Jean d'Arras was a 15th century North French tale-teller (trouvere) of whom all we know is that he collaborated with Antoine du Val and Fouquart de Cambrai in putting together a collection of stories entitled Les Vangiles de Quenouille ("The spinners' Tales"). The frame story is that these are the narratives told a group of ladies at their spinning, who relate the current theories on a great variety of subjects. The work dates from the middle of the 15th century and is of considerable value for the light it throws on medieval manners, and for its echoes of folklore, sometimes deeply buried under layers of Christianity. (14th century - 15th century - 16th century - other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 15th century was that century which lasted from 1401 to 1500. ... The French Republic or France (French: République française or France) is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents. ... Trouvère is the Northern French (langue doïl) version of troubador (langue doc), and refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadors but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France. ... A frame story (also frame tale, frame narrative, etc) is a narrative technique whereby a main story is composed, at least in part, for the purpose of organizing a set of shorter stories, each of which is a story within a story. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... Christianity is an Abrahamic religion based on the life, teachings, death by crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as described in the New Testament. ...

There were many editions of this book in the 15th and i6th centuries, one of which was printed by the early printer Wynkyn de Worde in English, as The Gospelles of Dystaves. A more modern edition (Collection Jannet) had a preface by witty and cynical tale-teller Anatole France. Wynkyn de Worde, born in Alsace, was the successor to William Caxton in his English printing business, taking over and running Caxtons press after his death. ... Anatole France (April 16, 1844 - October 12, 1924) was the pen name of French author Jacques Anatole François Thibault. ...

Jean d'Arras, perhaps the same, wrote, at the request of John, duke of Berry he says in his introduction, a long prose romance variously called the Roman de Mélusine or the Chronique de Melusine part of Le Noble Hystoire de Lusignan ("The Noble History of the Lusignans"), written in 1392-94. Leaning on oral tradition, it is one of the first literary versions of the tale of Melusine the water-nymph with a serpentine tail who married a mortal and supernaturally guided the spectacular rise and subsequent fall of the House of Lusignan with many digressions and inner stories. Rainmondin, the originator of the line, met the beautiful Melusine by a fountain in the forest, married her and had eleven brave sons, whose exploits in the Crusades brought them fame. The one promise Melusine extracted was that Raimondin never try to find her on a Saturday (when she reverted to her water-serpent form). What she could not tell him was that if she were ever to be seen by a mortal in her changeling state, the curse would be eternal and she would never be able to seek the release of a Christian death and the promise of Heaven. Each of the noble sons too had some secret defect. John of Valois, the Magnificent, (November 30, 1340 – March 15, 1416) was Duke of Berry and Auvergne and Count of Poitiers and Montpensier. ... Melusines secret discovered, from One of sixteen paintings by Guillebert de Mets circa 1410. ... The Lusignan family originated in Poitou in western France, and in the late 12th century came to rule the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Cyprus. ... This article is about historical Crusades . ... Serpent is a word of Latin origin (serpens, serpentis) that is normally substituted for snake in a specifically mythic context, in order to distinguish such creatures from the field of biology. ... The heavens are the sky, the celestial sphere, or outer space. ...

Betrayed by Raimondin, who has broken his vow, Melusine is forced to return to her eternal nature:

" Ah! Raymond, the day when I first saw you was for me a day of sadness! Alas! for my bane I saw your grace, your charm, your beautiful face. For my sadness I desired your beauty, for you have so ignobly betrayed me. Though you have failed in your promise, I had pardoned you from the bottom of my heart for having tried to see me, not even speaking of it to you, for you revealed it to no one. And God would have pardoned it you, for you would have done penance for it in this world. Alas! my beloved now our love is changed to hate, our tenderness to cruelty, our pleasures and joys to tears and weeping, our happiness to great misfortune and hard calamity. Alas, my beloved, had you not betrayed me I were saved from my pains and my torments, I would have lived life's natural course as a normal woman, I would have died in the normal way, with all the sacraments of the Church, I would have been buried in the church of Notre-Dame de Lusignan and commemorative masses would have been observed for me, as they should. But now you have plunged me back into the dark penitence I have known so long, for my fault. And this penitence, I must bear it until Judgment Day, for you have betrayed me. I pray God to pardon you."

And she showed such remorse that there is no heart in the world so hardened it would not have relented." (Wikipedia translation)