La Chanson de Roland, or The Song of Roland, is a 12th-century verse narrative written in Old French. The poem recounts a version of an historical event, the Battle of Roncevaux, in the Pyrenees Mountains on August 15, 778 CE.  

The narrative centers the retainers of the Emperor Charlemagne. It depicts the divinely inspired Christian army going to battle against a monstrous “pagan” enemy, who is ambushing them in a pass through the Pyrenees mountains as Charlemagne returns from Spain to France.

Over 400 years separate the event and the earliest extant text of the poem. The text shows evidence of both oral and textual composition written in stanzas of varying lengths called laisses. La Chanson incorporates themes present in early 12th-century French culture and politics: crusades and martyrdom, Christianity and conversion, and Islamic presence.

It's important for students to compare the historical record to the political and social circumstances in which the poem was written. They need to see the poem not as a singular text, but as a result of an oral and textual history, one that is manipulated over time. I want students to ask: why is this poem being written down at this point in history? What purpose does it serve across time?

Paien unt tort e chrestiens unt dreit: The pagans are wrong and the Christians are right

The actual events of that fateful battle in the Pyrenees Mountains in 778 were much different than the poem’s depiction, according to Charlemagne’s personal biographer, Einhard. According to his biography, upon Charlemagne’s return to his capital in Aix-la-Chappelle (or Aachen), the rearguard of his army was attacked not by Muslims, but by Gascons (Basques), who were Christians.  

In Einhard’s recounting, the Basques attacked swiftly and dispersed widely, so Charlemagne could not locate them. Einhard’s contemporary account records that Hruodland, or Roland, commander of the rearguard, dies in the attack with a few others. It is neither heroic nor dramatic. The description of the battle and its aftermath lacks any details.  

Over the course of the next four centuries, this story is transformed into the text we have today. The Basques are replaced by “pagans,” assumed to be Muslims in al-Andalus, and their belief system is caricatured in almost cartoonish ways, as they worship Muhammad, Apollo, and a purely fictional deity named “Tervagant.”  

The beliefs of the so-called “pagans” in La Chanson de Roland are largely a mix of some actual knowledge and a lot of invention. From the beginning of the poem, in the very first laisse, or stanza, the city of Zaragoza (Saragossa) in northern Spain is said to be ruled by the king Marsile, “who does not love God,” and “serves Muhammad and calls upon Apollo.”

Except for Saragossa, which stands upon a mountain.
It is held by King Marsile, who does not love God;
He serves Muhammad and calls upon Apollo.

The inclusion of Apollo into the religious beliefs of the Muslims in Spain, however inaccurate, represents a blanketed sense of otherness on the part of medieval European Christians—there are Christians and then there is everyone else. Belief in the Roman or Greek gods, in the European Christian imaginary, stood for folly and ignorance and reflected the prejudices that the French audience might have held about non-Christians.

Later in the poem, we see some recognition that Muslims have a sacred text, the Quran, though it is not named. It is placed on a lectern made of ivory and containing the “law of Muhammad” and an entirely fictional deity named “Tervagant.”

A lectern stood there, made of ivory; 
Marsile has a book brought forward,
Containing the law of Muhammad and Tervagant. 

As Europeans participated in religious wars in the Mediterranean and encountered Muslims in al-Andalus, North Africa, and western Asia, knowledge of the Quran grew in Christian Europe. Another aspect of the poem that demonstrates some familiarity with the non-European world is that the lectern in laisse 47 is made of ivory, an African import. Ivory was widely traded in the medieval Mediterranean between Africans, Asians, the Byzantines, and western Europeans.

Crusades ideology

La Chanson de Roland was composed and written down almost immediately after the First Crusade. It was in this moment that the image of Christian crusader martyrdom was constructed, symbolized by the merging of religion and violence, and the solidification of proto-national and ancestral pride.

Roland is portrayed as a holy warrior for Christianity who is carried up to heaven by the Angel Gabriel upon his death in an act of crusader penitence. The character of Archbishop Turpin, who leads masses before battles and prays to kill the pagans, embodies the propagandistic rhetoric of crusader Christianity.  

The crusader ideology of holy war is evident in the representation of the Muslim armies as well-equipped, richly adorned, and organized. In laisse 79, the poet comments on the sight of the Muslim army as giving Roland and Oliver resolve in the battle to come.  

The pagans arm themselves with Saracen hauberks,
Most of which are triple linked.
They lace on their fine helmets from Saragossa
And gird themselves with swords of steel from Viana.
They have shields which are fair and spears from Valence,
And pennons which are white, blue and red.
Leaving their mules and all their palfreys
They mount their war horses and ride in close array.
The day was fine and the sun was bright;
They have no equipment which does not gleam in the light.
They sound a thousand trumpets to enhance the effect.
The noise is great and the Franks heard it.
‍
Oliver said: “Lord companion, I think
We may have a battle with the Saracens."
‍
Roland replies: “And may God grant it to us.
It is our duty to be here for our king:
For his lord a vassal must suffer hardships
And endure great heat and great cold;
And he must lose both hair and hide.
Now let each man take care to strike great blows,
So that no one can sing a shameful song about us.
The pagans are wrong and the Christians are right.
No dishonourable tale will ever be told about me.”

This passage contains the famous line “The pagans are wrong and the Christians are right,” the clearest distillation of absolute certainty in the Europeans’ moral and religious superiority.

Relationship to colonialism

Although the poem’s representation of proto-nationalistic Christian chauvinism was historically inaccurate to the battle it recounts, it gave rise to the kinds of ultra-nationalism that drove French colonialism in North Africa.  

The enmity depicted in the poem between Charlemagne and the Arab-Muslim world couldn’t have been further from the truth. According to his biography, Charlemagne had a good relationship with the Abbasid dynasty, under the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, to whom he sent gifts and delegations. Despite the historical inaccuracies, the most identifiable object in the poem is an oliphant, an ivory horn, which represents Roland’s high status. The Song of Roland, which symbolizes European and Christian identity in the modern era, has at its core an African object.  

This is significant given that the text was promoted to the level of a French national epic while colonizing Algeria and during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. During the war, France passed the Cremieux Decree, which granted French citizenship to Algerian Jews, but not Algerian Muslims. This decree helped instigate the 1871 Kabyle Revolt, where over a third of Algeria’s population rose up against the French colonial settlers. The poem, as a national epic, became a touchstone for the national identity of France, the implications of which include the inherent superiority of Christians, the celebration of religious violence, and Islamophobia.  

At the same time, during the German siege of Paris in December of 1870, the French medievalist literary scholar Gaston Paris gave a series of lectures at the Collège de France called “La chanson de Roland et la nationalité française.” The lectures align the Christian crusader ideologies with French national identity as an attempt to galvanize resistance against the Germans.  

La Chanson de Roland, and its use as a national epic, was a product of both European nationalist and colonial aspirations. It is important for students to understand how the poem and its histories, even in classrooms across the United States, can reiterate and underscore Eurocentric white supremacist values if it is not properly contextualized.