GUILLAUME DE SAINT-PAIR
(fl. 1150–1190). A monk at Mont-Saint-Michel when Robert de Torigni was abbot there
(1154–86), Guillaume de Saint-Pair wrote the Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel. The poem,
in almost 3,800 octosyllabic lines, is divided into three sections, the first two purporting
to record the history of the Benedictine monastery, the third describing Mont-Saint-
Michel and recounting legends and miracles attached to it.
Norris J.Lacy
[See also: MONT-SAINT-MICHEL]
Guillaume de Saint-Pair. Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel, ed. Paul Redlich. Marburg: Elwert, 1894.
Beaurepaire, Eugène de. “Étude sur Guillaume de Saint-Pair.” In Mémoires de la Société des
Antiquaires de Normandie. Caen, 1851, pp. 227–53.
GUILLAUME D’ORANGE CYCLE
. The epic cycle of Guillaume d’Aquitaine takes its name from St. Guilhem d’Aquitaine,
who was a grandson through his mother of the first Carolingian king, Charles Martel.
Named count of Toulouse in 789 by his cousin Charlemagne, Guilhem (OFr. Guillaume)
fought for many years against the Muslims, being defeated by them at Orbieu (793) but
capturing Barcelona from them in 803. In 804, he retired to the abbey of Aniane. Shortly
thereafter, he founded the abbey of Gellone nearby—later renamed Saint-Guilhem-le-
Désert in his honor—where he died in 812. Around this saintly hero, there arose in the
12th and 13th centuries twenty-four chansons de geste that fall into two groups: poems
devoted to Guillaume himself and those devoted to his father, Aymeri, or other members
of his family. The ensemble is known as the Guillaume d’Orange (or William of Orange)
Cycle or, alternately, as the Garin de Monglane Cycle, after Guillaume’s legendary
ancestor. With the exception of the Chanson de Guillaume, these poems, grouped in
“cyclical manuscripts,” constitute the largest and most coherent of the chanson de geste
cycles and have much to tell us about the medieval epic.
The manuscript tradition is extensive and attests to both the oral role of the jongleurs
and the importance of writing in the elaboration of the poems; ateliers ensured the
coherence of the ensemble by creating transitional pieces between the texts. The
manuscripts allow us to catch glimpses of earlier redactions and to propose hypotheses on
the development of the geste. One group, called the “short cycle manuscripts,” comprises
only poems relating to Guillaume; another group, characterized by the presence of a six-
syllable line at the end of each laisse, comprises poems about Aymeri; and the third,
called the “long cycle manuscripts,” brings together both types of poems. Several
manuscript families, the work of three different revisers, can be distinguished; the
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