"Por voloir castoier li coarz et li van": lettura dell'Entrée d'Espagne

The anonymous Padovano, author of the Entrée d'Espagne, writes to admonish and educate the knights and the rulers of his time: his explicit aim is to «castoier li coarz et li van». Therefore, it is not surprising that the story of the chanson is provided with a moral intent. The knights of the Entrée often disobey Charlemagne's orders because of their pride and wrath. Also Roland, the best Christian knight, is affected by these vices, as the episode of the conquest of Nobles shows. His adventure in the Orient can be read as a penitential route, at the end of which he learns the high value of humility. Given the moral goal of the text, the author proposes to date the Entrée in the early decades of the fourteenth century (between 1312 and 1328), when the Paduan commune and the Trevisan March were upset by civil wars, determined by the violence and the vicious ambitions of the local nobility.