The Song of Roland: a Mid-Twelfth Century Song of Propaganda For

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Hans E. Keller The Song of Roland: a Mid-Twelfth Century Song of Propaganda for the Capetian Kingdom For more than a century now scholars have been discussing the Oxford version of the Song of Roland. It is thus scarcely surprising that all of those who have dealt with the poem have been intrigued as to the authorship of such an incomparable masterpiece, nearly classical in its structure. But it seems even more important to understand its significance and to define the audience to whom the poet is speaking, as well as to discover the message he wants to convey. For this purpose, it is most vital to know when the Oxford version of the poem was composed. If that problem can be solved satisfactorily, we will know more about the man who signed the Oxford version, Turoldus, and, further, the dispute as to whether or not the different parts of the work constitute later inser- tions can be resolved without undue difficulty. This paper, therefore, will examine the factors which help determine the date of the version preserved in the Oxford manuscript, and we will also propose a possible new solution to the problem. For the dating of the Oxford Roland, it is not without interest that one finds all combatants using the spear in what Dorothy Leigh Sayers1 terms "the modern fashion (escrime nouvelle): the spear is held firmly under the right arm, with the point directed at the adversary's breast, the aim being either to pierce him through, or to hurl him from the saddle by weight and speed as the horses rush together." She further points out that in the Bayeux Tapestry (which "fut pour la première fois suspendue de pilier en pilier à l'entour de la nef"2 for the celebration of the dedication of the newly rebuilt and considerably enlarged cathedral on 14 July 1077), "both the old (escrime ancienne) and the modern fashion are shown together, some knights being depicted with the right arms raised above head-level, using the spear as a throwing-weapon."3 Sayers also calls attention to the fact that in the Bayeux Tapestry "the spears thus thrown have plain shafts, whereas most of those used in the modern escrime are adorned with a pennon or gonfalon just below the point,

1The Song of Roland, trad. Dorothy L. Sayers (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1937), p. 35. 2Simone Bertrand, La Tapisserie da la reine Mathilde à Bayeux (Paris: Hachette, n.d. [1969]), p. 9. 3Sayers, loc. cit. 242 Keller/Song of Roland 243 exactly as described in the Roland (e.g., vv. 1228, 1539, 1576, etc.)."4 It therefore can be safely stated that the Oxford version of the Song of Roland must have been composed after 14 July 1077. But it is generally agreed today that the poem must have been composed even later, after 1086, the year of the battle of Zalaca, near Badajoz in western Spain, in which the Berber Moslem sect of the Almora- vides inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Christians of Alfonso VI through the use of camels and drums. Neither had ever been seen or heard before by the Christians, reports the chronicler; consequently, the fact that they are mentioned in connection with the pagans in the Oxford Roland is currently considered a strong indication that the poem must have been written after 1086.5 It is much more difficult to determine the terminus ante quem of the poem, since there is no evidence in the work itself to provide help. Some scholars6 have maintained that the fact that the Song of Roland never mentions Santiago de Compostela and its importance for the pilgrims suggests a composition before 1095. Following the Council of Reims in 1049 —at which time the archbishop of Santiago was excommunicated by the Pope —there were hostile feelings between the Spanish Church and the Pope, causing an estrangement dividing all of western Christianity. In the fight concerning the supremacy of the archbishop of Santiago over the Spanish Church, the French Church sided very strongly with Rome. This fact, it has been claimed, could explain the silence of the Song of Roland with respect to the central place of Christianity in Spain. But after the reconciliation in 1095, in view of the First Crusade, such a silence would have been senseless, all of which suggests composition of the Oxford Roland before that date. Such arguments ex silentio, however, are rarely convincing. The fact that this center of pilgrimage is not mentioned has little relevance, because the poem contains no proof whatsoever that its theme was to propagandize pilgrimages to Santiago. The terminus ante quem of the poem should therefore be sought out- side of the work itself. The fact that certain Byzantine coins are mentioned in the Song is no longer considered to be of significance,

4Ibid. 5Martín de Riquer, Les Chansons de geste françaises, 2e édition, entièrement refondue, trans. Irénée Cluzel (Paris: Nizet, 1957), p. 76. 6The idea goes back to Aurelio Roncaglia, "Il silenzio del Roland su Sant' Iacopo: le vie del pellegrinaggi e le vie della storia," in Coloquios de Roncesvalles, Agosto 1955 (Zaragoza: El Noticiero, 1957), pp. 151-71. 244 Olifant/Vol. 3, No. 4/May 1976 because evidence they provide for dating the poem has been so strongly contested. The only factors we can take into consideration, then, are: 1° the date of the Oxford manuscript; 2° the date of the adaptation of the poem into Middle High German by the priest Conrad; and, 3° the iconographic evidence. 1° The date of the Oxford manuscript has been much discussed. Some maintain that it was copied in the second quarter of the twelfth century, while others believe in a date around 1170 or even slightly later. Joseph Bédier never adhered to the early date assigned to the manuscript by his compatriot Charles Samaran in 1933. The latter, in an article published in 1973,7 tried to add even more weight to his argumentation based entirely upon paleographical evidence. Other paleographers, however, especially from Great Britain, have seriously questioned such an early date.8 Linguists have also stressed dialectal particularities which cannot be found yet in the second quarter of the century.9 Furthermore, it is a strange coincidence that the oldest extant fragments of Wace's Roman de Brut, also preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, show an astonishing paleographical and linguistic resemblance to the Oxford manuscript of the Roland: these fragments were dated in 1974 by two paleographers of the Library as having been written toward the end of the twelfth century.10 For these reasons, the Oxford manu-

7Charles Samaran, "Sur la date approximative du Roland d'Oxford," Romania, 94 (1973), 523-7. 8For example, see Ian Short, "The Oxford Manuscript of the Chanson de Roland: A Paleographical Note," Romania, 94 (1973), 221-31.

9See Jules Horrent, La Chanson de Roland dans lee littératures française et espagnole, Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l'Université de Liège, Fascicule 120 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1951), pp. 34-42. To Horrent's pertinent remarks should be added another feature found in v. 3986, where the Oxford manuscript has "Truvee li unt lo num de Juliane"; the spelling "truvee" for a masculine past participle does not occur in Anglo-Norman texts before the later twelfth century; cf. Mildred K. Pope, From Latin to Modern French, with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman. Phonology and Morphology, re- vised edition (Manchester: University Press, 1952), §1235. 10"We feel that fol. 83-4 are certainly no later than the beginning of the thirteenth century and may belong to the late twelfth" (private communication from Mr. Bruce C. Barker-Benefield, 16 September 1974). Keller/Song of Roland 245 script can hardly have been composed before the second half of the century, in all probability not before the chancellery of King Henry II Plantagenet had begun to exert its overall influence in England, i.e., not before 1170. 2° In a recent article11 the writer hopes to have demonstrated that, contrary to a widely held view among Germanists, the Middle High German adaptation by Conrad was—as already maintained by Professors Rita Lejeune and Jacques Stiennon12—probably composed after 1180, perhaps between 1185 and 1189. That adaptation—which, incidentally, does not reflect so much the Oxford version as that of Venice IV13—was thus composed so late in the century that it is of no help in dating the composition of the Song of Roland as we read it today in the Oxford version. 3° Iconography is not much of assistance either in dating the poem, because the first time that it is found represented in its entirety by an artist is precisely in the Middle High German Ruolantes liet, of which the oldest manuscript (now preserved in Heidelberg) is decorated by inserted pictures as they were in use particularly in England in the second half of the twelfth century, especially in the Abbey of St. Albans in Hertfordshire.14 This points again to the end of the twelfth century, the date of the Heidelberg manuscript. Before that time, iconographic representations depict only the first part of the poem, up to Charle- magne's revenge upon the pagans. These images are indeed attested quite early in the century, above church portals and in church mosaics in Southern France and in Italy, as we know thanks to the research of Pro-

11"Der Pfaffe Konrad am Hofe von Braunschweig," in Wege der Vorte. Festschrift für Wolfgang Fleischhauer (Köhn: Böhlau Verlag, forthcoming). 12Rita Lejeune and Jacques Stiennon, La Légende de Poland dans l'art du moyen âge (Bruxelles: Arcade, 1967), I, 119. 13Cf., Hans-Erich Keller, "La Place du Ruolantes liet dans la tradition rolandienne," Le Moyen Age, 71 (1965), 215-46, 401-21. Cesare Segre, in his edition of La Chanson de Roland, Documenti di Filologia, 16 (Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1971), p. xvii, questioned the writer's view, but not basically, for he too admits another model from which K and V4 were copied. 14 See Otto Pächt, The Rise of Pictorial Narrative in Twelfth Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), pp. 50ff. and plates 30, 33, and 34. 246 Olifant/Vol. 3, No. 4/May 1976 fessors Rita Lejeune and Jacques Stiennon.15 The earliest iconographical representation, depicting the narrative from Ganelon's treason to Roland's death, is found at the cathedral of Angoulême in Périgord, Southern France, where it can be dated with the help of the date of consecration of the church, about 1123.16 As early as 1131, the name of the traitor Ganelon is also mentioned in the cathedral of Nepi, not far from Sutri, which was, for a pilgrim, one day's journey north of Rome: an inscription there speaks of the "turpissimam . . . mortem, ut Galelonem [sic] qui suos tradidit socios."17 This inscription proves in effect that at least the first part of the Song of Roland was known by 1131 in Cen- tral Italy. But iconography is absolutely silent with respect to the second part of the poem, which does not appear, as previously stated, before the illustrations of the Ruolantes liet, i.e., toward the end of the century. The composition of the Oxford version of the Song of Roland must therefore have taken place between 1086 and at least 1170 (the probable date of the Oxford manuscript), that is to say, in a period of time which stretches over nearly a whole century. Is it possible to define more closely the period when the poem in its present form must have been composed? It is this writer's con- tention that that is indeed feasible. What has continued to mislead so many scholars for more than a hundred years now is the fact that research has concentrated upon the genesis of the poem, uncovering valuable evidence for an old song of the battle at Roncevaux and of the death of its prin- cipal hero due to a personal feud with his stepfather, Ganelon; yet few scholars have shown interest in the second part, and those that have done so have approached it with the attitude justified in itself for which Eugene Vance is typical when he writes: "To say the least, the Baligant episode inaugurates a wholly different poetic climate in the Song of Roland. "18 Analyzing this "wholly different poetic climate" and realizing that iconographical evidence in the earlier part of the twelfth century depicts only the battle of Roncevaux and the revenge of its heroes by Charlemagne, lead to the conclusion which will be presented in the second

150p. cit. 16See Rita Lejeune and Jacques Stiennon, I, p. 36. 17See Pio Rajna, "Un1 iscrizione nepesina del 1131," Archivio Storico Italiano, ser. 4, vol. 18 (1886), 332. 18Reading the Song of Roland (Engelwood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice- Hall, 1970), p. 73. Keller/Song of Roland 247 part of this study. But first a preliminary observation is necessary with regard to the structure of the Oxford Roland. In order to discuss the poem, it will be divided here into the following seven segments: 1) Ganelon's treason; 2) the battle of Roncevaux and Charlemagne's revenge; 3) the Baligant episode; 4) the death of Fair Aude; 5) Ganelon's trial; 6) the conversion of Bramimonde; and 7) an outlook over Charlemagne's future tasks. Quite a few scholars have tried to prove that the so-called Bali- gant episode (3) is a later insertion in the poem, because they too sensed that it "inaugurates a wholly different poetic climate." Nevertheless, no one has succeeded to date in lifting the episode out of the text without damaging the whole structure, not to mention the fact that the poetic technique is the same as in the rest of the poem, the style is identical, and, as this study hopes to demonstrate, the thought expressed in the episode is an essential part of the whole work.19 Because of the persistent claim that the Baligant episode did not originally form part of the poem, this paper will concentrate mainly upon the second part of the poem (3-7 above). To begin with, the following represent some of the findings which have been published separately in the volume honor- ing the memory of the German scholar Erhard Lommatzsch:20 a) First of all there is the orie flambe, the royal banner mentioned exclusively in the Baligant episode, a name which was later trans- formed by chroniclers who no longer understood the term into oriflamme "golden flame." For some years now we have known that it had nothing to do with gold but that it is a vernacular rendering of the Latin term aurita flammula "notched banner" (literally, "eared little flame").21 It was indeed never a golden banner, but rather a scarlet one. It had formerly belonged to the counts of a region immediately north of Paris, the Vexin, which, in 1077, became a domain administered by the abbots of Saint-Denis and therefore indirectly a royal domain. But it was not until 3 August 1124, when Suger was already abbot of Saint-Denis, that the

19Cf. also André Burger, "Remarques sur la composition de l'épi- sode de Baligant," in Mélanges Maurice Delbouille (Gembloux: Duculot, 1964), II, 59-69. 20Hans-Erich Keller, "La Version dionysienne de la Chanson de Ro- land," in Philologica Romanica. Erhard Lommatzsch gewidmet (München: Fink Verlag, 1975), pp. 257-87. (Abstract in Olifant, 1 [April 1974] 4, 64-67.) 21See André Burger, "Oriflamme" in Festschrift Walther von Wartburg zum 80. Geburtstag, 18. Mai 1968 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1968), II, 357-62. 248 Olifant/Vol. 3, No. 4/May 1976 banner of the former counts of Vexin became known to a wider public. Suger arranged that his king, Louis VI, come to the Abbey of Saint-Denis to take it from the main altar, blessed by the abbot, for the purpose of carrying it in a military conflict with the German Emperor Henry VI and the English King Henry I. The ceremony was repeated with even more pomposity by Suger before the Second Crusade, when he could persuade King Louis VII to receive the banner on 11 June 1147, in the presence of the entire royal family, including Queen Eleanor, from Pope Eugene III in person, who had taken it from the main altar of Saint-Denis. This explains the fact that the author of the Oxford Roland was able to say of the banner that it first had been Saint Peter's and was called "Romaine," but that from the French battle cry ,it derived the name "Munjoie."22 b) The name of the Abbey of Saint-Denis has been introduced in the poem in particularly striking places. It is found for the first time in the scene of the twelve boasting pagan peers, who all assure their king, Marsile, that they will accomplish an extraordinary deed. We are reminded of the famous gabs in the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne—perhaps not acciden- tally. As the last of the pagans, the handsome hero Margariz of Seville, steps forward and boasts that they will conquer the whole of France within one year and will be able to sleep in the town of Saint-Denis,23 he makes an obvious reference to the heart of France, although Charlemagne's capital was Aachen, in reality as well an in the poem. The second time the name of Saint Denis is found—in the moving scene of Roland's death when the hero addresses his sword, Durendal— Roland mentions the relics of saints contained in its hilt: one of Saint Peter's teeth, blood of Saint Basil (one of the favorite saints of the first crusaders), a piece of the Virgin Mary's clothing, and some hairs belonging to "my lord" Saint Denis.24 Saint Denis is the only saint whose name is accompanied by the title "my lord" ("mon seignor")—a custom which would become quite popular with saints' names in the later Middle Ages—and this notwithstanding the fact that the name of Saint Denis is cited next to that of the patron saint of the crusaders (the

22"Gefreid d'Anjou portet l'orie flambe: / Seint Piere fut, si aveit num Romaine; / Mais de Munjoie iloec out pris eschange." Edition Moignet, vv. 3093-5. 23"Jusqu'a un an avrum France saisie; / Gesir porrum el burc de seint Denise." Edition Moignet, vv. 972-3. 24"En l'oriet punt asez i ad reliques, / La dent seint Perre e del sanc seint Basile, / E des chevels mun seignur seint Denise; / Del vestement i ad seinte Marie." Edition Moignet, vv. 2345-8. Keller/Song of Roland 249 mention of whom in the poem is only logical), next to that of Saint Peter, Christ's representative on earth, and even next to the name of Christ's own mother, whose cult had begun to gain popularity in France from the middle of the twelfth century. It is difficult to imagine a more prominent place for the Abbey of Saint-Denis and its patron saint than here, in the scene in which Roland, through his faith, is made an equal to the martyrs. c) Certain names in the Baligant episode point without any doubt to the period of the crusade of Louis VII (1147-49), in which Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis was regent of France together with Count Raoul of Verman- dois. It was a period of revolt against the Capetian king on the part of many barons who wanted to profit from Louis's absence in the Orient. Suger, the real ruler of the kingdom, succeeded in subduing the revolt thanks to the loyalty of two powerful vassals in particular, namely Duke Geoffrey Plantagenet of Normandy, the father of the future King Henry II of England, and Count Thierry of Flanders. Both are mentioned in the Oxford Roland: the former is Charlemagne's standard-bearer25—quite a symbolic office—and the latter is ambiguously referred to in the poem as Geoffrey's "frere" (v. 2883), a term which in Old French could mean both "brother" and "brother-in-law" ("frere en loi").26 Thierry, it is true, is slightly disguised as Duke of Argonne,27 but this is one of the many mystifications of our author, mystifications which are reminiscent of those employed by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain, of which the composition was completed between 1136 and 1138; Geoffrey's influence is also perceptible elsewhere in the poem.28 Argonne, the region of France cast of Paris and Champagne, is where Thierry of Flanders's inherited personal domain (his "alleu") began, for Thierry and his ancestors were counts of Alsace; their territory in fact reached northwest to the region of Argonne. The same type of mystification is also used in the case of Duke Geoffrey Plantagenet of Normandy, who is called "Geffrei d'Anjou" (vv. 106, 2383, 2945, 2951, 3093, 3535, 3545, 3938), for he held Normandy only since 1144 and he and his ancestors had been counts of Anjou. Even the designation "brother" for Thierry of Argonne is historically correct, for, since 1134, Thierry of Flanders was indeed brother-in-law to Geoffrey Plantagenet.

25"Gefreid d'Anjou portet l'orie flambe." Edition Moignet, v. 3093.

26See FEW, III, 765, col. 1; V, 292, col. 1.

27See edition Moignet, vv. 3083, 3534. 28See Hans-Erich Keller, "La Version dionysienne de la Chanson de Roland," pp. 278-80. 250 Olifant/Vol. 3, No. 4/May 1976 Given our poet's inclination for a bit of mystification, it is to be expected that other historical personalities of Sugar's regency would similarly be "mystified" in the Oxford Roland. It has been possible to identify quite a few of the barons of the period, though it is not essential for the present argument to go into further details.29 Never- theless, in order to demonstrate another type of mystification used by the author, attention should be called to the way in which the poet introduced Suger's co-regent, Count Raoul of Vermandois, into the poem. His name is found split into two personages, Rabel and Guineman, to whom Charlemagne says (vv. 3016-18): "Be in place of Oliver and of Roland, the one may carry the sword and the other the olifant; ride in front of all!" again one of the sententious formulas dear to Abbot Suger. The name "Rabel" is a play on words—there are many other instances in the poem—upon the local pronunciation found in the county of Vermandois northeast of Paris, for the ending -able is pronounced -aule in the region.30 Knowing this was easy for a monk of the Abbey of Saint-Denis, located not far from Vermandois. As a hypercorrection he could therefore easily transform the name "Raoul" into "Rabel." That he spelled it -bel and not -ble is further evidence of his knowledge of the local dialect, which in effect inserts an e in a cluster formed by a consonant and l.31 His knowledge of the local dialect is also revealed by the second name, Guineman, undoubtedly a misspelling of the Oxford scribe, or of the model he was copying, for *Guireman. The poet obviously knew that in Vermandois Germanic initial w- is preserved,32 for in another hypercorrection he rendered it by gu-, used in the region of Paris, in a name which he derived from the medieval Latin form of "Vermandois" and for which he assumed a pronunciation with /w/, namely "Viromandensis." As -ensis is the Latin ending of adjectives derived from place names, he clearly refers to Vermand, the capital of the Gaulish tribe of the Viromandui, today's

29Ibid., 261-7. 30See Carl Theodor Gossen, Französische Skriptastudien. Unter- suchungen zu den nordfronzösischen Urkundensprachen des Mittelalters, Oesterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Sitzungsberichte, 253 (Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 1967), p. 209. 31See Carl Theodor Gossen, Grammaire de l'ancien picard, Bibliothèque française et romane, Série A (Paris: Klincksieck, 1970), p. 103. 32See Carl Theodor Gossen, Französische Skriptastudien, p. 209. Keller/Song of Roland 251

Saint-Quentin.33 d) For the dating of the Oxford Roland the name of the head of heathendom, Baligant, is of course of particular interest. A French Islamist34 recently succeeded in identifying him as Yahya Ben Ali Ghâniya, a leader of the Spanish Moors who in 1134 inflicted a crushing defeat on the Christians of Aragon and their French allies under Alfonso I, the latter mortally wounded in the battle. Charlemagne's victory over Baligant therefore also represents a literary revenge for this injury to national pride, reminding us again of Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose Britains under King Arthur take a late revenge at Siesia against the Romans for their victory at Alesia over the hero of the last Celtic resistance in Gaul, Vercingetorix.35 At the same time the date of the battle of Fraga, 1134, furnishes us with an additional terminus ab quo for the Oxford version of the Song of Roland. e) But the name of Ganelon's champion during his trial, Pinabel, indicates an even more recent date for the poem. The author dwells on the scene at court where Pinabel is admired by all for his behavior and especially by those of Auvergne, who are said to be the most courtly of Charlemagne's people (v. 3796). This observation makes sense only if we assume that the military virtues of the term "curteis," as it appears in the Song of Roland, are coupled here with the qualities of politeness, sociability, wisdom, and even physical beauty, qualities which intrude upon the moral values of Northern France only about 1150 under the influence of the South, as is attested by the first of the Old French romans d'antiquité, the Roman de Thèbes, written shortly after 115036 But the admirable, courtly, well-spoken and handsome, towering Pinabel holds the castle of Sorence! Those who are familiar with twelfth century

33See Auguste Vincent, Toponymie de la France (Bruxelles: Imprimerie Générale, 1937), p. 113, col. 2. 34Jean Poncet, "La Chanson de Roland à la lumière de l'histoire: vérité de Baligant," in Actes du Deuxième Congres International d'Etudes Nord-Africaines (Aix-en-Provense 1968), Revue de l'Occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée, numéro spécial (1970), pp. 125-39, espec. pp. 131 ff. 35See Edmond Faral, ed., La Légende arthurienne. Etudes et documents, 1st part: Les plus anciens textes, III: Documents, Biblio- thèque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes historiques et philologiques, 257 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1929), 166-76. 36Glyn Sheridan Burgess, Contribution à l'étude du vocabulaire pré-courtois, Publications romanes et françaises, 110 (Genève: Droz, 1970), p. 23. 252 Olifant/Vol. 3, No. 4/May 1976 French paleography recognize that the form "Sorence" must actually be a scribal mistake for *Sorente, Sorrento on the Bay of Naples. This means that the name of Pinabel, Ganelon's champion in the episode of his trial, probably has to be explained by Southern Italian linguistic elements. It is there, indeed, that we find that tree names are of feminine gender, as, for instance, faga, instead of standard Italian fago "beech tree." But in addition, the type of compound adjective with "bel," meaning "beautiful like, as," is of Mediterranean origin, for it is found from Italy to Spain but not at all in Old French.37 "Pinabel," Interpreted in this way, would be a name whose meaning was easily discernible to a twelfth century man in Southern Italy, "beautiful like a pine tree." In order to have access to such a Mediterranean name, our poet must have had some contact with this totally different world (it should not be forgotten that most of the poem's heroes have names of Germanic origin). This fact can be explained only when it is recalled that when King Louis VII and his crusaders returned from the Holy Land, they crossed the Mediterranean and landed in Calabria early in the summer of 1149. The region, at that time, belonged to King Roger of Naples and Sicily, whom Louis met in the city of Potenza, after which meeting he continued to Rome where he sojourned at the court of Pope Eugene III, during the months of July and August, in order to reconcile his marital difficulties with his wife, Eleanor. The noble champion of Ganelon, Pinabel, is thus in all probability a reminiscence of King Louis's stay in this part of Italy in the year 1149, although that does not necessarily imply that the poet himself must have spent time in Southern Italy. Such a word construction could doubtless have been easily understood in Northern France, though with a different meaning.38 Further evidence for a South Italian origin is provided by the Catalogue of the Barons, compiled in approximately 1150 for King Roger, in which a "Pinabellus" is recorded.39 f) The above assumption accords perfectly with other indications in the second half of the Song of Roland, particularly in Ganelon's trial.

37See Gerhard Rohlfs, Historische Grammatik der italienischen Sprache (Bern: Francke, 1949-54), II, 77; III, 225; Oscar Schultz-Gora, "Zum griechischen Akkusativ," Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 53 (1933), 103-12. 38See FEW, VIII, 550, col. 1: OFr. pine "membre viril" (since the Roman de la Rose), OPr. pina. 39Evelyn Jamison, "Notes on S. Maria della Strada at Matrice, its History and Sculpture," Papers of the British School at Rome, 14 (1938), 71. Keller/Song of Roland 253

The Germanic legal procedures described in that episode, those concerning the relationship of a baron toward his feudal overlord, were successfully challenged by Suger and his master, King Louis VII, in their drive toward royal contralization of the judicial power and in their search for a juris- diction for the king which would best represent his sovereign authority as it is represented by the Charlemagne of the Song of Roland. "Ganelon's trial does more than bring together the loose ends of the narrative and provide a satisfying punishment for the villain of the piece. It raises and answers one of the most essential questions of the earlier Middle Ages: where is loyalty due?"40 This question could have been answered the way in which the poem does only around 1150 at the earliest. g) But there is still more evidence to support a date of composition for the Oxford version of the Song of Roland around 1150. The defeat of the French rearguard in the Pyrenees in 778 was never more meaningful than around 1150, when the recent defeat of the crusaders under Louis VII in Anatolia was fresh in everyone's mind, especially in that of the chronicler of the crusade, Odo of Deuil, who eventually became Suger's successor as abbot of Saint-Denis in 1151. According to Odo's work About Louis VII's campaign in the Orient, Book Six,42 the French crusaders left the city of Laodicea in Phrygia on 6 January 1148 in order to cross the mountains of ancient Pisidia, with the goal of reaching the port of Adalia on the Mediterranean Sea, from whence they hoped to sail to Antioch. Louis had prescribed a strict discipline in these mountain passes, where the Turks could attack them from behind nearly each rock, but only the Templars complied with his orders. One night, instead of camping as planned on the top of a pass, the commander of the vanguard chose to march on and to camp on a plain further down, thus breaking contact with the main body of the army. The Turks realized this and immediately occupied the intervening mountains. The next morning they attacked the main body of the army commanded by Louis himself. The king, after a heroic battle, succeeded in rejoining the vanguard with a few barons and reached the port of Adalia against all obstacles. The relevance of the battle of Roncevaux at this point doubtless did not escape a poet as familiar with the history

40John Halverson, "Ganelon's Trial," Speculum, 42 (1967), 666.

41Cf. Marcel Pacaut, Louis VII et son royaume. Bibliothèque Générale de l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, 6th section (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1964), pp. 166 ff. 42Odo de Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, ed. and English trans. Virginia Gingerick Berry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948), pp. 114-20. 254 Olifant/Vol. 3, No. 4/May 1976 of France as the monks of Saint-Denis, who, under Suger, revived the idea that they should be the depositaries of the history of France, an idea promoted by Suger himself. Suger, of course, had a strong inclination for history, had written the chronicle of the reign of his past master, Louis VI, and had started another on the reign of his present king, Louie VII.43 h) Finally, the interest in Charlemagne himself should be mentioned. Although the cult of Charlemagne in the twelfth century was particularly fostered by the imperial party in Germany,44 the monks of Saint-Denis jealously guarded their relics, the crown of thorns, a nail of the Holy Cross, and a splinter of wood from it, which Charlemagne had allegedly brought back from his journey to Jerusalem. During the twelfth, century, the Abbey of Saint-Denis was most instrumental in the ascendency of the cult of Charlemagne in France. In this respect the abbey rivaled with the historical capital of Charlemagne, Aachen, as already mentioned with respect to the name of Saint-Denis itself in the poem (see above, sub (b)). But in its rivalry with Aachen, the Abbey of Saint-Denis lost out, for in Germany the cult of Charlemagne by the Hohenstaufen even led to his canonization in 1165, a fact which the Pope (who was a Frenchman!) and his faithful followers in France could not accept. This does not mean; however, that Charlemagne was not venerated in Northern France during this period. The cult had slowly emerged during the eleventh century, when Saint-Denis had written a Descriptio qualiter Karolus Magnus clavum et coronam Domini a Constantinopoli Aquisgrani detulerit qualiter- que Karolus Calvus haec ad S. Dionysum retulerit,45 up to the period of Suger, where Charlemagne was used in order to heighten and strengthen the Capetian kingdom. Even Tierry of Flanders—the Tierri d'Argonne of the poem—stresses his ties with Charlemagne by observing before his duel that he owes this service to Charlemagne because of his ancestors.46 As

43Cf. Hans-Erich Keller, "La Version dionysienne de la Chanson de Roland," pp. 276-7. 44Cf. Robert Folz, Le Souvenir et la Légende de Charlemagne dans l'Empire germanique médiéval (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1950). 45Ed. G. Rauscher, in "Die Legende Karls des Grossen im XI. und XII. Jahrhundert," Publikationen der Gesellschaft für rheinische Ge- schichtskunde, 7 (1890); an edition of a manuscript at Montpellier has been published by F. Castets, in Revue des Langues Romanes, 36 (1892), 407-74 (cf. R. Folz, op. cit., p. 179, n. 110). 46"Far anceisurs dei jo tel plait tenir." Edition Moignet, v. 3826; Keller/Song of Roland 255 a matter of fact, Thierry of Flanders could indeed trace his family tree back to Charlemagne, for he was by his mother a descendant of Count Baldwin I, who in 862 succeeded in making a runaway match with Judith, the daughter of Charlemagne's grandson, Charles the Bald; but the Tierri d'Argonne of the poem refers at the same time to a kinship with the reigning king, Louis VII, because Bertha of Holland, the stepdaughter of his grandfather Robert I the Frisian, was married to King Philip I of France. A first conclusion can then be derived from these facts. There is no doubt that there must have been an old poem, probably containing Ganelon's treason (1) and the battle of Roncevaux and "Charlemagne's revenge (2), because the evidence unearthed by scholars such as Paul Aebischer, Rita LeJeune, Jacques Stiennon and Ramón Menéndez Pidal is totally convincing. Traces of this old poem are already found icono- graphically before the first half of the twelfth century even in the neighboring countries of Spain and Italy. But it is impossible today to reconstruct that poem, even with the help of the existing work, for it has been amply demonstrated that the style and poetic technique of the Oxford Roland are absolutely the same throughout the whole work and that it is impossible to lift out, for instance, the Baligant episode without damaging the work or its significance.47 The poet of Saint-Denis, who must have lived in the immediate surroundings of Abbot Suger during and following his regency (a gratuitous guess is that it was Odo of Deuil himself, the author of the chronicle of Louis's crusade) had apparently seen the parallel between Louis's defeat in Asia Minor and the defeat of Charlemagne's rearguard in the Pyrenees, as described by the old song of Roncevaux. He wrote a new poem, but—unlike Jean de Meung more than a century later —he rewrote the old song before adding a second part to it in which he showed that in the Emperor's service Roland was not acting on his own behalf but merely as a representative of Charles. Ganelon's action was therefore not personal revenge, as claimed by Ganelon during the trial; rather, as Louis VII and Abbot Suger chose to understand it, and as shown by the stand taken by Tierri d'Argonne, Ganelon's action George F. Jones, The Ethos of the Song of Roland (Baltimore, 1963), pp. 70-1, came to the same conclusion, and so did John A. Stranges, "The Character and the Trial of Ganelon: A New Appraisal," Romania 96 (1975), 361. 47Cf. also André Burger, "Remarques sur la composition de l'épisode de Baligant," in Mélanges Maurice Delbouille (Gembloux: Duculot, 1964), II, 59-69. 256 Olifant/Vol 3, No. 4/May 1976 was a clear case of high treason. Tierri asserts the precedence of a loyalty higher than traditional bonds, which in turn implies a denial of the vendetta ethic for the sake of the common good. "An extremely important principle, it might even be called revolutionary, for it announces the overthrow of a traditional pattern of social organization for a new one to which the old must yield."48 And this drive toward royal centralization had already made considerable progress by the time the poem, as we read it today, was written.49 If this represented progress, however, it was not without provoking a violent reaction, for it is reflected even in literature, as can be seen from poems such as Raoul de Cambrai, Leo Loherains, Renaut de Montauban, Girart de Roussillon and others written in the same period or later. But the mere fact that the viewpoint of the Germanic tribesmen could successfully be challenged is an indication of the time in which the Oxford version of the Song of Roland must have been composed: historians are unanimous in affirming that the drive toward centralization, even in judicial matters, began to make progress from the 1140s onward.50 This is exactly the period in which the Charle- magne cult came to its first peak, and hence it is not surprising that our poet felt compelled to enhance the personal drama of two vassals, Roland and Ganelon, by a confrontation of the two highest rulers of the secular world, Charlemagne and Baligant, using this idea concomitantly to affirm the sovereign authority of the king over all his vassals during the period they were in his service. That these views of the kingdom must have appealed to King Henry II Plantagenet of England should not be surprising. As a matter of fact, it is under the veil of a slight Anglicization that the Song of Roland of the Oxford version is preserved today.51 Someone in England even succeeded in twice introducing the name of his king in his copy, once probably Instead of Duke Geoffrey Plantagenet, and in another instance in place of Tierri d'Argonne,52 in order to remind his

48John Halverson, op. cit., 667.

49See above, n. 41.

50Ibid.

51See above, n. 9. 52"Richard li Velz e sun nevold Henri" (ed. Moignet, v. 171), and "Naimes li dux e li quens Acelin, / Gefrei d'Anjou e sun frere Henri / Prenent le rei, sil drecent suz un pin" (ed. Moignet, vv. 2882-4). Keller/Song of Roland 257 audience of the realities of life in their own country. But even more important is the fact that the poem is already found to be slightly altered, for this Anglo-Norman version contains an episode not previously attested: the conversion of Bramimonde (6).53 Between its composition at Saint-Denis and the copying of the Oxford manuscript by the scribe Turoldus, a redactor felt that the indication at the end of the Baligant episode (3), namely that Queen Bramimonde was made prisoner and brought to France so that she could become a Christian of her own volition, needed expansion. Thus he introduced an additional laisse in which the christening of the queen is described,54 a laisse which is not contained in any other manuscript of the Song of Roland. It is true that the Middle High German adaptation also contains the conversion of Brechmunda,55 but this scene is recounted immediately after her seizure at Sarraguz and developed absolutely independently of the French model. Even the fact that the Bramimonde of the Oxford version is baptized Juliane points toward England, where the cult of this saint was particularly prevalent. There exists an Anglo-Saxon hagiographical poem on the life of Saint Juliana by Cynewulf as early as the beginning of the ninth century, based on a Latin manuscript also written in England. In addition, there are half a dozen versions of the saint's life in Middle English, composed between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries, and an Anglo-Norman version written in the same period in which the episode of Bramimonde's conversion was inserted in the Oxford Roland. It is also noteworthy that the German Ruolantes liet does not contain the name Juliana for the baptized Queen Bramimonde. In conclusion, it can safely be stated that, although some scholars still cling to an earlier date, the Oxford manuscript cannot have been written earlier than around 1170. The Middle High German Ruolantes liet does not contradict this dating, for it was written in the 1180s. Nor is the iconographic evidence in opposition with this view, because the very first time that the whole poem is represented in the arts is precisely

53Cf. Hans-Erich Keller, "La Conversion de Bramimonde," Olifant, 1 (October 1973) 1, pp. 3-22, reprinted in the Actes du VIe Congrès international de la Société Rencesvals (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1974), pp. 177-203.

54Edition Moignet, laisse CCXC, which, unfortunately, is damaged in the Oxford manuscript at the end of the vv. 3983 and 3984; perhaps even several lines may be missing between the two lines. 55Edition Wesle-Wapnewski, vv. 8625-30. 258 Olifant/Vol 3, No. 4/May 1976 in the oldest manuscript of the Ruolantes liet, from the end of the twelfth century at Heidelberg. The Oxford manuscript, on the other hand, contains an Anglo-Norman adaptation and expansion of the poem as it was composed around 1150, probably at the Abbey of Saint-Denis. It is then basically the poem of Saint-Denis which we read and admire today, a poem whose main purpose was to enhance the Roland tragedy through the addition of a drama concerning Charlemagne, in order to further Capetian interests as formulated by the political genius of Abbot Suger. As Otto von Simson states so well;56 Suger employed historiography as an instrument of politics. For this very reason history was for him not merely, nor even primarily, the documentation of fact, but rather the reaction of political reality. He was not more inclined than his contemporaries to let factual proof interfere with the flight of the imagination. To realize his political aims Suger had recourse to poetry and fable. Hence these aims appear not only in the official history he wrote or inspired, but in the popular tales of the jongleurs that were launched by the abbey and soon became the most effective means by which the great sanctuary established itself in the public mind. Indeed, the Oxford version of the Song of Roland is the quintes- sence of the national spirit of the Capetian kingdom toward the middle of the twelfth century, of which Suger's Saint-Denis was the soul.57 Hans E. Keller The Ohio State University

56The Gothic Cathedral, Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 111. 57Cf. also Leonardo Olschki, Der ideale Mittelpunkt Frankreichs im Mittelalter in Wirklichkeit und Dichtung (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1913).