In the twelfth century, coinciding with the period of the first four major crusades, there was a great flowering of vernacular literature in France and the Anglo-Norman realm. The genres of Old French imaginative literature most associated with a crusading theme are the chansons de geste (epic poems) and those lyric poems known as the chansons de croisade (crusade songs), but crusading themes and the conflict of Christian versus non-Christian are also found in other texts. Old French texts characterize the crusaders’ enemies as Saracens who are polytheistic pagans. Even chronicles, which generally show a more accurate knowledge of Islam, use the term “Saracen” to denote the opposing forces; the term can only be defined as “non-Christian.”
The chansons de geste were long narrative poems written in laisses (strophes of irregular length) united by a common assonance or rhyme and often linked by devices of repetition. They are tales of heroic deeds, sometimes loosely based on historical fact, situated in the age of Emperor Charlemagne (771-814) or his immediate predecessors and successors. The literary techniques of these texts suggest an oral prehistory with the extant written texts destined for oral presentation. The best-known and earliest chanson de geste is the masterpiece of the genre, the Chanson de Roland, written down in its present form around 1100.
The chansons de geste are often grouped into cycles (Fr. gestes). These were first named by an epic poet, Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube, in Girart de Vienne (c. 1180): the Geste du roi, the cycle of poems centered around Charlemagne; the Geste de Garin de Monglane, more generally known as the Guillaume d’Orange cycle; and the Geste de Doon de Mayence, the ancestor of the traitor family. For Bertrand the key connection between the texts of one cycle seems to be family. To this classification can be added the texts of the Cycle de la croisade (Crusade Cycle) and the Cycle des barons révoltés, which was linked to the Mayence cycle; these two groupings are primarily thematic. Texts of the same cycle may be found grouped in compilation manuscripts, or, in the case of the Guillaume d’Orange cycle, rewritten to join texts together in great cyclical manuscripts that create a kind of family history.
The Crusade Cycle is composed of fictionalized accounts, primarily of the First Crusade (1096-1099). Its nucleus is formed by the Chanson d’Antioche, the Chanson de Jérusalem, and Les Chétifs,which survive only in cyclical form in a redaction that dates from the late twelfth century. The originally separate folktale of the Swan Children is attached to the semihistorical branches by making the character of the Swan Knight the ancestor of Godfrey of Bouillon, one of the leaders of the First Crusade and subsequently ruler of Jerusalem. A related but more loosely connected group of poems (sometimes known as the “Second Crusade Cycle”) extends the story of the Bouillon-Boulogne family beyond historical fact in the descendants of Godfrey and ends in the story of Saladin, which survives only in prose manuscripts of the fifteenth century.
The crusading background is also important in poems centered upon Charlemagne or Guillaume d’Orange, in which the heroes serve both God and their king in wars against the infidel; the ideal is that of the miles Christi (knight of Christ). The infidels, “Saracens,” or “pagans” are apparently followers of Muhammad, but the religion they follow is distorted; it is both a reflection of the pagans of the Old Testament and a distorted mirror image of the Christian religion, with a trinity of gods and worshipping of idols. The gods are not always the same, though Muhammad, elevated from his position as prophet, is a constant. Others found alongside him make up a trinity; Apollo, Jupiter, and Ter- vagent are the most popular. There are common motifs in the chansons de geste: Christian warriors destroy the statues of the idols in the mahommerie (a kind of pagan temple rather than a mosque), for example, in the Chanson de Roland, Fierabras (c. 1200), and Aspremont (c. 1190), and the Saracen leader rails against his gods, illustrating the fact that the Saracens are not only infidels, but are not even faithful to their own gods, in Fierabras, and the Siège de Barbas- tre (late twelfth century). The action commonly takes place in northern Spain or Italy, but in Acquin (late twelfth century) Charlemagne drives the Norsemen out of Brittany. In Jehan Bodel’s Chanson des Saisnes (written before 1202), the enemy is the Saxons, and in Garin Le Loherain (late twelfth century) they are Vandals, but generally they are Moors. The act of fighting the infidel is often explicitly referred to as a penance. Death in such a fight is martyrdom, as in the Chanson de Roland and Aspremont. The Chanson des Saisnes is an unusual text in several ways. It is one of the few chansons de geste for which we have a named author, one who is known to have written a number of other texts, although it may not be entirely his work. Bodel exploits the genre skillfully, using conventional representations of the Saracen applied to the Saxons.
Single combats between a Christian champion and a Saracen, in texts such as Fierabras, Otinel (thirteenth century), and the Couronnement Louis (twelfth century), are presented as contests between the Christian God and false gods, with the Christian champion eventually winning, with or without direct intervention from God. The Saracen will normally either convert or be killed, although there is from the time of the earliest texts some admiration for the bravery of Saracens. They are worthy enemies who would be noble if only they were Christian, an attitude also common in Latin and vernacular chronicles. In some texts (for example, Fierabras, Anseïs de Carthage, Bueves de Conmarchis, and Huon de Bordeaux), this potential for the Saracen to be noble is realized through conversion, while in others (such as Otinel) the conversion of the Saracen is not prepared for by nobility. Forced conversions, where the alternative is death, do exist, usually when a large group is converted at once (Chanson de Roland); Saracens may, however, choose death (Aye d’Avignon).
There is a tendency to demonize the enemy. Alongside the noble Saracen there are fierce Saracen emirs who refuse conversion and do not deserve to live (Balan in Fierabras), gigantic Goliath types (Corsolt in the Couronnement Louis), and absolute monsters, not recognizable as humans (Ago- lafre in Fierabras).
In the central texts of the Guillaume d’Orange cycle (the Couronnement Louis, the Prise d’Orange, and the Charroi de Nîmes) the struggle against the Saracens is linked inextricably to the gaining of land and the acquisition of a bride; Guillaume’s bride is a converted Saracen queen who betrays her people. These texts are concerned with political and religious ideals. The man who defeats the Saracens, taking over land held by the infidel, will also be faithful to his king. The king may not deserve this loyalty, but Guillaume is an exemplary vassal. Denied his rights by the king, Guillaume will carve out a fief for himself, taking land held by the Saracens. He thus upholds the authority of the king and extends the kingdom of God.
A significant figure is the converted Saracen princess, often improbably conforming to Western ideals of beauty. Guillaume’s wife, who takes the name Guibourc on conversion, abandoning her pagan name of Orable, and her brother Rainouart, who also converts, figure in central texts of the Guillaume cycle, and the theme is important also in texts of the Cycle du roi. This is often ascribed to the influence of courtly romance, but the nature of that influence is not straightforward. Strongminded young women, such as Floripas or Guibourc/Orable, who act independently and against the interests of their own families, are very different from the heroines of romance. They may suffer for love, but they are prepared to take action, sometimes violently, to achieve their desired end; since this is generally to help the Christian knight with whom they are in love, this is condoned rather than condemned by the poet.
Conversion and marriage go together; the Christian knight may not even kiss the princess until she is baptized. Extramarital sex is the stuff of romance rather than epic, but there are two notable exceptions: in the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne a Constantinople (a text with a strong religious theme, but not a crusading one), Oliver sleeps with the daughter of the emperor of Constantinople; in Anseïs de Carthage, Anseïs, left in charge of the conquered Spain by Charlemagne, seduces the daughter of one of the emirs, with disastrous consequences, including the reneging of the emir; the romantic in the end is subjugated to the ideological. In some texts, notably the thirteenth-century Aiol, the adventures and love interest seem more important than the crusading ethos, but conversion remains important. Although a Saracen prince is more likely to be converted by single combat than for love, Ganor in Aye d’Avignon is accepted by Aye as a husband on condition that he accepts Christianity.
Tensions between more “domestic” concerns and interreligious conflict, and the awareness of the need to subject personal and feudal matters to the higher call of religion, can be seen in the person of the traitor/renegade/rebel. The traitor damages not just the nation, but also the cause, as is made evident in the Chanson de Roland, where the treachery of Ganelon leads to the loss of Charlemagne’s best warriors. In Aspremont, the rebellion of Girart de Fraite also threatens Christian success.
Scenes from the Chanson de Roland in the cathedral of St. Peter, Angoulême, France, twelfth century. (Giraudon/Art Resource)
The same tension is seen in rebellion against the emperor; the rebel with just cause is treated with respect in the poems of the Cycle des barons révoltés—for example, Renaud and his brothers inRenaud de Montauban, Girart in Girart de Vienne and Girart de Roussillon, and Ogier in La Chevalerie Ogier. All these poems date from the early thirteenth century and may be linked to the situation in France at the time, with the king strengthening the central power of the monarchy. Ultimately the rebel subjects himself to the emperor. In Ogier, the poet indicates quite clearly that energies ought to be turned against pagans rather than dissipated in civil war, and Ogier finally subjects himself to Charlemagne for the sake of Christianity. Charlemagne and Ogier together defeat the pagans. Similarly, in Girart de Roussillon, Christian unity, with Charlemagne and Girart fighting together against the Saracens following a reconciliation between them, is clearly preferable to the rift.
The renegade is a rare figure in the chanson de geste. Only a fragment remains of the twelfth-century text of Gormont et Isembart in which a French knight, Isembart, unjustly treated by the king like the heroes of the rebel cycle, goes beyond the acceptable line and joins forces with the pagan king, Gormont. Isembart dies in battle but is first reconciled to God. In the Chanson de Guillaume, by contrast, Gui- bourc’s nephew Girart, a converted pagan like Guibourc herself, apostasizes just before his death. His role seems to be largely that of a foil to Guillaume’s own nephews, who are faithful even unto death.
Some chansons de geste, surprisingly, do show an ambivalent attitude to the violent killing that is clearly an integral part of any warfare, whether religious or merely political. The Guillaume cycle includes two poems in which the hero retires to a monastery to end his days in repentance: both the Moniage Guillaume and the Moniage Rainouart are a mixture of the heroic and the comic, as the hero cannot be contained within the restrictions of the monastic life. In the Moniage Rainouart, the ex-pagan Rainouart specifically wants to repent from his deeds of violence, and yet he continues to act violently. The poem reaches its climax with Rainouart fighting an army of Saracens led by his own son. Rainouart, naturally, wins; his son and the Saracens convert, and Rainouart retires again to his monastery. In Gadifer, a sequel, Rainouart is again forced to fight the Saracens. While these poems show that a hero’s rightful place is in heroic, and therefore violent, combat, they also show an awareness of the problem of Christians committing acts of violence.
Many of the chansons de geste survived long after the peak period of the crusades, being incorporated into longer pseudo-historical texts, such as the fourteenth-century Chronique rimée of Philippe Mouskés or the Chroniques et conquestes de Charlemagne of David Aubert (fifteenth century), or reworked as prose texts. Most of the prose adaptations date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but the Crusade Cycle poems, Hélias, Enfances Godefroi, Chanson d’Antioche, Les Chétifs, and the Chanson de Jérusalem, were turned into an abridged prose version as early as the thirteenth century. Some of the prose texts were then translated and adapted into English and other languages.
The action-packed tales of knights and beautiful Saracen princesses had an appeal that outlasted their use as crusading propaganda, if that is what they were. Undoubtedly the religious element remained an important factor in their popularity; those texts most often adapted, translated, and turned into prose (such as Fierabras, Otinel, and the story of Guillaume d’Orange) often had at their heart themes of conversion or Christian triumph over Saracens. Their entertainment value was no doubt also enhanced by the combination of fantasy and humor found quite frequently in the chanson de geste.
The Old French lyric owes much to its Occitan neighbor, and the chanson de croisade is no exception. Some of the earliest, and arguably finest, crusade songs are found among the works of the Occitan poet Marcabru. Because of the difficulty in defining this subgenre of the lyric, with poems centered on the crusades and others where the reference is a more oblique one, scholars have compiled widely different lists of texts containing anything from six to around thirty-five poems. Various typologies have been attempted, the most enduring being Joseph Bédier’s division of the poems into two groups: (1) exhortations to take up the cross, and (2) love poems. The second group can be further subdivided according to voice, that is, whether it is the crusader speaking, or the lady lamenting the loss of her beloved who is departing on crusade; a few poems alternate the voices of the man and the woman. There are also a few later poems that show an element of criticism about the conduct of the crusades, for example, by Philippe de Nanteuil and Rutebeuf.
Typically the chansons de croisade deal with how an individual is affected by the crusades. Many are anonymous, but some are by significant poets. The Châtelain Gui de Couci, whose death (1203) is mentioned by Geoffrey of Villehardouin in his chronicle of the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204), wrote several songs, and his own life became the stuff of legend. In the late thirteenth-century romance Le Châtelain de Coucy, given the name of Guy’s successor, Renaut, he has his heart brought back from the Holy Land for his mistress, only for it to be intercepted by her husband and served to her as a meal.
Conon de Béthune (d. c. 1220) took part in both the Third Crusade (1189-1192) and the Fourth Crusade and was a significant figure as one of the negotiators in the latter; his role is also recorded by Villehardouin. Conon wrote two chansons de croisades; his Ahi! amours, com dure departie is one of the best-known examples of the genre and exemplifies the difficulties of any typology, as it combines a propagandist appeal with a love song. In Bien me deüsse targier, part leave- taking of his beloved, part polemic against those who take the cross for the wrong reason, Conon uses a fellow-poet, Huon d’Oisi, as a scapegoat, a target for those who disagree with him. Maugré tous sainz et maugré Dieu ausi, attributed to Huon d’Oisi, is a satiric response to Conon’s work.
Thibaud IV, count of Champagne and king of Navarre, took part in a crusade to the Holy Land (1239-1240), arriving just after the battle of Gaza in 1239. He wrote several poems about the crusades. In Seignor, sachiés qi or ne s’en ira, he gives an impassioned polemic against those who do not take up the cross. In Au tens plain de felonie, he links the two main themes of the crusading poem, the crusades and love, but in a more clumsy juxtaposition. The expedition of 1239 would also be the inspiration for poetry by Philippe de Nanteuil, whose only surviving poem, En chantant veil mon duel faire, criticizes the advice of the Hospitallers and the Templars that led to captive crusaders being abandoned.
With this later phase of the crusades comes the expression of a less straightforward approach to them. Philippe de Nanteuil laments the losses and the actions of the Christians; the thirteenth-century poet Rutebeuf also laments the loss of faith in his Complainte de Constantinople (1262) and Complainte d'Outremer (1265). Rutebeuf wrote a number of poems centered on the crusades, mostlycomplaintes (lyric poems, usually of love, in which the poet bemoans the cause of his melancholy); these make him arguably the most significant lyric poet of the crusades in France, although he himself seems to have remained in Paris. He calls on the faithful to succor Acre, the main surviving Christian stronghold in the Holy Land, and bemoans the lack of commitment to the crusades by the clergy, an aspect of his anticlericalism, which coexists with his zeal and piety.
More controversial is Rutebeufs Débat du croisé et du décroisé (1268/1269) in which two knights in turn put the case for and against the crusades. While the crusader wins, persuading thedécroisé (noncrusader) to take up the cross, the décroisé is given a strong voice. The reasons given by the décroisé no doubt express a view shared by many, and they are not entirely condemned by the poet. The crusader does not really have an answer to the questions raised by his opponent regarding his responsibilities to his family. The décroisé, having given his point of view, capitulates too suddenly for his change of heart to be convincing. The whole poem is based on exploitation of literary convention. The commonplace of the lover lost in abstraction is replaced by the poet lost in contemplation of the suffering of the inhabitants of Acre. The love debate is replaced by a debate of ideals.
The chanson de croisade shares characteristics with other lyric genres, such as the chanson de congé (departure poem), adapting literary conventions to fit the circumstances of crusading.
The literary theme of crusading is not limited to specific genres. The Ordene de Chevalerie (c. 1220) offers a different treatment of the noble Saracen. Here Hugh of Fauquember- gues, lord of Tiberias (Hue de Tabarie in the text), a prisoner of the Saracens, consents reluctantly to knight Saladin, whose reputation as a noble Saracen seems to have been established from the time of the Third Crusade. This combination of infidel Saracen and Christian knighthood was seen to be an anomaly. Although Hugh consents to knight Saladin, this does not prevent him from classing him as “vile as regards the religion of goodness, baptism and faith” [Ordene de Chevalerie, ed. and trans. Keith Busby (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1983), 171].
Muhammad himself figures in some of the encyclopedic works of the thirteenth century, and legend and myth rose around him. In the chanson de geste we find a distorted awareness of the Islamic ban on alcohol and pork in the account given of Muhammad’s death: in a state of drunkenness, Muhammad falls over and is eaten by a herd of pigs. Muhammad’s fictionalized biography, written in Latin, was adapted into French verse by Alexandre du Point in 1258. This legendary and defamatory account owes more to literary tradition and myth than reality, though it clearly springs from the spirit of the crusades; the same is true of other texts.
In the unique chantefable (work that is part verse, part prose) Aucassin et Nicolette, the commonplaces of the literary treatment of the Saracens are both exploited and subverted. The beautiful Saracen slave girl turns out to be the daughter of the king of Carthage, and Aucassin is caught up in a series of mock-heroic adventures. “Saracen” in this case is more of a literary construct to be played with than a real threat to Christendom. Similarly, the popular romance Floire et Blanchefleur (1150/1160) takes as its starting point the attack by a Saracen king on a group of pilgrims traveling to the shrine of Santiago de Compostella in Spain, but its interest is in the romance between the young Muslim Floire and the Christian slave girl Blanchefleur. In this case, Floire’s conversion comes after their marriage but precedes his coronation.
Jean Bodel, who develops the Christian/Saracen theme to good effect in his Chanson des Saisnes, makes parodic use of the same theme in the drama Jeu de Saint Nicholas, where a Saracen army defeats the crusaders. The text exploits commonplaces of the chanson de geste and specifically draws upon the tale of Fierabras. Despite the comic elements, the crusading theme is not subverted but rather upheld by the eventual conversion of the Saracen emir when, in response to the prayers of the only Christian survivor, St. Nicholas forces three thieves to return what they had stolen from the emir.
Finally, chronicles of the crusades, while not strictly “imaginative” literature, have an important place in Old French literary tradition. The earliest chronicles were dynastic and domestic, but at the end of the twelfth century Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, a verse chronicle of the Third Crusade, demonstrates the potential literariness of the genre. The chronicles of the Fourth Crusade by Geoffrey of Villehardouin and Robert of Clari are among the earliest extant prose narratives in French.
Conversion in the French literature of the crusades is presented more in terms of baptism than conviction. Where clear conviction precedes baptism, whether as a result of defeat in combat or the work of the Holy Spirit, the Saracen is not presented as Christian until after baptism.
Many of the texts in Old French that deal with crusading material offer difficulties of interpretation unless they are read contextually. Some of the chansons de croisade require extratextual knowledge to make sense, and most are enhanced by some appreciation of the historical context. The Holy Land as the feudal patrimony of God is implicit in much of this literature. Intertextual reference and an understanding of literary tradition are equally important. Finally, it should be noted that although the texts reflect contemporary attitudes of crusaders or noncrusaders, they were primarily literary constructs and should be read as such.