Paladin
A
paladin is the prototypical
knight in shining
armour, a
hero of sterling character and courage, who rights wrongs and defends the weak and oppressed.
The word comes from
Latin palatinus, "attached to the palace." The original paladins of legend were the heroes of the
Chanson de Roland and the other romances of
chivalry told about the legendary court of King
Charlemagne. There were originally twelve paladins attached to Charlemagne's court. The best known list comes from the
Italian epics of
Tasso and
Ariosto and their successors; it includes:
- Astolpho, descended from Charles Martel, handsome and swaggering; he was Roland's cousin, and went to the moon to fetch back Roland's brains when he went mad, as told in Orlando Furioso.\n* Ferumbras the Saracen who became a Christian.\n* Florismart, friend of Orlando \n* Ganelon the betrayer, who appears in the Inferno by Dante Alighieri\n* Maugris the sorcerer\n* Namo \n* Ogier the Dane, in more recent years the subject of a story by Poul Anderson \n* Oliver, rival to Roland \n* Otuel, another converted Saracen\n* Rinaldo\n* Roland, called Orlando in Italian, the chief hero among the paladins. He was Charlemagne’s nephew.\n* Guy de Bourgogne
A different and much earlier listing of the twelve
Peers of France is contained in the
Chanson de Roland; this list names:
Tales of the paladins of Charlemagne once rivalled the stories of
King Arthur and the knights of the
Round Table in popularity.
Ludovico Ariosto and
Torquato Tasso, whose works were once as widely read and respected as
Shakespeare's, were the principal poets who wrote tales of the
epic deeds of the paladins. The tales that were told of the paladins revolved around the wars between the
Franks and the
Moors during the
Islamic conquests of
Spain and their invasion of southern
France. Their adventures were known as the "Matter of Charlemagne" or "
Matter of France," even as the adventures of King Arthur and his knights were known as the "
Matter of Britain."
The late
nineteenth century Celtic revival benefitted the Arthurian material and caused it to be reworked and recirculated. No such aura of latter-day romance could assist the Charlemagne material, which was strongly
Christian and triumphalist in its presentation. As a result, in the
twentieth century Arthur and his
Camelot are well known while the paladins of Charlemagne, who once enjoyed equal renown, are mostly forgotten.
The paladin was revived in the
Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game in the late 1970s as a
character class archetype of a heroic knight devoted to a sacred order.
Paladin is also the given name for the
M109 howitzer, primarily used by the
US army,
IDF and
Norwegian Army.
