There are many stories about Roland, and one of them even calls in question whether he was actually the nephew of Charlemagne. At Sutri, near Rome, stands an ancient castle that now serves as the home of a farmer who lives with his family in the thousand-year-old barn. Friends who live in the castle itself say that in what is now the barnyard and was once the courtyard of the castle Roland met Charlemagne during Charlemagne’s visit to Latium in A.D. 790, when he convened with Pope Adrian I for political discussions that changed the course of European history.
During ceremonies after the meeting, Charlemagne enquired formally whether any of his followers would ask of him a boon. A certain lovely woman advanced to the throne: she was one of the handmaidens of the Queen. She had a son, she confessed, though she was not married, and because of her faithful service to the Queen she asked that the King recognize her son and take him into his band of closest followers. He was already, the woman claimed, a valiant fighter. “His name?” the King asked. “Roland,” the boy’s mother replied. The King accepted him, both legitimizing and honoring him in one act. The boy may have been his own son by this handmaiden of his Queen.
Roland grew up and became the King’s right hand, the first among the Twelve Peers of the realm, the leader of Charlemagne’s armies in a hundred battles. Brave and stubborn, fierce and unyielding, ready to defend with his life any slight upon his own honor or that of his King, Roland was the epitome of the medieval knight, the vassal faithful to his lord until death and demanding equal loyalty from those who followed him. A simple man in the extreme, he saw all things as black or white; there were no shades of gray, no difficult moral problems. He was right and the enemy wrong. God was his ally and against his enemies.
The Song of Roland tells of how Roland is betrayed by his stepfather Ganelon, whose name betokens treachery to this day; of how Ganelon arranges it so that Roland commands the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army as it moves through the deep passes of the Pyrenees, leaving Spain after seven long years of warfare against the Infidel; of how the treacherous Paynim, egged on by Ganelon, attacks Roland and the Twelve Peers along with twenty thousand men, in the defile of Roncesvaux; of how Roland and all his followers are slain and of how Charlemagne revenges Roland’s death and punishes Ganelon. The story is straightforward, simple, and predictable. Roland refuses out of pride to call for help when he and his men are attacked and when he finally blows his famous horn it is too late for Oliver, his friend, and all his followers, and for Roland himself, who dies on the field stretched out upon his sword Durendal.
The poem’s primal simplicity does not detract from it. Roland is not a modern man nor is his world the modern world. His world died centuries ago. Good riddance to it, we may say, it was a world in which the only honorable occupation was fighting, killing, or being killed, a world in which butchers were exalted to the highest places among men. But it was also a world in which honor was clear and clean and palpable, apparent to all. There were no doubts about what a man ought to do with his life, no second thoughts, and no regrets if one’s career was ended by an early death as long as the death was noble and one died on the battlefield facing the enemy.
Men and women shared these beliefs even if they were not knights. Duke William of Normandy had a troubadour, the best in the world as he thought, named Taillefer. Taillefer had grown old in the Duke’s service and when William invaded England in the famous year 1066 and met King Harold the Saxon at Hastings, Taillefer asked a boon. “Lord,” he asked, “let me lead the charge against the enemy.” “You cannot lead the charge,” the Duke replied. “You are not a knight and besides, you are not armed.” “As for being a knight, you can change that with the tip of your sword,” said Taillefer. “And as for being armed, your other knights are well armed and will win the day.”
Duke William told him to kneel and knighted Taillefer on the spot. And Taillefer led the charge, riding on his horse and singing at the top of his voice the great verses of The Song of Roland that tell of the death of Roland and the revenge of Charlemagne. Taillefer was struck down the moment the armies met but we know, because he was a medieval man to whom chivalry was real, that he had obtained his dearest wish.
If you can understand how Taillefer felt you will have no trouble understanding this splendid old poem out of another age.
ANONYMOUS
—
“The Tumbler of Our Lady”
I don’t believe anyone knows the name of the author of this story, but it is nevertheless one I love. It was one of a collection of stories gathered by Gautier de Coinci, a monk of St. Medard, near Soissons in France. Once a royal abbey of the Frankish kings and the goal of many pilgrimages, hardly a trace of it now remains. The manuscript which includes the stories, now in Soissons, is a lovely example of the thirteenth-century art of bookmaking. Each story has its appropriate illustration on a background of gold, blue, and red. The stories were translated from Latin into French and were often based on Eastern originals, some brought by Crusaders, others by traders and travelers. Whatever their original source they were all dedicated to Our Lady, advocata nostra as St. Bernard called her. And again, whatever their original sources, they were all turned into simple tales for simple, pious folk, whether monks or peasants. And of course they all told of wonderful miracles wrought by the Virgin, the Mother of God.
This one, “The Tumbler of Our Lady,” could hardly be simpler. It seems that a certain man, weary of the world and having relinquished his horses, his clothes, his money—all that he had—and desiring never to return to his old life, has entered the great Monastery of Clairvaux, intending to spend the rest of his days in devotions to the Mother of God. The Abbot, the famous St. Bernard, has not examined very carefully into his background or abilities, content, the story suggests, with the gifts the man has offered and moved by his evident love of the Virgin, a love shared by the abbot himself.
For a while all goes well enough, except that the man is totally unschooled and does not even know how to pray to the Virgin or to God. He was a tumbler in his former life, a famous minstrel, and had performed in the courts of nobles as well as the king, always to great applause. But in the abbey there is no call for his skills, no place to perform. As time goes on he becomes at first embarrassed and then ashamed of his ignorance, which is laughed at by the monks (behind their hands). The man, growing desperate, seeks a quiet place and finds one in the crypt where there is an image of the Virgin, before which he kneels in supplication. He hears the bell ring for Mass and his heart assails him. He cannot attend Mass because he does not know any of the responses, but there is one thing he does know how to do. He strips himself of all but a belted tunic, lays his clothes on the altar beneath the image, and, saying “Lady, to your keeping I commend my body and my soul,” he begins to turn somersaults, now high, now low, first forwards, then backwards. When he is exhausted he kneels and says: “Lady, the others serve, and I serve also. Do not despise your servant, for I serve you for your diversion. I do homage to you with my heart, and my body, and my feet, and my hands, for naught beside this do I understand.”