The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

were; when he sleeps, St. Gabriel watches by his bed; God speaks to him by the voice of the angels; when he prays the sun stops in the heavens; when his warriors go into battle he blesses them with his right hand.
    His figure, though Godlike, is human nevertheless, and near to us, for it is sorrowful. We weep with him for Roland the fair, slain at Roncevaux in 778. 13
    But the angel of God is implacable with Charlemagne the Emperor, and reminds him what his mission must be. Roland lies dead upon the green sward at Roncevaux with his face turned towards Spain, so that Charlemagne should not think he turned his back upon his foes. Roncevaux was a lost battle, but Roland became the best-beloved hero of the Middle Ages, as immortal as Leonidas at Thermopylae, and the minstrels sang of his deeds for centuries. At Hastings in 1066, the Norman jongleur, Taillefer sang of Roland as he spurred on his horse and tossed his sword aloft before William’s army. And the memory of Roland echoed in the minds of innumerable pilgrims of the eleventh and twelfth centuries as they plodded through the passes of the Pyrenees towards far-off Compostella.
    They thought of Roland when they entered the dark valley of Roncevaux at eventide through the dismal gorge with its grim rocks which seemed to echo and re-echo with the distant battle-cry, “Mont-joie”, and the melancholy winding of Roland’s horn, Olifaunt. And they thought of Roland’s peer, Archbishop Turpin, who not only celebrated Mass and consecrated knights, pledging Heaven itself as a return for every life, but turned aside to handle lance and blade. For, said the Chanson, not even St. Michael himself fought more fiercely against the fallen angels and ‘Soon four hundred pagans lie stretched around him—a tremendous exploit, even for an archbishop’. And the dying Roland, seeing his beloved archbishop lying dead on the green , sward with his shapely white hands crossed over his breast, commends to God the soul ‘of one who all his life had been a valiant champion against the heathen both in word and deed’.
    So sang the twelfth-century poet of the Chanson, but then we are told by the scholars that the poet was wrong and that Turpin never even took part in the Battle of Roncevaux, for when it was taking place he was celebrating Mass a few leagues away.
    According to the tradition in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, after the disaster Turpin had returned to France and retired to Vienne, where he laid up his helmet and sword and cured his wounds. Then, being at leisure, he resolved to write his memoirs, for his friend, Leoprand, the Dean of Aix-la-Chapelle, had asked him to tell the story of the Emperor Charlemagne’s expeditions to deliver Spain and Galicia from the Saracens. And so the good Archbishop wrote back announcing his intention of describing in all sincerity, as befits one who is Charlemagne’s historian, the marches and counter-marches of the Emperor, the miracles of God and the deeds of prowess of the Twelve Peers during the fourteen years that had preceded the fatal engagement at Roncevaux. This letter was the preface to the celebrated chronicle entitled Turpini Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi, written by the so-called pseudo-Turpin, which has aroused such a tempest of criticism in the academic world. *
    Joseph Bédier, who in the matter of epic poetry deserves to be called Maestro di color che sanno, has shown step by step how the chronicle of Turpin, which formed the fourth book of the Codex Calixtinus, or Book of St. James, was closely related to the great pilgrimage. According to the chronicle, Charlemagne was old and weary after a life spent in warring episodes and he wished to rest. One night in the heavens he saw a starry road which crossed France and Spain to the world’s end. It ran across the sky to Galicia, where the body of St. James at that time lay unrecognized. Many a night he saw the portent and understood it not. At last a fair lord appeared to him, and when the Emperor asked: “Lord, who art thou?” he answered: “I am James the Apostle, Christ’s servant, the son of Zebedee, John the Evangelist’s brother, elect by God’s grace to preach His law, whom Herod slew: look you, my body is in Galicia, but no man knoweth where, and the Saracens oppress the land. Therefore God sends you to recapture the road that leads to my tomb and the land wherein I rest. The starry way that you saw in the sky signifies that you shall go into