Assessing the Theme of Christianity in The Song of Roland

The relevance of Charlemagne's autobiography to the history of Christianity and to The Song of Roland is the fact that, under Charlemagne, Christianity was identified with the institution of the Church. And just as at its origin Christianity was in significant character to be understood as a fulfillment of Judaic law, so was Charlemagne's activity meant to be understood as a fulfillment of the billing of Christianity in the shape of the Church. This dynamic is in the background of The Song of Roland, though the focus of the epic poem is on Roland's adventures, betrayal, and death in the context of France's battles with the "Paynim [pagan, Saracen] King of Spain."

The story plot of The Song of Roland illustrates the nature of Christianity in the work, or more exactly the nature of Charlemagne's military mission as a proxy for the spread and hegemony of Christianity in Europe. The poem deals with the deceitful endeavor of the Saracen king of Spain (Marsila), aided by a traitorous extremity of Charlemagne's court (Ganelon), to declare himself a Christian only to steerer Charlemagne's forces into an ambush. Charlemagne tells Marsila that he may retain half of Spain by converting to Christianity, or alternatively to be "tried and judged, / There to be murder in shame and vile e

Sh both fail you not. Ay, you have lost the flower

Of France, and God himself enjoins you now

The Christianity of The Song of Roland is in peril because it is beset by a rival, world-historical, missional, religion--Islam--and must respond. The militarist, statist preparation of the role of Christianity in human experience is to be princely from the Christian mission articulated in the apostolic period. Christianity began as a project of ghostlike reform of Judaism, transforming into wholesale reconstitution of religious experience. In the texts that define the new religion there is a missional component that is as strong as the sense of mission in The Song of Roland. But missional exhortation is not predominate by a rationale for military conquest.

Rather, the tone is pedagogic:

In capital of Minnesota's formulation, it is given only to Christians to know the glories of the kingdom of heaven. That field occupies virtually the whole of I Cor. 1, which introduces, states, and restates the unique and superior qualities of the church building; whether at Corinth or Ephesus or Rome, differentiating the culture (cult) of the church from all and sundry, whether Jewish spiritual or Greek secular tradition, and rivalry the need for spiritual unity of the cult. Campbell (379) says in this regard that "in turning from Pharisee [the old law] to Christian, Paul simply transferred his temperament to the different side of the line and that the Christian Church that he founded thence inherited and carried into Europe the stamp of his Levantine regard for the massive consensus." By the time of The Song of Roland, the monolithic consensus advocated by Paul in the first century had been transfigured into a consensus enforced by military might and sanctioned by institutional concerns of the church to survive the challenge of Islam.

Einhard. The Life of Charlemagne. Two Lives of Charlemagne. By Einhard and Notker the Stammerer. Trans. Lewis Thorpe. capital of the United Kingdom: Penguin Books, 1969. 49-92.<
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