Vikings
Vikings were Norse seafarers speaking the Old Norse language, who during the late 8th to late 11th centuries and traded from their Northern European homelands across wide areas of Europe, explored westwards to Iceland and Vinland. The term is commonly extended in modern English and other vernaculars to the inhabitants of Norse home communities during what has become known as the Viking Age; this period of Nordic military and demographic expansion constitutes an important element in the early medieval history of Scandinavia, the British Isles, Kievan Rus' and Sicily. Facilitated by advanced sailing and navigational skills, characterised by the longship, Viking activities at times extended into the Mediterranean littoral, North Africa, the Middle East. Following extended phases of exploration and settlement, Viking communities and governments were established in diverse areas of north-western Europe, Belarus and European Russia, the North Atlantic islands and as far as the north-eastern coast of North America.
This period of expansion witnessed the wider dissemination of Norse culture, while introducing strong foreign cultural influences into Scandinavia itself, with profound developmental implications in both directions. Popular, modern conceptions of the Vikings—the term applied casually to their modern descendants and the inhabitants of modern Scandinavia—often differ from the complex picture that emerges from archaeology and historical sources. A romanticised picture of Vikings as noble savages began to emerge in the 18th century. Perceived views of the Vikings as alternatively violent, piratical heathens or as intrepid adventurers owe much to conflicting varieties of the modern Viking myth that had taken shape by the early 20th century. Current popular representations of the Vikings are based on cultural clichés and stereotypes, complicating modern appreciation of the Viking legacy; these representations are not always accurate — for example, there is no evidence that they wore horned helmets.
One etymology derives víking from the feminine vík, meaning "creek, small bay". Various theories have been offered that the word viking may be derived from the name of the historical Norwegian district of Viken, meaning "a person from Viken". According to this theory, the word described persons from this area, it is only in the last few centuries that it has taken on the broader sense of early medieval Scandinavians in general. However, there are a few major problems with this theory. People from the Viken area were not called'Viking' in Old Norse manuscripts, but are referred to as víkverir,'Vík dwellers'. In addition, that explanation could explain only the masculine and ignore the feminine, a serious problem because the masculine is derived from the feminine but hardly vice versa; the form occurs as a personal name on some Swedish runestones. The stone of Tóki víking was raised in memory of a local man named Tóki who got the name Tóki víking because of his activities as a viking; the Gårdstånga Stone uses the phrase "ÞeR drængaR waRu wiða unesiR i wikingu", referring to the stone's dedicatees as vikings.
The Västra Strö 1 Runestone has an inscription in memory of a Björn, killed when "i viking". In Sweden there is a locality known since the middle ages as Vikingstad; the Bro Stone was risen in memory of Assur, said to have protected the land from vikings. There is little indication of any negative connotation in the term before the end of the Viking Age. Another etymology, one that gained support in the early twenty-first century, derives Viking from the same root as Old Norse vika, f.'sea mile', originally'the distance between two shifts of rowers', from the root *weik or *wîk, as in the Proto-Germanic verb *wîkan,'to recede'. This is found in the Proto-Nordic verb *wikan,'to turn', similar to Old Icelandic víkja'to move, to turn', with well-attested nautical usages. Linguistically, this theory is better attested, the term most predates the use of the sail by the Germanic peoples of North-Western Europe, because the Old Frisian spelling shows that the word was pronounced with a palatal k and thus in all probability existed in North-Western Germanic before that palatalisation happened, that is, in the 5th century or before.
In that case, the idea behind it seems to be that the tired rower moves aside for the rested rower on the thwart when he relieves him. The Old Norse feminine víking may have been a sea journey characterised by the shifting of rowers, i.e. a long-distance sea journey, because in the pre-sail era, the shifting of rowers would distinguish long-distance sea journeys. A víkingr would originally have been a participant on a sea journey characterised by the shifting of rowers. In that case, the word Viking was not connected to Scandinavian seafarers but assumed this meaning when the Scandinavians begun to dominate the seas. In Old English, the word wicing appears first in the Anglo-Saxon poem, which dates from the 9th century. In Old English, in the history of the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen written by Adam of Bremen in about 1070, the term referred to Scandi
Charles the Bald
Charles the Bald was the King of West Francia, King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor. After a series of civil wars during the reign of his father, Louis the Pious, Charles succeeded by the Treaty of Verdun in acquiring the western third of the Carolingian Empire, he was the youngest son of Louis the Pious by his second wife, Judith. He was born on 13 June 823 in Frankfurt, when his elder brothers were adults and had been assigned their own regna, or subkingdoms, by their father; the attempts made by Louis the Pious to assign Charles a subkingdom, first Alemannia and the country between the Meuse and the Pyrenees were unsuccessful. The numerous reconciliations with the rebellious Lothair and Pepin, as well as their brother Louis the German, King of Bavaria, made Charles's share in Aquitaine and Italy only temporary, but his father did not give up and made Charles the heir of the entire land, once Gaul. At a diet in Aachen in 837, Louis the Pious bade. Pepin of Aquitaine died in 838, whereupon Charles at last received that kingdom, which angered Pepin's heirs and the Aquitainian nobles.
The death of the emperor in 840 led to the outbreak of war between his sons. Charles allied himself with his brother Louis the German to resist the pretensions of the new Emperor Lothair I, the two allies defeated Lothair at the Battle of Fontenoy-en-Puisaye on 25 June 841. In the following year, the two brothers confirmed their alliance by the celebrated Oaths of Strasbourg; the war was brought to an end by the Treaty of Verdun in August 843. The settlement gave Charles the Bald the kingdom of the West Franks, which he had been up until governing and which corresponded with what is now France, as far as the Meuse, the Saône, the Rhône, with the addition of the Spanish March as far as the Ebro. Louis received the eastern part of the Carolingian Empire, known as East Francia and as Germany. Lothair retained the Kingdom of Italy, he received the central regions from Flanders through the Rhineland and Burgundy as king of Middle Francia. The first years of Charles's reign, up to the death of Lothair I in 855, were comparatively peaceful.
During these years the three brothers continued the system of "confraternal government", meeting with one another, at Koblenz, at Meerssen, at Attigny. In 858, Louis the German, invited by disaffected nobles eager to oust Charles, invaded the West Frankish kingdom. Charles was so unpopular that he was unable to summon an army, he fled to Burgundy, he was saved only by the support of the bishops, who refused to crown Louis the German king, by the fidelity of the Welfs, who were related to his mother, Judith. In 860, he in his turn tried to seize the kingdom of his nephew, Charles of Provence, but was repulsed. On the death of his nephew Lothair II in 869, Charles tried to seize Lothair's dominions by having himself consecrated as King of Lotharingia at Metz, but he was compelled to open negotiations when Louis found support among Lothair's former vassals. Lotharingia was partitioned between Louis in the resulting treaty. Besides these family disputes, Charles had to struggle against repeated rebellions in Aquitaine and against the Bretons.
Led by their chiefs Nomenoë and Erispoë, who defeated the king at the Battle of Ballon and the Battle of Jengland, the Bretons were successful in obtaining a de facto independence. Charles fought against the Vikings, who devastated the country of the north, the valleys of the Seine and Loire, up to the borders of Aquitaine. At the Vikings' successful siege and sack of Paris in 845 and several times thereafter Charles was forced to purchase their retreat at a heavy price. Charles led various expeditions against the invaders and, by the Edict of Pistres of 864, made the army more mobile by providing for a cavalry element, the predecessor of the French chivalry so famous during the next 600 years. By the same edict, he ordered fortified bridges to be put up at all rivers to block the Viking incursions. Two of these bridges at Paris saved the city during its siege of 885–886. In 875, after the death of the Emperor Louis II, Charles the Bald, supported by Pope John VIII, traveled to Italy, receiving the royal crown at Pavia and the imperial insignia in Rome on 29 December.
Louis the German a candidate for the succession of Louis II, revenged himself by invading and devastating Charles' dominions, Charles had to return hastily to West Francia. After the death of Louis the German, Charles in his turn attempted to seize Louis's kingdom, but was decisively beaten at the Battle of Andernach on 8 October 876. In the meantime, John VIII, menaced by the Saracens, was urging Charles to come to his defence in Italy. Charles again crossed the Alps, but this expedition was received with little enthusiasm by the nobles, by his regent in Lombardy and they refused to join his army. At the same time Carloman, son of Louis the German, entered northern Italy. Charles, ill and in great distress, started on his way back to Gaul, but died while crossing the pass of Mont Cenis at Brides-les-Bains, on 6 October 877. According to the Annals of St-Bertin, Charles was hastily buried at the abbey of Nantua, Burgundy because the bearers were unable to withstand the stench of his decaying body.
He was to have been may have been transferred there later. It was recorded that there was a memorial brass there, melted down at the Revolution. Charles was succeeded by Louis. Charles was
Bradamante
Bradamante is a fictional knight heroine in two epic poems of the Renaissance: Orlando Innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo and Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto. Since the poems exerted a wide influence on culture, she became a recurring character in Western art. Bradamante, a female Christian knight, is the sister of Rinaldo and falls in love with a Saracen warrior named Ruggiero, but refuses to marry him unless he converts from Islam. An expert in combat, she wields a magical lance that unhorses anyone it touches, rescues Ruggiero from being imprisoned by the wizard Atlantes; the two lovers are separated many times in the story, her parents reject the suitor after Ruggiero converts to Christianity, preferring a nobleman called Leo. She decides to marry whoever withstands her in combat and Ruggiero overcomes the challenge. At the end, their marriage gives rise to the noble House of Este, who were patrons to both Boiardo and Ariosto; the poems drew from legends of Charlemagne, chansons de geste, blended recurring motifs found in the Matter of France and the Matter of Britain.
In 1582, French dramatist Robert Garnier wrote a tragicomedy named Bradamante that further develops the love story between the heroine and Roger. Several eponymous operas have been written about the heroine: La Bradamante, written by Pietro Paolo Bissari with music composed by Francesco Cavalli, was first performed in 1650 at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo of Venice. Bradamante, composed by Louis Lacoste with a libretto written by Pierre-Charles Roy, was first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique on 2 May 1707. Bradamante, written by Heinrich Joseph von Collin with music composed by Johann Friedrich Reichardt, was first performed in Vienna on 3 February 1809. Bradamante, composed by Eduard Tauwitz, was first performed in Riga in 1844, she appears as a character in Handel's opera Alcina. Bradamante appears as one of the leading characters in several novels. For example, in Italo Calvino's surrealistic ironic 1959 novel Il Cavaliere inesistente. In cinema, she is depicted by Barbara De Rossi in the 1983 Italian film Paladini-storia d'armi e d'amori – a film based on the legends surrounding the Peers of Charlemagne.
She appears as a Lancer class Servant in the mobile game Fate/Grand Order. List of woman warriors in legend and mythology Media related to Bradamante at Wikimedia Commons
Auguste Longnon
Auguste Honoré Longnon was a French historian and archivist. He is remembered for his research in the field of historical geography and for his edition of the 15th century poet, Francois Villon. Up to the age of 20 he worked as a shoemaker for his father. From 1868 he studied at the École pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, at the same time, worked at the National Archives as an assistant to Alfred Maury. On, he received a promotion as sous-chef at the Archives, became a director of studies at the École pratique des Hautes Études. From 1892 to 1911 he held the chair of historical geography at the Collège de France. In 1886, he was chosen as a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. In the 1880s he published an atlas of French history, "Atlas historique de la France depuis César jusqu'à nos jours", considered to constitute the actual beginning of French historical atlases; the following is a listing of some of Longnon's many original works and editions of other authors: Études sur les pagi de la Gaule, 1869 – Studies on the pagi of Gaul.
François Villon et ses légataires, 1873 – Francois Villon and his legatees. Géographie historique et administrative de la Gaule romaine, 1876-93 – Historical and administrative geography of Roman Gaul. Étude biographique sur François Villon, d'après les documents inédits conservés aux archives nationales, 1877 – Biographical study of François Villon, according to unpublished documents held by the National Archives. Géographie de la Gaule au VIe siècle, 1878 – Geography of Gaul in the 6th century. Atlas historique de la France depuis César jusqu'à nos jours, 1885-89 – Historical atlas of France from the time of Caesar up to the present. Dictionnaire topographique du département de la Marne, 1891 – Topographical dictionary of the département of Marne. Œuvres complètes de François Villon, publiées d'après les manuscrits et les plus anciennes éditions, 1892 – Complete works of François Villon. Méliador. Roman comprenant les poésies lyriques de Wenceslas de Bohême, duc de Luxembourg et de Brabant, 1895-99 – "Meliador".
Including lyrical poems of Wenceslas of Bohemia, duke of Luxembourg and of Brabant. Origine des noms de communes du département de la Haute-Marne, 1908 – The origin of commune names in the department of Haute-Marne. Origines & formation de la nationalité française. Les noms de lieu de la France. Works written by or about Auguste Longnon at Wikisource
Chivalric romance
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative, popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures of a chivalric knight-errant portrayed as having heroic qualities, who goes on a quest, it developed further from the epics. Romances reworked legends, fairy tales, history to suit the readers' and hearers' tastes, but by c. 1600 they were out of fashion, Miguel de Cervantes famously burlesqued them in his novel Don Quixote. Still, the modern image of "medieval" is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, the word medieval evokes knights, distressed damsels and other romantic tropes. Romance literature was written in Old French, Anglo-Norman and Provençal, in Portuguese, English and German. During the early 13th century, romances were written as prose. In romances those of French origin, there is a marked tendency to emphasize themes of courtly love, such as faithfulness in adversity.
Unlike the form of the novel and like the chansons de geste, the genre of romance dealt with traditional themes. These were distinguished from earlier epics by heavy use of marvelous events, the elements of love, the frequent use of a web of interwoven stories, rather than a simple plot unfolding about a main character; the earliest forms were invariably in verse, but the 15th century saw many in prose retelling the old, rhymed versions. The romantic form pursued the wish-fulfillment dream where the heroes and heroines were considered representations of the ideals of the age while the villains embodied the threat to their ascendancy. There is a persistent archetype, which involved a hero's quest; this quest or journey served as the structure. With regards to the structure, scholars recognize the similarity of the romance to folk tales. Vladimir Propp identified a basic form for this genre and it involved an order that began with initial situation followed by departure, first move, second move, resolution.
This structure is applicable to romance narratives. Overwhelmingly, these were linked in some way only in an opening frame story, with three thematic cycles of tales: these were assembled in imagination at a late date as the "Matter of Rome", the "Matter of France" and the "Matter of Britain". In reality, a number of "non-cyclical" romances were written without any such connection. Indeed, some tales are found so that scholars group them together as the "Constance cycle" or the "Crescentia cycle"—referring not to a continuity of character and setting, but to the recognizable plot. Many influences are clear in the forms of chivalric romance; the medieval romance developed out of the medieval epic, in particular the Matter of France developing out of such tales as the Chanson de Geste, with intermediate forms where the feudal bonds of loyalty had giants, or a magical horn, added to the plot. The epics of Charlemagne, unlike such ones as Beowulf had feudalism rather than the tribal loyalties; the romance form is distinguished from the earlier epics of the Middle Ages by the changes of the 12th century, which introduced courtly and chivalrous themes into the works.
This occurred regardless of congruity to the source material. Chivalry was treated as continuous from Roman times; this extended to such details as clothing. When Priam sends Paris to Greece in a 14th-century work, Priam is dressed in the mold of Charlemagne, Paris is dressed demurely, but in Greece, he adopts the flashier style, with multicolored clothing and fashionable shoes, cut in lattice-work—signs of a seducer in the era. Historical figures reappeared, reworked, in romance; the entire Matter of France derived from known figures, suffered somewhat because their descendants had an interest in the tales that were told of their ancestors, unlike the Matter of Britain. Richard Coeur de Lion reappeared in romance, endowed with a fairy mother who arrived in a ship with silk sails and departed when forced to behold the sacrament, bare-handed combat with a lion, magical rings, prophetic dreams. Hereward the Wake's early life appeared in chronicles as the embellished, romantic adventures of an exile, complete with rescuing princess and wrestling with bears.
Fulk Fitzwarin, an outlaw in King John's day, has his historical background a minor thread in the episodic stream of romantic adventures. The earliest medieval romances dealt with themes from folklore, which diminished over time, though remaining a presence. Many early tales had the knight
Aquitaine
Aquitaine, archaic Guyenne/Guienne, is a historical region of France and a former administrative region of the country. Since 1 January 2016 it has been part of the region Nouvelle-Aquitaine, it is situated in the south-western part of Metropolitan France, along the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees mountain range on the border with Spain. It is composed of the five departments of Dordogne, Lot-et-Garonne, Pyrénées-Atlantiques and Gironde. In the Middle Ages, Aquitaine was a duchy, whose boundaries fluctuated considerably. There are traces of human settlement by prehistoric peoples in the Périgord, but the earliest attested inhabitants in the south-west were the Aquitani, who were not proper Celtic people, but more akin to the Iberians. Although a number of different languages and dialects were in use in the area during ancient times, it is most that the prevailing language of Aquitaine during the late pre-historic to Roman period was an early form of the Basque language; this has been demonstrated by various Aquitanian names and words that were recorded by the Romans, which are easily readable as Basque.
Whether this Aquitanian language was a remnant of a Vasconic language group that once extended much farther, or it was limited to the Aquitaine/Basque region is not known. One reason the language of Aquitaine is important is because Basque is the last surviving non-Indo-European language in western Europe and it has had some effect on the languages around it, including Spanish and, to a lesser extent, French; the original Aquitania at the time of Caesar's conquest of Gaul included the area bounded by the Garonne River, the Pyrenees and the Atlantic Ocean. The name may stem from Latin'aqua', maybe derived from the town "Aquae Augustae", "Aquae Tarbellicae" or just "Aquis" or as a more general geographical feature. Under Augustus' Roman rule, since 27 BC the province of Aquitania was further stretched to the north to the River Loire, thus including proper Gaul tribes along with old Aquitani south of the Garonne within the same region. In 392, the Roman imperial provinces were restructured as Aquitania Prima, Aquitania Secunda and Aquitania Tertia, better known as Novempopulania in the south-west.
Accounts of Aquitania during the Early Middle Ages are a blur, lacking precision, but there was much unrest. The Visigoths were called into Gaul as foederati, they established themselves as the de facto rulers in south-west Gaul as central Roman rule collapsed. Visigoths established their capital in Toulouse. In 507, they were expelled south to Hispania after their defeat in the Battle of Vouillé by the Franks, who became the new rulers in the area to the south of the Loire; the Roman Aquitania Tertia remained in place as Novempopulania, where a duke was appointed to hold a grip over the Basques. These dukes were quite detached from central Frankish overlordship, sometimes governing as independent rulers with strong ties to their kinsmen south of the Pyrenees; as of 660, the foundations for an independent Aquitaine/Vasconia polity were established by the duke Felix of Aquitaine, a magnate from Toulouse of Gallo-Roman stock. Despite its nominal submission to the Merovingians, the ethnic make-up of new realm Aquitaine wasn't Frankish, but Gallo-Roman north of the Garonne and main towns and Basque south of the Garonne.
A united Basque-Aquitanian realm reached its heyday under Odo the Great's rule. In 721, the Aquitanian duke fended Umayyad troops off at Toulouse, but in 732, an Umayyad expedition commanded by Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi defeated Odo next to Bordeaux, went on to loot its way up to Poitiers. Odo was required to pledge allegiance to the Frankish Charles Martel in exchange for help against the advancing Arabic forces. Basque-Aquitanian self-rule temporarily came to a halt in 768 after the assassination of Waifer. In 781, Charlemagne decided to proclaim his son Louis King of Aquitaine within the Carolingian Empire, ruling over a realm comprising the Duchy of Aquitaine and the Duchy of Vasconia He suppressed various Basque uprisings venturing into the lands of Pamplona past the Pyrenees after ravaging Gascony, with a view to imposing his authority in the Vasconia to south of Pyrenees. According to his biography, he achieved everything he wanted and after staying overnight in Pamplona, on his way back his army was attacked in Roncevaux in 812, but narrowly escaped an engagement at the Pyrenean passes.
Seguin, count of Bordeaux and Duke of Vasconia, seemed to have attempted a detachment from the Frankish central authority on Charlemagne's death. The new emperor Louis the Pious reacted by removing him from his capacity, which stirred the Basques into rebellion; the king in turn sent his troops to the territory, obtaining their submission in two campaigns and killing the duke, while his family crossed the Pyrenees and continued to foment risings against Frankish power. In 824, the 2nd Battle of Roncevaux took place, in which counts Aeblus and Aznar, Frankish vassals from the Duchy of Vasconia sent by the new King of Aquitaine, were captured by the joint forces of Iñigo Arista and the Banu Qasi. Before Pepin's death, emperor Louis had appointed a new king in 832, his son Charles the Bald, while the Aquitanian lords elected Pepin II as king; this struggle for control of the kingdom led to
Ferragut
Ferragut was a character—a Saracen paladin, sometimes depicted as a giant—in texts dealing with the Matter of France, including the Historia Caroli Magni, Italian romantic epics, such as Orlando innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo and Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto. In the tales, he was portrayed as physically invulnerable except at his navel/stomach, was killed by the paladin Roland. "Ferracutus" was the Latin form of the name used in the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle. Thomas Bulfinch used "Ferragus" in his English adaptation Legends of Charlemagne, but the form "Ferragut" appears to be the most frequent in English today. In his Orlando innamorato, Matteo Maria Boiardo used Feraguto/Feragu. Ferraù is a syncopated form used in Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto; the character appears in one of the main episodes of the so-called Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, a Latin chronicle concerning the feats of Charlemagne and the paladin Roland from the middle of the 12th century. In a story modeled on David and Goliath, Roland battles the Saracen giant Ferracutus, holding the city of Nájera.
A descendant of Goliath, sent to Nájera from Syria by the Emir of Babylon to fight the Christian army of Charlemagne, the giant Ferracutus didn't fear any arrow or spear and had the strength of forty strong men, was nearly twelve cubits tall, with a face a cubit long, a nose a hand long, members nearly four cubits long and fingers the length of three hands. Charlemagne sent several of his men to fight the giant: the Dacian Ogier, Reinaldos of Montalbán, Constantine king of Rome, Count Hoel, twenty other fighters two by two, who were defeated effortlessly by the giant and put to prison; as soon as Roland obtained permission from Charlemagne, he approached the giant alone and they fought for two days using swords, wooden sticks and bare fists. They accidentally killed each other's horses. During the second night, the courteous Roland placed a stone beneath the head of the giant as a pillow, upon waking the giant revealed to Roland that he was only vulnerable in one spot: his navel, they had a conversation about religion discussing matters such as the Holy Trinity, the Genesis, the Immaculate Conception and Resurrection of Jesus.
After this conversation another fight took place in which Roland used the knowledge his opponent had given him, killed Ferragut by inserting a spear in his navel. The Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle was a massive success throughout Europe and was adapted or borrowed from until the Renaissance. An adaptation of the Pseudo-Turpin story of Ferraguto and his mortal duel with Orlando occurs in the anonymous Franco-Venetian epic L'Entrée d'Espagne; the story appears in the 14th-century Italian epic La Spagna. Based in part in the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, Jean or Jehan Bagnyon's 15th-century La Conqueste du grand roy Charlemagne des Espagnes et les vaillances des douze pairs de France, et aussi celles de Fierabras includes the story of Ferragus; this work knew a European success and was adapted into Castilian, Portuguese and English. While the incident is not depicted in it, Ferraguto's death at the hands of Orlando is presented as a well-known fact in Luigi Pulci's epic Morgante. In Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando innamorato, Ferraguto is a leading Saracen knight, the nephew of King Marsilio of Spain, one of the many characters passionately in love with Angelica.
At the beginning of the poem and her brother Argalia arrive at the court of the Emperor Charlemagne in Paris, announcing that any knight who defeats Argalia in single combat will win Angelica's hand in marriage, but if he loses he will become Argalia's prisoner. Ferraguto is among the first knights to is unhorsed. However, he angrily refuses to accept his captivity and Argalia and Angelica flee in terror. Ferraguto catches Argalia, kills him and steals his helmet, but he promises the dying man only to wear it for a few days. At the beginning of Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso, Ferraù loses the helmet in a stream and is confronted by the ghost of Argalia, who tells him he must find another helmet instead. Ferraù vows to win the helmet of Almonte, which now belongs to the greatest Christian knight, Orlando, he manages to possess it for a while but Ariosto predicts his ultimate death at the hands of Orlando. Like the character in the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle and the 14th-century Italian epic La Spagna, Ferraù is invulnerable except via his navel.
Ferragus is the name of a different Saracen giant from Portugal in the medieval romance Valentine and Orson. Brother of Esclarmonde, he is responsible for imprisoning Bellissant, the sister of King Pepin, is beheaded by the Duke of Aquitaine. Fierabras: a Saracen knight, appearing in several chansons de geste and texts relating to the Matter of France. Unlike Ferragut, Fierabras converts to Christianity, joins Charlemagne's cause, becomes a ruler of Spain. Faraj ben Sālim known as Farragut of Girgenti, a Sicilian-Jewish physician and translator. Ariosto:Orlando Furioso, verse translation by Barbara Reynolds in two volumes. Part one (
