Sir Isumbras

Sir Isumbras is a medieval metrical romance written in Middle English and found in no fewer than nine manuscripts dating to the fifteenth century.

Sir Isumbras lives a comfortable life; he is a generous nobleman with a young family, a beautiful, loving wife and enjoys a respected position in society.

(This resembles the way that Sigurd is warned by the birds to kill Regin in the Saga of the Volsungs when he is splashed by the juice from the dragon's heart as it cooks and can immediately understand their language.

) Immediately, Sir Isumbras's horse falls down dead beneath him, his hawks and hounds flee away in startled fright and a boy comes running up to tell him that his manor house has just burnt to the ground.

He is sent to a convent to receive medical attention and convalescence and when he is fit again, rather than going to the king to claim the honours promised him, he makes his way once more towards the Holy Land as a beggar.

Then he makes his way to Jerusalem, and outside the walls of this city an angel appears one night to tell Sir Isumbras that God has at last forgiven him his sins.

This lady is accustomed to distributing alms to wandering paupers and to taking in the most needy to feed and to ask them about their travels; as though keen to hear news of somebody.

Many scholars of romance have considered an intense piety and emphasis on saintly or Christ-like heroes characteristic of Middle English and Anglo-Norman tales.

Isumbras’ penitential suffering is the focus of much of the poem's pathos, and his reaction to his fate reflects the complexity of the chivalric and hagiographic elements at play in the tale.

In some ways, it could be read as a rejection of chivalric culture, as his sufferings begin with the loss of his horse, hawks, hounds, and manor—all symbols of his knightly status.

[21] Historian Richard Kaeuper has explored this aspect of chivalric piety, arguing that the embrace of hardship and suffering was a core part of knightly self-justification against the harshness of clerical criticism.

[22] The motif of the "man tested by Fate" (happiness in youth or in old age) falls under ATU 938 ("Placidas", "Eustacius") in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index of folktale classification.

The separation of a noble or royal family through calamity or misunderstanding is another common theme among Middle English romances, a feature that Felicity Riddy attributes to its “bourgeois-gentry” readership.

[25] Leila Norako reads the reunification of the family at the battle against the Saracens as an idealized version of Christian unity in the face of Muslim attacks.

[27] Because of the resulting complex relationship between Christian and chivalric ideals in Sir Isumbras, literary criticism of the romance over the past several decades has been dominated by questions over its generic identity.

In her 1965 article, “Sir Isumbras and the Legend of Saint Eustace,” Braswell critiques William of Nassington's dismissal of the tale as “veyn carping” and argued that it had actually been transliterated from the hagiographic material.

[28] However, unlike later scholars, she does not find the reworking of the material problematic, calling the story “an artistic synthesis.” [29] A few years later, in his 1969 book The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, Dieter Mehl included Sir Isumbras in a sub-category of tales he labeled “homiletic romances.”[30] According to Mehl, in these stories “the plot is completely subordinated to the moral and religious theme…One could describe these works, therefore, as either secularized Saints’ legends or legendary romances because they occupy a position exactly in the middle between these two genres.”[31] Other romances Mehl places in this category include The King of Tars, Robert of Sicily, Sir Gowther, Emaré, Le Bone Florence of Rome, Athelston, The Sege of Melayne, and Cheuelere Assigne.

For instance, Susan Crane disagrees with the separation of homiletic romance/secular hagiography from general romance, suggesting that tales such as Sir Isumbras challenge or subvert religious doctrine even as they engage with it.

While accepting the similarities between the stories, she emphasizes the importance of their differences in her 1990 book The Sinful Knights: A Study in Middle English Penitential Romance.

[38] For Hopkins, the central difference between Sir Isumbras and St. Eustace is that the former is performing penance for his sin of pride, while the latter is a true saint, suffering for the sake of the faith without prior wrongdoing.

[40] In recent years, a different type of classification has emerged for Sir Isumbras and similar romances, replacing the homiletic romance/secular hagiography debate.

[44] Eight medieval versions of the Man Tested By Fate are known; except for an exemplum in Gesta Romanorum and the legend of Saint Eustace, all such tales are highly developed romances, such as Sir Isumbras.

[46] Some have drawn attention to close parallels in the story of Sir Isumbras, and in other medieval hagiographic works, with tales from Iran and northern India.