Animal Characters. Bruce Thomas Boehrer
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distinctive, superior, exceptional—in a word, heroic. In this respect he embodies the ideals of the courtly elite that romance as a genre is designed to celebrate. To this extent one could argue that in Orlando furioso—and more broadly within the romance tradition it epitomizes—rank trumps species as a marker of difference between persons.
On this view, Baiardo would, in fact, appear to be more suitable as a companion and peer for Rinaldo than would the vast mass of humanity. Certainly the romance tradition insists on a special linkage. Baiardo first appears, as Bayard, in the early thirteenth-century Quatre fils Aymon, traditionally attributed to Renaud de Montaubon, and here the horse already possesses the qualities that distinguish him as a literary figure. On one occasion, for instance, Renaud and Bayard compete in a grand horse race whose prize includes the crown of Charlemagne. Before the race commences, both horse and rider have been subjected to insults by other members of the field, so pride is particularly at stake. When the starting trumpets sound, Bayard and his master quickly find themselves at the rear of the field, and Renaud takes time to give his horse a pep talk:
[W]han Reynawde saw that it was tyme for to renne after the other: he spurred his horse, & said to bayarde, we been ferre behynde ye myght wel abide. For if ye be not soone afore: ye shall be blamed, whan Bayarde heard his master speake thus: he understoode him as well as thoughe he had been a man. Than he grylled his nosethrels and bare his head up and made a long necke, and tooke his course so fast that it semed the erthe should haue sonken under hym, and within a whyle he was passed all the other horses a ferre waye. (Right plesaunt…historie, fol. 49v)
[“Baiart, ce dist Renaus, trop uos alons tarjant.
Se cil i vont sans nos, blasme i averons grant;
Reprovés vos sera à trestot vo vivant.”
Baiart oï Renaut, si va le cief dreçant;
Ensement l’enten li com mere son enfant.
Il fronce des narines, le cief vait escoant.
Renaus lache les regnes, Baiart s’en va bruiant,
Tot à col estendu, le terre (porprennant);
En trois arpens de terre en a trespassé tant,
Que trestot le plus cointe se tient por (recreant).]
(4927–36)
Here the bond between horse and knight manifests itself in a common language and a harmony of interest, with the former acting as an expression of the latter. The La Vallière Manuscript of the Quatre fils has Bayard understand Renaud “com mere son enfant,” that is, as a mother does her child; William Caxton's 1489 English translation, perhaps drawn from a different copy text, renders the same line as “he understood him as well as thoughe he had been a man.” Like Renaud, Bayard is concerned with honor, his own and his master's, and the two figures base their claim to heroism on the determination to maintain their good name through exploits of the sort described in this episode. In the process, however, the Quatre fils Aymon also celebrates resistance to authority, situating itself within the tradition of the Old French “epics of revolt” (Calin 113), which take feudal injustice and rightful disobedience as their subject matter. From this standpoint the poem retails the exploits of Renaud in resisting the persecution of Charlemagne, whose nephew Renaud has slain after quarreling over a game of chess. In the action that follows, Bayard and Renaud emerge as equally resourceful opponents of Charlemagne, and when the two human antagonists are finally reconciled, it is at the expense of the horse, who effectively takes Renaud's place as the object of Charlemagne's punishment:
[Charlemagne] made be brought afore hym the good horse of Reynawde Bayarde. And whan he saw him: he began for to saye in this wyse. Ha Bayarde, bayarde, thou hast often angred me, but I am come to ye poynt, god gramercy for to auenge me…. And whan the kyng had sayd so: he made a great milstone to be fastened at the necke of bayard, and than made him to be cast from the brydge downe into the water, & whan Bayarde was thus tombled into the ryuer…the kynge…made great Ioye and so said. Ha bayarde nowe haue I that I desyred and wysshed so lo[n]g For ye be now dead…. And whan the fre[n]che men sawe the greate cruelnes of Charlemayne that auenged himself upon a poore beast: they were yll co[n]tent. (Right plesaunt…historie, fol. 146v)
[Puis (Charlemagne) fist mander Baiart que Renau li fist rendre.
“Baiart, dist Charlemagnes, ta vigor m’(as) fait vandre
Maint jor m’as (fait corrout), maint povre, disner, prendre.”
................................................
Li rois fist Baiart penre iluecques maintenant.
Une mu(e)le li pent à son col par devant,
Et il fu sor le pont, si lo bota avant.
.............................
(Quant le voit Charlemaignes, si en ot joie grant.
“Baiart, ce dist li rois, or ai quanque demant.”)
.....................................
Quant François l’ont oï, si en ont mautalent.]
(15296–98, 303–5, 308–9, 12)
In the event the horse not only functions as “the pharmakos, the sacrificial victim immolated to ensure the others’ happiness” (Calin 95), but in the process he also throws into further relief the injustice of the oppression under which he and his master have suffered. Moreover, in representing his master for the purpose of punishment, Bayard also reaffirms his own heroic status as equivalent to that of Renaud: smashing the millstone that weighs him down, the horse escapes his tormentors to live out his life at ease in the forest of the Ardennes.
The Quatre fils Aymon proved highly popular in the late medieval and early modern periods, surviving in numerous manuscripts, translations, and adaptations.1 It spawned verse continuations in thirteenth-century Spain and fourteenth-century Italy and received mention in England in the early thirteenth century. However, the work's influence on later chivalric verse culminated with the Italian romances of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Luigi Pulci's Morgante (1483), for instance, revisits the exploits of Rinaldo and Baiardo, again remarking on the intimacy of the relationship between man and horse. Thus, for example, when Pulci's Rinaldo finds himself beset by a band of giants, Baiardo fights as furiously as he, prompting one of the giants to exclaim, “[G]o on your road, / for this your horse is better than a friend” [“piglia il tuo cammino, / ché questo tuo destriere è buon compagno” (16.103, 3–4)]. Taking his advice, Rinaldo finds rest in a shepherd's hut, but as soon as the knight falls asleep, his host steals Baiardo and conveys him to the nearest city, where he offers the horse for sale to the city hangman. Before committing to the purchase, the hangman asks for a display of riding, and predictable mayhem ensues:
[M]ost eager to comply, the shepherd spurred
Baiardo, who could feel who’d mounted him:
Quickly, therefore, into midair he leapt.
The shepherd, who knew not the art of riding,
fast found himself upon the barren ground
with two ribs broken.
[(Q)uel pastor di spron détte al cavallo.
Baiardo conosceva a chi egli é sotto:
Subitamente prese in aria un salto,
onde il pastor, ch’a l’arte non è dotto
so ritrovò di fatto in su lo smalto
e del petto due costole s’ha rotto.]
(16.108.8–16.109.5)
Here, as in the Quatre fils Aymon, Baiardo operates as a figure of calculated resistance who possesses the functional equivalent of human intelligence. In the Quatre fils he understands Renaud's conversation; in the Morgante he recognizes when an unfit rider climbs onto his back; in both cases he exhibits self-awareness and intellectual discrimination while casting his lot with his master and opposing his master's enemies. More than a well-trained animal in the modern understanding of the