Getting drunk and stupid with the Paladins of France
Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, Adam's Notes for December 14, 2023
Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne (The Pilgrimage of Charlemagne) is a poem of 870 lines which was written sometime after 1140 CE, when the abbey at Saint Denis, where the poem opens and closes, gained prominence as the site of a large annual fair. The poem tells the story of a journey made by Charlemagne and his Twelve Paladins to Jerusalem and Constantinople.
It’s the only outright comedy among the chansons de gestes and a good introduction to the characters who make up the Paladins, also known as the Twelve Peers. English translations of the poem can be found in The Song of Roland and Other Poems of Charlemagne1 by Simon Gaunt and Karen Pratt, as well as in Heroes of the French Epic by Michael Newth.
The story begins with Emperor Charles at the abbey church of Saint-Denis, on the outskirts of Paris, decked out in his royal crown and other fine, kingly garments.
Surrounded by his dukes, vassals, barons and knights, he takes his queen by the hand and asks her if she has ever seen any man so well-suited to wearing a sword and a crown. She chides him, answering that she knows of a man who wears a crown better than Charles. Charles is embarrassed and asks who this other guy is, wants to size him up. The Queen backtracks and says this guy is richer, but not a better knight. But now Charles is furious and demands to know who could wear a crown better than he. The Queen relents and names him: it’s King Hugo the Strong, Emperor of Greece and Constantinople, who is more handsome than Charlemagne but a lesser knight. Charles decides to travel to Constantinople to compare himself with Hugo, making the awkward vow that he will behead the Queen if she has lied about Hugo.
Charles gathers a thousand knights who will ride war horses and take a good deal of gold and treasure with them, but armed with pilgrims’ staffs instead of proper chivalric weapons. It’s a play on the traditional arming scene in the epic. Among these knights are the Paladins, who would be familiar to medieval audiences but might be worth introducing here now. They are:
Roland: Charlemagne’s nephew and best knight. He’s headstrong and overly proud, which will get him killed in The Song of Roland, but otherwise the greatest knight of the age.
Oliver: Roland’s companion. When the chansons de geste were at the height of fame, it wasn’t uncommon for parents to name sons Roland and Oliver. Their names together were a byword for friendship. Normally he’s more even tempered than Roland, but I’ll let you judge if that’s the case here.
Ogier the Dane: akin to Diomedes in the Iliad, always the second or third best warrior, exemplary but always more of a sidekick than a main actor. During the romantic revival of the 1800s, there was an attempt to make him a national hero of Denmark, but he’s really Frankish in origin. I’ve seen one proposed etymology for his name that suggests ‘Ogier le Danois’ is a corruption of something like ‘Ogier l'Ardennais’, Ogier of the Ardennes, the Ardennes being sort of a French version of Sherlock Forest, a place filled with bandits and outlaws.
Archbishop Turpin: a priest-warrior who fights and dies alongside Roland at Roncevaux Pass, but in later tradition becomes the chronicler who composes the histories the gestes claim to be drawn from. Anytime something outrageous/fantastic/magical happens, the poets say something like, “if you don’t believe me look it up, this is how Turpin wrote it.”
Duke Naimon: an older man akin to Nestor in the Iliad. Charlemagne’s friend and counsellor. There’s a tradition in the chansons de geste, though not in the Pèlerinage, that the King is not free to act as he will, but must choose a course of action from the advice of his Paladins. Naimon reliably offers him the best advice, sometimes couched between advice that’s too drastic and advise that’s too passive. Charlemagne usually comes to rue ignoring Naimon’s advice. Other times Naimon’s counsel represents the only chivalric course of action, though it isn’t necessarily enough to win the day.
William of Orange: usually portrayed as a survivor of the generation of Roncevaux Pass, and the main hero of the Monglane cycle. Also known as William Shortnose and William of Gellone, and not to be confused with the later Protestant prince.
Also among the Twelve Paladins are Berin and Berenger, Ernaut and Aimer, Bernard of Brusban, and ‘battle-hardened Bertram’. For our purposes these are just filler names to round out the Paladins their traditional number of twelve. It’s actually surprisingly similar to the role of the Jedi Council in Star Wars—there are some guys who are always among the Twelve Peers and then are some guys who are just seat fillers.
So, Charlemagne sets out on his journey, deciding to head first to ‘Jerusalem and the land of Our Lord God.’ They pass quickly through various European cities, then ‘gallop into the land where god was crucified.’ They make a tremendous offering at the Church of the Paternoster (‘God sang mass there, and so did His Apostles’). In the church they find twelve chairs where the Apostles were said to have sat, and a thirteenth, covered chair where God2 was said to have sat. Tired from their journey, they sit in the chairs, Charles taking the thirteenth chair. A Jew walks into the church and begins to tremble on seeing Charles, who he mistakes for God. Obviously this part hasn’t aged well. The Jew runs to the Patriarch of Jerusalem and explains he has seen God and the Apostles, and demands to convert.
The Patriarch of Jerusalem goes to investigate and meets and befriends Charles. The Patriarch praises Charles for having the courage to sit in the same seat where God sat, and says that from now on Charles will be known as Charlemagne (Charles the Great), king of kings. Sensing opportunity, Charlemagne asks for some relics to take back to France. He’s given Jesus’ shroud, a nail from the Holy Cross, a bejewelled bowl and utensils God dined with, hair from Saint Peter’s head and beard, and the Virgin’s milk. The Patriarch relates how these items have healed a paralytic and commissions a reliquary for Turpin to carry the relics in.
Charlemagne and his men stay in Jerusalem for four months, building a new church that the locals refer to as the Latin church, but then it’s time to leave. On their journey, the reliquary parts water before them, restores strength to paralytics, and sight to the blind.
There’s a nice travelling passage and then they meet King Hugo, out working his fields with a golden plough. The two Kings greet each other and Hugo invites Charlemagne and his retinue to stay for a year. Hugo unyokes his plow and mounts one of the mules to ride alongside Charlemagne, but Charlemagne says not to leave the golden plough unguarded. No one has ever seen so much gold in one place, surely it will be stolen. But Hugo says that just as he’s never seen a foreigner in seven years, neither has his kingdom seen a thief.
They go to Hugo’s palace, which is described with all the hallmarks of medieval luxury. We’ve got seven thousand knights in Persian silk and ermine cloaks, golden furniture, azure walls, costly paintings, windows of crystal and quartz. The chansons de geste are great at doing the medieval equivalent of Succession’s opulence. There’s are even some marvels: a pair of lifelike statues whose horns sound when the wind blows, and then a coastal wind comes and rotates the palace:
(Charlemagne) witnessed a wind blow in from the coastal port;
It blasted against the palace, buffeting it on one side,
Setting it in motion, softly and smoothly,
And making it revolve like the shaft of a mill.
…
The storm was most violent, frightening, and harmful.
Charles watched as the palace turned and shook;
He did not know what was happening, nor had he ever seen anything like it.
Unable to remain standing, he sat down on the marble floor.
The French have all been toppled; they cannot remain upright,
And they covered their heads whether face down or up.
And each said to the other: ‘We are in dire straits:
The doors are open, yet we cannot escape from here.’
The opulence literally makes them dizzy. When the storm ends, they feast, and presumably there’s a lot of drinking. Oliver makes a remark under his breath about the beauty of King Hugo’s daughter. Then its bedtime: Charlemagne and the Paladins share a magnificent room, with beds so big you’d need four carts to move them, and a bedcover made by the fairy Maseus. The chamber is lit by a bright carbuncle ‘dating from the time of King Goliath.’ Hugo sends them wine but also places a spy in a hollow under some marble.
The French, now thoroughly drunk, are overwhelmed by the luxury around them and begin to boast as they prepare for bed. Charlemagne and each of the Paladins make boasts, as follows:
Charlemagne: boasts he’s stronger than any of Hugo’s knights, even one wearing two hauberks and two helmets, and he can plunge a blade so far into the earth that no mortal could extract it.
Roland: boasts he can blast Hugo’s ivory horn so loud that it would knock over every gate and postern. (Of course, the audience knew that Roland was fated to die at Roncevaux Pass, by blowing so loudly on the horn Oliphant that his temples explode from his forehead.)
Oliver: boasts that if he were to bed King Hugo’s blonde daughter, she would swear in the morning that he had her one hundred times in the night. If she refused to swear it, the King can take Oliver’s head.
Archbishop Turpin: boasts he can juggle apples with one foot in the saddle of two different horses, and win a race against Hugo’s three fastest horses while doing so. (The spy remarks that this is a noble boast, and not as insulting as Oliver’s.)
William of Orange: boasts he alone can move a huge golden ball that no one else in the palace has been able to budge. It gave me the comedic impression that French had been drunkenly trying to move it during the feast, and failing.
Ogier the Dane: boasts he can shatter the central pillar the palace literally revolves around.
Duke Naimon: boasts that he can don King Hugo’s chainmail hauberk, and shake himself so violently that each link will fall away like bits of straw.
Of the lesser knights, Berenger boasts he can shatter swords by jumping on them from a high tower. Bernard boasts he can divert the river and flood the fields and all the cellars of King Hugo’s town, soaking the city until Hugo has to climb the tallest tower. Ernaut of Gironde boasts he’ll sit in a cauldron of molten lead, let it set, then shake himself free. Aimer boasts that tomorrow at dinner he can wear his silly hat and walk up behind Hugo, eat his fish and drink his wine, then give him such a blow he falls to the ground. Bertram will shout so loud from on top of an ancient pine tree that every animal will flee the nearby woods. Gerin wants two pennies set on top of a tower, and with a spear he’ll knock the bottom one out without disturbing the other.
The spy dutifully reports all this boasting to King Hugo, who is incensed. Like Charles with the queen, Hugo makes the rather strange vow that he will cut off their heads if they do not fulfill their boasts. Hugo’s men surround Charlemagne and the Paladins the next morning as they leave church and Hugo demands an explanation. Charlemagne says that’s just the way Frenchmen are, they like to boast when they’re in bed, whether wisely or foolishly. Hugo demands they follow through on their boasts, or else it’s off with the heads.
Charlemagne takes his men aside and they’re all a little sheepish. How can they possibly make good on their boasts now, in the light of day? They have the relics from the reliquary brought before them and begin to pray. Then an angel descends from heaven with a message from Jesus: “The boasts that you uttered last night were very stupid. / Christ orders you never to mock anyone again. / Go and get on with it; every one of them will be fulfilled.’
Back in front of Hugo, Charlemagne admits they were drunk and acting stupid, but says you were wrong to spy on us. Still, the Paladins will fulfill their boasts, and Hugo can select the order in which they’re performed.
Hugo chooses Oliver, thinking to himself, rather oddly:
‘Here stands Oliver, who boasted so outrageously
That he would have my daughter a hundred times in one night.
May I be cursed in every court if I do not hand her over to him.
If I do not give her to him, then I have no regard for my honour.
But if he gives up and falters just once,
I shall cut off his head with my polished sword.
He, along with the twelve peers, are destined to die.’
Oliver and Hugo’s daughter spend the day together, and at night they are locked into a chamber to attempt the boast. The daughter becomes afraid, and asks Oliver if he has come from France ‘to kill us women’. Oliver says he doesn’t want to take advantage of her or harm her, and this wins her over. There is some ambiguity over what happens next: the implication is that they spend the night chastely, but a footnote tells us that a line has been struck through in the manuscript which says they managed to accomplish their task only thirty times. It doesn’t matter either way, the point of Oliver’s boast was not that Oliver would do the deed one hundred times, but that in the morning the daughter will swear he had. And that’s what happens: she lies to her father and says she and Oliver did it one hundred times, as per the boast. Hugo is outraged.
William of Orange is up next. He removes his beaver-pelt mantle, then with one hand lifts the heavy ball that no one else could budge, throwing it and destroying forty yards of the king’s wall. We are told this is the result of God’s strength, not William’s. Bernard follows up on that and diverts the river, forcing King Hugo to climb to his tallest tower, while Charlemagne and the Paladins climb tall pine trees3. Hugo swears he’ll become Charlemagne’s vassal, but Charlemagne takes pity on him and prays God the waters recede, which they do immediately.
King Hugo comes to Charlemagne and says he knows God loves him. He will become Charlemagne’s vassal and hold his kingdom in fief from Charlemagne. Charlemagne asks if Hugo wants some more boasts performed. Hugo replies not this week, he knows he’ll regret it forever if more boasts are carried out.
At Charlemagne’s insistence they hold a lavish celebration together and wear their crowns side-by-side, and it’s noticed that “King Hugo is wearing his just a little closer to the ground, / For Charlemagne was a good foot and three inches taller.” Meaning the Queen’s words have proven false. The knights agree that their Queen spoke foolishly.
The tables had been set up and they have gone to eat.
They were made to wait for nothing that they asked for.
There is plenty of game: venison and wild boar,
And they have cranes, geese, and peppered peacocks.
A never-ending stream of wine and claret is brought,
And their entertainers sing, playing the viol and the rote.
They feast lavishly, and Hugo promises his wealth to Charlemagne, but he won’t take a penny of it. Meanwhile, Oliver tells King Hugo’s daughter that he loves her, but must return to France with Charlemagne. She loves him and would kiss him, except that her father is watching.
Charlemagne and the Paladins arrive home in France and distribute the relics throughout the kingdom. Charlemagne prays at the abbey of Saint-Denis and places his crown and the nail from the True Cross on the altar. We are told his anger at the Queen subsides and he forgives her in the poem’s final lines.
I love the Looney Tunes logic around the boasts in this poem: it’s somehow not the boasts themselves that are insulting, it’s the implication that the knights might not be able to perform them. There’s also something funny about how the Christian god is taken down a peg or two. He’s not some remote, inaccessible deity; he’s the friend you call up after a night out drinking when you need a ride home. Your friend will sigh and be annoyed, but you know he’s going to pick you up. Ariosto portrays Charlemagne’s relationship to god in a similar manner, and we’ll get to that eventually.
The other thing I love about Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne is that it’s easy to picture it as being performed, probably for the Lendit, the fair at Saint Denis. I always picture the rotating palace as some little contraption someone’s built for the occasion.
The poem seems to be a humorous take on the Descriptio qualiter Karolus Magnus, a latin document composed by the monks of the Saint Denis abbey claiming that their relics are real, that Charlemagne brought them home after a trip to rend military aid to Constantinople. The historical Charlemagne, of course, never travelled to Jerusalem or Constantinople. He did, however, have diplomatic relations with the rulers of both places.
Charlemagne’s long distance diplomacy with Harun al-Rashid, caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate, is the more interesting4. Charlemagne sent gifts of gold and red cloth to Harun al-Rashid, and sponsored the Christian community in Jerusalem, and asked al-Rashid for an elephant. In October 801, Isaac the Jew, the sole survivor of the Frankish embassy to Raqqa, returned to Europe with an elephant named Abul-Abbas. Not much is known about Abul-Abbas, except that Charlemagne commissioned some ships at Liguria to take the elephant home, and that they had to wait until spring to cross the alps and bring the elephant to Aachen. Abul-Abbas died suddenly in 810, while Charlemagne was marching to stop a Danish invasion of Friesland.
As for Oliver, his dalliance with King Hugo’s daughter will be followed up in the chanson called Galiens li Restores or Galien the Restored, in which the hero, Galien, is said to be Oliver’s son by King Hugo’s daughter. Galien spends the poem searching out his father, only to find him making his last stand with Roland at Roncevaus Pass. Later still, Galien is replaced by Aquilant and Grifone, who are said to be Oliver’s twin sons by the King’s daughter. They play a big role in both Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, where they fight a giant who is able to heal whatever wounds they give him.
I went long on this, so I’ll hold off on the Pepys Show update until next time, along with my year end retrospective.
Thanks for reading, especially if you’ve made it this far. This has been Adam’s Notes for December 14, 2023. My name is Adam McPhee, and you can find me on Twitter, Bluesky, Letterboxd, and Goodreads.
This week’s Blue Sky codes:
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They’ve titled their version The Journey of Charlemagne to Jerusalem and Constantinople. It’s this version I’m quoting from throughout.
Gaunt and Pratt point out that the conflation of God and Christ throughout the poem is part of the Trinitarian view.
Charlemagne is always associated with pine trees. In The Song of Roland, for example, his curule throne is set under a pine tree. I think it’s a symbol of wisdom.
Check out The Emperor and the Elephant by Sam Ottewill-Soulsby for a really in-depth look at the subject.