As legend has it, a sword from God given to Roland, an eighth century navy chief beneath Charlemagne, was so highly effective that Roland’s final mission was to destroy it.
When the blade, referred to as Durandal, proved indestructible, Roland threw it so far as he may, and it sailed over 100 miles earlier than slicing by way of the aspect of a rock face within the medieval French village of Rocamadour.
That sword, because the story goes, sat wedged within the stone for almost 1,300 years, and it grew to become a landmark and vacationer attraction in Rocamadour, a small village in southwestern France, about 110 miles east of Bordeaux. So residents and officers there have been surprised to find late final month that the blade had vanished, in accordance with La Dépêche du Midi, a French newspaper.
An officer with France’s nationwide police pressure in Cahors, a city 30 miles southwest of Rocamadour, stated that the sword disappeared someday after dusk on June 21, and that the authorities opened an investigation after a passerby reported the following morning that it was lacking.
The officer, who declined to offer his title, emphasised that the sword is “a duplicate,” however acknowledged that it had symbolic significance.
He referred additional inquiries to the workplace of the prosecutor of the republic in Cahors, which didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The mayor of Rocamadour, Dominique Lenfant, stated the sword had been an compulsory cease for vacationers and a degree of pleasure for residents, all of whom study the legend by learning the well-known Eleventh- or Twelfth-century French poem “The Tune of Roland.”
When a resident referred to as on June 22 to report that the sword had vanished, she recalled in an interview on Saturday, “I had the impression that somebody had lower a bit of Rocamadour, as if it have been a residing being and somebody had simply lower off an arm.”
“This sword belongs to this place,” Ms. Lenfant added, “because the legend says that it was thrown from the Pyrenees and landed right here. After I began telling individuals what had occurred, they informed me, ‘It’s a joke, it’s not doable.’ Nobody may consider that such a factor may occur.”
For many People, King Arthur’s Excalibur is a extra recognizable instance of a sword caught in stone. However the myths of Durandal are common throughout France due to “The Tune of Roland.”
The poem is partly set throughout the Battle of Roncevaux Move in 778 A.D., throughout which Charlemagne’s males who had fought towards Muslims in Spain, led by Roland, discovered themselves severely outnumbered by enemy forces. Based on the poem’s fictional account, Roland and his sword battled valiantly, however he was badly wounded and tried unsuccessfully earlier than his demise to destroy the blade.
Based on “The Tune of Roland,” Roland hid the blade beneath his dying physique.
However tour guides in Rocamadour have inspired guests to return to the city — a postcard-worthy cluster of castles carved out of a steep mountainside — and see the blade for themselves: jutting out of a crack within the rock face, some 30 ft up within the air.
The story of how Durandal ended up in Rocamadour — 150 miles northeast of the place Roland died — has its skeptics.
A British historian, Richard Barber, wrote in 2020 that the duplicate sword was positioned in Rocamadour by an official trying to enhance tourism within the 1780s. And others, together with Helen Solterer, a professor of romance research at Duke College, referred to as the sword “a duplicate.”
Ms. Lenfant went a step additional, describing it as “a duplicate of a duplicate of a duplicate.”
“The vital factor to know,” she stated, “is that it’s an emblem of our heritage in Rocamadour, and that it’s not there.”
Others agreed that, copy or no, Durandal was a fixture of Rocamadour, and its absence has resonated all through the realm.
“I can definitely think about this will probably be an enormous loss for Rocamadour because it was one of many medieval village’s most legendary sights,” stated Paola Westbeek, a journey journalist who has visited Rocamadour a number of instances.
“The far proper would code the sword as a signature piece of French nationwide identification,” Ms. Solterer stated.
“The Tune of Roland” has been referenced by nationalist teams for its message that Muslims are an enemy and Muslim immigrants are overtaking France, stated Ada Maria Kuskowski, an assistant professor of historical past with a specialization in medieval historical past on the College of Pennsylvania.
“The sword, which Roland struggled so onerous to steer clear of Muslim palms to protect honor, Christianity and Frenchness,” she stated, “is now gone.”
However the principle that this sword might have been stolen to ship a political message is simply conjecture. This may increasingly turn into a easy prank, Ms. Solterer stated.
Ms. Lenfant stated that the sword was eliminated for a couple of months in 2011, when it was displayed on the Musée de Cluny, the French nationwide museum of the Center Ages in Paris. A duplicate was made at the moment, although officers misplaced observe of which one was the unique.
In any occasion, she stated, 4 blacksmiths have provided to make use of the one which has been saved on the village corridor since then to create a brand new Durandal without cost. So it appears its legend will dwell on regardless of how the police investigation pans out.
“These are unimaginable provides,” Ms. Lenfant stated. “We didn’t ask, however everyone seems to be speaking about this story and has discovered that one thing is lacking. It’s a must to put it again.”
Susan C. Beachy contributed analysis.
