Jean d'Arras was a 14th-century NorthernFrench writer about whom little is known. He collaborated with Antoine du Val and Fouquart de Cambrai in putting together a collection of stories entitled L'Évangile des quenouilles. The frame story is a group of ladies at their spinning who relate the current theories on a great variety of subjects. The work is of considerable value for the light it throws on medieval manners, and for its echoes of folklore, sometimes deeply buried under layers of Christianity. There were many editions of this book in the 15th and 16th centuries, one of which was printed by the early printer Wynkyn de Worde in English, as The Gospelles of Dystaves. A more modern edition had a preface by Anatole France.
Jean d'Arras, perhaps the same, wrote at the request of John, duke of Berry, as he says in his introduction, a long prose romance variously called the Roman de Mélusine or the Chronique de Melusine part of Le Noble Hystoire de Lusignan, in 1392-94. He dedicated the work to Marie of Valois, Duchess of Bar and expressed the hope that it would aid in the political education of her children. Leaning on perhaps mostly oral tradition surrounding the originally Celtic region of Poitou, it is one of the first literary versions of the tale of Melusine, a fairy cursed by her fairy mother to become a hybrid woman/serpent every Saturday. If she married a mortal man who remained faithful to her and obeyed her request never to seek her out on that day, she would gain the status of a mortal woman and enjoy salvation as a Christian. She guided the spectacular rise and subsequent fall of the House of Lusignan after she met the nobleman Rainmondin by a fountain in the forest, who married her and fathered ten sons on her whose exploits in the Crusades brought them fame, despite the fact that most of them carried some form of physical blemish. Raimondin remains faithful to his promise until he is persuaded to believe that her hiding every Saturday is an excuse for her to entertain a lover, and he spies on her in her bath. He doesn't betray her secret until one of their most deformed sons, Geoffrey Big-Tooth, burns down the monastery his brother Fromont has retired to. In despair, Raimondin curses her publicly for her demonic nature that has infected their sons, and she turns into a dragon and flies away, wailing. For more information consult the Wikipedia article on Melusine.
