No one in Kjartan’s company undergoes any religious instruction; instead they only carry out formal rituals and quickly gain highest esteem as new Christians. King Olaf regards Kjartan as a supreme leader of his people who deserves greatest respect. However, there is no mention of any specific religious issues, ideas, experiences, or learning. We never learn why the Icelanders are not instructed in the Christian faith and why it seems sufficient for the narrator to explain that they are all baptized. In the meantime, the missionary efforts by Norwegian priests in Iceland turn violent, resulting in the death of some men who oppose being converted, and then in the expulsion of the Christians who basically have to flee home to Norway (151). After a while, Christian Icelanders return home and preach at the Althing, which finally makes everyone change their minds and accept the new faith (153).
We might not necessarily accept this account as a particularly good example for toleration, since the outcome is the complete victory of Christianity over the indigenous religion. The pagan belief is dismissed as false, and yet it takes the full investment of some of Kjartan’s relatives who have returned to Iceland before him to achieve their missionary goal. At a closer analysis, however, we also notice how carefully King Olaf approaches the topic and refrains from exerting his power, at least over Kjartan, trying to coax him into the Christian fold through respectful and diplomatic maneuvers. Undoubtedly, there is specific criticism of the pagan faith, which is simply identified as inferior to Christianity. But Olaf never demonstrates any disrespect for the Icelanders’ religion, even though he himself delivers powerful sermons in favor of his own belief. However, just this careful, very sensitive approach to the issue at stake makes Kjartan and his men responsive and willing to change their minds. The relationship between Olaf and Kjartan is one of great mutual respect, perhaps even admiration and friendship; and whereas the king holds the authority and power, he allows his visitor to reach his own conclusions as to what religion he wants to pursue in the future. This would be a good example of Nordic toleration.
Of course, the King wants to convert him, which is fundamental to Christianity (Matthew 28:19–20, Mark 16:15–18). However, he accepts Kjartan as the man he is and only hopes that he can convince him that his own religion is a better one through friendly gestures, polite talk, eloquent sermons, and a highly respectful treatment. He does not belittle or ridicule the pagan religion, though he identifies it as wrong and useless. But he does not impose his own religion with any duress and, thus, demonstrates a certain willingness to accept the other side as part of the cultural background of his Icelander friend. We will observe numerous other examples of this kind of cultural, philosophical, and religious outreach, contact, and exchange in a variety of vernacular texts from the entire Middle Ages.
Nibelungenlied
Heroic poetry tended to look backward and to idealize deeds of the past, but within that framework, we can also discover alternative scenarios of great cultural and social significance, such as in the Nibelungenlied (ca. 1200) when the Burgundian Princess Kriemhild has finally agreed to marry the Hunnish King Etzel/Attila and then travels east to meet her future husband. The narrator emphasizes how much Etzel enjoys tremendous respect far and wide and that he has, therefore, attracted knights from all over the world to serve at his court (stanza 1331, 3), irrespective of their religious orientation. Both Christians and heathens assemble there together (stanza 1331, 4), and all the laws and regulations from both groups are observed at Etzel’s court because the king demonstrates extraordinary generosity and, as we would have to say, using an anachronistic term in this context, ‘tolerance’: “daz schuof des küniges milte, daz man in allen gap genuoc” (stanza 1332, 4; the king’s generosity was thus that everyone received enough).12
When Kriemhild arrives where she can meet Etzel, she observes that the king is accompanied by Russians, Greeks, Poles, and Wallachians, and each group appears to be fully integrated into the Hunnish army, although they all continue to practice their own cultural features and probably use their own weapons and armor (stanza 1336). The audience must have been stunned by this passage in the Nibelungenlied since we hear also of horsemen from Kiev and Pechenegs (stanza 1337, 1–2), of knights from Denmark and Thuringia (stanza 1342), and probably many others. In other words, East and West, Christians and heathens have all assembled under the rule of King Etzel and glorify him, who accepts them all and treats them to the best of his abilities without making any distinctions regarding their religion or culture.
El Poema de Mío Cid
The less a poet was determined by religious issues and focused, instead, on social and military aspect, the more we can identify specific situations where religious differences matter very little and ethical and moral criteria gain dominance. This is also the case in the Old Spanish El Poema de mío Cid, also known as El Cantar de mío Cid from ca. 1200, or considerably earlier. The main plot focuses on Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, who is called Mío Cid (meaning My Lord) by the Moors in recognition of his heroic accomplishments and military skills. For most of the epic poem, he struggles hard to recover his honor after he had been expelled from the court of King Alfonso VI of Leon and cannot return to León and Castilla. Rodrigo carries out many raids against various Muslim rulers, and especially against Moorish forces, incrementally regaining wealth, reputation, honor, and political recognition. He constantly keeps the king in mind and sends him significant gifts, which ultimately helps him to regain his favor.
As it turns out, the infantes (princes) de Carrión, the nephews to the king, had originally plotted against him, and now, in light of the new condition, they pretend to be on his good side and ask for the hands of Rodrigo’s daughters, to which the hero has to agree because of the king’s urging. The infantes quickly prove to be cowards and mean-spirited individuals, hateful and envious of the glorious hero, but the protagonist does not seem to notice and pretends that he likes them. However, then the infantes travel home with their wives, and at a convenient moment in the forest, Afrenta de Corpes, they tie them to a tree and try to whip them almost to death with their belts, leaving them behind in the assumption that they have completed their revenge against Rodrigo through this murder.13
Felix Muñoz, a cousin of the two women and Rodrigo’s close ally, finds the miserable women and rescues them. The epic poem concludes with a court trial against the infantes, who, together with their family members, lose badly and are deeply shamed and have to pay a huge fine and return the dowry to Rodrigo. His daughters are then married to the kings of Navarra and Aragón, so the protagonist and his family rise to the highest political level because his honor has been restored.14
Throughout the epic poem, the narrator never leaves any doubt as to the explicit hostility between El Cid and the Moorish opponents. However, he does not fight them specifically out of religious reasons; instead, he battles them to carve out his own territory and a new power base, which he then establishes in the city of Valencia. During the various war campaigns, Rodrigo tends to treat the Moorish population rather kindly and allows them to return to their own homes and actually receive a share of the booty (40, p. 64/65). He gains their support and even admiration, and when he is about to leave the fortress, “all the Moors were sorry to see him go” (46, 852–54, p. 66/67). When Muslim forces arrive from Africa, however, Rodrigo fights them with all his might and succeeds quickly in squashing them altogether at various occasions. This is, after all, a heroic epic predicated primarily on warfare and the protagonist’s glorious accomplishments.
To pursue our topic of toleration/tolerance, we must zoom on to the departure scene where the infantes, together with their wives, take leave from El Cid, who sends his nephew Félez Muñoz ahead of them to his friend, the Moor Abengalbón, asking him to provide a good welcome to the traveling company, to supply them with whatever they might need, and then to escort them on their way farther north (126, 2635–41; p. 160). There appears to be a strong bond between both men, as Rodrigo underscores himself: “por la mi am
or” (2640; for my love).15 Indeed, the Moorish ruler of Molina carries out all of his friends’ wishes—“por el amor del Cid Campead[or]” (126, 2658; p. 160; for the love he bore to the Campeador)—and demonstrates extraordinary generosity to his guests, but the two Infantes immediately plot to kill him and to rob him of all of his treasures. However, one of Abengalbón’s men, who understands Spanish, overhears them and immediately informs his lord who then takes the necessary precautions and subsequently dismisses the entire company, taking leave of the two ladies but expressing greatest disrespect for the Infantes (127 and 128; p. 162/163).
Famously, the horrible princes of Carrión try to kill their wives by beating them with their belts until they faint from pain, and they assume that they have left them behind dead, which is not the case. The two women survive and are transported back home. On their way, they come to Molina again, where they are greeted once again by the Moorish ruler, who emphasizes here as well that he does all of this out of love for his friend, the Cid: “por amor de Mio Cid” (132, 2883; p. 172). Beyond that, however, the poet does not engage further in the relationship between El Cid and the Arab ruler, or any other Saracen. We can safely claim, however, that Rodrigo’s battles are hardly ever driven by religious intentions; he is not a crusader. He fights to regain his honor, to secure riches, and to establish his own court in Valencia. He fights various Moorish armies, but he also has a trustworthy friend in the Moorish Prince Abengalbón. Particularly in contrast to the infantes, this ruler emerges as an ideal character, as a reliable and loving ally who does everything in his power to support El Cid, or rather, his daughters, as his representatives. In this sense, we encounter here a fascinating example of the ‘good heathen’ in the Old Spanish context.
The Paradigm of Religious Tensions in the Middle Ages and Its Transgression: A Few Questions
Everyone who lived in the world of monotheism, whether a Jew, a Muslim, or a Christian, was deeply challenged in coming to terms with the claim on exclusivity by the respective other churches or religions. Could one simply accept the priests’ preaching, from the pulpit, in favor of a crusade, or in condemnation of Jews, inciting pogroms, for instance, or should one look beyond such propagandistic comments and reach out to the foreigners, especially if they then did not appear to be really foreigners? Were medieval travelers, for instance, entirely blind to the foreignness as a valuable and respectful entity, or did they try their best to interact with the world as they experienced it in reality? In other words, were pre-modern pilgrims entirely blind to their social and religious environment once they had left the confines of Christian Europe?16 To raise this question is tantamount to answering it to the contrary, as much research on medieval and early modern travel literature has already demonstrated, although the issue continues to be a major desideratum because pilgrimage accounts tend to be more or less silent as to cultural, political, racial, and linguistic situations.17
Ottokar von Steiermark
While many of those issues have already been discussed in a variety of contexts, the purpose of the present chapter consists of investigating a number of relevant examples where we might be able to discover specific attempts to undermine the dominant dogma and to see beyond the binary opposition of Christians versus Muslims, as tenuous as those strategies might have been. Medieval Europeans certainly knew well the concept of the ‘good heathen’, that is, of Muslims who demonstrate a very similar, if not even the same, set of ethical values as Christian knights. The Middle High German chronicler Ottokar von Steiermark (of Styria) (ca. 1256–1318/1322) refers at times to good, admirable Saracens, great heroes, and honorable knights; at other times, he condemns them as the enemies of the Christian world.18 Comparing his own account with that by Wolfram von Eschenbach in his Willehalm, he remarks:
bî der tugende grôz,
diu von dem soldan flôz,
und doch gerlich,
die der tugentrîch
ze diser stunt begie,
erkenne ich wol hie,
ez sî allez wâr geseit,
swaz tugend unde wirdikeit
von den heiden sprach
her Wolfram von Eschenbach.
(45305–14)
[in view of the great virtues
that emanated from the Sultan,
and which he actively pursued
at that time,
I recognize clearly
that it was all truth what
Sir Wolfram von Eschenbach said.]
In fact, Ottokar illustrates this with references to the glorious, but heathen, heroes, Arofel and Akarîn (4517), and depicts them as true role models for all male members of his audience, irrespective of their status as Muslim warriors. He neither wants to put down the Christian hero in Wolfram’s Parzival, Gahmuret, nor does he draw an artificial distinction between Muslims and Christians. Thus, he suggests that manly virtues matter more than the religious orientation in this war situation in the Holy Land.19
The Baseline
There was also the perennial conflict between Christians and Jews, which finds a rich reflection in medieval German literature, oscillating between outright condemnation and admiration, harsh vilification and paying high respect, but that is a rather different issue, especially in theological terms, and obviously never as urgent and difficult as the relationship between Christians and Muslims. Jews were commonly identified as being simply blind to the Christian teachings, and only would have to be convinced of the truth behind the New Testament.20 Muslims, on the other hand, represented deadly enemies with a solid army behind them, constantly threatening the European heartlands, in the early Middle Ages from the Iberian Peninsula, and in the late Middle Ages from Asia Minor and the Balkans. Consequently, the literary discourse tended to perceive Muslims rather negatively, especially if we think of the many different Chansons de geste, such as the Old French Chanson de Roland (ca. 1150) and the Middle High German Rolandslied by the Priest Conrad (ca. 1170). However, once the last Christian fortresses in the Holy Land were conquered, and once Acre fell in 1291, the entire situation changed, especially for European authors who began to espouse a different ideology, suddenly treating the Muslim ‘Other’ in different terms. Whether those constituted a semblance of toleration will remain to be seen.
Many scholars have happily accepted the theoretical framework established by Edward Said’s famous study, Orientalism (1978), addressing the universal perception of the Orient through European eyes from the early modern age until today.21 Nevertheless, in specific contexts, the evidence often paints quite a different picture, as I will try to outline below. While I have discussed already extensively Der guote Gêrhart by Ems (ca. 1240) as a significant case in point, there are numerous other examples that deserve our attention especially because they do not simply follow the precepts of radical anti-Islam or anti-Other, although Jerold C. Frakes argues along those lines, focusing on Hrotsvit von Gandersheim’s Pelagius, the Ludus de Antichristo, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival and Willehalm, and Walther von der Vogelweide’s crusade song.22 I will begin with the songs by the latter and examine from then on how medieval poets granted Muslim characters the opportunity to figure in their narratives or lyrics and to operate sometimes even as equals, if not as much as friends. Whether this then would establish a form of toleration, as I want to imply, can be a matter of debate, but I regard it as important to change our focus away from the imperialist, Orientalizing perspective and to recognize the true extent to which individual poets were prepared to engage with ‘Otherness’, even in religious terms, and this rather constructively and with great interest, which then could be identified, after all, as a form of early toleration.
Walther von der Vogelweide
One can easily draw certain conclusions about individual crusading songs composed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But the German poets seem to have taken a somewhat critical perspective and viewed crusades as dangerous both for the body and the soul.23 In terms of Vogelweide’s so-called “Palästinalied,
” “Nû alrêst lebe ich mir werde” (C7 / L 14, 38), composed some time around 1227–28, our first major example here, we can observe a curious but meaningful ambivalence that deserves to be studied in our context, although Frakes argues that
the proof of Christ’s championing the Crusader cause is demonstrated, which then also is to prove both the illegitimacy of the Muslim claim and the guilt of the Jews, who, the poet claims, killed Christ…, conveniently forgetting the New Testament’s specification of Roman jurisdiction over and execution of capital sentences in general and of this case in particular.24
Walther raises his voice here to sing a glorious praise on the Holy Land, which he could visit himself. He had prayed for this privilege many times and is deeply thankful for the fulfillment of his long-held wish (stanza 1). The Holy Land impresses him deeply, but not only because of its geophysical beauty, but also because of the miracle of the Virgin Mary having given birth to the Christ child, the lord over all the angels (stanza 2). The third stanza briefly summarizes Christ’s Passion to which He submitted in order to free all people from the original sin. Then we are informed about Christ’s descent to hell and about the spiritual character of the Holy Trinity (stanza 4). After having defeated the devil, Christ returned to life, which was to the Jews’ detriment since they had killed Him (stanza 5). Christ’s reappearance guarantees, as the poet underscores, that in the future, widows will be protected, that the lament of the poor will be listened to, and that the wise can sue against the violence committed against them (stanza 6).
Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval European Literature Page 24