RUTEBEUF or RUSTEBUEF (fl. 1245-1285), French trouvere, was born in the first half of the 13th century. His name is nowhere mentioned by his contemporaries. He frequently plays in his verse on the word Rutebeuf, which was probably a pseudo nym. Some of his poems have autobiographical value. In Le Mar iage de Rutebeuf he says that on Jan. 2, 1261, he married a woman old and ugly, with neither dowry nor amiability. In the Com plainte de Rutebeuf he details a series of misfortunes which have reduced him to abject destitution. In these circumstances he ad dresses himself to Alphonse, comte de Poitiers, brother of Louis IX., for relief. His distress could not be due to lack of patrons, for his metrical life of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary was written by request of Erard de Valery, who wished to present it to Isabel, queen of Navarre; and he wrote elegies on the deaths of Anceau de l'Isle Adam, the third of the name, who died about 1251, Eude, comte de Nevers (d. 1267), Thibaut V. of Navarre (d. 1270), and Alphonse, comte de Poitiers (d. 1271), which were probably paid for by the families of the personages celebrated. In the Pauvrete de Rutebeuf he addresses Louis IX. himself.
The piece which is most obviously intended for popular recita tion is the Dit de l'Herberie, a dramatic monologue in prose and verse supposed to be delivered by a quack doctor. Rutebeuf was also a master in the verse conte, and the five of his fabliaux that have come down to us are gay and amusing. The adventures of Frare Denyse le cordelier, and of "la dame qui ally trots fois autour du moldier," find a place in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles.
Rutebeuf's serious work as a satirist probably dates from about 126o. His chief topics are the iniquities of the friars, and the
defence of the secular clergy of the university of Paris against their encroachments ; and he delivered a series of eloquent and in sistent poems (1262, 1263, 1268, 1274) exhorting princes and peo ple to take part in the crusades. He was a redoubtable champion of the university of Paris in its quarrel with the religious orders, and he boldly defended Guillaume de Saint-Amour when he was driven into exile. The libels, indecent songs and rhymes con demned by the pope to be burnt together with the Perils des derniers temps attributed to Saint-Amour, were probably the work of Rutebeuf. The satire of Renart le Bestourne, which borrows from the Reynard cycle little but the names under which the characters are disguised, was directed, according to Paulin Paris, against Philip the Bold. To his later years belong his religious poems, and also the V oie de Paradis, the description of a dream, in the manner of the Roman de la Rose.
The best work of Rutebeuf is to be found in his satires and verse conies. A miracle play of his, Le Miracle de Theophile, is one of the earliest dramatic pieces extant in French.
The Oeuvres of Rutebeuf were edited by Achille Jubinal in 1839 (new edition, ; a more critical edition is by Dr. Adolf Kressner (Rustebuef's Gedichte; Wolfenbiittel, 1885). See also the article by Paulin Paris in Hist. litt. de la France (1842), vol. xx. pp. 719-783, and Rutebeuf (1891), by M. Leon Cledat, in the Grands Ecrivains francais Series.