Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Turpin

TURPIN, archbishop of Rheims and the supposititious author of Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi, is probably to be identified with Tilpin, who was archbishop of Rheims towards the end of the 8th century. This Tilpin is alluded to by Hincmar (845-882), his third successor in the see. According to Flodoard (ob. 969), Charles Martel drove Ragobert, bishop of Rheims, from his office, putting in his place a warrior-clerk, Milo. The same writer represents Milo as discharging a mission among the Vascones or Basques, the very people to whom authentic history has ascribed the great Carolingian disaster at Roncesvalles. It is possible that we owe the warlike legends that have accumulated round the name of Turpin to some confusion of his identity with that of his martial predecessor. Flodoard says that Tilpin was originally a monk of St Denis; and we know from Hincmar that, after his appointment to Rheims, he occupied himself in securing the restoration of the metropolitan rights and landed property of his church, whose revenue and prestige had been impaired under Milo's rule. He was, according to the latter authority, elected in the days of Pippin, the son of Charles Martel, i.e., between 752 and 768. He died, if we may trust the evidence of a diploma alluded to by Mabillon, in 794. Hincmar, who composed his epitaph, makes him bishop for forty years and more, from which it is evident that he was elected somewhere about 754. Flodoard, however, states that he died in the forty-seventh year of his bishopric. Tilpin was present at the synod of Rome in 769; and Pope Hadrian, at the request of Charlemagne, sent him a pallium and confirmed the rights of his church (Gallia Christiana, ix. 28-30). According to Flodoard, he substituted monks for canons in the monastery of St Remigius; and 17th-century tradition ascribed to him an ancient pontificale, still extant in Marlot's days (17th century).

The above is a summary of all that authentic history and trustworthy tradition teach about the author to whom the common voice of the Middle Ages ascribed the Historia Caroli Magni. A short account of the work has been given elsewhere (Roland, Legend of). But, popular as this production was during the Middle Ages, it was rather the crystallization of earlier Roland legends than the source of later ones. Potthast has enumerated about fifty codices without by any means, according to M. Gaston Paris, exhausting the list. The latter writer has made the Historia Karoli the subject of a special study (De Pseudo-Turpino, Paris, 1865), which may be recommended as a model of brilliant though cautious scholarship. The great popularity of the pseudo-Turpin seems to date from the latter half of the 12th century; and M. Paris enumerates at least five French translations belonging to the 13th, and one into Latin verse of about the same age. Mr Ward (Cat. of Romances, 549) has recently expressed a doubt as to whether the Turpin chronicle was completed at Vienne.