Durendal

Also Known As: also Durandal; Italian Durindana or Durlindana; German Durendart; the first syllable is usually read as Old French dur, hard, and the rest has no agreed meaning
Region/Culture: Western Europe
Mythos: French Mythology, Medieval Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Mythological Objects
Mythical Attributes: Durendal is a sword that cannot be broken, sent from heaven by an angel, with the relics of four saints sealed inside its golden hilt.
Role in Mythos: It is the weapon of Roland, nephew and champion of Charlemagne, and the last thing he tries to save in the Song of Roland.
Relation to Humans: Durendal passes from the emperor’s hand to the one knight judged fit to carry it, and with it he is said to have won most of Europe for his lord. Later poems give it a line of earlier owners, each of whom lost it by losing a fight.

The dying man could no longer see. He got to his feet anyway, found the brown boulder in front of him by touch, and brought his sword down on it ten times. The steel grated and shrieked. It did not break. He was trying to destroy the finest blade in Christendom, and it would not let him.

This is the scene that made Durendal famous, and it comes near the end of the Song of Roland, the Old French epic set down around the year 1100. The poem turns a real ambush of Charlemagne’s rearguard in the Pyrenees in 778 into a great battle against the Saracens of Spain. Roland, the emperor’s nephew, commands the rear. He is too proud to blow his horn for help until his men are dead around him, and when at last he blows it, the effort bursts his temples. He is not killed by any enemy. He walks off the field under his own power, horn in one hand and sword in the other, to die facing Spain.

Before that hour the sword does what it was made to do, and the poet enjoys telling it. When Roland’s lance shatters he draws Durendal and meets a pagan lord named Chernuble. The blow goes through the jewelled helmet, through the head and the body, through the mail coat and the saddle, and into the spine of the horse beneath. Man and mount drop together on the thick grass. Later he takes off the right hand of King Marsile at the wrist and kills the king’s son. The blade comes up red to the hilt and loses none of its edge.

Now, alone on a rise beneath two trees, with four blocks of marble standing near, he faints. A Saracen who has been lying among the corpses pretending to be one of them sees his chance, creeps up, and lays hold of the sword to carry it home to Arabia. Roland feels it sliding from him. He opens his eyes, swings the only other thing he is holding, and stoves in the man’s gilded helmet and skull with his ivory horn. The horn splits. Its crystal and gold fall into the grass.

That is what decides him. If one thief has tried, another will, and he will not be awake for it.

So he strikes the boulder. Then he strikes a block of sardonyx. Then he hammers a dark stone so hard that great pieces fly off the rock, and the sword springs back from the blow toward the sky, whole. Between attempts he talks to it, as a man might to an old companion he is about to betray. He tells it how white and bright it is, how it flashes in the sun. He recites what they did together, and the list is not modest: Anjou and Brittany, Poitou and Maine, Normandy, Provence, Aquitaine, Lombardy, Bavaria, Flanders, Burgundy, Saxony, Constantinople, and for good measure Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England. History does not support much of this. The poem is not asking history.

He also says where the sword came from. Charlemagne was in the valley of Moriane when God sent an angel to tell him to give this blade to a count and captain. The emperor belted it on Roland himself. And he says what is in it. Inside the golden hilt lie a tooth of Saint Peter, blood of Saint Basil, hairs of Saint Denis, and a piece of the robe of the Virgin Mary. The sword is a reliquary with an edge. That is why it must not fall to unbelievers, and perhaps why no stone can hurt it.

When he understands that he cannot break it, he does the only thing left. He runs to a pine tree, lies down on his face on the green grass, and puts the sword and the broken horn beneath his body. He turns his head toward the enemy’s country so that those who find him will know he died advancing. He holds up his right glove to God. The angel Gabriel takes it from his hand, and Michael comes with him to carry the soul away.

The Song of Roland says nothing about who forged Durendal. Later poets could not leave that alone. Several chansons de geste of the following centuries credit it to Galant, the French name for Wayland the Smith, or to one of his brothers; the poem Fierabras names the brother Munificans. Others supply former owners. In the Chanson d’Aspremont the sword belongs to a young Saracen prince, Aumon, until the boy Roland, armed with nothing better than a stick, kills him and takes both the sword and the horse Veillantif. A separate tradition has the young Charlemagne win it in Spain from a foe called Braimant. The Italians went furthest. In Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato, at the end of the fifteenth century, Durindana is the sword of Hector of Troy, handed down through the Amazon queen Penthesilea, and Ariosto kept that pedigree in Orlando Furioso. An angel’s gift had become a Trojan heirloom.

Its name has been argued over for as long. It seems to begin with the French word for hard, and a twelfth-century Latin chronicle of Charlemagne’s wars already had to explain it to readers as meaning a hard blow. A long line of learned proposals has followed, drawing on French, Breton and even Arabic, and none has settled the matter.

Its powers are few and absolute. It cuts whatever it meets and it cannot be destroyed. Its limit is that it protects nothing but itself. It did not save the rearguard, and it did not save Roland, whose own horn killed him. An unbreakable sword is a poor thing to own on the day its owner breaks.

Places have claimed what the poem left lying under a pine. High in the Pyrenees there is a vast square notch in the ridge called Roland’s Breach, said to have been cut when he tried once more to shatter the blade against the mountain. At Rocamadour, in south-western France, local legend says he never hid the sword at all but hurled it, with the archangel Michael’s help, some hundreds of kilometres north, where it stuck in the cliff above the sanctuary. A sword has been shown there for generations, wedged in a cleft of the rock and held by a chain. It was a replica, and nobody in the town claimed otherwise. In June 2024 it vanished overnight, and the police treated it as a theft.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Durendal?

Durendal is the sword of Roland, the nephew and leading knight of Charlemagne in medieval French legend. It appears in the Song of Roland, an Old French epic from around 1100. The poem describes it as an unbreakable blade with holy relics sealed in its golden hilt.

Where did Durendal come from?

In the Song of Roland, an angel sent by God told Charlemagne in the valley of Moriane to give the sword to a count and captain, and the emperor gave it to Roland. Later poems tell other stories. Some say Wayland the Smith or one of his brothers forged it, and the Italian poets Boiardo and Ariosto say Durendal once belonged to Hector of Troy.

What relics are in the hilt of Durendal?

The Song of Roland lists four relics in Durendal’s golden hilt. They are a tooth of Saint Peter, blood of Saint Basil, hairs of Saint Denis, and a piece of the robe of the Virgin Mary. Roland gives these relics as the reason the sword must never fall into non-Christian hands.

Why did Roland try to break Durendal?

Roland tried to break Durendal so that it would not be captured after his death at the battle in the Pyrenees. A Saracen had already tried to steal it while he lay faint. Roland struck the blade against a boulder ten times and then against other stones, but it would not break, so he lay down on top of it to die.

Is the sword at Rocamadour the real Durendal?

No. A local legend says Roland threw Durendal all the way to Rocamadour in south-western France, where it lodged in the cliff. The sword displayed there, held in a cleft of the rock by a chain, was a replica, and it was stolen in June 2024.