14 Pierrepont at a Crossroads of Literatures

14 Pierrepont at a crossroads of literatures An instructive parallel between the first branch of the Karlamagnús Saga, the Dutch Renout and the Dutch Flovent Abstract: In the French original of the first branch of the Karlamagnús Saga [= fKMSI], in the Dutch Renout and in the Dutch Flovent – three early 13th century texts from present-day Bel- gium – a toponym Pierrepont plays a conspicous part (absent, however, from the French models of Renout and Flovent); fKMSI and Renout even have in common a triangle ‘Aimon, vassal of Charlemagne – Aie, his wife – Pierrepont, their residence’. The toponym is shown to mean Pierrepont (Aisne) near Laon in all three texts. In fKMSI, it is due almost certainly to the intervention of one of two Bishops of Liège (1200−1238) from the Pierrepont family, and in the other two texts to a similar cause. Consequently, for fKMSI a date ‘before 1240’ is proposed. According to van den Berg,1 the Middle Dutch Flovent, of which only two frag- ments are preserved,2 was probably written by a Fleming (through copied by a Brabantian) and can very roughly be dated ‘around 1200’ on the basis of its verse technique and syntax. In this text, Pierrepont plays a conspicuous part without appearing in the French original.3 In the first fragment, we learn that King Clovis is being besieged in Laon by a huge pagan army (vv. 190 ss.). To protect their rear, the pagans build a castle at a distance of four [presumably French] miles [~18 km] from Laon. Its name will be Pierlepont (vv. 208 ss.). At the beginning of the second fragment, Christian relief forces coming from the east under the command of Clovis’s son Flovent have already conquered the castle and temporarily entrenched themselves in it. But soon, leaving only two squires in it (vv. 444 s.), they hurry on to the relief of Laon. ‘Those from Pierle- pont’ now refers to these forces (vv. 432 s.; cf. vv. 338, 354, 370). Thanks to them, the pagans suffer a decisive defeat. Towards the end of his story, the author must have narrated how King Clo- vis (or Flovent as his successor) invested one of his warriors with the new castle. In sum, then, the Flovent informs us how Pierlepont originated in Merovingian times. A look at the map suffices to make it clear beyond any doubt that the 1 Van den Berg, 1987, pp. 13 s., 32. – For full bibliographical data, see the References below. 2 Edited by Kalff 1886 [1967], pp. 180–203. 3 This fact was briefly mentioned but not analyzed by Loke, 1906, p. 113, n. 3. For the French original see Andolf’s edition, 1941; the part we are interested in comprises at most vv. 2271– 2534. Note: First published in: Neophilologus 89 (2005), 587–603. Open Access. © 2019 Gustav Adolf Beckmann, publiziert von De Gruyter. Dieses Werk ist lizenziert unter der Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Lizenz. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615692-014 356 Renaut de Montauban author means Pierrepont (Aisne), 15 km north-east of Laon, so the form Pierle- pont with its -l- is simply a playful literary variant. Situated in the middle of the marsh of Saint-Boëtien, Pierrepont commanded the passage through that marsh and was therefore fortified by the tenth century.4 Still today, some villages up to 8 km away add ‘-lès-Pierrepont’ to their names. But all this means compara- tively little, since other roads from Laon to the north-east by-pass the marsh on its north and south. So we may conclude precisely from its at best mediocre importance that Pierrepont must have been introduced into the story by (or on the initiative of) someone with an intense personal interest in that place, in other words, a native speaker of French; this interest, however, becomes visible to us only when the story reaches present-day Belgium. *** The same curious constellation – Pierrepontian enthusiasm in a literary text from Belgium – recurs in two more texts from the same time. At the outset, let us examine the first branch (henceforth: KMSI) of the Karlamagnús Saga (henceforth: KMS). The importance of the 13th century KMS for the study of the French genre of chansons de geste is undisputed.5 Strictly speaking, what students of Old French literature are interested in, is not the branches of a KMS themselves, but the French-language originals underlying them, and a KMS branch may be particularly interesting if the French text is no longer extant. This holds true for the first branch which we may define as an epic biography of Charlemagne,6 breaking off at the moment of the Spanish campaign when the Chanson de Roland itself takes over.7 As a plethora of details suggests, the French original (henceforth: fKMSI) of KMSI hails from French-speaking Belgium,8 but nothing in detail is so far known about its milieu of origin nor its more exact date within the first 60 years of the 13th century.9 4 Gysseling, 1960, s. v.; Matton, 1871, s. v.: castrum Petrae Pontis a. 938. 5 Editio citanda for the branches covered in it: Loth, 1980. I have not seen the facsimile edition of ms. a by Halvorsen, 1989. Translations include: branches I, III, VII and IX into French by Annette Patron-Godefroit in Loth, 1980; branch I into French by Aebischer, 1972, pp. 93–139; the whole KMS into English by Constance B. Hieatt, 1975–80 (the translations so far mentioned have called forth some criticism of details); the whole KMS into French: Lacroix, 2000. 6 Aebischer (1972, p. 13 s.) called it a Vie romancée de Charlemagne, more precisely a Vie et chronique guerrière, mondaine et scandaleuse de Charlemagne et de sa cour. 7 We are not concerned here with the fact that certain later parts of KMS, such as the end of the Roland and the Moniage Guillaume, seem to come again from that biography; see Skårup, 1990, passim. 8 See e.g. Aebischer, 1972, pp. 6 ss., 18, 33, 39. 9 See e.g. Skårup, 1990, passim, in whose opinion this Vie de Charlemagne [= fKMSI] n’a guère pu être antérieure au second tiers du XIIIe siècle. For practical purposes, a terminus ante quem 14 Pierrepont at a crossroads of literatures 357 The events of the first 25 chapters of KMSI take place in a rather narrow strip of land between Bitburg in the Eifel and Tongres to the north of Liège.10 On the order of an angel, Charlemagne had to try his hand at burglary in the company of the master-thief Basin and thereby overheard a conversation between Count Rainfroi of Tongres and his wife about a conspiracy against Charle- magne’s life. Rainfroi named no less than a dozen conspirators: they fall into four groups having their fiefs respectively at Tongres (Belgian Limburg), Waes- Aardenburg (westernmost Flemish-Dutch borderland), Orléanais-Breteuil-Pierre- pont-Hirson (central and northern France) and finally Trier-Salm (or Saarburg or Saarbrücken) plus an ambiguous Homb(o)urg (all on the border of or inside the German language area).11 The possessions of the traitors thus surround what implicitly stands out as the land of the faithful, to wit, Wallonia plus the county of Flanders. In full knowledge of the conspirators’ plans, Charlemagne then convoked his vassals from throughout the empire to a diet at Aix-la-Chapelle. About 90 vassals are named, the geographical density of the list being least in Italy and southern France, greatest in the fiefs immediately west of the Rhine and also in the Meuse and Ardenne regions, where even smaller fiefs like Rethel, Chiny, Durbuy, La Roche and Esch-sur-Sûre are duly registered.12 Two vassals are portrayed with marked deference: the archbishop of Cologne (in the Middle Ages the spiritual overlord of the bishop of Liège) and the count of Flanders13 (at the time of the compilation of fKMSI mostly on excellent terms with Liège against their common adversary Brabant). The author also seizes the opportunity to describe Aix- is 1263, the year of the death of King Hakon IV Hakonarson of Norway who was almost certainly the promoter of the whole untertaking. 10 Twenty-six chapters in Unger’s old edition of 1860. For a full discussion of the geographical aspects see Beckmann, 1973, passim. 11 For the Waes, Old French Waise, the correct Veisa appears in Chs. 4 and 25. Aardenburg is the modern name of medieval Rodenburg. In Hirson, medieval Iriçon and similar spellings, the Norse translator mistook ç for k, writing Irikun.InSalim-, Salen(am)borg (and the clearly mis- taken hapax Salernisborg) the last syllable may, but need not be a clarifying addition of the Norse translator; a dissimilation r > l is attested for Saarburg and/or Saarbrücken (and a vacil- lation between ‘bridge’ and ‘castle’ for Saarbrücken) in (mostly French) sources from the 11th to the 13th century. Hoenborg or similar is one of the Homb(o)urgs near Verviers, Metz, Forbach and Saarbrücken, respectively. Generally speaking, geographical names in KMSI are in a bad state, but by comparing the different Norse manuscripts and using the tools of historical geog- raphy, we can identify most of them – a task whose scope, however, would clearly exceed the space of the present article. 12 Kretest is a mistake for Retest, the old name of Rethel; Chims/Chimz in b (misread as Thuns in B) is Chiny, Dyrbo Durbuy, Eysu Esch, Fjalli translates La Roche. 13 He still resides at Arras (which, in reality, Flanders lost to Philip Augustus in 1184).

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