Mediaeval Tales

Before Tolkien, before modern fantasy, there were these stories: brutal, holy, and unafraid of the miraculous. This 1823 collection gathers legends that medieval Christians actually believed, tales of Emperor Charlemagne and his knight Orlando battling not merely men but the forces of darkness itself. Archbishop Turpin serves as witness and narrator, recounting campaigns in Spain where divine intervention appears as visible angels on the battlefield, where heroes duel supernatural adversaries, and where every sword stroke carries eternal stakes. The Arthurian material adds rounds ofenchantment: wizardry, grail quests, and the doomed glory of Camelot. These are not sanitized fairy tales but raw medieval imagination, unapologetic in their faith and violence. For readers who want fantasy before it learned to be wry about its own premises.