ROLAND'S GOSPEL COMMENTARY

Hello. My name is Justin Bianchi, and this blog is an opportunity for me to express my thoughts on Scripture after studying theology at the graduate level for four years. I’ve been blogging since 2009, and the blog has evolved from a rather general blog on Scripture and the faith into a commentary on the four Gospels.

I follow the Lectionary readings used by the Roman Catholic Church. The Revised Common Lectionary has a generally similar cycle of readings for the Gospels. My blog posts are not sermons. They are commentary, or more properly, theological background notes on the Gospel readings.   When it is relevant, I may borrow or alternately critique the commentary of well-known scholars.

It is my position that most of what was recorded in the four Gospels actually occurred.  Once a person accepts, as a matter of faith, the truth content of the Gospels, then interpretation becomes straightforward, inspiring, and sometimes, fun.   I look for the theology in a Gospel passage.  I look for passages that explain the Christology of the faith, the ecclesiology of the faith, as well as the soteriological and pneumatological dimensions of the faith. Sometimes I will comment on, or rebut, the historical-critical scholarship of the text.

This blog is named for Roland of Roncesvaux, a ninth-century governor of the Breton Marches (Brittany), and a senior officer in Charlemagne’s Court.   He is memorialized in the The Song of Roland – a twelfth century work which is the oldest surviving example of literature from the French medieval era.  As an heroic epic, Roland’s story shares some similarities with Beowulf (the oldest surviving piece of literature in Old English) and the legend of Arthur.

However, Roland is a very historic figure, who held a position both as a governor of the French borderland with Spain, and who was also part of Charlemagne’s court of advisors. Roland governed the marches at a perilous time: the moors ruled Spain from a caliphate in Cordoba.

Roland.

In 778, the non-Christian King of Saragossa, in Spain, sent an emissary to Charlemagne.  The emissary from the Spanish mountain kingdom proposed a truce between France and the King of Saragossa.  According to the Song of Roland, the peace proposal was a ruse, intended to force France out of Spain.

Charlemagne’s advisors debated the peace proposal and decided to send Ganelon, Charlemagne’s tempera-mental brother-in-law, to Spain.  Ganelon was also Roland’s step-father, though they disliked each other. Ganelon reluctantly went to Spain, and immediately offered to betray both his King and his son-in-law.  The King of Saragossa and Ganelon, the French emissary, quickly agreed to a plan.

Charlemagne sent an expedition into Spain’s north-western mountains, and agreed to come to terms with the King of Saragossa, who controlled territory populated by the Basques and the Navarrans.   When Charlemagne’s forces withdrew through a narrow pass on their return to the French border, the enemy Basque/Navarran forces ambushed Charlemagne’s rearguard.  Several senior French officers, including Roland, perished in the battle.

The Song of Roland tells us that the forces that attacked Charlemagne’s rearguard were Moors.  However, historians believe that it is more likely that local forces – the Basques and the Navarrans – attacked the French, though they may have been equipped or assisted by the Moors.

Roland’s Feast Day is August 15, the same date in which the Church commemorates the Assumption of Mary.