FERUMBRAS

(Fierabras, Firumbras)

Although today the best-knownCHANSON DE GESTEisThe SONG OF ROLAND, the numerous surviving manuscripts about Fierabras (Ferumbras in MIDDLE ENGLISH) point to this CHARLEMAGNE ROMANCE epic character as the most popular during the Middle Ages. TheFierabrascycle conflates two separate stories. In the first, the Destruction of Rome, Fierabras, who is the son of the sultan and a formidable warrior, leads the Saracen (Muslim) attack on Rome and the theft of the relics of Jesus Christ. In the second episode, the Song of Fierabras, Charlemagne’s forces follow the Saracens into Spain. Fierabras converts to Christianity after losing a fight with Oliver, the most famous of Charlemagne’s Peers after Roland. Fierabras then assists the Franks in defeating the Saracen army of his father. Meanwhile, his sister, Floripas, frees Roland and other Peers imprisoned by her father because of her love for Guy of Burgundy, one of Charlemagne’s knights. By the conclusion, Floripas and Fierabras are baptized while their father is killed for rejecting Christianity. Fierabras returns the stolen relics to Charlemagne, and Floripas marries Guy, who will become king of Spain (de Mandach 1987, 129–30).

Three Middle English manuscripts of the Fierabras cycle survive:Sir Ferumbras, Firumbras, andThe Romance of the Sowdone of Babylone and of Ferumbras His Sone Who Conquered Rome. Of the three, the last receives the highest praise of the Middle English Charlemagne romance poems because it is the most complete—the other two omit the Destruction of Rome, for example—and because critics consider it the most original and inventive of the translations. Dorothee Metlitzki has categorized the stereotypical Saracen characters found in these romances, such as the converted knight (Ferumbras, who at one point saves the life of Charlemagne), the defeated sultan (Laban, the sultan of Babylon, and father of Ferumbras and Floripas, who began the war by ordering the destruction of Rome after Romans had robbed his ships), the enamored princess (Floripas, whose use of magic and murder on behalf of her lover and father’s enemy, Guy of Burgundy, makes her a medieval amplification of Medea), and the Saracen giant (the fiercest opponents the Christians face in battles with the Saracens; they include the Ethiopian monsters Estragot and his wife Barrok) (Metlitzki 1977, 160–197).Metlitzki contends that “the romantic Saracens of the military encounters are stereotypes petrified in a literary convention which served as a vehicle of propaganda and psychological warfare” (188).Jeffrey Jerome Cohen specifically connectsThe Romance of the Sowdone of Babyloneto English involvement with the final failed Crusades of the Middle Ages. This Charlemagne romance’s incorporation of Chaucerian phrases helps date it after the 1390 Crusade in Tunis and to the first half of the 15th century. Interest in the Fierabras cycle continued into the Early Modern era. For instance, in 1484 William CAXTON printed his translation of a French prose adaptation of Fierabras, which he entitled theHistory and Lyf of the Noble and Crysten Prince Charles the Grete(de Mandach 1987, 136). Apparently Caxton was interested in employing the Matter of France (romance epics about Charlemagne and his Peers) as a model the English should follow in reacting to the rising threat of the Islamic Ottoman Empire.

■ Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “On Saracen Enjoyment: Some Fantasies of Race in Late Medieval France and England,”Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies31, no. 1 (2001): 113–146.

■ Hausknecht, Emil, ed.The Romance of the Sowdone of Babylone and of Ferumbras His Sone Who Conquered Rome. 1881. EETS ES 38. London: Oxford University Press, 1969.

■ Herrtage, Sidney J.The English Charlemagne Romances. Part I:Sir Ferumbras. 1879. EETS ES 34. London: Oxford University Press, 1966.

■ Mandach, Andre de. “The Evolution of the Matter of Fierabras: Present State of Research.” InRomance Epic: Essays on a Medieval Literary Genre, edited by Hans-Erich Keller, 129–139. Studies in Medieval Culture, 24.Kalamazoo,Michigan:Medieval Institute, 1987.

■ Metlitzki, Dorothee.The Matter of Araby in Medieval England. New Haven,Conn.:Yale University Press, 1977.

■ O’Sullivan, M. I.Fierumbras and Otuel and Roland. 1935. EETS OS 198. Suffolk, U.K.: Boydell and Brewer, 2002.