Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval European Literature

by Albrecht Classen

  The King of Kings (God), hence, orders the wise men to return home and to teach their people the basic lesson about wisdom, the “the unity of the true cult” (272). In order to achieve that goal, they should then reconvene in Jerusalem and “in the name of all accept the one faith and upon it establish perpetual peace” (272). Nicholas shows here his true colors, in the positive sense of the word, aiming for peace all over the world, which could only be achieved if the conflicts among the religions would be overcome by way of recognizing that there is only one creator, one faith, and one religion.43 His ultimate desire aimed for “concord of religions” by way of a rational discourse focusing on wisdom as the deepest insight possible for all people on earth.

  Granted, this treatise was written with the explicit purpose of reuniting mankind under the fold of Christianity and to convince everyone that there is only one god, that is, the Christian God. However, the framework of this debate narrative proves to be extraordinary and most remarkable. Nicholas uses the ‘Word’ as the central spokesperson, representing both God here on earth and wisdom incarnate. There is no reference to Christ as such, only to the Holy Trinity, but this only as a concept and not in detail.

  The ‘Word’ engages in conversation with representatives of the Jews, Muslims, Persians, Scythians, Syrians, and many others, and all of them are presented as most wise, eloquent, insightful, learned, and spiritual individuals. Of course, they are easily convinced of the Word’s teachings and so quickly turn toward Christianity, without saying so specifically. But they all accept the fundamental teachings, particularly with respect to the notion of there being only one god, one eternity, and one wisdom. The ultimate goal consists of establishing peace all over the world, and this on the basis of one religion. This was to be Christianity, according to Nicholas, who, thus, did not develop a particularly tolerant attitude. But the larger context allows us to recognize here a major intellectual endeavor to which the representatives of the various religions and ethnic groups are invited. The author pays them all extraordinary respect, which proves to be striking in light of the historical events, the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Nevertheless, even the Turk appears among the wise men and engages with the Word as a fully equal partner.

  Even though determined by his own desire to make Christianity to the one and only world religion, Nicholas can be recognized and acknowledged as a significant contributor to the discourse on toleration, at least in this text, since he voices rather different perspectives in his Cribratio Alchorani. Considering the fragility of the concept of toleration and tolerance, and this particularly in the Middle Ages, De Pace Fidei emerges as a worthy continuator of the debate discourse as more or less initiated by Abelard, and which then continued into the early modern world. We cannot expect from Nicholas truly tolerant opinions, especially considering the historical context. But despite the military conflicts, the disastrous situation in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the growing danger for European Christianity through the growing Ottoman empire, Nicholas succeeded, after all, in projecting an intellectual platform where the various representatives of the different faiths could meet and discuss the basic notions of religion, here grounded, as to be expected, in the understanding that there is only one God.

  All wise men agree that every person desires to acquire wisdom, that there is only one universal wisdom, grounded in eternity, hence, in God. They also understand that most people ardently cling to their own, old religion as learned from their forefathers. But they are all charged with teaching their own people the complete truth and to convince their co-religionists that there is a very easy way to build a bridge to the religion as explained by the Word (Christianity). Nicholas makes every possible effort to cast his own religion in as abstract terms as possible and to define Christianity basically in philosophical concepts, which often remind us strongly of Boethian teachings (De consolatione philosophiae). Thereby, he removed most of the objections that Jews or Muslims might have had against Christianity, urging his listeners among the other religious groups to accept the words of the true nature of God as absolutely true and acceptable to all wise individuals.

  We can identify this approach as representative of toleration insofar as the Word relies exclusively on the logical operations of reasons to explain the nature of God. Rationally, as we are told, there would be no objection to the understanding of God as being one, and as one, being identical with wisdom, hence, with rationality. Even the concept of Trinity is not personified and finds its explanation in philosophical terms. Nicholas, thus, created a profound peace offering to all the other religions, inviting their representatives to listen to his arguments and accept their logic. He was talking as a philosopher to other philosophers, assuming that the other side would be as open and rational as he was himself. His De pace fidei is, thus, deeply predicated on mutual respect, honor, peacefulness, and love. We would search in vain for tolerance in the modern sense of the word, but there are plenty of reasons to identify this treatise as an expression of late medieval toleration.

  Both Llull and Nicholas developed this concept further than Abelard, but they all shared the same philosophical principle that rational people, irrespective of their religious background, can and should talk with each other, and this also about their fundamental concepts of God.

  Notes

  1 See, for instance, Steven D. Martinson, Projects of Enlightenment (2013).

  2 See now the contributions to Recounting Deviance: Forms and Practices of Presenting Divergent Behaviour in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, ed. Jörg Rogge (2016). See also Mark Häberlein, “Einleitung” (1999), 9–32. See also the contributions to At the Edge of the Law: Socially Unacceptable and Illegal Behaviour in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, ed. Suzana Miljan (2012). Guy Geltner, “Social Deviance: A Medieval Approach” (2012), 29–40, argues against the notion that medieval society at large was a ‘persecuting society’, especially because late medieval urban authorities tried hard to integrate deviant groups and individuals and accepted increasingly the fact that their own world increasingly turned heterogeneous. The most seminal study on this phenomenon continues to be Howard S. Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1963).

  3 Chiara Benati, “Painted Eyes, Magical Sieves and Carved Runes” (forthcoming). See also the contributions to Magical Practice in the Latin West, ed. Richard L. Gordon (2010). Cf. also Christian Braun, Sprache und Geheimnis (2016).

  4 R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (1987). In strong contrast to Moore’s position, see the contributions to Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration Before the Enlightenment, ed. John Christian Laursen and Cary J. Nederman (1998).

  5 Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (2003).

  6 Albrecht Classen, “The World of the Turks Described by an Eye-Witness: Georgius de Hungaria’s Dialectical Discourse about the Foreign World of the Ottoman Empire” (2003), 257–79; id., “Life Writing as a Slave in Turkish Hands: Georgius of Hungary’s Reflections about His Existence in the Turkish World” (2012), 55–72.

  7 Martin A. Cohen, “Reflections on the Text and Context of the Disputation of Barcelona” (1964), 157–92; David Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages (1979); Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews (1982); for a good anthology of relevant texts, see Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. Hyam Maccoby (1982); Robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith (1989).

  8 See, for instance, Cary J. Nederman, Worlds of Difference (2000), 85–97 (on Nicholas of Cusa); Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration Before the Enlightenment, ed. John Christian Laursen and Cary J. Nederman (2011); see also the contributions to Ramon Llull und Nikolaus von Kues: eine Begegnung im Zeichen der Toleranz, ed. Ermenegildo Bidese, Alexander Fidora, and Paul Renner (2005).

  9 Collationes a.k.a. Dialogus inter Philosophum, Iudaeum, et Christianum, ed. Giovan
ni Orlandi, with introduction, translation, and notes by John Marenbon (2001). For a succinct and comprehensive introduction to Abelard, see Peter King, “Peter Abelard” (Summer 2015 Edition; originally 2010), online at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/abelard/.

  10 See my chapter on Boccaccio’s Decameron.

  11 See also Joseph Rosenblum (updated by John K. Roth), “Peter Abelard” (2000), 8–16; M. T. Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life (1997); John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (1997).

  12 Peter Dinzelbacher, Bernhard von Clairvaux (1998), 236–48; see also A Companion to Medieval Christian Humanism: Essays on Principle Thinkers, ed. John P. Bequette (2016), 101–21.

  13 Constant Mews, “The Council of Sens (1141): Abelard, Bernard, and the Fear of Social Upheaval” (2002), 342–82.

  14 Kevin Guilfoy, “Peter Abelard” http://www.iep.utm.edu/abelard/ (after 2005; last accessed on December 29, 2017); see also The Cambridge Companion to Peter Abelard, ed. Jeffrey E. Brower and Kevin Guilfoy (2004); Jennifer Constantine Jackson, Conversation, Friendship and Transformation (2017). The research on Abelard is legion, both in English and in numerous international languages.

  15 The Letters of Heloise and Abelard: A Translation of Their Collected Correspondence and Related Writings, ed. Mary Martin (2009); Peter Godman, Paradoxes of Conscience in the High Middle Ages (2009); Barbara Newman, Making Love in the Twelfth Century (2016).

  16 Peter Abelard, A Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew, and a Christian, trans. Pierre J. Payer (1979); for the original text, see Petrus Abaelardus, Dialogus inter Philosophum, Iudaeum, et Christianum (1970). Payer offers a comprehensive overview of the relevant scholarly debate regarding the dating of the text (1136, 1139, or even later), possible sources, and Abelard’s personal experiences that might have led him to compose this dialogue. It is of critical importance to consider whether Abelard had personal contact with Jews, how he viewed Jews, and then Muslims by the same token, which scholarship has debated already for a long time. To evaluate all those points would go certainly far beyond the limits of the present study, but these issues have to be kept in mind for further elaborations and analyses.

  17 Rosenblum, “Peter Abelard” (2000), 12.

  18 Maria Elisabeth Wittmer-Butsch, Zur Bedeutung von Schlaf und Traum im Mittelalter (1992).

  19 Irven M. Resnick, in Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue against the Jews; Dialogus contra Iudaeos, trans. Resnick (2006), 146–47, n. 1, with a comprehensive bibliography on this topic.

  20 Constant Mews, “Peter Abelard and the Enigma of Dialogue” (1998), 39.

  21 Mews, “Peter Abelard and the Enigma” (1998), 41.

  22 Mews, “Peter Abelard and the Enigma” (1998), 42. See also Aryeh Grabois, “Un chapitre de tolérance intellectuelle dans la société occidentale au XIIe siècle: le ‘Dialogue’ de Pierre Abélard et le ‘Kuzari’ d’Yehuda Halévi” (1975), 641–52. See also Klaus Guth, “Forms of Dialogue Between Jews and Christians Before the Second Crusade” (2011), 313–21.

  23 Karen Bollermann and Cary J. Nederman, “Standing in Abelard’s Shadow” (2014), 13–36.

  24 As to be expected, this famous Catalan author has been the subject of much research already; see, for instance, Juan Ignacio Sáenz-Díez, Ramón Llull, un medieval de frontera (1995); Anthony Bonner, The Art and Logic of Ramon Llull (2007); Raimundus Lullus, an Introduction to His Life, Works and Thought, ed. Alexander Fidora and Josep E. Rubio (2008); Lola Badia, Joan Santanach, and Albert Soler, Ramon Llull as a Vernacular Writer (2016).

  25 Ramon Llull, Libre del gentil e los tres savis (1901–1903), here vol. 1. This volume also includes Llull’s Libre de la primera e segona intencio and his Libre de mil proverbis. For the French translation, see Le Livre du gentil et des trois sages. Texte établi et présenté par Armand Llinarès (1966).

  26 Selected Works of Ramon Llull (1232–1316), ed. and trans. by Anthony Bonner. Vol. 1 (1985).

  27 Raymond Lulle: christianisme, judaïsme, islam, ed. Ruedi Imbach (1986); Ramon Llull und Nikolaus von Kues, ed. Ermenegildo Bidese, Alexander Fidora, and Paul Renner (2005).

  28 Roger Friedlein, Der Dialog bei Ramon Llull (2004); Annemarie C. Mayer, Drei Religionen – ein Gott?: Ramon Lulls interreligiöse Diskussion der Eigenschaften Gottes (2008); Hans Joachim Widmann, Hommage a Ramon Llull: Leben – Werk – Botschaft. 3rd ed. (2012; 2015).

  29 Not surprisingly, this last section is also included, in German translation, in Wege zur Toleranz, ed. Heinrich Schmidinger (2002), 53–56. Curiously, by contrast, there is not even any mention of Llull in John Tolan, Gilles Veinstein, and Henry Laurens, Europe and the Islamic World: A History (2013). The authors do not seem to be interested in toleration/tolerance at all. Tolan limits himself in his contribution to ‘rivalries, emulation, and convergences’, focusing on religious minority status, trade, and transmission and exchange of knowledge. But see also the contributions to Ramon Llull ou … les premiers jalons d’une Europe tolérante (1994); see also Anstösse zu einem Dialog der Religionen: Thomas von Aquin, Ramon Llull, Nikolaus von Kues, ed. Charles H. Lohr (1997).

  30 Kurt Flasch, together with Fiorella Retucci and Olaf Pluta, Das philosophische Denken im Mittelalter (2013), 627. He identifies Nicholas really as the thinker who brought late medieval ideas in connection with humanism and innovated in many different intellectual areas out of the profound understanding that traditional scholasticism was no longer working in light of the current conditions. He drew from many different sources, both theological and philosophical, poetic and mystical, but he was not a follower of any of them (627–29).

  31 Stefanie Frost, Nikolaus von Kues und Meister Eckhart (2006); Stephan Grotz, Negationen des Absoluten: Meister Eckhart, Cusanus, Hegel (2009).

  32 Clyde Lee Miller, Reading Cusanus (2003); Jacob Holsinger Sherman, Partakers of the Divine (2014). See also the contributions to Cusanus: Ästhetik und Theologie, ed. Michael Eckert and Harald Schwaetzer (2013). See also Kurt Flasch, Die Metaphysik des Einen bei Nikolaus von Kues (1973).

  33 Josef Gelmi, Cusanus: Leben und Wirken des Universalgenies Nikolaus von Kues (2013; 2017); Hans Gerhard Senger, Cusanus-Studien/Nikolaus von Kues (2017); for a factual overview of his biography, nicely correlating major steps in his life with his writing, see Morimichi Watanabe, Nicholas of Cusa – A Companion to His Life and His Time (2011), xiii–xvii. For a good selection of his texts, see Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings, trans. and intro. by H. Lawrence Bond (1997).

  34 Jürgen Dendorfer, “Die Reformatio generalis des Nikolaus von Kues zwischen den konziliaren Traditionen zur Reform in capite und den Neuansätzen unter Papst Pius II. (1458–1464)” (2012), 137–55.

  35 Consuelo López-Morillas, “Secret Muslims, Hidden Manuscripts” (2012), 99–116; Davide Scotto, “‘De pe a pa’: il Corano trilingue di Juan de Segovia (1456)” (2012): 515–77. See also Anne Marie Wolf, Juan de Segovia and the Fight for Peace (2014).

  36 Morimichi Watanabe, Nicholas of Cusa: A Companion to His Life and His Time (2011), 55.

  37 Nicholas Rescher, Scholastic Meditations (2005), 49–57.

  38 Ulli Roth and Reinhold F. Glei, “Die Spuren der lateinischen Koranübersetzung des Juan de Segovia” (2009): 109–54.

  39 Das Mathematikverständnis des Nikolaus von Kues, ed. Friedrich Pukelsheim and Harald Schwaetzer (2005). See also Kurt Flasch, Nicolaus Cusanus (2001).

  40 Reinhold F. Glei, “Konkav und konvex: Die Spielkugel in Nikolaus’ von Kues De ludo globi” (2016), 261–85.

  41 Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: A Guide to a Renaissance Man, ed. Christopher Bellitto, Thoma M. Izbicki, and Gerald Christianson (2004); Erich Meuthen, Nicholas of Cusa: A Sketch for a Biography, trans. from the seventh German edition with an introduction by David Crowner and Gerald Christianson (1994; 2010); Ingo Reiss, Das Verhältnis von Mathematik und Technik bei Nikolaus von Kues (2016); Spiritualität: Neue Ansätze im Licht der Philosophie und Theologie des Nikolaus von Kues, ed. Erich Möde (2017).

  42 For the Englis
h translation, see Toward a New Council of Florence: ‘On the Peace of Faith’ and Other Works by Nicolaus of Cusa, trans. and with an intro. by William F. Wertz, Jr. (1993), 231–72. Cf. also Nicholas of Cusa, On the Peace of Faith (De Pace Fidei), trans. by H. Lawrence Bond (2000), available online at http://www.appstate.edu/~bondhl/bondpeac.htm (last accessed on December 29, 2017). For the original text in Latin, see Nicholas of Cusa, On Interreligious Harmony, Text, Concordance and Translation of “De pace fidei”, ed. James E. Biechler and H. Lawrence Bond (1990).