Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval European Literature

by Albrecht Classen

  The emir serves an important role in illustrating the enormous impact that the force of love can have on barbaric, despotic, selfish, and ruthless rulers, transforming them, when they witness a case of truly altruistic love, into benevolent, magnanimous leaders of their people. For Fleck, like most of his contemporaries who were interested in this narrative material, religious differences did not matter as long as the two protagonists could find each other, survive the great dangers presented by the emir and his people, and gain public recognition for their love. At the end, when the married couple celebrates a court festival, a mass conversion to Christianity takes place (7804–40), with Flore being the first to submit under and accept the new faith, but the narrator neglects to give us details about the reasons for or at least about the process of conversion, except that this pure love between the two young people and their happiness simply necessitates this step that they all take. Since the narrator mentions already very early in the romance that Flore’s love for Blanscheflur made him accept the Christian faith (328–29), the final event, the communal baptism, does not need further elaboration.

  Basically, we observe the same narrative development in other pan-European versions of this tale. Each time, the brutal and despotic emir suddenly changes his heart and becomes mellow and kind, accepts the two lovers as his friends; allows them to marry, knights Flore, or Floris, or Fiorio, depending on the language version; and stays behind when the two lovers depart to return home to Spain.72 In fact, the emir turns into the canonical ‘good heathen’ who confirms at the end that virtues, character strength, moral and ethical values, respect for other people, honor, and love can be found everywhere. Religion does not play any significant role here, although Flore ultimately converts to Christianity, but this happens only on the side as a minor event concluding the massive romance.

  The Anonymous Fortunatus

  This paradigm shift finds powerful expression also in a remarkable text, a novel first printed in Augsburg in 1509, the anonymous Fortunatus, which was, however, probably composed sometime before 1453 because the author does not yet reflect the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks.73 The protagonist travels throughout the world after he has acquired a magical purse that allows him to draw as much money as he wants. This, however, invites criminals to steal from him, and this is the case as well when he stays in Constantinople. His servants, however, kill the criminal innkeeper and dump his body in a well. But Fortunatus knows too well from previous experience that he, as a foreigner, would not have any resort to protect himself against the charge of murder, so they all flee to Turkish territory where they are well received and find full protection because the general laws protect everyone better than in the world of the Christian authorities (462–63).

  More importantly, much later, after Fortunatus has settled down in Cyprus, his home island, and after he has married and his wife has delivered two sons, he embarks on another global travel that takes him both to Egypt and Persia. He strikes a good friendship with the sultan and receives much help and support from him, even against the Italian merchants in Alexandria who are jealous of Fortunatus’s success, not knowing of the source of his infinite wealth (486–88). However, he secures the help of the Egyptian admiral in Alexandria, who then establishes direct contacts for him with the sultan and the permission to travel farther east (489). Of course, Fortunatus pays for everything and can smooth all conflicts with his inexhaustible amount of money, while religious differences do not matter here at all and are not even mentioned.

  After his return from Persia and India, the Egyptian ruler invites Fortunatus to his court to tell him about all of his adventures, and he treats him most friendly (494–95), not knowing how easily he might be cheated by the protagonist. The sultan allows him to visit his treasury, where he also keeps an old and used-looking cap, which turns out to be the sultan’s most valuable object since it allows the wearer to travel anywhere in the world where his imagination might take him. The sultan, in his naïveté, reveals the full truth about the cap to Fortunatus, treating him as his best friend whom he can entrust the greatest secret, not knowing that the protagonist would betray him immediately and depart with the hat as soon as the sultan has placed it himself on his head to demonstrate to Fortunatus that it does not weigh any more than all other caps of that size (496–97). As soon as the protagonist is in the possession of that magical object, he wishes himself to be on his ship, so he escapes with the greatest treasure and travels home without ever returning the hat. The sultan is deeply grieved about this outcome and can never recover it, despite all diplomatic efforts, which sheds rather negative light on the Christian protagonist, while the Muslim sultan is thereby characterized as simple-minded and overly trusting. Fortunatus is simply a thief and utterly disregards the fact that for the sultan, the cap represents his highest treasure. There is a vast difference between Fortunatus and Good Gerhart in Rudolf Ems’s romance, with the former being presented as a rather selfish world traveler, whereas Gerhart appears as an ideal personality who strikes true friendship with the Muslim ruler. Similarly, Reinfrid von Braunschweig let go off his crusader mentality and accepts the Persian prince as his companion and friend, thereby practicing toleration, and this already at the end of the thirteenth century.

  Nevertheless, overall, even Fortunatus demonstrates, and this in its form as a printed prose novel from the late fifteenth century, that the issues of religious conflict, of intolerance, and of hatred were no longer of real concern for the ordinary persons and that the relationships among people were no longer determined by the traditional conflict between Islam and Christianity, as the contemporary discourse by Nicholas of Cusa, for instance, illustrates. Instead, as this literary masterpiece illustrates, the central function of money had taken over all other criteria determining social conditions.74 European travelers no longer faced serious difficulties to engage with their partners in the Muslim world, and if they had enough money, they could easily enjoy the best exchanges even with the highest authorities in Alexandria and Cairo. This did not necessarily constitute tolerance, but it set the basic condition for people from different worlds to engage with each other in a peaceful, constructive, mutually profitable manner and to disregard their religious differences as entirely secondary.

  Multiple Voices in the Late Middle Ages

  From here we could move to many other late medieval poems, narratives, and even historiographical texts where we would be able to identify surprisingly similar concepts about the ‘good heathen’. Granted, the overall ideal continues to be Christianity, especially when the heathen figures finally convert, such as in Ulrich von Etzenbach’s Wilhalm von Wenden (late thirteenth century).75 European writers had no freedom whatsoever to ignore the Christian faith and possibly to idealize Islam. However, as the selection of various texts from ca. 1200 to ca. 1300 has already indicated, they could experiment and project alternative perspectives regarding the character portraits of their heathen protagonists. True tolerance hardly ever emerges, most definitely with the case of the anonymous Reinfrid von Braunschweig. But we recognized that numerous poets undoubtedly leaned toward an attitude or general opinion about Muslims that can only be defined as toleration. Love and friendship can exist between heathens and Christians, or between Saracens and Christians. The foreign world is not simply cast in Oriental, colonizing lights and proves to be more often than not as simply different, and yet this within a rather familiar framework.

  European authors quite often projected the possibility that there could be constructive, peaceful, harmonious relationships between two individuals from different cultural, religious, and linguistic backgrounds. At first, we might have assumed that the example of Rudolf von Ems’s Der guote Gêrhart might have been exceptional, or that Wolfram von Eschenbach’s experiments with connecting Christians with Saracens through universal family bonds, or that Boccaccio’s exploration of how the three world religions could be compared with each other. But now, in light of all those additional examples, even
if they appear at times to mirror only tentative approaches between the religions, such as in the case of Walther von der Vogelweide’s poem, we are in a much better position to argue more forcefully for the thesis that the idea of toleration was already present in medieval literature. After all, as the various poets outlined it regularly, there were no strict boundaries between the Christian and the Muslim world, whereas the question regarding the experience of true love mattered most centrally. The Mediterranean was, altogether, a shared space for the cultures to the north, east, south, and west. Many Europeans had personal contacts with Muslims and Jews, and even representatives of other religions and races.76

  The literary discourse dealing with these issues did not necessarily create a paradigm shift in specific terms, and we also do not find explicit theoretical reflection on those two significant ideals of toleration and tolerance. Nevertheless, poets enjoyed considerable freedom in developing their narratives, such as projecting new settings, spaces, locations, cultural frameworks, and stages of operation. Even though Christianity remained the firm anchor point from which virtually no one could deviate, late medieval narratives reflect a growing interest in and fascination with the Orient, with the world of Muslims, with the ideal of more tolerant relationships, and with the ideal of friendship across all borders separating races, religions, and cultures.77

  Conclusion

  Such examples could be easily accumulated if we combed further through the French, English, Spanish, or Italian literature from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Those contacts between Europeans and outsiders were not necessarily regarded in light of toleration or tolerance, but we can easily subsume them under those categories because they were all predicated on the fundamental concept of mutual respect and recognition. Without necessarily addressing the philosophical issues, the early modern poets and writers simply began to practice toleration, at least indirectly, although the military conflicts especially between the Muslim Ottomans and the Christian Europeans accelerated and intensified at times.78

  Notes

  1 Together with a group of colleagues I have explored this issue already once before. See the contributions to Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages, ed. Albrecht Classen (2002); see also the contributions to Fremdes wahrnehmen – fremdes Wahrnehmen, eds. Wolfgang Harms and C. Stephen Jaeger (1997).

  2 Joachim Bumke, Mäzene im Mittelalter (1979); The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. June Hall McCash (1996); Mäzenaten im Mittelalter aus europäischer Perspektive, eds. Bernd Bastert, Andreas Bihrer, and Timo Reuvekamp-Felber (2017).

  3 See the contributions to Utopie im Mittelalter, eds. Heiko Hartmann and Werner Röcke (2013); cf. also Heiko Hartmann, “Utopias / Utopian Thought” (2010), vol. 2, 1400–1408.

  4 See, for instance, C. Stephen Jaeger, Ennobling Love (1999). As to gnomic literature, see Russell Poole, “Didactic and Gnomic Literature” (2010), vol. 2, 1750–55.

  5 Albrecht Classen, “Bestsellers in the European Middle Ages?” (2016), 83–103; id., “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.

  6 See the contributions to Vergessene Texte des Mittelalters, eds. Nathanael Busch and Björn Reich (2014).

  7 See the statement by the Medievalists of Color, posted by the Medieval Institute Studies at The Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, on August 1, 2017; online at: http://medievalistsofcolor.com/medievalists-of-color-/on-race-and-medieval-studies (last accessed on December 29, 2017). For other comments on this sensitive, certainly very important issue for us today, see the final comments in my introduction, with further references to relevant online statements.

  8 Recounting Deviance: Forms and Practices of Presenting Divergent Behaviour in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, ed. Jörg Rogge (2016). The contributors to Text und Normativität im deutschen Mittelalter, eds. Elke Brüggen et al. (2012), make good attempts at opening up perspectives toward norm transgressions, but most studies operate still within the same categories and do not explore the true breaking up of traditional expectations. One such case would be Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Titurel (ca. 1220), where very innovative narrative motifs and thematic reflections emerge, but which the contemporary audiences probably could not fully appreciate; the text has survived only in three fragments. Wolfram von Eschenbach, Titurel, ed., trans., and with a commentary and intro. by Helmut Brackert and Stephan Fuchs-Jolie (2003); my own study on this intriguing text, Utopie und Logos. Vier Studien zu Wolframs von Eschenbach “Titurel- Fragmenten (1990), has not attracted much attention perhaps because the ideas formulated there were too provocative for most colleagues at that time. Indirectly, however, numerous scholars have followed me since then without acknowledging my early observations. Only once we deliberately embark on a search for hidden messages about human life conditions, race relations, gender conditions, etc. can we also expect to reach new results.

  9 For the negative perspective, establishing a rigorous category of Islamophobia, see Dorothee Metlitzki, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England (1977); Frederick Quinn, The Sum of all Heresies: The Image of Islam in Western Thought (2008). See also the contributions to Images of the Other: Europe and the Muslim World Before 1700. Ṣūrat al-āḫir, ed. David R. Blanks (1997). For the opposite approach, identifying constructive, even optimistic conditions in the pre-modern world, see María Rosa Menocal, The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History (1987). By almost the same token, Nizar F. Hermes, The [European] Other in Medieval Arabic Literature and Culture (2012), convincingly demonstrates how much medieval travel writers were exploring Christian Europe and managed to make contacts with their counterparts.

  10 For an excellent resource online, see http://sagadb.org/; see also http://omacl.org/Laxdaela/ (both last accessed on August 13, 2017); Ármann Jakobsson, “Laxdæla Dreaming: A Saga Heroine Invents Her Own Life” (2008): 33–51; Gabriele Bensberg, Die Laxdoela [sic] saga im Spiegel christlich-mittelalterlicher Tradition (2000); Dorothee Fröhlich, Ehre und Liebe: Schichten des Erzählens in der “Laxdœla saga” (2000).

  11 Laxdaela Saga, trans. with an intro. by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson (1969), 145.

  12 Das Nibelungenlied: Mittelhochdeutsche / Neuhochdeutsch. Nach der Handschrift B herausgegeben von Ursula Schulze. Ins Neuhochdeutsche übersetzt und kommentiert von Siegfried Grosse ([2010]). See also Alexander Sager, “Foreigner, Foe, and Neighbor: The Religious Cult as a Forum for Political Reconciliation” (2002), 11–26.

  13 Connie Scarborough, Enscribing the Environment (2013), 11–23.

  14 Poema de Mio Cid, ed., intro., and notes by Ian Michael. 2nd ed. (1973). The Poem of My Cid – Poema de Mio Cid, trans. with an intro. and commentary by Peter Such and John Hodgkinson (1987).

  15 Oddly, the translators simply left out this half line, although it proves to be so important for the understanding of the relationship between El Cid and Abengalbón.

  16 East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, ed. Albrecht Classen (2013).

  17 There is much relevant literature on this topic; see, for instance, On the Road in the Name of Religion, eds. Klaus Herbers and Hans Christian Lehner, 2 vols. (2014 and 2016); Shayne Aaron Legassie, The Medieval Invention of Travel (2017).

  18 Ursula Liebertz-Grün, Das andere Mittelalter: Erzählte Geschichte und Geschichtserkenntnis um 1300 (1984), 149; Stefan Hohmann, Friedenskonzepte: Die Thematik des Friedens in der deutschsprachigen politischen Lyrik des Mittelalters (1992), 284; Ernst Ralf Hintz, “Ottokar von Steiermark” (2010), 1176–77; Valeska Lembke, “Ottokar von Steiermark” (2012), 327–30.

  19 Ottokars Österreichische Reimchronik, ed. Joseph Seemüller (1890; 1974), 589.

  20 Albrecht Classen, “Jewish-Christian Relations in the German Middle Ages” (2003): 123–49; id., “Complex Relations Between Jews and Christians in Late Medieval German and Other Literature” (2013), 313–38. See also the contributions to Juden, Chr
isten und Muslime (2004).

  21 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (1978). As to the situation in the Middle Ages, see, for instance, William Wistar Comfort, “The Literary Role of the Saracens in the French Epics” (1940): 628–59; Jürgen Brummack, Die Darstellung des Orients in den deutschen Alexandergeschichten des Mittelalters (1966); Dorothee Metlitzky, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England (1977); Norman Daniel, Islam and the West (1960); eadem, Heroes and Saracens (1984); R. W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (1962); Paul Bancourt, Les musulmans dans les chansons de geste du cycle du roi. 2 vols. (1982); Philippe Sénac, L’image de l’autre: L’Occident médiéval face à Islam (1983); see also the contributions to Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. David R. Blanks and Michael Frassetto (1999); Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (2009); cf. also the contributions to Contextualizing the Muslim Other in Medieval Christian Discourse, ed. Jerold C. Frakes (2011).