Note 1712 — The Romaunce of the Sowdone of Babylone and of Ferumbras his Sone who Conquerede Rome: ◊ (continued 2)

p. 49, l. 1711. Turpyn. There was a real bishop of this name, who, according to the Gallia Christiana, held the see of Reims from A.D. 753 to 794. As we find him described in the romances, Turpin was the very type of a knight-bishop. In the poem of Aspremont, he bears before the Christian army the wood of the true cross which in his hands beams with brightness like the sun. In the romance of the Enfances Ogier it was he, into whose custody Ogier was given, when he had been made a prisoner after his revolt, in company with the king of Lombardy, against Charlemagne (see above, note to l. 856), and who, notwithstanding the order of Charles to have Ogier starved to death, kept the Dane alive, who afterwards, when the Saracens invaded France, proved a great help to the Christian arms. As we read in the Chanson de Roland, ll. 2242ss, Turpin met his death at Roncesvaux, but according to the Chronicle of Turpin, he survived the disaster of Roncesvaux, and was saying mass for the dead, when he saw the angels carrying the soul of Roland up to heaven. But from Gaston Paris’s Essay De Pseudo-Turpino we know this chronicle to be an apocryphical book written by two monks of the eleventh and twelfth century.