The Song of Roland

  

A long distance shooter friend, JF, sent this in today, from the journalist and former Communist, Whittaker Chambers:

It seemed to me that I had a more important task to do, one that was peculiarly mine. It was not to attack Communism frontally. It was to clarify on the basis of the news, the religious and moral position that made Communism evil. I had been trying to make a negative point. Now I had to state the positive position, and it was a much more formidable task than attack. It meant explaining simply and readably for millions the reasons why the great secular faith of this age is wrong and the religious faith of the ages is right; why, in the words of the Song of Roland, the Christians are right and the heathen are wrong.

 

I'd say there's a lesson to be drawn from that and a good one, but I'll spare you the sermon. Instead, consider the Song of Roland, the great, epic, 11th century chivalric poem. Betrayal, heroism, faith, the battle of good versus evil, all that and far more. It's also bloody. 

Here's Archbishop Turpin in action against Corsablix at the battle of Roncevaux, in which Roland and the ferocious if saintly prelate ultimately die:

To strike that king by virtue great goes he,

The hauberk all unfastens, breaks the shield,

Thrusts his great spear in through the carcass clean,

Pins it so well he shakes it in its seat,

Dead in the road he's flung it from his spear.

Looks on the ground, that glutton lying sees,

Nor leaves him yet, they say, but rather speaks:

"Culvert pagan, you lied now in your teeth,

Charles my lord our warrant is indeed;

None of our Franks hath any mind to flee.

Your companions all on this spot we'll keep,

I tell you news; death shall ye suffer here.

Strike on, the Franks! Fail none of you at need!

Ours the first blow, to God the glory be!"

"Monjoie!" he cries, for all the camp to hear. 

Despite steely Almace and his lance, Turpin's mortally wounded, though he continues to fight the heathen: 

Come on afoot a thousand Sarrazens,

And on horseback some forty thousand men.

But well I know, to approach they never dare;

Lances and spears they poise to hurl at them,

Arrows, barbs, darts and javelins in the air.

With the first flight they've slain our Gualtier;

Turpin of Reims has all his shield broken,

And cracked his helm; he's wounded in the head,

From his hauberk the woven mail they tear,

In his body four spear-wounds doth he bear;

Beneath him too his charger's fallen dead.

Great grief it was, when that Archbishop fell.

Turpin of Reims hath felt himself undone,

Since that four spears have through his body come; 

Nimble and bold upon his feet he jumps;

Looks for Rollant, and then towards him runs,

Saying this word: "I am not overcome.

While life remains, no good vassal gives up."

He's drawn Almace, whose steel was brown and rough,

Through the great press a thousand blows he's struck:

As Charles said, quarter he gave to none;

He found him there, four hundred else among,

Wounded the most, speared through the middle some,

Also there were from whom the heads he'd cut:

So tells the tale, he that was there says thus,

The brave Saint Giles, whom God made marvellous,

Who charters wrote for th' Minster at Loum;

Nothing he's heard that does not know this much. 

Wow, and you can and should read the whole thing here before it's banned by the rainbow Maoists and better still, in the original, which rings.

Chanson in mind, it's said that William the Conqueror's minstrel  went into the Battle of Hastings singing the Song of Roland, and most certainly, Bishop Adhemar de Monteil carried arms in the First Crusade. A mace, perhaps.

What a far cry from the Church of the West as it is today, cowering from a sickness with a 99.8% survival rate, as it cravenly parrots the faddish shibboleths of our corporate sponsored, oligarch, leftist elite establishment and their billionaire CCP heathen patrons. 

Draw the moral as you like, but what would Olifant say? 

Monjoie,

LSP