Christlich-muslimischer Dialog in Spanien, 12.-15. Jahrhundert
on the Iberian Peninsula, 12th to 15th centuries
This paper is the first overview and the starting point of my research program of the next five years to come. On the following pages I will present three major topics: 1st I’ll give an introduction into the necessity and relevance of an project of alterity nowadays. 2nd I want to exemplify my methods of research for solving the problems to come. 3rd I’ll try to transfer this methodological knowledge with the aid of two central Latin texts of 12th century Iberian Christianity.
1. The situation: Christian-Islamic approaches in the European history between the Middles Ages and Today
We are living in an era of politicized and politicizing
religions. Within the present process of religious globalization we detect
not only the actual thread of specific religious and cultural identities
but also a strong return to geographically or even locally limited religious
orientation. There has been in the last years an ever growing revival of
cultural, social, ethnic and religious conscience. This very often individual
revival of sacrament and religion is the answer to the perception of our
World as “global village”. If this political and religious diagnosis will
be right, we are obliged to question the possibilities of peace or conflict
within the globalization of world religions like Christianity and Islam.
We won’t find satisfying answers to this very complex question by describing
and explaining the intercultural and interreligious relationship between
these two religions at present time alone. Questioning the readiness and
conditions for peace or conflict within the word religions means questioning
the historical patterns of peace or conflict as well. We won’t be able
to pull down our artificial constructions of cultural and religious prejudices
without analizing their historical process of construction, and without
exploring the vast landscape of manners of historical and literary behaviour
in the Christian-Islamic approaches:
Once being in contact with Islam,
have Christians, in certain times and regions, been ready to conflict or
have they also been capable of peace, tolerance and convivence? When, why
and to which degree one position has been prefered to the other one? And:
Can we, Europeans, tolerate the widely diffused opinion of a “clash of
civilizations/religions” because of our more close and complex perspective
and experience of European history of intercultural and interreligious
conflict?
For answering these questions,
the Iberian Peninsula of the High and Late Middle Ages is the very best
model to analyze. South-Western Europe is a particular geographical unit
with a more or less separate history of transformation and homogenization
of Church and Society between the 12th and 15th centuries.
Although this region between Western and Central Europe and Nothern Africa
has been a space of permanent cultural and religious contacts, approaches,
exchanges and conflicts between Christians and Muslims during the whole
Middle Ages, the phase of transformation in the 14th and 15th
centuries are less intensively investigated than the central period of
the 12th and 13th centuries. Here, we have the very
rare chance to describe the process of a Christian nation-building via
theoretical and practical conflict with the “other” religion – the case
of a selfdefining and selfconstructing Christian society by means of defeating
and destroying the former prevailing religion and culture.
2. The situation of research
Until now, the international European and American research on Iberian Islam in the Middle Ages is dominated by three fields of work: 1st we have the traditional historiography of the Latin Christian image of Islam and his development. These attempts to reconstruct the alterity of Islam can be of historical, social, cultural, theological or philosophical nature. 2nd we can mention the studies on the scientific, technical and artistic, but also on the philosophical and theological influences of the Arabic-Islamic culture on the Occident coming especially from Spain. These processes of transfer are described either in a Mozarabic or in a Mudejar perspective. 3rd in the last twenty-five years we state a growth of sociological studies on convivence and conflict between Spanish Christianity and Islam in a “frontier society” working with categories like “cultural barrier”, “parallel societies”, “proper and foreign”, “minorities and majorities” or “violence and sex”.
3. The task of a new generation of research – developping more adequate methods
It is only in the last ten oder fifteen years that
the Iberian Christian literature on Islam has been appreciated in a more
suitable philosophical, theological, historical and philological way. But
this – nevertheless important – research is methodologically deficient
because there has been, to a certain degree, a lack of theoretical reflexion
on the multiple contextuality of medieval texts, their changing, their
functionalism and their variable publics. Furthermore, we can observe a
shortcoming of consideration of the complicated interdependence between
Christian literature on Islam and its structural potential of peaceful
or conflictual behaviour. The history of the interreligious communication
or non-communication, its processuality, its conditions, responsibles,
and effects on the Iberian Peninsula from the 12th to the 15th
centuries has still to be written. The base of my research will be a multilayered
concept of contextuality which regards Latin and popular texts on Islam
from the Peninsula of all literary genres (theology, philosophy, history,
and literature), forms (letters, treatises, dialogues, chronicles, biographies,
and poems), characters (learned, popular, real, and imaginary), and with
different publics (scholars, noblemen, laymen, real or fictitious readers
and listeners). The different intellectual and religious milieus of authors,
periods, and forms of production and reception, will be respected like
their influences on the interpretation of texts in manuscripts. Given that,
the contextuality of my literature will be at least a double one because
it focusses on external and internal criteria of handwritten transmission.
With this concept of a morefold
interpretation of handwritten text tradition I hope to develop a theory
of intercultural and interreligious discursivity in the field of traditional
and innovative methods of dialogue or non-dialogue which contributes to
explain the success or failure of dialogical literature dealing with culture
and religion.
4. The exemplification. Two Spanish sources of the 12th century in comparison
Both examples, I will now present, have their origin in the French-Iberian culture of Latin Christianity, both authors are (probably) of French origin, both aim at a specific public of Iberian readers, and both testify a certain stage of development in the Christian Latin image of Islam in the 12th century (“from heresy to new religion”) which is interdependently related to a dramatic change of strategy in the confrontation with Islam.
a. Pseudo-Turpin
The first important text to analyze is perhaps something
unexspected in the eyes of the majority of the scientific readers: It is
the so-called Pseudo-Turpin, one of the most famous and successfull Latin
legends of Charlemagne and Roland whose primary purposes have been to promote
the international pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela (with all its implications
on the contemporary struggle of the Galician diocese against Toledo to
become the metropolitan see of Spain) and to develop a Christian antiislamic
crusaders’ identity among the pilgrims to and among the priesthood of Compostela.
The legend tells the campaigns of the most victorious Charlemagne on the
Iberian Peninsula, his total defeat of the Mulims of al-Andalus. Within
this curious, very knightly story, you will find two chapters of direct
confrontation between Christians and Muslims, modelled firstly as duels
of arms, but secondly as duels of words as well. To my knowledge at the
moment, these two scenes are the earliest literalizations of (fictitious)
interreligious dialogues between Christianity and Islam in Spain. First,
there is the dialogue between Charlemagne and Aigoland, the African king
and warlord who occupied again large parts of the Peninsula after Charlemagne’s
return to France (ch. 12). Then, there is a second duel of words between
the young Christian hero Roland and the Islamic giant Ferracut (ch. 17).
Everyone who reads this second encounter will be impressed by the typological
writing of Pseudo-Turpin using the well-known image of David and Goliath
to characterize this interreligious confrontation. Evidently, this is a
perfect literary contrefacture embeded in the rich antique and medieval
tradition of Jewish and Christian exegesis of I Sm 17. In the patristic
and medieval continuum of typological thinking and biblical exegesis since
at least St. Augustine this duel – by the way the most important motif
of the Davidian iconography – is the best prefiguration of the victorious
fight of Christ against the Devil. But in the ecclesiastical tradition
of the Church of Martyrdom in Late Antiquity this is as well the key story
for the fight of the earliest Christian martyrs struggling without weapons
against their pagan enemies. David, prefiguration of the Lord, fights without
sword and spear as the Lord is the unweaponed Saviour of mankind. In the
imagination and iconography of the Latin Church David is the bold and cunning
warrior as well. On the contrary, Goliath, the Philistine, impresses by
his gigantic frame and heavy armour. He challenges Israel to the decisive
duel. But despite all expectations the young David overcomes him by means
of his catapult aiming at the only vulnerable part of the body (I Sm 17,
49–51). Like Goliath, the giant perishes by his own weapon. This is the
image of overcoming the seemingly invincible by the supposedly weak. So,
Goliath’s tenure symbolizes the arrogance of the heretics which will be
overcome by the orthodox believers.
Pseudo-Turpin’s manner of literary
behaviour fits perfectly in the strategies of passed and contemporary chronical
tradition on the Iberian Peninsula between the 9th and 11th
centuries: The conflict between Christians and Muslims is nothing else
than Holy War, the Christian kings are compared with their ancestors of
the Old Testament, and the story of the Iberian Christianity is part of
the story of Divine Providence planning and realizing the salvation of
mankind.
Let me now summarize the main
points of literary performances realized by the author:
- he adapted the traditional patristic or medieval
exegesis within the new frame of legendary or hagiographical narration
- he seems to be the earliest author who used the
authoritative image of David and Goliath as biblical argument to explain
the relationship between Christianity and Islam
- he transposed the contemporary idea of duel into
a new sphere of argumentation.
In this remarkable process of intellectual transfer
he shifted from juridical or moral guilt to the theological inferiority
of the wrong religion: the duel is understood as a form of theological
trial by ordeal: victory or defeat are indicators of the divine will –
the defeated is guilty (wrong), but the unguilty (right) is helped by God.
Despite the fictitious or unreal scenery of dialogue the literalization
of interreligious communication is the first step to real dialogue. Furthermore,
this virtual shift from the duel of arms (arms as arguments; crusade; war)
to the duel of words (arguments as arms; dialogue) is an indicator of change
of mentality in the Christian-Muslim approach on the Iberian Peninsula,
because for the first time the possible use of reason and reasoning instead
of the already missing physical superiority appears.
Let my now analyze the structural
concept of dialogue in Pseudo-Turpin. You will see that this concept is
truely a Christian one, but it is situated on the mental threshold between
physical confrontation, that means refusal of rational argumentation, and
oral confrontation, that is denial of physical violence. The most important
Christian aspect in both dialogues is the, by all means, general Christian
dominance: it is clear that only the true Christian faith possesses the
more convincing arguments (contents of faith) in contrast to the diabolic
vanity of Islam. And therefore, it is also true that the Christian partner
of dialogue becomes the teacher of his creed so that the dialogue is nothing
else than a real and successful (!) catechumenical preparation to baptism.
Being so, the Muslim is the typical asking catechume, the Christian his
answering and explaining teacher who develops the kernel of Christian faith
with the three main topics of religious disagreement between Muslims and
Christians: Christ, the Son of God, trinity and incarnation (furthermore:
crucification, resurrection, and ascension). It is obvious that in this
program of dialogue, even in the eyes of the Muslim, conversion and baptism
is possible.
But this concept allows some
very interesting insights into a more realistic view of contemporary interreligious
confrontation as well: 1st the dialogue is the consequence of the undecided
situation of physical confrontation without decisive success or victory
on either side, and it is another form of confrontation before the always
following duel of arms as a new form of theological trial by ordeal. 2nd
it is thinkable that the initiative of dialogue is taken by the Muslim.
3rd we find explicit presuppositions of communication in the two mentionned
chapters: It must be the same language (Arabic or Romance/Spanish). 4th
further presupposition is the equality of rational arms between the two
partners. Both sides are expected to use rational argumentation to convince.
5th although convinced by arguments, both opponents are persuaded to seek
definite decision by arms. 6th the Christian position is a very aggressive
one. This tone is typical for epic and popular literature because of its
particular illiterate public.
b. Peter the Venerable
Within a single generation there has been a fundamental
change in attitude and method of intellectual confrontation with Islam.
This change was connected with an exorbitant growth of knowledge about
Muslim religion fostered by the first Latin translation of the Koran and
other important traditions about Islam. The context of this revolutionary
shift to a more intellectual or even scientific explanation and refutation
of Islam was a diplomatic voyage of Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny,
to Spain in 1141 with the purpose of negotiations of peace between the
kings of Castile and Aragon. In 1142 he came in contact with professional
translators of Arabic scientific (astronomical) literature. So, he was
able to persuade a group of prolific translators – not without massive
financial arguments – of his project of translating Koran and other authentic
sources of Islam. It is interesting to see that this quantum leap in Christian-Islamic
approaches was made in a seemingly traditionalistic monastic benedictine
milieu, not in the meanwhile highly esteemed progressive clerical or canonical
circles of the new intellectual schools. Certainly, there aren’t any strong
differences between the more theoretical and literary manner of behaviour
of Pseudo-Turpin and the more practical one of Peter the Venerable: The
abbot’s aim was as well to abolish the heretical errors of Islam by detecting
with reason and rational argumentation the Christian truth, and this presupposition
is expected from the Islamic side as well. And he got the same problems
of definition of Islam and its prophet Muhammed (heresy vs. new religion
as an established rival of Christianity) as his patristic ancestors confronted
with the heresies and pagan movements of Late Antiquity. In this perspective,
Peter was a self-confidential traditionalist of his Church in articulating
the voice of orthodoxy in the case of heresy. The real achievement of Peter
was to understand that his intended virtual dialogue with Muslims who should
read his apologetical treatise in a translated Arabic version had to be
based on the profound knowledge of the authentic text (tradition) of Islam.
In comparison with other contemporary manners of behaviour (cf. Bernard
of Clairvaux) this was a dramatic change of attitude.
Even more realistic was his
strategic concept of a double-sided work and linguage for refutation of
Islam: Whereas the Summa totius haeresis Saracenorum was a short
phenomenological abbreviation of Islam, written in a very polemical tone
for the French and Spanish Cluniac monks, the proper refutation of Islam,
his Liber contra sectam sive haeresim Saracenorum, the principal
work of the so-called Collectio Toletana (or: Corpus Toletanum),
was intended for the Muslim readers in Spain and was therefore written
in a very sensible and reasonable way. In ch. 19 sq. of his prologue to
this work, Peter even realized the possibility of non-reception by the
Muslim side. In this case, his work could be used as an aid of argumentation
for Christians who were involved in interreligious conflict or dialogue.
5. Conclusion
It would be a very interesting task now to make this very hastily painted picture of beginning Christian-Islamic approaches on the Iberian Peninsula in the mentionned period more precise (cf. Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogi contra Iudaeos). In lack of time and space we unfortunately have to renounce and wait for the certainly fruitful discussion with the world-wide scientific public reading this paper.
Bibliography
Sources
Peter the Venerable, Collectio Toletana (Corpus
Toletanum)
ed. by JAMES KRITZECK: Peter the Venerable and
Islam, Princeton/N. J. 1964, 204–211 and 220–291.
ed. by REINHOLD GLEI: Petrus Venerabilis, Schriften
zum Islam (Corpus Islamo-Christianum. Series Latina 1), Altenberge 1985,
2–238.
Pseudo-Turpin, Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi
ed. by ADALBERT HÄMEL: Der Pseudo-Turpin von
Compostela. Aus dem Nachlaß herausgegeben von André de Mandach
(Sitzungsbericht der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-Historische
Klasse 1965, 1), Munich 1965, 37–102.
ed. by KLAUS HERBERS/MANUEL SANTOS NOIA: Liber
Sancti Jacobi. Codex Calixtinus, Santiago de Compostela 1998, 199–229.
Secondary Literature
ALPHANDERY 1929
PAUL ALPHANDERY: “Les citations bibliques chez
les historiens de la première croisade”, in Revue de l’Histoire
des Religions 99 (1929) 139–159.
D’ALVERNY 1965
MARIE THÉRÈSE D’ALVERNY: “La connaissance
de l’Islam en Occident du IXe au milieu du XIIe siècle”, in L’Occidente
e l’Islam nell’Alto Medioevo 2 (Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano
di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 12, 2), Spoleto 1965, 577–602.
BANCOURT 1982
PAUL BANCOURT: Les musulmans dans les chansons
de geste du cycle des Rois 1–2, Diss. phil. [masch.] Aix-en-Provence 1982.
BURMAN 1994
THOMAS E. BURMAN: Religious polemic and the intellectual
history of the Mozarabs, c. 1050–1200 (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual
History 52), Leiden/New York/Cologne 1994.
BURNS 1967
ROBERT IGNATIUS BURNS: The crusader kingdom of
Valencia 1–2, Cambridge/Mass. 1967.
BURNS 1978
ROBERT IGNATIUS BURNS: Moors and crusaders in mediterranean
Spain (Collected Studies Series), Aldershot 1978.
BURNS 1984
ROBERT IGNATIUS BURNS: Muslims, Christians, and
Jews in the crusader kingdom of Valencia. Societies in symbiosis (Cambridge
Iberian and Latin American Studies), Cambridge 1984.
DANIEL 1960
NORMAN DANIEL: Islam and the West. The making of
an image, Edinburgh 1960 [Oxford 21993].
DANIEL 1975
NORMAN DANIEL: The Arabs and mediaeval Europe (Arab
Background Series), London 1975 [21979].
DANIÉLOU 1957
JEAN DANIÉLOU: “David”, in RAC 3, Stuttgart
1957, 594–603.
DIÁZ FERNÁNDEZ 2003
JOSÉ MARIA DÍAZ FERNÁNDEZ:
“El diálogo cristiano-musulmán en el Pseudo-Turpín”
in El Pseudo-Turpín. Lazo entre el culto jacobeo y el culto de Carlomagno.
Actas del VI Congresso Internacional de Estudios Jacobeos, ed. by KLAUS
HERBERS, Santiago de Compostela 2003, 167–175.
GIBSON 1978
MARGARET GIBSON: Lanfranc of Bec, Oxford 1978.
GLICK 1979
THOMAS F. GLICK: Islamic and Christian Spain in
the early middle ages, Princeton/N. J. 1979.
GUICHARD 1990
PIERRE GUICHARD: L’Espagne et la Sicile musulmanes
aux XIe et XIIe siècles, Lyon 1990 [21991;
also: (Histoire et archéologie médiévale), Lyon 2000].
GUICHARD 2000
PIERRE GUICHARD: Al-Andalus, 711–1492 (Pluriel),
Paris 2000.
HÄMEL 1953
ADALBERT HÄMEL: “Los manuscritos latinos del
falso Turpino” in Estudios dedicados a Menéndez Pidal 4, Madrid
1953, 67–85.
HUNTINGTON 1996
SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON: The clash of civilizations
and the remaking of world order, New York 1996.
ITALIANI 1979
GIULIANA ITALIANI: La tradizione esegetica nel
commento ai Re di Claudio di Torino (Quaderni dell’Istituto di Filologia
classica ‘Giorgio Pasquali’ dell’Università degli Studi di Firenze
3), Florence 1979.
KELLERMANN 1990
DIETHER KELLERMANN: “Die Geschichte von David und
Goliath im Lichte der Endokrinologie”, in Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche
Wissenschaft 102 (1990) 344–357.
LA BONNARDIERE 1956
ANNE-MARIE LA BONNARDIERE: “Les livres de Samuel
et des Rois, les livres des Chroniques et d’Esdras dans l’œuvre de saint
Augustine”, in Mémorial Gustave Bardy, Paris 1956 (= Revue des Études
Augustiniennes 2 [1956]) 335–363.
LA BONNARDIÈRE 1957
ANNE-MARIE LA BONNARDIÈRE: “Saint Augustin
et les Libri Regum”, in Studia Patristica I. Papers presented to the Second
International Conference on Patristic Studies held at Christ Church, Oxford,
1955, part I, ed. by KURT ALAND/FRANK LESLIE CROSS (Texte und Untersuchungen
zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 63), Berlin 1957, 375–388.
LAISTNER 1953
MAX LUDWIG WOLFRAM LAISTNER: “Some early medieval
commentaries on the Old Testament”, in The Harvard Theological Review 46
(1953) 27–46.
LEWIS 1993
BERNARD LEWIS: Islam and the West, New York/N.
Y./Oxford 1993.
LINEHAN 1983
PETER LINEHAN: Spanish church and society 1150–1300
(Collected Studies Series 184), London 1983.
LINEHAN 2001
PETER LINEHAN: “At the Spanish frontier”, in The
medieval world, ed. by PETER LINEHAN/JANET L. NELSON, London/New York/N.
Y. 2001, 37–59.
MENENDEZ Y PELAYO 1925
MARCELINO MENENDEZ Y PELAYO: Orígenes de
la novela 1. Introducción. Tratado histórico sobre la primitiva
novela española (Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Española), Madrid
21925.
MEYERSON/THIERY/FALK 2003
‚A great effusion of blood’? Interpreting medieval
violence, ed. by MARK D. MEYERSON/DANIEL THIERY/OREN FALK, Toronto 2003.
MOISAN 1992
ANDRE MOISAN: Livre de Saint Jacques ou Codex Calixtinus
de Compostelle. Étude critique et littéraire (Nouvelle Bibliothèque
du Moyen Âge 21), Geneva 1992.
NIRENBERG 1996
DAVID NIRENBERG: Communities of violence. Persecution
of minorities in the middle ages, Princeton/N. J. 1996.
NIRENBERG 2001
DAVID NIRENBERG: “Muslims in Christian Iberia,
1000–1526: Varieties of Mudejar experience”, in The medieval world, ed.
by PETER LINEHAN/JANET L. NELSON, London/New York/N. Y. 2001, 60–76.
NITSCHE 1998
STEFAN ARK NITSCHE: David gegen Goliath. Die Geschichte
der Geschichten einer Geschichte. Zur fächerübergreifenden Rezeption
einer biblischen Story (Altes Testament und Moderne 4), Munster 1998.
RAMÍREZ DEL RÍO 2003
JOSÉ MARIA RAMÍREZ DEL RÍO:
“La imagen de al-Andalus en el Pseudo-Turpin”, in El Pseudo-Turpín.
Lazo entre el culto jacobeo y el culto de Carlomagno. Actas del VI Congresso
Internacional de Estudios Jacobeos, ed. by KLAUS HERBERS, Santiago de Compostela
2003, 149–165.
SOUTHERN 1962
RICHARD W. SOUTHERN: Western views of Islam in
the middle ages, Cambridge/Mass. 1962 [21978].
SPICQ 1944
CESLAS SPICQ: Esquisse d’une histoire de l’exégèse
latine au moyen âge (Bibliothèque Thomiste 26), Paris 1944.
TISCHLER 2003
MATTHIAS MARTIN TISCHLER: “Tatmensch oder Heidenapostel.
Die Bilder Karls des Großen bei Einhart und im Pseudo-Turpin”, in
Jakobus und Karl der Große. Von Einhards Karlsvita zum Pseudo-Turpin,
ed. by KLAUS HERBERS (Jakobus-Studien 14), Tübingen 2003, 1–37 and
221 (Spanish summary).
VERBRAKEN 1956a
PATRICK VERBRAKEN, “Le texte du commentaire sur
les Rois attribué à saint Grégoire”, in Revue Bénédictine
66 (1956) 39–62.
VERBRAKEN 1956b
PATRICK VERBRAKEN, “Le commentaire de saint Grégoire
sur le Premier Livre des Rois”, in Revue Bénédictine 66 (1956)
159–217.
WYSS 1968
ROBERT LUDWIG WYSS: “David”, in Lexikon der Christlichen
Ikonograpie 1, Rome e. a. 1968, 477–490.
© by Dr. Matthias M. Tischler