Battle of Loquifer, The
An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)
a tale incorporated in the Charlemagne saga, supposed to have been written about the twelfth century. Its hero is Renouart, the giant brother-in-law of William of Orange, and the events take place on the sea. Renouart and his barons are on the shore at Porpaillart, when a Saracen fleet is seen. He is persuaded to enter one of the ships, which immediately set sail; and he is told by Isembert, a hideous monster, that the Saracens mean to flay him alive. Renouart, armed only with a huge bar of wood, kills this creature, and makes the Saracens let him go, while they return to their own country. It is arranged that Renouart will fight one Loquifer, a fairy giant and leader of the Saracens ; and on the issue of this combat the war will depend. They meet on an island near Porpaillart. Loquifer is in possession of a magical balm, which heals all his wounds immediately, and is concealed in his club; but Renouart, who is assisted by angels, at length succeeds in depriving Loquifer of his club, so that his strength departs. Renouart slays him, and the devil carries off his soul. The romance goes on to tell of a duel between William of Orange and Desrame, Renouart's father, in which the latter is slain. Renouart is comforted by fairies, who bear him to Avalon Beaumont where he has many adventures. He is finally wrecked, but is rescued by mermaids, and awakes to find himself on the sands at Porpaillart, from which spot he had been taken to Avalon.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The Encyclopaedia of Occultism's 1920 summary of the plot still holds: La Bataille Loquifer is a chanson de geste of the Guillaume d'Orange cycle, usually dated to the later twelfth century, in which Rainouart fights the fairy giant Loquifer with his great wooden bar. What has moved is scholarship rather than story. The poem, once known mainly through paraphrase, now has a modern critical edition (Monica Barnett's, published for the Anglo-Norman Text Society in the 1970s), and specialists prize it chiefly for the episode Spence passes over quickly ",Morgan and the fairies carrying Rainouart to Avalon",as an early sign of Arthurian matter crossing into the Charlemagne cycle. A modern reader is also likely to be struck that the entry appears in a book about occultism at all: it is treated today simply as medieval French literature.
Written for this edition, 2026.