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Holy Land, Holy Lance: Religious Ideas in the Chanson d’Antioche

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Susan B. Edgington
Susan B. Edgington*
Affiliation:
Huntingdonshire Regional College
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Extract

Silence, Seigneurs, and hold your peace if you want to hear a glorious song. No jongleur can speak of a higher theme … my song is of the Holy City - may she be praised - where God allowed himself to be tortured and crucified, even suffering the lance and blows and wounds. Jerusalem, such is her name.

The opening laisse of the Old French Chanson d’Antioche, which focuses on the Holy Land as the scene of Christ’s Passion, promises to address the theme of this volume very directly. How far is that promise fulfilled? The purpose of the examination which follows is to look at the image of Jerusalem in the Chanson and the attraction of the Holy Land to the poem’s audience: this will entail a consideration of the ideas of pilgrimage and crusade. Aspects of popular religion – visions and miracles, for example – will be identified. It will be seen that the role played by the clergy in promoting, explaining, and especially participating in the expedition is crucial to the text.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 36: The Holy Land, Holy Lands, and Christian History , 2000 , pp. 142 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2000

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References

1 La Chanson d’Antioche, ed. Suzanne Duparc-Quioc, 2 vols (Paris, 1977). All references to the text are to this edition, which occupies vol. 1, and are by vers. This quotation: vv. 1-3, 8-11. All translations are by the present writer.

2 The most recent editions of the other two chansons are vols 5 and 6 in The Old French Crusade Cycle: Les Chétifs, ed. Geoffrey M. Myers (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1981) and La Chanson de Jérusalem, ed. Nigel R. Thorp (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1992).

3 Duparc-Quioc, Suzanne, ‘La Composition de la chanson d’Antioche’, Romania, 83 (1962), pp. 1-29, 210–47.Google Scholar

4 Cook, Robert F., ‘Chanson d’Antioche’, Chanson de Geste: Le Cycle de la Croisade est-il epique? (Amsterdam, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 V. 9014.

6 Kleber, Hermann, ‘Graindor de Douai: remanieur - auteur - mécène?’ in Bender, Karl Heinz, ed., Les Épopées de la croisade, Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur: Beiheft, nF 11 (Stuttgart, 1987), pp. 66–75.Google Scholar

7 Sumberg, Lewis, La Chanson d’Antioche: Étude historique et littéraire (Paris, 1968), p. 361 Google Scholar; Trotter, D. A., Medieval French Literature and the Crusades (1100-1300) (Geneva, 1988), p. 246 Google Scholar; Edgington, Susan B., ‘Albert of Aachen and the chansons de geste’, in France, J. and Zajac, W. G., eds, The Crusades and their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 23–37 Google Scholar. Marcus Bull is insistent that vernacular literature should not be quarried for the mentalité of the first crusaders: Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony c. 970-c. 1130 (Oxford, 1993), p. 13.

8 Examples: prayer v. 3828; despair v. 3874; rallying v. 6425; battle v. 6354.

9 Vv. 16-17, 23-7.

10 V. 272.

11 The best modern historical treatment is Blake, E. O. and Morris, C., ‘A hermit goes to war: Peter and the origins of the First Crusade’, SCH, 22 (1985), pp. 79–107.Google Scholar

12 This is in an interpolated passage, probably rather later than the main text: Interpolation 3, v. 61 (Duparc-Quioc, p. 517).

13 Vv. 121-4 (p. 519).

14 Vv. 2531-3.

15 The crusaders called the Turkish sultan, Kilij Arslan, ‘Soliman’, from his patronymic ‘Ibn-Sulaiman’.

16 Hunger vv. 3478-9; child vv. 6995-6; ‘tapins’ v. 5058; Peter v. 8253.

17 For a recent and controversial discussion of the development of the term ‘crusade’ see Tyerman, C., The Invention of the Crusades (London, 1998), pp. 8–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Remission vv. 76-7; cross v. 98.

19 Interpolation 3, vv. 105-6 (p. 518).

20 Cowdrey, H. E. J., ‘Martyrdom and the First Crusade’, in Edbury, Peter W., ed., Crusade and Settlement (Cardiff, 1985), pp. 46–56.Google Scholar

21 Vv. 8961-2.

22 Vv. 8535-40.

23 Vv. 35-6.

24 Vv. 157-82, 205-11.

25 See, especially, Riley-Smith, J., The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London, 1986), pp. 9, 21, 48-9, 109, 146.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., pp. 55-6.

27 Vv. 128-37.

28 This is discussed in relation to other poems in the cycle by Hermann Kleber, ‘Pèlerinage, vengeance, conquête: la conception de la première croisade dans le cycle de Graindor de Douai’, in J. Subrenat, ed., Au Carrefour des routes d’Europe: la chanson de geste, Xe congrès Rencesvals, Strasbourg, 1985, 2 vols (Aix-en-Provence, 1987), 2, pp. 757-75.

29 Vv. 3458-69.

30 Vv. 9246-8.

31 V. 1624.

32 Deschaux, Robert, ‘Le Merveilleux dans la Chanson d’Antioche’, in Au Carrefour, 1, pp. 431–43.Google Scholar

33 Vv. 3667-71, 3690-7. The exploit is something of an epic cliché, for there are contemporary examples relating to Charlemagne and Roland: Meredith-Jones, C., ed., Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi ou Chronique du Pseudo-Turpin (Paris, 1936), p. 177 Google Scholar; Walpole, R. N., ed., An Anonymous Old French Translation of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle (Cambridge, MA, 1979), p. 71 Google Scholar. Other parallels between the Chanson d’Antioche and the Chanson de Roland are explored in Edgington, ‘Albert of Aachen and the chansons de geste’.

34 Examples: heroes v. 3541; astrology v. 5256.

35 The dreams: Bohemond vv. 5650-72; Dacien vv. 5729-59; Sansadoine vv. 6611-28.

36 Visions: Peter vv. 70-1; St Mary’s vv. 7115-68; Lance vv. 7202-22.

37 Miracles: Enguerrand v. 2629; Raimbaut v. 3879 (not in Deschaux); priest v. 545.

38 Early appearances vv. 2179, 2783-4; Adhémar announces vv. 13 n, 7720; Soliman recognizes vv. 5715-20; battle of Antioch vv. 9057-71.

39 The horse: v. 3064. Compare, for example, v. 3574 (Bohemond); vv. 9288-305 (Godfrey).

40 Vv. 7919-28.

41 Vv. 6094-126.

42 Vv. 3286-7.

43 For example interpolation 3, vv. 43-9 (pp. 516-17). See also Micheline de Combarieu du Grès, ‘Le premier cycle de la croisade’, in Danielle Régnier-Bohler, ed., Croisades et pèlerinages (Paris, 1997), pp. 14-24.

44 Vv. 4365-70.

45 Interpolation 3, vv. 162; 178-9 (pp. 520-1).

46 Examples: Mass v. 7665; confession vv. 7666-7; burial vv. 2193-7, 6494-5; baptism vv. 6514-16; penance vv. 7535-40; lance vv. 7196-8, 7223-4.

47 Vv. 1321-2.

48 Vv. 2545-7.

49 Vv. 2854-6.

50 Vv. 2759-64, 3190-3.

51 Vv. 3601-9, 3623-8, 3647.

52 Vv. 7685-8187.

53 V. 8142.

54 V. 8163.

55 Vv. 8352-70, 8950-1.

56 Vv. 9057-71.

57 Vv. 9326-34.

58 Vv. 8217-37.