The late fourteenth-century
Sir Ferumbras, preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 33, and the early fifteenth-century
Sowdone of Babylone, surviving in Princeton University Library, MS Garrett 140,
1 The Sowdone of Babylone, ed. by Emil Hausknecht, EETS, e. s., 38 (London: Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1881), line 1911. are derived ultimately and independently from the French
Fierabras tradition.
2 Sir Ferumbras derives ultimately from the Vulgate Fierabras tradition represented by the continental chanson de geste and the Anglo-Norman Fierabras in Hanover, Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, MS IV 578. The Sowdone of Babylone derives from the non-Vulgate or abbreviating tradition and probably shares a common source with the Anglo-Norman Fierenbras preserved in London, British Library, MS Egerton 3028. Fierenbras and the Sowdone combine the Fierabras story with that of the Destruction de Rome. See further Ailes and Hardman, The Legend of Charlemagne in Medieval England, pp. 266, 272–3, 316, 330; Marianne Ailes, ‘A Comparative Study of the Medieval French and Middle English Verse Texts of the Fierabras Legend’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Reading, 1989), pp. 270–7, 353–7, 420–6, 430–4, 443–4; Janet M. Cowen, ‘The English Charlemagne Romances’, in Roland and Charlemagne in Europe: Essays on the Reception and Transformation of a Legend, ed. by Karen Pratt (London: King’s College London, Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1996), pp. 149–68 (especially pp. 150–1, 159, 161–2). These works narrate the conflict between Charlemagne’s forces and those of the Muslim Sultan Balan/Laban during or in the aftermath of the Sultan’s sacking of Rome. When Charlemagne’s peers are taken prisoner, the Sultan’s daughter, Floripas, takes charge of them and seizes the opportunity to declare her love for Guy of Burgundy.
3 For a different interpretation of Floripas as herself undesiring, see Lucy M. Allen-Goss, ‘Stony Femininity and the Limits of Desire in The Sowdone of Babylon’, in Female Desire in Chaucer’s ‘Legend of Good Women’ and Middle English Romance (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020), pp. 111–39. These romances demonstrate even less preoccupation with religious race than
Bevis, though they still contribute to creating and maintaining a normative hierarchy of desire. This section focuses on Guy’s attempt to reject Floripas in
Sir Ferumbras and the
Sowdone, drawing on some of their French sources – primarily the
chanson de geste, Jean Bagnyon’s prose
Fierabras, and the anonymous prose version – as comparative material.
4 The Fillingham Firumbras, surviving in London, British Library, MS Add. 37492 (the Fillingham manuscript), is missing the early sections in which Guy and Floripas negotiate their relationship, so I do not consider it here. William Caxton’s translation of the Bagnyon prose Fierabras, the Lyf of the Noble and Crysten Prynce Charles the Grete (1485), follows his source regarding Guy and Floripas’s relationship. When Floripas, who is ‘fair & swet’, asks for Guy of Burgundy’s love in return for helping the imprisoned Christians, saying she will convert to Christianity for him, Guy’s response does not focus on Floripas’s race or faith at all.
5 Sir Ferumbras, ed. by Sidney J. Herrtage, EETS, e. s., 34 (London: Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1879), line 1201. Instead, Guy declares, ‘wyuy nolde he noȝt, / With-oute assent of kyng Charloun ; þat had him vp i-broȝt’ (2096–7). He elaborates on this further in
The Sowdone of Babylone, where he swears
By God […] þat gafe me life,
Hire wole I never haue,
Wyle I neuer take hire ner no woman,
But Charles the kinge hir me gife.
I hight him, as I was trewe man,
To holden it, while I lyve. (SoB, 1909–14)
Guy’s resistance to marrying Floripas is not based upon racialisation or concerns about conversion; instead, he focuses upon the issue of homosocial loyalty through his reluctance to love any woman not given to him by Charlemagne. This reflects the value placed upon the social practice of kings rewarding their vassals through advantageous marriages rather than a concern with Floripas’s own identity.
The Sowdone of Babylone and
Sir Ferumbras therefore significantly move away from the anxiety about racial-religious difference in
The King of Tars and
The Man of Law’s Tale, suggestively indicating the extent to which marrying a Muslim (convert) was considered less of a fraught issue for Christian men compared to Christian women. This lack of concern about Floripas’s faith is particularly striking in the Ashmole
Sir Ferumbas, as the author of this version (which survives only in two draft, autograph copies preserved in the Ashmole manuscript) was apparently a cleric, though he may simply have been following his source material in this portrayal.
6 See Ailes and Hardman, The Legend of Charlemagne in Medieval England, pp. 183–5.Both Ferumbras romances use strategies to minimise, but not entirely erase, Floripas’s racial-religious difference from Guy. Like Josian, Floripas is described as white. This is especially emphasised in the scene of her baptism at the end of
Sir Ferumbras, in which ‘hyr skyn’ is said to be ‘as whyt so þe melkis fom’, her ‘eȝene graye’, and her hair ‘of gold’ (5879–82), but she is described as ‘faire’ in both works (for example,
SoB, 124) and as ‘whit as wales bon’ in
Sir Ferumbras (2429), suggesting that she is seen as white throughout both romances.
7 The Sowdone reduces the description of Floripas’s beauty and whiteness greatly from La Destruction de Rome, one of the ultimate sources that lies behind it, but Floripas’s later reference to Roland choosing one of her maidens who are ‘white as swan’ (2749) does seem to suggest that Floripas and her maidens are perceived as white here. See Emil Hausknecht, ‘Notes’, in The Sowdone of Babylone, ed. by Hausknecht, pp. 95–132 (pp. 100–1). She also offers to convert for Guy’s love. However, her proposed conversion does not seem to clearly resolve all possible concerns about her faith, as both the
Sowdone and
Sir Ferumbras include moments that characterise her religious beliefs as problematic. In
Sir Ferumbras,
after she has offered to convert, Floripas suggests the knights should pray to her idols, since ‘ful litel ys ȝour god of myȝt ; þat vytailes ne sent ȝov none’ (
SF, 2526). Her commitment to conversion is reaffirmed after this, when the peers break her idols and she sees that they had no power to protect themselves, but her reversion to idolatry, falsely represented as a part of Islam, still expresses doubt about her commitment to Christianity. The
Sowdone does not include the same reversion, in keeping with other texts from the abbreviating tradition of
Fierabras,
8 See Ailes and Hardman, The Legend of Charlemagne in Medieval England, p. 319. but it exhibits anxiety about religious difference when Roland refuses Floripas’s offer for him to choose one of her maidens to love, saying
þat were myscheve;
Oure lay wole not, þat we with youe dele,
Tille that ye Cristyn be made;
Ner of your play we wole not fele,
For than were we cursed in dede. (SoB, 2750–4)
Roland’s refusal of Floripas’s maidens sits uncomfortably alongside her relationship with Guy, as Roland apparently extends this concern to Floripas herself, saying Christians may not ‘with
youe dele, / Tille that
ye Cristyn be made’ (my emphasis). While Guy and Floripas’s relationship is not depicted in detail, they do kiss as soon as they are betrothed, marking a departure from most of the French texts, where the sense of religious divides is stricter and they do not kiss initially ‘por chen qu’ele iert paienne et il crestïennez’ [because she was pagan and he Christian].
9 Fierabras: Chanson de geste du XIIe siècle, ed. by Marc Le Person, Classiques français du moyen âge, 142 (Paris: Champion, 2003), line 2930. My translation. The anonymous French prose Fierabras is an exception to the absence of the kiss, as I discuss below. See further Akbari, Idols in the East, pp. 183–4. Roland’s negative reaction to Floripas’s offer contrasts with his positive response in
Sir Ferumbras (3441–2) and the Fillingham
Firumbras,
10 Firumbras and Otuel and Roland, ed. by Mary Isabelle O’Sullivan, EETS, o. s., 198 (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), lines 860–2. indicating some concern with interfaith relationships in the
Sowdone and suggesting that despite Guy’s lack of anxiety about Floripas’s faith, some doubts about her conversion remain.
The oscillation between doubt and acceptance of Floripas in the Middle English texts is illuminated by comparing them with the anonymous French prose
Fierabras. Unusually, this does not include Guy’s resistance, as he accepts Floripas immediately.
11 Fierabras: roman en prose de la fin du XIVe siècle, ed. by Jean Miquet, Publications médiévales de l’Université d’Ottawa, 9 (Ottawa: Éditions de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1983), p. 92 (91. 1013–27). The differing situation in the prose
Fierabras can probably be attributed to the anonymous author or their immediate source, as this text is not a different recension of the narrative as a whole: Ailes situates it on the same side of the stemma as the Egerton manuscript of the Anglo-Norman
Fierabras (London, British Library, MS Egerton 3028), the Middle English texts, and the Bagnyon prose version.
12 Ailes, ‘The Fierabras Legend’, pp. 291–320, 421, 444. Nor does it seem to focus more emphatically on Floripas’s willingness to convert: while she does say that in kissing her, ‘ja vous n’y aurez pechié’ [you will never have sinned] (a direct contrast to the Bagnyon prose version), her offer to convert is presented quite similarly to
Sir Ferumbras and the
Sowdone.
13 Fierabras: roman en prose, p. 92 (91. 1014). My translation. The omission of Guy’s resistance does not seem to relate to a change in Floripas’s conversion, then, but it does seem to correlate with a different approach to Floripas overall in this narrative, Suzanne Conklin Akbari suggesting that it ‘presents a neutralized Floripas’ as ‘a model of feminine deportment’.
14 Akbari, Idols in the East, pp. 179–80. The omission of the rejection episode may contribute to or result from this change: the author of the anonymous prose version may have omitted Guy’s initial rejection of Floripas to ensure she is presented as more conventionally desirable and thus does not need to resort to threats or violence to obtain her desired husband, or, in rendering Floripas a more neutral/positive figure, they may have seen no reason for Guy to reject her. These alterations can offer insights into the functions of the rejection episode in the other texts: if the rejection episode is omitted in accordance with changes to Floripas’s character, then its inclusion may support a particular interpretation of Floripas. Despite his apparent absence of concern about her faith, and despite the courtlier and more romantic portrayal of Guy and Floripas in the Middle English texts more widely,
15 See Ailes and Hardman, The Legend of Charlemagne in Medieval England, pp. 266, 284–6. Guy’s resistance to loving Floripas may work with the other moments that suggest anxiety about her beliefs to demarcate racial-religious difference by suggesting that she is an improper object of desire, even momentarily and without explicitly relating this to her faith. As I suggested in the introduction to this chapter, resistance to loving a convert can express concerns about the efficacy of conversion or can reveal the persistence of other forms of racialised difference, contrasting with the easy acceptance of conversion in other narratives of Muslim–Christian relations. Guy’s resistance certainly seems to humiliate Floripas and, in
Sir Ferumbras, to characterise her negatively through her angry and anti-Christian response to Guy’s rejection (like Josian, Floripas curses ‘by Mahoun’,
SF, 2099). While it seems odd that Guy’s rejection of Floripas does not explicitly comment on her character or religion, his initial resistance may still implicitly serve the dual ideological function of race-making and demarcating normative desires along the lines of perceived racial-religious difference.
However, the focus on homosocial loyalty opens up different functions for Guy’s resistance to love, diminishing the concern with racial-religious difference and instead turning to issues perhaps more rooted in medieval readers’ realities. Kings influenced the marriages of their highest nobility in both literature and life, and Guy is noted to be Charlemagne’s nephew in the
Sowdone (1888) and to have been ‘vp i-broȝt’ by him in
Sir Ferumbras (2097; and in Charlemagne’s description of Guy as ‘of my blod’, 1488), adding a familial or even paternal dimension to this relationship, where an even greater influence over marital choice would be expected.
16 See Women of the English Nobility and Gentry, 1066–1500, ed. & trans. by Jennifer Ward (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 15–16. Rachel Moss, writing about English gentry families, argues that
Fathers played an important role in running negotiations. From the evidence of marriage contracts, it would seem that fathers were often responsible for having the contracts drawn up. […] The case of William Stonor and Margery Blount demonstrates that whilst sons may have wooed women, they relied on their fathers for advice and permission – and that a father had the ability to stop negotiations.
17 Rachel E. Moss, Fatherhood and its Representations in Middle English Texts (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), p. 94.Shannon McSheffrey similarly observes that while ‘there is little evidence to support the old chestnut that all medieval marriages were arranged by fathers or lords’, ‘a decision as important as the choice of spouse was not made without recourse to the advice, help, and sometimes the consent or even the coercion of the important people in a young man’s or young woman’s life’.
18 Shannon McSheffrey, Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), pp. 77–8. Guy’s commitment to marry only a woman approved by Charlemagne therefore seems to reflect the real-life importance of fathers and guardians in marital arrangements, as well as the significance accorded to kings rewarding their followers with advantageous marriages. This focus on familial concern may have been apposite to the early readers of these romances: while the intended recipient of the fair copy that is presumed to have been planned (or actually produced) from the Ashmole
Sir Ferumbras is unknown, Ailes and Hardman speculate on the basis of adaptations from its French source and the apparent care taken with work on the draft copies that the end product might have been intended for ‘the noble or gentry families of the South-West’, while the parchment manuscript of the
Sowdone is of ‘modest prestige’ and makes ‘no great effort […] to economise on the use of this more expensive material’, suggesting it may have been associated with readers of some wealth and status.
19 Ailes and Hardman, The Legend of Charlemagne in Medieval England, pp. 184–7 (quotation at p. 186); Carol M. Meale, ‘Patrons, Buyers and Owners: Book Production and Social Status’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475, ed. by Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 201–38 (p. 217). The probable social environments of these romances’ readers are thus precisely those in which marriages are likely to have been negotiated through broader networks of agency.
While Guy’s promise to Charlemagne is broken when he accepts Floripas’s offer, this acceptance continues to highlight the range of people who might play a part in the making of a marriage. In Sir Ferumbras, Guy changes his mind when Roland appeals again to ‘ys cosyn free’, saying ‘tak thys damesele by þe hand ; as þow louest me’. This time, Guy replies ‘as þow wolt y wol done’ (SF, 2102–4). While Guy partly reneges on his commitment to Charlemagne (although at the end of Sir Ferumbras, he says he will ‘gladlych’ marry Floripas ‘so þat myn vncle assenty to’, 5875), homosociality is still highlighted in his acceptance of her love. Likewise, in the Sowdone, Roland and Oliver both beseech Guy,
Certyfyinge him of her myschefe,
Tellinge him of the parelles, þat þay in wer,
For to take this lady to his wedded wife.
‘But thou helpe in this nede,
We be here in grete doute.
Almyghty god shalle quyte thy mede,
Elles come we nevere hennys oute.’
Thus thay treted him to and fro;
At the laste he sayde, he wolde. (SoB, 1916–24)
Roland and Oliver make this decision about ‘her myschefe’ and ‘parelles’ rather than Floripas’s qualities, appealing to Guy to help them and the other peers. They do tell Guy that ‘almyghty god shalle quyte thy mede’, perhaps implying reassurance about Floripas’s faith and/or suggesting that Guy will be forgiven for breaking his promise to Charlemagne. But overall, the focus here seems to be on homosocial bonds and pressures, with Roland and Oliver’s influence replacing Charlemagne’s. While Guy’s acceptance of Floripas diminishes his commitment to Charlemagne, it still prioritises homosocial influence.
Roland and Oliver’s appeals reflect the manner in which Floripas has couched her proposal, combining her offer to convert with leveraging her power over the imprisoned Christian forces. Dorothee Metlitzki labels this ‘blackmail’, while Mohja Kahf suggests Floripas ‘forces a proposal of marriage […] on Sir Guy, whose options are understandably limited’.
20 Metlitzki, The Matter of Araby, p. 174; Kahf, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman, p. 35. Floripas tells Duke Neymes
but he wole graunte me his loue,
Of you askape shalle none here.
By him, þat is almyghty aboue,
Ye shalle abye it ellis ful dere. (SoB, 1899–1902)
In
Sir Ferumbras, Floripas is not initially so explicit about threatening the peers, but she does instruct them, ‘perfornyeþ ȝe my wille. / ȝif ȝe þynkeþ to askape away’, ‘do me haue a þyng ; þat al myn herte ys on’ (
SF, 2039–42). Floripas’s assistance is dependent upon Guy accepting her offer, and this is augmented by an explicit threat when he initially rejects her, warning ‘bote if Gy to wyue hure take […] / Ecchone þay scholde for is sake ; or euene beo an-honge’.
21 Sir Ferumbras, lines 2100–1. Floripas also issues this threat in the chanson de geste, lines 2918–19, and in Charles the Grete. As we have seen, concern for their own safety motivates Roland and Oliver to persuade Guy in the
Sowdone, while this threat also prompts Roland’s intervention in
Sir Ferumbras. While Guy ultimately agrees to marry Floripas, and later seems to love her, the Middle English texts adding to their source material the language of precisely the kind of ‘reciprocal married love’ likely to be valued by romance and its readers,
22 See the discussion in Ailes and Hardman, The Legend of Charlemagne in Medieval England, pp. 185, 285–6 (quotation at p. 285). the situation in which he accepts her love is marked by coercion and threats. Although Guy himself seems unconcerned about Floripas’s Islamic heritage, her need to invoke threats and bribery and recruit the peers to make him accept her love suggests that she is not straightforwardly desirable, despite the descriptive emphasis on her fairness throughout. The
Sowdone and
Sir Ferumbras turn away from concerns with religious race, using Floripas’s proposition to consider homosocial commitment instead. However, the presence of Guy’s resistance in itself effects the political demarcation of who is and is not desirable, contributing to the creation of a hierarchy of desire.