and is particularly rich in profane and popular elements. It is one of the earliest examples of the genre, treated with remarkable variety and vivacity.

BIBL.: E. Raymond, Les Cougés de J. B., in Romania, 9 (1880), p. 216 ff.; the Chanson des Suisses was edited by F. Merzel and Z. Stengel, Marburg 1906–1909; the Jeu de Saint Nicolas by A. Jeanroy, Paris 1925. Cf. also D. Rohsterm, Etude sur J. B., Uppsala 1900; L. I. N. Monnerque and F. Michel, Théâtre français au moyen-âge, Paris 1885; 2nd ed., there 1939, p. 157 ff.; and G. Cohen, Le théâtre en France au moyen-âge, there 1948 (larger ed. with the same title, in 2 vols., there 1928–31).