The Chronicle of Turpin in Saintonge

Abstract

THE authority with which, during the Middle Ages, the Chronicle of Turpin was regarded by chroniclers and learned writers is amply illustrated by the extremely large number of the manuscripts in which it is still preserved. Its popularity amongst unlettered people has, however, been to a great extent ignored by scholars who have confined their studies mostly to the technical problems raised by the Latin text. As long ago as 1865, Gaston Paris drew attention to the existence of five Old French translations of the Chronicle, made separately and at different places during the thirteenth century.' Although many manuscripts of these translations exist in widely scattered libraries, three only of the five versions have as yet been published. None of them, perhaps, offers to the scholar interested in the popular development of mediaeval Carolingian legends a more fertile field for research than the one I shall call the Saintongese version.2 The Count Baldwin of Hainaut, so says the Introduction, had sent a clerk on a tour of exploration, with the object of bringing back a copy of the History of the fabulous deeds of Charlemagne and his knights which the Archbishop Turpin was believed to have compiled. When this History was found at Sens, in Burgundy, the scribe copied out the Latin text and presented it to his master. This copy was willed at his death to Yolande, countess of Saint Paul, by her brother Baldwin and she, at a later date, somewhere around the year 1200, caused it to be translated into French. The object was, as usual in these Chronicles, to provide an authentic version of a story which contemporary jongleurs and story-tellers had revised into unrecognizable forms: 'Maintes gens en ont oi conter e chanter, mes nest si mensongie non co quil en dient e chantent cil iogleor ne cil conteor. Nus contes rimes nest verais; tot est menssongie co quil en dient quar il non sevient rien fors par oir dire.'3 This original translation is now lost, but some fifty years later it was recopied three times. This latest revision is the version known as the Poitevin or Saintongese version; it is preserved in three late thirteenth-century manuscripts: Bibliotheque Nationale 5714, 124 and MS. Lee (in the possession of the heirs of the late F. W. Bourdillon). It was again translated into modern French in 1527, and a number of fresh interpolations were added. This 1527 printed edition was for long, but in error, believed to have been the work of Robert Gaguin.4 The three manuscripts and the printed edition of 1527 do not offer identical readings of the text. The manuscripts represent two copies made at different times and by different scribes of a French original which has now disappeared. B.N. 5714, which is the older, does not give an original rendering; nor is it the