RENAUD DE MONTAUBAN (Rinaldo di Montalbano), one of the most famous figures of French and Italian romance.
His story was attached to the geste of Doon of Mayence by the 13th-century trouvere who wrote the chanson de geste of Renaus de Montauban, better known perhaps as Les quatre fils Aymon.
The four sons of Aymon give their name to inns and streets in nearly every town of France, and Renaud's sword Floberge, and his horse Bayard passed with him into popular legend. The poem opens with the dissensions between Charlemagne and the sons of Doon of Mayence, Beuves d'Aigremont, Doon de Nanteuil and Aymon de Dordone. The rebellious vassals are defeated by the imperial army near Troyes, and, peace established, Aymon rises in favour at court, and supports the emperor, even in his persecution of his four sons, Renaud, Alard, Guichard and Richard. At the end of the usual series of violent adventures and catastrophes, Renaud gives himself up to religion, working as a mason on the church of St. Peter at Cologne, where he receives martyrdom at the hands of his jealous fellow-labourers.
The connection of the four brothers with Montessor, Dort mund, Mayence and Cologne, and the abundant local tradition, mark the heroes as originating from the region between the Rhine and the Meuse. Nevertheless, their adventures in Gascony, with the king of which they take service against the Saracens, are corroborated by historical evidence, and this section of the poem is the oldest. The enemy of Renaud was Charles Martel, not Charlemagne ; King Yon was Odo of Gascony; the victory over the Saracens at Toulouse, in which the brothers are alleged to have taken part, was won by him in 721, and in 719 he sheltered refugees from the dominions of Charles Martel, Chilperic II., king of Neustria, and his mayor of the palace, Raginfred, whom he was compelled to abandon. In a local chronicle of Cologne it is stated that St. Reinoldus died in 697, and in the Latin rhyth
mical Vita his martyrdom is said to have taken place under Bishop Agilolf (d. 717). Thus the romance was evidently com posite before it took its place in the Carolingian cycle.
In Italy Renaud had his greatest vogue, and many episodes were added, as well as the personage of the hero's sister, Brada mante. Rinaldo di Montalbano had been the subject of many Italian poems before Il Rinaldo of Tasso.