It was here that the Emperor set out with his armies for Spain

In order to enter Spain, pilgrims had to cross the Pyrenees. The most popular route was the Cize Pass and as the descent into Spanish territory began, the road led through a narrow and heavily wooded defile called Roncevaux. It was here that in the long distant and mythical past, the mother of all battles had taken place between the Christian Franks and the Moors of Spain.

The legend was epic. It told of the betrayal of Charlemagne's Frankish army by the Judas-like Ganelon and the subsequent ambush of the rearguard led by the heroic knight Roland. They were surprised and overwhelmed by a massive Saracen force and Roland tried to recall the main body of the army by sounding his horn, the Oliphant made of elephant tusk, blowing so hard that he burst the vessels of his temple. In a dying gesture, Roland tried to smash his great sword Durendal against a rock rather than have it fall into enemy hands but finding that his stroke was so powerful and the sword so well made that it split the boulder in two. Roland died a martyr's death.

At Blaye, not far from Bordeaux, pilgrims could visit the tomb of Roland in the church of Saint Romanus where he was buried with his famous horn and sword. A little further south at Belin was the burial ground of the fallen Frankish warriors. All along the pilgrim roads jongleurs would recite the epic poem known as the Song of Roland which was but the most famous of a huge repertoire of popular legends centered around Charlemagne and the heroic feats of his twelve paladins

This epic story was based on a real event, but rather than a great battle between the forces of Islam and Christianity it involved a minor skirmish between Franks and a small band of Basques.

The medieval mind made no difference between legend and historical fact - such a distinction was alien. The popular retelling of the oral tradition where subsequent versions added to the old, met the learned, written tradition of the elite. Professor Jacques Chocheyras has observed that because of the rupture in classical culture caused by the collapse of the Latin Western Empire in the sixth century, a process took place whereby each was contaminated by the other. Monasteries were deliberately located in rustic areas where pagan traditions thrived. Correspondingly, the vast body of the illiterate imbued the written Latin word with magical properties and undeniable truth.

Out of this came the simultaneous perpetuation of legendary traditions in both clerical texts and oral tales. And so the legend of Roland has its written Latin version - the Historia Rotholandi et Karoli Magni which was included in the five books of the Codex of Calixtus which set down the tradition of Santiago in manuscript.

In this latter version we find the Apostle James appearing to the Emperor Charlemagne in a vision calling him to liberate his forgotten tomb from the Saracens and the expedition which was then undertaken to do his bidding. Charlemagne not only liberated the shrine of Galicia but also built the first church there and made the road safe for pilgrims to follow. It was when returning victorious but exhausted to France, that the misfortune at Roncevaux took place.

Of the two versions, it is not possible for us to know which came first, but heroic knightly tales and pious lives of saints coexisted comfortably in the age of Pilgrimage and Crusade