The Twelve Peers: ’s Elite Combatants in the Song of

Gerard J. Brault

he Frankish warriors known as the Twelve Peers play a major role in where they distinguish themselves in the battle against the Saracens at Roncevaux before meeting T 1 their fate there. Famously bound together in a close alliance, they are (in alphabetical order): Anseis, Berenger, Engeler, Gerer, Gerin, Girart, , Oton,2 Roland, Samson, Yvoire, and Yvon. The barons are relatively obscure except, of course, Roland and Oliver. Like their leader and his comrade-in-arms, some are paired and their names may be so due to alliteration.3 Seeking to divest the Twelve Peers of the mythical qualities some scholars associated with them, Gaston Paris pointed out that, in the Song of Roland, at the time their earliest known appearance on the literary scene, they were simply Roland’s close companions, not a kind of Round Table made up of Charlemagne’s greatest warriors.4 He noted that many of the celebrated personages in this poem, for exam- ple Naimes, Ogier, and Turpin, also figure in the Emperor’s entourage in the twelfth-century Latin Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle and in the early epics of revolt but that they are not known as Peers in these works either. Paris concluded that the Twelve Peers only became a firmly

1 All references, except where noted, are to The Song of Roland: An Analytical Edition, ed. Gerard J. Brault, 2 vols. (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978). 2 There are two individuals named Oton. For the Peer, also known as Aton or Haton, see La Chanson de Roland, ed. T. Atkinson Jenkins (1924; rpt. Watkins Glen: Amer- ican Life Foundation, 1977), n. to v. 705. The other individual of this name, a marquis, appears in the Episode (vv. 2432, 2971, and 3058). 3 Jenkins, n. to v. 794. 4 Gaston Paris, Histoire poétique de Charlemagne (1905; rpt. Geneva: Slatkine, 1974) 417. Paris appears to have been the first scholar to suggest that the Peers number twelve in imitation of the Apostles (418). 40 Gerard J. Brault established group of Charlemagne’s most celebrated worthies in later chansons de geste, notably .5 In the latter works, peer mem- bership varied—except again for Roland and Oliver—because jon- gleurs were inclined to substitute more famous characters for the relatively unknown individuals accorded this distinction in the Song of Roland (417–18). Since Paris’s analysis, the most important finding with respect to the Twelve Peers was Dámaso Alonso’s discovery in 1953 of the Nota Emilianensis.6 Reliably dated 1065–75, a quarter of a century before most scholars believe the Song of Roland was set down in its best- known version, this short document—only sixty-two words long— originating in the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla and written in Latin tinged with Medieval Spanish, mentions Charlemagne’s elite but in curious fashion. According to the Nota, when the Emperor came to Saragossa in 778 he had twelve neptis [nephews] each of whom was accompanied by 3,000 armed and with his men served the King one month a year. Although twelve individuals are specified, only six names are provided: “Rodlane, Bertlane, Oggero Spartacuria, Ghigelmo Alcor- bitunas, Olibero, et episcopo domini Turpini” [Roland, Bertrand, Ogier “Short ,” Guillaume “Short Nose,” Oliver, and Bishop Turpin]. No one doubts that this group corresponds to the Peers in the Song of Roland. The list is plainly at variance with that in the French poem, but it is consistent with the one found in the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne. Alonso concluded that the Nota was based on one or more works redacted in Spanish and not the French Song of Roland. The details found in the Nota were an important element in Ramón Menéndez Pidal’s elaborate theory that the Oxford version of the Song of Roland was not, as Joseph Bédier claimed, essentially the creation

5 In Appendix 16, Paris listed seven works, not all of them chansons de geste, in which the Twelve Peers are listed by name (507). Léon Gautier, Les Épopées françaises, vol. 3 (2nd ed. Paris: Palmé, 1892), augmented the sources from seven to sixteen, but once again not all are actually chansons de geste (185–86, n. 2). 6 Dámaso Alonso, “La primitiva épica francesa a la luz de una ‘Nota Emilianense,’ ” Revista de Filología Española 37 (1953): 1–94. Latin text in Ramón Menéndez Pidal, La Chanson de Roland et la tradition épique des Francs, trans. Irénée-Marcel Cluzel (2nd ed. Paris: Picard, 1960) 390; facsimile, Plates 10 and 11. See also Martín de Riquer, Les Chansons de geste françaises, trans. Irénée-Marcel Cluzel (Paris: Nizet, 1957) 70–73, here 71.