ce dist li rois, or ai quanque demant.”).....................................
Quant François l’ont oï, si en ont mautalent.]
(15296–98, 303–5, 308–9, 12)
In the event the horse not only functions as “the pharmakos, the sacrificial victim immolated to ensure the others’ happiness” (Calin 95), but in the process he also throws into further relief the injustice of the oppression under which he and his master have suffered. Moreover, in representing his master for the purpose of punishment, Bayard also reaffirms his own heroic status as equivalent to that of Renaud: smashing the millstone that weighs him down, the horse escapes his tormentors to live out his life at ease in the forest of the Ardennes.
The Quatre fils Aymon proved highly popular in the late medieval and early modern periods, surviving in numerous manuscripts, translations, and adaptations.1 It spawned verse continuations in thirteenth-century Spain and fourteenth-century Italy and received mention in England in the early thirteenth century. However, the work's influence on later chivalric verse culminated with the Italian romances of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Luigi Pulci's Morgante (1483), for instance, revisits the exploits of Rinaldo and Baiardo, again remarking on the intimacy of the relationship between man and horse. Thus, for example, when Pulci's Rinaldo finds himself beset by a band of giants, Baiardo fights as furiously as he, prompting one of the giants to exclaim, “[G]o on your road, / for this your horse is better than a friend” [“piglia il tuo cammino, / ché questo tuo destriere è buon compagno” (16.103, 3–4)]. Taking his advice, Rinaldo finds rest in a shepherd's hut, but as soon as the knight falls asleep, his host steals Baiardo and conveys him to the nearest city, where he offers the horse for sale to the city hangman. Before committing to the purchase, the hangman asks for a display of riding, and predictable mayhem ensues:
[M]ost eager to comply, the shepherd spurred
Baiardo, who could feel who’d mounted him:
Quickly, therefore, into midair he leapt.
The shepherd, who knew not the art of riding,
fast found himself upon the barren ground
with two ribs broken.
[(Q)uel pastor di spron détte al cavallo.
Baiardo conosceva a chi egli é sotto:
Subitamente prese in aria un salto,
onde il pastor, ch’a l’arte non è dotto
so ritrovò di fatto in su lo smalto
e del petto due costole s’ha rotto.]
(16.108.8–16.109.5)
Here, as in the Quatre fils Aymon, Baiardo operates as a figure of calculated resistance who possesses the functional equivalent of human intelligence. In the Quatre fils he understands Renaud's conversation; in the Morgante he recognizes when an unfit rider climbs onto his back; in both cases he exhibits self-awareness and intellectual discrimination while casting his lot with his master and opposing his master's enemies. More than a well-trained animal in the modern understanding of the phrase, he emerges from these poems as a “buon compagno,” already possessing the distinctive personality he will retain in Ariosto as well. Moreover, these same qualities also characterize Rinaldo's horse in Ariosto's immediate precursor, the Orlando innamorato of Matteo Boiardo (1483). The key scene here unfolds when Baiardo, who has become separated from Ranaldo (Boiardo's spelling) and has passed through the hands of several caretakers in the process, finds himself bearing Orlando into combat, ironically, against Orlando's cousin and the horse's own true master, Ranaldo himself:
Valiant Orlando and Aymone's
strong son converged: both violent,
each thought he’d knock the other down.
Now listen to what's strange and new.
The good Baiardo recognized
its master when it saw Ranaldo.
…. …. …. ……
[A]nd that horse, as if he could think,
had no desire to go against
Ranaldo, so he swerved, despite
Orlando, to avoid the clash.
…. …. …. ……
At the same time, [Orlando] yanked the reins,
believing he would turn Baiardo,
but the horse moved no more or less
than if it stood to graze on grass.
[Il franco Orlando e il forte fio d’Amone
Se vanno addosso con tanto flagella,
Che profondar l’un l’altro ha opinione.
Ora ascoltare che strana novella:
Il bon Baiardo cognobbe di saldo,
Come fu gionto, il suo patron Ranaldo.
…. …. …. ……
E quel destrier, come avesse intelletto,
Contra Ranaldo non volse venire;
Ma voltasi a traverso a mal disperto
De Orlando, proprio al contro del ferire
................................
Ed a quel tempo ben ricolse il freno,
Credendolo a tal guisa rivoltare;
Non si muove Baiardo più di meno,
Come fosse nel prato a pascolare.
(1.26.26.2-8, 27.3-6, 30.1-4)
In sum, from his first appearance in the Quatre fils Aymon through his appropriations by the Italian romances of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the figure of Baiardo maintains a distinctive and steady character profile consonant with his intelligence and ability to engage in considered acts of disobedience. In the Quatre fils, Bayard already understands human language and successfully opposes the tyranny of Charlemagne; in Pulci, the horse serves as a “buon compagno” to Rinaldo, resisting his enemies in combat and refusing to obey when they seek to command him; in Boiardo, the horse behaves “come avesse intelletto,” refusing to engage in combat with his master; and in Ariosto, Baiardo expressly possesses “intelletto umano,” which he exercises in part by refusing to obey Rinaldo's enemies and in part by refusing to obey Rinaldo himself. Moreover, the various poets who develop Baiardo's character do so through consistent narrative gestures—topoi deployed after the manner of a Wagnerian leitmotif to serve, in effect, as the literary signature of the character in question. Baiardo's repeated human behavior—his “gesto umano”—provides a case in point, but perhaps the most distinctive such feature of the horse's presentation is what I would call the topos of equine civil disobedience: Baiardo's set-piece refusal to comply with commands or submit to conditions that he considers unjust or misguided. This refusal already appears in the Quatre fils,
