The Medieval Record by Andrea Alfred J.;

Author:Andrea, Alfred J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company, Incorporated
Published: 2020-01-12T16:00:00+00:00

{214} The Ideal Feudal Warrior?

57. THE SONG OF ROLAND 33

The chanson de geste, or “song of heroic deeds,” known as The Song of Roland is France’s earliest and greatest epic poem, although the singular is misleading. Some eight manuscripts exist of versions of the poem in various Old French dialects, and quite a few other versions exist in a variety of medieval tongues, such as Welsh and Norse. Of the eight Old French texts, scholars agree that the most authentic is a manuscript at Oxford that dates to the second quarter of the twelfth century. Although it has serious deficiencies, this manuscript serves as the core of what is accepted today as the most authentic version of the original poem.

Scholars further conclude that the original epic was composed around 1100. One theory is that it was composed to stir up French aid for the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem that had been created in the wake of the First Crusade. Whatever the motive and whenever it was composed in more or less its final form, it surely was based on stories and songs about Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver, Turpin, and other legendary Frankish heroes that had been told and sung for several centuries.

The epic relates the legendary last battle of Count Roland and his companions. The story is loosely based on a minor disaster suffered by Charlemagne in 778. While his army was returning from an expedition in northern Spain, Christian Basques ambushed and wiped out his baggage train and rear guard in the mountain pass of Roncesvalles. Among the fallen was Roland, lord of the Breton frontier. We know little else about this skirmish or the historical Roland. When Roland re-emerges several centuries later, however, he has been transformed into Charlemagne’s nephew and the greatest champion in the emperor’s holy war against Islam, and the Basque bandits have become an enormous Muslim army. Charlemagne, who was only thirty-six at the time of the ambush and twenty-two years shy of his eventual coronation as emperor, has metamorphosed into a Moses-like patriarch more than two hundred years old, who rules as God’s sole agent on Earth over a united Christian world. He, his nephew, and his nephew’s companions are now Frenchmen, even though there had been no France or French culture in Charlemagne’s day. In a similar anachronistic manner, The Song of Roland assumes a society permeated by feudal relationships and values.

The story revolves around the themes of feudal loyalty and chivalric honor. Roland has unwittingly offended his stepfather, Ganelon, who, in revenge, enters into a conspiracy with the Saracen king, Marsilion, to deliver up Roland and the rest of the flower of French knighthood. Ganelon then arranges for Roland to command the emperor’s rear guard, knowing that the Saracens plan to ambush it and that Roland will be too proud to sound his horn for reinforcements. Such is the case. Despite the entreaties of Oliver, his closest friend and intended brother-in-law, Roland does not sound the horn until the battle is lost and 20,000 Christian soldiers lie dead.

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