The ninth-century biographer of Charlemagne, Einhard, refers in his Vita Karoli to the death in battle of Roland, whom he calls Hruodlandus, a prefect of the Breton Marches. Since this is the earliest account in existence of this seminal event, it is worth quoting in full:

At a time when this war against the Saxons was being waged constantly and with hardly any intermission at all, Charlemagne left garrisons at strategic points along the frontier, and went off himself with the largest force he could muster to invade Spain. He marched over a pass across the Pyrenees, received the surrender of every single town and castle which he attacked and then came back with his army safe and sound, except for the fact that for a brief moment on the return journey, while he was in the Pyrenean mountain range itself, he was given a taste of Basque treachery. Dense forests, which stretch in all directions, make this spot most suitable for setting ambushes. At the moment when Charlemagne’s army was stretched out in a long column of march, as the nature of the local defiles forced it to be, these Basques, who had set their ambush on the very top of one of the mountains, came rushing down on the last part of the baggage train and the troops who were marching in support of the rearguard and so protecting the army which had gone on ahead. The Basques forced them down into the valley beneath, joined battle with them and killed them to the last man. They then snatched up the baggage and, protected as they were by the cover of the darkness, which was just beginning to fall, scattered in all directions without losing a moment. In this feat the Basques were helped by the lightness of their arms, and by the nature of the terrain in which the battle was fought. On the other hand, the heavy nature of their own equipment and the unevenness of the ground completely hampered the Franks in their resistance to the Basques. In this battle died Eggihard, who was in charge of the King’s table, Anshelm, the Count of the Palace and Roland, Lord of the Breton Marches, along with a great number of others.1

Two texts which have the same title, Annales Regum Fran-corum (Annals of the Frankish Kings), one dated 778 and anonymous, and the other written about 800 by an author known to us as the pseudo-Einhard, refer to the fatal battle but do not mention Roland by name.

Whether the Count Rotholandus of the document of 772 and Einhard’s Lord of the Breton Marches, killed in 778, are the same person is not certain,, but scholars regard it as probable. Whatever his origins and identity, Roland entered legend and came ultimately to denote a superhuman personage, at times grossly distorted, yet retaining, according to culture and century, something of the qualities to be found in the Roland of the Chanson:

Roland’s character is simplicity itself. Rash, arrogant, generous, outspoken to a fault, loyal, affectionate and single-minded, he has all the qualities that endear a captain to his men and a romantic hero to his audience.… Beneath all his overweening there is real modesty of heart, and a childlike simplicity of love and loyalty – to God, to the Emperor, to his friend, to his men, to his horse, his horn, his good sword, Durendal. His death-scene is curiously moving.

But the picture that remains most vividly with us is that of gay and unconquerable youth. No other epic hero strikes this note so unerringly.1

This valorous Roland is found also in the visual arts, represented for over four hundred years in sculpture, wall paintings, miniatures, mosaics, stained glass, engravings and tapestry.2 In the age-old symbolism of the ‘chevaliers affrontés’, of two knights in combat face-to-face, Roland, the embodiment of heroic virtue, finds his place. It is in the role of Defender of the Faith that Roland, sanctified and numinous, reaches his apotheosis in Dante’s Paradiso. He is first mentioned in Inferno, when the entrance of Dante and Virgil into the Circle of the Traitors is heralded by a blast upon a horn, blown by the giant, Nimrod:

… I heard a high horn sound

So loud, it made all thunder seem but hoarse;

Whereby to one sole spot my gaze was led,

Following the clamour backward to its source.

When Charlemayn, in rout and ruin red,

Lost all the peerage of the holy war

The horn of Roland sounded not so dread.3

Here, at the edge of the Circle of Treachery, Dante recalls the betrayal of Roland by Ganelon, whose soul he is about to see, wedged in the ice between two other traitors; but the note which he sounds finally on this theme of ‘the holy war’ (la santa gesta) is not one of defeat but of victory. In Paradiso, in the heaven of Mars, Dante comes into the presence of the Defenders of the Faith. This heaven, the symbol of fortitude, is under the influence of the angelic order of Virtues, the image of divine strength, the workers of signs and the inspirers of endurance. Among the warrior-martyrs is Dante’s own ancestor, Cacciaguida, his great-great-grandfather, who served in the Second Crusade. It is he who calls out the names of eight warriors who flash like rubies across the glittering bands of pure white light which form the image of the Cross:

… I saw a flashing lustre run,

At Joshua’s name, athwart the cross and stop;

Nor was it sooner said than it was done;

Great Maccabee was named; I saw him drop,

Spinning as he went, along his fiery lane,

And gladness was the whip unto the top;

Then Roland on the track of Charlemayne

Sped, and my keen eye following – as it does

The flight of one’s own falcon – watched the twain;

After, my sight was drawn along the cross

By William, Reynald and Duke Godfrey – three

Fires, and a fourth, which Robert Guiscard was.1

Here, then, is Roland, in this verbal stained-glass window of Dante’s cathedral, as sublime as Chartres, where Roland also is. And here in Paradise he is in the company of Joshua, Judas Maccabaeus, Charlemagne, William of Orange,2 Reynald (the converted Saracen giant, who balances the giants of Inferno, those symbols of primitive violence), Godfrey of Bouillon and Robert Guiscard, all Defenders of the Faith. Further in glorification of the Christian warrior, no poet could go. Here the legend is pure, undistorted by engrossments. Dante has concentrated on a single theme, Roland the champion of Christendom, betrayed and killed at Roncevaux and elevated to sainthood among his peers of all ages.

Of the many stories of Charlemagne and his paladins by which generations of jongleurs, Minnesänger,3 and cantastorie held their audiences entranced in market-squares or along pilgrim routes, two have particular importance for the later Italian tradition. They are Renaus and Aspremont. The former, an anonymous poem of some 18,000 lines, relates the adventures of a new hero, Renaus (Renaud, Rinaldo), who is to play a major role in Italian romances. The second of the four sons of Aymon, he is a valorous and ferocious warrior, worthy to be compared with Roland, whose cousin he later becomes. He is shown originally in opposition to Charlemagne, who is fiercely hostile to him. The author of Renaus identifies him with St Renaut of Cologne and shows him to be protected by God, who performs a miracle to defend him against conspirators who plot to kill him. Italianized as Rinaldo, he later rivalled Roland (Orlando) in popularity, to the extent that cantastorie came to be called Rinaldi.1

In Aspremont, a poem of 12,000 lines which dates from the beginning of the thirteenth century, later retold in Italian as Aspromonte, the story is set in Calabria.