The Romance of the Middle Ages

La Chanson de Roland has become the national epic of France, telling how Roland, Charlemagne’s vassal, is tricked by the traitor Ganelon into encountering a Saracen army at Roncevaux. In the climactic passage shown here, Roland finally blows a horn to summon aid, bursting a blood vessel and dying a hero. This manuscript, known as the 'Oxford Roland', is the earliest surviving copy of the poem. It was perhaps already bound with a separate manuscript of Plato’s Timaeus by the thirteenth century, when a note records that the Timaeus was bequeathed by Master Henry of Langley to the Abbey at Osney, just outside Oxford.