In Search of the Lost Epics of the Lower Rhône Valley*

ALICE M. COLBY-HALL In Search of the Lost Epics of the Lower Rhône Valley* ID THE MEDIEVAL INHABITANTS OF ORANGE take the slightest interest in the epic hero that we call Guillaume d'Orange? In theory, I should Dnot be asking this question; for it should be self-evident that the local population, and especially the rulers of Orange, would have felt strong admiration for the warrior who was said to have delivered the city from the hands of the Saracens and become its first governor. My question should be completely ridiculous—and I certainly wish it were. But what concrete evidence do we have that local writers produced any literature praising Guillaume and recounting his exploits or that natives of Orange appreciated such literature, whether it was of local origin or not? The twelfth-century Latin biography of Guillaume describes the tak- ing of Orange, and the description appears to be derived from a chanson de geste, but the biography itself was composed at Guillaume's own mon- astery of Gellone, now called Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert. In other words, it came from the region around Montpellier and may, or may not, have close ties with the local traditions of Orange. Inasmuch as all the surviving Wil- liam cycle epics that deal with Orange are written in French rather than Occitan, scholars have been hard put to demonstrate the southern origin of this material and, by and large, have considered that these epics origi- nated in the North and were aimed at a northern audience. Does the sheer lack of objective evidence force us to accept this widely held view? I think not; for such evidence is, in fact, available and has long been accessible to medievalists. For one reason or another, it has simply gone unnoticed. On October 18, 1112, Pope Paschal II sent a letter to Béranger, the bishop of Orange, confirming the total separation of the diocese of Orange from that of Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux. The begin- ning of the document is lost; and the remaining portion, which has sur- vived in a twelfth-century copy now preserved at the Bibliothèque du Musée Calvet in Avignon (MS 1830, fol. 5r°), begins with a tantalizing adverbial clause that deserves to be quoted in full: "[ . Aura]sice siqui- dem civitatis populus aliquando ita exaltatus est, ut illius civitatis nomen *This paper was presented at the Symposium on the Romance Epic sponsored by the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, at the seventeenth International Congress on Medieval Studies held in Kalamazoo, May 6-9, 1982. The language of the paper has undergone minor revisions. 339 340 Olifant / Vol. 8, No. 4 / Summer 1981 vulgaribus passim carminibus celebretur; aliquando ita depressus, ut ejus ecclesia civitatis alterius ecclesie vel subdita sit vel unita."1 This explana- tory clause can be translated as follows: " . since indeed the people of the city of Orange have been so exalted that the name of that city is celebrated everywhere in vernacular songs and, at the same time, have been so abased that its church has either been made subject to, or joined to, the church of another city." As Paschal II goes on to demonstrate the legality of the pro- cedures already used to appoint a bishop of Orange, it becomes clear to the reader that the Pope finds it disgraceful and humiliating for a city as famous as this one to be deprived of ecclesiastical independence. And what is the source of that fame? The city is praised carminibus vulgaribus 'in vernacular songs'; and it receives this praise passim, that is to say, 'far and wide'. This letter was first published in 1715, in Volume I of the Gallia Christiana (Instr., p. 132), with errors and omissions that do not affect the passage under discussion, and was reprinted in 1870 in the second edition of this volume. In 1896, the document was carefully reedited by Léopold Duhamel and published in the Mémoires de l'Académie de Vaucluse (vol. 15, pp. 395-96); and, in 1916, a third edition, which differs only slightly from that of Duhamel, was incorporated into the Gallia Christiana novissima. Despite the existence of these three editions, no scholar, to the best of my knowledge, paid any attention to the literary implications of Pope Paschal's letter until 1956, when the historian and archivist Jacques de Font-Réaulx identified the Pope's carmina vulgaria as epic poems con- cerning Guillaume d'Orange. This interpretation is hidden away in the introduction to Font-Réaulx's edition of the will of Tiburge d'Orange, which appeared in a relatively inaccessible Festschrift honoring Raoul Busquet.2 Font-Réaulx translates the expression carminibus vulgaribus with the 1Gallia Christiana novissima, ed. J.-H. Albanés and Ulysse Chevalier, Vol. VI: Orange (Valence: Imprimerie Valentinoise, 1916), No. 72, col. 40; hereafter cited as GCNN. Since the last two syllables of the first word of this text are preserved in the manuscript and the scribe consistently calls the city Aurasica rather than Arausica, I have corrected the reading [ . Arausi]ce given in the GCNN edition. It is clear from the remainder of the letter that Orange is the city referred to in this passage. 2Jacques de Font-Réaulx, "Le Testament de Tiburge d'Orange et la cristallisation de la Principauté," in Mélanges Busquet: Questions d'histoire de Provence (XIe -XIXe siècles) (Provence historique, fasc. hors série, déc. 1956), pp. 41-58. The interpretation under discussion occurs on pp. 41-42. Colby-Hall / Lost Epics of the Lower Rhône 341 phrase "par des chants vulgaires" and equates these chants with chansons de geste. In this context, the adjective vulgaris does not mean 'popular', but rather 'vernacular', as in the title of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia. We are dealing with chants en langue vulgaire. But are these chansons de geste? In all probability, yes; but shorter poems may also be involved. What is their narrative content? Why have they brought fame to Orange? Font-Réaulx is certainly right in assuming that only one body of epic material could have produced this effect, namely, the tales linking Guil- laume, count of Toulouse, with the history of Orange. However, because he is thinking exclusively of the surviving Old French poems, he fails to perceive the linguistic issue raised by the word vulgaribus. Since the songs were being sung passim, the Pope was not necessarily referring to a single non-Latin language. In fact, it is far more likely that he had at least two vernaculars in mind, that he was alluding to languages such as French, Italian, Occitan, Franco-Italian, and Franco-Provençal—to name only the most obvious possibilities. Whatever languages were involved, it seems abundantly clear that the Pope's reasoning would make little sense if none of the poems alluded to were composed for the entertainment of the resi- dents of Orange and in a language they could readily comprehend. In all probability, Paschal II's argument is borrowed from the reasoning of the local leaders who sought his support. To justify this contention, let me tell you a bit more about the bishopric controversy. In a letter written some time between 1061 and 1070 (GCNN, No. 51), Pope Alexander II threatened the temporal ruler of Orange, Bertrand-Raimbaud, with excommunication, should the latter persist in his efforts to remove the church of Orange from the diocese of Saint-Paul-Trois-Chateaux. Around 1086, the clergy of Orange elected a bishop named Guillaume; and this election had the approval of Pope Victor III (GCNN, col. 30). In 1095, Pope Urban II decreed that the two bishoprics should be reunited upon the death of Guillaume (GCNN, No. 58). The latter died in 1098 (GCNN, No. 59); and in 1100, Pope Paschal II reprimanded the people and the clergy of Orange for their obstinate refusal to obey the bishop of Saint- Paul-Trois-Châteaux (GCNN, No. 63). The local clergy eventually per- suaded the Pope that the conditions which had originally determined the union of the two bishoprics no longer obtained. Consequently, they were given the right to choose their own leader; and, in 1107, Béranger was elected bishop of Orange with the full consent of the clergy, the assembled populace, and the reigning prince of Orange, Giraud Adhémar (GCNN, No. 66). 342 Olifant / Vol. 8, No. 4 / Summer 1981 If we accept the line of descent proposed by Font-Réaulx ("Test.," pp. 48-49), Giraud Adhémar was the first husband of the Tiburge d'Orange who made her will about 1150. The modern form of this princess's name conceals the fact that during her own lifetime she would have been called Tiborc, that her real name could even be regarded as a nickname for Gui- borc, the Occitan equivalent of Witburgh. Four children are mentioned in the will of Tiborc: Guillaume, Tiburge, Tiburgette, and Raimbaut. Tiborc's second husband was Guillaume d'Omelas, but Font-Réaulx assigns the children called Guillaume and Tiborc to her first marriage ("Test.," pp. 50-51). If these two children were not simply named after their parents, what motivated the choice of names? And, furthermore, why did they each call two of their own children Guillaume and Tiborc?1 One strongly suspects that an epic tradition lies behind the popularity of these names in the ruling family and that Giraud Adhémar and his wife Tiborc were well aware of their city's glorious past. Is it surprising then that Paschal II alludes to that past when confirming the ecclesiastical independence of Orange after the legality of Béranger's election was challenged in 1112 by the bishop of Saint-Paul- Trois-Châteaux (GCNN, Nos.

Load more