Song of Roland: Relationship of the Lord and Vassal

Occasionally, historical text or historical fiction, like the Song of Roland, can exist in our minds loosely attached to actual historical occurrences, where narratives and events of the past seem to exist floating nowhere in time as they to appear out of dust from a thousands of years ago. Presumably, this kind of separation of historical time and space occurs due to the difficultly of conceptualizing whole societies vastly different from our own modern society of the twenty-first century. In other words, it seems that we cannot find the relevancy and close interconnections between our own familiar U.S. society of our current moments and the society of the eleventh century, specifically during the reign of Charlemagne. As the Song of Roland is one of the oldest French epics, it can serve as a microcosm of feudal values that emphasizes the relationship of the lord and vassal, as it illustrates the religious transformation of France into a Christian nation united by the sovereignties and loyalties of the king (feudal monarch) and country. Under the reign of Charlemagne, the Feudal system of France maintained a couple of principle that lasted beyond his rule, which can be understood as the protection and security of land by the means of warfare. Similarly, we have this same notion that we understand as American nationalism, as we believe our country is the land of the free and home of the brave, and will do anything to preserve our own protection and security, even if we have to go to war. (We can also tell this by looking how much the U.S. spends on the military and defense). However, for a country to have any kind of nationalistic camaraderie or an understanding of collective togetherness, there must be loyal relationships formed within higher social structures of the nation’s government that provides a model from the top down, especially in a feudal system as landowners and tenants had similar relationship to lords and vassals as the landholders would provide land to tenants in exchange for their loyalty and service.

In this sense, the lord and the vassal swore allegiance to one another, just like the landholder and tenant, and thus a kind of feudal relationship of loyalty and mutual trust is created. In the Song of Roland, Roland is seen as great warrior and a perfect undoubtedly devoted vassal, as he says: “It is our duty to be here for our king: / For his lord a vassal must suffer great hardships / And endure great heat and great cold; / And he must lose both hair and hide” (79.1009 – 79.1012). It is within Roland’s words before he enters in an impossible plight of combat that the reader realizes the true nature of being a vassal to a lord. Roland is fully aware of the suffering that he must endure to protect Charlemagne’s rule and land, and still decides to place himself in harm’s way, knowing that he could potentially die. Unfortunately, he does lose his life in battle. However, for Roland serving Charlemagne had a greater meaning than just being devoted to the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Since the Empire was responsible for defending at expanding Christendom, Charlemagne in the epic is depicted as being god-like as he has been appointed feudal monarch of the Empire. In this light, we can perceive that Roland was not just loyally devoted to Charlemagne because he had to be, as if being a vassal was some kind of career choice. Rather, Roland’s commitment to his lord was similar to how Dhouda instructs her son to understand that “all honor and authority are given by God, [and thus,] we should serve our lords faithfully, without ill will, without reluctance, and without sluggishness, [because] there is no power but form God: and he…that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God” (Geary 270-271). From this understand, Roland is devoted to Charlemagne because he is reverently devoted to God. Thus, as Dhouda explains to her son that she “urge[s] [him] to keep this loyalty as long as [he] lives, in [his] body and in [his] mind,” we can picture Roland having the same kind of spiritual meditative practice towards being obediently and sincerely faithful to Charlemagne, as Roland is also faithful to God. With this in mind, we realize that Roland does not seem to bear any sense of hesitancy or self-doubt towards his duty to protect the Holy Roman Empire. An example of how an inkling of conscientiousness could have help Roland to be potentially a better vassal is when Oliver tries to sound the horn to get more help in fighting the futile battle, and Roland refuses the help, because he presumably believes that self-sacrifice is the ultimate sacrifice to his lord Charlemagne and to the Christian God. Roland writes, “may it not please God and his angels and saints to let France lose its glory because of me – let me not end in shame, let me die first. The Emperor loves us when we fight well” (1090 – 1094). It is a little peculiar that Roland would have potentially won or had a greater chance of winning if he had sounded the horn earlier to ordered for more soldiers to come and aid the battle.

In other words, something does not add up very well. We would think that Roland would collectively want to win the battle and preserve the security of the Empire and Christendom, and so, it would seem logically reasonable to do whatever is necessary to put the lord and the country first. But, Roland didn’t. He was, in my understanding, worried about France losing glory because of him, which in reality trickles down to a kind of elevated self-perception that was initially created once a society tell their children, like Dhouda tell her son, that “in every matter of importance to royal power take care to show yourself a man of good judgment—in your own thoughts and in public—to the extent that God gives you strength” (Geary 271). Ultimately, socializing children into a feudal system that primarily functions by the giving of commodity in exchange for a person’s loyalty and trust, that is then further perpetuated because God (a power deity) has commanded you to, leads to individuals to become hypervigilant to their own actions…(because God forbid one’s actions are not always loyal and compliant). For the large extent, I think the lord-vassal relationship, especially between Charlemagne and Roland, is highly romanticized within the epic itself, and within feudal social structures of the eleventh century. There has to be events where vassals were socially deviant to the norms and value or expectations of being a fully devoted and faithfully serving vassal to a lord and God.