War is Hell (for Saracens): A Footnote to Aspremont’s Afterlife in Italy

Leslie Zarker Morgan

reat was the goodness of the knights of old!” Ariosto proclaims in the sixteenth century as Ferraù, a Saracen, offers Ga ride to Rinaldo, a Christian.1 But before Ariosto’s classic, selected “knights of old” developed distinctly peninsular characters and roles in Franco-Italian chansons de geste, texts written from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries in a mixed French and Italian, initially preserving French rhyme and form, but, like the characters, ultimately developing into Italian forms and language. As an Italianist saluting a scholar of Old French literature, and epic in particular, who first used the term “chanson d'aventures,”2 it is ap- propriate that I should examine a Franco-Italian chanson de geste that subsumes the Old French Chanson d'Aspremont to the distinctly Italian Commedia.3 There Christian and Saracen do not always peace- fully share protagonist roles and “our” French offer positive examples and values to the public.

1 “O gran bontà de’ cavallieri antiqui!” (Orlando Furioso I 22: 1). For the English, see Ariosto: Orlando Furioso, tr. Guido Waldman (London: Oxford University Press, 1974); the Italian, Ariosto: Orlando furioso. ed. Marcello Turchi, 2 vols., I grandi libri (Milan: Garzanti, 1974). 2 William W. Kibler, “Relectures de l’épopée,” in Au Carrefour des routes d’Europe: La Chanson de geste. Actes du Xe Congrès International de la Société Rencesvals pour l’Etude des Epopées Romanes, 2 vols., Sénéfiance 20–21 (Aix-en-Provence: Publications du CUER MA, 1987) 103–40, here 110. 3 See Aspremont: Chanson de geste du XIIe siècle. Présentation, édition et traduction par François Suard d’après le manuscrit 25529 de la Bnf (Paris: Champion, 2008) for the French and, for the English, The Song of Aspremont (La Chanson d’Aspremont), ed. Michael A. Newth, (New York: Garland, 1989). Italian editions include: Andrea da Barberino. L’Aspramonte, romanzo cavalleresco inedito, ed. Marco Boni (Bologna: Palmaverde, 1951), and Andrea da Barberino, Storia d’Ugone d’Alvernia, ed. Francesco Zambrini (Bologna: Romagnoli, 1882; rpt. Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1968). 290 Leslie Zarker Morgan

Huon d'Auvergne: Background

In Franco-Italian texts that have become points of reference, like the Entrée d’Espagne, edited in 1913, and the Prise de Pampelune, edited in 1864, developing the “set ans tut pleins” that Charlemagne spent in Spain before Roncevaux, the Saracens remain foes to be conquered and converted.4 But one partially-edited Franco-Italian text, Huon d’Auvergne,5 that neither exists in any French form nor con- tinues any French text, Old French chanson de geste Saracens appear out of their usual element: they fight in the Christian afterlife beyond Roncevaux, in the time of Charles Martel.6 There are three almost- complete manuscripts of Huon d’Auvergne dating from 1341 to 1441, in addition to the Barbieri fragment of the fourteenth century, and an Italian prose version by Andrea da Barberino from the end of the fourteenth or early fifteenth century. In one branch of these, Aspre- mont's pagan leaders join Guillaume d'Orange's foe, Charlemagne's betrayers, and chanson de geste queens in hell, to create a unique re- interpretation of Dante's Inferno for the chanson de geste connoisseur. Agolant, Ulien, and Helmont fight demons thinking that they combat Christians:

Tot celle jeste que fu Aspremont a·l campt Parquoy en lor vie n’amerent Deu ni sanct

4 L’Entrée d’Espagne: Chanson de geste franco-italienne, ed. Antoine Thomas, Société des anciens textes français (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1913); and La Prise de Pampelune: Ein altfranzösisches Gedicht, ed. Adolfo Mussafia, Altfranzösische Gedichte aus venezianischen Handschriften 1 (Vienna: Carl Gerold, 1864), re-edited by Franca DiNinni in Niccolò da Verona: Opere (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1992), under the title Continuazione dell’ “Entrée d’Espagne,” 205-381. 5 I am working from my own transcription, but see also Edmund Stengel, Huons aus Auvergne Höllenfahrt Nach der Berliner und Paduaner Hs, Festschrift der Universität Greifswald (Greifswald: F. W. Kunike, 1908). 6 The timing is historically an anachronism, of course, since Charles Martel was Charlemagne’s grandfather. Huon d'Auvergne stands alone as a unique creation, though traces of its existence are documented from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries in French tradition as well as Italian. For the tradition, see Leslie Zarker Morgan, “Chrétien de Troyes comme sous-texte de Huon d’Auvergne,” in Les Chansons de Geste: Actes du XVIe Congrès International de la Société Rencesvals, pour l’Étude des Épopées Romanes, Granada, 21–25 juillet 2003, ed. Carlos Alvar et Juan Paredes (Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2005) 649–63.