de Roussillon, Engelier the Gascon, Ivon and Ivoire, and the flower of the Frankish army. They had nearly reached the summit of the pass when Oliver, who had mounted a high rock, saw the advancing army of the Saracens, 400,000 strong. In vain Oliver begged Roland to sound his horn and summon Charlemagne to his aid. A description of the battle, a series of single combats, follows. Oliver, with his sword Hauteclère, rivalled Roland with Durendal. After the first fight, a second division of the pagan army appears, then a third. Roland's army was reduced to sixty men before he consented to sound his horn. Presently all were slain but Roland and Oliver, Turpin and another. Finally, when the Saracens, warned of the return of Charlemagne, had retreated, Roland alone survived on the field of battle. With a last effort he blew his horn once more, and heard before he died the sound of Charlemagne's battle cry of “ Montjoie." Charlemagne pursued the enemy, and destroyed their army. The raising of a second army by Baligant, the emir of Babylon, and its defeat by the emperor, who slays Baligant in single combat, is obviously an interpolation in the original narrative. The trouvère then relates the return of the Franks, the burial of the heroes of Roncevaux, and, at great length, the trial of Ganelon at Aix, his execution, and that of his thirty kinsmen, and the death of Alde, Roland's betrothed and Oliver's sister, when she heard the news of Roland's death. The trial of Ganelon is one of the most curious parts of the story, providing, as it does, a full account of the Frankish criminal procedure.
Relations between the Earlier Forms of the Legend.—The Pseudo-Turpin represents a different recension of the story, and is throughout clerical in tone. It was the trouvère of the Chanson de Roland who developed the characters into epic types; he invented the heroic friendship of Roland and Oliver, the motives of Ganelon's treachery, and many other details. The famous fight between Roland and the giant Ferragus appears in the Pseudo-Turpin (chapter xviii.), but not in the poem. The Chanson de Roland presupposes the existence of a whole cycle of epic poetry, probably in episodic form; it contains allusions to many events outside the narrative, some of which can be explained from other existing chansons, while others refer to narratives which are lost. In lines 590–603 of the poem Roland gives a list of the countries he has conquered for Charles, from Constantinople and Hungary on the east to Scotland on the west. Of most of these exploits no trace remains in extant poems, but his capture of Bordeaux, of Nobles, of Carcassonne, occur in various compilations. Roland was variously represented by the romancers as the son of Charlemagne's sister Gilles or Berte and the knight Milon d'Anglers. The romantic episode of the reconciliation of the pair with Charlemagne through Roland's childish prattle (Berte et Milon) is probably foreign to the original legend. In the Scandinavian versions Roland is the son of Charlemagne and his sister, a recital probably borrowed from mythology. His enfances, or youthful exploits, were, according to Aspremont, performed in Italy against the giant Eaumont, but in Girais de Viane his first taste of battle is under the walls of Vienne, where Oliver, at first his adversary, becomes his brother-in-arms.
Other Versions.—Most closely allied to the Oxford Roland are (a) a version in Italianized French preserved in a 13th or 14th century MS. in the library of St Mark, Venice (MS. Fr. iv.); (b) the Ruolantes Liet (ed. W. Grimm, Göttingen, 1838) of the Swabian priest Konrad (fl. 1130), who gave, however, a pious tone to the whole;[1] (c) the 8th branch of the Karlamagnus-saga (ed. C. Unger, Christiania, 1860), and the Danish version of that compilation.
In the 12th century the Chanson de Roland was modernized by replacing the assonance by rhyme, and by amplifications and additions. Several MSS. of this rhymed recension, sometimes known as Roncevaux, are preserved. In the prose compilations of Galien and in David Aubert's Conquêtes de Charlemagne (1458) the story kept its popularity for many centuries. In England the story was understood in the original French, and the English romances of Charlemagne (q.v.) are mostly derived from late and inferior sources. In Spain the legend underwent a curious transformation. Spanish patriotism created a Spanish ally of Marsile, Bernard del Carpio, to be the rival and victor of Roland. It was in Italy that the Roland legend had its greatest fortune: Charlemagne and Roland appear in the Paradiso (canto xviii.) of Dante; the statues of Roland and Oliver appear on the doorway of the cathedral of Verona; and the French chansons de geste regularly appeared in a corrupt ltalianized French. The Roland legend passed through a succession of revisions, and, as the Spagna, forming the 8th book of the great compilation of Carolingian romance, the Reali di Francia, kept its popularity down to the Renaissance. The story of Roland (Orlando) in a greatly modified form is the subject of the poems of Luigi Pulci (Morgante Maggiore, 1481), of Matteo Boiardo (Orlando innamorato, 1486), of Ariosto (Orlando furioso, 1516), and of Francesco Berni (Orlando, 1541).
Authorities. For a complete bibliography of the editions of the various MSS. of the Chanson de Roland, of the foreign versions, and of the enormous literature of the subject, see Léon Gautier, Les Epopées françaises (2nd ed., vol. iii., 1880), and the same author's Bibliographie des chansons de geste (1897). Among critical editions of the Chanson are those by Wendelin Foerster in the Altfranz. Bibliotek, vols. vi. and vii. (Heilbronn, 1883–86), and by E. Stengel, Das altfranzösische Rolandslied (Leipzig, 1900, &c.). The most popular edition is La Chanson de Roland (Tours, 1872, and numerous subsequent editions). by Léon Gautier, with text, translation, introduction, notes, variants and glossary. L. Petit de Julleville published in 1878 an edition with the old French text, an a modern French translation in assonance verse. There are various other translations in French; in English prose by I. Butler (Boston, Mass., 1904); and a partial English verse translation by A. Way and F. Spencer (London, 1895). Consult further G. Paris, Hist. poét. de Charlemagne (reprint, 1905), and De Pseudo Turpino (Paris, 1865); P. Rajna, Le Origini dell' epopea francese (Florence, 1884) and Le Fonti dell' Orlando Furioso (2nd ed., Florence, 1900); F. Picco, Rolando nella storia e nella poesia (Turin, 1901); G. Paris, “ Roncevaux," in Légendes du moyen âge (1903), on the topography of the battlefield.
ROLANDSECK, a village of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine
province, delightfully situated on the left bank of the Rhine,
8 m. above Bonn, with a station on the railway Cologne-Coblenz.
The place consists almost entirely of villas and is a favourite
summer resort. Crowning the vine-clad hills behind it lie the
ruins of the castle, a picturesque ivy-covered arch, whence a
fine view is obtained of the Siebengebirge and the Rhine valley
as far as Bonn. Immediately below Rolandseck in mid-river
is the island of Nonnenwerth, on which is a nursing school
under the conduct of Franciscan nuns, established in 1850. The
convent which formerly stood here was founded in 1122 and
secularized in 1802. Tradition assigns the foundation of the
castle of Rolandseck to Charlemagne's paladin, Roland. It
was certainly built at a very early date, as it was restored by
Frederick, archbishop of Cologne, in 1120, and it was a fortress
until the end of the 15th century.
ROLL, ALFRED PHILIPPE (1846– ), French painter,
was born in Paris on the 1st of March 1846. Pupil of Gérôme
and Bonnat at the École des Beaux Arts, he made his
début at the Salon in 1870 with “ Environs of Baccarat ” and
" Evening," and attracted the widest attention in 1875 by
his colossal painting of “ The Flood at Toulouse ” (now at
the Havre Museum). All his early work is imbued with the
spirit of romanticism under the influence of Géricault, whilst
his colour tended to Bolognese heaviness with a strong leaning
towards dark shadows in the flesh painting, in which he closely
followed Courbet. In 1877 he showed at the Salon the “ Fête
of Silenus ” (now at the Ghent Museum), a painting of such
vivid colour and exuberant life that it recalls the work of
Jordaens. About this time he began to devote himself to the
realistic rendering of modern life, especially among the working
classes, and together with romantic subjects he abandoned
his earlier heavy colouring, and devoted himself to the study
of free light. His “ Miners' Strike ” of 1880 (now at the Valenciennes
Museum) placed him in the front rank of modern French
painters, and from that date his career was one of continuous
and brilliant success. He became “official painter ” to the
- ↑ A proof of the popularity of the legend in Germany is supplied by the so-called Roland statues, of which perhaps the most famous example is that of Bremen. Mention of a statua Rolandi is made in a privilegium granted by Henry V. to the town of Bremen in 1111. The Rolands-säule were probably symbolic of the judicial rights possessed by the towns where they are found, and it has been suggested that the word arises from false etymology with Rothland-säule, red-land-pillar, the symbol of the possession of the power of life and death.
