Thomas d’Angleterre, Roman de Tristan
England, c. 1170

University Library, MS Add. 2751(3), r
France, thirteenth century
Vellum, 134 x 112 mm (123 x 55 mm), 1 f.

Thomas of Britain’s Tristan romance is the oldest surviving version of the tragic love story of Tristan and Iseut. Thomas’s work formed the basis for Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan (early thirteenth century), which in turn provided the chief source for Richard Wagner’s famous opera, Tristan und Isolde (which débuted in Munich in 1865). However, Thomas’s work – of which an estimated 25% survives – comes down to us only in five fragmentary witnesses. A sixth fragment, preserved in Strasbourg, was destroyed during the Prussian bombardment of the city in 1870. The fragment presented here is one of these surviving five sections; in it King Marc discovers his wife (Iseut) and his nephew (Tristan), sleeping together in a wood. It is the sole copy of this scene to survive to the present day.