This poor woman laments her own beauty and blames it for all those men falling in love with her and committing horrible crimes just to gain control of her, that is, only of her body. After all, no one ever talks with her; they only gaze at her physical appearance and want to conquer that exotic beauty. It is Orientalism alive, we might say, though the narrator never formulates any approval of those men’s sordid and criminal behavior and displays with gruesome detail how they all become victims of their own sexual obsession. We can only conclude that she is constantly an innocent victim and only adapts to ever-changing situations, being abused as a sex object without her own doing. However, the narrator also makes clear that she fully enjoys the sexual pleasures and takes whatever she can, not having any freedom in the choice of her sex partners, who simply take her by force and basically rape her all the time.31
In the meantime, Osbech, King of the Turks, who is the emperor’s archenemy and constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to hurt his opponent, learns of Constantine’s stay on Chios, totally absorbed by his lady. So, quite naturally, he attacks the island by night, kills anyone who dares to use arms in self-defense, and takes everyone else prisoner, including the princess, whom he soon enough recognizes as the fabled lady who had been Constantine’s mistress. He makes her his wife, finally with all the formal ceremonies. But the wheel of fortune turns once again insofar as the emperor seeks revenge and signs a treaty with Basano, King of Cappadocia—a region in central Anatolia—who then attacks Osbech on his eastern front and manages to defeat and kill him, while the princess is still kept at Smyrna—today İzmir, located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia—in the care of loyal servants. Basano approaches that city and takes it by force. Love, war, death, and fortune intertwine in a most curious manner throughout the tale.
During Osbech’s absence, the elderly lord Antioco, being Osbech’s servant, has fallen in love with Alatiel, and since he can speak her language, he succeeds in convincing her to accept him despite his old age. When the conquest of Smyrna is imminent, Antioco flees with his lady to Rhodes, where he dies, however, a natural death, the first man associated with her in a long series of casualties resulting from the contact with that princess and her stunning female beauty. He entrusts her and all the treasures that they had taken from the Turkish king to a good friend, a Cypriot merchant—once again, as in the previous story—and only requests that she keeps him in her memory. Antioco dies, and the merchant takes the lady to Baffa—today Paphos in the Southwest of Cyprus—but on the way there, he also falls in love with her, sleeps with her, and declares her to be his wife.
Alatiel then lives on Cyprus as the merchant’s wife for some time when she suddenly espies an elderly gentleman whom she recognizes from her father’s court, Antigono of Famagusta—on the eastern coast of Cyprus—who also speaks her language and soon remembers her, although everyone in Egypt is of the opinion that she had drowned at sea. She retells him her entire story and pleads with him to help her to return to her previous status and honor.
For the first time in her long suffering at the hands of lustful men, this old and wise man does not immediately think of her as a sex object and treats her respectfully and offers all his help. However, even he is attracted to her because of her beauty, but nothing develops in erotic terms between them, probably because of his experience, wisdom, and old age. Moreover, here it is her turn finally to call a man to her, with whom she can communicate successfully in her own language. Subsequently, Antigono helps her to recover her own agency, taking her back to Alexandria with the assistance and approval of the king of Famagusta, who is not smitten by love for Alatiel and welcomes her together with his wife, the queen.
When she later confers with her father about her own destiny, Alatiel invents a new story, as instructed by Antigono, mentioning her near rape by two men and her rescue by four others, who eventually took her to a monastery, St. Crescent-in-Hollow, where she lived according to the Christians’ custom, learned somewhat their language, and participated in their religious rituals. In her story about her adventurous life, she reverses the Christian perspective and makes it into a Muslim one, talking about how she observed their customs and kept quiet about her own faith. The abbess then helped her to make her way back to Cyprus with Antigono’s assistance.
Alatiel keeps quiet about the many sexual encounters and pretends to be a virgin until the present day, thus convincing her father about her honorable conduct while in foreign lands. Antigono adds his own fictional account about her virtuous life in the convent and how all the nuns shed tears when she was finally leaving them, so as to underscore her praise and recognition as a most honorable person untouched by any male seduction. The strategy works well since both can play a perfectly harmonious game with the Sultan, pretending that the princess is the pinnacle of extraordinary honor and virtues, which subsequently allows her father to offer her a second time to the King of Algarve, who happily accepts Alatiel as his bride and so marries, as he assumes, a highly praised virgin, although she has experienced lots of sex with eight different men.
Since there is no further word about the Duke of Athens, we might assume that he also died. To be sure, Alatiel was, more or less, all of those men’s unintentional cause of death because they could not resist the erotic attraction and never communicated with her as a person due to the differences in languages.
As in so many other cases, scholars have already discussed this tale numerous times, especially because of its dramatic presentation of the workings of fortune, the role of the Mediterranean as a shared space of all three world religions, and because of the negative treatment of all Christian men who turn into sexual predators as soon as they have come into Alatiel’s presence. We also would have to consider her condition as an innocent victim, her inability to communicate with any of those men who try to seduce her, and her constant effort to maintain or to regain her honor. This tale presents a whole series of difficult challenges and cultural-historical perspectives, some of which allow us to consider, once again, the degree of toleration or tolerance that might be hidden behind the narrative surface.
The narrator presents an Arab woman who becomes the victim of a whole series of men from various parts of the Mediterranean. None of them can contain himself and immediately lusts after her to such an extent that murder is the modus operandi for all of them. No one speaks Arabic, and Alatiel never learns any European language, so it is always an awkward situation for everyone involved. Not one of the men consults a translator and do not seem to care about the foreign lady’s own interests or concerns. They just take her, when the opportunity arises, and then they all pay the high price, their own lives. In her silence, Alatiel tries to make the best out of her constantly changing situation, but this also means that she has to allow those men to sleep with her. Even though she is the daughter of the mightiest ruler of the East, and destined to marry the King of Algarve, she ends up as a merchant’s wife, until she finally meets Antigono who takes her back to her father, who eventually manages to organize the original marriage and, thus, also liberates her from the imposed silence within the Western world of Christianity.32
In terms of love and gender relationship, much is wrong in the Western world. Poor Alatiel undergoes a most dramatic destiny in the hands of all kinds of Christian nobles, merchants, and sailors, none of whom ever learn how to speak with her and think of her only in sexual terms. The narrator projects a horrible situation in the various parts of the Mediterranean where Christianity rules, since the individual men all betray their own faith, turn to murder in order to gain control over this strange woman, and are killed in turn as well. Law and order are in shambles, to say the least, and none of the Christian men can control himself; they all become victims of their sexual obsession and no longer care about family bonds, virtues, their own religion, ethical ideals, or political exigencies. By contrast, as soon as Alatiel manages to return to a world where she is recognized (Cyprus) and then can get hom
e (Egypt), order sets in again and no one thingis opposed to the orderly marriage with the King of Algarve.
Antigono is the first man who feels sympathy for her above all and does not become prey of his own sexual lust. He then takes her to the King of Famagusta (Cyprus) and convinces him of the young woman’s great honor and virtues, successfully hiding all the sexual depravities she had to undergo with the various men in the Western Mediterranean.
There is no word about the merchant to whom Antioco had entrusted Alatiel, since he is away on a merchant journey to Armenia. Granted, the narrator does not hide the fact that she had enjoyed her sexual relationship with this merchant, and it is also very obvious that she had found much pleasure in her other contacts with the various men. But there is no indication anywhere that she might have had any realistic opportunity to resist the individual men’s advances. After all, it is not sexuality that might be the object of criticism, or Alatiel’s weakness in her interaction with those men. Instead, Panfilo, and, hence, probably also Boccaccio, argued rather critically about the Christian men’s behavior, their lustfulness, and their lack of self-control. By contrast, the world of Islam emerges as peaceful, well ordered, civilized, and lawful.
More importantly, in this story the author projects the possibility that the social and legal conditions in the Islamic world might be superior to those in the Christian realm. Alatiel is subject to the forces of nature (shipwreck), to the many men who can only think of how to win and conquer her, and finally to the one man who eventually helps her to return home and to make up the creative story of her having spent the long time in the women’s convent. For her father, then, it appears to be very impressive and welcome that she could preserve her virginity and honor in that convent. This has no impact on her marriageability when her father offers her to the King of Algarve once again. By contrast, all her previous suitors had not cared at all about her feelings, her social background, her desires, or wishes. For Panfilo, or for Boccaccio, then, this tale provided a significant platform to explore how such sudden, unexpected meetings between a Muslim princess and Christian knights and merchants might work out. Overall, the latter cut a very poor picture, even if Alatiel does not necessarily fight more ardently for her chastity.
Why would we then think about this tale within the context of toleration or even tolerance? There are no discussions anywhere about how to bring together the two different faiths. Alatiel just keeps her own religion to herself and hides successfully behind her foreign language, which no one can understand until she reaches Cyprus. Overall, she proves to be a thoroughly sympathetic figure with no real shortcomings. The men she encounters, however, strike us as corrupt, weak, murderous, and deeply unethical. Would Boccaccio, hence, regard the Islamic world as more positive than the Christian society?
While in the West, she is tossed around like a ball, getting into the hands of one man after the other; once she has reached Cyprus, her destiny changes radically. Antigono can openly tell her story to the king without fearing any reverberations for the young woman, and the king then generously allows him to accompany her back home to Alexandria. First, however, she is brought to Famagusta, where the queen takes care of her honorably. Subsequently, she is sent to Egypt and served by a large group of aristocrats, since she is the Sultan’s daughter. After all, as Antigono had correctly emphasized, restoring Alatiel to her father would certainly strengthen the good political connections between Cyprus and Egypt, both close to each other. All this works out well, and the Sultan is overjoyed seeing his daughter again, who can provide him with a fabulous account about her past destiny. This does not necessarily mean that her father would have to be evaluated as naïve and ignorant; he simply cannot know any alternative explanations since no one is there who would know about Alatiel’s true experiences. Why she identifies the location of her shipwreck now as in the vicinity of Aigues-Mortes in Southern France, and not near Marjorca, as the narrator had emphasized at the beginning, might be significant, though it does not change anything in the overall evaluation of the female protagonist.33
For our purposes, we can simply conclude that here the narrator presents an outstanding Muslim woman who is buffeted badly by destiny but survives and regains her honor and happiness by means of making up her own life story once she has managed to return home safely, while the Christian men, who had most eagerly pursued Alatiel for sexual gratification, succumb to death as a result of their lack of self-control, recklessness in treating a foreign woman, disinterest in trying to establish some kind of communication with the beautiful lady, and a profound sense of jealousy. For the poet, the real target of criticism proves to be the male world within Christian, Western society, as we have already observed in the second tale of the first day.
Conclusion
This then conforms, overall, with the global presentation of non-Christians in Boccaccio’s Decameron, who are regularly judged not by their religion but by their ethics and virtues and, thus, gain considerable respect. Indirectly, this deeply speaks to toleration, after all, at least from the narrator’s perspective. Of course, on the surface, this tale does not thematize toleration or tolerance as such, but it implies in a sophisticated and subtle manner how tolerant behavior and values, if properly applied, could avoid much conflict and strife within human society and could build connections between representatives of different faiths.
The narrator, to be sure, characterizes Alatiel as an honorable lady deserving of much respect and sympathy. Who would blame her for not enjoying the sexual experiences when those men imposed themselves upon her by force, especially when she was aware of being entirely alone and without any help? Curiously, her physical beauty and sexual attraction are the central vehicles for her to survive in the foreign world—the Christian universe—where violence, lack of communication, bitter competition among the men over the sexual object—Alatiel—their own selfishness, and hatred dominate. The Arab princess laments her own physical attractiveness, but she can only try to survive and make the best out of the general situation she is caught in.
By contrast, the Muslim empire is not affected by any of those vices, so it seems, and the Sultan happily and endearingly welcomes his daughter back, whom he had thought to be among the dead already. He would certainly have reacted differently if his daughter had told him the full truth, but he is rather pleased with Alatiel that she survived so well in a Christian convent. So, spending time in such an institution does not matter to her father, especially because he believes that thereby she could preserve her honor. Boccaccio argues, indirectly, but certainly in clear terms, that the Christians should take the Muslims as a model of ethical behavior. The poet, thus, has his narrator put the entire cultural and religious conflict on its head and charges the Christian society for its lack of values, principles, and ideals, whereas the Eastern world emerges as a foil against which the Europeans ought to measure themselves.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my colleague Fabian Alfie, University of Arizona, for his critical reading of this chapter and his valuable comments.
Notes
1 Thomas More, Utopia, ed. George M. Logan, trans. Robert M. Adams (2016); see the contributions to Utopia, Ancient and Modern: Contributions to the History of a Political Dream, ed. Francisco L. Lisi (2012); Thomas Schölderle, Utopia und Utopie (2011); Thomas Schölderle, Geschichte der Utopie: eine Einführung. 2nd rev. ed. (2012, 2017); for a useful overview, see also Lyman Tower Sargent, “Utopia” (2005), 2403–9. Surprisingly, utopian concepts as they were developed in the Middle Ages are entirely ignored everywhere. But see the contributions to Utopie im Mittelalter: Begriff, Formen, Funktionen, ed. Heiko Hartmann and Werner Röcke (2013). In our context, I employ the term ‘utopia’ in a rather generic dimension and do not want to imply a truly utopian society in the way More had projected it.
2 Utopie im Mittelalter: Begriff, Formen, Funktionen, ed. Heiko Hartmann and Werner Röcke (2013). See also the detailed study by Tomas Tomasek, Die Utopie im “Tr
istan” Gotfrids von Straßburg (1985); Albrecht Classen, “Die Suche nach der Utopie in der Gralswelt” (2000), 133–56.
3 See, for instance, David Wallace, Giovanni Boccaccio: Decameron (1991); see also the magisterial study by Vittore Branca, Boccaccio medievale e nuovi studi sul Decameron (1996). For the opposite perspective, identifying Boccaccio as the founder of modernity, see Francesco Paolo Botti, Alle origini della modernità: Studi su Petrarca e Boccaccio (2009). For a recent collection of latest studies on Boccaccio, see Boccaccio 1313–2013, ed. Francesco Ciabattoni, Elsa Filosa, and Kristina Olson (2015). The journal Studi sul Boccaccio serves as the leading scholarly platform for ongoing Boccaccio research.
4 See, for instance, the article by famous Vittore Branca, “Boccaccio, Giovanni” (1986), 345–61; or by Lucia Battaglia Ricci, “Giovanni Boccaccio” (1995), 727–877. Reliable articles on Boccaccio appear both in large and small encyclopedias, in Italian and in English; see for instance, Vittore Branca, “Boccaccio, Giovanni” (2002), 70–72; Rainer Stillers, “Giovanni Boccaccio” (1994), 70–83.
5 Boccaccio e le letterature romanze tra medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. Simonetta Mazzoni Peruzzi (2006).
6 Ricci, “Giovanni Boccaccio” (1995), 750.
7 Stillers, “Giovanni Boccaccio” (1994), 81.
8 In the introductory chapter of this book, I have examined not only Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Nathan der Weise, but also some of the medieval narratives that addressed the same issue as in Boccaccio’s Decameron. It is not easy to disentangle the complex of tales all addressing the same, almost archetypal motif of the three rings representing the three world religions. Can we simply assume that the similarity in motif indicates that the later author drew from the earlier one? Considering how much the Middle Ages were still deeply determined by orality and the absence of strict national borders or rigid language barriers, we are on fairly safe ground accepting the notion that poets from across Europe learned from each other and/or copied earlier works for their own purposes. I have explored this issue already in Zur Rezeption norditalienischer Kultur des Trecento im Werk Oswalds von Wolkenstein (1376/77–1445) (1987); see now my article “The Gesta Romanorum– A Sammelbecken of Ancient Wisdom and Didactic Literature” (2017): 73–98 (https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/LA/article/view/11786/11098).
Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval European Literature Page 22