Introduction

The narrative tradition of The Seven Sages of Rome is predicated on a frame story inspired by the biblical tale of Joseph and the wife of Potiphar. The stereotype of the powerful woman threatening men conveyed in this biblical story is reinforced by the strong homosocial bond between the numerous male characters: the young prince, the seven wise masters in charge of his education and the emperor of Rome. This narrative configuration establishes a gender paradigm that proves largely unwelcoming to the development of any heterosexual love plot. However, when prose continuations emerge during the 13th century, following the success of the French Roman des Sept Sages, they confront a dual challenge. The plot should depict the new imperial heirs as wise men, adhering to the original sapiential ethos, while ensuring the perpetuation of their lineage. Consequently, the heroes are encouraged to marry in keeping with the conventions of chivalric romance and in accordance with the genealogical logic of the cycle, which mandates that each continuation recount the exploits of the preceding hero’s son or sons.

This paper will examine the opening of the third continuation, the Roman de Cassidorus (RC), in which the protagonist – the young emperor of Constantinople, Cassidorus – becomes entangled in a conventional narrative pattern. After offering his assistance to a foreign ruler, Edypus, the prince of Bethsaida, he encounters the latter’s daughter, the beautiful Helcana, whose love for him unfolds in accordance with established narrative conventions. However, the young prince’s conduct defies all expectations. Rather than yielding to the princess’s wishes, he chooses to follow his own course and resolves to return to Constantinople. In the lengthy episode that follows this initial encounter, many of the most recognisable motifs of the courtly love tradition are enacted. Each night, the beautiful and desirous princess appears in her beloved’s dreams, thereby reviving the well-known lyrical motif of the amor de lonh (Bec, 1992).¹ Cassidorus and Helcana are finally reunited, and their reciprocal love is legitimated by the fact that the decisive agency in their union lies with the young emperor himself.

This narrative sequence reactivates several popular narrative motifs familiar from the chansons de geste and from the romances of the period. Taking place in the Holy Land, in Bethsaida, the plot explores themes of intercultural encounter. While the text does not explicitly define the religious identities of Edypus and Helcana, it clearly reworks the ‘Saracen princess’ topos discussed by Sarah Kay (1994).

I argue that the resolution of this curious love affair can be compared to an apocryphal episode in the story of Joseph, well known in Jewish, Muslim and Christian traditions. The opening episode of the Roman de Cassidorus bears striking resemblance to the legend of the marriage of Joseph with a young Egyptian princess, Aseneth. This story is widespread and shares with the Seven Sages tradition its translinguistic and transcultural character.

By examining the intertwining of apocryphal material and fictional chronicles of the Roman and Byzantine Empires, I challenge the presumed normality of heterosexual love plots in medieval literature. Both the Roman de Cassidorus and the Joseph and Aseneth story feature interreligious unions that require the bride’s conversion and present the relationship in an almost mystical light.

Courtly love, as it developed in Occitan and French literature from the 12th century onward, is commonly regarded as marking a new and decisive turn in the history of heterosexuality, insofar as it presents love, specifically ‘a man’s love for a woman’, as ‘an absolute ideal’ (Zink and Stanesco, 1992: 39). It is generally acknowledged that the transposition of spiritual imagery to the representation of human erotic emotion endows love with this status of the absolute (Valette, 2016: 329). The amorous encounter is thus assimilated to a spiritual event. Yet, I would argue that in the Roman de Cassidorus, the intricate interplay between the motifs of religious conversion and mystical experience paradoxically exposes a form of resistance to the dominant narrative tradition that depicts romantic heterosexual relationships as natural or innate, and passion as an irresistible and desirable ecstatic experience. The proliferation of the various obstacles staged to obtain a marital union mirrors the difficulty in developing a ‘heterosexual culture’ (Tin, 2008). This elaboration is not only the result of the curious gender system of the Seven Sages’ cycle. The complex process of making heterosexual love is certainly particularly evident in the case at hand, and it also allows to see the tensions that characterise the discourse of courtly love and its contradictions. Literature is crucial for reflecting on gender, sexuality and emotions because it provides models, such as courtly love, which inform our imagination. However, while reproducing these standards, the diversity of narratives multiplies configurations of desire, producing new negotiations that either reinforce or disrupt stereotypes of passionate love.

Joseph and The Seven Sages: Narrative Inventiveness in a Global Context

The legend of Joseph, the dearly beloved son of Jacob, who suffers the vindictive wrath of his brothers, is sold into slavery in Egypt under Potiphar, yet ultimately rises to become Pharaoh’s powerful minister and later welcomes his father and brothers fleeing the famine in Canaan, is well known across Judaic, Christian, and Muslim narrative traditions (Holy Bible, Genesis: 38–45). Within the medieval context, particular attention may be drawn to the profusion of commentaries and glosses on Genesis produced in Latin, but also to paraphrases and translations in the various vernacular traditions, most notably in Old French (Gingras, 2025). Moreover, the episode of Joseph’s attempted seduction by Potiphar’s wife is frequently recast in Old French literature as a sophisticated critique of the courtly paradigm, questioning the ideal of the powerful, amorous, and ostensibly benevolent lady (McCracken, 1998: 144–170; Foehr-Janssens, 2023a).

In this context, it is hardly surprising that the connection between the story of Joseph and the Seven Sages tradition should be particularly strong, especially in the ‘Western’ versions. As previously noted, the frame story reworks the well-known episode in Genesis: 39, 7–20, in which Joseph is threatened by Potiphar’s wife, who seeks to seduce him. In the ‘Western’ adaptations, this intertextual link is further reinforced by the fact that the final embedded tale, ‘Vaticinium’ (The prophecy), which is narrated by the prince to convince his father once and for all of his filial loyalty, is itself largely inspired by Joseph’s adventures (Loiseleur-Deslongchamps, 1838: 163, fn. 1). It is designed to illuminate the situation of the young prince within the framing narrative (RSS: 369, fn. 197).

The biblical story of Joseph rests on familial violence, near-death experiences, exile, harassment, but also on divination, political and economic success and familial pardon. Joseph endures the vengeance of his jealous brothers and is left for dead in a cistern. In parallel, the hero of ‘Vaticinium’, the son of a wealthy vavasor, is cast into the sea by his jealous father after claiming that he would one day become so powerful that his parents would take pleasure in serving him at table. Whereas Joseph is rescued by merchants and sold to Potiphar, eventually becoming his steward through his sagacity, the child in ‘Vaticinium’ is saved by a fisherman and sold to the seneschal of the king of a foreign kingdom. Whereas Joseph, through his capacity to interpret dreams, becomes Pharaoh’s steward, and marries Aseneth, the daughter of the wealthy priest of Heliopolis, the young hero in ‘Vaticinium’ attains the same position thanks to his ability to decipher the language of birds. Finally, just as Joseph welcomes his father and brothers to Egypt, revealing his identity and reconciling with them after the famine, the young man likewise receives his impoverished parents and makes himself known to them. The only episode that doesn’t receive any echo in ‘Vaticinium’ is precisely the encounter between Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, present in the frame tale.

This final tale thus serves as an elegant response to the framing narrative and bears witness to the ingenuity and literary inventiveness that shaped the reworking of the Book of Sindibad within the ‘Western’ literary tradition. The conclusion of the romance is wholly directed toward affirming the son’s legitimacy to rule the kingdom: his wisdom, perseverance in the face of adversity, and comprehensive knowledge present him as an ideal model of sovereignty, fashioned in the image of the biblical heroism of the patriarchs.

The Roman de Cassidorus and the Discursive Foundations of Heterosexual Normativity

The Roman de Cassidorus provides a particularly explicit illustration of the establishment of what Lett (2012) terms a ‘gender regime’,² founded on the valorisation of heterosexual love as the legitimate mode of union. The narrative’s plot goes well beyond what would normally be required in the pursuit of a socially acceptable marriage within the framework of feudal reproductive policy. It grants the reader the rare privilege of witnessing a moment of transition between two distinct conceptions of masculinity.

Educated as a philosopher, Cassidorus deliberately keeps himself at a distance from the temptations of heterosexual romance. A worthy descendant of the wise Cato, one of the legendary Seven Sages of Rome, he embodies an ethical system that privileges homosocial bonds over heterosexual attachment. Consequently, his eventual marriage to Helcana results from a complex negotiation among several competing cultural imperatives such as mistrust of feminine seduction, spiritualisation of desire, inclination toward religious conversion and anxiety about moral purity.

As already pointed out, the tradition of The Seven Sages is characterised by a pronounced male homosociality structured around relationships between masters and disciples, emperors and sages (cf. Foehr-Janssens, 2023b). Within this tradition, all meaningful human relationships are homosocial in nature. Both in the frame narrative and in the embedded tales, female characters tend to be portrayed as contemptible or deprived of agency. Marital alliances are arranged between men. Furthermore, the few maternal figures who might appear benevolent die in childbirth or at an early stage in the narrative. The premature death of the queen, in particular, recurs as a structuring motif throughout the cycle, occurring as a leitmotif in the first and third continuations, the Roman de Marques (RM) and the Roman de Cassidorus:

Et en ot Laurine, [l]a feme [de Marques], .I. fil [ = Laurin], qui puis fu sire de la terre […] mes au chief de .II. anz li sordi .I. grant duel, quar Laurine, sa feme, acoucha malade et morut. (RM: 218).³

And Laurine, Marques’ spouse, gave birth to a son, who later became the lord of the land […] but two years later, a great sorrow befell Marques, for his wife, Laurine, fell ill and died.

Moult furent poi ensamble quar la dame ne vesqui que .ij. ans; ainçois morut d’un fils qui ot nom Cassidorus. Li enfans vesqui et la dame couvint morir (RC: 4).

They lived together for a short time, as the lady’s life lasted only two more years; she died giving birth to a child. The child survived, but the lady had to die.

In the two first continuations, the intensity of homosocial relationships becomes even more insistent than in the foundational romance. The emperor Fiseus, hero of the original narrative, forms such an intimate bond with his fellow student, Marques, the son of Cato the Wise, that his friendship with Marques provokes sarcastic comments in the second continuation, the Roman de Laurin (RL):

Li empereres amoit molt Marques son seneschal, et tant que li auquant disoient: ‘Li deable feroient marier nostre empereres ; il est bien mariez ou seneschal, quar il n’est rien que li seneschaus veille qui ne soit fait’ (RL: 2).

The emperor greatly loved Marques, so much that some people said: ‘The devil himself would have trouble marrying our emperor; he is already well married to his seneschal, for there is nothing the seneschal wants that is not done’.

At the beginning of the Roman de Laurin, the text reaches the apex of its hatred of women. Fiseus, who has been betrayed by his stepmother in the Roman des Sept Sages and then by his wife in the Roman de Marques, refuses to remarry:

Lors si li sovint de sa marrastre qui grant peine mist a lui faire destruire ; et, prés ce penser, entra ou malice de l’empereriz qui nouvelement avoit esté arse, si li desplot moult. […] Lors parla et dist : ‘[…] N’i ait si hardi sus le chief a perdre qui jamais me parole de femme prendre, quar poi en sont qui ne facent à douter’ (RL: 2).

His mother-in-law, who had taken great care to have him condemned, came back to his mind; then he thought of the Empress’s mischief, who had just died at the stake. All this displeased him greatly. […] Then he said: ‘[…] Let no one, at the risk of his life, be so bold as to talk to me about getting a wife, for there are few who should not inspire fear’.

This rejection of marriage, rooted in a misogynistic logic, provides the narrative basis for the development of the cycle, recounting the rise of Marques’s lineage thanks to the emperor’s decision to withdraw from the marriage market. But it also hinders the progression of the cyclical storytelling, if the heroes, with Marques at the forefront, decide to follow the same path as the emperor. What follows is a somewhat ambivalent representation of the question of marriage, in which the political and narrative imperatives of reproductive continuity are persistently called into question.

Traces of heterosexual passion are scarce. In the Roman de Marques the encounter between Marques and Laurine, the sister of the Emperor of Constantinople, becomes a privileged site for the exploration of these tensions. Laurine swiftly falls in love with the handsome Roman knight when he takes up arms in defence of her brother, the cousin of the Emperor of Rome. A parallel narrative to that of the original romance thus unfolds: the young woman embodies the promotion of heterosexual desire, while the young man remains markedly reluctant to reciprocate (Foehr-Janssens, 2023b: 24).

This brings us to the third continuation, which I will now examine. I suggest that this text proposes the establishment of a heterosexual romance, while emphasising at length the difficulties raised by such a choice. Cassidorus, the son of Laurin and his wife Cassidore, is a valiant young prince, but he takes after his father and grandfather and has no interest in romantic love, nor in marriage, and professes this choice of life:

Que vous diroie je? Moult fu convoitiez de dames et de pucelles, mais onques tant n’en veoit d’unes ne d’autres que il onques i vausist metre son cuer (RC: 4).

What can I tell you? Many ladies and maidens made advances to him, but he couldn’t think of any to whom he’d want to give his heart.

La pensee qu’il avoit lors, que ja femme n’espouseroit, quar trop amoit virginité (RC: 5).

His position was that he would marry no one, because he was too attached to the virtue of virginity.

Cassidorus’s reluctance is motivated by a positive value: virginity. According to Ruth Mazzo Karras (2017), medieval thought regarded virginity as an autonomous state, rather than a default status like singleness in modern gender regimes. Here again, the rejection of the heterosexual alliance is presented as a virtue. In addition, the pattern of situating marital relationships within the imperative of lineage continuation is clear in the text. The emperor has to conform to the requirement of his counsellors to give birth to an heir, a logic that is explicitly and exclusively reproductive:

Li damoisiaus se tut touz cois et pensa a ce, puis leur respondi: ‘Biau seigneur, volez vous dont que je preigne femme.’ Il ont respondu que bien en estoit temps desoremais, quar il ne vouloient pas que la terre demourast sanz hoir de sa char (RC: 5).

The youth was silent and thoughtful, then replied, ‘Dear lords, do you want me to take a wife?’ They replied that now was the time to do so, as they did not want his land to remain without an heir.

The prince wants to put off this search for a wife. That is why he leaves to prove himself in war.

Recycling the ‘Saracen Princess’

The first episode of the Roman de Cassidorus then presents a scenario commonly found in the chansons de geste: a young knight becomes the protector of a powerful pagan ruler, and a romance unfolds between the Christian knight and the ruler’s daughter (e.g., Beuve de Hantone, Aiol). Typically, the young woman flees her father, follows her lover, converts to Christianity, and ultimately assumes the role of a Christian queen. This heterosexual fantasy serves to legitimise the knight’s drive for conquest and triumph over the ‘Saracen’ adversary; the love and conversion of the beautiful Saracen princess justify the martial and moral authority of the valorous Christian hero (Kay, 1994; Kinoshita, 1995; Akbari, 2005). Once established, the alliance between the Christian knight and the Saracen princess is never questioned.

In Cassidorus, however, the storyline complicates this familiar pattern. The young emperor distinguishes himself in a conflict between the Caliph of Babylon and the Soudan of Baudas (Baghdad), before journeying to the Holy Land, where he befriends Edipus, the Saracen prince of Bethsaida. Edipus introduces him to his wife and daughter, whom he keeps hidden in a tower. Cassidorus is struck by the simultaneous presence of both women, mother and daughter. The classic narrative scenario is thus unsettled, raising the question of why two female figures are present. The mother-daughter pairing is singular, defying conventional patterns of romantic and marital narrative.

Both women fall in love with Cassidorus and write a kind of ‘tenson’, a debate in verse on the respective values of the maiden and the lady as lovers. They address their letter to Cassidorus, who is invited to give his opinion and express a judgement (RC: III–V, 33–63). But the young man’s response disappoints both the mother and the daughter. Cassidorus refuses to take sides, describing love as a childish desire for possession: ‘et tout aussi est il d’amours, quar amours n’est autre que le petit oiselet que li poupars met en son sain’ (‘And it is the same with love, for love is nothing more than the little bird that the child places in his bosom’, RC, 62). Disappointed, the daughter, Helcana, declares that Cassidorus’ prose letter is that of an viaus (‘old man’) and a musart (‘fool’, RC: V, § 53, 61). The mother, called Erga, compares his argumentation with that of an hermite (‘hermit’, RC: V, § 55, 63). Helcana’s and Erga’s responses express disdain toward forms of masculinity that are marginalised because of age, intellectual capacity, or ascetic lifestyle choices. Cassidorus’ ethos shows up in a much less favourable light when seen from the point of view of these female characters. Their voices carry, from the Saracen otherworld, the echoes of a valorisation of heterosexual relationships in terms that evoke courtly debates (Speer, 1971: 301–343). Yet, unlike in the Roman de Marques, this perspective is not entirely undermined by the narrative voice. In any case, it is undeniably difficult to fit the descendants of Cato the wise into the mould of heterosexual romance.

Cassidorus returns to Constantinople as a hero, but without the bride whose presence should have served to highlight his bravery. He refuses Edipus’ offer to give him his beloved daughter:

‘Sire, dist il, ‘[…] une chose veul que vous sachiez. Veritez est que, pour l’amour que vous avez a moi, que, se je vous demandoie vostre fille, espoir vous le m’escondiriez, se vos voliez ou espoir vous me la donriez, mais tant que je ai la volonté que je ai maintenant, je n’avrai femme espousee.’ […] et dist que ja pour jour de sa vie n’espousera femme (RC: 86).

‘Sire,’ he said, ‘[…] I want you to know one thing. It is true that, by virtue of the love you feel for me, if I asked you for your daughter, you would perhaps refuse me, or perhaps you would give her to me, but as long as I have the dispositions that are now mine, I will never marry.’ […] and he says he will never marry.

What is clearly at work here is what Gayle Rubin (1975) terms the ‘traffic in women’: a woman is transferred as a bride to a man with whom another male figure maintains particularly strong ties. The chansons de geste abound with such examples of matrimonial transactions: in the Chanson de Roland, Olivier gives his sister Aude to his companion Roland, for instance. Within the framework of chivalric romance, these exchanges are frequently accompanied by sentimental subplots designed to emphasise mutual consent to marriage, in accordance with ecclesiastical prescriptions. In the mid-12th century Roman d’Éneas, for example, Lavinia’s love for Aeneas serves to justify her union with the Trojan conqueror. Courtly love thus binds women to heterosexuality, shaping their social and narrative existence according to their relationships with men. Consequently, the depiction of female solidarity, friendship, or sisterhood proves challenging since women are systematically divided by alliances between men that, in turn, produces rivalries among themselves. They thus are ‘created heterosexual’ (Rubin, 1975: 180) or ‘heterosexualised’ (Wittig, 2007: 39).

In the Roman de Cassidorus, the figures of Helcana and Erga exemplify these tensions in a striking manner. Rather than positioning the daughter in opposition to the mother over the choice of a suitor, as in the Roman d’Éneas, Erga and Helcana compete for the same man, further intensifying discord between them. This fact is of crucial significance for understanding the gender dynamics at stake in this analysis. The peculiar rivalry between Erga and Helcana, which will culminate in Helcana’s amorous triumph, directly echoes the narrative framework of the Roman des Sept Sages. As a royal consort, Erga assumes the role of the wicked queen found in the source narrative. By setting the young Cassidorus into confrontation with this mother–daughter pair, the third continuation articulates its ambition to replace the female figure inherited from Potiphar’s wife, who haunts the earlier continuations, with that of the beautiful Saracen princess in love with the valiant Christian knight. Yet both Cassidorus and Helcana subvert these narrative conventions. The emperor of Constantinople departs from Bethsaida, and Helcana places herself ‘en attente de lui’ (‘in waiting for him’, RC: VI, § 80, 88) for him and deliberately returns to her former captivity.

The Seduction of Dreams

In Constantinople, the question of the emperor’s marriage becomes politically charged, as unexpectedly, Cassidorus’ advisors oppose it. Unlike the typical plot, where wise counsellors select the ideal bride for a reluctant king (as in Roman de Tristan, La Manekine, or Boccaccio’s Griselda), here a prophecy foretells that the emperor’s marriage would cost the princes everything (RC: I, §4, 6), overturning the familiar narrative.

From this point, the narrative unfolds in ways that take familiar motifs in unexpected directions. In her quest to win Cassidorus’ heart, Helcana employs a strategy that combines the marvellous with the mystical: she renders heterosexual love desirable in the manner of courtly poetry. She is somehow able to appear out of her own volition in Cassidorus’ dreams, revealing the desire he had previously scorned. Love emerges as an experience that transcends wisdom, functioning as a form of divine inspiration. To achieve this effect, the romance harnesses the powers of imagination to challenge the sapiential tradition, portraying love as a mode of cognitive revelation – a process intimately tied to memory (Foehr-Janssens, 1994: 398–408):

Grant piece après que il fu ainssi repairiez, avint que il se gisoit en son lit, et li vint en son dormant une pucele aournee de toute biauté et li disoit: ‘Cassidorus, comment poez vous durer sanz moi, que je ne puis durer sanz vous?’ (RC: 90).

Some time after his return, as he lay in bed, a beautiful young girl appeared to him and said. ‘Cassidorus how can you live without me, when I cannot do so without you?’

Cassidorus is delighted by this apparition, but unlike the reader, he does not recognise the beautiful Helcana in his nocturnal visitor:

Adont l’esgarda Cassydorus et li sambla tante gente et gracieuse que merveilles lui en sambloit […] et ne fina toute la nuit de penser ou il peüst avoir veü tele damoisiele qui lui est venue en son songe (RC: 90).

Cassidorus looked at her and she seemed to him wonderfully noble and gracious […] All night long, he wondered where he could have seen this young lady who had come to visit him in his dreams.

The following night, the same dream recurs. The maiden subsequently utters words that reveal how this vision serves to remedy the anomaly presented in the first episode. Helcana’s words also indicate that Cassidorus’ attitude represents a subversion of both conventional ideals of heterosexual conquest and narrative norms:

‘Cassidorus, bons cuers ne puet mentir. Je sui venue a toi, ce que tu a moi deüsses faire. Il pert bien de quel part l’amour vient.’ (RC: 90).

‘Cassidorus, a generous heart cannot lie. I came to you, which you should have done for me. It is obvious from which side love comes.’

How can one imagine a character who renounces marriage with the beautiful princess, daughter of the sovereign whose power he has valiantly supported? The appeal of the dream and its erotic charge are such as to belie the hero’s apparent imperturbability:

Lors s’efforça Cassidorus et cuidoit la pucelle embracier. A ce s’est de rechief esveilliez. Adont se sentit une estincele au cuer et commença a sospirer (RC: 90–91).

Cassidorus tried to take the maiden in his arms. At that moment, he awoke. He then felt a spark ignite his heart and he began to sigh.

Ovid and Virgil famously employ erotic dreams to depict the turmoil of love, a trope widely adopted by medieval authors (Foehr-Janssens, 2007). In Cassidorus, however, the erotic dream – usually dismissed as mere fantasy – is overlaid with visionary and oracular significance. Medieval dream theory distinguishes true from false dreams: as Macrobius explains in his Commentary on Scipio’s Dream (Armisen-Marchetti (ed.), 2001: I, 3, 10–16), insomnium and fantasma are delusive, whereas somnium, visio, and oraculum convey trustworthy messages.⁴ Erotic dreams are typically false, arising from physical desire, while visionary or oracular dreams dreams are true.

The dream sequence in Cassidorus blends these categories. Helcana appears to summon Cassidorus to his heroic and amorous destiny. Despite his philosophical reluctance toward marriage, he is guided toward the path that will render him both ruler and husband. In this context, Helcana functions analogously to an angel in hagiography. She is both the object and messenger of the dream, awakening Cassidorus to the truth of his desire. The repeated nocturnal dreams create a prolonged psychological and narrative stasis, necessary for the transformation of the proud emperor into a true lover. The love dreams work as a revelation.

The ensuing confrontation with the princes, who oppose his desire, recalls the embedded tales of the Roman des Sept Sages: for 12 nights, Helcana narrates a tale each evening, countered each day by a prince’s story. This contrast – nocturnal, oneiric tales versus daytime, ostensibly rational tales – positions the emperor’s amorous vocation ambiguously against the misogynistic and self-interested logic of the barons. While the princes’ tales serve pragmatic ends, Helcana’s dream-tales, though originating from an unreliable source, carry spiritual authority. She thus embodies the productive force of the narrative, compelling Cassidorus toward marriage and consolidating imperial authority through dynastic succession, while simultaneously driving narrative continuation.

By elevating nocturnal fantasies to veridical visions, the narrative supports socially sanctioned heterosexual desire, yet simultaneously allows the expression of the power of desire, acquiring a self-referential significance that renegotiates gender norms. Under Helcana’s authority – invested with divine illumination – dreams become metaphors for the narrative’s capacity to reveal truths. The princess of Bethsaida emerges as a central character, experiencing multiple adventures and shaping the text’s trajectory.

Ultimately, Helcana prevails. After 12 nights Cassidorus arrives in Bethsaida, where he both discovers and recognises the princess he adores. In the continuation of the dreamlike events, the scene is reversed. Now Cassidorus comes to Helcana, who is still locked in her tower: the hero and his future bride are each, in turn, the providential being for the other.

Curiously, although she seemed ready and willing to engage in a heterosexual love story with Cassidorus from the outset, Helcana’s behavior now resembles that of certain saints, such as Christine, Barbara and Irene, who defied their fathers by refusing to marry and retreating to a tower to await their Saviour, the Lord:

Helcana estoit en une chambre, dont elle n’estoit issue des dont que Cassidorus s’estoit partis de lui et n’avoit veü clarté ne jour, se n’avoit esté de chandoiles ou de feu ardant. […] Elle a dit en haut : ‘Viegne avant celui pour qui j’ai gardé prison, et me traie de ci, ou autrement je morrai.’ (RC: 267).

Helcana lived in a room which she had not left since Cassidorus had separated from her, and she had seen no light or day, except that of candles or an open fire […] She said aloud: ‘Let him come, he for whom I have remained in prison, and deliver me from here, or else I shall die.’

The motifs of imprisonment, mortal peril, and darkness, set in contrast with those of light and deliverance (cf. ‘Or issons de tenebres, moi et vous. Soions desormais en joie et en clarté’, ‘Let us come out of darkness, you and I. Let us now be in joy and light’, RC: XXXVI, § 202, 268), evoke a mystical vision of the soul’s liberation, here brought about through the transformative power of heterosexual passion. These metaphorical and mystical overtones reinforce the novel’s already evident tendency to turn the romantic intrigue into a spiritual journey. Cassidorus, who assures Edypus that he has ‘eü assez de persecutions puis que je ne vous vi’ (‘suffered enough persecution since I last saw you’, RC: XXXV, §201, 266), confesses that he recognises in Helcana ‘cele qui lui estoit dedens le cuer empainte’ (‘the one whose image was engraved in his heart’, RC: XXXVI, §202, 268), adding the further motifs of persecution and engraved hearts common in mystical writing.

As we shall see, this model is indebted to intertestamental writings. It invites us to rethink the invention of heterosexual romantic narratives, proposing that their formation might represent a form of acculturation of spiritual and mystical depictions of religious conversion. To be sure, sacralisation of the lady’s love is not foreign to courtly literature, most notably in Chrétien de Troyes’ Chevalier de la Charrette, where amorous devotion is elevated to a form of spiritual worship, yet, in this context, it is not so much devotional practices that define fin’amor as the transformative experience of falling in love, an experience presented as comparable to revelation or conversion. This depiction of heterosexual love as an emotional dramatisation rooted in religious or mystical feelings thus contrasts sharply with the idea of love as an innate attraction between people of different sexes.

Loving Beyond the Religious Boundaries: The Influence of the Story of Joseph and Aseneth

But more can be said about this complex making of heterosexual love as it recalls a well-known apocryphal episode in the story of Joseph. As already shown, the Roman de Cassidorus offers mystical and vocational representations of the awakening of amorous passion, prompting reflection on the sources of such a complex fiction. The Cycle of the Seven Sages demonstrates notable virtuosity in reworking diverse narrative materials. Far from merely assembling disparate stories into a heterogeneous collection, the Roman des Sept Sages integrates its tales through carefully motivated links to the frame narrative rather than by mere aggregation. Yet the various continuations are no less accomplished in this regard. Mary Speer (1983) has demonstrated the significance and richness of the redeployment and renewal of the Sept Sages plot within the Roman de Marques.

Many episodes in the Roman de Cassidorus feature skilful rewritings and adaptations of hagiographic accounts and as well as motifs borrowed from Arthurian legend. Helcana’s character exemplifies this intertextual richness. As we have seen, she is successively portrayed as a bold Saracen princess in matters of love, then as a ‘saint in the tower’, akin to Christine or Barbara. Later in the story, she endures the trials of a persecuted woman. Moreover, after having lost her child under circumstances reminiscent of Lancelot’s abduction in early childhood by the fairy Viviane at the beginning of the Prose Lancelot, she assumes a male identity and lives for a time as a hermit, following the model of transgender saints such as Marina or Euphrosyne (RC: XLIII- XLVIII, 335–401) (Deleville 2025).⁵ Her complex literary persona is woven from multiple threads, echoes of earlier continuations, as well as borrowings from French prose romances and hagiographic compendia such as Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea and Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum historiale (c. 1260), which notably includes the lives of Saint Christina, and also of Marina or Euphrosyne.⁶

This interlacing of multiple references, added to a refined art of compilation and intertextual reconfiguration, invites us to explore additional intertextual parallels. Most notably, a pseudepigraphal text centred on the biblical figure of Joseph, previously identified as a paradigmatic model of heroism in the foundational romance, displays several noteworthy parallels with the love story of Cassidorus and Helcana.

The Greek narrative of Joseph and Aseneth recounts the marriage of Jacob’s renowned son to Aseneth, the steadfastly chaste daughter of a powerful Egyptian. The work is generally regarded as of Jewish origin and is thought to have been composed in Egypt between the first century BCE and the second century CE (Lipsett, 2011: 91). Owing to its nuptial plot, several scholars have drawn parallels between this story and the Greek and Latin novels (Philonenko, 1968: 43, 109; Inowlocki, 2002: 97–108; Lipsett, 2011: 92–93). It is also associated with the hagiographic corpus known as the ‘Cycle of the Saint in the Tower’ (Philonenko, 1968: 110–117), which includes the lives of Saints Christina, Barbara, and Irene. The tale enjoyed wide popularity, circulating in Greek, Syriac, Slavic, Armenian, and Latin versions. Vincent of Beauvais incorporated an abridged version in his Speculum historiale that was later translated into French by Jean de Vignay (Cavagna, 2017: 365–371). A Middle English verse version derives from a 12^th century Latin text (Battifol, 1889; Peck, 1991: 3). Translations and adaptations of Vincent of Beauvais’s version also gained extensive circulation in German, Dutch, Norse, Danish, Czech, and Polish manuscripts.

The name of Aseneth appears three times in the Bible (Genesis: 41, 45; 41, 50; 46, 20). It refers to Joseph’s spouse, the daughter of Poti-phera (in Greek Pentephres), priest of Pharaoh, who was given to Joseph once the hero has been elevated to the rank of viceroy of Egypt. Aseneth is said to be the mother of Manasse and Ephraïm (Genesis: 46.20). The fact that these two sons of Joseph, explicitly mentioned by Moses when he blesses the twelve tribes of Israel (Deuteronomy: 33, 17), were born of an Egyptian mother obviously raised questions that may explain the proliferation of legends surrounding Aseneth (Kraemer, 1998: 20). Joseph and Aseneth thus addresses the issue of intercommunity marriages: how can Aseneth become an ‘appropriate wife for Joseph’ and an ‘acceptable daughter of the Hebrews’ (Kraemer, 1998: 20), as well as an accomplished mother of Hebrew sons?

In the Greek text, the first description of the beautiful virgin explicitly mentions that Asenet ‘Καὶ αὕτε οὐδένα εἶγεν ὅμοιον τῶ θυγατέρων τῶν Αἰγυπτίων, ἀλλὰ ἦυ κατὰ πάντα ὁμοία ταῖς θυγατράσι τῶυ Εβραίων. καὶ ἦν μεγάλη ὡς Σάρρα καὶ ὡραία ὡς ‘Ρεβέκκα καὶ καλὴ ὡς Ραχήλ’ (‘was not like the daughters of the Egyptians, but in every way like the daughters of the Hebrews. She was as tall as Sarah, as graceful as Rebecca, and as beautiful as Rachel’, Philonenko, 1968: 130–131). The future bride is thus expected to be a perfect partner for one of the most distinguished heroes of Israel. The recension of Vincent of Beauvais echoes these preoccupations (VB, SH: I, CXVIII, 42b).⁷

Furthermore, although they bear similar names, Poti-phera, priest of Heliopolis, and Potiphar, Pharaoh’s chamberlain whose wife tried to seduce Joseph (Genesis: 39), are two distinct figures. But over time, the two characters have been confused with each other and were combined into one in some versions of the tradition. This gave rise to stories where the identity of Potiphar remains uncertain, namely in the Western Latin versions and their adaptations (VB, SH: I, CXVII and CXVIII, and Jean de Vignay, Le Miroir historial, Cavagna, 2017: II, chapters 117 et 118, vol. I, t. I, 364–365). In the Islamic and Persian tradition, the story of Youssouf and Zuleikha is inspired by that of Joseph and Aseneth. In this narrative, the confusion goes so far that Aseneth is equated with Potiphar’s wife, Zuleikha, who becomes a widow and marries Youssouf (Philonenko, 1968: 117–123).

Towards Nuptiality: Worship of Virginity, Mourning and Revelation (Helcana and Aseneth)

The narrative goes as follows: after being imprisoned because of Potiphar’s wife’s accusation and then released for his talent as a dream interpreter, Joseph is sent to Heliopolis to gather the wheat harvest. The city’s priest Potiphar has a particularly beautiful virgin daughter named Aseneth who despises all men and refuses all suitors:

Despiciens omnem virum, quam etiam nullus unquam viderat virorum (VB, SH: I, CXVII, 42b).⁸

Despising every man, she was one whom no man had ever seen before.

Like Helcana, Christine, Barbara and Irene, Aseneth lives in isolation in a magnificent, richly furnished tower. When her parents welcome Joseph and offer him Aseneth’s hand in marriage, she refuses outright, mocking his low social status:

Indignata respondit se nolle darit viro captivo (VB, SH: I, CXIX, 43a).

She was outraged and replied that she did not want to be given to a captive man.

Joseph, for his part, fears above all to unite with a foreign woman (Philonenko, 1968: 153; VB, SH: I, CXIX, 43a). But he also fears to be entrapped by luxurious women who send him messages and gifts (a fear that clearly evokes the meeting with Potiphar’s wife):

Et ait Joseph : quae est mulier illa quae erat in caenaculo ad fenestram? abeat nunc de domo ista : timebat enim ne molesta esset illi, sicut omnes alia quae certatim mittebant nuncios suosei cum muneribus diversi generis, quos proijciebat cum indignatione et iniuria (VB, SH I: CXIX, 43 a; see also Philonenko, 1968: 151–153).

And Joseph said: ‘Who is that woman who was in the upper room at the window? Let her now leave this house’; for he feared that she might be troublesome to him, just like all the others who were eagerly sending their messengers to him with gifts of various kinds, which he threw away with indignation and outrage.

Both Joseph and Aseneth therefore resist the heterosexual patriarchal order that prescribes the circulation of women among men as a means of alliance. Their shared reluctance is explicitly based on social and religious prejudice and on a strong attachment to virginity. Aseneth’s parents emphasise the similarity of their refusals of marriage:

Et ascendit mater eius, ut adduceret eam quam statuit in conspectu Joseph et ait pater eius : ‘Saluta fratrem tuum qui odit omnes mulieres alienigenas, sicut tu omnes viros’ (VB, SH: I, CXIX, 43a; see also Philonenko, 1968: 155).

And her mother went up to bring her into the presence of Joseph, and her father said: ‘Greet your brother, who hates all foreign women, just as you hate all men’.

Aseneth succumbs to the seductions of marriage only when the handsome Joseph arrives. At the sight of Joseph, ‘indutus tunica candida splendidissima et pallio purpureo […] et corona aurea’ (‘arrayed in a splendid spotless tunic, a purple cloak, and a crown of gold’, VB, SH: I, CXIX, 43a; see Philonenko, 1968: 147), she says:

Ecce sol venit de caelo ad nos in curro suo, nesciebam quod Joseph filius Dei erat (VB, SH: I, CXIX, 43a; see Philonenko, 1968: 151).

Behold, the sun has come from heaven to us in his chariot; I did not know that Joseph was the Son of God.

After Joseph’s departure, Aseneth, like Helcana, is in mourning. She renounces her magnificent clothes, dresses herself in a sackcloth, throwing her treasures and her father’s idols out of the window to beggars. A very determined figure, she goes against her father’s wishes and rejects Egyptian idolatry in favour of Joseph’s faith. In the Christian tradition, this attitude of refusal is taken up by the holy virgin who converts to Christianity and refuses to worship false idols. Saint Irene, Saint Barbara and Saint Christine throw their father’s idols through the windows of the tower in which they have secluded themselves, just as Aseneth does. Potiphar’s daughter then receives the visit of a divine messenger, a ‘man who looks just like Joseph’ (‘vir per omnia similis Joseph’, VB, SH: I, CXX, 43b; see also Philonenko, 1968: 179) and urges her to take off her mourning clothes. The divine messenger, surrounded by light, celebrates the conversion of the virgin bride. He performs several rites that confirm her mystical resurrection. Aseneth washes her face, puts on an immaculate dress, eats the bread of life and drinks from the cup of immortality.

The relationship between the couple formed by the Christian hero Cassidorus and the young Saracen princess Helcana, and that of Joseph and Aseneth, is compelling and invites consideration. The broad dissemination of the story Joseph and Aseneth, the presence of a Latin translation in as famous a compendium as the Speculum historiale and the multiple connections between the Seven Sages’ tradition and the legend of Joseph allow us to postulate that the anonymous redactor of the Roman de Cassidorus could have had in mind the pseudepigraphic story in its medieval form.

A feature of the story of Joseph and Aseneth is its polysemic value. A love story in the style of Greek and Latin novels, it also has a missionary dimension, so far as it depicts the religious conversion of Aseneth (Philonenko, 1968; Inowlocki, 2002). Furthermore, it is a mystical tale that uses nuptial metaphors and wedding rites as symbols of initiation, conversion and spirituality. Most commentators agree that the evocation of Aseneth’s loving emotions echoes the Song of Songs. Composed and diffused in a time when Judaism and Christianism were not fully separate, the story appears to be very adaptable to Jewish as well as Christian interpretations. Inowlocki (2002: 21) considers that ‘the novel offers a reinvention of a biblical episode from the Old Testament, drawing on a literary genre from Hellenistic Greek literature’.⁹

To Philonenko (1968: 53–61), Aseneth corresponds to the type of the biblical proselyte, such as Tamar, or Ruth. Furthermore, as Standhartinger (2009) argues, Aseneth is thus a multifaceted character that can also be acknowledged as the prototype of the Saracen princess:

The longing for love and inwardness at the centre of Joseph and Aseneth is reflected in the chansons de geste, which have been popular since the Crusades and tell stories of love and conversion to Christianity by Muslim women as well as heroic tales (Stanhartinger, 2009: 226, translation my own; see also Nisse, 2006: 750–752).¹⁰

The victory of the monotheistic God of the Hebrews over the Egyptian idols, becomes, in the hagiographic tradition, the victory of Christianity over Greek and Latin paganism. Similarly, in medieval literature, the handsome Christian warrior wins the Saracen princess.

The originality of Joseph and Aseneth lies in the unique link it establishes between conversion and marriage. The story depicts the difficulties of entering a heterosexual marriage while presenting it in an attractive light, as a revelation, a mystical adventure and a religious conversion. But Aseneth’s journey, so easily transferable to that of the saint who is reluctant to marry, also requires her to mourn the loss of her former family ties: she breaks with her parents and her companions. She proclaims herself an ὀρφαυὴ (‘orphan’, Philonenko, 1968: 173) and significantly, the narrator notes that the mourning clothes Aseneth wears after Joseph’s departure are precisely those she had previously donned upon her brother’s death:

Accepit Asseneth tunicam nigram, quod erat indumentum tristiciae eius, quando mortuus erat frater eius minor (VB, SH: I, CXX, 43a; see also Philonenko, 1968: 163).

Aseneth took a black tunic, which was the garment of her mourning, from when her younger brother had died.

In this way, the stranger she had rejected appears to take the place of her lost brother. The mourning of her beloved positions the virgin within a redefined familial framework, a view also reflected by her parents, who see Joseph and Aseneth as brother and sister due to their mutual disdain for the opposite sex (VB, SH: I, CXIX, 43a, citation above). Aseneth’s mourning thus also marks a break with a gender regime that privileges the virtues of autonomy, self-control and independence that virginity provides, and this is what distinguishes her trajectory from that of the saints. When tied to a nuptial project—as in the cases of Aseneth and Joseph and of Helcana and Cassidorus—conversion operates as a support for heteronormativity.

To Conclude: Gender Roles Reversal in Courtly Love: When Cassidorus Rewrites Aseneth’s Conversion

Although they are not entirely identical, the opening episode of the Roman de Cassidorus and the narrative of Joseph and Aseneth nevertheless share numerous motifs: the maiden confined in a tower; the future bride’s affiliation with a non-Christian religious tradition and the accompanying motif of conversion; the future husband’s reluctance toward marriage and his aversion to dealings with women; the heroine’s grief and voluntary seclusion following her beloved’s departure; the motif of the oracular or visionary dream; the resemblance of the divine dream-messenger to the beloved person and the reunion depicted as both a revelation and an emergence from mourning.

To what extent do these parallels shed light on the elaboration of a heterosexual relationship in the Roman de Cassidorus? Above all, it should be acknowledged that the pseudepigraphical text attests to the enduring importance of Joseph as a model of wisdom and human justice within Jewish, Christian, and Muslim cultures. The strong connections linking the entire Seven Sages of Rome tradition to the biblical legend of Joseph – through both the opening episode of the frame narrative and the final tale, ‘Vaticinium’ (The prophecy) – allow us to consider Joseph as embodying an emblematic masculine paradigm of the heroes of the Cycle des Sept Sages.

The intertext of Joseph and Aseneth underscores the similarities between Cassidorus’s and Joseph’s shared mistrust of women, as well as their reluctance toward both heterosexual and interreligious unions. Yet the powerful figure of Aseneth illuminates further dimensions of the reframing of this story undertaken in the Roman de Cassidorus. At first glance, the pseudepigraphical story emphasises that resistance to the heterosexual order is shared by both the bride and the groom, while the focus remains on the woman’s religious conversion. In this view, the narrative of Helcana’s encounter with Cassidorus entails a complete reversal of those gender polarities: throughout the entire dream episode, Helcana assumes the role of the angelic or divine messenger, while Cassidorus takes on that of Aseneth. The connection between conversion and marriage thus persists, but unexpectedly, the agent of mystical transformation is now the female character – a shift arguably made possible by the literary topos of amor de lonh (‘love from afar’). Helcana’s own religious conversion becomes secondary (there is not even a mention of it) while Cassidorus’s discovery of heterosexual love is portrayed as a complex process of cognitive and emotional rebirth.

At the same time, conversion is also presented as a process of mourning. The twelve-day resistance that Cassidorus opposes to the oneiric entreaties of his nocturnal visitor underscores the enduring force of his homosocial habitus. This long process involves, to a greater or lesser extent, a form of betrayal, so that the euphoric outcome that leads Cassidorus and Helcana towards the light as cited above (‘Let us come out of darkness, you and I. Let us now be in joy and light’) remains ambivalent and never completely conceals the shadow of guilt and sin.¹¹ The dominant discourse on (Christian) conversion obscures the renunciation of previous attachments inherent in embracing a new religion. Yet the stories of Joseph and Aseneth and Helcana and Cassidorus make clear that conversion entails the abandonment of previous embodied social patterns. The Roman de Cassidorus bears traces of this resistance. By portraying entry into heteronormativity as similar to a religious and social transgression it promotes a new seemingly necessary regime of genre. Nonetheless the complexity of the narrative processes that leads to this achievement underscores simultaneously the difficulty of the task.

Thus, while heterosexual love becomes desirable, even for virgins most resistant to the exchange of women and for the young men imbued with misogynistic discourse and with prejudice against pagans, the arduous process of conversion never completely erases reluctance towards heteronormative marriage. The Roman de Cassidorus attempts to impose a reinforced heteronormative logic onto the cycle, yet the arduous symbolic and emotional processes required to achieve this paradoxically exposes all the reasons why both men and women should resist such a framework.

Acknowledgements

This article was written as part of a research project led by the author and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the National Fund for Scientific Research of Wallonia, Belgium, focused on the Cycle of the Seven Sages of Rome: “Canonizing the Seven Sages.” https://www.unige.ch/c7s/.

Competing Interests

The author has no competing interests to declare.