2 - Mestre and Son: The Role of Sabaoth and Terri in Boeve de Haumtone

Summary

In the Anglo-Norman Boeve de Haumtone (late twelfth-century), the young hero has a mestre, Sabot or Sabaoth, who plays an important part in the narrative. He and later his son save Boeve from death and from his enemies. Mestre is a term which in the twelfth century replaces pedagogus, or nutricius, as the term for the person employed by noble households to educate their sons, and Insular texts before Boeve show knowledge of the word and the role. It is the purpose of this chapter to examine the way early Anglo- Norman romances use the historical figure of the mestre: briefly to look at its use in the Roman de Horn and Ipomedon before Boeve, and in Gui de Warewic after Boeve. In Boeve itself, I contend that the figure acquired a distinct flavour, peculiar to the poem, but one which was much attenuated in the later English version, Sir Bevis of Hampton.

In Norman and Angevin England, as in Continental France, the custom in the twelfth century, and later too, was to allocate a magister or mestre to a youthful nobleman. Such a figure was usually a knight, generally with his own household. The young boy was either given the mestre within his parents’ household – this might happen if he were a prince – or sent out, at around seven or even younger, to the mestre's household. There he may have found himself in a group of other young boys in a similar situation; they were all there to be educated.

But the mestre was more than just an educator. The connotations of mestre and maistrie help us here. Mestre certainly could mean not just tutor but master, expert, manager, and was applied to doctors and lawyers, those with skills. But maistrie also carries meanings of authority, control and power. The mestre was appointed by a father to be a sort of mentor to his son: he protected and taught him, he accompanied him to the most profitable tournaments, he restrained and advised him. He was not necessarily much older than the youth but he had greater experience. According to Georges Duby, it was the mestre who would accompany the restless youths of Northern France – the juvenes – after they took up arms, on lengthy expeditions, financed by their fathers.