The Song of Roland: a Mid-Twelfth Century Song of Propaganda For

Hans E. Keller The Song of Roland: a Mid-Twelfth Century Song of Propaganda for the Capetian Kingdom For more than a century now scholars have been discussing the Oxford version of the Song of Roland. It is thus scarcely surprising that all of those who have dealt with the poem have been intrigued as to the authorship of such an incomparable masterpiece, nearly classical in its structure. But it seems even more important to understand its significance and to define the audience to whom the poet is speaking, as well as to discover the message he wants to convey. For this purpose, it is most vital to know when the Oxford version of the poem was composed. If that problem can be solved satisfactorily, we will know more about the man who signed the Oxford version, Turoldus, and, further, the dispute as to whether or not the different parts of the work constitute later inser- tions can be resolved without undue difficulty. This paper, therefore, will examine the factors which help determine the date of the version preserved in the Oxford manuscript, and we will also propose a possible new solution to the problem. For the dating of the Oxford Roland, it is not without interest that one finds all combatants using the spear in what Dorothy Leigh Sayers1 terms "the modern fashion (escrime nouvelle): the spear is held firmly under the right arm, with the point directed at the adversary's breast, the aim being either to pierce him through, or to hurl him from the saddle by weight and speed as the horses rush together." She further points out that in the Bayeux Tapestry (which "fut pour la première fois suspendue de pilier en pilier à l'entour de la nef"2 for the celebration of the dedication of the newly rebuilt and considerably enlarged cathedral on 14 July 1077), "both the old (escrime ancienne) and the modern fashion are shown together, some knights being depicted with the right arms raised above head-level, using the spear as a throwing-weapon."3 Sayers also calls attention to the fact that in the Bayeux Tapestry "the spears thus thrown have plain shafts, whereas most of those used in the modern escrime are adorned with a pennon or gonfalon just below the point, 1The Song of Roland, trad. Dorothy L. Sayers (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1937), p. 35. 2Simone Bertrand, La Tapisserie da la reine Mathilde à Bayeux (Paris: Hachette, n.d. [1969]), p. 9. 3Sayers, loc. cit. 242 Keller/Song of Roland 243 exactly as described in the Roland (e.g., vv. 1228, 1539, 1576, etc.)."4 It therefore can be safely stated that the Oxford version of the Song of Roland must have been composed after 14 July 1077. But it is generally agreed today that the poem must have been composed even later, after 1086, the year of the battle of Zalaca, near Badajoz in western Spain, in which the Berber Moslem sect of the Almora- vides inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Christians of Alfonso VI through the use of camels and drums. Neither had ever been seen or heard before by the Christians, reports the chronicler; consequently, the fact that they are mentioned in connection with the pagans in the Oxford Roland is currently considered a strong indication that the poem must have been written after 1086.5 It is much more difficult to determine the terminus ante quem of the poem, since there is no evidence in the work itself to provide help. Some scholars6 have maintained that the fact that the Song of Roland never mentions Santiago de Compostela and its importance for the pilgrims suggests a composition before 1095. Following the Council of Reims in 1049 —at which time the archbishop of Santiago was excommunicated by the Pope —there were hostile feelings between the Spanish Church and the Pope, causing an estrangement dividing all of western Christianity. In the fight concerning the supremacy of the archbishop of Santiago over the Spanish Church, the French Church sided very strongly with Rome. This fact, it has been claimed, could explain the silence of the Song of Roland with respect to the central place of Christianity in Spain. But after the reconciliation in 1095, in view of the First Crusade, such a silence would have been senseless, all of which suggests composition of the Oxford Roland before that date. Such arguments ex silentio, however, are rarely convincing. The fact that this center of pilgrimage is not mentioned has little relevance, because the poem contains no proof whatsoever that its theme was to propagandize pilgrimages to Santiago. The terminus ante quem of the poem should therefore be sought out- side of the work itself. The fact that certain Byzantine coins are mentioned in the Song is no longer considered to be of significance, 4Ibid. 5Martín de Riquer, Les Chansons de geste françaises, 2e édition, entièrement refondue, trans. Irénée Cluzel (Paris: Nizet, 1957), p. 76. 6The idea goes back to Aurelio Roncaglia, "Il silenzio del Roland su Sant' Iacopo: le vie del pellegrinaggi e le vie della storia," in Coloquios de Roncesvalles, Agosto 1955 (Zaragoza: El Noticiero, 1957), pp. 151-71. 244 Olifant/Vol. 3, No. 4/May 1976 because evidence they provide for dating the poem has been so strongly contested. The only factors we can take into consideration, then, are: 1° the date of the Oxford manuscript; 2° the date of the adaptation of the poem into Middle High German by the priest Conrad; and, 3° the iconographic evidence. 1° The date of the Oxford manuscript has been much discussed. Some maintain that it was copied in the second quarter of the twelfth century, while others believe in a date around 1170 or even slightly later. Joseph Bédier never adhered to the early date assigned to the manuscript by his compatriot Charles Samaran in 1933. The latter, in an article published in 1973,7 tried to add even more weight to his argumentation based entirely upon paleographical evidence. Other paleographers, however, especially from Great Britain, have seriously ques- tioned such an early date.8 Linguists have also stressed dialectal particularities which cannot be found yet in the second quarter of the century.9 Furthermore, it is a strange coincidence that the oldest extant fragments of Wace's Roman de Brut, also preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, show an astonishing paleographical and linguistic resemblance to the Oxford manuscript of the Roland: these fragments were dated in 1974 by two paleographers of the Library as having been written toward the end of the twelfth century.10 For these reasons, the Oxford manu- 7Charles Samaran, "Sur la date approximative du Roland d'Oxford," Romania, 94 (1973), 523-7. 8For example, see Ian Short, "The Oxford Manuscript of the Chanson de Roland: A Paleographical Note," Romania, 94 (1973), 221-31. 9See Jules Horrent, La Chanson de Roland dans lee littératures française et espagnole, Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l'Université de Liège, Fascicule 120 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1951), pp. 34-42. To Horrent's pertinent remarks should be added another feature found in v. 3986, where the Oxford manuscript has "Truvee li unt lo num de Juliane"; the spelling "truvee" for a masculine past participle does not occur in Anglo-Norman texts before the later twelfth century; cf. Mildred K. Pope, From Latin to Modern French, with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman. Phonology and Morphology, re- vised edition (Manchester: University Press, 1952), §1235. 10"We feel that fol. 83-4 are certainly no later than the begin- ning of the thirteenth century and may belong to the late twelfth" (private communication from Mr. Bruce C. Barker-Benefield, 16 September 1974). Keller/Song of Roland 245 script can hardly have been composed before the second half of the century, in all probability not before the chancellery of King Henry II Plantagenet had begun to exert its overall influence in England, i.e., not before 1170. 2° In a recent article11 the writer hopes to have demonstrated that, contrary to a widely held view among Germanists, the Middle High German adaptation by Conrad was—as already maintained by Professors Rita Lejeune and Jacques Stiennon12—probably composed after 1180, per- haps between 1185 and 1189. That adaptation—which, incidentally, does not reflect so much the Oxford version as that of Venice IV13—was thus composed so late in the century that it is of no help in dating the composition of the Song of Roland as we read it today in the Oxford version. 3° Iconography is not much of assistance either in dating the poem, because the first time that it is found represented in its entirety by an artist is precisely in the Middle High German Ruolantes liet, of which the oldest manuscript (now preserved in Heidelberg) is decorated by inserted pictures as they were in use particularly in England in the second half of the twelfth century, especially in the Abbey of St. Albans in Hertfordshire.14 This points again to the end of the twelfth century, the date of the Heidelberg manuscript. Before that time, iconographic representations depict only the first part of the poem, up to Charle- magne's revenge upon the pagans. These images are indeed attested quite early in the century, above church portals and in church mosaics in Southern France and in Italy, as we know thanks to the research of Pro- 11"Der Pfaffe Konrad am Hofe von Braunschweig," in Wege der Vorte. Festschrift für Wolfgang Fleischhauer (Köhn: Böhlau Verlag, forthcoming).

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