William of Orange

 As I have discussed previously, medieval people loved epic tales.  Although there had been epics written in classical antiquity (the Greek Iliad and Odyssey, the Latin Aeneid), epic was re-invented in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.  Most famous of the medieval epics is doubtless the Song of Roland, but there were plenty of others, including the cycle of epics about William of Orange.

William was a real person, although there is only a slight overlap between the historical William, who died at the beginning of the ninth century, and the William of the epics.  The historical William, a rough contemporary of Charlemagne, was a powerful lord of southern France, of a family that for a while acted as rivals to the Carolingian dynasty.  His grandson ended up as a hostage at the royal court, and let's just say that story doesn't end well.  The real William founded the monastery of Gellone, and when he grew old he retired there.

During his time, southern France had a number of Saracen settlements; the Mediterranean was mostly controlled by Muslims, not by Christians.  This real feature of the eighth-ninth centuries was one of the few realistic elements that made it into the epics.

The epics starring William were supposedly set in the time of Charlemagne, although everything about the castles, the armors, and the culture of the people in the stories was a slightly larger-than-life version of aristocratic life in the twelfth century.  In the epics, William fights the Saracens, converts a Muslim princess to Christianity and marries her, and at the end of his life becomes a monk at Gellone.

The stories were told both as entertainment and as a commentary on the author's own twelfth century.  The same thing is true today, when authors bring into historical fiction points that they want to make about their society:  one will notice for example that a lot of women have written a lot of historical novels about queens of England.

In the case of William of Orange, much of the entertainment value was provided by big battle scenes.  The author drove a path of destruction through armies on both sides.  This person is beheaded, that person has his brains knocked out, the other person has a spear driven all the way through his body.  One assumes the audience loved it.

The stories also routinely portray priests and bishops as weak hypocrites.  Knights and great secular lords were more than a match for these fellows, the author seems to be saying.

But there was also a strong critique of knighthood in these epics.  William was portrayed as huge, ferocious, a terrific fighter, and yet also ridiculous.  When he becomes a monk, he is very bad at it, to the extent that the other monks want to drive him out.  As he faces Saracens, he keeps saying, "We're all going to die!"  It usually takes a woman to save the day, and for a twelfth-century male audience, having to be saved by a woman added to the humiliation.  Good times.

If you'd like to see these epics, they are translated as Guillaume d'Orange by Joan M. Ferrante.

© C. Dale Brittain 2021

For more on medieval knights and epics, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.  Also available in paperback.

Epics and romance

As I have discussed elsewhere in the context of chivalry, how medieval knights and nobles would have liked to imagine themselves was presented in their own time in epics and romances.

These forms of literature began in the late eleventh or twelfth century (epics slightly earlier),  and were equivalent in some ways to what we now think of as fantasy:  larger than life characters having great adventures, with a serious admixture of the marvelous.  Then, this was literature, not just a genre.

The distinction between the two forms of literature (epic and romance) is really a modern one, because the categories were not entirely separate.  As a group, epics focused much more on battles and glorious deeds.  Wars, fights to the death, loyalty, and bravery in the face of overwhelming odds featured heavily.  The "Song of Roland" is probably the best known epic today, but there were plenty of others.

The "William of Orange" epics were very popular, based, as was "Roland," on some real figures of the ninth century who had been turned into legend--and who were depicted with twelfth-century armor and weapons and living in twelfth-century castles.  Although epics tended to be male-centered, in most of the "William of Orange"stories women played a major role, often being the only ones in sight with their heads on straight.

Romances, on the other hand, always featured women.  Although we now think of a romance as a love story, where the couple ends up happily ever after, a medieval romance was a story that did not focus almost exclusively on fighting.  (The modern French word roman, meaning novel, comes from "romance.")  The best known of these are the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes.  He essentially invented what we think of as King Arthur, including the love triangle with Lancelot, the quest of the Holy Grail, and the like.

As well as glorifying knights and nobles, epics and romances also critiqued them.  In "Roland," the hero (Roland) is undoubtedly brave and true, but his excessive pride loses the king half his army.  In "William of Orange," William would have been destroyed multiple times if not for women coming in to save the day.  Chrétien de Troyes condemned adultery even while introducing Lancelot's adulterous affair with Guinevere.  And in the "Romance of the Rose" the lovers enjoying themselves with fornication are clearly going to hell.

Medieval authors were subtle.  On the one hand, their stories were exciting and fun to read or hear.  On the other hand, the authors worked in all sorts of criticism of the aristocracy, if anyone was paying attention.

© C. Dale Brittain 2016 

For more on medieval life, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.

Medieval Chivalry

As soon as you put the term "code of chivalry" from your mind, everything will become much easier.

The modern word "chivalry" comes from Old French chevalerie, meaning the behavior of knights.  It first appears in the twelfth century as an ideal to which knights might aspire.  But from the beginning it was highly contested and contradictory, which is why it is impossible to speak of a single "code."

We know about twelfth-century chivalry primarily from the epics and romances that knights enjoyed.  Every author portrayed chivalry somewhat differently, suggesting that there was no agreement as to what chivalry might entail.  In addition, the authors of the epics put their heroes into situations where even the best and most chivalrous could not follow all of chivalry's conflicting demands.

In the "Song of Roland," for example, one of the first epics, the hero Roland is reckless and brave, unwilling to ask for backup when in a desperate battle, and ends up dead, having allowed half his king's army to be destroyed.

"Chivalry" originally was used to mean battlefield virtues, courage and strength, but it quickly became merged with "courtesy" (courtoisie in Old French), meaning knowing how to behave well at court, being polite, tidy, and restrained.  By the time Christian virtue and deference to ladies were added in, the mix was hopeless.

After all, how can someone, at the same time, be a ferocious fighter, a meek Christian who turns the other cheek, someone who is lively and entertaining while delicately stealing a kiss (or something more), and a refined, learned man who is always careful about his clothes and appearance?

By the fourteenth century, actual "manuals" of chivalry were being written which just complicated the situation even more with enormous long lists of things to do and not do.  But knights clung to the ideal of chivalry, because by this time, the fourteenth century, their centrality in warfare was being superseded by cannons and footmen with pikes.

For more on knights, click here and here.

© C. Dale Brittain 2014

For more on medieval chivalry and other aspects of medieval history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.