Who were the Paladins and why use that
name?
A paladin
in poetry is any of the twelve legendary chivalrous
retainers of Charlemagne (the Twelve Peers) in medieval chansons
de geste and stories of romance.
They are thus loosely based on historical Frankish retainers
of the 8th century and events such as the Battle of Roncevaux Pass and the
confrontation of the Frankish Empire with Umayyad Andalusia in
the Marca Hispanica.
The
word evolved from the Latin
word palatinus "belonging to the Palatine
Hill", where the house of the Roman emperor was situated since Octavian. Also
from palatine developed the word palace, so that a paladine was
in one sense a palace official, cf. Palatini. The
palace of the twelve paladines above is the Carolingian
court; compare the titles of "mayor of the palace" and "count
palatine". The original Middle
French form is palaisin. The English paladin was loaned into Early Modern English from the Italian form, paladino,
because late medieval treatments of the "Matter
of France" were mostly by Italian authors such as Ludovico
Ariosto and Matteo Maria Boiardo.
Names
of the paladins
The
names of the twelve paladins vary from romance to romance, and often more than twelve
paladins are named. All stories feature paladins by the names of Roland and
Oliver. Other recurring characters are Archbishop
Turpin, Ogier the Dane, Huon
of Bordeaux, Fierabras, Renaud de Montauban, and Ganelon. Tales of
the paladins of Charlemagne once rivalled the stories of King Arthur
and the knights of the Round Table in popularity. Ariosto and
Boiardo, whose works were once as widely read and respected as Shakespeare's, contributed most prominently to the
literary/poetical reworking of the tales of the epic deeds of the paladins.
The death of Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux, from an illustrated
manuscript of the 1450s.
The
twelve paladins of Charlemagne are listed in the Old French
Chanson de Roland as follows: