| Sumario: | Is the Pseudo-Turpin’s enigmatic Rainaldus de Albo Spino just an early name of the later Renaut de Montauban of high renown? The arguments commonly offered against this identification are disproved, and three new arguments based on a closer analysis of the Pseudo-Turpin text itself make a positive answer almost unavoidable. The emergence of the toponym ‘Montauban’ in twelfth-century reality and literature is examined in detail, and a certain metamorphosis of the ideas underlying the toponym is traced through the versions of the Renaut de Montauban from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. To round off the picture, the two other constituent elements of the Renaut beside the part of the protagonist, i.e. the character of Maugis and the four brothers’ theme, are also briefly studied in a genetic perspective.
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