Memoirs of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America

Abstract

Gerard Joseph (Gerry) Brault,who passed away in StateCollege, Pennsylvania, onFebruary 5, 2020, was born in Chicopee Falls, MA, on November 7, 1929. His parents had come to the USA from Lacolle, Québec, in 1921. His undergraduate studies at Assumption College in Worcester, MA, were interrupted in June 1948, when he joined the Massachusetts National Guard. At the end of 1951, he joined the US Army in Fort Dix, NJ, where he proved particularly proficient with the rifle. Further training at FortHolabird,MD, preceded elevenmonths in La Rochelle, France, as a special agent in the Intelligence Corps. He was awarded the National Defense Service and Good Conduct Medals. Brault graduated cum laude with a MA in French from theUniversité Laval inQuébecCity in 1952. Six years later, hewas awarded aPhD inRomanceLanguages from theUniversity of Pennsylvania.His dissertation,“AStudyof theWorks ofGirart d’Amiens,”was directed byWilliamRoach, one of themost distinguished scholars of Old French of his generation. The choice of a then little-known author is an early indication of Brault’s readiness to undertake sizable and challenging scholarly topics; some early articles were drawn from the dissertation. His first post teaching Frenchwas at Bowdoin College (1957–61). He then moved as Associate Professor to his graduate alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, where he remained for four years, before his appointment as Professor and Chair at The Pennsylvania State University, State College, in 1965. The rest of his distinguished teaching career was spent at Penn State, where he trained a number of graduate students inOld Frenchwhowent on to have successful academic careers. He became Distinguished Professor of French andMedieval Studies, then Edwin Erle Sparks Professor, in 1990. He retired from Penn State at the end of 1997. His first book was an edition of the first French translation (1527) of the Spanish La Celestina (1963), and although he continued to publish articles on sixteenth-century French literature, Brault was essentially a medievalist. His second book, Early Blazon: Heraldic Terminology in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries with Special Reference to Arthurian Literature (1972), the origins of which can be traced back to his dissertation, soon became a landmark in Old French studies. Not only did it explore the significance of heraldry in romance, but it also provided an introduction to a complex and arcane area of medieval studies as well as an invaluable glossary of heraldic terms. It is still indispensable reading half a century after its publication. Heraldry remained one of Brault’s principal interests throughout his career. Twenty-five years after Early Blazon, he published the monumental two-volume edition of The Rolls of Arms of Edward I (1272–1307) (1997), which earned him both the Riquer Prize from the Académie Internationale d’Héraldique and the Julian Bickersteth Memorial Medal from the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies. Research for these books took him to many libraries in France and England, and its results confirmed the impossibility of separating insular and continental francophone culture in theMiddle Ages. NeitherEarly Blazon norTheRolls of Armswould have been possible without the acute philological and historical awareness that Brault developed early in his career. TheRolls of Arms, through its demonstration of the significance of heraldry for those bore the blazons, is regarded as transformational in the field. The other area of Old French studies in whichBrault left an indeliblemarkwas the studyof the chansonde geste, and in particular, the venerable Oxford version of La chanson de Roland. If his heraldry studies opened up new fields, the two-volume edition (with translation) and commentary on the Roland (1978)