care has been taken to ensure that the manuscript is agreeable to the eye. It is ruled (although not always entirely consistently), and the margins are generous. The initial letter of each line is offset and there is at least one colored initial for each page; corrections are few and neat. Digby 23(2) was not just a rough draft or private copybook. It has been quite heavily used, and the ink is badly faded in places. The first and last folios are dog-eared, and half a quire is discolored at the beginning and the end, suggesting that it lay for a while unbound, but otherwise the Roland is in reasonable condition. It has not been folded, torn, stained, or scribbled in. The classification “minstrel manuscript” cannot be disproved, but it is based not on a consideration, but on an almost willful dismissal, of the codicological evidence.
A closer investigation of the manuscript can provide glimpses of the world in which the poem probably circulated and can suggest some of the ways in which it might have been enjoyed. It will also illustrate the sophistication of at least one baron and the interpenetration of clerical and chivalric culture—all points the traditional understanding of the poem tends to deny or at least to minimize.
The first approach is through the copyist, who writes a hand that has often been criticized for its awkwardness (fig. 2). Earlier readers, such as Gautier, took this awkwardness as a sign of the copy’s low social status and therefore of its association with a jongleur. But it might also be seen as a sign that the copyist was engaged in cultural negotiation, modifying a traditional script to meet new demands. This suggestion might seem highly speculative, but it is advanced by no less an authority than M. B. Parkes, who attributes the awkwardness to the scribe’s attempts to modify a large bookhand, of the kind used for Bibles and Psalters, to the demands of the smaller reading text. Parkes provides other examples of comparable hands in small single-column manuscripts, many of which seem to have emanated from the Norman or Anglo-Norman schools. On this basis, Parkes suggests the scribe may well have been “someone trained in the schools, who found service as chaplain or clerk in a bishop’s familia or a baronial household.”64 The conjunction of “worldly oriented clerics and a sophisticated urbane baronry” that was particularly marked in England and has been offered as one reason for the strength of the Anglo-Norman hagiographic tradition ensured that there were households where the Roland might have found an audience.65
Orderic Vitalis has left us a picture of one such household, that of Hugh of Avranches, earl of Chester and one of William the Conqueror’s chief supporters, who surrounded himself with “swarms of boys of both high and humble birth.”66 At many of these courts it was the custom when the knights and squires were gathered to have selected members read aloud from some suitable and improving book. At Hugh’s court this was the responsibility of the chaplain, Gerold:
To great lords, simple knights, and noble boys alike he gave salutary counsel; and he made a great collection of tales of the combats of holy knights, drawn from the Old Testament and more recent records of Christian achievements, for them to imitate. He told them vivid stories of the conflicts of Demetrius and George, of Theodore and Sebastian, of the Theban legion and Maurice its leader, and of Eustace, supreme commander of the army and his companions, who won the crown of martyrdom in heaven. He also told them of the holy champion, William, who after long service in war renounced the world and fought gloriously for the Lord under the monastic rule. And many profited from his exhortations, for he brought them from the wide ocean of the world to the safe harbour of life under the Rule.67
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
