Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval European Literature

by Albrecht Classen

  He expects, furthermore, that his listeners/readers would react in a similar fashion, insofar as he only reflects on Gahmuret’s first reaction upon seeing the black queen and then smoothly leads over to the discussion of him falling in love with her. Gahmuret’s initial response to the black queen confirms, however, that, generally, European authors and their audiences simply assumed the superiority of whiteness, while Belacane appears to represent an exception, especially because of her virtuosity, beauty, and innocence vis-à-vis Gahmuret. She might carry considerable guilt regarding her harsh treatment of the previous lover, Isenhart, who died in battle where he fought without armor in order to convince Belacane of his true love and to make her accept himself as her servant and lover14—just as in the case of the thirteenth-century verse narrative Friedrich von Auchenfurth contained in Jans Enikel’s world chronicle.15 However, the narrator does not push this issue much and quickly leads over to the new relationship between this black queen and Gahmuret. Even if Isenhart might have succeeded in gaining her love and surviving the battle, he would have followed the same path as pursued by his successor, as a white man marrying a black queen.

  The focus, however, rests on Gahmuret’s singular emphasis on his own masculine ideals and practices, irrespective of the women surrounding him. After all, when he finally agrees to marry Herzeloyde, Parzival’s future mother—a white woman—he warns her that he might slip away from her just the same way as he had done with Belacane, if she were not to allow him all the freedom that he as a man demands from his wife.16 His argument is not predicated on religious or racial components, but on his personal requirement to enjoy all liberties as a knight, free from the social constraints that a marriage would imply. Little wonder that he subsequently quickly disappears from the narrative stage and gives room to his son, who has to struggle hard for many years to find his own identity and his true role in life.

  Gahmuret rejoins the military service for the Asian ruler Balduc and is then tragically killed by an envious opponent because his virtually impenetrable helmet is magically softened by means of goat blood. But Gahmuret’s death provides the poet with another opportunity to reflect further on Christian and Muslim relations. Despite the religious differences, Balduc provides the dead Gahmuret with a most worthy burial, paying him highest respect even after his death, and the throngs attending the funeral indicate the full admiration that this Christian knight enjoyed while still among the living.

  The mighty Baruc, an Eastern ruler who enjoys greatest respect among his people as well as among the Western nobility, pays great respect to the dead hero and has him buried in a truly worthy fashion, entirely disregarding the religious difference between them (ch. 106, verse 29–ch. 108, verse 30). In fact, the grave is decorated with a cross to mirror Gahmuret’s own religion (ch. 107, verses 10–24).17 It almost seems that for Wolfram, in the world of knighthood and chivalry, there are no particular concerns about race and religion. Instead, worthy and honorable men form a kind of international community all bound by similar values and principles. Manly virtues and physical prowess outshine religious issues by far in Wolfram’s Parzival, although the fundamental Christian ideas still continue to matter centrally.

  However, according to Wolfram himself, and maybe also in the eyes of his protagonist Gahmuret, the black queen Belacane enjoys the highest praise a Christian narrator could grant a woman of a different faith and race. As he emphasizes, in face of her death, which resulted from her love pains over Gahmuret’s secret departure, one could identify her purity and her tears as tantamount to a Christian blessing (ch. 28, verse 14).18 Nevertheless, all this does not help Belacane; her husband abandons her, never to return, although he continues to have strong feelings for her, as he indicates later in his conversation with Herzeloyde, whom he also abandons. Religious differences, and hence religion itself, do not matter in any significant manner for Gahmuret, and the black queen would also have readily converted to Christianity if she had had a chance to do so and if that had helped her to hold on to her husband.19

  As we also can recognize, for Herzeloyde, it proves to be rather difficult to convince Gahmuret to let go of his love for Belacane, even though she argues for the superiority of her Christian faith (ch. 94, verses 11–16). But this all remains rather precarious because Gahmuret warns her that he could sneak away from her and their marriage just as well as he did in the case of Belacane, as soon as he would feel lacking in knightly challenges (ch. 96, verse 25–ch. 97, verse 3). Gahmuret impregnates both women and leaves both as well. In his terms, he could engage with any woman in this world as long as she appeals to his erotic ideals. Comparing Belacane with Herzeloyde, we cannot even identify any significant differences in terms of virtues, values, morality, beauty, and love. For a knight like Gahmuret, there is virtually no racism and no religious differences, as long as he himself can realize his knightly ideals.

  While the beautiful and heartbroken African woman soon disappears from our view, her son, which she had conceived with Gahmuret, Feirefiz, later plays a significant role in Parzival’s life. His appearance almost at the end of the romance, shortly before his half brother is called upon to return to the Grail castle and to ask the crucial question of his uncle, King Anfortas, which then would redeem the latter and allow him to heal from his wound, demarcates a remarkable opening of the global worldview espoused by Wolfram. The narrator identifies Feirefiz as checkered in his physical appearance, as a result of having been the son of a black woman and a white man (ch. 789, verse 2). But is he also checkered in his character or in his spirituality?

  Parzival encounters a stranger when he rides out of the camp one early morning, who quickly proves to be his equal, if not his superior, as they both find out in their bitter joust. However, finally, Parzival’s sword breaks, which makes it impossible for Feirefiz to continue fighting since it would constitute nothing but dishonor for him to overcome an unarmed man. Hence, he himself throws his sword away and invites the opponent to sit down with him and to talk. They soon learn that they are closely related, that is, half brothers. Full of joy, they both return to King Arthur’s camp where Parzival is announced as the chosen successor to the throne of the Grail kingdom and only would have to ask the decisive question.

  He is allowed to take one companion with him, and he chooses Feirefiz. The latter then falls in love with the Grail maid, Repanse de Schoye, and immediately submits to baptism under the basic conditions required for the conversion to Christianity. His boisterous nature and lack of real concern about religion make the members of the court first smile, then laugh aloud (ch. 815, verses 1–2). They laugh because this mighty ruler from the Orient believes that he could gain his baptism by means of his sword and his shield, as if it were a matter of knightly prowess.20 But Feirefiz is not the kind of person to let that bother him, so the baptism and then the marriage can take place to the satisfaction of all sides, as indicated by the general laughter. However, as Mireille Schnyder now alerts us, that laughter also mirrors a certain degree of incomprehension as to the true meaning of baptism (“Unverständlichkeit der Taufe,” 14). There are no specific instructions for Feirefiz, and the Christian baptism is simply posited as the better one than the heathen notion of the use of the sword to fight for the right to be baptized. The particular fact that the act of baptism takes place without anyone fully understanding what is happening in that very moment, that is, the holy water in the baptismal font transforming the new believer into a Christian, so the Grail company bursts out in laughter and yet leaves much of the apophatic component of this spiritual moment untouched since it is simply incommensurable. As religious as this special moment is supposed to be, as open-ended it ultimately appears, integrating the famous heathen Feirefiz into the Grail society without much ado indicates a considerable degree of tolerance.21

  Even though the Grail kingdom proves to be deeply determined by religion, once the Oriental ruler has made his way into it, most of the spiritual seriousness gives way to irony and frolicking.
Nevertheless, once Feirefiz is baptized and, hence, a member of the Christian Church, he becomes a devout defender and promoter of his new faith. At the same time, he formulates his new faith in a rather odd way, pledging his faith in God and also in Repanse (ch. 818, verse 7), thus merging the spiritual with the erotic-sexual. Wolfram might be smiling here about the traditional ritual of baptism, but he is certainly not trying to undermine the Christian faith.22 What matters for us, however, is not the question regarding his true religious conviction, but his status as a fully integrated member of the Christian community, irrespective of his mixed race. Wolfram presents Feirefiz as a most amazing, perhaps a little ridiculous, Oriental ruler who then takes on the very serious task of contributing to the conversion of India to Christianity, which his son Johann later carries out most successfully as the famous, or rather, mysterious, Prester John.23 We are invited to smile about Feirefiz because of his bombastic status, both as the supreme ruler over the Orient and as the most outstanding knight, lover, and noble character, but there is no further comment on him as a person of mixed races. On the contrary, his checkered appearance makes him interesting and fascinating, and no one at King Arthur’s court or at the Grail castle has anything negative to say about Feirefiz because of his curious skin color.

  In fact, he quickly proves to be a superior representative of all courtly values and is an admirable individual certainly equal to the main protagonist Parzival. Without his appearance on the narrative stage, his half brother would not have achieved his goals quite the way it was intended. The triumphal succession to the throne of the Grail kingdom would have become a deeply serious process, whereas Feirefiz’s presence transforms the entire situation into a more relaxed ceremony during which laughter is permissible.

  Moreover, Wolfram projects a most fascinating global perspective with people from all over the world connected with each other, either through family bonds or via love. In Wolfram’s perspective, good individuals can easily bond with each other irrespective of their race or religion. Of course, Wolfram continues to embrace Christianity as the only true religion, but in Parzival, we clearly observe a strong dose of toleration because it is more important for the protagonist to express his sympathy for his wounded uncle Anfortas, the Grail king, and to find his heathen brother, Feirefiz, than to support the Christian Church as such.

  Undoubtedly, Parzival himself has to undergo a profound conversion through the teachings by his uncle, Trevrizent, but both he and other teachers whom Parzival encounters throughout his life, as reflected in this romance, prove to be less focused on the narrow, scriptural messages than on ethical, moral, and character issues.

  No wonder Feirefiz has no problems receiving his baptism since, for the poet, the traditional rituals and use of specific words matter less than the person’s inner strength and values. In this regard, it does not come as a surprise that both the Queen Belacane and her son Feirefiz emerge as shining individuals who strongly contribute to the fundamental development of this text, even though they figure mostly at the margin. But this is not unusual for Wolfram, who apparently enjoyed playing with the notions of center and periphery, with the tension between Christianity and Islam, and with the interactions between white and non-white people, thereby creating astounding narrative spaces where free interplay was possible. Wolfram does not emerge as a representative of tolerance, but already here we can confirm that he strongly advocated a notion of toleration, which is not, as Alfred Raucheisen opines, retrospective but progressive, experimental, provocative, and innovative.24

  The situation in Wolfram’s Willehalm, again based on a French source (Chanson des Aliscans) and yet dramatically developed further,25 proves to be somewhat different, but there we face a specific genre deeply predicated by religious values for which everyone is willing to fight and to die.26 Without going too much into details, here the poet presents a universal problem of love versus religion. Gyburg, formerly called Arabel, has abandoned her Muslim husband and her family out of love for Willehalm, whom she met when he spent time in her husband’s prison after having been captured while in the Holy Land on a crusade. Love and a shared religious conviction bonds Gyburg and Willehalm, to the great disadvantage of the Islamic, or any other, faith and Gyburg’s previous husband and family.27 Now, a massive army has arrived in the Provence and besieges Willehalm’s castle. The latter loses his entire army in the first battle and barely saves his own life. Later he manages to appeal to his extended family and the French king for help and can thus gain victory over his opponents in a second battle. Many individuals appear on the stage, and it would take a whole book-length study to come to terms with the numerous figures, topics, motives, and themes.28

  There are three short but most significant scenes where we can observe remarkable examples of toleration, and this already in the early thirteenth century.29 I will try to show how much Wolfram continued with his conceptual approach to foreignness and otherness, as already outlined in his earlier work, and challenged himself and his audience by situating those ideal values within a military context, which has always been anathema to peace and friendship, forgiveness, and mutual understanding. First, I will examine the way Willehalm views the Muslim opponents, especially in the case of equally ranked and principled individuals,30 then I will discuss the famous scene in which Giburc addresses the court council and reminds them that even the worst opponents on the battle field belong to the God-created community of humanity, and finally I’ll take into view the way of how Willehalm treats the killed kings and how he pays respect to their noble bodies.

  Just as in the Parzival, the institution of family emerges as a centerpiece of Wolfram’s worldview, that is, a family of universal dimensions, irrespective of religion or race. This does not mean that the poet harbored naïve perspectives and dreamt of world peace in the modern sense of the word. Willehalm indicates the very opposite and results in bloody battles of a most cruel kind, granting the Christians ultimately glorious triumph over the infidels despite the vast differences in numbers in their confrontation.31 The price they have to pay, however, is enormous, and most painfully both young Vivianz was killed and later young Rennewart is lost as well, who essentially helped the Christians to win the battle through his most resolute strategies and boldness, not permitting anyone in the French army to shrink back.32

  As an important side note, the inclusion of Rennewart also proves to be most remarkable for Wolfram’s universal approach to the issue of toleration. The young man was abducted from his Muslim family—he is Gyburg’s brother—and now serves Willehalm who is the only one whom he trusts and whom he respects greatly, irrespective of their differences in faith. He is full of anger about his family since they never seem to have made any effort to free him from his enslavement and to help him return home (ch. 292, verse 10–ch. 293, verse 20). Rennewart keeps to his own culture and language (Arabic), which only Willehalm—and of course Gyburg as well—can understand, but despite many jokes played on him in the early part of the epic poem, for which he then took brutal revenge (ch. 286, verses 5–18), he soon rises to the rank of the most respected warrior who contributes most decisively to the victory over the Muslim army.

  Remarkably, Rennewart does not want to convert since he distrusts the Christians as well (ch. 193, verse 191), but he takes a specific distance to his Muslim family since they have basically abandoned him, as he claims (ch. 292, verse 23). Altogether, Rennewart assumes a hostile attitude both to his original, Oriental family and to the world of the French nobility because both sides have either abandoned or repressed him. Without Willehalm, whom he completely trusts, and his beloved Alyze,33 Rennewart would be entirely alone and forlorn. He forces Willehalm to speak in Arabic with him because he rejects the French court, and yet Arabic is the original language of his family. Rennewart thus remains a most complex and even contradictory figure, which might mirror Wolfram’s global concerns with issues of identity and culture and which cannot be tied down to a religious faith.34

  Ne
vertheless, Wolfram projects him as a true hero whose disappearance at the end is greatly mourned by everyone. Especially Willehalm is almost inconsolable and sheds many tears, until Duke Bernart promises him that they would carry out an intensive search mission. They all understand that Rennewart had been the most valuable warrior on their side, so there is no doubt about their desire to recover him, especially in case he might have been captured by the enemy; since the Christians have such a valuable heathen prisoner as the King of Scandinavia, they would be able to barter him for Rennewart (ch. 458, verse 22–ch. 459, verse 3).

  In other words, in this global war the actual religious orientation held by individual warriors such as that young man ultimately means fairly little. Bernart accepts without any question the supreme importance of Rennewart for Willehalm and all the other knights in his service, and in this regard, we face the intriguing situation that the religious conflict upon which this epic was predicated suddenly transforms into an imperialist war pitting Eastern against Western forces. Rennewart never even considered accepting the Christian faith, and yet he fights most energetically on the Christian side out of his friendship with Willehalm and because of his hatred of his originally family. Bernart does not touch the religious difference and only cares about their own military triumph, which they achieved thanks to Rennewart. The victory is generally regarded and touted as the result of God’s intervention on their behalf, but the great respect, if not even love, for Rennewart on the part of all the knights underscores a different perspective certainly present in the text as well.35