Figure 2. MS Bodleian Digby 23 (2), fol. 24V (with permission of the Bodleian Library).
As Marjorie Chibnall notes, these legends represent “a point in eleventh-century culture where hagiography shaded into epic and even romance.”68 Numerous legends circulated about the deeds of the warrior saints Demetrius, George, and Theodore, and there was a chanson de geste of the life of St. Eustace.69 The “holy champion William” can only be Guillaume d’Orange, also known as Guillaume Courtnez, second only to Charlemagne and Roland among the heroes of Old French epic. The story of Roland would have suited a similar collection admirably. Roland, too, was a “holy champion,” implacable in his hostility to pagans and often regarded as a saint.70 He dies for his faith willingly, telling his companions “Ci recevrums ma[r]tyrie” (Here we will receive martyrdom, fol. 35r, line 1922). If the twelfth-century Digby copyist was indeed “someone trained in the schools, who found service as chaplain or clerk in a bishop’s familia or a baronial household,” his career would have been very similar to that of Gerold, and he might well have used the Digby Roland to entertain and improve his own patron’s household, just as Gerold used his “great collection of tales” to entertain and improve Hugh’s knights and squires.
Certainly there are numerous passages in the poem that deliver an emphatic moral, like Archbishop Turpin’s address to the knights before their last battle, which the poet appropriately enough calls a sermon:
Franceis apelet, un sermun lur ad dit.
“Seignurs baruns, Carles nus laissat ci
Pur nostre rei devum nus ben murir.
| Chrestïentèt aidez a sustenir. | MS Xpientet |
Bataille avrez, vos en estes tuz fiz,
| Kar a voz oilz vëez les Sarrazins. | MS auoz |
Clamez voz culpes, si preiez Deu mercit.
Asoldrai vos pur voz anmes guarir
Se vos murez, esterez seinz martirs,
| Sieges avrez el greignor pareïs” | MS averrez (fol. 21r, lines 1126–35) |
Turpin addressed the Franks and gave them a sermon. “Charles has placed us here. It is our duty to die well for our king. Help Christianity to survive! There will be a battle, you may be sure, for you can see the Saracens with your own eyes. Confess your sins and call on God for mercy! I will absolve you to save your souls. If you die, you will be holy martyrs and will have a seat in paradise.”
Here the poem might present the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman baronial household—lords, knights, and boys alike—with an exalted vision of those who fight while ensuring that religious counsel was incorporated into this vision in the figure of Turpin, a prince of the church who was also a mighty warrior and combined the two roles with absolute moral certainty.
There are numerous other passages in which one can easily hear a chaplain’s voice ringing out with moral conviction, reciting lines that tell of the triumph of militant Christianity and attribute the final defeat of the Saracens to divine intervention: “Pur Karlemagne fist Deus vertuz mult granz / Car li soleilz est remés en estant” (For Charlemagne God performed a great deed, for he stopped the sun, fol. 44V, lines 2458–59). Like the saints’ lives, the Roland tells of miracles, faith tested through violence, and the triumph of bellicose Christianity over its opponents. What is harder to imagine is a chaplain delivering one of the innumerable blow-by-blow descriptions of slaughter, such as laisse 104, in which Roland finally draws Durendal:
La bataille est merveilluse e cumune.
Li quens Rollant mie ne s’asoüret.
Fiert de l’espiét tant cum hanste li duret,
| A XV. cols l’ad fraitë e perdue | Segre emends to rumpue; |
Trait Durendal, sa bone espee, nue,
Sun cheval brochet, si vait ferir Chernuble:
L’elme li freint u li carbuncle luisent
Trenchet le chef e la cheveleüre,
Si li trenchat les oilz e la faiture,
Le blac osberc dunt la maile est menue,
En tut le cors tresqu’en la furcheüre.
Enz en la sele, ki est a or batue,
El cheval est l’espee aresteüe:
Trenchet l’eschine, une n’i out quis [joi]nture,
Tut abat mort el préd sur l’erbe drue.
Après li dist: “Culvert, mar i moüstes!
| De Mahumet ja n’i avrez aiüde. | MS auerez? |
| Par tel glutun n’ert bataille oi vencue.” | (fol. 24V, lines 1320–37, see fig. 2) |
The battle was fierce, and all were engaged. Count Roland did not hold back. He struck with his spear as long as its shaft remained, but he broke it completely by the fifteenth blow. He drew out the naked blade of Durendal, his good sword, spurred on his horse, and struck Chernuble. He cut through his helmet, where the carbuncles shone, and through his head and his hair. Cut through his eyes and his face, his shining mail hauberk, and all his body, to the trunk, and then into his saddle, which was decorated with gold, and into his horse and through its spine, without looking for the joints. He left both dead in the thick grass. Then he said, “Wretch, you did wrong to come. You will never have aid from Mohammed. Battle will never be won by such a coward.”
It is much easier to imagine these lines being delivered by a minstrel or jongleur, who could supply appropriately histrionic gestures and perhaps even go so far as to twirl a sword (as Taillefer is said to have done in one account).71 As we shall see, however, there are grounds for serious doubt about whether minstrels or jongleurs ever had much opportunity to deliver more than short fragments, while there are lines written by clerics, and even by a canon at Oseney, that have something of this brutality. If we are trying to imagine the conditions under which the poem might have been delivered more or less in its entirety, we must think in terms of someone like the chaplain Gerold, however much this may clash with the clichés of medieval culture we have inherited.
So far, we have been considering how the poem might have been delivered during the period when it was copied. At least a century must pass, however, until we get evidence that allows us to link the manuscript to a specific owner. On an opening leaf of the Timaeus, folio [2]r, there is an inscription in what appears to be at least a late thirteenth-century, or more likely a fourteenth-century, hand informing us that one Master Henry of Langley bequeathed it to the Augustinian canons of St. Mary of Oseney (“liber ecckesie sancte marie de osenya ex le/gato magistri henrici de langelya”).72 Master Henry is in all probability the Henry Langley who was a canon and prebendary of the king’s free chapel in Bridgnorth Castle, Shropshire, and is last mentioned in a record of 1263.73 Admittedly, the lapse of time between the last reference to Henry and the probable date of the inscription is a little troubling. Abbeys were generally expected to keep track of donations. At Barnwell Priory, for example, which happens to be the one Augustinian