GACE  BRUL$ (d. c . 1220),

French trouvbre, was a native of Champagne . It has generally been asserted that he taught Thibaut of Champagne the art of verse, an assumption which is based on a statement in the Chroniques de Saint-Denis : " Si fist entre lui [Thibaut] et Gace Brule les plus belles chancons et les plus delitables et melodieuses qui onque fussent 'ales." This has been taken as evidence of collaboration between the two poets . The passage will bear the interpretation that with those of Gace the songs of Thibaut were the best hitherto known . Paulin Paris, in the Histoire litteraire de la France (vol. xxiii.), quotes a number of facts that fix an earlier date for Gace's songs . Gace is the author of the earliest known jeu parti . The interlocutors are Gace and a count of Brittany who is identified with Geoffrey of Brittany, son of Henry II. of England . Gace appears to have been banished from Champagne and to have found refuge in Brittany . A deed dated 1212 attests a contract between Gatho Brusle (Gace Ernie) and the Templars for a piece of land in Dreux . It seems most probable that Gace died before 1220, at the latest in 1225 . See Gedeon Busken Huet, Chansons de Gace Brula, edited for the Societe des anciens textes francais (1902), with an exhaustive introduction . Dante quotes a song by Gace, Ire d'amor qui en mon over repaire, which he attributes erroneously to Thibaut of Navarre (De vulgari eloquentia, p .

151, ed . P . Rajna,

Florence, 1895) .