Mahieu le Juif was an Old French

Old French

Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...

 trouvère

Trouvère

Trouvère , sometimes spelled trouveur , is the Northern French form of the word trobador . It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France...

. His name means "Matthew the Jew" and, if his own songs are to be believed, he was a convert from Judaism

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

 to Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

. Only two of his songs survive, one with a melody. He has been conflated with Mahieu de Gant

Mahieu de Gant

Mahieu de Gant was a Flemish trouvère from Ghent associated with the so-called "school of Arras". He has been conflated with Mahieu le Juif, but the same manuscript that contains both their works clearly distinguishes them...

, but the same manuscript that contains both their works clearly distinguishes them.

Mahieu's more popular song, Par grant franchise, was very widely copied and today it exists in twelve chansonnier

Chansonnier

A chansonnier is a manuscript or printed book which contains a collection of chansons, or polyphonic and monophonic settings of songs, hence literally "song-books," although some manuscripts are so called even though they preserve the text but not the music A chansonnier is a manuscript or...

s, including one in Occitan. It was probably the fascinating subject of the song that accounts for its popularity. Mahieu abandoned the faith of the Jews for that of his Christian lady. Expecting to receive praise, however, he got only ridicule. The apropos melody of this song survives in many variations, but all are of a simple, yet tight, structure. There is intertextual similarity between a piece of the troubadour

Troubadour

A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....

 Albertet de Sestaro

Albertet de Sestaro

Albertet de Sestaró, Sestairó, Sestairon, Sestarron, Sisteron, or Terascon was a Provençal jongleur and troubadour from the Gapençais . Of his total oeuvre, twenty three poems survive. "Albertet" or "Albertetz" is the Occitan diminutive of Albert...

 and Par grant, but the direction of any influence of the one on the other cannot be ascertained: though Jeanroy

Alfred Jeanroy

Alfred Jeanroy was a French linguist.Jeanroy was born at Mangiennes, Meuse, Lorraine. He was a leading scholar studying troubadour poetry, publishing over 600 works. He established an influential view of the second generation of troubadours divided into two camps: “idealists” and “realists”...

thought the trouvère was influenced by the troubadour.

Mahieu's other piece, Pour autrui movrai, likewise refers to his Jewishness, but it was not as widely read.