The Song of Roland (Chanson de Roland) was reintroduced to the world with the 1835 discovery of a twelfth-century manuscript in Oxford. Scholarship notes the wide-spread popularity of the story at the time the version that comes to us in the manuscript was composed, which is likely AD 1030-1160. The epic poem (chanson de geste), the oldest surviving work of French literature, is some 4000 lines long, and the last line says, “Here ends the story which Toruldus told.” Who this Toruldus was, and what he means that he “told” the story are matters of no consensus.
Though written in the middle of the High Middle Ages, the story is about an earlier time. If we had to date this time, we’d have to begin at AD 778, the year of the Battle of Rencevaux Pass, and end at AD 814 with the death of Charlemagne. That’s the best we could do, since the story is about this battle during the reign of this king, though, by modern standards, the account of both is highly fictionalized.
In the story and in history, the Pyrenees mountains roughly marked the boundary between Charlemagne’s Frankish and European Christendom and Muslim Spain (Iberia). The Rencevaux Pass in the Pyrenees was the site of an attack on the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army.
In the story, but not in history, Charlemagne is coming to terms of peace with the Muslims in Spain, which are supposed to include the conversion of King Marsile of Saragossa to Christianity. One of Charlemagne’s chief vassal lords, Roland, nominates his own stepfather, Ganelon, as emissary to Marsile’s court. Ganelon believes the Muslims will kill him, believes that Roland knows this, and so interprets Roland’s nomination–which Ganelon must accept–as tantamount to murder. As Charlemagne withdraws his forces from Spain, Roland volunteers for the dangerous mission of commanding the rear guard through the Rencevaux Pass. For revenge and for personal gain, Ganelon convinces Marsile to ambush this vulnerable tail end of the force, as both Ganelon and Marsile will benefit from Roland’s death. As the rear guard is attacked, Roland, notably accompanied by Oliver and Archbishop Turpin, commands his outnumbered forces to fight. Now comes the first great and moving question of the poem: will Roland blow his ivory horn, his olifant, to call for help from Charlemagne, or must he and his men fight alone? The second great question comes at the final movement of the story, when Ganelon is on trial: just what was the nature of his betrayal–merely personal against Roland, or treason against Charlemagne? At the end, Charlemagne wearily resigns himself to endless holy war for his Christendom.
To whom does such a story and such questions belong? We might say that they belong, first of all, to France and the Frankish heritage. But they might just as well belong to all who have received Charlemagne as the father of Europe and the architect of the culture of western Christendom. Or, thinking of the era out of which the poem emerges, they might belong to the Crusades, to the Reconquista of Spain, or to William’s Norman Conquest of Britain (Roland’s song is known to have been sung at the battle of Hasting in AD 1066). By certain historical extensions, they probably belong to the Reformation, too, since Charles V is heir to the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne, who was crowned Imperator Romanorum (Emperor to the Romans) in Rome on Christmas Day, 800 AD, by the Pope himself. This crowning, the first in the west since the fall of Rome and something of an affront to Byzantine Romans, came in recognition of and admonition toward the Emperor’s perpetual support of the Roman pontiff’s prerogatives through thick and thin–the very issue at question in the Imperial Diet of Augsburg in 1530. On the other hand, like the confessing Saxon Electors at that Diet, Charlemagne was a great patron of Christian and classical learning, of a renaissance of catechesis for laity and clergy. And, I think, the story and its questions are ours to embrace today, since even in the pages of this issue of Christian Culture, some of us seem–what shall we say? Inspired? Haunted?–by the geist of Charlemagne’s Christendom.
For us today, Roland, Charlemagne, their world, their values, and their conflicts will seem both familiar and strange. They will be familiar especially if we know more ancient classics, if we remember Achilles, Hector, Aeneas, and Beowulf. Two of the familiar spirits of the west, undying fame and tragic hubris, are alive and well in the The Song of Roland. And in another way, too, it should be familiar; and that is, it is all distinctly Christian.
But, in the same place, it is also strange to us, because the Christianity is that of Christendom, and that, not of an abstraction, an ideology, or an “-ism,” but a unique and irreducible vision of the cosmos from top to bottom. This vision will only suffer under my analysis, so instead I’ll just invite you to open the book and enter in—with the unironic warning for the Christian reader that reading such a thoroughly Christian poem might be something of a shock. Christendom isn’t a comfortable place, and people here don’t think or act like you might expect them to.
There is virtue here to be learned and pursued, to be sure, and the poet is not shy about pointing it out, though it would be good if we paid attention to the way the poet draws this attention, at the very moral center of the story, away from the center of Christendom and out to the rear guard. Here we are not at the heartland, but the borderland. Here we have to do not with throne rooms (and certainly not board rooms) nor with the places where things are being built and into which riches and glory are flowing, but rather with contested territory, declining strength, even retreat.
The main action of the story takes place on a mountain pass on the geographic border of Christendom and that which is not. Notice that the question, “Should Roland blow his horn?” is precisely a question for people on such a border, in the rear guard, the last line of defense–and not really for people in palaces. Borderlands are, in both myth and real life, strange places. Decisions–to call for Christian help or not–must be made here that those in the comfortable center can avoid, or debate objectively, from a safe distance. And those decisions are not just academic or policy-based; they have to do with…well, why don’t you read the story and keep track of all the items at stake around the issue of whether or not to blow the olifant.
Yet, Roland is no Lone Ranger. He is, rather, self-consciously (and different translations may render this term differently) a vassal, and here is a virtue of ancient Christendom for which one would be hard-pressed to find an analog today. Notice that being a vassal, that is, one who is sworn by oath to a lord, is subordinate to this lord, and who owes him homage and more, is something Roland and others are quite proud of; it is a station from which they derive a great deal of positive purpose, identity, and agency for life’s fray. There is nothing cynical or subversive in Roland’s actions or in Toruld’s song over-against vassalage; it is all quite earnest. The rear guard, in his borderland decision about the olifant, is not at all torn about whether or not to be a vassal, but only about how to be the best vassal he can. Go figure.
While mentioning things familiar and strange, whether virtues or not, I’d be remiss not to bring up a few things that every modern analysis will point out, for good or ill.
For example, what I’ve been referring to as “Muslims” in the story are actually more of a projection and invention of the poets of the Middle Ages than they are accurately portrayed followers of Islam. In fact, in many ways they are a mirror image of Christendom, but without the Christianity. Their manners, feudal structure, and even knightly virtues are similar to those of Charlemagne’s kingdom–making them worthy adversaries–except that King Marsile “does not love God; he serves Muhammad and calls upon Apollo [sic!]. He cannot prevent disaster.” This polytheistic portrait does not reflect any historical reality, but apparently it was a compelling portrait for medieval Christians of what the enemies outside their borders were like. Something to think about.
Also, where is the border between the family and the civil estate under King Charlemagne? Ganelon has conspired and betrayed, that is clear. But the issue is whether this was vengeance against a family member or high treason against God’s king. When does a family feud become an assault on Christendom? Charlemagne would see it one way, but the poet allows those who see it another way to speak–but then are they also traitors?
A final item. Charlemagne’s swords and the Spiritus gladius (Sword of the Spirit) are firmly fused together in The Song of Roland. The Archbishop is as adept at hacking pagans to death as he is at administering last rites to the dying. We could have some qualms about this, but then also wonder if these qualms are not implicit worship of the fashionable false gods of our own age. Take note, though, that the saintly and learned Alcuin (died AD 804) had occasion to admonish the historical Charlemagne about the measures he used to convert or suppress the Germanic peoples. The borders of Imperial Christendom are violent places, as Saxon pagans experienced at Verden and Saxon Lutherans at Magdeburg.
None of the above is offered to subject an ancient story or the ancient Christian world to the merely critical canons of modernity. Instead, from the foregoing I come to this point, that The Song of Roland is precisely that sort of book to remind us why we read any old books in the first place. In that spirit, a concluding word from C.S. Lewis:
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at recognizing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means old books. […] Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.1
For readers today, I will not recommend any particular of the several available translations, other than one you can read with ease and pleasure. The beauty of the Old French poetry will likely escape most of us, but the story is deeply moving and instructive even in English.
Endnotes
1. C. S. Lewis, “Introduction,” Athanasius, On the Incarnation, (SVS Press, 1996), 4–5.
