Mutilation and dismemberment in the Chanson de Roland, a question of faith?

King, David S.

THE Chanson de Roland seems to present a Manichean world, one in which Christians enjoy God's favor and Saracens do not. True, certain Saracens, such as Abisme ("vasselage ad e mult grant estultie" v. 1639) and Baligant ("deus! quel baron, s'oust chrestientet" v. 3164), have their virtues and certain of the Franks, notably Ganelon, their failings. (1) Nonetheless, in this poem, God prevents the sun from setting in answer to Charlemagne's prayers (vv. 2447-75) and through the angel Gabriel bolsters the French king when he falters in his combat with the Emir (vv. 3611-12). No such aid comes to the opposing side, as Roland says: "paien unt tort e chrestiens unt dreit" (v. 1015). (2) Yet one cannot help noticing that the feats of arms by the opposing sides in this martial narrative are remarkably similar. Aside from the prodigious blows struck by Roland himself, the faithful and the faithless appear to produce equally spectacular mutilations. Close examination of the bloodshed, however, reveals a code that follows the Christian-Saracen dichotomy. Knights of both faiths are penetrated by lances, their hearts crushed, but only Saracen bodies, and that of the Christian traitor, Ganelon, undergo the severing of extremities. Whereas one is tempted to seek the motivation for these amputations in medieval theology, such as a belief in the materiality of the soul, no religious explanation by itself suffices. For a better understanding of this preference for Saracen dismemberment, one must look instead to Germanic traditions of criminal punishment. As Dominique Boutet says of chanson de geste brutality in general: "derriere l'ideologie religieuse il y a un vieux fond barbare que l'on ne peut pas, que l'on ne veut pas renier" (Le Cycle de Guillaume d'Orange 11).

Boutet's proposition certainly applies to the Chanson de Roland, in that gore plays a major role in the text. Here bloodshed, for the original audience and today's reader, provides more than essential entertainment. Almost without exaggeration, one can say that carnage is the narrative. Despite the seemingly black and white moral world the song presents, where the right battle the wrong, both sides of the fight suffer wounding and death in nearly equal measure. There is no doubt as to who will triumph in the end, but until then the Saracens give almost as good as they get. No doubt, the need for drama trumps religious absolutism, for an enemy easily defeated offers no glory. (3) The battle begins with French feats of prowess, but soon the Saracen blows begin to tell, such as when Climborin confronts Engelier de Gascogne: "empeint le ben, tut le fer li mist ultre,/pleine sa hanste el camp mort le tresturnet" (vv. 1497-98). As an engagement between minor characters, the killing is typically terse. For major protagonists, the wounding becomes more graphic; for example, when Marganice meets Olivier and he "fiert Oliver derere enmi le dos;/le blanc osberc li ad desclos el cors,/parmi le piz sun espiet li mist fort" (vv. 1945-47). Turpin's demise is all the more vivid:

 Li quens Rollant veit l'arcevesque a tere;
 Defors sun cors veit gesir la buele,
 Desuz le frunt li buillit la cervele;
 Desur sun piz, entre les dous furceles,
 Cruisiedes ad ses blanches mains, les beles.
 (vv. 2246-50)

Even Charlemagne himself suffers mutilation before dispatching Baligant:

 Li amiralz ... fiert Carlemagne sur l'elme d'acer brun,
 Desur la teste li ad frait e fendut;
 Met li l'espee sur les chevels menuz,
 Prent de la carn grant pleine palme e plus;
 Iloec endreit remeint li os tut nut.
 (vv. 3602-07)

When the French land telling blows the results are equally florid, such as when Olivier encounters the pagan Malon and strikes him with his broken lance: "l'escut li freint, k'est ad or e a flur,/fors de la teste li met les oilz ansdous,/e la cervele li chet as piez desuz" (vv. 1354-56). Only Roland's feats of prowess produce slightly more spectacular detail than those of other knights:

 Rollant....
 Vait le ferir li quens [Aelroth] quanque il pout:
 L'escut li freint e l'osberc li desclot,
 Trenchet le piz, si li briset les os,
 Tute l'eschine li desevret del dos;
 Od sun espiet l'anme li getet fors;
 Enpeint le ben, fait li brandir le cors,
 Pleine sa hanste del cheval l'abat mort:
 En dous meitiez li ad briset le col.
 (vv. 1196-205)

Other than Roland's ability to kill rider and horse in one blow, little distinguishes the wounds the French inflict from those inflicted by the Saracens. Except that the French, unlike their adversaries, never suffer dismemberment or beheading. On the battlefield there is no exception to this rule, and when the fighting stops, only Ganelon--who made a pact with the Saracens--loses his limbs.

The severing begins inconspicuously soon after the first of the twelve peers lose their lives. After taking vengeance on Climborin, Olivier beheads the otherwise unmentioned Escababi (v. 1512). Two laisses later, Roland severs the head of Valdarbon who has just killed another of the peers. There follows two laisses with multiple amputations, all the work of French swords:

 La bataille est merveilluse e hastive
 Franceis i ferent par vigur e par ire,
 Trenchent cez poinz, cez costez, cez eschines,
 Cez vestemenz entresque as chars vives;
 Sur l'erbe verte li cler sancs s'en afilet.
 (vv. 1610-14)

 Oliver sent qu'il est a mort nasfret,
 De lui venger jamais ne li ert sez:
 En la grant presse or i fiert cume ber,
 Trenchet cez hanstes e cez escuz buclers
 E piez e poinz e seles e costez.
 Ki lui veist Sarrazins desmembrer,
 Un mort sur altre a la tere geter,
 De bon vassal li poust remembrer.
 (vv. 1965-72)

The narrative again highlights this mutilation reserved for non Christians, as the French survey the damage surrounding Turpin's body: "tels quatre cenz i troevet entur lui,/alquanz nafrez, alquanz parmi ferut,/s'i out d'icels ki les chefs unt perdut" (vv. 2092-94). In perhaps the best remembered dismemberment, Roland cuts off Marsile's right hand and then beheads Marsile's son: "vait le ferir en guise de baron,/trenchet li ad li quens le destre poign,/puis prent la teste de Jurfaleu le Blund" (vv. 1902-04).

The exclusiveness of Saracen amputation suggests a theological motivation. (4) Again, Turhold, the poet, makes clear who enjoys God's favor. He describes the death of numerous of Marsile's and Baligant's men only to follow it with such lines as "L'anme de lui as vifs diables dunet" (v. 3647), or words to that effect. As the pagans lose their limbs, one cannot help remembering Christ's apparent endorsement of amputation in Matthew 5:30: "And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell." (5) Similar injunctions appear in Matthew 18:8 and Mark 9:43. Thereby, Jesus seems to sanction the dismemberment of the sinner. Certain of the Church Fathers, such as Tertullian and Hilary, believed in the materiality of the soul. Augustine, if he did not ascribe to the notion of materiality, at least wondered in De Quantitate Animi "whether the soul fills the body, as it were to the fingertips" and "if it does, what happens when a limb is amputated? Is part of the soul lost too?" (Evans 92). With these sources in mind, one cannot help wondering whether the Christian tradition, or this strain of it, informs the representation of violence in the Roland. Does the loss of limbs reflect the sinful, errant nature of the Saracens or does the song suggest that these mutilated pagans, their soul rent, will face added suffering in the afterlife?

No direct link, however, between theology and limbless warriors makes itself clear. Augustine, however much he wondered about the nature of the soul, never made common cause with Tertullian and Hilary. (6) And neither Tertullian nor Hilary otherwise inspired much of a following in the early western Church on the question of materiality (Evans 93; Waszink 48). As for the biblical verses, it is difficult to imagine that Jesus meant literally to endorse amputation as a means toward salvation. (7)

If he did, the endorsement fits poorly into the scheme of this poem, in that the reader receives no indication that anyone is saved by virtue of severed limbs. Indeed, the Saracens seem headed for damnation whether their bodies are intact or not. In any case, Christ, speaking of the end of times, also makes the promise to believers that "not a hair of your head will perish" (Luke 21:18). Paul affirms this notion in 1 Corinthians 15:52 when speaking of the resurrection. Whether non believers would enjoy the same restoration The New Testament leaves unclear. Nonetheless, our poet appears more attuned to these last biblical verses than the one in Matthew, for although the Christians in the Roland never lose limbs or their heads, their internal organs, which presumably would contain their portion of soul, frequently empty onto the battlefield. Moreover, one notices that when Charlemagne locates the bodies of Roland, Olivier, and Turpin, he has their hearts removed (vv. 2961-73). In short, there is little evidence in the Christian tradition to suggest that mutilation has any consequence in the hereafter.

That said, the Church Fathers did, according to Yves Lefevre, associate claudication with moral error. In the prose Chronique du PseudoTurpin, Lefevre points out: "Roland, disputant de theologie avec le Sarrasin Ferragut, qui croit en Dieu unique, mais non pas en la Trinite, lui dit qu' 'il boite dans la foi'" ("La Mosaique de Lescar" 308). 8 Lefevre raises this connection in explicating a romanesque mosaic from Aquitaine that features an archer "au teint sombre, dont la jambe droite, coupee sous le genou, s'appuie sur la fourche d'une jambe de bois en Y" (303). Apparently, this character, always manifesting "une attitude agressive," appears on many romanesque monuments in that region of France. Because of the figure's attitude and dark skin, Lefevre assumes, no doubt correctly so, that it represents a Saracen.

But the connection between mutilation and religious faith remains just that, an assumption. The Roland is not the Chronique du PseudoTurpin. In any case, the historical record tells us that medieval Europe reserved other punishments for those guilty of transgressions in faith. Heretics and blasphemers burned for their crime, or occasionally those in the latter category lost their tongues, yet none of the Saracens in the Roland loses his tongue or is set aflame. (9) If punishing the Saracens for their heresy were part of the poet's message, one could certainly imagine Charlemagne and the avenging Franks laying siege to Saragossa and setting the city on fire. Such an end for Baligant's men would not lack verisimilitude. It would, however, deny warriors the chance for individual heroics, the song's reason for being.

Indeed, the warrior's creed, more so than the Christian, offers a clue to the motivation behind the patterns of mutilation. Though the poet refers to Marsile's and Baligant's men as paien, more often he calls them felun, (10) a term reserved for the disloyal, the hypocritical, or the traitorous, those who break faith with their feudal master. (11) Of this crime the Saracens are manifestly guilty, given Marsile's false promise of loyalty to Charlemagne in laisses 6-10. According to Germanic custom of the early medieval period, the penalty for felonie was death and dismemberment. Such we can gather from Gregory of Tours's sixth-century History of the Franks. He recounts numerous such incidents of amputation. Nearly all of these cases involve some form of treason or lese-majeste: (12)

Merovech [knowing that the king, Chilperic, is aware of the conspiracy to kill him] ... called his servant Gailen to him.... said he ... "take my sword and kill me." Gailen did not hesitate a moment. He killed Merovech with his own sword. When the king arrived, Merovech was found dead.... Gailen was seized: they cut off his hands, and his feet, and his ears, and his nose, tortured him cruelly and then dispatched him in the most revolting fashion. (282-83)

Severus, Gunthram Boso's father-in-law, had a serious accusation brought against him before the King by his own sons.... Severus was banished and later met a miserable end. His two sons, Burgolen and Dolo, were condemned to death on a charge of lesemajeste. One was killed out of hand by the soldiery. The other fled, but he was captured and had his hands and feet cut off. (290)

When Queen Fredegund had been packed off to the manor ... because much of her power had been brought to an end, and yet she considered herself a better woman than Brunhild. In secret she sent a cleric of her household who was to gain Brunhild's confidence ... then assassinate her.... they realized on what a treacherous errand he had been sent.... he was permitted to return to the Queen.... When ... he confessed that he had failed in his mission, she punished him by having his hands and feet cut off. (401-02)

Sichar was exhorting one of his slaves to get on with his work, and had just taken hold of a stick and was belabouring him with it, when the slave dragged Sichar's sword ... and had the effrontery to wound his master with it.... The slave was seized, he was cruelly beaten, his hands and feet were cut off, and he was hanged from the gallows. (429)

Fredegund handed ... daggers over to two clerics, and then gave them the following instructions: "Take these two poignards and make your way with all speed to King Childebert, pretending that you are mendicants.... If this boy is so closely guarded that you cannot come close to him, kill Brunhild instead.... When they had made these admissions, they were submitted to a number of tortures, their hands, ears and noses were cut off, and they were put to death each in a different way. (457-58)

In all cases, the victims lose their hands, often their feet, and occasionally other parts are shorn as well. Isidore of Seville evokes a similar practice in his History of the Goths:

In the year 639 (601 [ad]), the seventeenth year of Mauricius's rule, after King Reccared his son Livva became King, and his reign lasted two years; he was indeed born of a lowranked mother, but was distinguished for the native quality of his virtues. After seizing despotic power Witteric drove him away from kingship in the first flower of his youth, although he had done no harm, and after cutting off his right hand killed him in the twentieth year of his age, the second of his reign. (26-27)

Here the usurper metes out the punishment, but presumably because he sees, or wants others to see, the deposed king, Livva, as disloyal to the rightful ruler, Witteric. 13 Establishing the origins of such punishment is, to say the least, problematic. In 2 Samuel 4:11-12, one finds a case where two men commit murder believing that their initiative would please King David. To their chagrin, he sees their deed as a crime. They lose their hands and feet as a consequence; although, in this instance, the amputation appears to be post-mortem. (14) The similarity of cruelties across cultures may, of course, be mere coincidence.

This ritual mutilation must have had great cultural significance, however, given its considerable staying power. Amputation as a prelude to execution survived the middle ages and became codified into French law. Until 1832, those convicted of parricide or regicide in France saw their right hand subtracted before enduring the ultimate punishment (Foucault 19; Pauli 41; Monestier 66). The Napoleonic code offers no explanation for the removal of the right hand; perhaps, because none was necessary at the time. However, one presumes the right hand to be the one that perpetrated the crime for which its owner must perish. (15) In light of this penal tradition, one can perhaps better understand the role of amputation in the Roland, and in particular the amputation that receives the most attention. Laisses similaires abound in the song, but the only lost limb mentioned more than once is Marsile's right hand. Roland cuts it off at laisse 142: "trenchet li ad li quens le destre poign" (v. 1903). Then as Baligant comes to the Saracens' rescue, the subject of Marsile's severed hand arises six more times.

 Li reis Marsilie s'en fuit en Sarraguce,
 ...
 La destre main ad perdue trestute.
 (vv. 2570, 2574)

 Dit l'uns a l'altre: 'Caitifs, que devendrum?
 Surse nus est ui male confusiun:
 Perdut avum le rei Marsiliun,
 Li quens Rollant li trenchat ier le poign.
 (vv. 2698-701)

 Dist Bramimunde: '....
 Noz chevalers i unt leisset ocire,
 Cest mien seignur en bataille faillirent;
 Le destre poign at perdut, n'en ad mie.
 (vv. 2714-19)

 Dist Clarien [to Baligant]: '....
 Il [Marsile] e Rollant el camp furent remes.
 De Durendal li dunat un colp tel
 Le destre poign li ad del cors sevret.'
 (vv. 2771, 2779-81)

 [Clarien to Baligant]: 'Li reis Marsilie le poign destre i
 perdiet.' (v. 2795)

 [Baligant to Clarien]: 'S'or ne s'en fuit Karlemagne li veilz,
 Li reis Marsilie enqui serat venget:
 Pur sun poign destre l'en liverai le chef.'
(vv. 2807-09)

Evidently, Marsile's missing hand fulfills more than one poetic role. Besides serving as a metonymy for the Saracen disaster at Roncevaux, it echoes the "guant le destre" that Ganelon drops when Charlemagne designates him as the envoy to Marsile earlier in the song (vv. 331-33). With the lost hand, the poet evokes the pagan leader's symbolic surrender (laisses 6-10), for a tendered glove on the medieval battlefield, besides being a gesture of peace as it is for Charlemagne, may also be a sign of submission. (16) The mutilation of Marsile thus binds him in the audience's mind to Ganelon's treachery, a collusion that ultimately dooms the Saracens to defeat. Van Emden notes also that Marsile's mutilation parallels the injury that the Saracens inflict on Charlemagne, namely the loss of Roland, his "destre braz" (v. 597). (17) Ganelon's dismemberment, on the other hand, emanates explicitly from a legal proceeding. In this trial by combat, Ganelon's champion, Pinabel loses to Thierry, so Ganelon is attached to four horses and is pulled limb from limb:

 Trestuit si nerf mult li sunt estendant,
 E tuit li membre de sun cors derumpant;
 Sur l'erbe verte en espant li cler sanc.
 Guenes est mort cume fel recreant.
 (vv. 3970-73)

In Ganelon, Treason, and the Chanson de Roland, Emanuel Mickel gives extensive attention to this process. He demonstrates that quartering as a punishment for treason was not promulgated in England before the thirteenth century and not in France before the fourteenth century. (18) The particular means of Ganelon's death is thus a poetic fiction. (19) That said, Mickel also cites the eleventh-century laws of William I of England, a pertinent example given the Anglo-Norman dialect of the Oxford manuscript. Although he forbade capital punishment, William sanctioned the amputation of the hands and feet of felons (134-35) (20)--cruelties reminiscent of those we see in Gregory's History of the Franks and Isidore of Seville's History of the Goths. In other words, whereas pulling the limbs from traitors may itself have been anachronistic for the Roland, dismemberment of a similar sort was not. As Marc Bloch said, referring to the execution of Ganelon's compurgators: "a poet's exaggeration, beyond any doubt. But ... the poet's inventions could hope to find little response unless they conformed to the common sentiment" (185).

Yet no matter how plainly attached to feudal custom Ganelon's crime is, because he made a pact with the infidels, his transgression is not free of religious impression. Similarly, though Marsile is felun for betraying his new feudal master, at the same moment he will take his oath of fealty to Charlemagne, he promises to adopt the Christian faith. Does this feint constitute two false promises, or are the two betrayals one and the same in that Charlemagne represents the Christian imperium; therefore, any disloyalty to the emperor is an offense against the Christian god? The paratactic composition of the poem results in a lack of explicitness on this question. However, given that God intervenes on behalf of the avenging Charlemagne, that the Saracens, in defeat, abuse their idols as "malvais deus" (v. 2582), and that the narrator leaves no doubt as to which side represents evil and which good, one must conclude that no meaningful distinction exists in the Roland between feudal and religious duty.

Despite that conclusion, and despite the stark moral terms the narrative assumes, theology does not appear to directly inform the manner in which the opposing forces suffer mutilation. Only the Saracens lose hands, feet, and heads, and only the souls of these same warriors risk eternal damnation. But little in the Christian tradition helps explain this unequal maiming, other than the association between claudication and moral error posited by some of the Church Fathers. Tertullian and Hilary argued for a materiality of the soul, and Augustine, though he did not concur with his predecessors, wondered how the soul might fill the body and of the consequences of lost limbs. These musings might explain the cruelties in the Roland if these meditations had produced much of a following in Christian thought; however, none gained much credence. What few biblical verses seem to promote amputation as a solution to sinful behavior lose meaning, for our purposes, in the face of other parts of the New Testament promising the restoration of lost limbs at the end of times and at the resurrection. In any event, if the poet wished to portray Marsile's and Baligant's men as religious criminals, one would expect them to die by fire rather than by the sword. To understand why the Saracens suffer dismemberment, whereas the Franks do not, requires instead a look at Germanic penal traditions. As the histories of Gregory of Tours, of Isidore of Seville, and the laws of William I indicate, those considered guilty of lese-majeste or treason often endured amputation either as punishment unto itself or as a prelude to execution. Indeed, this cruel tradition survived well beyond the middles ages in France. Those feluns, such as Marsile and Ganelon, who betrayed their sovereign could expect to lose one or all their limbs as a price for their transgression. In other words, the most gruesome mutilations in the Roland highlight more the Saracens' feudal treachery rather than their errant faith.

RICHARD STOCKTON COLLEGE

WORKS CITED

Ailes, Marianne. The Song of Roland on Absolutes and Relative Values. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellon, 2002.

Alexis, Chantal. Les Buchers de l'histoire. Paris: Pygmalion, 1980.

Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. City of God: Books XVII-XXII. Trans. Gerald G. Walsh, and Daniel J. Honan. Washington: Catholic UP, 1964. Vol. 8 of The Fathers of the Church. 22 vols. 1964.

Bellamy, J.G. The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages. London: Cambridge UP, 1970.

Biblia. Trans. Jerome, saint. Lugduni [Lyon]: Gillberti de Villiers, 1524.

Bloch, Marc. Feudal Society. Trans. L.A. Manyon. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1964.

Boatner, Janet W. "The Misunderstood Ordeal: A Re-Examination of the Chanson de Roland." Studies in Philology, 66 (1969), 571-83.

Boutet, Dominique. "Introduction." Le Cycle de Guillaume d'Orange. Ed. Dominique Boutet. Paris: Librairie Generale Francaise, 1996, 5-36.

La Chanson de Roland. Ed. Ian Short. 2nd ed. Paris: Librairie Generale Francaise, 1990.

Cook, Robert Francis. The Sense of the Song of Roland. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1987.

Cuttler, S.H. The Law of Treason and Treason Trials in Later Medieval France. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981.

Evans, G.R. Philosophy and Theology in the Middle Ages. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Foucault, Michel. Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard, 1975.

Gerberding, Richard A. The Rise of the Carolingians and the Liber Historiae Francorum. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1987.

Gregory of Tours. The History of the Franks. Trans. Lewis Thorpe. New York: Penguin, 1974.

Hieatt, Constance. "Roland's Christian Heroism." Traditio, 24 (1968), 420-29.

The Holy Bible. Revised Standard Edition. New York: Thomas Nelson, 1952.

Isidore of Seville. History of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi. Trans. Guido Donini, and Gordon B. Ford. Jr. Leiden: Brill, 1970.

Jacques de Voragine. La Legende doree. Ed. and trans. Alain Boureau, Pascal Collomb, Monique Goulet, Laurence Moulinier, and Stefano Mula. Paris: Gallimard, 2004.

Jones, George Fenwick. The Ethos of the Song of Roland. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1963.

Keegan, John. The Face of Battle. New York: Penguin, 1978. The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I. Ed. and trans. A.J. Robertson. Cambridge UP, 1925.

Lear, Floyd Seyward. Treason in Roman and Germanic Law: Collected Papers. Austin: U of Texas P, 1965.

Lefevre, Yves. "La Mosaique de Lescar et la litterature medievale." Travaux de linguistique et de litterature. Strasbourg: C. Klincksieck, 1978, 303-16.

Mickel, Emanuel. Ganelon, Treason, and the Chanson de Roland. University Park: Penn State UP, 1989.

Monestier, Martin. Peines de mort: histoire et techniques des executions capitales des origines a nos jours. Paris: Le Cherche Midi, 1994.

Owen, D.D.R. "The Secular Inspiration of the Chanson de Roland." Speculum, 37 (1962), 390-400.

Pauli, Leslaw. Peines corporelles et capitales dans la legislation des etats europeens des annees 1751-1903. Warsaw: Nakladem Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego, 1986.

Pensom, Roger. Literary Technique in the Chanson de Roland. Geneva: Droz, 1982.

Picciotto, Robert S. "Marsile's Right Hand." Romance Notes, 7 (1966), 207-08.

Rateau, Marguerite. "Les Peines capitales et corporelles en France sous l'ancien regime." Annales Internationales de Criminologie. Paris 1963, 276-308.

Tertullian. Tertulliani De Anima. Ed. J. H. Waszink. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1947. Van Emden, Wolfgang. La Chanson de Roland. London: Grant & Cutler, 1995.

(1) All quotes of the Roland are from Ian Short's edition of the Oxford Manuscript. Recent scholarship promotes a more nuanced view of the poem's moral context. Robert Cook, for example, although he sees Roland as a faultless hero, contends that his comrades are much less so (The Sense of the Song of Roland). Marianne Ailes cautions that "in our text the Christians are right, but they are not infallible.... The Saracens, on the other hand, however good or brave, are positionally, theologically wrong" (The Song of Roland on Absolutes and Relative Values 69).

(2) Roger Pensom suggests that the poet does not share Roland's sentiment. To this critic, for example, Naimes and Charlemagne contribute to "the side of chaos and destruction" and the principal flaw of the pagans is "the formlessness and meaninglessness" of their society (Literary Technique in the Chanson de Roland 115-16).

(3) In terms of sheer numbers lost, the Saracens do suffer disproportionately, yet in highlighted instances of single combat, they hold their own in the battle preceding Roland's death.

(4) George Jones (The Ethos of the Song of Roland) and D.D.R. Owen ("The Secular Inspiration of the Song of Roland"), among others, see the poem as secular narrative adorned with a Christian veneer. However, the recent critical consensus favors reading the Christian and secular elements as "two orders of fact, not rivals, one of which must exclude or even necessarily diminish the other" (Cook 214). See also: Ailes (particularly 19-23), Janet Boatner ("The Misunderstood Ordeal: a Re-Examination of the Chanson de Roland"), Constance Hieatt ("Roland's Christian Heroism"), and Wolfgang Van Emden (La Chanson de Roland).

(5) All quotes from the Bible, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Standard Revised Edition.

(6) That said, the following passage from the City of God seems to suggest that Augustine maintained some ambivalence on the materiality question: "If we may trust the reports of workers in the field of natural phenomena, the salamander lives in fire. Again, certain well-known volcanoes in Sicily have been continually active from the earliest times until our own day, yet, in spite of the fire, the mountains remain intact. Such facts should prove that everything that burns is not consumed; and, as we saw, the soul proves that not everything that is susceptible to pain is susceptible of death. What further evidence, then, do we need to prove that human bodies suffering the penalty of eternal pains, first, remain united with their souls in the fire; second, burn without being consumed; and, third, suffer pain without meeting death?" (Book XXI, ch. 4). However, subsequent passages also make clear that whatever materiality Augustine might attribute to the soul, mutilation of the living proves inconsequential: "It is unthinkable that there should be any limits to the Creator's omnipotence in resuscitating and restoring to life every element of any human body that has been devoured by beasts or consumed by fire, or reduced to dust, or dissolved into liquid, or evaporated into air" (Book XXII, ch. 20).

(7) Jacques de Voragine records the example of Saint Leo. According to the legend, this fifth-century pope followed Christ's injunction to the letter: "une dame lui baisa la main, ce qui fit monter en lui une violente tentation charnelle ... l'homme de Dieu, exercant contre sa propre personne une vengeance tres cruelle, se coupa ... la main qui l'avait perdu et la jeta loin de lui" (La Legende doree 446-47).

(8) The Chronique exists in numerous Latin and Old French versions. Some of these manuscripts omit Roland's remark about limping in faith; for those that include it, see Ronald Walpole's edition Le Turpin francais, dit le Turpin I (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1985) or C. Meredith-Jones's Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi ou Chronique du Pseudo-Turpin (Paris: Droz, 1936).

(9) See, for example, Chantal Alexis's Les Buchers de l'histoire. Foucault writes of the "utilisation de supplices 'symboliques' oU la forme de l'execution meme renvoie a la nature du crime: on perce la langue des blasphemateurs, on brule les impurs" (Surveiller et punir 48).

(10) "Paien" appears at verses 467, 484, 692, 940, 1535; "felun" at verses 69, 213, 844, 910, 1024, 1216, and 1632. In laisse 108, Turpin refers to Siglorel, the pagan enchanter he has just slain, as "forsfait" or criminal (v. 1393). Similarly, the angel urges Charles to take revenge on the "gent criminel" (v. 2456).

(11) See Marc Bloch's Feudal Society (217; 228-29).

(12) J.G. Bellamy notes the distinction between the German Treubruch, a breach of faith between two parties that owe each other loyalty and Roman "notion of maiestas, insult to those of public authority" (The Laws of Treason in England 1). See also S.H. Cuttler (The Law of Treason and Treason Trials in Later Medieval France 7-8). That the Roman notion was adopted only later in the Middle Ages is important to Emanuel Mickel's thesis (Ganelon, Treason, and the Chanson de Roland) but not to mine. In any case, I am following Gregory's example in using the term lese-majeste.

(13) Exceedingly brief, the eighth-century Liber Historiae Francorum gives no clear indication of this tradition of amputation as a prelude to execution, though it does hint at such a practice: "King Sigibert died and Grimoald tonsured his [the king's] young son, named Dagobert, and sent him to Bishop Dido of Poitiers so that he might make a pilgrimage to Ireland and placed his own son on the throne. The Franci, however, enraged by this, prepared an ambush for Grimoald and removing him they brought him for judgment to Clovis [II], king of the Franci. In the city of Paris he was put in prison bound with painful chains as one worthy of death because he had acted against his lord. His death came with terrible torture" (qtd. in The Rise of the Carolingians 175).

(14) Jerome's Vulgate, the translation with which the Franks were presumably best acquainted, reads thus: "praecepit itaque David pueris et interfecerunt eos praecidentesque manus et pedes eorum suspenderunt eos super piscinam in Hebron," or "and David commanded his young men, and they killed them, and cut off their hands and feet, and hanged them beside the pool at Hebron."

(15) Floyd Lear notes: "a homicide within the early family could well be as treasonable as the murder of a king in an absolute monarchy, since such a crime might deprive that early social group of a warrior essential for its protection or a child-bearing woman needed for its continuance. Under such circumstances it is not strange that parricide retained a character of particular heinousness" (Treason in Roman and Germanic Law xiv).

(16) According to John Keegan, medieval knights "surrendered their right gauntlets to their captors, as token of submission (and subsequent re-identification)" (The Face of Battle 108).

(17) La Chanson de Roland (67); see also Robert Picciotto's "Marsile's Right Hand," Romance Notes (207-08). Cook claims in passing that the loss of the right hand "is a traditional punishment for treason" but provides no reference (The Sense of the Song of Roland 94).

(18) Mickel relies principally on Bellamy (20-21) and Cuttler (21-22) as historical sources, then cites one example of dragging and hanging for treason in 1196 (Mickel 147-155). Mickel's attempt to use legal history to further an argument for a later dating of the Oxford manuscript has proved controversial. See Ailes (112) and Van Emden (98-99).

(19) The dismemberment of Discordia in Prudentius's Psychomachia may be the literary inspiration for Ganelon's punishment (Ailes 117; Mickel 149; Van Emden 98).

(20) See also A.J. Robertson (251). Mickel refers to Gregory's History in notes but not in reference to the dismemberment the bishop describes. On the early punishments for treason, he cites instead the first-century Germania: "Tacitus indicates that deserters and traitors were hanged" (Mickel 133).