Musart is one of the two camels in the "Roman de Renart", the papal legate whom Noble seeks advice when Ysengrin pleads justice in the Va branch. We want to show, in the light of the sources, that in the imagination of the 12th century the camel was predestined for this role. An overview of the sources will show that the camel was little known, except through fables and religious texts. Embodying the ambivalence between the material and the celestial, it can represent both the humility of Christ and the arrogance of the Pharisees. Moreover, scientific tradition describes this camelid, which embodies the papal legate and should therefore represent the law of the Church, as a sexually virulent animal. Against the backdrop of all these ambivalences, the poet of the "Roman de Renart" has every right to ridicule the papal legate. We will show that he uses three means to do this: speech (from a linguistic and legal point of view), the choice of the animal which embodies him, and his name (Musart), heavy with meaning. - [Author]

Language: French

0925–4757; DOI: 10.1075/rein.26.02bir