Raoul de Cambrai, the name of a French chanson de
geste. The existing romance is a 13th
century recension of a poem by a trouvère of Laon
called Bertholais, who professed to have witnessed the events he described. It presents, like the
other provincial geste of Garin le Loherain, a picture of the devastation
caused by the private wars of the feudal chiefs. A parallel narrative, obviously inspired by popular poetry, is preserved in the
chronicle of Waulsort (ed. Achery, Spicilegium, ii. p. 100 seq.), and probably corresponds
with the earlier recension. Raoul de Cambrai, the posthumous son of Raoul Taillefer, count of
Cambrai, by his wife Alais, sister of King Louis
d'Outre-Mer, whose father's lands had been given to another, demanded the fief of Vermandois, which was the natural inheritance of the four sons of Herbert, lord of Vermandois. On King Louis's refusal, he proceeded to war. The chief hero
on the Vermandois side was Bernier, a grandson of Count Herbert, who had been the squire and firm adherent of Raoul, until he was
driven into opposition by the fate of his mother, burned with the nuns in the church of Origny.
Bernier eventually slew the terrible Raoul in single fight, but in his turn was slain, after an apparent reconciliation, and the
blood-feud descended to his sons. The date of these events is exactly ascertainable. Flodoard
(Annales, Anno 943) states that Count Herbert died in that year, and was buried by his sons at St. Quentin, that when they learnt that Raoul, son of Raoul de Gouy, was
about to invade their father's territory, they attacked him and put him to death. The identity the other personages of the story
has also been fixed from historical sources. The second part of the poem, of which Bernier is the hero, is of later date, and
bears the character of a roman d'aventures.
Bibliography
- Raoul de Cambrai, French translation by William Kibler, original text edited by Sarah Kay (1996)
See also Li Romans de Raoul de Cambrai et de Bernier, ed. E. le Clay (Paris, 1840); Raoul de Cambrai, ed. P.
Meyer and A. Longnon (Soc. des anc. textes Fr., Paris, 1882); J. M. Ludlow, Popular Epics of the Middle Ages
(London and Cambridge, 1865); H. Grüber, Grundriss d. roman. Phil. (ii. pp. 567 seq.).
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public
domain.
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