As legend has it, a sword from God given to Roland, an eighth century army 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 via 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 practically 1,300 years, and it turned a landmark and vacationer attraction in Rocamadour, a really small village in southwestern France, about 110 miles east of Bordeaux. So residents and officers there have been shocked to find late final month that the blade had vanished, in keeping with La Dépêche du Midi, a French newspaper.
An officer with France’s nationwide police drive 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 subsequent morning that it was lacking.
The officer, who declined to offer his identify, 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, instructed La Dépêche that the sword “is a public good that belongs to the state.”
“We’ll miss Durandal,” she stated. “It was a part of Rocamadour for hundreds of years. There may be not a information who fails to indicate it throughout a go to. Rocamadour has been stripped of part of itself, even whether it is only a legend. The destinies of our village and this sword are linked.”
For many People, King Arthur’s Excalibur is a extra recognizable instance of a sword caught in stone. However the myths of Durandal are in style in France, due to the well-known eleventh or twelfth century French poem “The Tune of Roland.”
The poem is partly set in the course of 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. In keeping with the poem’s fictional account, Roland and his sword battled valiantly, however he was badly wounded and tried unsuccessfully earlier than his loss of life to destroy the blade.
In keeping with “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 toes 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 reproduction sword was positioned in Rocamadour by an official trying to increase 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.”
However Durandal was nonetheless a fixture of Rocamadour, and its absence has resonated all through the world.
“I can definitely think about this shall 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 occasions.
Including to the thriller of the disappearance is its timing throughout a contentious political cycle. After President Emmanuel Macron referred to as for a snap election, France’s far-right get together dominated the primary spherical of voting.
“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 avoid Muslim fingers to protect honor, Christianity and Frenchness,” she stated, “is now gone.”
However the idea that this sword might have been stolen to ship a political message is simply conjecture. This will likely transform a easy prank, Ms. Solterer stated.
The place the sword could also be is anybody’s guess. And whereas the police proceed to show over each stone, the thriller of Durandal continues — 1,246 years and counting.
William Lamb contributed reporting and Susan C. Beachy contributed analysis.
