Gautier de Coincy (1177–1236)
Born 1177 CE, died 1236 CE.
Gautier de Coincy (1177–1236) was a French abbot, trouvère and musical arranger, chiefly known for his devotion to the Virgin Mary. While he served as prior of Vic-sur-Aisne he compiled Les Miracles de Nostre-Dame (known in English as The Miracles of Notre Dame or The Miracles of Our Lady) in which he set poems in praise of the Virgin Mary to popular melodies and songs of his day. It is a reverential but humorous work, full of love for the cult of the Virgin Mary, which at that time also received attention from Saint Bernard of Clairvaux who was the leading medieval proponent of veneration of the Virgin as a counterbalance to the more rigorous Christian scholasticism, then the dominating spiritual force. Unlike Clairvaux's more sombre tomes, de Coincy's book (whilst sharing much of the same ideological bedrock) tends more towards the indulgent or soft-hearted. Many of the songs de Coincy wrote were set to popular ballads then in vogue at the royal court, or borrowed the tune of pastoral or romantic ditties.
Text from the Wikipedia article Gautier_de_Coincy, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.