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The Battle Between Christians And Pagans In The Song Of Roland

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The Song of Roland is an epic about a battle between Christians and Pagans. Pagans were anybody that wasn’t Christian. This battle takes place in Rencesvals on August 15, 778. This was a battle that lost the lives of tens of thousands of men. Few people came out of this alive. In the Song of Roland it mainly focuses on Roland and Oliver. Readers don’t really find much out about anyone during the battle but Roland, Oliver (Roland’s best friend), and King Charlemagne. After years and years of the story being told someone wrote it down and now many stories have sprouted from it. This is an epic that has been told for years and will continue to be learned. All great epics follow a similar journey pattern. This pattern typically goes in the order …show more content…

Sometimes it is to help the hero but sometimes it is just another obstacle for the hero to pass through. It can also be both, depending on the epic. In the Song of Roland, readers see many different interferences from God because it is a story of Christians fighting non-christians. They see all that happens to them God's doings because that is their faith and the way the religion works. They put all things in God. A big interference of the Gods that does happen in the Song of Roland is when God takes care of the light so that Charlemagne can catch up to the Pagans to end the battle with the victory. We see a major interference of the Gods in Gilgamesh when Ishtar forces her father to send the Bull of Heaven down to kill Gilgamesh for throwing her acts in her face (which she did not like at all). Although this plan doesn’t work out like she wanted, someone very close to him did die, Enkidu. This really kicked Gilgamesh’s quest into its real start. In the epic of Beowulf, there is a specific interference of the Gods to Beowulf. In the battle between Beowulf and Grendel’s mother a light shines on a weapon just when Beowulf needs one in the scene, this is very much thought to be shown to him by the Gods. Not all epics have the interference of a God and not all lean good or bad but many epics do have some sort of help from the God’s given in the book to one party or the …show more content…

In Beowulf, the reward for him happens a few times. First he gets rewarded when he goes to save the people from Grendel which stops a feud between Geatland and Heorot. He has jewels and prizes sent back to the King Geatland. Next, he stops Grendel’s mother which gains him spot as the King of Heorot. His last reward was for them to follow through with what he asked for before the dragon took the last of him. I don’t really think there is much of a reward in the Song of Roland, if anything the reward is that King Charlemagne does end up winning the battle that he lost so many men to. Personally, I believe that the reward for Gilgamesh is that he learns about life and loss. Losing Enkidu changed Gilgamesh and made him realize exactly what he was afraid of and what he

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However, after Beowulf kills Grendel using his inhuman strength to rip his otherwise impenetrable arm off, causing him to bleed out, Hrothgar rewards him “Then Beowulf was given the brand of Half-Dane, the golden banner in reward of victory, the adorned standard, helm and byrnie; the renowned treasure-sword many saw brought before the hero; Beowulf took the full flagon from the floor; of the reward-gift he did not, for as payment, need not be ashamed...the head-guard was wound with wires the re-inforced crest guarded from without.. ”(Slade 1020-1032). Gifts represent success and the heroism of the character, adding to the glorified epic hero quality yearned by all warriors of the Anglo-Saxon

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While Roland and the Franks fight hard, there's no way they can hold off the Saracens, based on sheer numbers. Almost all of Rolands men are dead and he knows that it's too late now to be saved, but he blows his oliphant anyway. The emperor sees what happened to his men and tries to avenge them. However, when Roland blew his horn he blew it so hard that his temples burst. He died a martyr, and saints took his soul to

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Authored by an unknown poet in the early 11th century, The Song of Roland (Le Chanson de Roland) is the earliest surviving major work of French literature, and seeks to recount Charlemagne's sole military defeat, that of the Battle of Roncenvaux Pass in 778. The only other surviving record of the events of that battle is a brief passage in Einhard's biography of Charlemagne, Life of Charlemagne (Vita Karoli Magni), in which he paints the emperor's campaign in Spain as a short, calculated, and (at least momentarily) unsuccessful politically-driven incursion into the Iberian Peninsula. The battle itself is described as a relatively minor blip in the emperor's military career; an ambush in a Pyrenees mountain pass by a band of Christian Basque raiders who attack Charlemagne's rearguard, after which they immediately disperse and effectively evade any efforts from the emperor to avenge the deed. Einhard's account mentions that several Frankish lords were killed, among which is Roland, the prefect of the Breton March.

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He knew what they had tholed, the long times and troubles they'd come through without a leader; so the Lord of Life, the glorious Almighty, made this man renowned." This quote describes how God played a large role in the success of Beowulf. Assuming that all acts of heroism proven successful are really acts of God. Thus, leaving you thinking success must be a form of divine assistance, in the hands of God. The poem takes on both beliefs of Paganism and Christianity.

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