Aiol and Mirabel

The narrative recounts the adventures of the young knight Aiol who attempts to restore his father's fiefdom, and along the way marries a Saracen princess.

Aiol is a young knight whose father, Elis, lost his lands and his reputation because of the schemes of a traitor named Makaire de Lausanne.

He is ridiculed at Louis's court in Orleans, but a young woman, Lusiane, recognizes the nobility in him and falls in love with him, not knowing that their mothers were sisters, but Aiol continues his journey.

In Pamplona, he rescues the young Saracen woman Mirabel, the daughter of the Muslim king Mibrien, from two abductors, and falls in love with her.

All is well that ends well: Mibrien converts to Christianity, Makaire is quartered (like Ganelon[2]), Aiol and Mirabel, and his father Elie, go back to Burgundy; the two sons go to Venice.

[5] The manuscript, BnF Français 25516, also contains a version of Elie de Saint Gille, and may be from the library of Margaret of Flanders, Duchess of Brabant; the two are called the "small cycle" of Saint-Gilles.

The first dates from the end of the 14th century and is a prose romance by Andrea da Barberino; B. Finet-van der Schaaf surmises this is based on a now-lost Italian version.

Linguistic training is part of the general education she received which "prepare[s] [her and the heroine of La Chanson de Gaufrey] for their eventual encounters with Christian knights".