The French Works of Jofroi de Waterford

At the beginning of the fourteenth century, Jofroi, a brother of the Dominican house of St Saviour’s in Waterford, Ireland, translated into French and adapted from the Latin three texts: the De excidio Troiae of the so-called ‘Dares Phrygius’, the Breviarium historiae romanae of Eutropius, and Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum. While the first two, La gerre de Troi and Le regne des Romains are generally close translations, Le secré de secrés is much modified by omissions and interpolations of exempla and scientific material. In his enterprise, Jofroi was aided and abetted by his scribe, the Walloon merchant and custos, Servais Copale. This book is the first critical edition of Jofroi’s œuvre. The texts are accompanied by a general introduction, individual introductions to each of the three texts, extensive notes, a substantial glossary, and an index of proper names. Jofroi and Servais collaborated in Waterford, not Paris, as has long been assumed, and these texts are therefore witness to the importance of French as a literary language in southeastern Ireland.