Paladin

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The death of Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux (manuscript illustration c. 1455–1460)

The Paladins, also called the Twelve Peers, are twelve legendary

The Song of Roland, written between 1050 and 1115, which narrates the heroic death of Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass
.

The legend is based on the historical

Frankish Empire and the Emirate of Córdoba. The term paladin is from Old French, deriving from the Latin comes palatinus (count palatine), a title given to close retainers
.

The paladins remained a popular subject throughout

Modern depictions of paladins are often an individual knight-errant holy warrior or combat healer, influenced by the paladin character class that appeared in Dungeons & Dragons
in 1975.

Etymology

The earliest recorded instance of the word paladin in the

Mayor of the Palace.[1] A presumptive Old French form *palaisin was already loaned into late Middle English
as palasin in c. 1400.

Over time paladin came to refer to other high-level officials in the imperial, majestic and royal courts.[2] The word palatine, used in various European countries in the medieval and modern eras, has the same derivation.[2]

By the 13th century, words referring specifically to Charlemagne's peers began appearing in European languages; the earliest is the Italian paladino.[1] Modern French has paladin, Spanish has paladín or paladino (reflecting alternate derivations from the French and Italian), while German has Paladin.[1] By extension, paladin has come to refer to any chivalrous hero such as King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table.[1]

Historical title

In the Roman imperial period, a palatinus was one of the closest retainers of the

Merovingian dynasty (reigned 480–750) employed a high official, the comes palatinus, who at first assisted the king in his judicial duties and at a later date discharged many of these himself. Other counts palatine were employed on military and administrative work.[3]

In the Visigothic Kingdom, the Officium Palatinum consisted of a number of men with the title of count that managed the various departments of the royal household. The Comes Cubiculariorum oversaw the chamberlains, the Comes Scanciorun directed the cup-bearers, the Comes Stabulorum directed the equerries in charge of the stables, etc. The Ostrogothic Kingdom also maintained palatine counts with titles such as Comes Patrimonium, who was in charge of the patrimonial or private real estate of the king, and others. The system was maintained by the Carolingian sovereigns (reigned 751–987). A Frankish capitulary of 882 and Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, writing about the same time, testify to the extent to which the judicial work of the Frankish Empire had passed into their hands.[3]

Instead of remaining near the person of the king, some of the counts palatine were sent to various parts of his empire to act as judges and governors, the districts ruled by them being called palatinates.

Count Palatine of the Rhine served as prince-elector from "time immemorial" (with Wigeric of Lotharingia reaching back to the late Carolingian era), noted as such in a papal letter of 1261, and confirmed as elector in the Golden Bull of 1356. Palatin was also used as a title in the Kingdom of Hungary
.

Medieval romance

Roland storms the temple of Muhammad (Codex Palatinus Germanicus, 12th century)

In the French courtly literature of the 12th century, the paladins are the twelve closest companions of Charlemagne, comparable to the role of the Knights of the Round Table in Arthurian romance.

The names of the twelve paladins vary from romance to romance, and often more than twelve are named. The number is popular because it resembles the

Twelve Apostles (etc.
). Always named among the paladins are .

Their greatest moments come in

.

The paladins figure into many chansons de geste and other tales associated with Charlemagne. In Fierabras (c. 1170), they retrieve holy relics stolen from Rome by the Saracen giant Fierabras. In some versions, Fierabras is converted to Christianity and joins the ranks of the paladins himself. In

Byzantine Emperor
Hugo.

Early modern reception

Fierabras (1497 woodcut)

The Italian Renaissance authors Matteo Maria Boiardo and Ludovico Ariosto, whose works were once as widely read and respected as William Shakespeare's, contributed prominently to the literary and poetical reworking of the tales of the epic deeds of the paladins. Their works, Orlando Innamorato and Orlando Furioso, send the paladins on even more fantastic adventures than their predecessors. They list the paladins quite differently, but keep the number at twelve.[4]

Boiardo and Ariosto's paladins are

Inferno;[5] Rinaldo (Renaud de Montauban); Malagigi (Maugris), a sorcerer; Florismart, a friend to Orlando; Guy de Bourgogne; Namo (Naimon
or Namus), Duke of Bavaria, Charlemagne's trusted adviser; and Otuel, another converted Saracen.

In the Baroque era, Ariosto's poem was the basis of many operas. Among the earliest were

Orlando (1727). In France, Jean-Baptiste Lully turned to Ariosto for his tragédie en musique Roland
(1685).

Perhaps the most famous operas inspired by the poem are those by Handel: Orlando (1733), Ariodante and Alcina (1735).

La Fontaine, Le petit chien qui secoue de l'argent et des pierreries, itself derived from an episode in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. [6]

The enthusiasm for operas based on Ariosto continued into the Classical era and beyond with such examples as Niccolò Piccinni's Roland (1778), Haydn's Orlando paladino (1782), Méhul's Ariodant (1799) and Simon Mayr's Ginevra di Scozia (1801).[7]

The title of Paladin is revived in the early modern period for the closest retainers of a monarch. Thus, the leaders of armies supporting the Protestant

Frederick V in the Thirty Years' War were named Paladins.[8]

Modern reception

Die drei Paladine des deutschen Kaisers by Wilhelm Camphausen (Die Gartenlaube, 1871)
Hans Peder Pedersen-Dan's 1907 statue of Holger Danske (Ogier the Dane) in the casemates at Kronborg castle, Denmark

Paladin was used informally of the closest confidants of the

Garnet Wolseley and Frederick Roberts have been dubbed "Queen Victoria's Paladins".[9] Following this template, Adolf Hitler used to refer to Hermann Göring as his Paladin.[10]

While the Arthurian "Matter of Britain" enjoyed a major revival in the 19th century in the hands of the Romantic and Victorian poets, writers, and artists, the "Matter of France" has generally received less attention. The Song of Roland has nevertheless inspired numerous modern works, including Graham Greene's The Confidential Agent (1939),[11] and Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

Emanuele Luzzati's animated short film, I paladini di Francia, together with Giulio Gianini, in 1960, was turned into the children's picture-story book, with verse narrative, I Paladini de Francia ovvero il tradimento di Gano di Maganz ('The Paladins of France or the treachery of Gano of Maganz', 1962). This was republished in English, as Ronald and the Wizard Calico (1969).[12]

In the later 20th century, Paladin has become a trope in modern fantasy. A paladin character class was first introduced in 1975 for Dungeons & Dragons in Supplement I – Greyhawk. The Dungeons & Dragons character class was reportedly inspired by the protagonist of the 1962 fantasy novel Three Hearts and Three Lions,[13] which was itself a pastiche of various elements of medieval and post-medieval legend, including elements of the Matter of France. I paladini — storia d'armi e d'amori is a 1983 Italian fantasy film. As a character class in video games, the Paladin stock character was introduced in 1985, in The Bard's Tale.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Paladin" Archived 2021-04-29 at the Wayback Machine. From the Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved November 23, 2008.
  2. ^ a b "Palatine" Archived 2020-01-08 at the Wayback Machine. From the Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved November 23, 2008.
  3. ^ a b c  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainHolland, Arthur William (1911). "Palatine". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 595–596.
  4. ^ Frank, Grace, "La Passion du Palatinus: mystère du XIVe siècle," in Les Classiques français du moyen âge (30) Paris 1922.
  5. ^ The Divine Comedy, Canto XXXII.
  6. ^ Sylvie Bouissou, Jean-Philippe Rameau (Fayard, 2014), p. 817
  7. Grove
    or The Viking Opera Guide (ed. Holden, 1994).
  8. ^ Wilson, Peter H. The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy, Harvard University Press, 2009
  9. ^ John Philip Jones, Queen Victoria's Paladins: Garnet Wolseley and Frederick Roberts (2018).
  10. ^ Stefan Marthens: Erster Paladin des Führers und Zweiter Mann im Reich (1985). Wolfgang Paul: Hermann Goering: Hitler's Paladin or Puppet? (1998).
  11. .
  12. ^ The Picture Lion paperback edition (William Collins, London, 1973) is a paperback imprint of the Hutchinson Junior Books edition (1969), which credits the English translation to Hutchinson Junior Books.
  13. Geocities. Archived from the original
    on 9 December 2007. Retrieved 19 June 2011.