Heroes and Saracens: A New Look at Chansons de Geste 0852244304, 9780852244302

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HEROES A N D S A R A C E N S

In Memoriam

R uth w ho had so large a part in everything I ever w rote w ith warm interest and cool judgem ent w ho died before this book was finished but w as interested to the last its faults are not hers dying and in pain she said com e and kiss me now and let's be laughing this w as the spirit that the singers created for the paladins o f Charlem agne and the Saracens o f Babylon

M orte est G uibors, ma cortoise m olliers Et mes lignages, dont jou sui moût iriés. O r ai por D ieu tout mon pais laissié. M oniage Guillaum e (2) 2 2 75-7

HEROES AND SARACENS An Interpretation of the Chansons de Geste

NORMAN DANIEL E d in b u rgh U n iv e rsity P ress

© Norman D aniel 1984 Edinburgh U niversity Press 22 G eorge Square, Edinburgh Set in M onotype Barbou, 178 series by Speedspools, Edinburgh and printed in G reat Britain by Redwood Bum Lim ited, Trow bridge British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data D aniel, Norman Heroes and saracens: an interpretation o f the Chansons de geste i. Chansons de geste— H istory and criticism 1. T ide

84I.O3

PQ20I

ISBN O 85224 43O 4

CONTENTS

Acknowledgem ents Chapter O ne. Introductory

vii i

Part O n e . The

People Chapter T w o . Chivalry

23

Chapter Three. Courtly Pastim es

47

Chapter Four. The Fam ily, Women and the Sexes

69

Chapter Five. Violence: Hatred, Suffering and War

94

Part T wo. The

G ods Chapter Six. W fy the Gods ? Introductory

121

Chapter Seven. Who are the Gods ?

133

Chapter Eight. The C ult o f the Gods

15 5

Chapter N ine. Conversion

179

Chapter Ten. Christianity

213

P art T hree Chapter Eleven. Corroboration

241

Chapter T w elve. Conclusions

263

N otes

280

Bibliography o f Sources Used

320

Plot Summaries

328

Index

340

ACKNOW LEDGEMENTS

M y first thanks are to m y w ife, for her criticism , interest and encour­ agem ent, and her exam ple (w hich the dedication m ay help to exp lain ); and also to M adem oiselle M arie-Thérèse d’A lvem y and Sir Richard Southern, for encouraging me to go ahead, and to M r A . R. Turnbull, Secretary to the Press, w ho is a stim ulating as w ell as inventive publisher. Academ ic acknowledgem ents relating to particular issues are made in the course o f the notes. I am most grateful to D r M ichael Rogers, M onsieur and Madame Jean-Yves Tadié, and M r and M rs J .R . Young, all o f whom helped me in a number o f w ays, and in particular to get m aterial at times when it w as inaccessible to me, sometimes at considerable inconvenience to them selves; and to M r Robert Anderson and M r Peter M ackenzie Smith, w ho also helped me m aterially at moments o f need. I am under a great debt to the Abbot and Com m unity o f St Benoit de Port Valais, and to the Sisters o f Ste M arthe, for their hospitality, and in particular to the Prior, Père M ichel de Ribeaupierre, for m aking me com fortable in his ‘scriptorium ', and to the Librarian, Père François H uot, for all the attentions that a librarian can give. I am sim ilarly obliged to the Prior and Com m unity o f the Institut dominicain d’études orientales, Abbasiah, C airo, in whose grounds I live for most o f m y tim e, and in particular to the D irector o f Studies, Père G .G A n a w a ti, for m aking all their facilities alw ays available. I am indebted for the quiet efficiency o f the Students Room at the British Library, for the determination o f the staff o f the Reading Room to overcom e their many difficulties, and for the efficiency and courtesy o f the staff o f Bodley. I am also greatly obliged to Madame J.le M onnier, conservateur en ch ef du service photographique de la bibliothèque nationale in Paris, for m aking photographs o f a manu­ script quickly available in special circum stances, and to the staff o f the bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, w ho make it so easy and pleasant for a stranger to consult their manuscripts. I am most grateful to D r C arole Hillenbrand, whose understanding o f a tangled script made the preparation o f the text possible.

IN TRO D U CTO R Y

A good deal o f attention has been paid to w hat w e might call the official Christian attitude to Islam in the M iddle A ges; I am m yself one o f those w ho have done so. M uch less has been said about ordinary and unofficial attitudes, and most o f it relates to the origins o f the idols imputed to the Saracens. O fficial attitudes w ere expressed by theologians w hose function w as to speak for the Christian Church o f the W est. Apart from its m aterial privilege, the Church w as privileged to speak for Christian society in a period when all overt opposition w as successfully suppressed. The existence o f official spokesmen and the absence o f open opposition do not, o f course, eliminate unofficial attitudes and ideas, and these are not necessarily part o f a hidden opposition. H ypothetical secret organisations o f opposition need to be fully substantiated to be plausible, and they rarely or never are. I am thinking more o f instances o f divergent thought or sentiment w hich w ere not meant to com pete w ith, let alone harm or destroy, the official view . People m ay accept an established authority quite w illingly, and still live their own lives and think their ow n thoughts. This book is about unofficial attitudes to Islam and the Arabs. Exhaustive or even adequate source m aterial is much harder to com e by than is the case w ith expressions o f theologically acceptable opinion, because unofficial attitudes w ere not encouraged, and received little explicit and formal expression; i f they had done, they w ould no longer have been entirely unofficial. W hat material there is is much harder to interpret, because w e often cannot take it at its face value. It is a question

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o f making the least improbable guess, when refusing to guess at all is to fall back on some uncalculated assumption w ithout conscious reflection. W here conclusive proof is impossible, w e naturally look for the explanation that best fits the known facts and, so far as w e can manage, is least anachronistic. It is probably safe to assume that, in any age, in the M iddle Ages as now , most Europeans have had very litde idea o f Islam and very litde interest in it. W e cannot study here the ideas o f the mass o f the common people, w ho may or may not have heard about Saracens, and m ay or may not have believed w hat they heard. W e shall never know the thoughts o f those people w ho had no technique w ith w hich to express them­ selves, because they could neither w rite nor command an amanuensis, and because they did not have skills o f oral composition and memorial retention. The subject is too flimsy to pursue ; but there w ere people whose ideas bear upon Islam ; w ho composed without needing to w rite ; w ho w ere not spokes­ men for the Church, though they did have to satisfy an audi­ ence; w ho w ere not philosophers, not theologians, not even propagandists - or, if propagandists, not necessarily propa­ gandists for w hat ostensibly they supported. T h ey made propaganda rather for the ch ivaliy that often paid them and that provided their subject matter, than for the endless religious w ar in w hich they set their stories. Indeed, it is already to beg the question to speak o f a religious w ar, before w e have estab­ lished that that is w hat it w as. W e should more safely say, w ar against people o f another religion. I f w e are looking for an unofficial view , it is natural to turn to the poets o f the chansons de geste and o f the later romances that developed out o f them, because these w ere not theologians. T h ey composed for the benefit o f laymen, primarily soldiers, but at all social levels o f society interested to hear about courdy adventures. The chansons de geste, historical fictions m osdy set in the tíme o f Charlem agne or his son Louis, appear several generations earlier than that other courtly literature that is concerned w ith the dalliance o f lovers. Their lovers have little time to dally. The chansons appear in the tw elfth century in manuscript, in

Introductory

3

the three forms o f O ld French, Francien, Picard and AngloNorman and they had a European influence throughout the M iddle Ages, especially on Italian, but also on English and German literatures, as w ell as in Spain, and, o f course, on Provençal. T h ey certainly had eleventh century forebears, probably, as w e shall shortly see, in oral form . W e do not know how far they go back. T h ey preserve a mem ory o f a distant past, alw ays incorrect, yet uncannily preserving authentic recollections, not only o f events, but often o f a forgotten atmo­ sphere o f defeat by alien armies. T h ey w ere once supposed to derive from cantiiènes contem porary w ith the events they describe, but this is just a hypothesis, and Joseph Bédier inferred w ritten sources in monastic records instead; there is no agree­ ment about their pre-history. T h ey survived for several centuries, com promising w ith modish themes o f love-m aking and surrendering assonance to the new taste for rhym e, but alw ays preserving certain conventions that mark them out from all other m edieval literature; these concern their treat­ ment o f the Saracens, and o f religious themes connected w ith them. From the ‘Benedictine centuries*, through the G regorian Reform , to the rise o f papal temporal pow er and o f canon law , and in the Conciliar age, there is still no important change in their peculiar vie w o f the Saracens. M any people, if asked w hat they think o f as the m edieval idea o f Islam, w ill think first o f the idolatry imputed to the Saracens by these songs o f action. It is useful to remember that this absurdity becam e notorious in the last century, when these poems w ere rediscovered and many o f them published; since then, our m odem awareness that this is so gross an error makes us give an anachronistic emphasis to the im portance w e suppose the m edieval poets must also have seen in it. Even so, the facts remain that these poems are concerned w ith the Saracen religion, and that they do commit this absurdity. W hat they say about the Saracens and their gods is the obvious place to look for an unofficial, unchurchmanlike, m edieval view o f Islam - if only w e can interpret it correcdy. I am therefore going to concentrate on these songs or poems, concerned w ith

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a w ar between Christians and Saracens, but composed by poets w ith ideas o f their ow n, not so much original individual ideas, as ideas taking the form o f a clear but com plex convention within w hich the poets chose to w ork. It is this conventional fram ework w hich sets the literature apart. W hile I hope to offer some check on m y conclusions, by comparison w ith other sources w holly or largely outside the convention, I w ill concentrate on the seventy and more w orks within it. 1 want at the same time to compare these songs o f action w ith the official polem ic, and w ith the legendary and libellous origins from w hich it developed. Finally, 1 w ant to com pare w hat the poets say w ith w hatever w e can suggest may have been a possible source in Islam itself; it is prim afa cie im probable, yet conceiv­ able, that Saracen religion in the songs relates to actual facts about Islam in the same w ay as a distorting mirror twists a real object into an unrecognisable travesty. The origins o f the poets' pantheon and o f their concept o f a Saracen have, o f course, been studied before, but mainly from the point o f view o f literary criticism .1 1 do not propose to attempt literary criticism or literary history for w hich I am not qualified by training or experience. It w ill no doubt be impos­ sible to w rite a w hole book about a series o f literary texts w ithout expressing or im plying some literary opinion, but such opinions are personal, and I hope not to obtrude them. I have no special experience in literature as an artefact, rather than as an historical source. N either would I attempt to judge the history o f texts or o f manuscripts, their inter-relations and mutual influences. Although I trust to make full use o f the w ork o f editors, o f critics and o f commentators on the texts, I confine m yself to the history o f ideas. I want to discuss the ideas in the minds o f the poets, without reference at all to the literary skill w ith w hich they speak. Because I am not concerned w ith the history o f written texts, but w ith the content o f a convention used and modified only slighdy over a long period, I am able to use material from different dates throughout the period, often to illustrate the durability o f the tradition. W e are using texts that have reached us in a final form determined in many cases

Introductory

5

only when they w ere committed to w riting; they are the fossils o f a lengthy evolution w hich is largely homogeneous. T exts that are an exception to the rule only show some variation o f ideas within a convention that remains unchanged in all its essentials. M odem literary studies, and historical literary studies such as com prise the area o f sociocritique, are exploring some lines o f enquiry w hich, though they first appeared in the last century, and lay dormant for a time, are now approached w ith highly sophisticated techniques, and relate the content and form o f a w ork to major social change, rather than just to the superficial details o f social background in an author or an audience.2 I f w e are to w ork on the convention as a w hole, on the other hand, w e must expect to single out those elements that do not change, even when they are understood in a new w ay. It is a fact that very different audiences m ay enjoy the same convention, though it m ay be for new reasons or w ith a different kind o f appreciation. For the prelim inary control o f the material over the w hole field it should be useful to eliminate the unchanging convention from new forms and purposes. 1 do not attempt more than that, and I do not attempt either to w rite the history o f the convention, w hich would be too much for one book, and perhaps for one author. M y ow n interest is a special one, not a general one. I am concerned only to find out more about how the chansons represent Islam -an d the A ra b s-to their public. T o exam ine, not only w hat they did, but w hat they thought they w ere doing, I am qualified by long experience o f the problems o f European and Christian apprehension o f Arabs and Muslims in the M iddle Ages, and also other periods, including our ow n. M y experience is professional as w ell as lengthy. It is in this field that I believe I m ay usefully supplement, certainly not com pete w ith, the literary specialists and the social historians.I I shall usually say ‘poets’ for the creators o f the chansons, including those that created only a passage here and there, or just modified verse they had inherited from other singers,

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perhaps varying a laisse w ith a different assonance, blending or interpolating passages that others had composed. I say ‘poets’, rather than ‘singers' or jongleurs. 'Jongleur' has no adequate English equivalent, and may anyw ay mean just buffoon or trickster. 1 am using 'poet' to designate the jongleur as author or adapter, and 'singer' when I refer to him as executant, w ith­ out meaning to draw a line between these in practice, or only a notional line. I rarely need to speak o f the singer rather than o f the person whose ideas 1 am talking about. Rychner stresses the w ide range o f jongleur professionalism, from singer to manipulator o f perform ing fleas, and Faral speaks o f tw o kinds o f jongleurs, the respectable, needed to compose the lives o f saints, and the rest, those approved by the Church and those disapproved; perhaps one man might at different times be either.3 Rychner shows how the text is fluid, an oral trans­ mission w hich the singer may m odify as he goes along, and w hich at some stage, determined by chance, m ay be committed to w riting. There is no correct text, no ‘expression singulière et originale. In his support he cites Milman Parry's w ork on Homer, and his exam ples o f songs o f action in H erzogovina.4 The results o f Muhsin M ahdi’s revolutionary w ork on the 'Arabian N ights' ( a lf lay la wa la yla ) are similar, except that in this case a conglom eration o f w orks in prose w as committed over five centuries to a progressively more classical written form. It remains true that, in this case also, the text w as con­ stantly adapted or manipulated by the perform er, that there cannot be said to be any one original form , and that the author­ ship is both communal and gradual.3 *M ais tous les bons chan­ teurs sont encore des improvisateurs', says Rychner, 'ils créent euxmêmes leurs chants, et, quand ils ne créentpas à proprementparler, ils savent combiner les chants entre eux, condenserplusieurs poèmes en un, m odifier, compléter, am plifier,'6 W e cannot tell how many lost poems there are, or how much each surviving author ow es to phrases and notions in general circulation. W hen 1 say 'the poet says', 1 mean the author or authors o f the line or the lines or the passage I am quoting, no m ore; 1 im ply nothing about his literary quality; and 1 say 'poet' even if the passage in

Introductory

7

question is like a patch o f garden, w orked over by many gardeners, one or tw o o f whom may - or m ay not - have imposed a pattern individually conceived. This literature is best conceived, not as a library o f editions, but as a conglom eration o f discrepant manuscripts behind w hich, and beyond our reach, loom the oral forms o f w hat was once a living tradition, only partly caught and crystallised when they w ere w ritten dow n. 'L a chanson de geste t í est pas dans le manuscrit que nous ouvrons, nous rien tenons là quun reflet; elle était ailleurs, dans le cercle au centre duquel chantait le jongleur,*7 The case for a kind o f communal authorship does not depend on Rychner’s pow erful arguments; he attributes Roland to a single author, and some poems w ere certainly the w ork o f individuals, a J ean Bodel or a Jean R enan, for instance. But these too made use o f communal forms and w orked within the set tradition o f a convention. As a garden m ay be m ore-orless landscaped or designed, or just planted haphazard, so a poem m ay be built up from traditional fragments more or less neady fitted together. A ny text, how ever fragm entary, and w hatever its literary quality, is good evidence for ideas. This vast literature, w ith its marked peculiarities, persisted for centuries; but, although the same form ulae, ideals, words, phrases, must have acquired new meanings or shades o f mean­ ing as society developed, the convention as a w hole remained the same. 1 am studying it as an episode - a long episode - in the history o f ideas, as a vehicle for thought and feeling, stated and im plied; often a bald statement implies much, sometimes the context alone does so. W e recognise disjointed pieces, a mother’s lament for her son, the dying w arrior’s farew ell to his horse, a stereotype sometimes spatchcocked in a little care­ lessly ; but there is an inference to be drawn just from w here the poet has chosen to insert it. There are cycles o f poems, and sometimes the same charac­ ters appear in different w orks, w ith repetitions and inconsist­ encies in one story, or from one to another. From one song to the next, from one passage in it to another, there are marked differences o f mood. In L e Charroi de Nîm es and L a P rise

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