Pontus and Sidonia

The text is associated with the lords of La Tour because it derives the ancestors of that family, whose ancestral possessions were in Brittany, from members of the train of prince Pontus.

The story is based on an earlier work, the Anglo-Norman chanson de geste Horn et Rimenhild (ca.

Another translation of the French text was made by Eleanor, Archduchess of Austria (1433–1480).

Two English translations appeared within a century: an anonymous one in 1450, and one by Henry Watson in 1501 and 1511.

[1] A late medieval Dutch translation Die historie van Ponthus ende die schoone Sidonie survived in an edition printed by Niclaes vanden Wouwere in Antwerp in 1564.

Pontus and his train disguised as wild men at the wedding of Sidonia and Genelet, illustration in a manuscript commissioned for Margarethe of Savoy in ca. 1475 (Heidelberg, CPG 142, fol. 122r).