Otherness in the Middle Ages 9782503594026, 2503594026

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‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages

INTERNATIONAL MEDIEVAL RESEARCH Volume 25 Editorial Board Axel E. W. Müller, University of Leeds — Executive Editor John B. Dillon, University of Wisconsin, Madison Richard K. Emmerson, Manhattan College, New York Christian Krötzl, University of Tampere Chris P. Lewis, University of London Pauline Stafford, University of Leeds / University of Liverpool with the assistance of the IMC Programming Committee Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages

Edited by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

© 2021, Brepols Publishers n. v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2021/0095/92 ISBN 978-2-503-59402-6 eISBN 978-2-503-59403-3 DOI 10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.122905 ISSN 2294-8783 eISSN 2294-8791 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper.

Table of Contents

Introduction The Many Facets and Methodological Problems of ‘Otherness’ Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood11 The Mediterranean Other and the Other Mediterranean Perspectives of Alterity in Medieval Studies Nikolas Jaspert37 Strangers in the House of Israel Confronting the Problems of Inner Diversity in Jewish Communal Ordinances at the End of the Middle Ages Martin Borýsek75 Between a Rock and a Hard Place? South-Italian Portrayals of Franks and Byzantines in the Ninth Century Clemens Gantner93 The Construction of Allegiance and Exclusion in Erchempert’s Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum Sophie Gruber117 Other Genders, Other Sexualities Crises of Identity in Medieval French Ovidian Narratives Sylvia Huot139 The Jew as the ‘Other’ in Word and Deed Astrid Kelser165 Layers of ‘Otherness’ Appearance Defining and Disguising ‘Otherness’ in Byzantine Monasticism Nike Koutrakou183 The ‘Others’ from Within Herders between Rural Communities and Venetian Governance on Late Medieval Korčula Fabian Kümmeler215

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Assimilating ‘Otherness’ in Early Islam Eduardo Manzano Moreno235 The Familiar Stranger Biblical Perception and Depiction of Muslims in Christian Chronicles of the Iberian Peninsula, c. 900 Patrick S. Marschner253 Not ‘the Other’ Barbarians and the End of the Western Roman Empire Ralph W. Mathisen275 How ‘Other’ Was the Viking Otherworld? Meghan Mattsson McGinnis289 Otherness as an Ideal The Tradition of the ‘Virtuous’ Indians Yu Onuma319 Distinctive Signs and Otherness The Depiction of Prophets, in the Late Fourteenth Century in the Cathedral of Toledo (Spain) Maria Portmann339 ‘It Was the Law Back Then’ The Viking Age as the Other in Medieval Scandinavian Legal Thought Roland Scheel371 The Other Part of the World for Late Medieval Latin Christendom Felicitas Schmieder395 The Muslim Archother and the Royal Other Aristocratic Notions of Otherness in Fourteenth-Century Portugal Tiago João Queimada e Silva415 ‘Otherness’ Within? The Sámi in Medieval Scandinavian Law Miriam Tveit437 General Index

457

Index of Names and Subjects Related to Otherness

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List of Illustrations

Sylvia Huot Figure 6.1 Narcissus at the fountain. © British Library Board, London, BL, Harley MS 4431, fol. 104r, c. 1410/14.147 Figure 6.2 Narcissus and Echo. © British Library Board, London, BL, Harley MS 4431, fol. 134r.147 Figure 6.3 Apollo and ‘Ganymede’. © British Library Board, London. London, BL, Harley MS 4431, 119v.152 Figure 6.4 Adonis and the boar. © British Library Board, London, BL Harley MS 4431, 124v.154 Figure 6.5 Cupid and a young knight. © British Library Board, London, BL, Harley MS 4431, 117r.155 Figure 6.6 Achilles unmasked by Ulysses. © British Library Board, London, BL Harley MS 4431, 127v.158 Meghan Mattsson McGinnis Figure 13.1 An unwelcome encounter with the dead – Gudrun accosted by the ghost of þorkell in Laxdæla Saga. 1898 illustration by Andreas Bloch from Vore fædres liv, ed. Nordahl Rolfsen (PD).290 Figure 13.2 An example of the spatial relationship between gravefields and farmsteads, Vallentuna kommun, Sweden. GIS rendering by the author.297 Figure 13.3 Trollakistan, Skåne, Sweden – Neolithic passage grave with Viking Age deposits of cremated bone. Photo by Ingrid Bergquist, Frosta härads hembygdsförening (PD).298 Figure 13.4 The islet of Holmen off the southern tip of Helgøya (‘the holy island’) in Lake Mjøsa, Norway – Site of grave mound and hof reachable by foot part of the year. 1885 photo by Jacob Tollesen Hoel, Domkirkeodden Samling (PD).299 Figure 13.5 Chamber grave Bj 581 – burial of the now famous female warrior. Illustration by Evald Hansen based on the original plans of Hjalmar Stolpe’s excavations at Birka (PD).300 Figure 13.6 Shoe spikes found by the feet of the skeleton in Birka grave Bj.918. Photo by Yliali Asp, Swedish Historical Museum; license CC-BY 2.5 SE.301

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Figure 13.7a Tjelvar’s Grave, Bronze Age ship setting on Gotland, Sweden. Photo by Mårten Stenberger, Swedish National Heritage Board (PD).303 Figure 13.7b Viking Age ship settings at Lindholm Høje, Denmark. Photo by Gunnar Bach Pedersen, Wikimedia Commons (PD).303 Figure 13.8 Reconstruction of grave FII from Stengade, Denmark — double burial of noble and sacrificed thrall. Photo by the staff at Viking Museum Ribe, used with kind permission.304 Figure 13.9a Detail of the deviant double burial in mound 29 at Bollstanäs, Sweden – two male skeletons found decapitated and placed in a prone position heads to feet. Photo by Ove Hemmendorff, Swedish National Heritage Board; license CC-BY 2.5 SE.306 Figure 13.9b Plan of the Gerdrup Grave — Denmark, a woman buried with three large stones placed atop her beside a bound man with a broken neck. Illustration Mette Høj, Museum Organization ROMU, used with kind permission.306 Figure 13.10 Part of the Viking Age cemetery at Tuna, Västerljung, Sweden with south-west portals highlighted. Plan after Gräslund, A.-S. ‘Living with the Dead’, 2001: 227, figure 1, additional markings by the author.308 Figure 13.11 The ‘offering mound’ discovered in grave-field Raä 223, Lilla Frescati, Stockholm – round stone setting enclosing small stone cairns and deposits of fire-steel shaped amulet rings. Plan by Erik Sörling, Stockholms Stadsmuseum; license CC-BY 2.5 SE.309 Figure 13.12 Some of the over 200 amulet rings from the Vendel period cult place recently discovered in connection with grave-field RAÄ 122:1, Spånga, Sweden. Photo by Ingela Harrysson, Stiftelsen Kulturmiljövård, used with kind permission.309 Figure 13.13 Memorial ritual (muistajaiset) at the festival of Semyk, 2002 – Shorunzha, Morki, Mari Republic. Photo by Lehtinen Ildikó, Finnish National Board of Antiquities — Musketti, Finnish-Ugrian picture collection; license CC-BY 4.0.311 Figure 13.14 Ög 66 Bjälbo kyrkogård — runestone inscribed ‘Ingevald raised this stone after Styvjald, his brother, an excellent young man, Spjalbude’s son of the dynasty. But I perfected it’. Photo by Bengt A. Lundberg, Swedish National Heritage Board, license CC-BY 2.5 SE.312 Figure 13.15 Heirloom (c. 300 ce) pendant found in the Viking Age mound at Aska, Hagebyhöga, Sweden. Photo by Christer Åhlin, Swedish Historical Museum; license CC-BY 2.5 SE.313 Figure 13.16 A hole cut in the roof of the burial chamber of the Oseberg ship by grave re-openers. After Shetelig, H., Falk, H. and Brøgger, A. W. Osebergfundet, 1917: 32, fig. 11.314

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Maria Portmann Figure 15.1 Scenes from the Genesis (Genesis 1–4): from God’s spirit sw ept over the face of the waters of creation until Cain Killing Abel, after 1288, Valencia, Cathedral, Porch of the Charity. Photo © Maria Portmann.346 Figure 15.2 Scenes from Jesus’ Childhood, 1388, Toledo, Cathedral, Southern Porch. Photo © Urs Portmann.346 Figure 15.3 Creation of the Birds; the Sun, Stars, Moon; the Angels; the Fall of the Rebel Angels; the Creation of Adam, 1388, Toledo, Cathedral, Choir Screen. Photo © Urs Portmann.348 Figure 15.4 Scenes from the Genesis after the Expulsion from the Paradise: God with Adam and Eve Wearing Fig Leaves; God with Adam and Eve (naked); The Expulsion from the Paradise; Eve and Adam Working; Cain Killing Abel; Cain Hiding Abel’s body; God Rebuking Cain, 1388, Toledo, Cathedral, Choir Screen. Photo © Urs Portmann.349 Figure 15.5 Scenes from the Genesis: Abraham with the Three Angels at Mamre; Sacrifice of Isaac; Sacrifice of the Ram, 1388, Toledo, Cathedral, Choir Screen. Photo © Urs Portmann.351 Figure 15.6 Scenes from the Exodus: The Meal of the Hebrews, the Plague of the First Born; The Crossing of the Red Sea; The Drowning of Pharaoh and his Soldiers in the Red Sea; The Producing of Water by Striking the Rock, 1388, Toledo, Cathedral, Choir Screen. Photo © Urs Portmann.354 Figure 15.7 Italian and Spanish painters from Starnina’s Workshop, Detail of The Annunciation c. 1395–1404, Toledo, Cathedral, St Blaise Chapel. Photo © Urs Portmann.354 Figure 15.8 Scenes from the Exodus: Killing of the Idolaters; Moses holding the Tablets of the Law; Adoration of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, 1388, Toledo, Cathedral, Choir Screen. Photo © Urs Portmann.358 Figure 15.9 Ferrer Bassa’s workshop, Detail of the Prophets with Moses holding the Tablets of the Law from the panel of All the Saints Adoring the Trinity, c. 1420, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, prov. Monastery of Valldecrist. Photo © Maria Portmann. 359 Figure 15.10 Moses assembles the Hebrew and Moses receives the Torah (Exodus 24 and 34), 1388, Valencia, Cathedral, Porch of the Charity. Photo © Maria Portmann.360

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Roland Scheel Map 16.1 Territorial dominions (‘ríki’, marked in grey) in Iceland around ad 1200 and localities of Family Sagas most likely written before 1262/64; Axel Kristinsson, ‘Lords and Literature’, p. 5. © 2003 The Historical Societies of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, reprinted by permission of Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group, www.tandfonline.com on behalf of The Historical Societies of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.387 Felicitas Schmieder Map 17.1 Velletri- or Borgia map, anon. 1402–1453, old print from Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Borgia XV.403 Map 17.2 Velletri- or Borgia map, anon. 1402–1453, old print from Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Borgia XV.404 Map 17.3 Velletri- or Borgia map, anon. 1402–1453, old print from Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Borgia XV.406

Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Woo d

Introduction The Many Facets and Methodological Problems of ‘Otherness’

The Multiple Meanings and Uses of ‘Otherness’ The present volume results from the IMC 2017 which had ‘Otherness’ as its ‘special strand’. ‘Otherness’ is a comprehensive theme that covers a great number of different facets, all of which, according to the congress habits and the Call for papers, should ideally be represented among the IMC papers. Within this frame, the papers were expected to deal with (any kind of) ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages rather than referring to ‘Otherness’ in the sense of pursuing non-traditional themes on the ‘Other Middle Ages’, as, for example, in the programmatic title of Jacques Le Goff ’s Un autre Moyen Âge,1 a book that was concerned with non-traditional, non-political research themes, such as time, work/labour or dreams. (‘Otherness’, of course, could also have been an important aspect of his programme, as a non-traditional theme, although, naturally, it was not yet considered in his collection of essays from the late 1970s). Similarly, although this aspect was not excluded, the conference was not intended primarily to focus on the problem of the ‘alterity’ of the epoch, ‘the Otherness of the Middle Ages’,2 as compared to modern or contemporary models. There will certainly always be controversy regarding opinions between the ‘alterity’ of the Middle Ages (and medieval studies) on the one hand and its ‘topicality’ on the other; however, both

1 Jacques Le Goff, Pour un autre Moyen Âge, Temps, travail et culture en Occident. 18 essais (Paris: Gallimard, 1978). 2 Cf. Joachim Kuolt, Harald Kleinschmidt, and Peter Dinzelbacher, eds, Das Mittelalter – unsere fremde Vergangenheit (Stuttgart: Helfant, 1990). The concept of alterity is sharply criticized by the contributions (mostly from German literary studies) in Manuel Braun, ed., Wie anders war das Mittelalter? Fragen an das Konzept der Alterität, Aventiuren, 9 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht unipress, 2013), because alterity is a successful term on a weak theoretical foundation (thus Braun in his introduction, p. 8). Nevertheless, an alterity of the Middle Ages just cannot be denied or even substituted by a concept of ‘égalité’, and to draw on constants (forming the second part of the book) would be unhistorical. Rather, there always remains the necessity of a (medieval – modern) comparison. Hans-Werner Goetz  •  is professor emeritus of medieval history at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Ian Wood  •  is professor emeritus of medieval history at the University of Leeds. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 11–35 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123584

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aspects are not really or necessarily antagonisms. At any rate, the great majority of the papers given at the IMC as well as in this volume focus on different aspects of ‘Otherness in the Middle Ages’. It is evident that this comparatively new theme needs some methodological reflection (which we will attempt to give below), since it is far from easy to describe precisely what ‘Otherness’ really means. It is an ‘open term’ that covers many facets. ‘Others’ can be found everywhere: outside one’s own community or horizon (from foreigners up to non- or half-human monsters) as well as inside (for example, religious or social minorities or individual newcomers to towns, villages, or at court, but possibly also present in any deviating from current ‘norms’ of life and thought). And, of course, one should not forget gender and transgender perspectives, perhaps not so much with regard to the fundamental aspect of differences between the sexes3 as to the question of the extent to which these can lead to the perception of the other gender as ‘the Other’. In addition, there is the issue of any deviation from ‘gender norms’ being considered as not normal or even abnormal. Further, one can encounter ‘Others’ while travelling, but also by reading, writing, or thinking about them. One can judge ‘the Others’ or behave towards them in particular modes, just because they are different (plainly ‘Others’). They can be integrated or even become friends, but they may opt to remain outside or be deliberately excluded and be or remain enemies. Thus, inclusion and exclusion are important factors.4 They can be regarded with curiosity, supported, tolerated, rejected, or persecuted. The demarcation of ‘Others’ applies to all areas of life, to concepts of thinking and ‘mentalité’ as well as to social reality and social intercourse, to a rejection and refutation of their convictions and writings as well as to a transmission and appropriation of their knowledge and opinions. There are certainly many more possibilities and approaches towards ‘Others’ (and one may ask why the term can be used so multifacetedly). So much seems to be clear: ‘Otherness’ is not just there, not an ‘objective’, but a subjective phenomenon depending on personal views and ascriptions. Any investigation should take this ‘subjectivity’ into consideration. It must further be acknowledged that the term takes on different meanings in various modern languages and that it took a long time before ‘Otherness’ or ‘the Other’ (both normally and significantly still placed in inverted commas) found their way into an applicable English language use; formerly, in fact not so long ago, ‘other’ always needed a ‘sustaining noun’, and could not be used in an abstract sense.



3 Cf. the groundbreaking study of Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Age: Medicine, Science and Culture, Cambridge History of Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 4 Cf., from a sociological perspective, Robert Stichweh, Inklusion und Exklusion. Studien zur Gesellschaftstheorie, 2nd edn (Bielefeld: transcript, 2016); Julia Karin Patrut and Herber Urlings, eds, Inklusion/Exklusion und Natur: theoretische Perspektiven und Fallstudien von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Köln: Böhlau, 2013); the applicability on different epochs and in different disciplines is tested by the contributions in Peter Weibel and Slavoj Žižek, eds, Inklusion – Exklusion. Probleme des Postkolonialismus und der globalen Migration, 2nd edn (Wien: Passagen-Verlag, 2010). For the Middle Ages, cf. Anja Eisenbeiß and Lieselotte E. Saurma-Jeltsch, eds, Images of Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern Times: Exclusion, Inclusion, Assimilation (München: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2012).

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And until today, it remains fairly ambiguous. German studies prefer to use ‘fremd’ or ‘Fremdheit’ which is not really the same, but may be considered as being a particular nuanced or more intensive level of ‘Otherness’ (‘Anderssein’), which has no real English equivalent; it can mean ‘foreign’ or ‘strange’ (or both), but it rather expresses a demarcation, a sense of separating something, someone or some group (in some respect) from oneself or from those people (or things, or ideas) with which one is familiar. All of this therefore necessitates a methodological discussion.

Research on ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages Before discussing the values, dangers, and characteristic features of ‘Otherness’, it is worth briefly considering what has so far been done on an international level, because ‘Otherness’ is an international theme that should not be restricted to research in certain languages. Medievalists began to be interested in these themes in the course of the great shift from political and social history towards cultural history (in a modern sense), which started in the 1980s but did not increase significantly until the late 1990s. Here, the French collective volume on L’étranger au Moyen Âge, resulting from a conference of the ‘Société des Historiens Médiévistes de l’Enseignement supérieur Public’ held in Göttingen in 1996, might be mentioned as an exemplary model,5 or, even earlier, the collective volume edited by Jean-Pierre Jessenne on The Image of the Other in North-Western Europe from 1996,6 as well as the 2002 volume by Albrecht Classen on Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages, with a literary focus.7 An even older volume was Fremde der Gesellschaft which looked at ‘Strangers of Society’ from a social and legal perspective; it had particular concerns that were indeed innovative at that time, but it was not particularly focused on the Middle Ages.8 These (and others) are certainly not the first publications on the subject, but they may mark a turning-point of increasing interest, not least in cultures remote from 5 L‘étranger au Moyen Âge. XXXe Congrès de la S.H.M.E.S. (Göttingen, juin 1999), Série Historie Ancienne et Médiévale, 61 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2000). 6 Jean-Pierre Jessenne, ed., L’image de l’autre dans l’Europe du Nord-Ouest à travers l’histoire, Histoire et littérature du Septentrion (IRHiS), 14 (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Publications de l’Institut de recherches historiques du Septentrion, 1996). 7 Albrecht Classen, ed., Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2002). Classen’s own long introduction (‘The Self, the Other, and Everything in Between: Xenological Phenomenology of the Middle Ages’, pp. xi–lxxxiii) provides a splendid survey of themes and approaches, focusing on miraculous ‘Others’, remote peoples, infidels, and outsiders. The contributions circle mostly on the ‘margins’ of society. 8 Marie Theres Fögen, ed., Fremde der Gesellschaft: historische und sozialwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zur Differenzierung von Normalität und Fremdheit, Ius Commune. Studien zur Europäischen Rechtsgeschichte. Sonderhefte, 56 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1991). The contributions (in several languages) approach ‘Fremdheit’ from different disciplinary angles in order to explain and dissolve the antagonism between ‘normality’ and ‘Otherness’, or, in the words of the editor (p. viii) to convey the idea that what is self-evident really is improbable and that ‘Self ’ really is ‘the Other’. However, the volume, orientated towards theory and legal history, deals with different times and cultures.

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medieval Europe like China9 and in ‘Experiences with the Other’,10 often based on travel reports.11 Many more studies followed. For a long time there has been an almost unmanageable number of books and articles on ‘other’ groups, above all religious groups: for example, on Jews, anti-Jewish treatises and anti-Judaism,12 and on the perception of Muslims (‘Saracens’ in medieval nomenclature).13 Most of them dealt with Christian perceptions of or relations with just one other religion,14 and many other subjects. Nevertheless, they hardly ever embark on a deliberate enquiry into their ‘Otherness’ as such (albeit with some exceptions).15

9 Folker Reichert, Begegnungen mit China. Die Entdeckung Ostasiens im Mittelalter, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters, 15 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1992). 10 Cf. the survey by Folker Reichert, Erfahrung der Welt. Reisen und Kulturbegegnung im späten Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2001). 11 Cf. Marina Münkler, Erfahrung des Fremden. Die Beschreibung Ostasiens in den Augenzeugenberichten des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000); Irene Erfen and Karl-Heinz Spieß, eds, Fremdheit und Reisen im Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1997), with contributions from various disciplines, but primarily from literary history. 12 Cf., to name just a few examples, after the initial study by Bernhard Blumenkranz, Juifs et chrétiens dans le monde occidental 430–1096, École Pratique des Hautes Études. Sixième Section: Sciences économiques et sociales. Études juives, 2 (Paris: Mouton, 1960), the numerous works by Anna Sapir Abulafia, e.g., Christians and Jews in Dispute: Disputational Literature and the Rise of Anti-Judaism in the West, c. 1000–1150, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 621 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998); Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christian-Jewish Relations, 1000–1300: Jews in the Service of Medieval Christondom, The Medieval World (Harlow: Longman, 2011); Gilbert Dahan, La polémique Chrétienne et les Juifs au Moyen Âge (Paris: Michel, 1991); Robert Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); more recently Robert Chazan, Jews of Medieval Western Christendom 1000–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). In favour of an approchement of the two cultures, cf. Israel Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006; original Hebrew edition: Tel Aviv 2003). 13 Cf., after the initial works by Norman Daniel and Richard William Southern: John V. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). 14 For a comprehensive survey on the perception of all other religions (with an abundant bibliography), cf. Hans-Werner Goetz, Die Wahrnehmung anderer Religionen und christlich-abendländisches Selbstverständnis im frühen und hohen Mittelalter (5.–12. Jahrhundert) (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013); an English version is in preparation. 15 Cf., for example, concerning pagans as ‘Others’: Ian N. Wood, ‘The Pagan and the Other: Varying Presentations in the Early Middle Ages’, Networks and Neighbours, 1 (2013), 1–22; Richard Broome, ‘Pagans, Rebels and Merovingians: Otherness in the Early Carolingian World’, in The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Clemens Gantner, Rosamond McKitterick, and Sven Meeder (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 155–71, who characterizes the pagans as ‘the most definite other for Carolingian authors’ (Broome, ‘Pagans, Rebels and Merovingians’, p. 157); Timothy Barnwell, ‘Fragmented Identities: Otherness and Authority in Adam of Bremen’s History of the Archbishops of Hamburg–Bremen’, in The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Gantner, McKitterick, and Meeder, pp. 206–22, who underlines the complex and shifting perceptions of ‘Otherness’ of just one author; James T. Palmer, ‘The Otherness of Non-Christians in the Early Middle Ages’, in Christianity and Religious Plurality, ed. by Charlotte Methuen, Andrew Spicer and John Wolffe (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015), pp. 33–52, who underlines that, for early medieval Christian authors, pagans represented ‘the closest and clearest “other”’.

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The number of pertinent studies on medieval ‘Otherness’ depends, therefore, on what is being considered. If all types of ‘Others’ are regarded, a whole book would not suffice to print a bibliography (which could never effectively be compiled anyway). If one concentrates on studies that explicitly inquire into ‘Otherness’ (under this title), however, the result is far from being overwhelming. The IMB lists thirty-nine titles that feature ‘Otherness’ in their headline. Admittedly there would be considerably more ‘hits’ if other keywords (such as strangers, foreigners, Jews, pagans, monsters, etc.) were included into the search, but ideally those thirty-nine studies (or at least a part of them) would have deliberately reflected on or inquired into ‘Otherness’ as such. The same applies to German studies on ‘Fremdheit’, with various publications16 (the IMB lists thirty-two titles, ten of which, however, are contributions to just two edited volumes).17 Most titles are concerned with Western perceptions of ‘the Others’, but at least some take a view from the ‘other’ side.18 A closer look at these and other titles (and studies) confirms our impression: the vast majority concentrate on a limited number of subjects, namely on faraway cultures and the perception of foreign peoples,19 on magic worlds or fantasies20 and

16 To name just a few: Alexander Demandt, ed., Mit Fremden leben. Eine Kulturgeschichte von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (München: Beck, 1995), from antiquity to the present; Wolfgang Harms and Stephen Jaeger, eds, Fremdes wahrnehmen – fremdes Wahrnehmen. Studien zur Geschichte der Wahrnehmung und zur Begegnung von Kulturen in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit (Stuttgart: Hirzel, 1997); Volker Scior, Das Eigene und das Fremde. Identität und Fremdheit in den Chroniken Adams von Bremen, Helmolds von Bosau und Arnolds von Lübeck, Orbis mediaevalis. Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters, 4 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002); Andreas Gestrich and Lutz Raphael, eds, Inklusion/Exklusion. Studien zu Fremdheit und Armut von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Inklusion/ Exklusion. Studien zu Fremdheit und Armut von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 5 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004). For the legal position of strangers in Byzantium and Italy, cf. Laurent Mayali and Maria M. Mart, eds, Of Strangers and Foreigners (Late Antiquity – Middle Ages), Studies in Comparative Legal History (Berkeley: The Regents of the University of California, 1993). With an intercultural perspective: Manshu Ide and Albrecht Classen, eds, Japanisch-deutsche Gespräche über Fremdheit im Mittelalter. Interkulturelle und interdisziplinäre Forschungen in Ost und West, Stauffenburg Mediävistik, 2 (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2018), exclusively on literary sources. The Japanese contributions on ‘Fremdheit’ concentrate mostly on aspects in Japan that may seem ‘unfamiliar’ for a European audience. 17 Erfen and Spieß, eds, Fremdheit und Reisen; Fögen, ed., Fremde der Gesellschaft. 18 Cf., concerning Byzantium, Angeliki E. Laiou, Cécile Morrisson and Rown Dorin, eds, Byzantium and the Other: Relations and Exchanges, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 1005 (Farnham: Ashgate 2012); concerning the inner/interior society: Dion C. Smythe, ed., Strangers to Themselves: The Byzantine Outsider. Papers from the Thirty-Second Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. University of Sussex, Brighton, March 1998, Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Publications (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). For the Islamic perception of Europeans (but not focusing on religion), cf. Daniel König, Arabic-Islamic Views on the Latin West: Tracing the Emergence of Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Cf. also Suzanne Preston Blier, ‘Imaging Otherness in Ivory: African Portrayals of the Portuguese ca. 1492’, Art Bulletin, 75 (1993), 375–96. 19 See fn. 9–11 above. 20 Cf., for example, Timothy S. Jones and David A. Sprunger, eds, Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations, Studies in Medieval Culture, 42 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002).

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on the perception of other religions.21 Some offer a broader spectrum, focusing on ‘The Images of Otherness’ (primarily from an art history perspective),22 but most are smaller pieces on particular theological23 or literary texts.24 For example, in illuminated manuscripts of the chronicle of William of Tyre from the thirteenth century, the ‘Otherness’ of the ‘Saracens’ is made visible by their skin colour, weapons, and emblems or gestures.25 However, even entries that have ‘Otherness’ or ‘the Other’ in the title do not necessarily reflect on this theme, but frequently presume it to be a ‘given’ (notwithstanding, of course, that numerous studies with different titles may say something about this theme, too).

Modern Theories and Medieval Conditions This large divergence26 already indicates that ‘Otherness’ is a theme that is as interesting as it is ‘problematic’: interesting for its topicality and its still innovative character, its wide range and numerous facets, problematic because of the vagueness of a term in need of clarification prior to any research on the theme, and also because of a certain ambiguity between modern theories on ‘Otherness’ and their applicability to remote epochs. Modern theories are one (well-established) way to approach the Middle Ages (and other remote times), but we should not ignore that they hold and provoke further dangers. Modern theories may certainly sharpen our minds and questions, but they can never simply be applied to former epochs without pertinent reflections and without being challenged, because they are normally unhistorical and often enough they are even supposed to be ahistorical, precisely while they are

21 To mention only some further titles with ‘Otherness’ in their heading: Svetlana I. Luchitskaya, ‘Muslims in Christian Imagery of the Thirteenth Century: The Visual Code of Otherness’, Al-Masāq, 12 (2000), 37–67; Manuel Núñez Rodriguez, ‘Iconografia de uma marginalidade: o repúdio do “outro”’, Signum: Revista da ABREM (Assoçião Brasileira de Estudos Medievais), 2 (2000), 43–78; Jay T. Lees, ‘Confronting the Otherness of the Greeks: Anselm of Havelberg and the Division between Greeks and Latins’, Analecta Praemonstratensia, 68 (1992), 224–40. 22 Cf. Eisenbeiß and Saurma-Jeltsch, eds, Images of Otherness, primarily on visual techniques of ‘Othering’, rightly emphasizing the great variety of perspectives; recently Maria Portmann, ed., ‘Otherness’ in Space and Architecture: Jews, Muslims and Christians in Western European Art (1200–1650) (Bern: Lang, 2021). 23 Cf., just for example, Enrica Ruato, ‘God and the Worm: The Twofold Otherness in PseudoDionysius’s Theory of Dissimilar Images’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 82 (2008), 581–92; Gillian R. Evans, ‘Sources of the Notion of “Otherness” in Twelfth-Century Commentaries on Boethius’ Opuscula sacra’, Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Bulletin Du Cange), 40 (1977), 103–13. 24 Cf. Cyril Aslanov, ‘The Comic as a Factor of Integration: The Rehabilitation of Otherness in the Song of William’, Crusades, 7 (2008), 1–11; Alan S. Ambrisco, ‘“It lyth nat in my tonge”: occupatio and Otherness in the Squire’s Tale’, Chaucer Review: A Journal of Medieval Studies and Literary Criticism, 38 (2004), 205–28. 25 Cf. Lutchiskaya, ‘Muslims’. 26 Cf. Susan Yi Sencindiver, Maria Beville and Marie Lauritzen, eds, Otherness: A Multilateral Perspective (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011), underlining the variety of themes (including sexual otherness or non-human otherness, however, not dealing with the Middle Ages).

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claiming a universal validity. Edward Said’s theory of ‘Orientalism’ may serve as a famous example here that has often been discussed; however, theories of a constant antagonism or a ‘clash of civilizations’ (Samuel P. Huntington) can never explain the diversity of medieval cultural relations.27 In fact, however and without doubt, numerous modern theories exist (deriving from sociology, ethnology, philosophy, cultural sciences, and also biology and psychology, religious studies and other sciences or approaches, such as postcolonial studies).28 These theories touch on certain aspects which could also become important for inquiries into ‘Otherness’, for example, theories about society as a whole (such as Niklas Luhmann’s ‘system theory’), social groups or marginalization, inclusion and exclusion, ‘in-groups’ and ‘out-groups’, about individuals, identity, identification and ‘Othering’, to name just a few important ones. They all provide useful ideas or at most a kind of frame rather than a direct approach to ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages itself, and have to be applied and discussed in individual contributions, but cannot be presented in a brief introduction which should rather avoid a possible theoretical disequilibrium by favouring a certain theory. While it is impossible to discuss all those theories here, to predetermine a certain theory would inadequately configure comprehension, base what are very diverse studies on the same (modern) theoretical platform, and would limit the many possible approaches, where it is necessary to remain open to a great many influences and interpretations. Moreover, we should never forget that these are modern theories which are not universal (although they often claim to be), and whose validity for former epochs can and should be checked but should not be pre-assumed. Otherwise, they would measure the Middle Ages against a completely modern background and thus obscure genuine medieval understanding, feelings, or categories. For example, ‘sex difference’ is not merely (or even primarily) biological, but it is always a social and cultural phenomenon, and thus changes over time and according to cultural context (and the same is true for every other aspect of ‘Otherness’). Postcolonial theory rightly reminds us of the need to destabilize hegemonic identities, and of the domination of Christianity in the Occident, and it may counteract a European centred view.29 Critical

27 For (modern) concepts of cultural difference and postcolonialism one may refer to the collection of essays by Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). For anthropological theories (and modern examples), cf. Gerd Baumann and Andre Gingrich, eds, Grammars of Identity/ Alterity: A Structural Approach, EASA Series, 3 (New York: Berghahn, 2004), particularly Gerd Baumann, ‘Grammar of Identity/Alterity: A Structural Approach’, in Grammars of Identity/Alterity, ed. by Baumann and Gingrich, pp. 18–50. 28 Not really an ‘introduction’ into postcolonial studies (as the title promises), but a discussion of three early protagonists (Said, Spivak, Bhabha) and of criticisms of postcolonial theory is provided by Maria do Mar Castro Varela and Nikita Dhawan, Postkoloniale Theorie. Eine kritische Einführung, Cultural Studies, 12 (Bielefeld: transcript, 2005). An attempt to apply postcolonial theory on the Middle Ages is made by the contributions in Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed., The Postcolonial Middle Ages, The New Middle Ages (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000). 29 These are three of the characterizations of postcolonial theory given by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Introduction: Midcolonial’, in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. by Cohen, pp. 1–17 (pp. 6–7). More recently, even the word ‘transdifference’ was invented; cf. Doris Feldmann and Ina Habermann,

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Race Theory, originally intended to expose the racism of modern white Americans, reminds us to give due weight to non-white people in our research and insists that ‘race’ should be considered as an essential historical category.30 Nevertheless, one may add that all this has long before been recognized before by medievalists.31 In general, applying modern views to the Middle Ages may be misleading where we inquire into medieval concepts of ‘Otherness’,32 because, for example, medieval people in the West were not thinking of ‘race’, but of (other) peoples, kingdoms, regions or religions, and in Christian countries they had a deep conviction of Christianity being the only right religion, or, in Islamic countries, of Islam being the right religion.33 Apart from that, there is still another problem of applying modern theories without scrutinizing them: although there are many theories that touch upon the problem of ‘Otherness’, it is, in fact, hard to find any theory explicitly focusing on ‘Otherness’ as such. Consequently, pertinent studies on ‘Otherness’ still have to find their own way. Some reflections deliberately concentrating on ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages may be helpful here.

Some Problems with Research on ‘Otherness’ Apart from the applicability of modern theories and from absent or insufficient reflection, another problem arises from oversimplifying the great variety of ‘Othernesses’. In an enlightening article, Paul Freedman has underlined the enormous spectrum of ‘Otherness’, in which ‘monstrous races’ at the margins of the world represent only the

30 31 32

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eds, in collaboration with Dunja Mohr, Theorizing Cultural Difference and Transdifference, with Contributions on the Theory of Transdifference, Negotiations of Age in Literature, Religious Philosophy and Sound Studies = Journal of the Studies of British Cultures, 13.2 (2006). Cf. Thomas Kendall, ed., Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement (New York: New Press, 1995). Cf. the paper of Nikolas Jaspert in this volume, with an abundant bibliography concerning the Mediterranean countries. In fact, simply by way of example, in the papers in the volume The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. by Cohen, one can easily find misunderstandings of medieval thinking and conditions. The same is true to an uncritical application of the ‘Critical Race Theory’ on the Middle Ages. Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race and the European Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), wants to show, for example, that race mattered in the Middle Ages, but never questions whether medieval authors were aware of this problem. In fact, for them, ‘race’ was not a criterion, and, consequently, Heng’s examples, never being quoted from the sources, really deal either with ‘religion’ or with ‘peoples’ (or both), which, of course, could be equally depreciated. In fact, very distinct from modern opinions (perverted in Nazi Germany), Jews were never regarded as a ‘race’ in the Middle Ages. Similarly, M. X. Vernon, The Black Middle Ages. Race and the Construction of the Middle Ages, The New Middle Ages (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), underlines similarities of late medieval perceptions of black people with the opinions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors, but neglects the differences. It is not by chance that medieval Latin did not even have a word for ‘race’. Moreover, the Islamic world has never been a ‘colony’, but the leading culture in many medieval countries. We have long since known about manifold contacts between the two worlds, but also about the deprecatory perception of the other religion on both sides.

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‘most other’ end of a large scale, and he complains that most medieval studies would not sufficiently differentiate between the many types of ‘Otherness’.34 Freedman sees three great dangers of oversimplification when applying ‘Otherness’ to the Middle Ages (which are exemplified by more recent modern studies): first, the totalization of all unfavourable ascriptions ( Jews, Saracens, monstrous races, women, homosexuals, heretics or peasants) into one single model of alterity; second, the treatment of ‘Others’ as stable, ignoring differences over time and distinctions between groups; and third, the assumption that elite society is determined to despise peoples on the margins of humanity.35 While we are not so sure about the third issue — social ‘Otherness’ can be regarded from both sides of the social strata —, we might add a fourth danger: while the theoretical problems mentioned above, such as those relating to individual and group, inclusion and exclusion, in-group and out-group and so on, undoubtedly have a great effect on Otherness, it would be misleading to assume that these different approaches are identical. One need not be an ‘Other’ to be excluded (and vice versa). These studies cannot offer more than a contribution to the (independent) approach to ‘Otherness’. There is still a dilemma. On the one hand, there remains an uneasiness when applying modern theories to the Middle Ages, at least when they are applied uncritically without the intention of reconsidering their applicability. On the other hand, the vague subject-matter of ‘Otherness’ necessarily calls for a theoretical as well as, or even more, a methodological foundation and conceptual basis: What is meant when we apply the term ‘Otherness’? And how can we approach an inquiry into (any kind of) ‘Otherness’ in a distant period such as the Middle Ages? Moreover, to make it even more complicated, it is not enough to bear in mind that medieval comprehensions of ‘Otherness’ probably do not conform to ours. Likewise, a look into medieval sources reveals a great variability of attitudes towards what we may call ‘Otherness’. A brief look at the Gesta Karoli Magni imperatoris of the monk Notker of St Gallen shows that ‘the Other’ can refer to uncivilized peoples (like the Vikings)36 as well as nations that are considered to be so poor (like the Africans in Notker) that they had to be supported by Charlemagne with corn, oil and wine,37 but also to sophisticated and yet strange cultures (like Byzantium).38 However, Byzantine silks are not disdained by Notker because they are strange, but

34 Paul Freedman, ‘The Medieval Other: The Middle Ages as Other’, in Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations, ed. by Timothy S. Jones and David A. Sprunger (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), pp. 1–24. 35 Freedman, ‘The Medieval Other’, pp. 8–12. The second section of the paper deals consequently with the persecution of internal ‘Others’, arguing against theories of an increasing intolerance since the Middle Ages: the last section is concerned with the alterity of the Middle Ages, pleading for demonstrating the alterity without separating the Middle Ages from modern times: ‘The Middle Ages is different from the contemporary, but its alterity is not that of a single world’ (Freedman, ‘The Medieval Other’, p. 24). 36 Notker of St Gallen, Gesta Karoli imperatoris magni II. 12, ed. by Hans F. Haefele, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, nova series, 25 vols (München: MGH, 1922–2010), 12, 2nd edn (1980), p. 70. 37 Notker of St Gallen, Gesta Karoli imperatoris magni II. 9, ed. by Haefele, pp. 62–63. 38 Notker of St Gallen, Gesta Karoli imperatoris magni II. 6, ed. by Haefele, pp. 54–55.

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because they are unpractical and expensive.39 In contrast, the Persians under their king Harun (although they are Muslims, a point, however, which is concealed by Notker) are respected as representatives of a former world empire.40 Even in one and the same author, ‘Otherness’ is not a criterion of unequivocal assignment.

Some Methodological Considerations on ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages Consequently, a methodological reflection on what we (today) understand by ‘Otherness’ and what else may be comprehended by this term is indispensable when working on this complex and complicated theme. In a brief introduction, it is impossible to ponder all problems and preliminary considerations relating to all kinds of ‘Otherness’: such consideration would need to be adapted heavily to each particular theme. The following remarks are confined to some general but, as we think, nevertheless important aspects in order to indicate some of the inherent structural and methodological problems that we face when dealing with ‘Otherness’. They do not claim to present a (still lacking) ‘theory of Otherness’. But they hopefully offer some (very preliminary) building blocks to it from a historical perspective, applicable to the Middle Ages, and sharpen our methodological reflection.41 First, since ‘Otherness’ includes numerous variations, the distinction of several kinds, or models, of ‘Otherness’ which may lead us nearer to medieval concepts of ‘Otherness’ has long been established.42 For example, one can distinguish between – political (being a foreigner, a migrant or refugee, or just referring to different kingdoms or duchies, etc.), – ethnic (belonging to a different people or/and speaking a different language), – social (belonging to a minority, a different status, rank, class, or caste, or, German ‘Stand’, which means, for example, being noble or ‘ignoble’), – religious (being of a different faith, including deviation from the ‘true’ faith, thus, in the Catholic Middle Ages, also comprising Christian heretics and Greek ‘Orthodox’ Christians), – cultural (belonging to a different culture, with different customs and mindsets), – sexual ‘Otherness’ (including the difference of the other gender as well as deviations from ‘gender norms’).

39 Notker of St Gallen, Gesta Karoli imperatoris magni II. 17, ed. by Haefele, pp. 86–87. 40 Notker of St Gallen, Gesta Karoli imperatoris magni II. 8, ed. by Haefele, pp. 61–62. 41 References for similar considerations might probably have been given for each of the following statements. However, it rather seemed preferable to sum up the various (and dispersed) statements to a coherent general survey. 42 One possible, useful scheme is that of Jerzy Strzelczyk, ‘Die Wahrnehmung des Fremden im mittelalterlichen Polen’, in Die Begegnung des Westens mit dem Osten. Kongreßakten des 4. Symposiums des Mediävistenverbandes in Köln 1991 aus Anlaß des 1000. Todestages der Kaiserin Theophanu, ed. by Odilo Engels and Peter Schreiner (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1993), pp. 203–20 (p. 204), who distinguishes between a regional, an ethnic-political, a religious and a social ‘strangeness’ (‘Fremdheit’).

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In addition, from a different perspective, one can focus on the ‘Otherness’ of ‘the unknown’ or simply unfamiliar, including remote lands or peoples as well as the ‘theological’, complete ‘Otherness’ of God and ‘the Other World’ (or ‘the beyond’),43 or, for example, revenants.44 Or, to characterize and group, again, from a slightly different perspective, ‘Otherness’ can derive from different origins (remote places, peoples, countries, nations, regions, or even towns), different faith, social rank, customs, appearance, language, gender, but also from a failure to integrate, or into the appropriate status within society (as an ‘internal Other’). In concrete situations, these categories may (and certainly do) overlap, but it is nevertheless important to distinguish between these (and further) perspectives: a ‘political Other’ (from a different country) may, but need not be an ethnic, or religious, or cultural ‘Other’, a social ‘Other’ is not necessarily (and in most cases is not) a religious ‘Other’, and so on. Helpful as these differentiations are, they nevertheless need to be examined with regard to their applicability to the Middle Ages (simply because of the ‘Otherness’ of this period). In a schematic visualization, this situation might be illustrated like this: Diagram 1 kind of Otherness

character/reason of Otherness political

origin

ethnic

(un-)familiarity

social

OTHERNESS

(non-)integration

religious

faith cultural

customs

Distinctions like the aforementioned may be easily comprehensible. However, there are many others. Moreover, second, even within those categories just mentioned, ‘Otherness’ is not a stable phenomenon to be equally applied everywhere. Rather, it is certainly a cultural designation, or ascription, that is different in every culture: it differs according to epoch (it is different in every age), society (it is different in each class or group), and in the last analysis it is a subjective problem that may differ in

43 Cf., for example, Aisling Byrne, Otherworlds: Fantasy and History in Medieval Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Sylvia Huot, ‘Others and Alterity’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature, ed. by Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 238–50. 44 Cf. Aline G, Hornaday, ‘Visitors from Another Space: The Medieval Revenant as Foreigner’, in Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages, ed. by Classen, pp. 71–95.

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every individual. There may even exist a ‘temporary Otherness’, as has been claimed.45 ‘Otherness’ is not only dependent on given pre-conditions, situations, knowledge, attitudes, and experience, but it is also determined by stereotyped concepts and representations. The awareness of ‘Otherness’ is complex and multi-layered, equivocal and ambivalent as well as dynamic. A further, third distinction derives from spatial distance, which again overlaps completely with the aforementioned categories: the ‘Other’ can live far away, even at the edges of the world (that medieval people thought to be the living environment of ‘monsters’ or ‘monstrous races’),46 thus inevitably also being religiously and culturally different. However, the ‘Other’ may likewise come as a visitor (not a tourist, in the Middle Ages), a merchant coming from far away (but also from not so far away) or as a pilgrim (who is not a religious ‘Other’ as long as pilgrimage is directed to Christian sanctuaries) — and it is no coincidence that ‘peregrinus’, the expression for a ‘stranger’ or ‘foreigner’ par excellence, soon became the favourite term to designate a pilgrim. Moreover, the delimitation can even be much ‘closer’ than that: the ‘Other’ can just be an inhabitant of a different region (duchy, county), town, parish, or village in the same country, a member of a different monastic order or simply of a different monastery, of a different guild or seigneurial system, or even an inhabitant of the same town or village who had moved there from another town or village and therefore was regarded as a ‘stranger’ (in the later Middle Ages often being named after the place where he came from). In other words, the ‘Other’ can be familiar or unfamiliar. Fourth, in the same context, the situation of ‘meeting the Other’ matters: whether it is by encounters or any form of communication or social intercourse, during travels or embassies (on both sides), or in quarrels, conflicts, disputes, wars, or persecutions. This includes (and affects) different forms of relationship between one’s own and other groups, ranging from peaceful coexistence through (voluntary or forced) segregation and animosities up to hostile attitudes and attacks. Again, however, the reason for a certain behaviour is a crucial point: are Jews or heretics, for example, persecuted for (or primarily for) their ‘Otherness’? If so, for their religious, ethnic, cultural or social ‘Otherness’ (or does this not matter)? To draw on a lamentable modern example: the extermination of Jews during the German Nazi period did certainly not derive from religious reasons (and, in fact, many of the murdered ‘Jews’ were emancipated Christians). 45 Cf. Nirmal Dass, ‘Temporary Otherness and Homilectic History in the Late Carolingian Age: A Reading of the Bella Parisiacae urbis of Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés’, in Difference and Identity in Francia and Medieval France, ed. by Meredith Cohen and Justine Firnhaber-Baker (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 99–113. However, since ‘temporary’ is an ambivalent term, it should be emphasized that the author does not mean ‘momentary’ or ‘at times’, but rather ‘transient’: that ‘Otherness’ can change and be lost in the course of time. 46 Cf., for example, one of the earliest representations of this aspect, John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Also David Williams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Medieval Thought and Literature (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996), pp. 13–14. But see also Ian Wood, ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, in Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World: The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1100, ed. by Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, and Robert Payne (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 531–42.

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Moreover, fifth, it is almost needless to say that, as in any historical study, the bias, the horizon, the conceptions and the world-view of the authors of our sources are not merely an important factor in terms of source criticism, but, furthermore, reveal in themselves the authors’ perceptions and concepts of ‘Otherness’ and thus lead to its medieval understanding. ‘Otherness’ is not just there; it is a matter (and process) of mindset and construction. That is why more and more recent studies prefer to speak of ‘Othering’ rather than ‘Otherness’ in order to emphasize the process of making someone an ‘Other’ or constructing someone as an ‘Other’ rather than being an ‘Other’ or recognizing the (existing) ‘Other’ as such (although both are possible). No less important are the ‘practical’ manifestations of this ‘theoretical’ background, namely the attitudes and behaviour towards ‘Others’, as well as the relationship between these two manifestations, for instance, to mention just one prominent example: is there a correlation between anti-Jewish writings and thinking and the persecution or pogroms of Jews (as they climaxed during the Crusades or the late medieval times of the Black Death)? Thus, in addition, sixth, there are certainly different ‘grades’ of ‘Otherness’: from being somehow different from ‘normality’ (that is, again, what is thought to be normal) and from what is known and familiar in certain regards but different in others, up to being (or, rather, being thought to be) completely unknown or totally different in every respect, with many graduations, shades, and nuances in between. To ‘misuse’ poor George Orwell: All ‘Others’ are ‘Others’, but some are more ‘other’ than others. It is not possible to establish a clear scale where concrete cases or applications can be ‘ranked’ and classified, but nevertheless we have to be aware of the wide spectrum that is comprised within this term, indicating the intensity of ‘Otherness’. Methodologically, it therefore does not suffice just to name ‘the Other’, but we have also to ask ‘How “other” is “the Other”?’ and further: ‘Why is someone classified as being “the Other”?’ ‘Which features make him or her appear as “the Other”?’ Thus it is not so much the ‘discovery’ or ‘detection’ of ‘Otherness’ that is interesting, but rather the indicators, criteria, and reasons of demarcation. Finally, seventh, ‘Otherness’ may be used more or less neutrally, but normally there is some inherent assessment that, again, may range from just being (somehow) diverse, through being distinctly different, up to being absolutely intolerable. Accordingly, one’s own behaviour and attitude can vary between curiosity and admiration on the one end of the scale and contempt and hostility on the other. Thus, in most cases ‘Otherness’ comprises an assessment which need not necessarily be negative — we may time and again observe a kind of fascination towards very different cultures —, but surely it often is.47 Again, however, there are many grades and nuances within the possible assessments, from seemingly neutral descriptions up to strong disdain,

47 Cf. Ortfried Schäffter, ed., Das Fremde. Erfahrungsmöglichkeiten zwischen Faszination und Bedrohung (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1991); Herfried Münkler, ed., Furcht und Faszination. Facetten der Fremdheit, Studien und Materialien der interdisziplinären Arbeitsgruppe ‘Die Herausfordung durch das Fremde’ an der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997).

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combined with distinct repudiation. Here we have to ask whether, how, and why ‘the Other(s)’ is or are appraised as such. In all these cases, however — and this has been generally accepted —, ‘Otherness’ is a relative or rather relational term, not one that has a ‘value’ or meaning in itself. It distinguishes others from the speaker (and his or her society):48 being ‘the Other’ means being someone (or something) different from oneself.49 There is no ‘Other’ without ‘Self ’ (and vice versa). This has repercussions on all the different approaches to ‘Otherness’ mentioned above which, in fact, all derive from or at least are dependent on this close relationship. A classification of ‘Otherness’ results from a comparison with oneself and one’s own identity or identity group(s). Actually, forms and concepts of the ‘Other’ and attitudes towards ‘Others’ both imply and reveal concepts of ‘Self ’, self-awareness, and identity (which may be constructed, but in any case are shaped or sharpened by viewing ‘the Other’), whether expressed explicitly or implicitly, consciously or unconsciously. Precisely for this reason, inquiring into ‘Otherness’ is at the same time an interesting approach to— unconscious — medieval concepts of ‘Self ’, identity, and individuality. Therefore, it is very important to comprehend these terms in their respective correlation. ‘Otherness’ is a label that classifies and segregates, a label that the ‘Other’ might agree to (while on his or her part seeing the same or rather different distinctions, possibly or probably with inverse assessments), but is likely to reject as soon as it is combined with derogatory attitudes and behaviour. ‘Otherness’ is an expression of (respective) personal feelings (towards others), it is by no means an ‘objective’ term, even if it is meant in a neutral manner. Again, however, the relationship between ‘Self ’ and ‘the Other’ is complex and versatile50 and there are many different ways of distinguishing between them.51 This may even go so far as to see the ‘Self as Other’.52 In other words, the correlation between ‘Self ’ and ‘Other’ helps to explain the existence of ‘Otherness’, but it can never spare us from distinguishing between all those different forms, subjects, distinctions, and approaches mentioned above (and certainly many more). 48 Cf., from a sociological perspective, Karlheinz Ohle, Das Ich und das Andere. Grundzüge einer Soziologie des Fremden, Sozialwissenschaftliche Studien. Schriftenreihe des Seminars für Sozialwissenschaft der Universität Hamburg, 15 (Stuttgart: Fischer, 1978). In fact, this has already been emphasized in 1908 by Georg Simmel, ‘Exkurs über den Fremden’, in Der Gast, der bleibt. Dimensionen von Georg Simmels Analyse des Fremdseins, ed. by Almut Loycke, Edition Pandora, 9 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1992; first printed in 1908), pp. 9–16. 49 For a pertinent discussion, cf. Scior, Das Eigene und das Fremde, pp. 10–15. 50 Scior, Das Eigene und das Fremde, pp. 332–40, detects in the three chroniclers that form the basis of his study (Adam of Bremen, Helmold of Bosau, Arnold of Lübeck), three different models of a relationship between ‘Self ’ and ‘the Other’. 51 Stephen Greenblatt, Marvellous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 135, concerning travel reports, distinguishes a range that reaches ‘from radical alterity […] to a self-recognition that is also a mode of self-estrangement’. 52 Cf. Torfi H. Tulinius, ‘The Self as Other: Iceland and Christian Europe in the Middle Ages’, in Nordic Civilization in the Medieval World, ed. by Vésteinn Ólason, Gripla, 20 (Reykjavik: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 2009), pp. 199–216, concerning Christian Icelandic retrospective on the pagan prehistory of their own people. Nevertheless, past and present Icelanders are distinguished by their different religion; thus the former Icelanders as ‘Self ’ and as ‘Others’ result from different categories.

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Schematically, although this is necessarily a simplification, we might sketch this manifold relationship with its consequences and repercussions like this: SELF

↔ THE OTHER

manifest, for example, in coming from or belonging to:

one’s own place

↔ from other places

one’s own group one’s own institution one’s own religion identity

↔ different groups

from remote parts of the earth, other countries, regions, towns, villages, seigneurial systems; migrants other class, status; minorities

↔ from other institutions

lordship, monastery, etc.

↔ different religion/faith

pagans, Jews, Muslims, heretics, Greeks

self-awareness human

↔ delimitation

different culture, habits, appearance, language ↔ depreciation from admiration to contempt and persecution ↔ non-human / half-human / differently human

Or, judging from ‘reasons’ for repercussions of ‘Otherness’: epoch; culture origin, space, faith, class etc. mindset / attitudes THE ‘OTHER’

derives from

perception / construction (any) delimitation from ‘Self’

assessment This

leads to behaviour

What has been alluded to above, will certainly not include all possible differentiations; there are many more. However, it may be appropriate to illustrate the complexity as well as the difference of this approach: modern studies of certain religious (pagan, Jewish, Islamic) or other groups or descriptions of remote peoples and countries will certainly touch upon their being different and upon the perceptions of the authors. But

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they can well be written without focusing on ‘the Other’, while studies on ‘Otherness’ take these groups, authors or other themes as their examples (or case studies) of investigation in order to discuss their ‘Otherness’ in its various possible aspects. Doing this, the above remarks should equally have sharpened our eye in our own research: how important it is, when inquiring into ‘Otherness’, not only to make clear what we (want to) understand by ‘Otherness’ (or how medieval authors comprehended it) and how we use it. But it is no less crucial to clarify what kind of ‘Otherness’ we are investigating, to distinguish between different categories, relationships to ‘self ’, grades of being different and of assessing that difference appropriately. Lack of this precision can easily create misunderstandings. Even more, we should test our own observations by critically asking ‘Is this really (meant as) “Otherness” (or are we reading our understanding into the sources)?’ ‘Otherness’ (of any kind) can certainly become a social problem, but primarily, in being ‘created’, it is not so much a ‘social’ but rather a ‘mental’ phenomenon, a matter of perception and categorization rather than of (clear or precise) existence, an issue of ‘imagination’ and experience rather than ‘reality’ (notwithstanding, of course, that in a certain age and culture, the agreement of the great majority concerning ‘Others’ can lead ‘Otherness’ to be thought to be ‘real’, and taking measures against ‘Others’ can make ‘Otherness’ a social and political problem). Nevertheless, in the first instance, this is a personal, or individual, phenomenon, which, however, increases to become a social, or corporate, one (of a certain group, a certain region, a certain epoch) where it extends to being widespread and predominant. Moreover, as a rule, this is a mutual perception: whoever regards others as ‘the Other’ will normally likewise be regarded by them as ‘the Other’ (although not necessarily in the same manner or for the same reasons). It is also a matter of feeling which has repercussions for the individual: someone may not only be regarded as a stranger, but can equally feel himself or herself to be a stranger (among all the strangers). These multiple facets of ‘Otherness’ imply that, at least in an edited volume, we cannot (and should not) give a precise definition or expected requirements, when each author (and contribution) has to find out from the specific theme and perspective what ‘Otherness’ might mean, where it begins and where it ends, what are its particular features and why something or someone is felt to be an ‘Other’. ‘Otherness’ is not only a substantive, but first of all it is a methodological problem. Knowing that the modern researcher has a modern perspective, in order to avoid a complete misunderstanding of medieval conditions and perceptions, we would always be well advised to check how far our impressions and results conform to medieval standards and categories (and where they do not).

Some Preliminary Remarks on the Medieval Terminology and Comprehension of ‘Otherness’ When investigating medieval concepts of ‘Otherness’ (which is necessary to avoid hypermodern interpretations), medieval terminology may be a precious means, but it certainly does not solve all inherent problems. On the one hand, it is the

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context rather than the term that tells us that the author is implying ‘Otherness’ or what kind of ‘Otherness’ is implied; on the other hand, people can be described as or felt to be ‘Others’ without using corresponding words. There are several Latin terms for the ‘Other’, which, however, each bear several meanings that do not directly correspond with our notion of ‘Otherness’; this may be illustrated by the most current terms:53 – ‘peregrinus/peregrina’, originally someone without a complete legal capacity, is generally a traveller, and specifically the pilgrim, in a foreign land or region, outside the familiar environment, a ‘stranger among strangers’, but not necessarily ‘different’ (and not necessarily ‘charged’ with a pejorative meaning); on the contrary, ‘peregrini’ are also objects of care and charity, although their clothes, language, behaviour, etc. may seem ‘unusually strange’; – ‘advena’ is normally someone coming from (somewhere) outside, that is, someone not indigenous, in order to stay and live in a different community (thus already Isidore of Seville), possibly to be integrated soon or later on; – ‘extraneus/extranea’ seems to mean almost the same, but, in fact, is quite different: first of all, the term is the opposite to ‘proprius’ (or ‘proprium’ where objects are concerned), meaning one’s own. In medieval polyptychs, it marks a person living on the land of a seigneur but beyond his jurisdiction. Thus, ‘extranei’ are also foreigners (outside their homeland), who could nevertheless become conquerors and lords of foreign countries or regions; – finally, ‘alienus/aliena’ again seems fairly similar but is applied to every kind of delimitation from one’s own (including third party property, different law, someone else’s goods or even someone else’s wife or husband or the church of another bishop). ‘Alienus’ also refers to different gods and religions. Thus it can almost refer to everything beyond one’s own property, or, as ‘alienigenus’, one’s own community, but it means neither ‘alien’ nor ‘Other’ in our sense. Or, if we look at ‘alteritas’, which seems to be the equivalent of alterity (and thus of ‘Otherness’ in a different definition),54 this is a really good example to demonstrate the ‘Otherness’ of a medieval understanding of ‘Otherness’: medieval theologians may well place it in the context of ‘pluralitas’ which derives ‘ex alteritate’.55 However, ‘alter’ is just the other as distinguished from someone (‘unus’), including Self, but also from others (as a third party), but normally from just two persons or objects. Consequently, this is not ‘the Other’ in our sense, unless it is explicitly characterized as being different.

53 There is hardly any study on the corresponding medieval Latin terms for ‘Otherness’; for a preliminary insight, see Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘“Fremdheit” im früheren Mittelalter’, in Herrschaftspraxis und soziale Ordnungen im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit. Ernst Schubert zum Gedenken, ed. by Peter Aufgebauer and Christine van den Heuvel, with the collaboration of Brage Bei der Wieden, Sabine Graf, and Gerhard Streich (Hanover: Hahn, 2006), pp. 245–65, with references to sources for the following observations. 54 In this sense, for a medieval theological perspective, cf. Evans, ‘Alteritas’. 55 Cf. Evans, ‘Alteritas’, pp. 105–06, concerning Gilbert of Poitiers.

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So, if words are a reflection of concepts (and if wording and contexts are a reflection of mindset), we may cautiously conclude from these few remarks that medieval people had a comprehension of ‘Otherness’ that certainly reveals some parallels, but on the whole is fairly different from ours. All these terms — which, moreover, do not occur too frequently in medieval sources —, in spite of their range, seem much more specific than modern ‘Otherness’. However, they all include a notion of ‘Otherness’ in the sense that they delimit from ‘Self ’ and imply a notion of someone coming from somewhere else, but, again, this can mean: coming from far away or nearby; it can be good or bad, normal or strange, imply an ethnic, religious, cultural or social distinction. Thus the different categories of ‘Otherness’ mentioned above are always inherent, but they do not correspond to specific medieval terms in contrast to others. Moreover, these terms do not necessarily mean being ‘completely different’: the ‘Other’ can well be part of one’s own society. Therefore, ‘Otherness’, in medieval terms, should not be restricted to barbarian peoples living far away in remote countries or to people of other creeds (‘unbelievers’ in medieval Christian diction), the two favourite themes of modern studies on medieval ‘Otherness’. Nevertheless, the pertinent expressions each comprise a certain semantic field, and lay emphasis on specific aspects of distinction from ‘self ’ rather than ‘Otherness’ as such. Consequently, ‘Otherness’ cannot simply be deduced from medieval terms, but exclusively from their context. Equally, xenophobia existed, but it is not conveyed simply by these Latin expressions themselves. However, these are very preliminary observations, and we are still in need of a comprehensive analysis of these (and other) medieval terms of ‘Otherness’ before we can dare to advance to passably grounded conclusions.56

On the Present Volume Taken all that has been alluded to together, one may conclude that, while ‘the Other’ is also a matter of marginalization, ‘Otherness’ as such is far from being marginal. In fact, ‘Otherness’ is completely common and existent everywhere in every society, albeit with many different forms, facets, and nuances. Considering this, it should be evident that there are too many forms and manifestations, grades and judgements of and approaches to ‘Otherness in the Middle Ages’ to be covered by just one volume. The aim of this collection of articles is rather to demonstrate the great diversity of the theme and its differences, manifestations, and perspectives as well as different approaches to the theme to be explored. The volume contains the four keynote lectures given by Sylvia Huot, Nikolas Jaspert, Eduardo Manzano Morena and Felicitas Schmieder, and a further fourteen selected papers (from more than 660 papers on ‘Otherness’ that had been accepted and given at the IMC in 2017). The contributions consider the vast theme of ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages from distinct angles and with different

56 Cf., on the perceptions of two chroniclers of the twelfth century (although not on the medieval terms): Anna Aurast, Fremde, Freunde, Feinde. Wahrnehmung und Bewertung von Fremden in den Chroniken des Gallus Anonymus und des Cosmas von Prag (Bochum: Winkler, 2019).

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approaches respectively, each on a specific topic and not least written by contributors from different disciplines (history, literary history, art history, archaeology), from various countries (Austria, Britain, Finland, Germany, Greece, Japan, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States of America) and dealing with different areas (Western Europe, Scandinavia, Italy, Croatia, Crete, the Mediterranean, Christian and Islamic Spain and Portugal, Byzantium, India), perspectives (religion, law, social order, the past, a sea), and with diverse kinds of sources (documents, historiography, fiction, legal sources, maps, graves, paintings). Important aspects will certainly be missing. The editors had to choose from papers presented at the IMC. Nevertheless, we hope to have collected an interesting, multifaceted choice of contributions in order to demonstrate the wide range and fruitfulness of the theme as well as the possibilities of medieval research by inquiring into ‘Otherness’ (inside and outside a certain community), but also problematizing and relativizing common approaches or opinions, thus opening ways for further research. It might be advisable here to recall the genesis of this volume. The IMC is not a conference on a certain theme, carefully prepared by a sophisticated concept of the organizer(s) along which the contributions are expected to discuss their particular topic. On the contrary, the Call for papers invites researchers to cover as many aspects as possible. Consequently, the papers were written before this introduction which, we repeat, is intended to offer an access to the whole theme of ‘Otherness’ as such, including the many problems it raises, rather than being a mere opening to this volume. The authors of the papers subsequently had the opportunity to read the introduction, but were never expected to conscientiously consider and discuss all the ‘problems of Otherness’ as they have been raised above. An introduction of this kind seems the more necessary and helpful for further discussion as an equivalent methodological and theoretical survey has been lacking so far. Nevertheless, each contribution (consciously unconsciously) was confronted with at least some of the inherent problems that are mentioned here, and touches on them according to its particular subject, thus further sharpening our academic intuition for inquiring into ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages. Since each contribution has its own perspective (or, rather, perspectives) that not only focuses on a certain theme, but at the same time aims at a certain methodological approach, it would be misleading to subdivide the contributions under certain aspects and categories mentioned above, such as pagan, Jewish or Muslim ‘Otherness’, legal, historical or literary ‘Otherness’, or else ‘Otherness’ outside or inside one’s own community. Equally misleading would be a subdivision according to chronology, distance and other grades of ‘Otherness’, or its assessment, or else according to methodological approaches. Each decision would not only demand a different order of the papers respectively, but all this would mean having to choose one of several overlapping aspects dealt with in nearly every paper of this volume. Therefore, we decided to print the papers simply in alphabetical order, with the exception of Nikolas Jaspert’s article, which we placed at the beginning on account of its explicit methodological concerns. The changing approaches in modern and contemporary research and the plurality of possible manifestations and forms of ‘Othering’ through the example

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of Mediterranean studies ( Jaspert) serves as a welcome inauguration of the whole volume, because, while focusing on one (very large) region, this is also a splendid introduction into modern perspectives (and dissolutions) of ‘Otherness’. The other contributions deal with different kinds of ‘Otherness’ and of Others, how they are perceived and how they are dealt with in society, law, and religion, with different and yet ‘rationalized’ (linguistic) expressions of anti-Judaism (Kelser), or how Jewish ‘Otherness’ is represented in objects of art (Portmann). When looking into one’s own (pagan) past, the ‘Otherness’ (or the ‘Othering’ of the past) is obvious, but at the same time it gets blurred when this is one’s own past (Scheel on Scandinavian law), while, in comparison, the past pagan burial customs and their (archaeological) representations reveal fluid concepts of death, the ‘Otherworld’ and dealings with the dead ancestors (Mattson McGinnis), whereas contemporary (Scandinavian) laws might have ‘othered’ certain ethnic groups in the same kingdom in rather different manners (Tveit). Other contributions differentiate in distinct respects: how different ethnic groups (Greeks and Franks) were ‘othered’ by the same (South-Italian) early medieval authors, while at the same time the Frankish emperor was ‘samed’ (Gantner), or how and for which reasons ‘internal Others’ were properly excluded from a ‘community identity’ (Gruber), or how, on the contrary, ethnic as well as religious ‘Others’ could be assimilated in the course of time (Manzano, at the same time emphasizing the dynamics and changing attitudes towards ‘Others’ inside and outside). Further contributions investigate how remote ‘Others’ are represented (and, as a parallel, equally changing) in mappae mundi, with a shift of the antagonistic ‘Other’ from Asia to Africa and the Middle East (Schmieder). Several contributions demonstrate where traditional views and explanations do not suffice: for example, late antique and early medieval barbarians are not simply (and not really) the cultural ‘Other’, as Roman ideology (and modern research!) tend to see them (Mathisen), how internal political enmities can even ‘overarch’ traditionally ‘jammed’ antagonisms towards religious ‘Others’ (Silva) or how gender-related and sexual ‘Otherness’ still maintains common ground with one’s own identity in literary discourses (Huot). Thus they partly also look at ‘the Other’ inside one’s own society (Borýsek on immigrating Jews in Crete, Kümmeler on attitudes towards herdsmen in conflicts on Korčula) or even at ‘Othering’ inside monasticism, for very different reasons, from wearing different clothes up to holiness (Koutrakou). ‘Others’ (such as Muslims) can be delimitated and at the same time ‘integrated’ into the Christian world order by explaining their existence through biblical terminology (Marschner). Contributions like these help to relativize a strict dichotomy between ‘the Self ’ and ‘the Other’ and to dissolve a strict contrast between inside and outside. And, of course, representatives of a different (and remote) culture, such as the Indian philosophers, need not be assessed negatively, but could even become an ideal in Western thought because of their virtue (Onuma). The impression of ‘Otherness’ is not necessarily linked with xenology, nor is ‘Otherness’ confined to religious aspects; there are many forms of ‘segmentary Otherness’, while internal ‘Otherness’ may also dissolve through acculturation ( Jaspert). Certainly, the present volume is not, and as being an edited volume, cannot be a summary or a representative choice of the modern state of research, but the contributions, each in its own specificity, contribute to such a claim. It is an aperture

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towards an important, comparatively new theme rather than a concluding ‘harvest’, a methodological as well as a thematic attempt. Nevertheless, one may assert, without humility, that this volume is so far the most comprehensive attempt to tackle this huge problem concerning the Middle Ages. So it hopefully will stimulate a vivid discussion. The editors are grateful to all contributors for providing and preparing extended written versions of their papers, for helping to accelerate the printing process by observing the deadlines, and for a congenial collaboration. They equally wish to thank the IMC office and the Editorial Board of this series, both under the direction of Axel Müller, for every possible help as well as the publishers and their publishing manager, Guy Carney, for a very agreeable and constructive cooperation. May reflection on ‘Otherness’ help to bring people together in a world that seems to be tending more and more towards egotism and isolation.

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Blier, Suzanne Preston, ‘Imaging Otherness in Ivory: African Portrayals of the Portuguese ca. 1492’, Art Bulletin, 75 (1993), 375–96 Blumenkranz, Bernhard, Juifs et chrétiens dans le monde occidental 430–1096, École Pratique des Hautes Études. Sixième Section: Sciences économiques et sociales. Études juives, 2 (Paris: Mouton, 1960) Braun, Manuel, ed., Wie anders war das Mittelalter? Fragen an das Konzept der Alterität, Aventiuren, 9 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013) Broome, Richard, ‘Pagans, Rebels and Merovingians: Otherness in the Early Carolingian World’, in The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Clemens Gantner, Rosamond McKitterick, and Sven Meeder (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 155–71 Byrne, Aisling, Otherworlds: Fantasy and History in Medieval Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) Cadden, Joan, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Age: Medicine, Science and Culture, Cambridge History of Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) Chazan, Robert, Jews of Medieval Western Christendom 1000–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) ———, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) Classen, Albrecht, ed., Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2002) ———, ‘The Self, the Other, and Everything in Between: Xenological Phenomenology of the Middle Ages’, in Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages, ed. by Albrecht Classen (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. xi–lxxxiii Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, ‘Introduction: Midcolonial’, in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, The New Middle Ages (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 1–17 ———, ed., The Postcolonial Middle Ages, The New Middle Ages (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000) Dahan, Gilbert, La polémique Chrétienne et les Juifs au Moyen Âge (Paris: Michel, 1991) Dass, Nirmal, ‘Temporary Otherness and Homilectic History in the Late Carolingian Age: A Reading of the Bella Parisiacae urbis of Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés’, in Difference and Identity in Francia and Medieval France, ed. by Meredith Cohen and Justine Firnhaber-Baker (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 99–113 Demandt, Alexander, ed., Mit Fremden leben. Eine Kulturgeschichte von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (München: Beck, 1995) Eisenbeiß, Anja, and Lieselotte E. Saurma-Jeltsch, eds, Images of Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern Times: Exclusion, Inclusion, Assimilation (München: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2012) Erfen, Irene, and Karl-Heinz Spieß, eds, Fremdheit und Reisen im Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1997) Evans, Gillian R., ‘Sources of the Notion of “Otherness” in Twelfth-Century Commentaries on Boethius’ Opuscula sacra’, Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Bulletin Du Cange), 40 (1977), 103–13 Feldmann, Doris, and Ina Habermann, eds, in collaboration with Dunja Mohr, Theorizing Cultural Difference and Transdifference, with Contributions on the Theory

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König, Daniel, Arabic-Islamic Views on the Latin West: Tracing the Emergence of Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) Kuolt, Joachim, Harald Kleinschmidt, and Peter Dinzelbacher, eds, Das Mittelalter – unsere fremde Vergangenheit (Stuttgart: Helfant, 1990) L’étranger au Moyen Âge. XXXe Congrès de la S.H.M.E.S. (Göttingen, juin 1999), Série Historie Ancienne et Médiévale, 61 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2000) Laiou, Angeliki E., Cécile Morrisson, and Rown Dorin, eds, Byzantium and the Other: Relations and Exchanges, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 1005 (Farnham: Ashgate 2012) Le Goff, Jacques, Pour un autre Moyen Âge, Temps, travail et culture en Occident. 18 essais (Paris: Gallimard, 1978) Lees, Jay T., ‘Confronting the Otherness of the Greeks: Anselm of Havelberg and the Division between Greeks and Latins’, Analecta Praemonstratensia, 68 (1992), 224–40 Luchitskaya, Svetlana I., ‘Muslims in Christian Imagery of the Thirteenth Century: The Visual Code of Otherness’, Al-Masāq, 12 (2000), 37–67 Mar Castro Varela, Maria do, and Nikita Dhawan, Postkoloniale Theorie. Eine kritische Einführung, Cultural Studies, 12 (Bielefeld: transcript, 2005) Mayali, Laurent, and Maria M. Mart, eds, Of Strangers and Foreigners (Late Antiquity – Middle Ages), Studies in Comparative Legal History (Berkeley: The Regents of the University of California, 1993) Münkler, Herfried, ed., Furcht und Faszination. Facetten der Fremdheit, Studien und Materialien der interdisziplinären Arbeitsgruppe ‘Die Herausfordung durch das Fremde’ an der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997) Münkler, Marina, Erfahrung des Fremden. Die Beschreibung Ostasiens in den Augenzeugenberichten des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000) Ohle, Karlheinz, Das Ich und das Andere. Grundzüge einer Soziologie des Fremden, Sozialwissenschaftliche Studien. Schriftenreihe des Seminars für Sozialwissenschaft der Universität Hamburg, 15 (Stuttgart: Fischer, 1978) Palmer, James T., ‘The Otherness of Non-Christians in the Early Middle Ages’, in Christianity and Religious Plurality, ed. by Charlotte Methuen, Andrew Spicer, and John Wolffe (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015), pp. 33–52 Patrut, Julia Karin, and Herber Urlings, eds, Inklusion/Exklusion und Natur: theoretische Perspektiven und Fallstudien von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Köln: Böhlau, 2013) Reichert, Folker, Begegnungen mit China. Die Entdeckung Ostasiens im Mittelalter, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters, 15 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1992) ———, Erfahrung der Welt. Reisen und Kulturbegegnung im späten Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2001) Rodriguez, Manuel Núñez, ‘Iconografia de uma marginalidade: o repúdio do “outro”’, Signum: Revista da ABREM (Assoçião Brasileira de Estudos Medievais), 2 (2000), 43–78 Ruato, Enrica, ‘God and the Worm: The Twofold Otherness in Pseudo-Dionysius’s Theory of Dissimilar Images’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 82 (2008), 581–92 Schäffter, Ortfried, ed., Das Fremde. Erfahrungsmöglichkeiten zwischen Faszination und Bedrohung (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1991)

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Scior, Volker, Das Eigene und das Fremde. Identität und Fremdheit in den Chroniken Adams von Bremen, Helmolds von Bosau und Arnolds von Lübeck, Orbis mediaevalis. Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters, 4 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002) Sencindiver, Susan Yi, Maria Beville, and Marie Lauritzen, eds, Otherness: A Multilateral Perspective (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2011) Simmel, Georg, ‘Exkurs über den Fremden’, in Der Gast, der bleibt. Dimensionen von Georg Simmels Analyse des Fremdseins, ed. by Almut Loycke, Edition Pandora, 9 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1992; first printed in 1908), pp. 9–16 Smythe, Dion C., ed., Strangers to Themselves: The Byzantine Outsider. Papers from the Thirty-Second Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. University of Sussex, Brighton, March 1998, Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Publications (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000) Stichweh, Robert, Inklusion und Exklusion. Studien zur Gesellschaftstheorie, 2nd edn (Bielefeld: transcript, 2016) Strzelczyk, Jerzy, ‘Die Wahrnehmung des Fremden im mittelalterlichen Polen’, in Die Begegnung des Westens mit dem Osten. Kongreßakten des 4. Symposiums des Mediävistenverbandes in Köln 1991 aus Anlaß des 1000. Todestages der Kaiserin Theophanu, ed. by Odilo Engels and Peter Schreiner (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1993), pp. 203–20 Tolan, John V., Saracens: Islam in Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002) Torfi H. Tulinius, ‘The Self as Other: Iceland and Christian Europe in the Middle Ages’, in Nordic Civilization in the Medieval World, ed. by Vésteinn Ólason, Gripla, 20 (Reykjavik: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 2009), pp. 199–216 Vernon, Matthew X., The Black Middle Ages: Race and the Construction of the Middle Ages, The New Middle Ages (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) Weibel, Peter, and Slavoj Žižek, eds, Inklusion – Exklusion. Probleme des Postkolonialismus und der globalen Migration, 2nd edn (Wien: Passagen-Verlag, 2010) Williams, David, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Medieval Thought and Literature (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996) Wood, Ian N., ‘The Pagan and the Other: Varying Presentations in the Early Middle Ages’, Networks and Neighbours, 1 (2013), 1–22 ———, ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, in Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World. The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1100, ed. by Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, and Robert Payne (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 531–42 Yuval, Israel, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006; original Hebrew edition: Tel Aviv 2003)

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The Mediterranean Other and the Other Mediterranean Perspectives of Alterity in Medieval Studies

The End of a Dream? Xenology at the Crossroads of Historical Research The turbulent times we are living in have immediate repercussions on the research field that stands in the focus of this volume: For arguably xenology1 — that is the scientific analysis of otherness, othering, and further aspects of alterity — has been thrown into crisis by current events worldwide. One might even go as far as to ask if historians of alterity studies are experiencing the end of a dream. For the upswing of xenological studies in the 1990s was marked by a certain optimism generated by globalization and reflected in postcolonial studies.2 Intensified and accelerated





1 On the term ‘xenology’ see: Alois Wierlacher, ‘Kulturwissenschaftliche Xenologie’, in Konzepte der Kulturwissenschaften: theoretische Grundlagen – Ansätze – Perspektiven, ed. by Ansgar Nünning and Vera Nünning (Weimar: Metzler, 2003), pp. 280–306; Christian Bremshey, ed., Den Fremden gibt es nicht: Xenologie und Erkenntnis, Kulturwissenschaft, 2 (Münster: Lit, 2004); Bernhard Waldenfels, ‘Xenologie, Wissenschaft vom Fremden’, in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 12, ed. by Joachim Ritter, Karlfried Gründer, and Gottfried Gabriel (Basel: Schwabe, 2004), pp. 1105–10; Alexander Kozin, ‘Xenology as Semiotic Phenomenology’, Semiotica, 171 (2008), 171–92; Albrecht Classen, ‘Introduction’, in East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Transcultural Experiences in the Premodern World, ed. by Albrecht Classen, Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 14 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), pp. 1–219, pp. 5–12. Many thanks to Lea Dortschy and Sebastian Kolditz (Heidelberg) for their advice and assistance as well as to Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood for their valuable suggestions. 2 To name just two German major third party funded projects conducted in that period: Sonderforschungsbereich 541 ‘Identitäten und Alteritäten. Die Funktion von Alterität für die Konstitution und Konstruktion von Identität’ at the University of Freiburg, with its publishing series ‘Identitäten und Alteritäten’, and the project ‘Die Herausforderung durch das Fremde’ at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1994–1997): Herfried Münkler, ed., Die Herausforderung durch das Fremde, Interdisziplinäre Arbeitsgruppen. Forschungsberichte 5 (Berlin: Akademie, 1998). Historical overviews on otherness in medieval studies: Paul H. Freedman, ‘The Nikolas Jaspert  •  Ph.D. (1995), is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Heidelberg. He has published on the history of the Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean history, the Crusades, medieval religious orders, and urban history. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 37–74 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123585

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mobility and digital communication opened hitherto unknown modes of exchange, but also posed new challenges.3 These in turn heightened interest in the fashioning of self and others in earlier periods of human history, generally with the more or less overt aim of overcoming differences.4 Due to this correlation, the last three decades have experienced an enormous activity in the field of alterity studies. But now, we seem to be experiencing a backlash. Societal divisions are growing, not diminishing. Political barriers are being raised or re-established instead of being abolished. Nationalism is returning, not to speak of the many forms of religious demarcations that are being drawn in many parts of the world. We are all observing a strong tendency to reshape identities that some had believed overcome. One could state that we are currently awakening from the dream that boosted xenology some time ago; but then again, these recent developments make the subject of alterity more topical than ever before.





Medieval Other: The Middle Ages as Other’, in Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations, ed. by Timothy S. Jones and David A. Sprunger, Studies in Medieval Culture, 42 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), pp. 1–24; Elizabeth Hallam and Brian V. Street, eds, Cultural Encounters: Representing ‘Otherness’ (London: Routledge, 2000); Albrecht Classen, ed., Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2002); Gilles Ferréol, Dictionnaire de l’altérité et des relations interculturelles (Paris: Colin, 2004); Nikolas Jaspert, ‘Eigenes und Fremdes im Spätmittelalter: Die deutsch-spanische Perspektive’, in ‘Das kommt mir Spanisch vor’. Eigenes und Fremdes in den deutsch-spanischen Beziehungen des späten Mittelalters, ed. by Klaus Herbers and Nikolas Jaspert, Geschichte und Kultur der Iberischen Welt, 1 (Münster: LIT, 2004), pp. 31–61; Alessia Bianco, ed., Otherness – alterità, Saggistica Aracne, 259 (Roma: Aracne, 2012); Anja Becker and Jan Mohr, eds, Alterität als Leitkonzept für historisches Interpretieren, Studien und Quellen, 8 (Berlin: Akademie, 2012), particularly Anja Becker and Jan Mohr, ‘Einleitung’, in Alterität als Leitkonzept für historisches Interpretieren, ed. by Becker and Mohr, pp. 4–58 (pp. 4–46); Manuel Braun, ed., Wie anders war das Mittelalter?: Fragen an das Konzept der Alterität, Aventiuren, 9 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013); Pamela A. Patton, ‘The Other in the Middle Ages: Difference, Identity, and Iconography’, in The Routledge Companion to Medieval Iconography, ed. by Colum Hourihane (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 492–503. A statistical analysis of alterity studies shows a peak in the decade between 1995 and 2005: Manuel Braun, ‘Alterität als germanistischmediävistische Kategorie: Kritik und Korrektiv’, in Wie anders war das Mittelalter?: Fragen an das Konzept der Alterität, ed. by Manuel Braun, Aventiuren, 9 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), pp. 7–40, pp. 8–11. Cf. the systematic introduction to this volume by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood. 3 Programmatic: Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Public Worlds, 1 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). The relationship between globalization and xenology has not lost its momentum: Christoph Wulf, ed., Exploring Alterity in a Globalised World (New York: Routledge, 2017). 4 Hallam and Street, Cultural Encounters: Representing ‘Otherness’; a case in point is the overt correlation between the domestic challenges posed by German reunification (‘Wiedervereinigung’) and interest within German academia for issues of alterity, integration and demarcation: Alexander Demandt, ed., Mit Fremden leben. Eine Kulturgeschichte von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (München: Beck, 1995); Wolfgang Harms and Stephen C. Jaeger, Fremdes wahrnehmen – fremdes Wahrnehmen. Studien zur Geschichte der Wahrnehmung und zur Begegnung von Kulturen in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit (Stuttgart: Hirzel, 1997); Herfried Münkler, ed., Furcht und Faszination. Facetten der Fremdheit (Berlin: Akademie, 1997); Münkler, Die Herausforderung durch das Fremde.

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In the course of this article I will repeatedly return to this correlation between the current state of the world and the repercussions it is having on historical research. But this paper’s main focus will be on the Mediterranean, and its prime aim will be to tackle a question: Which are the contributions that ‘mediterraneanism’5 (the systematic study of a particular region defined by its maritime coherence) and medieval studies on the Mediterranean as a particular subfield within this line of research have made to xenology in the past and might make in the future. This is befitting for a volume on otherness and othering, because there is hardly a region of historical research more intimately tied to alterity studies than precisely the Mediterranean. The medieval Crusades and other forms of religiously motivated or legitimized warfare between Muslims and Christians, religious polemics between Christians, Muslims, and Jews and many instances more — all this has made the high and late medieval Mediterranean the very epitome of othering. It is true that in the early Middle Ages other, less Mediterranean groups were frequently othered — barbarians, Christian heretics, pagan others, or monstrous races.6 But for the period between 1000 and 1500, the Great Sea can be justly considered a prominent area of discursive division.



5 Nikolas Jaspert, Sebastian Kolditz and Jenny Oesterle, ‘Mediävistik’, in Handbuch der Mediterranistik, ed. by Mihran Dabag, Dieter Haller, Nikolas Jaspert, and Achim Lichtenberger, Mittelmeerstudien, 5 (Paderborn: Schöningh-Fink, 2014), pp. 303–24. 6 David A. Williams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996); Walter Pohl, ‘Die Namen der Barbaren: Fremdbezeichnung und Identität in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter’, in Zentrum und Peripherie: gesellschaftliche Phänomene in der Frühgeschichte, ed. by Herwig Friesinger, Mitteilungen der Prähistorischen Kommission der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 57 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004), pp. 95–104; Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘“Fremdheit” im früheren Mittelalter’, in Herrschaftspraxis und soziale Ordnungen im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit: Ernst Schubert zum Gedenken, ed. by Peter Aufgebauer and Christine van den Heuvel, Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Niedersachsen und Bremen, 232 (Hannover: Hahn, 2006), pp. 245–65; Gerald Krutzler, Kult und Tabu. Wahrnehmungen der Germania bei Bonifatius, Anthropologie des Mittelalters, 2 (Wien: Lit, 2011); Jonathan D. Perl Garrido, ‘¿Un Paganismo Germánico?: representaciones de la alteridad religiosa en el mundo temprano Carolingio, siglo VIII’, Intus-Legere Historia, 6.1 (2012), 19–44; Ian N. Wood, ‘The Pagans and the Other: Varying Presentations in the Early Middle’, Networks and Neighbours, 1 (2013), 1–22; Oliver Schipp, ‘Römer und Barbaren: Fremde in der Spätantike und im Frühmittelalter’, in Fremd und rechtlos? Zugehörigkeitsrechte Fremder von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart: ein Handbuch, ed. by Altay Coskun and Lutz Raphael (Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2014), pp. 121–52; Richard Broome, ‘Approaches to Community and Otherness in the Late Merovingian and Early Carolingian Periods’ (PhD, University of Leeds, 2014), http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/8541/; Richard Broome, ‘Pagans, Rebels and Merovingians: Otherness in the Early Carolingian World’, in The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Clemens Gantner, Rosamond McKitterick, and Sven Meeder (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 155–72; Jason R. Berg, ‘How Monstrosity and Geography Were Used to Define the Other in Early Medieval Europe’ (PhD, University of Leeds, 2015), http://etheses.whiterose. ac.uk/11353/; Jorge López Quiroga, Michail Michajlovic Kazanski, and Vujadin Ivaniševic, eds, Entangled Identities and Otherness in Late Antique and Early Medieval Europe: Historical, Archaeological and Bioarchaeological Approaches, BAR International Series, 2852 (Oxford: BAR, 2017); Henrik Janson, ‘Pictured by the Other: Classical and Early Medieval Perspectives on Religions in the North’, in The Pre-Christian Religion of the North: Research and Reception, vol. i: From the Middle Ages to c. 1830, ed. by Margaret Clunies Ross (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 7–40.

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There is of course a counter-narrative. The notion of the Mediterranean as an interconnecting sea can be traced back to antiquity but it has received its most important impulses since the nineteenth century, when navigation became easier and easier due to technological progress. Fernand Braudel’s famous vision of an interlocked zone of common human experience has been momentous for Mediterranean Studies and has led to a number of more recent comprehensive works.7 Such a perspective has been strengthened in recent years by transcultural studies that lay particular emphasis on entanglements and mutual cross-pollination, thus heightening awareness for Mediterranean ‘connectivity’.8 Seen from the perspective of xenology, the narrative of an interconnected sea of flowing exchange seems to tie up well with notions of interfaith harmony across maritime and religious divides. But despite this line of research, to which I will return shortly, the ‘Mediterranean other’ continues to take pride of place within alterity studies.9 This holds true for the two main modes of enquiry within medieval xenology, that is both for studies on the perception and construction of the other as well as for







7 Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II, 2 vols (Paris: Colin, 1949); Jean Carpentier and François Lebrun, eds, Histoire de la Méditerranée (Paris: Seuil, 1998); Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); Thierry Fabre and Robert Ilbert, eds, Les représentations de la Méditerranée, 10 vols (Paris: Maisonneuve Larose, 2000); Dionigi Albera, Anton Blok, and Christian Bromberger, eds, L’anthropologie de la Méditerranée = Anthropology of the Mediterranean (Aix-en-Provence: Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l’homme, 2001); Hatem Akkari, ed., La Méditerranée médiévale: perceptions et représentations (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2002); William V. Harris, ed., Rethinking the Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); John Julius Norwich, The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (London: Vintage, 2007); David Abulafia, The Great Sea : A Human History of the Mediterranean (London: Lane, 2011); Barry Cunliffe, On the Ocean: The Mediterranean and the Atlantic from Prehistory to ad 1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 8 Brian A. Catlos and Sharon Kinoshita, eds, Can We Talk Mediterranean? Conversations on an Emerging Field in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Mediterranean Perspectives, 2 (Cham: Springer, 2017). On Mediterranean connectivity see: Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History, pp. 53–88; Peregrine Horden, ‘Situations Both Alike? Connectivity, the Mediterranean, the Sahara’, in Saharan Frontiers: Space and Mobility in Northwest Africa, ed. by James McDougall and Judith Scheele (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2012), pp. 25–38; Sebastian Kolditz, ‘Horizonte maritimer Konnektivität’, in Maritimes Mittelalter: Meere als Kommunikationsräume, ed. by Michael Borgolte and Nikolas Jaspert, Vorträge und Forschungen, 83 (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2016), pp. 59–107; Peregrine Horden, ‘Mediterranean Connectivity: A Comparative Approach’, in New Horizons: Mediterranean Research in the 21st Century, ed. by Mihran Dabag, Dieter Haller, Nikolas Jaspert, and Achim Lichtenberger, Mittelmeerstudien, 10 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2016), pp. 211–24; Sebastian Kolditz, ‘Connectivity and Sea Power – Entangled Maritime Dimensions in the Medieval Mediterranean’, in The Sea in History: The Medieval World / La mer dans l’histoire. Le Moyen Âge, ed. by Michel Balard (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), pp. 58–69. 9 Nedret Kuran-Burçoglu and Susan Gilson Miller, eds, Representations of the ‘Other/s’ in the Mediterranean World and their Impact on the Region (Istanbul: Isis, 2005); Beate Burtscher-Bechter, Peter W. Haider, Birgit Mertz-Baumgartner, and Robert Rollinger, eds, Grenzen und Entgrenzungen: historische und kulturwissenschaftliche Überlegungen am Beispiel des Mittelmeerraums, Saarbrücker Beiträge zur vergleichenden Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft, 36 (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006); Patrick Crowley, ed., Mediterranean Travels: Writing Self and Other from the Ancient World to Contemporary Society (London: Legenda, 2011).

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studies on the dealings with, the conduct towards the other. Evidently, both modes of inquiry about otherness and othering only function in correlation with studies on sameness and belonging, for both in conjunction construct identities, that is the social subjectivities of persons and groups of persons — subjectivities based on ascriptions by selves as well as by others.10 Let us consider the first mode of enquiry, the cultural construction of the other.11 Within mediterraneanism, the majority of studies presented in this field of research refer to the perception of religious communities. Over the last decades, an enormous number of empirical case studies, general reflections, and theoretical analyses have revitalized a traditional line of research on Christian images of Islam and Judaism12 through similar studies on Islamic or Jewish views of Christianity, Jewish views of Islam or Islamic views of Judaism.13 Upon closer scrutiny, these works show that in 10 Silke Winst, ‘Identity vs. Difference – Sameness as a Concept of Identity Formation in Medieval Literature’, in Text or Context: Reflections on Literary and Cultural Criticism, ed. by Rüdiger Kunow and Stephan Mussil (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013), pp. 129–52; Kate Mason Cooper and Conrad Leyser, eds, Making Early Medieval Societies: Conflict and Belonging in the Latin West, 300–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Günther Schlee and Alexander Horstmann eds, Difference and Sameness as Modes of Integration: Anthropological Perspectives on Ethnicity and Religion, Integration and Conflict Studies, 16 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2018). Cf. the introduction to this volume by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood. 11 Hans Martin Krämer, Jenny Oesterle and Ulrike Vordermark, eds, Labeling the Religious Self and Others: Reciprocal Perceptions of Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Confucians in Medieval and Early Modern Times, Comparativ, 20 (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, 2010); Anja Eisenbeiß and Lieselotte E. Saurma-Jeltsch, eds, Images of Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern Times: Exclusion, Inclusion and Assimilation (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2012). 12 Norman Daniel, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1960); Richard William Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1962); Norman Daniel, Heroes and Saracens: An Interpretation of the ‘Chansons de geste’ (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1984); Samir Khali and Jørgen S. Nielsen, eds, Christian Arabic Apologetics During the Abbasid Period: (750–1258), Studies in the History of Religions, 63 (Leiden: Brill, 1994); John Victor Tolan, ed., Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam: A Book of Essays, Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, 1768 (New York: Garland, 1996); David R. Blanks and Michael Frassetto, eds, Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Perception of Other (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999); Dominique Iogna-Prat, Order Exclusion: Cluny and Christendom Face Heresy, Judaism, and Islam (1000–1150) (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002); John Victor Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Emmanouela Grypeou, Mark N. Swanson, and David Richard Thomas, eds, The Encounter of Eastern Christianity with Early Islam, The History of Christian-Muslim Relations, 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009); Irven M. Resnick, Marks of Distinction: Christian Perceptions of Jews in the High Middle Ages (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012); Pamela A. Patton, Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012). 13 Hanne Trautner-Kromann and James Manley, Shield and Sword: Jewish Polemics Against Christianity and the Christians in France and Spain from 1100–1500, Texts and Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Judaism, 8 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1993); Thomas E. Burman, Religious Polemic and the Intellectual History of the Mozarabs, c. 1050–1200, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 52 (Leiden: Brill, 1994);

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the Middle Ages, these constructions of otherness in the Mediterranean seldom dealt with religions themselves in the systematic sense of the word — Christianity, Judaism, or Islam — but were much more often ascriptions of individuals or groups — Christians, Jews, and Muslims. This is an important differentiation, because ever since the collective singular term ‘religion’ became firmly established in the age of Enlightenment,14 scholars tend to conceptualize interfaith relations as communication between holistic systems of belief and tend to overlook that most medieval authors wrote about people and their religious practices, not about the foundation of their respective belief systems. Singular scholars like Nicolaus of Cues who embraced a wider understanding of religion were an exception to the rule.15 Precisely in current times, in which media, politics, and

David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, ed., The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam, Studies in Arabic Language and Literature, 4 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999); Abdelilah Ljamai, Ibn Ḥazm et la polémique islamo-chrétienne dans l’histoire de l’islam, The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World, 17 (Leiden: Brill, 2003); Muslim-Christian Polemic During the Crusades: The Letter from the People of Cyprus and Ibn Abi Ṭalib al-Dimashqi’s Response, ed. by Rifaat Y. Ebied and David Thomas, The History of Christian-Muslim Relations, 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Daniel J. Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages (New York: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007); Sidney Harrison Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam, Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Sidney Adams Weston, Islam Corrects Judaism: The Polemics of a Thirteenth Century Jewish Convert, Analecta Gorgiana, 47 (Piscataway: Gorgias, 2007); Alexandra Cuffel, Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007); Yaacov Deutsch, Michael Meerson, and Peter Schäfer, eds, Toledot Yeshu (The Life Story of Jesus) Revisited: A Princeton Conference, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, 143 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012); Michael Meerson and Peter Schäfer, eds, Toledot Yeshu: The Life Story of Jesus, vol. i: Introduction and Translation, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, 159 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014); Michael Meerson and Peter Schäfer, eds, Toledot Yeshu: The Life Story of Jesus, vol. ii: Critical Edition, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, 159 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014); Mònica Colominas Aparicio, The Religious Polemics of the Muslims of Late Medieval Christian Iberia: Identity and Religious Authority in Mudejar Islam, The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World, 64 (Leiden: Brill, 2018). 14 Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of our Religious Traditions (New York: Knopf, 2006); Ernst Feil, Religio 3: Die Geschichte eines neuzeitlichen Grundbegriffs im 17. und frühen 18. Jahrhundert, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte, 79 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001); Ernst Feil, Religio 4: Die Geschichte eines neuzeitlichen Grundbegriffs im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte, 91 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007); Rudolf Schlögl, Alter Glaube und moderne Welt: europäisches Christentum im Umbruch 1750–1850 (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2013). 15 Recent studies have illustrated how seldom medieval contemporaries conceptualized religion as a belief system when dealing with the religious other: Reinhold Glei and Stefan Reichmuth, ‘Religion between Last Judgement, Law and Faith: Koranic Din and its Rendering in Latin Translations of the Koran’, Religion, 42 (2012), 247–71; Hans-Werner Goetz, Die Wahrnehmung anderer Religionen und christlich-abendländisches Selbstverständnis im frühen und hohen Mittelalter (5.–12. Jahrhundert), 2 vols (Berlin: Akademie, 2013); Knut Martin Stünkel, Una sit religio: Religionsbegriffe und Begriffstopologien bei Cusanus, Llull und Maimonides (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013); Hervé Pasqua, ed., Infini et altérité dans l’œuvre de Nicolas de Cues (1401–1464), Philosophes médiévaux, 64 (Bristol: Peeters, 2017).

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the famous man or woman in the street are all too ready to speak about ‘Islam’, but also about ‘Judaism’ or ‘Christianity’, it is our obligation as medievalists to call to mind that such an abstract and potentially essentialist notion of religious traditions is not a matter of course and is in fact often anachronistic, because it corresponds to modern, not medieval mindsets. Focusing the intellectual construction of religious groups instead of presupposing an oftentimes erroneously abstract notion of ‘religion’ approximates this mode of enquiry to the second one I just mentioned, one more indebted to social history because it studies the practical ways that the other was treated in the medieval Mediterranean. Here too, established approaches have been substantially amplified in recent years. The concrete shaping of the famous Dhimma-status within different regions of the dār al-Islām at different periods in time is now much better known,16 as are the social living environment of subjected Muslims in Christian territories,17 Muslim lifeworlds which can now be been compared with the better-known and

16 Antoine Fattal, Le statut légal des non-musulmans en pays d’ Islam, Recherches publiées sous la direction de l’Institut de Lettres Orientales de Beyrouth, 10 (Beyrouth: Imprimerie Catholique, 1958); Uri Rubin and David J. Wasserstein, eds, Dhimmis and Others: Jews and Christians and the World of Classical Islam, Israel Oriental Studies, 17 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997); Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Robert G. Hoyland, ed., Muslims and Others in Early Islamic Society, The Formation of the Classical Islamic World, 18 (Burlington: Ashgate Variorum, 2004); Nurit Tsafrir, ‘The Attitude of Sunni Islam toward Jews and Christians as Reflected in some Legal Issues’, Al-Qantara, 26 (2005), 317–36; Sidney Harrison Griffith, ‘Christians under Muslim Rule’, in The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. iii: Early Medieval Christianities, c. 600–1100, ed. by Thomas F. X. Noble and Julia M. H. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 197–212; Jacob Lassner, Jews, Christians, and the Abode of Islam: Modern Scholarship, Medieval Realities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Julie Chapuis and Sébastien Boussois, eds, Être non musulman en terre d’islam: Dhimmi d’hier, citoyen d’aujourd’hui?, Collection MEDEA (Paris: Cygne, 2013); Maribel Fierro and John Victor Tolan, eds, The Legal Status of Ḏimmi-s in the islamic West: second/eighth – Ninth/Fifteenth Centuries, Religion and Law in Medieval Christian and Muslim Societies, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013); Milka Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Benjamin Braude, ed., Christians Jews in the Ottoman Empire (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2014). 17 Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, Els sarraïns de la corona catalano-aragonesa en el segle XIV: segregació i discriminació, Anuario de estudios medievales. Anex, 16 (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1987); James M. Powell, ed., Muslims under Latin Rule, 1100–1300 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Syed Z. Abedin and Ziauddin Sardar, eds, Muslim Minorities in the West (London: Grey Seal, 1995); Isabel A. O’Connor, A Forgotten Community: The Mudejar Aljama of Xàtiva, 1240–1327, The Medieval Mediterranean, 44 (Leiden: Brill, 2003); Brian A. Catlos, The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050–1300, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Ser. 4, 59 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Ibn Taymiyya, Muslims under Non-Muslim Rule, trans. by Yahya Michot (Oxford: Interface, 2006); Kathryn A. Miller, Guardians of Islam: Religious Authority and Muslim Communities of Late Medieval Spain (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); Stéphane Boissellier, François Clément, and John Tolan, eds, Minorités et régulations sociales en Méditerranée médiévale (Rennes: Presses Université de Rennes, 2010); Brian A. Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c. 1050–1614 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

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more intensively studied living conditions of Jews under Christian or Islamic rule.18 The impulses provided by postcolonial and subaltern studies have changed many perspectives and opened up new lines of research which call for a new understanding of inter-minority relations, subaltern polemics, and many issues more.19

Re-Dimensioning Religion But what catches the eye when observing recent medieval research into the construction of Mediterranean alterities is a striking preponderance: that of religion as a demarcational device.20 Alterity in the Mediterranean is generally reduced to interfaith relations between Christians, Muslims, and Jews, the Mediterranean is constructed as a ‘Sea of Faith’.21 This reduction — it should suffice to recall the many different forms of ‘otherness’ and ‘other’ explicated in this volume’s introduction — is arguably the result of several historical circumstances and traditions. First, the Mediterranean was indeed strongly marked by monotheistic religions during the medieval millennium, particularly since the advent of Islam. This is undeniably a significant trait and an 18 Daniel Frank, ed., The Jews of Medieval Islam: Community, Society, and Identity, Etudes sur le judaïsme médieval, 16 (Leiden: Brill, 1995); Shlomo Simonson, The Jews in Sicily, 18 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1997– 2010); David S. H. Abulafia, ‘The Servitude of Jews and Muslims in the Medieval Mediterranean: Origins and Diffusion’, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Moyen age, 112 (Roma: École Française, 2000), 687–713; Ross Brann, Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Jews and Muslims in Eleventhand Twelfth-Century Islamic Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Mosheh Gil, Jews in Islamic Countries in the Middle Ages, Études sur le judaïsme médiéval, 28 (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Jonathan Ray, The Sephardic Frontier: The ‘reconquista’ and the Jewish Community in Medieval Iberia, Conjunction of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 2006). 19 David Nirenberg, ‘Muslim-Jewish Relations in the Fourteenth Century Crown of Aragon’, Viator, 24 (1993), 249–68; Boissellier, Clément and Tolan, eds, Minorités et régulations sociales en Méditerranée médiévale; Meerson and Schäfer, eds, Toledot Yeshu: The Life Story of Jesus, vol. i: Introduction and Translation; Meerson and Schäfer, eds, Toledot Yeshu: The Life Story of Jesus, vol. ii: Critical Edition. 20 Wolfgang Eßbach, ed., Wir – Ihr – Sie. Identität und Alterität in Theorie und Methode, Identitäten und Alteritäten, 2 (Würzburg: Ergon, 2001); Gerd Baumann and Andre Gingrich, eds, Grammars of Identity/Alterity: A Structural Approach, EASA series, 3 (New York: Berghahn, 2004); Christian Frevel and Christophe Nihan, ‘Introduction’, in Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean World and Ancient Judaism, ed. by Christian Frevel and Christophe Nihan, Dynamics in the History of Religions, 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 1–46. 21 Stephen O’Shea, Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in the Medieval Mediterranean World (New York: Walker, 2006); Adnan Ahmed Husain and Katherine Elizabeth Fleming, eds, A Faithful Sea: The Religious Cultures of the Mediterranean, 1200–1700 (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007); Euangelia K. Hatzetryphonos, ed., Routes of Faith in the Medieval Mediterranean: History, Monuments, People, Pilgrimage Perspectives (Thessalonike: University Studio Press, 2008); Michele Bacci and Martin Rohde, eds, The Holy Portolano: The Sacred Geography of Navigation in the Middle Ages, Veröffentlichungen des Mediävistischen Instituts der Universität Freiburg, Schweiz, 36 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014); Brian A. Catlos, ‘Ethno-Religious Minorities’, in A Companion to Mediterranean History, ed. by Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), pp. 361– 77; Nikolas Jaspert, Christian Neumann, and Marco di Branco, eds, Ein Meer und seine Heiligen. Hagiographie im mittelalterlichen Mediterraneum, Mittelmeerstudien, 18 (Paderborn: Schöningh-Fink, 2018).

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unusual one in global comparison which had far-reaching implications, not the least in the field of warfare, because military conflicts in the Mediterranean were frequently conceptualized and conducted as religious wars. That being said, warfare between coreligionists was at least as regular if not even more endemic in the medieval Mediterranean than conflicts between Christian and Muslim forces. Second, learned authors of the Middle Ages tended to use religion as a demarcational device, a notion often picked up uncritically or thoughtlessly within academic medieval studies, thereby overlooking or side-lining the many instances of cohabitation, accommodation, and cooperation that characterized everyday life within multireligious societies or in frontier areas. Finally, modern European history has also been influential in this respect. Christianity was a prime indicator of European and more generally Western expansion and colonialism in the Mediterranean during the early modern and modern era, often coalescing with equally influential notions such as civilization and in more recent times, democracy and freedom.22 Religion has therefore readily been accepted in the modern age as the absolutely singular or even sole foundation for constructions of the Mediterranean other in past times, particularly during an era believed to have been as utterly dominated by religion as the Middle Ages. All this, what one might call the ‘monumentalization’ of religion within alterity studies of the medieval Mediterranean, invites us to rethink, perhaps re-dimension the importance of religion — or better of ‘systems and practices of transcendent belief ’ — for our work as historians. For current research and debate within the field of religious studies should make us more cautious as to the importance of religion for Mediterranean history. To begin with, warnings have been voiced concerning the tendency to apply religion as a normalizing concept to analyse non-Christian societies. Some have even declared religion an invention of Western scholarship geared at establishing and maintaining political, cultural, and discursive dominance, particularly in the age of colonialism and imperialism.23 We might therefore query the often uncritically voiced presupposition 22 Alexandre Pons, La nouvelle Église d’Afrique ou Le catholicisme en Algérie, en Tunisie et au Maroc depuis 1830 (Tunis: Namura, 1930); Jeremy Black, ‘The Mediterranean as a Battleground of the European Powers, 1700–1900’, in The Mediterranean in History, ed. by David Abulafia (London: Belser, 2003), pp. 251–81; Jan Jansen, ‘Erfindung des Mittelmeerraums im kolonialen Kontext. Die Inszenierung eines “lateinischen Afrika” beim “Centenaire de l’Algérie française” 1930’, in Der Süden. Neue Perspektiven auf eine europäische Geschichtsregion, ed. by Benjamin Schenk and Martina Winkler (Frankfurt: Campus, 2007), pp. 175–205; Manuel Borutta and Sakis Gekas, eds, A Colonial Sea: The Mediterranean, 1798–1956, European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire, 19 (London: Routledge, 2012); Manuel Borutta and Fabian Lemmes, ‘Das Mittelmeer in der Neuesten Geschichte und Zeitgeschichte’, in Handbuch der Mediterranistik, ed. by Dabag and others, , pp. 325–51. 23 Russell T. McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on sui generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Derek R. Peterson and Darren R. Walhof, eds, The Invention of Religion: Rethinking Belief in Politics and History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002), especially Derek R. Petersen and Darren R. Walhof, ‘Rethinking Religion’, in The Invention of Religion: Rethinking Belief in Politics and History, ed. by Derek R. Peterson and Darren R. Walhof (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002), pp. 1–16; Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

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that belief systems and practices were the essential or even singular divide in medieval Mediterranean societies. Indeed, in recent years heated scholarly debates have been led concerning this question and the extent of interstitial cultural spaces between religious groups.24 Then again, perhaps the problem is not only that medieval studies exaggerate the importance of systems and practices of transcendent belief, but it also derives from an interpretation of the religious field as a force that exclusively polarizes, segregates and others. This oppositional understanding is ultimately part of an age-old and often artificially binary discussion about the relationship between politics and religion. The first, politics, is credited with rationality, pragmatism, or cultural accommodation, while religion in contrast is linked to irrationality and segregation.25 Seen from this perspective, medieval agents of transcultural exchange for example acquire a certain secular hue. They not only bypassed contemporary religious norms in order to act as they did, as transcultural mediators, but are implicitly depicted as if they had done so deliberately, as liberals avant la lettre so to speak.26 But in reality, belief systems in the medieval Mediterranean allowed for both cohabitation and war, not to speak of the varying manifestations the religious field might have exerted within the biographical lifetime of any one individual. Mediterranean societies — Jewish, Christian, and Muslim — indeed reproduced ideas of religious difference time and again, no matter what moralizing adherents of interfaith harmony may hope for. But these ideas also provided the base for interfaith relations. There is no need to suppose that agents of transcultural exchange were less ‘religious’ than their contemporaries. Furthermore, even when using the term with all due caution, we need to bear in mind that the notion of religion cannot fully reflect but rather tends to conceal the immense diversity within any one religious community — diversity of practices, loyalties, beliefs, doctrinal variations, and individual commitments. Most importantly, it tends to obliterate the extremely powerful intra-religious demarcational lines drawn within belief systems — between different confessions, schools of belief, etc. While early medieval studies generally pay due credit to doctrinal difference, xenological research on the high and late Middle Ages still very much focusses on the numerically dominant confessions within Europe, that is: Latin and Greek Christianity and

24 See the reactions to Jerold C. Frakes, ed., Contextualizing the Muslim Other in Medieval Christian Discourse (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), such as the review by Sharon Kinoshita published online in The Mediaeval Review, 8 (2012). 25 Jerome B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Enrique Dussel, ‘World Religions and Secularization from a Postcolonial and Anti Eurocentric Perspective’, in The Invention of Religion: Rethinking Belief in Politics and History, ed. by Derek R. Walhof and Darren R. Peterson (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002), pp. 179–89, on the political usage of this dichotomy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 26 Claudia Moatti and Wolfgang Kaiser, eds, Gens de passage en Méditerranée de l’Antiquité à l’époque moderne: procédures de contrôle et d’identification (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2007); Marc von der Höh, Nikolas Jaspert and Jenny Oesterle, eds, Cultural Brokers at Mediterranean Courts in the Middle Ages, Mittelmeerstudien, 1 (Paderborn: Schöningh-Fink, 2013).

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Sunni Islam.27 This one-sided perspective has had a lasting impact on the study of interreligious relations in the medieval Mediterranean. Admittedly, my call to re-dimension belief systems within alterity studies bears an only thinly veiled political backdrop, for doing so actually signifies attempting to counter the detrimental effect of religious fundamentalism in our times. This might appear to be a moralizing approach to othering, and such moralizing approaches are often both boring and useless. But I do believe that our field of research requires a certain refocusing in order to put the enormous quantity of relevant source material that the Mediterranean has to offer to a more comprehensive use. For lessening or changing our focus on religion does not mean limiting our field of research, quite the contrary: it actually opens our eyes to the many other forms and agents or othering, to the many other Mediterranean others, the many other fields of subjectivity and ascriptions such as gender, sexuality, race, aesthetics, etc. that marked societies around ‘The Great Sea’.28 It also recalibrates the relation between identity and alterity, that is between belonging and otherness. This is a necessary undertaking, because there is a tendency within the study of medieval Mediterranean otherness — and perhaps also within cultural studies in general — to discuss identity in terms of difference rather than in terms of belonging.

Modalities of Othering Even when focusing difference, classifications can and must be made. Lately, attempts have been undertaken to categorize modalities of selfing and othering. According to the German anthropologist Gerd Baumann,29 three such socially shared classificatory structures can be distinguished: orientalization, segmentation, and encompassment. All three of these modalities are based on the assumption that the self is not only different from, but also superior to the other. The first picks up Edward Said’s term orientalism30 in order to designate a binary opposition to the other which — perhaps

27 Dorothea Weltecke, ‘Space, Entanglement and Decentralisation: On How to Narrate the Transcultural History of Christianity (550 to 1350 ce)’, in Locating Religions: Contact, Diversity and Translocality, ed. by Reinhold Glei and Nikolas Jaspert, Dynamics in the History of Religions, 9 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 315–44. 28 This is not to say that gender, sexuality, race, aesthetics have not been amply treated in recent years with reference to the Mediterranean. To name but some recent studies: Cuffel, Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic; Miryam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac and Joseph Ziegler, eds, The Origins of Racism in the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Alexandra Cuffel, Ana Echevarria and Georgios T. Halkias, eds, Religious Boundaries for Sex, Gender, and Corporeality (London: Routledge, 2018). 29 For the following paragraph see: Gerd Baumann, ‘Grammars of Identity/Alterity: A Structural Approach’, in Grammars of Identity/Alterity: A Structural Approach, ed. by Gerd Baumann and Andre Gingrich, EASA series, 3 (New York: Berghahn, 2004), pp. 18–50. 30 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1955); Alexander L. Macfie, ed., Orientalism: A Reader (New York: New York University Press, 2000); Bharat Bhusan Mohanty, Edward W. Said’s Orientalism: A Critique ( Jaipur: Rawat, 2005).

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surprisingly — can go with a reverse mirrored image which makes the opposite desirable. For example, the other can be constructed as barbarian and backward, but at the same time as more authentic and closer to nature than the self. Exclusion and exoticized appreciation thus go hand-in-hand. The second modality, segmentation, is characterized by a logic of opposition at a lower level of segmentation which is overcome at a higher level. For example, local communities might frequently and fiercely oppose each other on regional issues, but unite against the state when they consider themselves threatened. The other is thus potentially a foe and an ally, depending on context; segmentation is therefore a particularly flexible form of othering. The third modality, encompassment, designates selfing by appropriation. It marks out difference and hierarchy, but simultaneously claims that the other is in fact part of one’s own group — albeit on a lower hierarchical level. For example, English might look down on Scots but nevertheless often encompass them through the notion of Britishness. Applied to the medieval Mediterranean, one can — hardly surprisingly — observe all three modalities at work. To illustrate this with some famous examples: The twelfth-century Syrian Lord Usama ibn Munqid31 or the contemporary Iberian traveller Muhammad ibn Jubayr32 used a typically orientalistic mode when referring to some Christians by aggressively denigrating them and simultaneously identifying certain values which supposedly ibn Munqid’s and Ibn Jubayr’s Islamic coreligionists had lost or were in danger of losing.33 Well-known examples for segmentary othering in turn are those cases in which traditionally opposed societal orders like high medieval Italian city states united when they came under shared pressure from outside, for example by the Emperor to-be whenever he crossed the Alps and entered Mediterranean politics.34

31 Philip Khuri Hitti, An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades: Memoirs of Usamah Ibn-Munqidh Kitab al-I'tibar, Records of Civilization. Sources and Studies, 10 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929); Kitab al-iʿtibār, ed. by Philip Khuri Hitti, Princeton Oriental Texts, 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1930); Paul M. Cobb, The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades (London: Penguin, 2008). 32 The Travels of Ibn Jubair, ed. by William Wright and Michael Jandel Goeje, ‘E. J. W. Gibb Memorial’ Series, 5 (Leiden: Brill, 1907); Abu’l-Husayn Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr: Being the Chronicle of a Mediaeval Spanish Moor Concerning his Journey to the Egypt of Saladin, the Holy Cities of Arabia, Baghdad the City of the caliphs, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, trans. by R. J. C. Broadhurst (London: Jonathan Cape, 1952). 33 Wadi Z. Haddad, ‘The Crusaders through Muslim Eyes’, The Muslim World, 73 (1983), 234–52; Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), pp. 259–63. 34 Giancarlo Andenna, ‘Gli imperatori svevi e le leghe delle città lombarde’, Tabulae del Centro di Studi Federiciani di Jesi, 15.2 (1999), 19–58; Christoph Dartmann, ‘Reichsherrschaft? Zum Eingreifen der Staufer in die regionale Politik des kommunalen Italiens’, in Der ‘Zug über Berge’ während des Mittelalters: neue Perspektiven der Erforschung mittelalterlicher Romzüge, ed. by Christian Jörg and Christoph Dartmann, Trierer Beiträge zu den historischen Kulturwissenschaften, 15 (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2014), pp. 111–34; Peter Herde, ‘Guelfen und Gibellinen beim Romzug Heinrichs VII’, in Rom 1312: die Kaiserkrönung Heinrichs VII. und die Folgen: die Luxemburger als Herrscherdynastie von

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Finally, encompassing the other as an inferior member if one’s own group was practised by both Muslims and Christians — from the Islamic notion of the ahl al-Kitāb, the people of the book,35 over Tertullian’s momentous claim that Roman pagans had an ‘anima naturaliter christiana’ — were Christians at heart36 — to images of the Prophet Mohammad as a Christian heretic.37 All such forms of othering claimed that the religious self and other actually shared common roots, the other had only lost the ability to discern the truth or had strayed from a mutual path. This however often did not make the offence less reprimandable. For example, most medieval thinkers believed heresy to be a worse offence than adhering to a different creed altogether. All three modalities described above can be observed empirically in a myriad of cases in the medieval Mediterranean, and they were applied flexibly. But conspicuously, in research on the medieval Mediterranean, of the three modalities, orientalization has received particular attention. This is probably a result of the binary, antagonistic interpretation of belief systems outlined above. I propose that the more flexible, context-dependant segmentary system merits more attention than it receives, and we need not explore it in interfaith relations alone.

gesamteuropäischer Bedeutung, ed. by Sabine Penth and Peter Thorau, Forschungen zur Kaiser- und Papstgeschichte des Mittelalters, 40 (Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 2016), pp. 43–58. 35 Ignaz Goldziher, ‘Ueber muhammedanische Polemik gegen Ahi al-kitâb’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 32.2 (1878), 341–87; Heinz Otto Luthe, ‘“Ahl al-kitab” – “Frères devant Dieu”: quelques prises de position sur les relations islamo-chrétiennes’, in Relations islamo-chrétiennes: bilan et perspectives, ed. by Heinz Otto Luthe and Marie-Thérèse Urvoy, Collection Studia arabica, 4 (Versailles: Éditions de Paris, 2007), pp. 101–24; Hikmet Yaman, ‘The Criticism of the People of the Book (ahl al-kitab) in the Qur’an: Essentialist or Contextual?’, Gregorianum, 92 (2011), 183–98. 36 Bernhard Lang, ‘Homo religiosus’, in Handbuch religionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe, vol. iii: Gesetz – Kult, ed. by Hubert Cancik, Burkhard Gladigow, and Günter Kehrer (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1993), pp. 164–72; Holger Strutwolf, ‘Anima naturaliter Christiana – Beobachtungen zum philosophischen und theologischen Hintergrund der Seelenlehre Tertullians’, in Studies on the Text of the New Testament and Early Christianity: Essays in Honour of Michael W. Holmes on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, ed. by Daniel Gurtner, Jr., Daniel Hernández, and Paul Foster, New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents, 50 (Boston: Brill, 2015), pp. 594–614. 37 Stephan Hotz, Mohammed und seine Lehre in der Darstellung abendländischer Autoren vom späten 11. bis zur Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts: Aspekte, Quellen und Tendenzen in Kontinuität und Wandel, Studien zur klassischen Philologie, 137 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2002); Ekkehart Rotter, ‘Mohammed in Bamberg: Die Wahrnehmung der muslimischen Welt im deutschen Reich des 11. Jahrhunderts’, in Aufbruch ins zweite Jahrtausend. Innovation und Kontinuität in der Mitte des Mittelalters, ed. by Achim Hubel and Bernd Schneidmüller, Mittelalter-Forschungen, 16 (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2004), pp. 283–344; Edeltraud Klueting, ‘“Quis fuerit Machometus?” Mohammed im lateinischen Mittelalter (11.–13. Jahrhundert)’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 90 (2008), 283–306; Goetz, Die Wahrnehmung anderer Religionen, i, 293–316, 377–95; Avinoam Shalem and Michelina Di Cesare, eds, Constructing the Image of Muhammad in Europe (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013); Christiane Gruber and Avinoam Shalem, eds, The Image of the Prophet Between Ideal and Ideology: A Scholarly Investigation (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014); Alberto Saviello, Imaginationen des Islam: bildliche Darstellungen des Propheten Mohammed im westeuropäischen Buchdruck bis ins 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015).

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Societies of Segmentary Othering One form of segmentary othering — here within the Latin medieval Mediterranean — that requires more research from a xenological perspective is the immense world of sworn communities. As is well known, voluntary corporations united by oath pervaded medieval society in Latin Europe and represented a powerful alternative to other means of constructing notions of identity, sameness, and belonging.38 Religious charitable confraternities and economic guilds are only the best known of these institutions, but in fact, many similar groupings provided an opportunity for units to socialize, to form in-groups and to thereby mark out-groups. In the late Middle Ages, knights founded chivalric societies which drew demarcational lines to other societal groups, clerics could form intercessory networks bound by oath, patricians distanced themselves from both simple burghers and aristocrats alike by forming corporations of their own, craftsmen founded guilds, so did merchants (thereby excluding craftsmen), the list could be prolonged and diversified. Such societies were generally segmentary by nature, because different societies and their members would regularly unite on a higher level if need be — as parishioners, town dwellers, subjects of a temporal lord or adherents of a common faith. The example of voluntary communities forcefully reminds us that the medieval Mediterranean offers an immense number of alternative groupings to those based on religious, ethnic, or political allegiance. Such voluntary groupings provide fascinating insights into moulds and models of self-fashioning, the construction of sameness as well as otherness, and they also redraw our attention to other directions and flows of contact and exchange than the traditional north-south or south-north dimension predominant in studies on Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations in the Mediterranean. Just as important from a xenological perspective were those in-groups that resulted from West-Eastern und East-Western mobility within the dār al-Islām or in Latin or Greek Europe. To give an example: in 1493, the learned German doctor and humanist Hieronymus Münzer embarked on a trip that took him to the Iberian realms.39 While in Barcelona, he

38 Pierre Michaud-Quantin, Universitas. Expressions du mouvement communautaire dans le moyen-âge latin, L’église et l’état au moyen âge, 13 (Paris: Vrin, 1970); Gilles Meersseman, Ordo Fraternitatis. Confraternite e pietà dei laici nel medioevo, 3 vols (Roma: Herder, 1977); Peter Johanek, ed., Einungen und Bruderschaften in der spätmittelalterlichen Stadt, Städteforschung A, 32 (Köln: Böhlau, 1993); Gerhard Krieger, ed., Verwandtschaft, Freundschaft, Bruderschaft: Soziale Lebens- und Kommunikationsformen im Mittelalter (Berlin: Akademie, 2009); Monika Escher-Apsner, ed., Medieval confraternities in European towns / Mittelalterliche Bruderschaften in europäischen Städten: Funktionen, Formen, Akteure, Studien zu Fremdheit und Armut von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 12 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2009); Konrad Eisenbichler, ed., A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Confraternities, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 83 (Leiden: Brill, 2019). 39 Ludwig Pfandl, ‘Itinerarium Hispanicum Hieronymi Monetarii 1494–1495’, Revue Hispanique, 48 (1920), 1–179; Hieronymus Münzer, Viaje por España y Portugal: (1494–1495), El espejo navegante, 8 (Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo, 1991); Albrecht Classen, ‘Die iberische Halbinsel aus der Sicht eines humanistischen Nürnberger Gelehrten. Hieronymus Münzer, Itinerarium Hispanicum (1494–1495)’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 111 (2003), 317–40; Klaus Herbers, ‘Die “ganze” Hispania: der Nürnberger Hieronymus Münzer unterwegs – seine Ziele und Wahrnehmung

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was invited to dinner by a group of compatriots. Münzer was astounded to find that these southern German merchants had taken on Catalan customs, adapting their eating habits to the Mediterranean diet, or living ‘more Catalanorum’, as he put it.40 This reference to culinary customs is a point well worth underlining, as food was and still is a prime mark of difference.41 Münzer’s German hosts appear to have been well integrated into their new surroundings; they even wrote their trade-manuals in a hybrid language, a sort of Catalano-German lingo.42 But at the very same time, contemporary Barcelonese documents reveal tensions between parts of the local population and groups of foreigners,43 and just before Münzer’s visit, these German emigrants had founded a confraternity of their own, the ‘confraternitas Alemanorum’, where a compatriot was employed to preach and say mass in German, where the society’s members gathered to socialize and to commemorate

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auf der Iberischen Halbinsel (1494–1495)’, in Grand Tour. Adeliges Reisen und europäische Kultur vom 14. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, ed. by Rainer Babel and Werner Paravicini, Francia, Beihefte, 60 (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2004), pp. 293–308; René Hurtienne, ‘Ein Gelehrter und sein Text. Zur Gesamtedition des Reiseberichts von Hieronymus Münzer, 1494/95 (Clm 431)’, in Erlanger Editionen. Grundlagenforschung durch Quelleneditionen: Berichte und Studien, ed. by Helmut Neuhaus (Erlangen: Palm & Enke, 2009), pp. 255–72; Nikolas Jaspert, ‘Hieronymus Münzers deutsche Gastgeber auf der Iberischen Halbinsel: Archivnotizen und Ergänzungen’, in Zwischen Rom und Santiago: Festschrift für Klaus Herbers zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Claudia Alraum, Andreas Holndonner, and HansChristian Lehner (Bochum: Winkler, 2016), pp. 79–98. A new edition of the text by Klaus Herbers (Erlangen) is in press. Pfandl, ‘Itinerarium Hispanicum Hieronymi Monetarii 1494–1495’, p. 13: ‘Qui inenarrabiles nobis honores exibuerunt. Inuitati ad eorum domos ex solo auro et argento et bibimus et commedimus more Catelanorum. Astiterunt continuo musici cum diuersis generibus instrumentorum, ut recrearemur. Fecerunt coreas, saltaciones more Maurorum. Quid plura? Credo baronem aut comitem in Almania honorem talem non posse exibere. Quot eduliis, quot fructibus, quam vario vino reficeremur, non est opus narrare. Vtinam in personis eorum aut filiis aut amicis eorum possemus refundere’. David M. Freidenreich, Foreigners and their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011); on Mediterranean food’s unifying attributions see Gisela Welz, ‘Taste the Mediterranean: Food, Culture and Heritagisation’, in New Horizons, ed. by Dabag and others, Mittelmeerstudien, 10 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2016), pp. 407–26. Nikolas Jaspert, ‘Catalunya, els catalans i el català a l’Imperi Romanogermànic (segles XIV i XV)’, in Els catalans a la Mediterrània medieval. Noves fonts, recerques i perspectives, ed. by Lluís Cifuentes i Comamala, Roser Salicrú i Lluch, and Maria Mercè Viladrich i Grau (Roma: Viella, 2015), pp. 229–49, drawing on Kurt Kohler, ed., Handelsakten der Ulmer Gesellschaft Färber-Ehinger um 1495, Beiträge zur schwäbischen Geschichte, 6 (Böblingen: Schlecht, 1968). Marina Mitjà, ‘Dificultades de la industria y comercio alemanes para abrirse paso en Barcelona hasta 1410’, Spanische Forschungen der Goerresgesellschaft – Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kulturgeschichte Spaniens, 13 (1958), 188–228; Jordi Rubió i Balaguer, ‘Integración de los impresores alemanes en la vida social y económica de Cataluña y Valencia en los siglos XV y XVI’, Spanische Forschungen der Goerresgesellschaft – Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kulturgeschichte Spaniens, 20 (1962), 103–22; Máximo Diago Hernando, ‘Los mercaderes alemanes en los Reinos Hispanos durante los siglos bajomedievales: Actividad de las grandes compañías en la Corona de Aragón’, in España y el ‘Sacro Imperio’. Procesos de cambios, influencias y acciones recíprocas en la época de la ‘europeización’ (Siglos XI–XIII), ed. by Julio Valdeón, Klaus Herbers, and Karl Rudolf (Valladolid: Ediciones Universidad de Valladolid, 2002), pp. 299–327.

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their departed brothers and sisters.44 In principle, such expatriates were just as much Mediterranean others as Jewish or Muslim groups, not to speak of more surprising communities such as the confraternities of freed sub-Saharan ex-slaves that can be traced in contemporary Iberian documentation.45 Analytical toolkits such as the one provided by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood in this volume’s introduction need to be employed to such groups in order to adequately differentiate different ranges and grades of otherness and othering as well as their changing usage over time.

The Other Mediterranean After having attempted to differentiate the ‘Mediterranean other’ and ways of approaching it, it is fitting to turn to the ‘other Mediterranean’ that figures so prominently in this paper’s title. To do so, we need to move from people to places, from societies to space. There is no need here to dwell on the enormous impact the so-called spatial turn — and for that part the material turn — has provided to cultural studies in general and medieval studies in particular.46 In the meantime, we are all well aware to which extent people construct spatial settings according to social, economic, political, or cultural criteria. But precisely because this has now become an established and accepted fact, it would be counterproductive to overlook the specifics of maritime space or forget the material, that is physical side of our natural environment, past and present.47 This has nothing to do with traditional geographical 44 Nikolas Jaspert, ‘Ein Leben in der Fremde: Deutsche Handwerker und Kaufleute im Barcelona des 15. Jahrhunderts’, in Ein gefüllter Willkomm. Festschrift für Knut Schulz zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Franz J. Felten, Stephanie Irrgang, and Kurt Wesoly (Aachen: Shaker, 2002), pp. 450–78, with an edition of relevant documents on pp. 476–77. In general on merchant communities in foreign lands in the Mediterranean see: Kathryn L. Reyerson, ‘The Merchants of the Mediterranean: Merchants as Strangers’, in The Stranger in Medieval Society, ed. by F. R. P. Akehurst and Stephanie Cain Van D’Elden (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), pp. 1–13; Nikolas Jaspert, ‘Corporativismo en un entorno extraño: las cofradías de alemanes en la Corona de Aragón’, in XVIII Congrés Internacional d’Història de la Corona d’Aragó: Actes, ed. by Rafael Narbona Vizcaíno (Valencia: Universitat de València, 2005), pp. 1785–806; Uwe Israel, Fremde aus dem Norden: transalpine Zuwanderer im spätmittelalterlichen Italien, Bibliothek des Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom, 111 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2005). 45 Antoni Albacete Gascón, ‘Les confraries de lliberts negres a la Corona Catalanoaragonesa’, Acta historica et archaeologica mediaevalia, 30 (2009/2010), 307–31. 46 Jörg Döring and Tristan Thielmann, eds, Spatial Turn: das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften (Bielefeld: transcript, 2008); Barney Warf and Santa Arias, eds, The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Routledge Studies in Human Geography, 26 (London: Routledge, 2009); Moritz Csáky and Christoph Leitgeb, eds, Kommunikation – Gedächtnis – Raum: Kulturwissenschaften nach dem ‘Spatial Turn’ (Bielefeld: transcript, 2009); Susanne Rau, Räume: Konzepte, Wahrnehmungen, Nutzungen, Historische Einführungen, 14 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2013); Robert T. Tally, ed., The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space (New York: Routledge, 2017). 47 Frederic L. Cheyette, ‘The Mediterranean Climate’, in A Companion to Mediterranean History, ed. by Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), pp. 11–25; Michael Borgolte and Nikolas Jaspert, eds, Maritimes Mittelalter: Meere als Kommunikationsräume, Vorträge

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determinism, but it has a lot to do with common sense. I believe it is futile to argue against the notion that intrinsic logics of the sea influenced the inhabitants of maritime spaces to a larger or lesser extent. Disciplines which mediate between the humanities and natural sciences — especially archaeology and geography — have made this blatantly obvious. If we apply this insight to xenology, we can extend the range of potential ‘others’ to the non-human world.48 For seen from a xenological standpoint, and in principle, not only groups or individuals can be othered, but so can a sea. This claim might come as a surprise, as one could object that a common ground is needed to separate something from something else. But in principle, if the sea can be approximated to humans — for example by underlining shared origins (both were believed to have been created by God), by constructing it as a ‘mare nostrum’, by comparing the sea to the world or to life (a notion already found in patristic texts) or by gendering the sea —,49 then it can also be othered. So, to put it bluntly: how ‘other’ is the Mediterranean Sea as a maritime space? Which images does this sea conjure today, which associations and desires does it evoke? Some compatriots of mine might think of nineteenth-century romanticism as represented by authors such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe or artists such as the ‘Nazarenes’ (‘Nazarener’),50 for most central Europeans however, other images spring to mind: pictures of beaches, of holidays. More important for this paper’s subject: both romanticists like Goethe and modern philo-Mediterraneans embrace and appropriate the distant sea as a space of yearning and desire.51 The Mediterranean however also evokes other, less cheerful associations, images of migration and refugees, notions of borders under attack and humanitarian

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und Forschungen, 83 (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2016); Gerhard van den Heever, ‘Spatializing Practices at the Intersections: Representations and Productions of Spaces’, in The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space, ed. by Robert T. Tally (New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 70–81. Francisco de Asís García García, ed., Animals and Otherness in the Middle Ages: Perspectives across Disciplines (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2013). Sebastian I. Sobecki, The Sea and Medieval English Literature, Studies in Medieval Romance, 5 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2008), pp. 16–47; Dieter Richter, Das Meer: Geschichte der ältesten Landschaft (Berlin: Wagenbach, 2014); Cunliffe, On the Ocean, pp. 1–28. A transcultural comparison of concepts of the sea: John Mack, The Sea: A Cultural History (London: Reaktion, 2011), pp. 72–98. Klaus Gallwitz and Ingrid Sattel Bernardini, eds, Die Nazarener in Rom: ein deutscher Künstlerbund der Romantik (München: Prestel, 1981); Willi Hirdt and Birgit Tappert, eds, Goethe und Italien, Studium Universale, 22 (Bonn: Bouvier, 2001); Laura Auteri and Margherita Cottone, eds, Deutsche Kultur und Islam am Mittelmeer, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 725 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 2005), particularly: Anna Chiarloni, ‘Goethe und der Islam: Formen eines Zusammentreffens’, in Deutsche Kultur und Islam am Mittelmeer, ed. by Auteri and Cottone, pp. 237–56. Frithjof Benjamin Schenk, ed., Der Süden: neue Perspektiven auf eine europäische Geschichtsregion (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2007); Dieter Richter, Der Süden: Geschichte einer Himmelsrichtung (Berlin: Wagenbach, 2009); John Baldacchino, Makings of the Sea: Journey, Doubt and Nostalgia, On Mediterranean Aesthetics, 1 (Piscataway: Gorgias, 2010); Andreas Eckl, ‘Méditerranée? Mediterranistische Diskurse um Mittelmeerwelten und -räume aus forschungsgeschichtlicher Perspektive’, in New Horizons, ed. by Dabag and others, pp. 109–53; Meike Meerpohl, ‘Kontrast und Konstruktion: Die Produktion von Bildern und Wissen durch Reiseaktivitäten im Mittelmeerraum’, in New Horizons, ed. by Dabag and others, pp. 333–59.

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catastrophes. The Mediterranean is therefore presently not so much imagined as a space of desire, but also and perhaps predominantly as an area of fear and danger. This novel feeling of threat will arguably change scholarly images of the Mediterranean as a maritime space. Although the Mediterranean is a comparatively calm sea, for centuries it was still dangerous enough. But in modern times, it had become tamed thanks to the inventions of modern seafaring.52 Until recently, Europeans’ associations of the Mediterranean hardly took its potential threats into account any more. Today however, the Mediterranean is experiencing a negative reappraisal, a regressive ascription. It is once again perceived as a dangerous space, as a wet grave that has taken many thousands of lives this year alone (2019).53 One of the consequences of the humanitarian catastrophe we are currently experiencing will arguably be a sharpened awareness for the particularities of the Mediterranean Sea as a maritime physical space not only in the present, but also in the past.54 We are also experiencing a ‘maritimization’ of the sea in the sense that historians are increasingly perceiving it not only as a space between lands, but as a zone with its own logics and challenges.55 Our perspective as historians is taking to sea, and this too will have consequences for medieval studies on alterity. Formulated

52 David M. Williams, ‘Humankind and the Sea: The Changing Relationship since the Mid-Eighteenth Century’, International Journal of Maritime History, 22 (2010), 1–14; Lincoln P. Paine, The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (New York: Knopf, 2013), pp. 508–45. 53 Peter H. Liotta, The Uncertain Certainty: Human Security, Environmental Change, and the Future EuroMediterranean (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2003); Nicholas De Genova, ed., The Borders of ‘Europe’: Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering (London: Duke University Press, 2017); Marion Boulby and Kenneth Christie eds, Migration, Refugees and Human Security in the Mediterranean and MENA (Cham: Springer, 2018); Yasser Elhariry and Edwige Tamalet Talbayev, eds, Critically Mediterranean: Temporalities, Aesthetics, and Deployments of a Sea in Crisis, Mediterranean Perspectives, 5 (Cham: Springer, 2018). 54 By way of example: Alexander Berner, Jan-Marc Henke, Achim Lichtenberger, Bärbel Morstadt, and Anne Riedel, eds, Das Mittelmeer und der Tod: mediterrane Mobilität und Sepulkralkultur, Mittelmeerstudien, 13 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2016), especially pp. 299–382; Norbert Fischer, ‘Zur Historisierung des maritimen Todes: Die Nordseeküste als Gedächtnislandschaft’, in ‘Das ungeheure Wellen-Reich’: Bedeutungen, Wahrnehmungen und Projektionen des Meeres in der Geschichte, ed. by Rudolf Holbach, Oldenburger Schriften zur Geschichtswissenschaft, 15 (Oldenburg: BIS-Verlag der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, 2014), pp. 87–98. 55 Jerry H. Bentley, Renate Bridenthal, and Kären Wigen, eds, Seascapes: Maritime Histories, Littoral Cultures, and Transoceanic Exchanges (Honolulu: University of Hawai Press, 2007); Barry W. Cunliffe, Europe between the Oceans: Themes and Variations: 9000 bc–ad 1000 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Mack, The Sea: A Cultural History; Paine, The Sea and Civilization; Peter N. Miller, ed., The Sea: Thalassography and Historiography (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013); Rudolf Holbach, ed., ‘Das ungeheure Wellen-Reich’: Bedeutungen, Wahrnehmungen und Projektionen des Meeres in der Geschichte, Oldenburger Schriften zur Geschichtswissenschaft, 15 (Oldenburg: BIS-Verlag der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, 2014); Borgolte and Jaspert, eds, Maritimes Mittelalter: Meere als Kommunikationsräume; Silvia Marzagalli, ‘Maritimity: How the Sea Affected Early Modern Life in the Mediterranean World’, in New Horizons, ed. by Dabag and others, pp. 309–31; Nikolas Jaspert and Sebastian Kolditz, eds, Entre mers – Outre-mer: Spaces, Modes and Agents of IndoMediterranean Connectivity (Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2018), especially Nikolas Jaspert and Sebastian Kolditz, ‘Entre mers – Outre-mer: An Introduction’, pp. 7–30.

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as a question: how does research into Mediterranean othering change, if we observe the Mediterranean not from a terrestrial, but rather from a maritime viewpoint? Maritime navigation in the Middle Ages was closely linked to the experience of danger. Storms and adverse weather conditions, distress and shipwrecks, pirate attacks and the loss of orientation on the high seas, but also stranding on a foreign coast — these and other motifs are often found in reports and literary narratives from the various cultural and religious areas of the Mediterranean — from the Geniza documents56 to pilgrims’ accounts.57 The medieval Mediterranean was an area of conflict, there can be no doubt about that. It was indeed a sea of fear, an arena for warfare, raids, and captivity, and as a consequence, it was critically separated from human lifeworlds, it was othered. But which of the modalities I have just described — orientalization, segmentation, or encompassment — were hereby applied, and how was the divide between us and them bridged, if ‘they’ was a sea? In fact, the dangers of the sea brought forth specific brokers who mediated between nature and man. On the one hand, these were the professionals of the sea — sailors, captains, etc.58 On the other hand, and less apparently, Christians — more than the

56 Shelomo Dov Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967–1993); Shelomo Dov Goitein, ‘Mediterranean Trade in the Eleventh Century: Some Facts and Problems’, in Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East: From the Rise of Islam to the Present Day, ed. by M. A. Cook, School of Oriental and African studies (London: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 51–62; Moshe Gil, ‘Shipping in the Mediterranean in the Eleventh Century A.D. as reflected in Documents from the Cairo Geniza’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 67 (2008), 247–92; Jessica L. Goldberg, Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Geniza Merchants and their Business World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 57 John Kenneth Hyde, ‘Navigation of the Eastern Mediterranean in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries According to Pilgrims’ Books’, Papers in Italian Archaeology, 1 (1978), 521–40; Michel Mollat, Europa und das Meer (translation of L’Europe et la mer, Paris 1993) (Wien: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1995), pp. 241–63; Margaret E. Mullett, ‘In Peril on the Sea: Travel Genres and the Unexpected’, in Travel in the Byzantine World, ed. by Margaret E. Mullett (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 259–84; Christiane Villain Gandossi, ‘Au Moyen Age, le domaine de la peur’, in La mer – terreur et fascination, ed. by Alain Corbin and Hélène Richard (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 2004), pp. 103–26; Nikolas Jaspert and Sebastian Kolditz, eds, Seeraub im Mittelmeerraum. Piraterie, Korsarentum und maritime Gewalt von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit, Mittelmeerstudien, 3 (Paderborn: Schöningh-Fink, 2013); Cunliffe, On the Ocean, pp. 1–35; Michel Balard and Christophe Picard, La Méditerranée au Moyen Âge. les hommes et la mer (Paris: Hachette, 2014), pp. 211–33. 58 Rosalba Ragosta, ed., Le Genti del mare Mediterraneo, 2 vols, Biblioteca di storia economica, 5 (Napoli: Pironti, 1981); Marco Tangheroni, ‘La vita a bordo delle navi’, in Artigiani e salariati. Il mondo del lavoro nell’Italia dei secoli XII–XV, Centro italiano di studi di storia e d’Arte, 10 (Pistoia: Presso la sede del Centro, 1984), pp. 155–87; Mollat, Europa und das Meer, pp. 173–223; Teresa-María Vinyoles Vidal, ‘La vita quotidiana della gente di mare (esempi barcellonesi dei secoli XIV e XV)’, Medioevo, 21 (1996), 9–36; Lawrence V. Mott, Sea Power in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Catalan-Aragonese Fleet in the War of the Sicilian Vespers (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003); Dirk Meier, Seafarers, Merchants and Pirates in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006); Ornella Pittarello, ed., Algune raxion per marineri: un manuale veneziano del secolo XV per gente di mare, Ricerche. Facoltà di lettere e filosofia dell’Università di Venezia, 42 (Padova: Poligrafo, 2006); Anna Unali, Marineros, piratas y corsarios catalanes en la Baja Edad Media, Isla de la Tortuga, 8 (Sevilla: Renacimiento, 2007); Pinuccia Franca Simbula, ‘Andar per mare nel Medioevo: marinai, mercanti, guerrieri e pellegrini

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members of other belief systems — called on maritime saints for mediation: St Nicholas of Bari, St Nicholas of Tolentino, Saint Eloy, and others who fulfilled this very task, not to speak of the Virgin Mary.59 Celestial mediators did not accommodate the sea permanently, but could punctually mitigate its otherness. If one approaches the sea from a xenological perspective, one necessarily needs to investigate its perception and the construction of maritime imagery. One might then ask if Mediterranean societies developed a particular understanding of or attitude towards the sea. A comparative reading of Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic sources reveals that in all three societies the medieval Mediterranean assumed the role of a — quite variable — symbol. It could stand for the temptations of the devil, for death and evil, but above all it was symbol for danger. This binary form of constructing the sea actually reveals an orientalistic mode of othering, because it fits the waters into a dualistic relationship of good or evil, peaceful or dangerous.60 In other cases, the Mediterranean was constructed as a medium to illustrate the omnipotence of God or the power of holy men, and (less often) women. These venerated individuals miraculously paralysed ships on the open sea, tamed the waves,

sulle rotte del Mediterraneo’, in Andar per mare, ed. by Paola Massa and Pinuccia F. Simbula (Genova: De Ferrari, 2009), pp. 9–42; Roser Salicrú Lluch, ‘Sobre las fuentes y bibliografia para el estudio de los enrolamientos de tripulación, los armamentos, la construcción naval y los salarios maritimos en la Cataluna bajomedieval’, in ‘Il re cominciò a conoscere che il principe era un altro re’: il principato di Taranto e il contesto mediterraneo (secc. XII–XV), ed. by Gemma Teresa Colesanti, Fonti e studi per gli Orsini di Taranto, 2 (Roma: Nella sede dell’Istituto, Palazzo Borromini, Il Principato di Tara), pp. 329–42; Balard and Picard, La Méditerranée au Moyen Âge, pp. 234–70; For the early modern period: Maria Fusaro, Bernard Allaire, Richard Blakemore, and Tijl Vanneste, eds, Law, Labour and Empire: Comparative Perspectives on Seafarers, c. 1500–1800 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 59 André Vauchez, ‘L’homme au péril de la mer dans les miracles médiévaux’, in Colloque L’homme face aux calamités naturelles dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen Âge, ed. by Jacques Jouanna, Jean Leclant, and Michel Zink, Cahiers de la Villa Kérylos, 17 (Paris: Boccard, 2006), pp. 183–96; Luciano Fanin, ed., Dio, il mare e gli uomini, Quaderni di storia religiosa, 15 (Verona: Molino, 2008); Antonio Ive, ‘Le “Sante Parole” tratte da un codice florentino del sec. XV’, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 34 (1910), 315–30; Michele Bacci, ‘Portolano sacro: santuario e immagini sacre lungo le rotte di navigazione del Mediterraneo tra tardo medioevo e prima età moderna’, in The Miraculous Image: In the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. by Erik Thunø and Gerhard Wolf, Analecta Romana Instituti Danici. Supplementum, 35 (Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2004), pp. 223–48; Christophe Picard, ‘La mer et le sacré en Islam medieval’, in La mer et le sacré en Islam médiéval, ed. by Christophe Picard, Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 130 (Aix-en-Provence: PUP, 2011), pp. 13–32; Valentina Ruzzin, ‘La Bonna Parolla. Il portolano sacro genovese’, Atti della società ligure di storia patria, n.s., 53.2 (2013), 21–59; Bacci and Rohde, The Holy Portolano; Immacolata Aulisa, ed., I santuari e il mare, Associazione internazionale per le ricerche sui santuari, 2 (Bari: Edipuglia, 2014); Jaspert, Neumann, and di Branco, Ein Meer und seine Heiligen. 60 An overview of appropriate narratives — travel accounts, hagiographical texts, etc. — can be found in: Abraham Malamat, ‘The Sacred Sea’, in Sacred Space: Shrine, City, Land, ed. by Benjamin Z. Kedar and R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 45–54; Mathias Jeschke, Meeresgeschichten der Bibel (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2004); Nikolas Jaspert, ‘Zur Hagio-Geographie des Mittelmeerraums: Ein Meer und seine Heiligen’, in Ein Meer und seine Heiligen. Hagiographie im mittelalterlichen Mediterraneum, ed. by Nikolas Jaspert, Christian Neumann, and Marco di Branco, Mittelmeerstudien, 18 (Paderborn: Schöningh-Fink, 2018), pp. 11–29. An ample study of the ways the Mediterranean was perceived in the early Middle Ages will be presented by Sebastian Kolditz (Heidelberg).

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walked over the water, in short: lifted the rules of nature out of their joints and thus showed their proximity to God. Here the sea is constructed as an intermediate space, a transitory zone between the human world and transcendence. It is therefore seldom depicted as an independent agent, but as a variable tool of divine agency. In these cases, we can observe the modality of encompassment: both the sea and humans are actually subordinate to God’s superior will and his choice of hierarchy, in which humans are superior to nature, to the sea. But does the fact that medieval writers generally bereaved the Mediterranean of agency imply that modern historians should, too? If we take the catchword of ‘the other Mediterranean’ seriously, then scholars need to explore under which circumstances the sea itself contributed to processes of othering. Giving the sea a voice would be a different form of subaltern studies. We could explore under which circumstances the waters facilitated processes of exchange due to very concrete and physical characteristics like currents and winds, with all the effects this heralded upon societies’ constructions of themselves and others.61 Under which circumstances in contrast did the sea impede such contacts, thus triggering quite different forms of self-fashioning? We know that maritime connectivity not only facilitated commerce and other forms of interaction, but also the spread of diseases, of plants and animals.62 Lately, multispecies research, eco-criticism, and further collaborative approaches fostered in the growing field of environmental humanities have significantly broadened our theoretical and methodological toolkit.63 In the age of the Anthropocene, we do well to invert the perspective when studying nature in order to explore, how the 61 John Wainwright and John B. Thornes, Environmental Issues in the Mediterranean: Processes and Perspectives from the Past and Present, Routledge Studies in Physical Geography and Environment, 1 (London: Routledge, 2004); J. Donald Hughes, The Mediterranean: An Environmental History, Nature and Human Societies (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2005); Dominik Faust and Christoph Zielhofer, eds, The Last 15ka of Environmental Change in Mediterranean Regions – Interpreting Different Archives, The Journal of the International Union for Quaternary Research, 181 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2008); Sylvie Shaw and Andrew Francis, Deep Blue: Critical Reflections on Nature, Religion and Water (Hoboken: Taylor & Francis, 2014); Robert Hofrichter, Janina Goetz and Christoph Pum, ‘Ozeanographie’, in Handbuch der Mediterranistik, ed. by Dabag and others, , pp. 365–93. 62 Robert Sallares, ‘Disease’, in A Companion to Mediterranean History, ed. by Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), pp. 250–62; Jodi Frawley and Iain McCalman, eds, Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities (New York: Routledge, 2014). 63 Alfred Kentigern Siewers, ed., Re-imagining Nature: Environmental Humanities and Ecosemiotics (Lanham: Bucknell University Press, 2014), particularly part II on ‘medieval natures’, pp. 109–59; Jorge López Quiroga, Michail Michajlovic Kazanski, and Vujadin Ivaniševic, eds, Entangled Identities and Otherness in Late Antique and Early Medieval Europe: Historical, Archaeological and Bioarchaeological Approaches, BAR International Series, 2852 (Oxford: BAR, 2017); Ursula K. Heise, Jon Christensen, and Michelle Niemann, eds, The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities (New York: Routledge, 2017). Robert S. Emmett and David E. Nye, The Environmental Humanities: A Critical Introduction (London: MIT Press, 2017); Alexander Elliott, James Cullis, and Vinita Damodaran, eds, Climate Change and the Humanities: Historical, Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Contemporary Environmental Crisis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); cf. the volumes of the Environmental History series, ed. by Mauro Agnoletti (Cham: Springer, 2013–2020), which however rarely with the Middle Ages.

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non-human or the other-than-human formed the human. This understanding of medieval alterity would indeed be the result of focusing on a different, on yet another Mediterranean. And it would be a step towards further pluralizing the Mediterranean Sea as an object of historical research. The medieval Mediterranean thus both relates to and is informed by pressing current issues, that have provided the frame for my paper — neo-nationalisms, religious fundamentalisms, refugee crises, and ecological challenges. They all have a more or less strong bearing on the ways historians of the 21st century deal with the constructions of otherness in the Middle Ages. To recognize this relationship need not mean dismissing it, quite the contrary: for Mediterraneanists as for any other scholar, realizing the contemporary contexts of current research questions is part and parcel of academic research. This also holds true for the different modes of interaction between maritime space and human space as a novel field of xenological inquiry in the humanities. The Mediterranean Sea continues to offer an enormously wide spectrum of questions, sources and approaches directly related to medieval otherness, othering and alterity, and it will probably continue to do so for many years to come.

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Rubin, Uri, and David J. Wasserstein, eds, Dhimmis and Others: Jews and Christians and the World of Classical Islam, Israel Oriental Studies, 17 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997) Rubió i Balaguer, Jordi, ‘Integración de los impresores alemanes en la vida social y económica de Cataluña y Valencia en los siglos XV y XVI’, Spanische Forschungen der Goerresgesellschaft – Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kulturgeschichte Spaniens, 20 (1962), 103–22 Ruzzin, Valentina, ‘La Bonna Parolla. Il portolano sacro genovese’, Atti della società ligure di storia patria, n.s., 53.2 (2013), 21–59 Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1955) Salicrú Lluch, Roser, ‘Sobre las fuentes y bibliografia para el estudio de los enrolamientos de tripulación, los armamentos, la construcción naval y los salarios maritimos en la Cataluna bajomedieval’, in ‘Il re cominciò a conoscere che il principe era un altro re’: il principato di Taranto e il contesto mediterraneo (secc. XII–XV), ed. by Gemma Teresa Colesanti, Fonti e studi per gli Orsini di Taranto, 2 (Roma: Nella sede dell’Istituto, Palazzo Borromini, 2014), pp. 329–42 Sallares, Robert, ‘Disease’, in A Companion to Mediterranean History, ed. by Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), pp. 250–62 Saviello, Alberto, Imaginationen des Islam: bildliche Darstellungen des Propheten Mohammed im westeuropäischen Buchdruck bis ins 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015) Schenk, Frithjof Benjamin, ed., Der Süden: neue Perspektiven auf eine europäische Geschichtsregion (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2007) Schipp, Oliver, ‘Römer und Barbaren: Fremde in der Spätantike und im Frühmittelalter’, in Fremd und rechtlos?: Zugehörigkeitsrechte Fremder von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart: ein Handbuch, ed. by Altay Coskun and Lutz Raphael (Wien: Böhlau, 2014), pp. 121–52 Schlee, Günther, and Alexander Horstmann, ed., Difference and Sameness as Modes of Integration: Anthropological Perspectives on Ethnicity and Religion, Integration and Conflict Studies, 16 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2018) Schlögl, Rudolf, Alter Glaube und moderne Welt: europäisches Christentum im Umbruch 1750–1850 (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2013) Schneewind, Jerome B., The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) Shalem, Avinoam, and Michelina Di Cesare, ed., Constructing the Image of Muhammad in Europe (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013) Shaw, Sylvie, and Andrew Francis, Deep Blue: Critical Reflections on Nature, Religion and Water (Hoboken: Taylor & Francis, 2014) Siewers, Alfred Kentigern, ed., Re-imagining Nature: Environmental Humanities and Ecosemiotics (Lanham: Bucknell University Press, 2014) Simbula, Pinuccia Franca, ‘Andar per mare nel Medioevo: marinai, mercanti, guerrieri e pellegrini sulle rotte del Mediterraneo’, in Andar per mare, ed. by Paola Massa and Pinuccia F. Simbula (Genova: De Ferrari, 2009), pp. 9–42 Sobecki, Sebastian I., The Sea and Medieval English Literature, Studies in Medieval Romance, 5 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2008) Southern, Richard William, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962) Strickland, Debra Higgs, Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003)

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Strutwolf, Holger, ‘Anima naturaliter Christiana – Beobachtungen zum philosophischen und theologischen Hintergrund der Seelenlehre Tertullians’, in Studies on the Text of the New Testament and Early Christianity: Essays in Honour of Michael W. Holmes on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, ed. by Daniel Gurtner, Jr. Daniel Hernández, and Paul Foster, New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents, 50 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 594–614 Stünkel, Knut Martin, Una sit religio: Religionsbegriffe und Begriffstopologien bei Cusanus, Llull und Maimonides (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013) Tally, Robert T., ed., The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space (New York: Routledge, 2017) Tangheroni, Marco, ‘La vita a bordo delle navi’, in Artigiani e salariati. Il mondo del lavoro nell’Italia dei secoli XII–XV (Pistoia: Presso la sede del Centro, 1984), pp. 155–87 Tolan, John Victor, ed., Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam: A Book of Essays, Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, 1768 (New York: Garland, 1996) ———, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002) Trautner-Kromann, Hanne, and James Manley, Shield and Sword: Jewish Polemics Against Christianity and the Christians in France and Spain from 1100–1500, Texts and Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Judaism, 8 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1993) Tsafrir, Nurit, ‘The Attitude of Sunni Islam toward Jews and Christians as Reflected in Some Legal Issues’, Al-Qantara, 26 (2005), 317–36 Unali, Anna, Marineros, piratas y corsarios catalanes en la Baja Edad Media, Isla de la Tortuga, 8 (Sevilla: Renacimiento, 2007) Vauchez, André, ‘L’homme au péril de la mer dans les miracles médiévaux’, in Colloque L’homme face aux calamités naturelles dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen Âge, ed. by Jacques Jouanna, Jean Leclant, and Michel Zink, Cahiers de la Villa Kérylos, 17 (Paris: Boccard, 2006), pp. 183–96 Vinyoles Vidal, Teresa-María, ‘La vita quotidiana della gente di mare (esempi barcellonesi dei secoli XIV e XV)’, Medioevo, 21 (1996), 9–36 Wainwright, John, and John B. Thornes, Environmental Issues in the Mediterranean: Processes and Perspectives from the Past and Present, Routledge Studies in Physical Geography and Environment, 1 (London: Routledge, 2004) Waldenfels, Bernhard, ‘Xenologie, Wissenschaft vom Fremden’, in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 12, ed. by Joachim Ritter, Karlfried Gründer, and Gottfried Gabriel (Basel: Schwabe, 2004), pp. 1105–10 Warf, Barney, and Santa Arias, eds, The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Routledge Studies in Human Geography, 26 (London: Routledge, 2009) Weltecke, Dorothea, ‘Space, Entanglement and Decentralisation: On How to Narrate the Transcultural History of Christianity (550 to 1350 ce)’, in Locating Religions: Contact, Diversity and Translocality, ed. by Reinhold Glei and Nikolas Jaspert, Dynamics in the History of Religions, 9 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 315–44 Welz, Gisela, ‘Taste the Mediterranean: Food, Culture and Heritagisation’, in New Horizons: Mediterranean Research in the 21st Century, ed. by Mihran Dabag, Mihran Haller, Nikolas Jaspert, and Achim Lichtenberger, Mittelmeerstudien, 10 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2016), pp. 407–26

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Wierlacher, Alois, ‘Kulturwissenschaftliche Xenologie’, in Konzepte der Kulturwissenschaften: theoretische Grundlagen – Ansätze – Perspektiven, ed. by Ansgar Nünning and Vera Nünning (Weimar: Metzler, 2003), pp. 280–306 Williams, David A., Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996) Williams, David M., ‘Humankind and the Sea: The Changing Relationship since the MidEighteenth Century’, International Journal of Maritime History, 22 (2010), 1–14 Winst, Silke, ‘Identity vs. Difference – Sameness as a Concept of Identity Formation in Medieval Literature’, in Text or Context: Reflections on Literary and Cultural Criticism, ed. by Rüdiger Kunow and Stephan Mussil (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013), pp. 129–52 Wood, Ian N., ‘The Pagans and the Other: Varying Presentations in the Early Middle’, Networks and Neighbours, 1 (2013), 1–22 Wulf, Christoph, ed., Exploring Alterity in a Globalised World (New York: Routledge, 2017) Yaman, Hikmet, ‘The Criticism of the People of the Book (ahl al-kitab) in the Qur’an: Essentialist or Contextual?’, Gregorianum, 92 (2011), 183–98

Martin Borýsek

Strangers in the House of Israel Confronting the Problems of Inner Diversity in Jewish Communal Ordinances at the End of the Middle Ages

In the spring of 1642, the elders of the Jewish community in the island of Corfu, then an overseas possession of the Venetian Republic, issued a number of decrees on various matters of the religious and public life in their community. The Jewish leaders issued the ordinances in the name of ‘the two communities which are here in Corfu, may God protect them’ (‫)אנחנו ממוני שני הקהלות קדשות שבקורפו יע”א‬, thus making claim to represent both Jewish communities that were at that time resident on the island, th indigenous Greek-speaking Romaniots and the more recent Jewish immigrants from Italy. However, later on in this introductory paragraph we read: ‫להשמיע להם כל הנרשם אנחנו ממוני ק”ק איטליאנו עם הנגידים המבוררים שלחנו לקרוא‬ ‫לממונים ומובחרים מק”ק אחר כדי למשמיע ולפרסם לפני כלם הנז’ […] וגבירי הק”ק אחר‬ ‫פצו פה ענו ואמרו שאין רצונם להיות [ברצון אחד עמנו] אלא כל איש הישר בעיניו יעשה‬ (To let them know everything recorded here, we, the deputies of the Italian holy community, with our chosen leaders have sent messengers to call for the deputies and leaders of the Other holy community […], but the elders of the Other holy community1 answered that they did not wish to be of one mind with us but rather that each man shall do as he sees fit).2 The rivalry which this text suggests and perhaps even more so the choice of words indicate a certain degree of internal tensions within the Corfiot Jewish community stemming from its inner diversity. Within late medieval and early modern Jewish society, this was not an isolated incident. In this article, I shall attempt to track the inner divisions within the European Jewish population of the later Middle Ages and the early modern period, utilizing selected extant excerpts from the internal byelaws



1 That is to say, the Romaniot one. 2 Louis Finkelstein, Jewish Self-Government in the Middle Ages (New York: Philipp Feldman, 1964), p. 316. Martin Borýsek  •  ([email protected], born 1983) gained his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2015 and currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Potsdam. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 75–92 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123586

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of Jewish communities. The main objective of this survey will be to examine how the dominant Jewish settlement of a given time and place regarded Jewish newcomers from another place and of a different cultural and/or linguistic background. I will examine to what extent the Jews, in many respects the prototypical ‘other’ of premodern European society, could approach their own coreligionists as their own, ‘internal others’, and what the consequences of such approach were.

The Jewish Minority in the World of Medieval Christendom When social historians of medieval Europe attempt to provide a classification of medieval European society, they often end up putting the Jews, together with other marginal groups, into the intriguing category of ‘people on the edge of society’. There are valid grounds for such classification, although there is now general consensus that we must not overemphasize the Jews’ standing apart from the rest of the society, whilst overlooking their often deep connections to the non-Jewish world that surrounded them.3 In particular, the recent scholarly discussion of the Jews’ marginalization in premodern European society assessed critically the previously widely accepted notion that ‘otherness’ as a social stigma has been forced on the helpless Jewish community from the outside, with little or no choice on the Jews’ part.4 Directly connected to this problem are the attempts to find a scholarly sound alternative to the so-called ‘lachrymose conception of Jewish history’, now viewed as an inadequate interpretation of the Jews’ place in majority society. In a nutshell, this conception postulated the long time between the collapse of the autonomous Jewish state in Palestine in the first century ad and the advent of political, economic, and intellectual emancipation of the Ashkenazi Jewry at the close of the eighteenth century as a ‘dark period’ characterized mainly by the universal discrimination to which the Jews were generally exposed. Accordingly, the Jewish historical experience during this period tended to be viewed as an unbroken series of calamities, or, conversely, as a heroic struggle against prejudice and oppression. The roots of this conception of Jewish history can be traced to the very beginning of modern Jewish historiography, in the works of the great pioneering authors of the nineteenth-century ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums movement’ such as Leopold Zunz or Heinrich Graetz. Whereas up

3 See Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000), p. 26. 4 For the dynamics between integration and separation in the relations between premodern Jews and the majority society, see Jonathan Elukin, Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relation in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). His observations are certainly enlightening in that he brings to light the importance of the widespread co-operation between the Jewish and non-Jewish communities in medieval Europe, but he sometimes tends to the opposite extreme, smoothing over the undeniable existence of systemic anti-Judaism in many aspects of the European Christendom. The importance of theological debate and polemics in JewishChristian relations is emphasized in Israel Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley: California University Press, 2006; Hebrew original published 2000).

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to this day, Zunz rightly enjoys universal acknowledgement as the founding figure of Jewish studies as a rigorous scholarly discipline, he did lend his great authority to cementing the view of universal decline of Jewish culture with the coming of the Middle Ages and promoting the belief that it is a modern intellectual’s duty to help to ‘lead the Jews out of the Ghetto’.5 The problematic aspects of the lachrymose conception were pointed out as long ago as in 1928,6 but the tendency to view the pre-Emancipation period mainly as a time where Jews faced persecution by default, and where any intellectual or material achievement was necessarily accomplished in face of fierce opposition remains a temptation of which scholars must be aware. This situation has been made more complicated because some more recent concepts of Jewish history in the Middle Ages and the early modern period that seek to correct the lachrymose conception seem to err in the opposite direction. Scholars like Robert Chazan or María Rosa Menocal7 correctly emphasize the importance of cooperation between the Jews and the Christian or Muslim majority in whose midst they lived, but they tend to underestimate the deep impact and far-reaching consequences of the legally inferior status reserved for the Jews in every country of their residence, Christian or Muslim, before the end of the eighteenth century at the very earliest. Especially in this context, it is important to consider what role the viewing of specific segments of society as ‘others’ played in Jewish history. Designating a chosen segment of society, groups of individuals or whole social classes, as ‘others’, i.e. fundamentally different from the society’s mainstream (which is acting as the judge of ‘otherness’), has been described as a potent self-affirming mechanism especially associated with premodern societies. Alongside real or imagined threats from the outside, such as hostile foreign powers or visitors from barely known, exotic countries, it was the marginal groups living in the midst of the majority society which were an obvious target of ‘othering strategies’. The Jews were arguably among the most attractive and most readily available targets to be singled out as wilfully, obstinately and harmfully different from ‘the ordinary people’, i.e. those making the judgement and assigning the otherness. Considering the burden of becoming the ‘default other’ that the Jews arguably bore in the Middle Ages and deep into the early modern era, one may perhaps be tempted to view them mostly through the lenses of this status. However, if we take a closer look at the Jewish community at specific places during the later Middle Ages and during the early modern period, we encounter a society which was far more than a uniform ‘reference point’ satisfying the majority’s need of self-definition and self-affirmation. We shall find that the Jewish community was a vibrant, diverse, and complex component of the European population which engaged in a lively inner debate about a wide variety of issues relating to its place in the society. In my paper, I shall try to explore to what extend the Jews themselves were open to using

5 See Leopold Zunz, Etwas über Rabbinische Literatur (Berlin: Maurer, 1818). 6 See Salo W. Baron, ‘Ghetto and Emancipation’, reprinted in The Menorah Treasury, ed. by Leo W. Schwarz (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1964), pp. 50–63. 7 See Robert Chazan, The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom 1000–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); María Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002).

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‘othering strategies’ as a means of strengthening the sense of their communal identity. The particular problem I shall address will be the Jewish communities’ reaction to an encounter with Jews of different cultural backgrounds visiting the community or settling there. Such ‘other’ Jews naturally caught the attention and, at times, caused apprehension in the eyes of the indigenous Jewish community. That these Jewish-Jewish encounters can today raise questions about the possible character of the Jews’ place in premodern society reflects the need for a more nuanced view of the inner diversity of the Jewish population.

Jewish Communal Organization and the takkanot ha-kahal In the fabric of medieval European society, the Jews generally stood apart, not fitting into the system of social orders. This distinctiveness stemmed from the Jews’ religious identity as well as from their status as a stateless minority, whose members were perceived as a foreign element in every country in which they dwelt. I shall explore the question of whether and how the Jews singled out their own coreligionists as potential ‘others’ in a set of events concerning different Jewish-Jewish encounters which took place in different European (and in one case, North African) Jewish communities between the late Middle Ages and mid-seventeenth century. The wide geographical as well as temporal range requires some explanation. A unifying motif that binds the seemingly disparate communities together is provided by the source type, which imparts knowledge of the described events: communal ordinances of (semi-) autonomous Jewish communities. These ordinances are known in Hebrew as takkanot ha-kahal (‘the communal council amendments’). The existence of communal statutes to which the state’s authorities granted a measure of recognition and legal power was enabled by a special legal regime under which the Jews of pre-Enlightenment times lived. On the one hand, the Jews’ inferior legal status meant that they were permanently exposed to state-sponsored discrimination (which from the state’s perspective could play the useful role of arresting popular anti-Jewish sentiments in a way the authorities could control). On the other hand, however, the very same state’s authorities were generally prepared to offer Jews legal protection, making them ‘servi camerae’ directly subject to the sovereign’s jurisdiction, thus ensuring oversight over the Jewish presence in their respective lands and, crucially, control over the economic potential of the Jewish merchants and moneylenders, who as a valuable asset were, at least theoretically to be protected from unauthorized harassment. This legal arrangement opened the space for limited autonomy for the whole Jewish populace (‘universitas Iudaeorum’)8 living under the jurisdiction of a given



8 ‘Universitas’ as a term denoting a specific community as whole has its roots in Roman legal terminology. The phrase ‘universitas Iudaeorum’ in the sense of ‘Jewish community’ appears already in the sixth-century East Roman legal code Corpus iuris civilis, cf. Dorothea Rohde, Zwischen Individuum und Stadtgemeinde. Die Integration von ‘collegia’ in Hafenstädten (Mainz: Verlag Antike, 2012), p. 25.

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sovereign, as well as for the individual Jewish communities, usually on a municipal basis. The historical roots of Jewish communal autonomy vis-à-vis the state are lost in obscurity, but the institution of ‘kahal’ or an executive communal council9 and its power to issue takkanot or locally binding ordinances was certainly known and discussed as a theoretical concept in the religious literature of the so-called Geonic period (roughly sixth to eleventh centuries).10 Although no texts of actual communal takkanot are preserved from any period before the high Middle Ages, at the latest by the thirteenth century, there is already reliable information of established communal institutions functioning on a regular basis in several areas throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. The issuing of communal takkanot is attested for example from the populous thirteenth-century Jewish communities of Rhineland. Takkanot ha-kahal are legislative texts concerning the functioning of a specific Jewish community or, especially during the early modern period, larger groups of neighbouring or culturally close Jewish communities. Within the wider discourse of Jewish religious literature and Jewish religious law (‘halakha’), their place is rather peculiar. Unlike in the realm of Biblical exegesis, Talmudic commentaries and legal decisions in matters of general religious significance, the authority of the Jewish communal ordinances is not derived from the author’s erudition in religious law or his status as a rabbi, but from the legitimacy of the community’s executive council and the respect enjoyed by its members in the eyes of the wider Jewish population of the place.11 The exact legal nature of a local community in Jewish religious law and the legal authority of its representatives are matters of intensive scholarly research, discussion of which is beyond the scope of this article.12 It may suffice to state that takkanot ha-kahal stand in a way apart from the discourse of ‘halakha’ not only in the different ultimate source of their authority, but also in that they did not claim universal legal power, but were devised on purpose for the community where they were written, and were easily and frequently amended or entirely replaced by new statutes. Given the collective nature of Jewish communal administration, communal takkanot were statements issued jointly in the name of the community’s leading council, and as such are the textual expression of the community’s corporate authority over its individual members.

9 For the definition and various uses of the term ‘kahal’ see Gershon David Hundert, The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatów in the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press), pp. 85–88. 10 See Aharon Nachalon, The ‘kahal’ and its Enactments in the Geonic Period ( Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2001) [in Hebrew]. 11 For a concise overview of the communal council and its legal history, see Menachem Elon, The Principles of Jewish Law ( Jerusalem: Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1975), pp. 71–73, 654–62. 12 For the discussion of the character of political discourse within medieval Jewish communities, see Menachem Lorberbaum, Politics and the Limits of Law: Secularizing the Political in Medieval Jewish Thought (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).

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Jewish Self-Government and the ‘End of the Middle Ages’ The texts which I am going to discuss in the following paragraphs were written over several centuries during the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. This raises an important question of continuity of Jewish historical existence during the Middle Ages and into the early modern era. The persistence of the Jews’ legal inferiority and forced legal separation from the majority constitutes a cause for the notion that lies at the heart of Jacob Katz’s lastingly influential study Tradition and Crisis, first published in Hebrew in 1958. Central to the book’s thesis is the notion of ‘end of the Middle Ages’ which, according to the author, lasted for the Jews up until the latter half of the eighteenth century.13 By approaching this long period as a one essentially continuous epoch of Jewish history, Katz insightfully emphasizes the wide and far-reaching consequences of the legally inferior status of European Jews, which emerged in the Middle Ages and remained in force until the far-reaching social reforms inspired by the Enlightenment. However, we must not forget that Katz’ thesis of Jewish Middle Ages stretching deep into the early Modern Age is applicable only on certain aspects of their historical experience, namely the legal status and institutional autonomy, while in many other areas of private and public life, the Jews were an integral part of the larger, increasingly modernized society. We must also be careful about his implications that the old order of legally separated Jewish communities, with a clearly recognizable and widely respected set of legal rules and moral maxims, ‘collapsed’ with the coming of the Enlightenment and had to be replaced by a freshly created new one. The reality was arguably to a much greater degree characterized by gradual evolution of ideas and ever-renewed series of specific ad hoc negotiations with the non-Jewish government authorities, both on the local and state level. More recent studies of Jewish public discourse (and especially communal autonomy) in the early modern period tend to emphasize a more gradual and pragmatic process of adaptation and accommodation of old structures to new circumstances. A powerful new impulse for a critical scholarly study of Jewish communal institution in this era is Andreas Gotzmann’s Jüdische Autonomie in der frühen Neuzeit, in which the author advocates a new approach to relevant sources, focusing on continual development and reassessment of social structures and hierarchies within Jewish communities, which enabled its members to find a functioning modus vivendi with the emerging early modern states.14 Nevertheless, the notion of the long ‘end of the Middle Ages’ does retain its usefulness and merits, because it rightly reflects the continuing importance and legal power of the premodern institutions whose authority evolved during the Middle Ages. Likewise, the continuity of this importance was dependent on the continuing existence of a certain model of the relations between Jews and the majority, which

13 See Katz, Tradition. 14 Andreas Gotzmann, Jüdische Autonomie in der frühen Neuzeit. Recht und Gemeinschaft im deutschen Judentum (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008). See especially the Introduction (pp. 6–22), where the author explains his methodology and offers a critical assessment of the research thus far in the field.

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was established in the Middle Ages and retained throughout the early modern period. However, we define the changes that affected the European and Mediterranean Jewry in the Enlightenment era, the fact remains that the legal power of Jewish autonomous communal councils and their takkanot no longer had a place in a world where Jews started to be systematically incorporated into a newly equalized, civic society. For our purposes, it means that the ‘long end of the Middle Ages’ was an era which produced a textual medium that enables us to consider the impacts of the Jews’ premodern legal status on the Jewish-Jewish encounters caused by the Europe-wide migrations throughout Europe between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Sephardic Immigrants in Late Medieval Morocco The first sample text, which will enable us to consider the approaches of the Jewish communal leaders to their coreligionists of a different cultural background, will take us out of the geographical reaches of Europe itself, but is very closely connected to the political and cultural history of European Jewry at one of the crucial moments of the late Middle Ages. The following is an excerpt from the book of communal takkanot created by the members of the émigré Sephardic community in the Maghreb, on the north-western shore of Africa in the territory of today’s Morocco. The adjective Sephardic can sometimes be used rather broadly, as for example in modern Israeli usage it often denotes almost all Jews of non-Ashkenazi extraction. However, it is important to emphasize the original sense of the term, denoting exclusively the Jewish community which evolved in the Iberian Peninsula (‘Sepharad’ in Hebrew) after the Muslim conquest of 711 and whose descendants dispersed around the Mediterranean during the later Middle Ages, with the emigration wave culminating after the final expulsions of all Jews from Spain and Portugal at the close of the fifteenth century. The example I am going to examine was written in May of 1494, barely two years after all the Jews of Spain were unconditionally ordered to leave. This event was a culmination of a lengthy process of mounting oppression of the once prominent Jewish community in ‘Reconquista’ Spain which set into motion a mighty emigration wave of Jewish refugees, who created a network of exile communities around the Mediterranean and beyond. What sets the North African Sephardic émigrés apart from other Jewish refugees from other areas of medieval and early modern Europe is that they came to their new homeland as representatives of the highly advanced Jewish culture of the old ‘Sepharad’ and, though ‘strangers in the House of Israel’, were perceived as such by the members of the local Arab-speaking Jewish community, which opened the way for their eventual cultural hegemony in their new home as well. The following text comes from the book of communal takkanot of the Sephardic Jewish community in Fez, the most important centre of the Sephardic settlement in Morocco. The extant text is based on the collection put together at the end of the seventeenth century by the local rabbis and communal leaders descended from the first generations of the Sephardic immigrants and subsequently revised and amended in the eighteenth. The cited text follows the critical edition, published in

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Israel in 1990.15 The collection contains statutes issued between 1494 and 1753 and its linguistic profile reflects the gradual assimilation of the Sephardic community into its new environment. Whereas all of the documents are written in Hebrew, the oldest are accompanied also by Spanish translations or summaries (in Hebrew characters), while later on the translations are omitted and, in contrast, towards the end of the seventeenth century are replaced by Judeo-Arabic renditions. The following ordinance, recorded both in Hebrew and in Spanish with numerous Hebrew loanwords (the Spanish component of the second paragraph is marked by italics), was issued on the 12 Sivan of the Jewish year 5294/ 17 May 149416 and sets the rules under which betrothals and marriages may be conducted in the community: :‫תיקנו חכמינו הקדושים זכרונם לברכה‬ ‫ ובתוכם חכם‬.‫ כי אם דווקא במניין עשרה‬,‫ששום בר ישראל לא יקדש לשום בת ישראל‬ ‫ ואם יהיה באופן‬.‫ או דיין מדייני העיר; וכן בכניסתם לחופה‬,‫מחכמי העיר המפרעים מהקהל‬ .‫ מפקיעין אותם הקידושין‬,‫אחר מעתה‬ ‫ סאלב’ו‬,‫ קי נינגון בר ישראל נון סיאה מקדש אנינגונא בת ישראל‬,‫פרימיראמינטי אורדינארון‬ ‫ או דיין מדייני העיר; וכן‬,‫ ובתוכם חכם מחכמי העיר דילוש אשאלרייאדוס‬,‫במניין עשרה‬ .‫בכניסתם לחופה; אין אוטרה מאנירא מעתה אנו מפקיעין לוס טאליס קידושין‬ (Our holy sages [i.e. rabbis] of blessed memory decreed: That no son of Israel shall be betrothed to any daughter of Israel, unless a quorum of ten is present, among them one of the town’s rabbis, namely one of the most eminent ones the community possesses, or one of the town’s rabbinic judges. The same shall apply for the couple’s admission to the wedding canopy. Should that from now on happen in any other manner, such a betrothal shall be nullified).17 On the surface, this text does not refer to any Jewish-Jewish encounter or even conflict, and even less so any possibility that the authors of this statute viewed their Moroccan Jewish neighbours as a potential ‘other’. However, when we ponder the implications of this ‘takkanah’, we see that the statutes’ requirements go beyond the strict word of the ‘halakha’, which demands simply the presence of two witnesses for a marriage contract to be valid. It is therefore eminently plausible that the statute’s agenda is to protect the Sephardic community’s control over the choice of life partners among its younger generation, thus keeping a wary eye on the relations with the native community, which may have been seen as less than reliable in properly observing the particularities of religious law. The extension of the number of witnesses to ten is known from other parts of the Mediterranean world (as we shall see below) and cannot be considered a Sephardic speciality, but it always occurs in circumstances in which the community’s leaders are afraid of improper relations between the young

15 Sefer Hataqanot: Spanish and Portuguese Jews in Morocco (1492–1753), ed. by Shalom Bar Asher ( Jerusalem: Academon, 1990). 16 The Christian date is given according to the Julian calendar, since the Gregorian calendar reform occurred only in the late sixteenth century. 17 Sefer Hataqanot, ed. by Bar Asher, p. 48.

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couple before the actual wedding and/or when there are implicit or explicit fears that unwelcome outside elements could penetrate the community and make the control over its affairs difficult for its leaders. The cited text comes from the first section of the Fez book of takkanot, which contains an interesting later testimony both to the continuing institutional distinction between the local and the immigrant Jewish communities, and to their growing closeness. A later statute, agreed by fourteen representatives of the Sephardic community on 14 March 1535, contains a marginal remark by the community’s scribe, Abraham Valense,18 who states that after securing the official agreement of the rabbis from the five ‘synagogues of the Expelled’ (i.e. Sephardic Jews) he also went to the ‘synagogue of the local residents’ and duly obtained the approval of its own rabbi.19 In the text, both communities are referred to with the conventional Hebrew eulogy ‘may their Rock protect them and grant them long life’, which suggests smooth and friendly relations, which aim to enable peaceful coexistence of the two Jewish communities that nevertheless maintain their distinct identities. That the regulation of ten witnesses necessary for a proper celebration of marriage could have a far less benign background, and could have laid bare the underlying tensions between the Jewish community’s mainstream and ‘strangers’ living in its midst, is revealed by another collection, produced in a different Jewish community, from which I am going to cite.

Jewish Communal Elders in Venetian Crete and the Problem of ‘those who Have Come Recently’ The community in question is Candia, the capital of Crete during the time when the island was ruled by the Venetian Republic (1211–1669), and the communal ordinances and other documents concerning the community’s administration are preserved in a collection called Takkanot Kandiyah,20 which documents the proceedings of the community’s executive council through most of the Venetian era. The statutes concern a wide variety of topics from all areas of the everyday and public life in the Candiot Jewish community, which contained Jews of many cultural backgrounds, reflecting the island’s strategic position in the midst of the Eastern Mediterranean commercial crossroads. The 121 texts contained in Takkanot Kandiyah, issued between 1228 and 1583, address a wide variety of issues from all areas of private and public life, concerning

18 Thus I transcribe the Hebrew ‫אברהם בלנסי‬, a name which seems to allude to Abraham’s family’s origins in Valencia. 19 Sefer Hataqanot, ed. by Bar Asher, pp. 62–63. 20 The one extant manuscript of the collection is deposited in the Jewish National and University library in Jerusalem as MS Heb 28°7203. For a critical edition, see Statuta Iudaeorum Candiae eorumque memorabilia, ed. by Elias S. Artom and Umbertus M. D. Cassuto ( Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1943). The following citations from Takkanot Kandiyah (TK) refer to the chapters and lines of this critical edition.

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religious practices, economic activities of the community’s members, their mutual relations as well as their dealings with their Christian neighbours and (to a certain degree) with the Venetian government authorities. For our purposes, it is important to note that the ordinances in Takkanot Kandiyah contain not only general rules and instructions for proper conduct, but very often react to specific incidents and give a great deal of background information. A large number of such incidents concern encounters between the inhabitants of the Candiot community with Jews who came from afar to live there. From the actual contents of such statutes and, crucially, also from the tone in which they are written and the occasional direct comments we may reconstruct how the community’s establishment perceived the newcomers’ influence on law and order in the community, and how this perception evolved between the late fourteenth and the late sixteenth centuries. The majority of the Candiot Jews was of the Romaniot heritage, belonging to the indigenous Jewish population, settled in the Greek cultural area since Late Antiquity, and were to a high degree adapted to Greek culture, speaking Greek among themselves. However, there is ample evidence in Takkanot Kandiyah and other sources that Jews from other cultural areas were present in the city from the thirteenth century on. Some of the individual members mentioned in Takkanot Kandiyah have names indicating their Italian, Ashkenazi, Middle-Eastern, or Sephardic origin. The lastly named group especially became an increasingly prominent presence in Candia, hugely increased by the worsening persecutions of Jews in Spain after 1391 and especially after the expulsions of 1492/1496. Nevertheless, it seems that for most of the Venetian period, the Romaniot rite and culture remained the norm.21 To illustrate how the challenges of inner diversity are reflected in one of the most extensive collections of communal takkanot, I will cite two incidents recorded in Takkanot Kandiyah in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Both show the community’s councillors acting as self-appointed moderators of the relations between Jews of different cultural backgrounds. The Jewish elders saw it as their natural duty to be the speakers of their people as well as guardians of the community’s religious and moral well-being, as perceived by them. The selected texts will show, on the one hand, an undeniable air of suspicion and mistrust towards the ‘Jewish strangers’, but, on the other hand, a pragmatic acceptance of their presence as a reality with which the community must come to terms. The former example forms a direct link with the situation we observed in the Fez community as it concerns intermarriages between ‘local Jews’ and ‘outsiders’, viewed clearly as a most sensitive and potentially dangerous issue. In the latter case, on the other hand, the authors of the statutes actively intercede on behalf of the newcomers, protecting them against ridicule and discrimination by the indigenous Candiot Jews.22 21 For more details on the composition of the Candiot Jewish community, see Simon Marcus, ‘The Composition of the Jewish Population in Crete during the Venetian Rule’, Sinai, 60 (1967), 63–76 [in Hebrew]. 22 I have described the inner tensions in the Candiot community in more detail in Martin Borýsek, ‘The Jews of Venetian Candia: The Challenges of External Influences and Internal Diversity as Reflected in Takkanot Kandiyah’, Al-Masāq, 26 (2014), 241–66.

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In many of the communal takkanot, issued in Candia from the late fourteenth century onwards, we find remarks that reprehensible practices (such as negligent attendance of Sabbath services or less than rigorous observation of the laws of ‘kashrut’ in the meat trade) are especially common among ‘those who have come recently’ (‫)חדשים מקרוב באו‬, thus reflecting a general mistrust towards them and perhaps also some level of institutionalized prejudice. On the other hand, there is relatively little evidence of similar mistrust or actively ‘othering’ approach to the Jews’ Greek neighbours, who are usually mentioned only in passing as an inevitable component of everyday life that is nevertheless quite easy to ignore. This approach can be explained by the statutes’ role in the community’s life, which is to comment on and regulate internal Jewish affairs. Among the few documents that do imply (or openly state) contentious relations with the Christian Greeks are statutes concerning the consumption of wine suspected of being made ritually impure by Christian wine traders23 or, most prominently, the only chapter of the collection which depicts an outright violent confrontation between the city’s Jews and Christians in June 1538.24 Nevertheless, the most frequent addressees of the communal councillors’ distrustful remarks are Jewish newcomers, seen as a potentially disruptive element threatening the community’s way of life. Apart from these remarks, Takkanot Kandiyah contains also a number of accounts of specific incidents that provoked the community’s leaders to a response in the form of a communal statute, which introduced new rules reacting to what was seen as unacceptable behaviour and describing in full details the events which moved them to action. Such events often involved Jews from foreign countries. A case concerning a Sephardi Jew named Abraham Tofer provides a telling illustration of behaviour that provoked the communal leaders’ wrath. The statute, recorded in December 1439 by the community’s then leader Jeremiah Capsali, attacks Tofer, a recent immigrant without any relatives in Candia, for an unlawful attempt to marry a Candiot girl called Kali (whose Greek name identifies here as a part of the ‘indigenous’ community) despite the fact that she had already been engaged to another man three years before. Capsali informs about a committee which he swiftly summoned to investigate the matter.25 The subsequent enquiry found the betrothal null and void and declared any witnesses Tofer may have had unreliable. Kali is released from the alleged union with the Sephardic Jew and declared free to marry, presumably her original fiancé, without the need of a divorce certificate.26 At face level, this seems like a relatively routine matter of a municipal authority intervening in a rather difficult family dispute. However, the decree betrays an apparent a priori bias against Tofer, who is called ‘this worthless man’ (‫)הזה לעילבה שיאה‬27 and from the very beginning is presented as a disruptive element and a danger to the established order. However, beyond forbidding Tofer from Kali’s presence, the



23 The oldest among them is TK XXXIII from March 1363. 24 See TK XCIX written in June 1541, three years after the intended pogrom. 25 TK LXXVI, 15. 26 TK LXXVI, 15. 27 TK LXXVI, 36.

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decree does not seek to punish him further. The matter is mentioned once again, in a later summary of past memorable deeds in the Candiot Jewish community, written in the sixteenth century by Jeremiah Capsali’s descendant Elijah. Here it is stated that Tofer approached the Venetian governer’s office in an attempt to have his illicit marriage approved by the state’s authorities, but that this request was denied thanks to Jeremiah Capsali’s intervention.28 Once again, we cannot say with certainty what lies under the surface of these revealed facts. Was this a measured and timely action protecting a young woman from an unwanted marriage with a truly unworthy partner? Could that be, on the contrary, a case of an attempted elopement? Did Kali actually want to marry Tofer, possibly to rid herself of the previous fiancé? Was it her parents who initiated the public inquiry (since the decree says that the affair was announced to the councillors by ‘a certain woman’, there is room for speculation as to the precise manner in which it caught the public attention)? Did Tofer’s foreign origin prejudice the community’s officials against him, and were his witnesses disregarded unjustly? None of these questions is asked explicitly in the decree, let alone answered, but the community’s collective displeasure over the incident, as the author of the decree wishes to convey it to the readers, is beyond doubt. We may never know the exact nature of the affair, but we do know what immediate effect it had for the Candiot Jewish community. The decree declares that in the future ten witnesses shall be required for marriage and betrothals to be valid, thus making the same arrangement we witnessed in the Fez community, where it was used by the Sephards strengthening their community’s control over possible external interventions. It is therefore obvious that the communal council in Candia did feel the need to increase its power to decide who entered into marriage and it is not difficult to conclude that this need was indeed motivated by the uneasiness about the Jewish newcomers and their activities in the host community. On the other hand, the decree does not pronounce any ban of such ‘mixed’ marriages, nor does it declare them undesirable. All in all, we witness here an attempt to come to terms with a reality which in the early fifteenth century meant an increased presence of Jewish migrants, who may not have been accepted without reservations, but were accepted nevertheless.29 The second case from the Venetian Candia which I will cite here shows the suspicions and mistrust of Jewish newcomers, again of Sephardic extraction, and the communal authorities’ approach to such sentiments in yet another light. The three documents we shall consider were written in the late 1560s and concern the fate of the ‘anusim’ refugees newly arrived in Candia. ‘Anusim’ (Hebrew for ‘the coerced’) or ‘conversos’ were Spanish and Portuguese Jews who under the growing anti-Jewish repressions during the fifteenth century were forcedly converted to Christianity, as

28 TK XLVI, 21–24. 29 For a more general discussion of the early waves of Sephardic immigration to Crete, see Rena Lauer, ‘Cretan Jews and the First Sephardic Encounter in the Fifteenth Century’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 27 (2012), 129–40.

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well as their descendants who continued to live in the original homeland after the expulsions of 1492/1496. They soon began to be seen as a distinct community by the Christian majority, suspected as possible ‘Judaisers’ and indeed, they often practised Judaism in secret. During the sixteenth century they became the target of increasing hostility and many of them were forced to exile, where they usually openly returned to Judaism and sought to join local Jewish communities. Those, in their turn, were often hesitant to embrace the re-converted Jews and viewed their religious sincerity with suspicion not dissimilar to that which the ‘anusim’ had suffered by their Christian neighbours in Spain (without the associate threat of violent persecution). The three documents in Takkanot Kandiyah, a communal statute issued in Candia probably in 1568 and two Rabbinic responsa which support it, show how tumultuous the reaction of the host Jewish community could be, and how its leaders might react to the ensuing conflict. We learn from the statute that the refugees had been met with enmity by many in the community and routinely called ‘meshumadim’, a highly offensive term which brands the converted Jews as willing apostates, rather than victims of religious persecution.30 In stark contrast to the statute concerning Abraham Tofer, where the community’s representatives show a less than enthusiastic approach to the immigrants, in the 1560s decree they put their support unequivocally behind the refugees. Supported by the Rabbinic letters, the communal statute uncompromisingly declares such behaviour unacceptable and threatens excommunication to all who continue this practice. Both letters, sent to Candia from Egypt and (probably) the Land of Israel, express the highest indignation over the situation and condemn the wrongdoers as ‘wicked men and sinners in the eyes of the Lord, those who sow discord in the midst of our people’.31 Accordingly, the communal statute forbids the continued use of the offensive words under the harsh penalty of excommunication: ‫ארור הוא בלילה‬, ‫ארור הוא ביום‬, ‫בעולם הזה ובעולם הבא‬, ‫יהיה מוחרם ומנודה לשמים ולבריות‬ .‫ומחה ה ‘את שמו מתחת השמים‬, ‫והבדילו ה ‘לרעה מכל שבטי ישראל‬, ‫לא יאבה ה ‘סלוח לו‬, ([Any transgressor] shall be expelled and excluded from Heaven and from the fellowship of Creation, in this world and in the world to come, and a curse shall be upon him day and night. May the Lord not vouchsafe to forgive him, but banish him from all tribes of Israel in payment for his evil deeds, and may He erase the transgressor’s name from the face of the Earth).32 What may on the surface appear as an overreaction to the use of somewhat stronger language is in fact an expression of the deepest concern for preserving the social fabric of the community so that it may fulfil one of its basic functions, i.e. to provide basic security for practising Jewish faith. The statute’s authors clearly show that they see themselves as the natural protectors of those who seek refuge in order to lead Jewish lives. We should by no means romanticize the authors’ actions or overlook the fact that here, too, a strong pragmatic element is present: a community torn by violent 30 See TK CXII–CXIV. 31 TK CXIV, 5–6: ‫אנשים רעים וחטאים לה' מאוד מכרעי עמנו‬. 32 TK CXIV, 11–13.

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internal struggles with presumably a significant section of its members effectively ostracized is undoubtedly far more difficult to manage than one in which a basic level of calm and unity is secured. It is also telling that the penalty of excommunication is here used as a prospective sanction, not a punishment for offences already committed, and the community’s leaders show more interest in improvement of the situation than in retribution. These sixteenth-century documents show persuasively that despite a certain level of protectionism and conservative preference for the established communal order which had traditionally formed part of the Candiot community’s ethos, its leaders were prepared to go against the current of popular sentiments when they deemed it their moral, religious, and political duty.

‘The Other Holy Community’ in Venetian Corfu I shall end this survey of Jewish communal takkanot from the late medieval and early modern Mediterranean by returning to the text from the island of Corfu, which I cited at the very beginning, to give an example of the communal takkanot’s potential to inform us about the mutual rivalries and feeling of strangeness that could arise among various Jewish communities living side by side. Whereas the Candiot statutes were occupied with the wrongdoing of foreign individuals, in Corfu, likewise a Greek island controlled by the Venetian Republic, we witnessed what appears to be a more large-scale and possibly long-term disagreement between two whole communities. The short set of Corfiot statutes from spring 1642 was issued, as we saw, by the leaders of the island’s Italian-speaking community, but with the aspiration to speak for the city’s Jewish population as a whole. The preserved text contains twelve relatively short decrees, half of which concern particularities of marital arrangements, with a heavy emphasis on the transparency of marriage arrangements and the conduct of engaged couples before the marriage. This specific problem is dealt with in some detail, and relative strictness, forbidding betrothed couples from visiting each other’s house or, in the last month before the marriage, even from meeting unaccompanied at any place. A later item pronounces a ban against Jewish women hiring themselves out as professional mourners at Jewish or Christian funerals. There are also more general arrangements, for example exhorting women to dress modestly and ‘not in the Gentile fashion’,33 and encouraging the terminally ill to confess their sins before the hour of their death comes. As we saw in the above cited excerpt from the takkanot’s introduction, the text reveals internal frictions within the community, the ambitions and modus operandi of the community’s leaders and their approach to the state authorities. When the Italian Jewish leaders approached the elders of the Romaniot Jews on the island, they were surprised by the ‘other community’s’, as they were pleased to call it, refusal to accept

33 The Hebrew expression ‫( םיוגה גהנמכ‬lit. ‘as is the custom of the nations’) uses the traditional reference to non-Jews, belonging to the ‘nations of the Earth’, as opposed to the sons of Israel.

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the proposed takkanot as binding. The reaction of the Italian community’s leaders shows their self-confident persuasion that it is they who were entitled to speak and act for the island’s Jewry as a whole. Accordingly, they show a keen sense of practical political dealings with those in power. Having met with the refusal of the ‘other’, or Greek, community to join them in a co-ordinate action, the elders turned directly to the Venetian authorities: ‫כשמענו את הדבר הזה קמנו ונתעודד כיד ה’ הטובה עלינו להלוך ולילות אילוסאריסימו‬ ‫ריגימנטו יר”ה ולהתנפל לפניהם יתפייסו לכתוב ולחתום תית שולי ההסכמה […] כדי להקים‬ ‫[…] ההסכמה הקדומה מחודשת כדי שיהיה לה כח רשות‬ (Having heard that, we stirred ourselves, and, the good hand of the Lord laying upon us, turned to the ‘illustrissimo regimento’, hastened to fall upon our faces before them and persuade them to give a written and sealed affirmation to the tenor of this statute, to give the ancient ordinance authority).34 Two interesting points may be gleaned from this brief paragraph. Firstly, the set of decrees claims to be a renewal of an ‘ancient’ legal arrangement, thus making a claim for legitimacy by renewing an implicitly better state of affairs, irrespective of the fact that some of the specific decrees are clearly immediate reactions to specific problems bothering the community at the time of writing (a conservative argument often found in other communal takkanot as well). Secondly, we see that, when attempts to achieve an agreement on a policy binding for the whole community, the Italian Jewish community did not hesitate to take a unilateral step and approach the Venetian administration of Corfu directly, perhaps taking advantage of their linguistic proximity and better knowledge of the ‘Italian ways’. Although the text does not explicitly mention whether their wish was granted, it is plausible to assume it was, because many of the provisions given in the Corfiot takkanot (such as marrying without a sufficient number of witnesses) are made punishable not only by public naming and shaming of the culprit or, in extreme cases, excommunication, but also by financial sanctions, which in the context of Venetian Republic the Jewish community could hardly impose without the consent of the government. It would be a fruitful topic for a further research to examine the reasons why the Italian-speaking community in Corfu seems to have dominated over the Romaniots (if it indeed was the case, as our text seems to suggest), while in Crete the Graecophone Jews remained throughout the Venetian period the cultural hegemon of the community, to whose customs and language the Jewish newcomers of other traditions seem to have assimilated. In any case, the difference in situations in both Venetian possessions shows us that no segment of the Jewish community had a guaranteed privileged position or was immune to the danger of becoming the ‘internal other’ in the eyes of their fellow Jews, simply because it belonged to a specific cultural tradition.

34 Finkelstein, Jewish Self-Government, p. 316.

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Conclusion A shared motif in the three sets of communal ordinances we examined is the a priori wariness demonstrated by the established, culturally advanced Jewish community towards their Jewish neighbours of a different background, which, however, was not necessarily tantamount to open hostility. When we consider the Sephardic immigrants in the late fifteenth-century Morocco, the indigenous Greek-speaking community in Crete, or the Italian community in seventeenth-century Corfu, we observe that their leaders were acutely aware that the mixed character of the Jewish population presented them with a challenge regarding the internal unity of their communities and preserving the communal identity (as the leaders understood it). In this article, I tried to present the genre of takkanot ha-kahal as an historical source with great potential to shed new light on the functioning of the early modern Jewish communal autonomy. The three sets of communal takkanot from various areas of the Mediterranean world offer us an insight into the various impacts that inner diversity had on the social and religious life in the Jewish communities. The communal leaders could use the medium of takkanot ha-kahal as a means of reinforcing the institutional distinctness of the immigrant community from the older Jewish population, without openly antagonizing it, as the Moroccan example shows. On the other hand, the Cretan texts concerning Abraham Tofer and other ‘newcomers who know not our ways’ shows that open antagonism, too, had its place among the tools Jewish elders used to enhance the social cohesion in their community, as it showed the ‘established’ Jewish population the perceived worth of their shared identity. However, this antagonism did know its boundaries, and we saw that the Cretan elders could intervene with great fervour on behalf of ‘the other Jews’, if they sensed that the newcomers had become the target of unacceptable discrimination, as was the case of the ‘anusim’ immigrants to Crete. In such cases, the elders’ allegiance to the unity of the people of Israel, and sense of duty towards the newcomers’ physical and spiritual well-being, overweighed the immediate discomfort caused by their presence in the midst of the indigenous community. Lastly, the cited texts show us also the potential of the takkanot ha-kahal texts to inform us about details of political struggles between various fractions of communal representatives, in which some of the actors were able and prepared to exploit their own cultural affinity with the Christian government, using ‘othering’ strategies not only towards individuals, but a whole community, as it happened in Venetian-ruled Corfu. As the editors of the present volume argue in the introductory paper, trying to tackle the elusive notion of ‘Otherness’ when applied to premodern realities is a difficult business. They rightly point out that constituting ‘the Other’ in the eyes of the majority society is not so much a matter of ‘objective reality’ but rather a role to which one is assigned. The texts discussed in this paper provide us with a valuable opportunity to evaluate what ‘Otherness’ could mean for a particular minority within the medieval and early modern society that so often has been the target of ‘othering’ strategies by others. The cited texts, however, show a more nuanced

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and multi-layered reality, a world in which the various Jewish communities appear as dynamic, inwardly diverse and hierarchically structured societies that not only become ‘Others for the others’ but can (and perhaps must) just as readily identify ‘Others of their own’, that is, among themselves. As my texts testify, these ‘Others’ can be found not only in the non-Jewish world, but within the House of Israel itself — thus pointing out the importance of bearing in mind the possibility of the term being related to the ‘known Others’ as well as the ‘unknown’. Furthermore, ‘othering’ can far too easily be confused with social marginalization of the weaker by the stronger members. While this can, of course, be the case also in the encounter with the ‘inner Other’ within Jewish society, we have witnessed the opposite in the shape of the protection of the forcedly baptized Sephardic refugees in Crete by the local Jewish elites. The texts from Corfu and Maghreb also showed a rather different facet of coming to terms with the ‘Other’ than the familiar clash between a privileged ‘Self ’ and a disadvantaged ‘Other’. What we witness in both cases is a negotiation between two segments of Jewish population, approaching the other as a power to be reckoned with, not necessarily hostile but nevertheless a potential source of uneasiness. The setting of these internal encounters within a minority society presents us with new challenges which offer possible new insight into hitherto understudied dimensions of ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages. It is my hope to have shown that using one type of such specifically Jewish texts, such as the communal takkanot, has revealed interesting and insightful information about the issues that could become major concerns within the community, and specifically on how those in the position of authority in the Jewish community related to the practical and moral dimensions of their office vis-à󠅛-vis Jews of a different cultural and/or linguistic background. We have seen that the texts related to the management of Jewish communities can have much to say about the frequently overlooked topic of the inner diversity within the Jewish community and the mutual encounter of its various sections, caused by historical events that led them to share new homes alongside one another.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Jerusalem, Jewish National and University Library, MS Heb 28°7203 Primary Sources Sefer Hataqanot: Spanish and Portuguese Jews in Morocco (1492–1753), ed. by Shalom Bar Asher ( Jerusalem: Academon, 1990) TK: Statuta Iudaeorum Candiae eorumque memorabilia, ed. by Elias S. Artom and Umbertus M. D. Cassuto ( Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1943)

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Secondary Works Baron, Salo W., ‘Ghetto and Emancipation’, in The Menorah Treasury, ed. by Leo W. Schwarz (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1964), pp. 50–63 Borýsek, Martin, ‘The Jews of Venetian Candia: The Challenges of External Influences and Internal Diversity as Reflected in Takkanot Kandiyah’, Al-Masāq, 26 (2014), 241–66 Chazan, Robert, The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom 1000–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) Elon, Menachem, The Principles of Jewish Law ( Jerusalem: Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1975) Elukin, Jonathan, Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relation in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007) Finkelstein, Louis, Jewish Self-Government in the Middle Ages (New York: Philipp Feldman, 1964) Gotzmann, Andreas, Jüdische Autonomie in der frühen Neuzeit. Recht und Gemeinschaft im deutschen Judentum (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008) Hundert, Gershon David, The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatów in the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1991) Katz, Jacob, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000) Lauer, Rena, ‘Cretan Jews and the First Sephardic Encounter in the Fifteenth Century’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 27 (2012), 129–40 Lorberbaum, Menachem, Politics and the Limits of Law: Secularizing the Political in Medieval Jewish Thought (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001) Marcus, Simon, ‘The Composition of the Jewish Population in Crete during the Venetian Rule’, Sinai, 60 (1967), 63–76 [in Hebrew] Menocal, María Rosa, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002) Nachalon, Aharon, The ‘kahal’ and its Enactments in the Geonic Period ( Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2001) [in Hebrew] Rohde, Dorothea, Zwischen Individuum und Stadtgemeinde. Die Integration von ‘collegia’ in Hafenstädten (Mainz: Verlag Antike, 2012) Yuval, Israel, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley: California University Press, 2006) Zunz, Leopold, Etwas über Rabbinische Literatur (Berlin: Maurer, 1818)

Clemens Gantner

Between a Rock and a Hard Place? South-Italian Portrayals of Franks and Byzantines in the Ninth Century*

This contribution aims to take a closer look at important actors in the political arena in Southern Italy who were perceived as outsiders in the region. Special attention will be given to Emperor Louis II of Italy (840–875) and his Byzantine counterpart Basil I (867–886), who were rather prominent figures in the historiographical accounts of the day. The article will not merely show the depiction of these Others in the texts. It will rather examine how the dynamic concepts of Othering and Sameing worked in them. The terminology employed here has been developed in the context of postcolonial studies and a short introduction is necessary in order to explain how it is applied in the particular case here.

Othering and Sameing as Concepts for Medieval Studies Postcolonial theory is still a relatively young theory: though its influences go back to early twentieth-century philosophical currents, its actual origin was the work of Edward W. Said, the world-famous Palestinian-American scholar.1 In the wake of his work, Gayatri Spivak2 and Homi K. Bhabha3 have also contributed considerably to the development of this theoretical approach. It is certainly no coincidence that

* I have received considerable advice and input for this contribution by Walter Pohl, Kordula Wolf and Sophie Gruber. The article also incorporates feedback at the Leeds IMC 2017 by Luigi Andrea Berto and Rosamond McKitterick. Many thanks to all of them. 1 Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003, 1st edn 1978). 2 Most well-known work: Gayatri C. Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271–313. 3 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). His most important input to research were probably his concepts of ‘mimicry’ (Bhabha, The Location of Culture, pp. 121–31) and ‘hybridity’ (Bhabha, The Location of Culture, pp. 112–14). Clemens Gantner  •  ([email protected]) works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. His research is focused on Carolingian Italy and cultural contact around the Mediterranean. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 93–115 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123587

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all these key researchers in postcolonial studies did most of their scholarly work at the interactions of literature theory and philosophy, not least influenced by Marxist theory — Antonio Gramsci’s work was often used.4 Said’s approach, especially, has received some spirited criticism, opposition, and even refutation — and some of the criticism is certainly justified.5 Notwithstanding, the theory has been taken up by historians — and even in Medieval Studies.6 In our field, postcolonial approaches are used for various purposes, but most commonly with the goal of shedding light on interactions between in-groups and out-groups, hence about various forms of the Other. And it is precisely in this field where the approaches of some postcolonial thinkers are very helpful indeed. This contribution will draw upon Bhabha’s ideas on ambivalence and hybridity, but even more upon Spivak’s theory of ‘Othering’ and its subsequently developed counterpart ‘Sameing’. It has to be conceded, however, that Spivak’s approaches do not form the centre of her research interest but can rather be seen as by-products in her bigger scheme.7 All these ideas need to be adapted when applied in this contribution to early medieval studies.8 The biggest problem with the use of postcolonial issues in Medieval Studies lies already in the core elements of our modern models: the theory was developed against the background of strong (western/European/etc) dominating forces, often seen as imperial as in the British Empire, opposed to colonized people. Even though Spivak and Bhabha, especially, have always cautioned their readers against this ‘bipolar’ model,9 many historians have nevertheless actively sought out cases where comparable relationships can be found, or, more often, attempted to construct such relations.10 The sources from the Middle Ages, however, more often than not prevent such a comparison, especially with the British Empire as is frequently done. These realities were far more complex, with a more equal distribution of power resources. Central Italy, for example, was the home of the former colonizing culture for most of the Mediterranean area. On the other hand, large parts of the peninsula were dominated at least in a cultural sense by the new centre of the Roman Empire in

4 Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere. Edizione critica dell’Istituto Gramsci, ed. by V. Gerratana, Collana NUE, 164, 4 vols (Torino: Enaudi, 1975). 5 See for example the criticism regarding detail by Daniel Martin Varisco, Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007). Consider also the long bitter and publicly fought controversy between Said and the Princeton Orientalist Bernard Lewis. 6 See the journal ‘Postmedieval’, or, for example, the contributions to The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (New York: Palgrave, 2000). 7 See the pages on Spivak in Maria Do Mar Castro-Varela and Nikita Dhawan, Postkoloniale Theorie. Eine kritische Einführung (Bielefeld: transcript, 2015), pp. 151–218, where this part of her theory only figures on p. 164. 8 See Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Introduction: Midcolonial’, in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, pp. 1–17; Clemens Gantner, Freunde Roms und Völker der Finsternis. Die päpstliche Konstruktion von Anderen im 8. und 9. Jahrhundert (Wien: Böhlau, 2014), pp. 48–57. 9 Castro-Varela and Dhawan, Postkoloniale Theorie, esp. pp. 153–55 and 222–29. 10 For excellent as well as less suitable examples, see the collected volume The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. by Cohen.

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the east, a development starting in the fourth century.11 Also in postcolonial theory, Bhabha has most explicitly broken up the dichotomies that are still prolonged in the use of postcolonial theory by medievalists and historians in general. There is no absolute colonial power and subsequently no absolute colonized role in his theory. Rather, there is always a strong ambivalence in the attitude of both ‘sides’ towards each other, so much so that this leads to forms of ‘hybridity’ that make it impossible altogether to distinguish two clearly separated groups.12 In this contribution, I want to take a closer look less at the status of otherness but rather at the dynamic process of ‘Othering’, in which the perception of others is one facet among many. Admittedly, as in all approaches developed in the postcolonial framework, ‘Othering’, too, has first and foremost colonial and postcolonial modern societies in its focus,13 which means that the basic concept needs to be adapted to the Middle Ages. For our subject, we must define two modes or representations of otherness in our sources: 1. the Others, as they were ‘really’ perceived by our authors and their environment and how they were interpreted using the tools at hand — mostly older texts, religious, historiographical and ethnographical, as well as personal knowledge; 2. the purposeful construction and manipulation of the image from number 1, directly by our authors or the people working with their text. Both categories are not easy to distinguish and they are not mutually exclusive. The second category proves to be the easier one to handle analytically. This article accordingly focusses on this second form, which can again be divided into two phenomena: 2a. Othering: Alterity is emphasized, puffed up or, in the most extreme case, invented. It is in any case employed purposefully, though the goal varies. In many cases it will be employed to estrange an ‘Other’, a family, a kin group or a ‘gens’. In other cases, it may mainly serve a narrative purpose, or be employed to provide an ‘I’ or ‘We’ with a stronger profile. 2b. Sameing:14 The opposite strategy. An ‘Other’ (perceived as such either by the author or his peers) is made the same by various rhetorical strategies. Differences are downplayed to create a sense of community. This is often 11 Gantner, Freunde Roms, pp. 68–70, on the example of the city of Rome. 12 See Bhabha, The Location of Culture, esp. pp. 112–14. The basis for hybridity lies in mimicry (Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p. 87) and in ambivalence (in Bhabha’s sense rather the non-existent separation between colonizers and colonized). See Castro-Varela and Dhawan, Postkoloniale Theorie, pp. 222–37. 13 Gayatri C. Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Towards a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 113. Castro-Varela and Dhawan, Postkoloniale Theorie, p. 164. 14 Terminology follows Mohja Kahf, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), p. 53. For a concept of Sameing, albeit without using the terminology, see Andreas Ackermann, ‘Das Eigene und das Fremde: Hybridität, Vielfalt und Kulturtransfers’, in Friedrich Jäger and Jörg Rüsen, eds, Handbuch der Kulturwissenschaften, vol. iii (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2004), pp. 139–50 (p. 147: translation between cultures).

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applied in combination with Othering of an out-group in order to accentuate the alienating effect of the latter strategy.15 In both cases, it needs to be possible within the prevailing discourse to define the object of Sameing or Othering as an Other in the first place.16 In the case of Sameing, it is even necessary for an Other to be perceived as such already, otherwise the act would be futile, even unthinkable. We have to be cautious on several levels though: our medieval texts frequently do not offer a clear definition of the persons and groups they describe. Often, it is likewise not clear, for what purpose a text or a section of it was written. Many authors do not define Others as such, and their texts do not offer consistent images of these others either. The Otherness we encounter in our sources is never an absolute: a person or a group of people could be perceived as Other under one aspect, whereas they could be seen as belonging to the in-group under another.17 A good example for this might be the ‘Greeks’ living in Rome between the seventh and the ninth century: from a cultural point of view, in which language could have been the most important marker, they were clearly part of a minority in Rome. They were perceived as outsiders and, even if they had been born in Rome, as foreigners. From a theological and religio-political viewpoint, some were the most Roman of all Romans, however, and were presented as champions of Roman orthodoxy.18 This and many examples that follow show us, that Otherness — similar to its positive form, identity — be it ascribed or not, very much depended on the situation. Otherness thus had different degrees of salience — and various aspects of Otherness likewise had changing degrees of salience, always depending on the situation, context, and the viewpoint of the author.19 What an author could write then also had to fit the reigning discourse, an unwritten set of rules governing what could be said or not and even what could be thought or was unthinkable.20 Our sources also reflect this: Others are not very often clearly defined as such; they are seldom called aliens, strangers, and so on in a generalizing sense, but are rather identified by some more precise markers, most often by their ethnic or regional

15 On the above, see Gantner, Freunde Roms, pp. 48–59, esp. 56–57. 16 Gantner, Freunde Roms, p. 51. See Walter Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification. A Methodological Profile’, in Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 1–64, esp. p. 29, for a good and concise explanation of the concept, and, of course, Michel Foucault, L’ordre du discours (Paris: Gallimard, 1971). On Foucault’s theories, see also Sophie Gruber’s contribution in this volume. 17 See the introduction to this volume for a very comprehensive range of possible forms of otherness. 18 Gantner, Freunde Roms, esp. pp. 88–100. 19 Walter Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies’, pp. 1–64 (esp. pp. 51–52): Pohl’s findings on ethnic identity apply in the case of otherness as well. 20 Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies’, p. 51: ‘A complex and, to a large extent, implicit set of rules governs the way in which members of a given society can decide, not only what is true or false, but also what is possible or impossible, what exists and what is an illusion, what can be said and what cannot, what is desirable and what should be disapproved’. See also above, n. 16.

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origin (a Frank, a Greek, or a person from Naples or Constantinople), but also by other elements of distinction, like office or status (e.g. monks and secular clergy).21 Otherness, apart from all these admittedly fuzzy characteristics, also worked on a scale. An Other could be closer or farther from a speaker’s in-group. This is the key element in the concept of Otherness employed here. It leads us back to the dynamic elements described, Othering and Sameing: only if we take degrees of Otherness into account, we see the shift brought about in and sometimes by our sources. Othering can therefore be found in our sources in every narrative, every choice of terminology, but also every act reported, which pushes an individual or a group (defined as such by the author/speaker and by the discourse he was working in) further away from the in-group on our imagined scale. Sameing would then be the opposite process, pulling an Other closer to the in-group by downplaying or negating difference.

Southern Italy in the Early Middle Ages – A Contact Zone For a long time now, Southern Italian affairs in the ninth and early tenth century have been viewed mainly under two aspects: First, many publications have dealt with the big struggle for the region between Christians and Muslims. Especially the Emirate of Bari has inspired researchers for centuries — and rightly so, given that it is a quite well-documented case in Latin and to a certain extent also in Arabic sources, even though one has to concede that other Muslim strongholds in the region, like Taranto, may have actually been more important politically and strategically.22 Second, there are the internal animosities. And indeed, the history of the region was one of constant strife between the local potentates, which is no wonder, given that these local powers consisted of up to three Lombard principalities, Benevento, Salerno, and Capua, several ex-Byzantine city-states, such as Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta and, as we have already seen, two Muslim city-states. By the eighth century, the dominant power in the region was the Lombard duchy of Benevento. After the

21 On many of these markers of distinction see Walter Pohl, ‘Introduction’, in Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800, ed. by Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz, The Transformation of the Roman World, 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 1–15; and Walter Pohl, ‘Telling the Difference: Signs of Ethnic Identity’, in Strategies of Distinction, ed. by Pohl and Reimitz, pp. 17–69. 22 Kordula Wolf and Klaus Herbers, eds, Southern Italy as Contact Area and Border Region during the Early Middle Ages: Religious-Cultural Heterogeneity and Competing Powers in Local, Transregional and Universal Dimensions, Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 80 (Köln: Böhlau, 2017); Kordula Wolf, ‘Auf dem Pfade Allahs. Ğihād und muslimische Migrationen auf dem süditalienischen Festland (9.–11. Jahrhundert)’, in Transkulturelle Verflechtungen im mittelalterlichen Jahrtausend. Europa, Ostasien, Afrika, ed. by Michael Borgolte and Matthias M. Tischler (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2012), pp. 120–66. Kordula Wolf and Marco di Branco, ‘Terra di conquista? I musulmani in Italia meridionale nell’epoca aghlabita (184/800–269/909)’, in ‘Guerra santa’ e conquiste islamiche nel Mediterraneo, VII–XI secolo, ed. by Marco di Branco and Kordula Wolf (Roma: Viella, 2014), pp. 125–65. See Giosuè Musca, L’emirato di Bari, 847–871 (Bari: Dedalo, 2nd edn, 1978, 1st edn 1967).

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hostile takeover of the Lombard kingdom in the north by Charlemagne and his Franks in 774 and the following years Benevento gradually became an independent ‘principality’ under its rulers Arichis II (758–787) and Grimoald III (788–806). In 817, Sico, the provincial official (‘gastaldus’) of Acerenza, launched a rebellion against Grimoald IV (806–817) and took over the principate. He ruled until 832 and was succeeded by his son Sicard. Sicard’s reign is among the better documented in the South. He was in near permanent conflict with many of his neighbouring city-states.23 The armistice called Pactum Sicardi from 836 could not stop these animosities.24 After Sicard captured Amalfi, a small but important harbour city south of Naples in 838, he fell victim to a plot organized by the Amalfitans. This caused a civil war in the principate, fought between his formerly exiled brother Siconulf, who held the second fortified city, Salerno, and one of the conspirators, Radelchis, who resided in Benevento. This war raged on for nearly a decade until the principate was divided in 848 more or less evenly between the rivals, with both sides keeping their capital city. During the war, both contenders had constantly enlisted the help of Saracen warriors, who had not only devastated the land, but also conquered two significant harbours.25 A group obviously under the control of the Aghlabid emirate in North Africa took Taranto in 842. By 847 at the latest, Bari was under the control of a group of more independent Berber military entrepreneurs.26 They had come to stay; both strongholds became an important factor in ninth-century south-Italian politics, dominated by violence throughout the century.27 Both Muslim strongholds had fallen under the control of the Byzantine Empire by the end of the century, however. The East Romans had in fact never really ceased to be a political factor in the Italian South, large parts of which showed strong influence of Greek culture anyway. The Byzantines had entertained excellent relations with Grimoald III at the beginning of the century. They had then lost their grip on the region for a few decades: we know of no significant support for the coastal cities in their war against Sicard, for example, and neither do we have any information that the Byzantines even tried to influence the Beneventan civil war that ensued, even though this would have been a good opportunity to regain influence in the region. The reason for this was quite certainly that the ruling Amorian dynasty had their hands full with their core area in the east; in 838, even their home city Amorion was 23 Barbara M. Kreutz, Before the Normans: Southern Italy in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), pp. 18–20. 24 On the document, see Jean-Marie Martin, Guerre, accords et frontiers en Italie méridionale pendant la haut Moyen Âge. Pacta Liburia, Divisio principatus Beneventani et autres actes (Roma: École français de Rome, 2005), esp. pp. 185–200. 25 The term ‘Saracens’ will be employed in this contribution for individuals or groups described as such in medieval Latin sources. Most Saracens will have been Muslims by the ninth century. In the case of Southern Italy, Arabs and Berbers will have been present. See John V. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). 26 Musca, Emirato di Bari, is still the classic literature; see Kreutz, Before the Normans, pp. 20–27; see more recently Wolf, ‘Auf dem Pfade’, esp. pp. 136–44. 27 Christopher Heath, ‘Third/Ninth-century Violence: “Saracens” and Sawdān in Erchempert’s Historia’, Al-Masāq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean, 27.1 (2015), 24–40.

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destroyed by the Abbasid army.28 The ‘Greeks’, however, were back in the game in Southern Italy by the late 860s, and they were to remain a force to be reckoned with until the Norman conquests. In the meantime, they were forced to let another strong player take the field: the Franks. The Franks had taken over the Lombard kingdom and, with it, large parts of the Italian peninsula in 774. Charlemagne and his son and sub-king Pippin of Italy had failed to get the South under control, just as most kings of the Lombards had before them. The early decades of the ninth century saw a diminution of interest on the part of the Franks.29 It was re-ignited by a strengthened ducal family in the duchy of Spoleto. The duchy of Spoleto had traditionally been strong in the South, especially so under the Guidones, who had been instated by Emperor Lothar I, who ruled Italy for his father Louis the Pious from 817 onwards. Guy I (842–c. 859) was an important power broker in southern affairs from the beginning of his office. He may have been granted his office with that very objective, given that he was married to a sister of the late Sicard and the pretender to the throne Siconulf.30 In 844, Emperor Lothar organized a military expedition that was first directed to Rome, but quite probably also had the goal of intervening in Benevento.31 The expedition was led by the young sub-king of Italy Louis II (840–875), Lothar’s oldest son. The intervention was bought off by Siconulf, who came to Rome together with Guy of Spoleto, submitted to Louis II and paid a large amount of silver to cover due tribute for the past decades.32 However, the big expedition from the north was only postponed. In 848, in the aftermath of the 846 Saracen raid of Rome, a far more sizeable army of Franks from Italy and north of the Alps was indeed sent south. Its objective was to bring order to the region; Emperor Lothar already envisioned a division of the principate in the capitulary he issued in spring 847, which ordered a military intervention to be made in Benevento.33 The capitulary still left room for a solution by negotiation. Guy of Spoleto and several other Italian potentates were charged with the task, but 28 For the Byzantine side: J. Signes Codoñer, The Emperor Theophilos and the East, 829–842: Court and Frontier in Byzantium during the Last Phase of Iconoclasm (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 323–28. 29 See Rudolf Schieffer, ‘Die Politik der Karolinger in Süditalien und im Mittelmeerraum’, in Southern Italy as Contact Area, ed. by Wolf and Herbers, pp. 65–78 (pp. 65–71). 30 Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri, ‘Guido’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 61 (2004). Online: http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/guido_res-6761ef83–87ee-11dc-8e9d–0016357eee51_ (Dizionario-Biografico) (retrieved 11 September 2018). 31 Werner Ohnsorge, ‘Das Kaiserbündnis von 842–844 gegen die Sarazenen. Datum, Inhalt und politische Bedeutung des Kaiserbriefes aus St Denis’, Archiv für Diplomatik, Schriftengeschichte, Siegel- und Wappenkunde 1 (1955), 88–131 (pp. 126–27 with n. 139); Schieffer, ‘Die Politik’, and Clemens Gantner, ‘A King in Training? Louis II of Italy at Rome in 844’, in After Charlemagne: Carolingian Italy and its Rulers, ed. by Clemens Gantner and Walter Pohl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 164–81. 32 Gantner, ‘A King in Training?’. Schieffer, ‘Die Politik’, pp. 71–72. 33 Tommi P. Lankila, ‘The Saracen Raid of Rome in 846: An Example of Maritime Ghazw’, in Travelling through Time: Essays in Honour of Kaj Öhrnberg, ed. by Sylvia Akar, Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, and Inka Nokso-Koivisto (Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society, 2013), pp. 93–120; Clemens Gantner, ‘The Saracen Attack on Rome in 846 and its Impact on the Italian Carolingian Empire’, in Social Cohesion and its Limits, ed. by Walter Pohl and Andreas Fischer (in press, Wien: Austrian Academy Press).

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their efforts seem to have been in vain. Hence, Benevento was taken by siege in the summer of 848. The captured Saracens were put to the sword and Radelchis was forced to accept the division of the principality. The Divisio ducatus Beneventani was drawn up in due course, most likely in the second half of the same year. Officially, as a result of a grant by Radelchis, who was after all lord of Benevento, to his rival Siconulf, the principality was practically split in half.34 Salerno got the less dangerous and thereby ‘better’ half, which both reflects Radelchis’ failure to agree to a peace during the negotiations 847 and the military situation in the South before Benevento’s fall.35 Emperor Lothar, and after him his son Louis II, were now the protectors of the preeminent southern monasteries Montecassino and San Vincenzo al Volturno. In the principalities themselves, too, the suzerainty of the Franks was recognized and felt at times. In 852, Louis II launched a limited campaign against Bari — and nearly took it.36 And in 865/866, a large Frankish expedition went south once again, this time in order to conquer Bari, which actually fell in early 871.37 It was during this phase, when Louis II was at the brink of taking control of the South, that the Byzantines returned to the scene. At first, the new emperor Basil I (d. 886), who had murdered and succeeded Michael III in 867, cooperated with Louis at the siege of Bari. But soon there were discords, culminating in a diplomatic fallout, about which we are informed in a letter from Louis II himself, preserved as a copy in the Chronicle of Salerno.38 This letter was written at the moment of triumph, when it seemed as if the establishment of Carolingian overlordship throughout the whole of the South was just a matter of time. In late summer 871, Louis was taken prisoner by Adelchis of Benevento (854–878), who led a rebellion backed by many southern potentates. Louis was set free after some 40 days, but never regained his old strength in the South again.39 The vacuum he left was then filled by ‘the Greeks’. In 876, Bari was taken by a Byzantine force, and in 882, Taranto also fell to the eastern empire. Gradually, the Byzantine empire expanded in the district (‘thema’) that was now called Longobardia. Between 892 and 895, a Byzantine official even ruled in

34 Divisio principatus Beneventani, ed. by Jean–Marie Martin, Guerre, accords et frontières en Italie méridionale pendant le haut Moyen Âge. Pacta de Liburia, Divisio principatus Beneventani, Sources et documents d’histoire du Moyen Âge, 7 (Roma: École française de Rome, 2005), pp. 201–17; Regesta imperii, vol. 1,3,1, ed. by Herbert Zielinski (Köln: Böhlau, 1991), no. 55 (p. 22): Louis was personally present when the document was drawn up, hence the dating. 35 Kreutz, Before the Normans, pp. 32–34. Note: The financial revenue will have been rather equally distributed. But Benevento got the far more dangerous share. 36 Musca, L’emirato, pp. 127–32. See Clemens Gantner, ‘“Our common enemies shall be annihilated!” How Louis II’s Relations with the Byzantine Empire Shaped his Policy in Southern Italy’, in Southern Italy as Contact Area, ed. by Wolf and Herbers, pp. 295–314. 37 Kreutz, Before the Normans, pp. 40–45. 38 Chronicon Salernitanum, ed. by Ulla Westerbergh, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Studia Latina Stockholmiensia, 3 (Lund: Almquist & Wiksell, 1956), pp. 107–21. 39 See Thomas Granier, ‘La captivité de l’empereur Louis II à Bénévent (13 août – 17 septembre 871) dans les sources des IXe–Xe siècles’, in L’écriture de l’histoire, de la fausse nouvelle au récit exemplaire, ed. by Claude Carozzi and Huguette Taviani-Carozzi (Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Universite de Provence, 2007), pp. 13–39.

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Benevento, which shows the dramatic power shift that had occurred. The Byzantines were clearly a power to be reckoned with for the coming century.40 The Franks and the Byzantines are the two forces I refer to in the title, the two outside Christian powers one could cooperate with and call upon in case of need, but one could equally also be at odds with. We will now have a look at how these outside forces and their respective narrative protagonists were seen in the historiographic sources from the region.41

The Franks and their Early Attempts to Dominate the South The first historian we have to look to for our period and region is Erchempert, a monk from Montecassino, who wrote a detailed and quite personal History of Southern Italy from the times of Arichis II (774–787), first prince of Benevento until the year 888/889, a text he called Historiola, little history. Erchempert was very critical of the state his region was in.42 He was also very critical of the Franks, who time and again tried to oust Arichis II and his immediate successors. In his chapter 6, Erchempert commented on the Frankish attacks on the Beneventan principality in the early ninth century: Charlemagne often approached Benevento now for battle, accompanied by his children whom he had already made kings and an immense procession of warriors; but God still cherished us and decided the issue on our behalf, so that Charlemagne had to turn back several times without glory after countless numbers of his men were destroyed by plague.43 Erchempert fully identifies with ‘his’ southern Lombards here and rejoices in the emperor’s withdrawal. He even has Grimoald III (788–806), Arichis’ son and heir, make the following statement before fighting against Charlemagne’s son Pippin of Italy: ‘Free and noble was I born of both parents; Free shall I always be, I believe, with God’s protection’.44 The early sections of the Historiola show us the clearest expressions of the Lombard identity of the Beneventan duchy and of course also of the author himself. It is no coincidence that this identity is clearly laid out against the background of a 40 Kreutz, Before the Normans, esp. pp. 62–67. 41 Southern Italy as Contact Area, ed. by Wolf and Herbers. 42 See Sophie Gruber’s contribution in this volume. On Erchempert, see also Walter Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung. Montecassino und die Gestaltung der langobardischen Vergangenheit, Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Ergänzungsband 39 (Wien: Oldenbourg, 2001); Luigi Andrea Berto, ‘Erchempert, a Reluctant Fustigator of His People: History and Ethnic Pride in Southern Italy at the End of the Ninth Century’, Mediterranean Studies, 20.2 (2012), 147–75. 43 Erchempert, c. 6, ed. by Berto, Erchemperto, Piccola Storia dei Longobardi di Benevento (Napoli: Liguori, 2014), pp. 92–93; ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards of Benevento: A Translation and Study of its Place in the Chronicle Tradition’, trans.by Joan Rowe Ferry (unpublished PhD, Rice University, 1995), p. 128. 44 Erchempert, c. 6, ed. by Berto, pp. 92–93; trans. by Ferry, p. 129.

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Frankish threat to the region, given that the Carolingians as representatives of the big hegemonial power were the logical foil against which to develop it. The Franks therefore at this point had to take the role of the dangerous Other, who threatened the freedom of Benevento. Charlemagne is not shown as the legitimate ruler of the South, even though both as king of the Lombards and as emperor of the West, and with the legal situation of Benevento as an old duchy subordinate to northern Lombard kingdom, northern onlookers would have seen things differently. The Franks are shown here as an outside aggressor instead, a quite clear sign of Othering, albeit a mild form, on the part of our author.

Louis II as Saviour in the ‘Historiola’ That was a quite stark contrast to Erchempert’s portrayal of Louis II. Louis had become king of Italy in 840, appointed already by his grandfather and senior emperor Louis the Pious (814–840). In 850, he had been crowned co-emperor of his father Lothar I (840–855), upon whose death five years later he became sole emperor of the West. Despite that, he could only directly rule the kingdom of Italy and small strips of land north of the Alps.45 Erchempert simply called Louis emperor (‘augustus’) when introducing him to his text in chapter 19.46 There, he gives the young Frank credit for killing Saracens at Benevento, which he had taken by siege in 848, and for ending the civil war amongst the southern Lombards by dividing the principality in the same year: Coming quickly, he [Louis] had all foreigners of profane race separated by force from the city and here killed by sword; and with all the Lombards present, he ordered the whole province of Benevento to be divided between Radelgis and Siconolf by even portions, under sworn oath.47 Erchempert excludes all previous history of the campaign of 848 from his text and does not link it with the Saracen attack on Rome either. He does not connect Louis with the Franks or Frankish overlordship in the north, but has him remain strangely aloof of factions. To the contrary, he introduces Louis as someone who is responsible for the South and who can be appealed to — in his case the appeal is attributed to the count of Capua, other south-Italian sources have other supplicants.48 Louis must

45 François Bougard, ‘Ludovico II’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 66 (2006), (accessed 6 September 2018). 46 Which has by the way led to erroneous dating of the events described there in much of the available modern literature, when really they all took place in 848, see Gantner, ‘The Saracen Attack’. Erchempert gets his chronology wrong here. 47 Erchempert, c. 19, ed. by Berto, p. 119; trans. by Ferry, p. 152 (modified according to Erchempert). 48 Erchempert, c. 19, ed. by Berto, p. 119; cf. John the Deacon, Gesta episcoporum Neapolitorum, c. 61, ed. by Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum (Hannover: Hahn, 1878)pp. 398–439 (p. 433), has Sergius I, ‘dux’ of Naples ask Louis for

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have commanded an army, which is not explicitly mentioned and not associated with the Franks. It is quite clear from the text that Louis ‘comes quickly’ from the outside, but our author strangely leaves open whence he actually came. The same holds true for the Gesta of the bishops of Naples, for example.49 Louis seems to have come back into the view of Erchempert and of most southern onlookers only much later, but then he re-appears like a bombshell. The years 866 to 871 saw Louis’ great south-Italian expedition, the biggest any Frank was ever to launch there and arguably the largest military operation the region had seen in centuries. The goal of the mission was to get the South under control and it seems to have been clear from the outset that this was not planned for only one campaigning season. We do have a document, a capitulary, transmitted from 865/866 that shows the general call to arms for all subjects of the emperor, though it does not explicitly state the size of the expedition, maybe as a precaution to avoid desertion or elusion.50 The sheer scope of the operation becomes clear from its initial development: this time around, Louis did not go directly for one city, unlike 848 and unlike 852, when he had tried and failed to re-take Bari.51 This time, in contrast, Louis got the south-Italian potentates in line first. He intervened in Capua and went as far south as Salerno, always offering a friendly solution but clearly demanding support for his campaign.52 Even then, campaigning against the Saracens proper took from 867 to February 871, when Bari was taken from its last amir, Sawdan, with the help of a Slavic fleet. But Louis stayed on in Italy in keeping with his project to get the whole region (possibly even Sicily) under control: we learn that Taranto was already held under siege and Apulia was largely under Frankish control. Louis himself still resided in Benevento, which, probably not without merit, was perceived by the local nobles as a claim to direct rule in the South. Prince Adelchis of Benevento thus became the leader of a rebellion. He took Louis captive and only released him after extracting an oath never to return south again. These actions caused a big scandal throughout Italy and the Frankish world, reactions and explanations are registered in nearly all sources dealing with the late-ninth-century Carolingians.53 Erchempert had his ideas about these matters. After summarizing the highlights, as it were, of the long expedition against Bari, he reports the grievous events afterwards. He found himself forced to sharpen his image of Louis, which is now surprisingly favourable: the emperor is called a ‘holy man’ and ‘the apparent saviour of the province

help against the Saracens, for example. 49 John, Gesta episcoporum Neapolitorum, c. 61, ed. by Waitz, p. 433. 50 Regesta imperii, 1,3,1, ed. by Zielinski, no. 249 (p. 104). See also Chronica Sancti Benedicti Casinensis, I, c. 3, ed. by Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum (Hannover: Hahn, 1878), pp. 467–88 (pp. 469–71). 51 On the latter, limited campaign, see Prudentius, Annales Bertiniani, a. 852, ed. by Félix Grat (Paris: Société de l’histoire de France, 1964), p. 65. See also Gantner, ‘“Our common enemies”’, pp. 312–13. 52 Regesta imperii, 1,3,1, ed. by Zielinski, nos 249–73 (pp. 105–13). 53 Granier, ‘La capitivité’.

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of Benevento’.54 Arguably, we have there the most positive characterization of any worldly potentate in the whole Historiola.55 In the same breath, intriguingly, the Franks are presented as having triggered the rebellion by harassing the poor Beneventans. The emperor stays aloof of these accusations at this point, however.56 It is only a little later in the chronicle, after Louis’ death (where he is again ‘of Divine memory’) is reported, that Erchempert felt the need to explain why such a good man had to fail in the end, at least in the South. He did this in a section that left no room for interpretation: Louis had been punished by God for two mistakes. The first one was Louis’ siege of Rome and of the pope in 864, including an unfortunate attack on a litany by some of his troops.57 We should note in passing that Erchempert was interpreting this event to the best of his abilities. In fact, the pope seems to have fulfilled most of Louis’ demands, and Louis seems to have had a very strong position in the city of Rome afterwards. The public reception, however, was indeed very negative everywhere outside of Louis’ core lands in northern Italy.58 The second mistake in Erchempert’s eyes was Louis sparing the life of Sawdan, the amir of Bari, in 871. Indeed, in many south-Italian sources, the Saracen leader is depicted as being the main instigator behind the insurrection.59 Erchempert, however, presented his interpretation at a predominantly moral level and stated that even a good man like Louis could be punished by God, just as the conspirators of the summer of 871 had been punished by a Saracen invasion soon thereafter. Thus, Erchempert’s assessment of Louis II is quite inconsistent. There may have been some time between the composition of the two chapters under study here, possibly the explanatory section was inserted as an afterthought on Louis’ time in the South. One could also argue, however, that Louis’ image always had to fit the narrative the author chose at various points, and thus at one time Louis needed to be a hero, whereas at another a different image would be opportune: Erchempert certainly used Louis II as a foil against which to measure the potentates of Southern

54 Erchempert, c. 34, ed. by Berto, pp. 142–43; trans. by Ferry, p. 178. Note that Ferry changes the sentence structure a lot in her rendering; she does convey the general sense of the section, however. We will return to this chapter below. 55 On this question, see also Sophie Gruber’s contribution in this volume. 56 Erchempert, c. 34, ed. by Berto, pp. 142–43. 57 Erchempert, c. 37, ed. by Berto, pp. 150–51. 58 The very negative account by Hincmar of Reims in the Annals of St Bertin has mostly been used by modern historians. See Hincmar, Annales Bertiniani, a. 864, ed. by Grat, pp. 104–16.; But at least one later source, the Libellus de imperatoria potestate, shows a very different picture. See Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma, ed. by Giuseppe Zucchetti, Il chronicon di Benedetto, Monaco di s. Andrea del Soratte e il Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma, Fonti per la storia d’Italia, 55 (Roma: Tipografia del Senato, 1920), pp. 189–210; See also Clemens Gantner, ‘Louis II and Rome: On the Relationship of the Carolingian Emperor of Italy with “his” Popes Nicholas I and Hadrian II’, in Through the Papal Lens: Shaping History and Memory in Late Antique and Early Medieval Rome, 300–900, ed. by Mark Humphries and Giorgia Vocino, Translated Texts for Historians Series (in press, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press). 59 Granier, ‘La Captivité’.

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Italy. The pious emperor was presented as flawed as well, yes, but still set a benchmark of good governance that the Lombard princes clearly failed to meet in our historian’s critical eye.60 Even in criticizing the emperor, Erchempert stays mild and seems to be looking honestly for an explanation why God would permit a man so great in the author’s eyes to fail in the end. It is still quite clear that both related pictures only show different degrees of Sameing, as we will now see.

The Emperor vis-à-vis the Franks The Franks in general were a different matter, as we have seen briefly, but the list could certainly be extended: they are often styled as intruders, tending to abuse the locals, even the Beneventans, who are certainly not generally exculpated by Erchempert in his Louis II-narrative. The best example for this is again the section on Louis’ captivity in Benevento, which starts off with the following sentences: Now that I have finished with these matters, let me tell as I promised earlier how the devil, seeing his followers eliminated and everyone restored to Christ, renewed his front lines and lamented his losses to the lower world. Through his inspiration, the Franks began to gravely persecute and cruelly distress the Beneventans; because of this Adelchis rose up deceitfully against the emperor Louis with his men.61 The Franks left in and around Benevento thus are inspired by the devil after all and are clearly made partly responsible for the emperor’s captivity, as they persecuted and attacked the Beneventans. It shows Erchempert’s full mastery of storytelling, that he still managed to point to the treacherous nature of Adelchis’ actions, while partly blaming them on the Franks, all while not putting any blame on Emperor Louis. The Franks are openly Othered in this chapter, intriguingly it is they, after all, who succumb to the devil’s tricks, something that does not happen to members of the author’s in-group.62 Despite the Franks providing at least the backbone, most probably the majority of Louis’ army, our author still separates the emperor from them and makes him the true victim of the events in late summer 871. Admittedly, the Franks who were perceived as a homogeneous group by our author, are not mentioned very often in Erchempert’s Historiola — or in any other southern text for that matter. We have seen right at the beginning, however, that when they appear in the narrative, they tend to be presented as dangerous, bellicose Others. Individual Franks were heavily criticized by Erchempert, too, the best example being the various dukes of Spoleto. Guy I, for instance, is shown as both greedy and

60 See Berto, ‘Erchempert, a Reluctant Fustigator’, esp. pp. 151–58. 61 Erchempert, c. 34, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards of Benevento’, trans. by Ferry, p. 178, see however the different clause position in ed. by Berto, pp. 142–43. 62 Which was itself a quite flexible concept, see Sophie Gruber’s contribution in this volume.

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treacherous during the Lombard civil war.63 His older son and immediate successor Lambert is first identified as a traitor against Louis II, as he had chosen to support the Beneventan insurrection. Interestingly, at this point he is not clearly identified as a Frank, possibly because in the eyes of our author he was acting just like the southern potentates — or because he had already associated Lambert with Frankish troops earlier in his work.64 Later, Lambert is again shown rather unfavourably, intervening on the side of the counts of Capua. Here Lambert and the Spoletans are clearly identified as Franks, probably to illustrate that Capuan factions would enlist the help of outside forces readily if need be.65 This is an interesting observation, as Lambert could also rightfully have been considered as half-Lombard, as his mother had been from an old noble family. Hence probably the need for Erchempert to mark out Lambert’s difference more clearly is also a form of Othering.66 It is intriguing to see that other south-Italian sources present a quite similar, if less clear picture. First and foremost, we have two relevant sources from Naples: the Vita of Bishop Athanasius I and the History of the Neapolitan bishops by John the Deacon (d. 910).67 In Athanasius’ Vita Louis II is of course not the protagonist, but as Thomas Granier summed up perfectly a few years ago, he is counted amongst the righteous, who are prosecuted by the evil doers.68 Once again, Louis II’s captivity in 871 provides the perfect test case. The anonymous author of the Vita described the situation in 871 as follows: ‘The Beneventans, inspired by a demon and by persons pretending to be men of God, instigated by their zeal, apprehended the pious man Emperor Louis, who was the liberator of the Beneventan province, and handed him over to the jailers’.69 Later, after the release of the emperor, the author has Bishop Athanasius I approach Louis together with Bishop Landulf of Capua and beg him for help against the new Saracen invasion in late 871 with the following words: ‘Come Lord and liberator of our fatherland. Ignore those who have sinned against you, just as the Lord did his persecutors. For with the swift and strongest divine help, you will be the victor and glorious in the whole world’.70 In the same sections, the Franks in general seem to be rather neutral, only figuring as the entourage of the emperor.

63 Erchempert, cc. 17 and 18, ed. by Berto, pp. 114–17. Di Carpegna Falconieri, ‘Guido’. See also Gantner, ‘A King in Training?’. 64 Erchempert cc. 33 and 35, ed. by Berto, pp. 142–43 and 146–49. 65 Erchempert, c. 42, ed. by Berto, pp. 158–59. 66 The same holds true for his brother and successor Guy (II./III., later emperor), who, however, is even less associated with the Franks; his intervention in the north and quest for power in the empire is criticized as hubris, see Erchempert, c. 79, ed. by Berto, pp. 200–01. 67 John, Gesta episcoporum Neapolitanorum, ed. by Waitz, p. 435: pius augustus. 68 Vita Athanasii, c. 8, ed. by Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum, 1 vol. (Hannover: Hahn, 1878)pp. 439–49 (p. 448). 69 Vita Athanasii, c. 8, ed. by Waitz, p. 448: ‘Benebentani inspirati a demone et ab emulis viri Dei, animati zelo eius, comprehenderunt Lodoycum augustum pium virum, liberatorem scilicet Benebentanae provinciae, et custodiis manciparunt’. 70 Vita Athanasii, c. 8, ed. by Waitz, p. 448: ‘Veni, domine et liberator patriae nostrae. Ignosce peccantibus in te, sicut Dominus pro persecutoribus suis. Nam divino adiutorio fretus fortissimo, victor eris et gloriosus in universo mundo’.

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The History of the bishops of Naples, however, shows them fleeing the scene after Louis is taken by the Beneventans, which may not be the best possible light to be depicted in after all.71 The Chronicle of Salerno from the second half of the tenth century is far more nuanced than the Neapolitan texts: here the blame for Louis’ captivity — and the author may be quite right — is put partly on Louis himself.72 The emperor, the author argues, had after all tried to govern the South himself and to take Benevento as a capital and had treated the inhabitants of the city badly. What is more, his wife Angilberga is accused of having acted even worse, taunting the Beneventans for not being able to defend themselves.73 So in this respect, Louis is portrayed as a tyrant and unfair ruler. The Chronicle is, however, far from one-sided when it comes to Louis and his Franks: when he helps the Southerners against the big Saracen army after his release he is in turn depicted very favourably indeed, and is called ‘most clement emperor’.74 The south-Italian sources show a marked tendency to incorporate the one Carolingian emperor, who was relevant for their narrative in the second half of the ninth century as belonging to ‘us’. Louis II is thus the object of various degrees of Sameing. This does not prevent the same authors from emphasizing the otherness of the Franks. The dukes of Spoleto from the family of the Guidones, who were of Frankish stock, as we have seen, and had been instated by Emperor Lothar I in the 830s, were depicted as such by Erchempert, and even the emperor’s wife is shown unfavourably as an outside force by the Salernitan chronicler, in a section where he clearly delivers a take on events that differs greatly from that of Erchempert, whose text he knew.75 Erchempert is the most interesting author for us, because he had a very clear agenda when telling his story: Louis II is deliberately distinguished from the Franks, in a manner that cannot be coincidence or south-Italian ‘zeitgeist’. That his Sameing of Louis II did not necessarily aim at building up a hero for his readers (mostly, we should assume, in Montecassino),76 does not invalidate this finding. The other authors portray the Frankish emperor as someone who is not part of a group but rather is above peoples’ or regional identities. This may very much be in accordance with the ideas Louis II himself had of his office.77

Basil and the Greeks A strangely similar picture emerges when we look at the emperor Basil I, who reigned from 867–886, and the Byzantines/Greeks in general. Basil is the first eastern emperor 71 John, Gesta episcoporum Neapolitanorum, ed. by Waitz, p. 435. 72 Granier, ‘La Captivité’. 73 Chronicon Salernitanum, c. 109, ed. by Westerbergh, pp. 121–22. 74 Chronicon Salernitanum, c. 117, ed. by Westerbergh, p. 129. 75 Pohl, Werkstätte, p. 64. 76 See Sophie Gruber’s article in this volume. Pohl, Werkstätte, pp. 33–42. 77 See Gantner, ‘“Our common enemies”’, esp. pp. 312–14.

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for quite some time to figure prominently in south-Italian texts, probably reflecting the Byzantine rise to new military, political, and cultural significance in the region during his reign. Our Latin south-Italian sources tend to be very critical of the East Romans indeed, as Luigi Andrea Berto has instructively shown quite recently.78 Berto aptly summarizes the viewpoint of three southern authors, Erchempert, the Chronicon Salenitanum and the so-called Continuatio codicis Vaticani. He asserts hostility towards the Greeks as a general trait of south-Italian historiography, be it Lombard or later. Most writers who perceived themselves as Lombards employ all kinds of Othering against a group of people shown like a monolith:79 They were depicted as cruel, as religiously or culturally diverse, even as possessed by the devil. Greeks are thus a perfect example for us. They were very well known in the Italian South, they had, after all, been part of this region since before Roman times. Still, they were easy to distinguish: not only did they speak a very different language (which was admittedly probably spoken by some as a second language, as befitted a cultural contact zone), they were also in certain forms culturally diverse, culturally ‘Greek’, by which I mean a combination of language, dress, religious, and everyday customs, tax and legal status, to name but the most important factors.80 It must have been difficult, however, given the amount of diversity, not to allow for positive reports about the Byzantines in general and Greek individuals in particular. This is the main reason to assert that the ‘Greeks’ were consequently and wilfully Othered by most southern authors. This does not hold entirely true for Erchempert, however, who is again more nuanced than any other comparable author. At first, he shows no real animosity towards the Byzantines, not even when they take over Bari in 876, a fact he reports as necessary to protect the city against the Saracens.81 The Greeks are portrayed as normal players in the southern political theatre even when they act contrary to Beneventan interests. Their actions are reported in a matter-of-fact way, no active shaping of the image of the other is employed. Later in his text, however, Erchempert starts to voice dislike vis-a-vis the Greeks culminating in the following assessment in his penultimate chapter: ‘Now the Greeks, as in appearance they are similar to beasts, so are they equal in spirit; in name they are Christians, but in practices sadly like Agareni’.82 Erchempert wrote this in connection with an episode of Saracen military success in the fight for Sicily, but clearly also in reaction to Byzantine pressure on the Lombard principalities further north83 and as

78 Luigi Andrea Berto, ‘The Image of the Byzantines in Early Medieval South Italy: The Viewpoint of the Chroniclers of the Lombards (9th–10th Centuries) and Normans (11th Century)’, Mediterranean Studies 22.1 (2014), 1–37. 79 Berto, ‘The Image of the Byzantines’, esp. pp. 1–11 and 26. 80 For more on the topic, albeit focusing on the city of Rome, see Clemens Gantner, ‘The Label “Greeks” in the Papal Diplomatic Repertoire in the Eighth Century’, in Strategies of Identification, ed. by Pohl and Heydemann, pp. 303–49. 81 Erchempert, c. 38, ed. by Berto, pp. 152–53. 82 Erchempert, c. 81, ed. by Berto, pp. 202–03; trans. by Ferry, p. 249. 83 Berto, ‘The Image of Byzantines’, esp. p. 26.

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a result of Greeks participating in trade, especially, it seems, slave trade with north Africa. The latter, one has to concede, was probably not an invention by the author, as the slave trade was certainly important in the region at the time, and was certainly also practised by Greeks.84 It is therefore all the more interesting that Erchempert chose to depict Emperor Basil in positive light, even though he actually had ordered many of the very actions for which the Greeks were criticized. He was still shown as a sympathetic and pious ruler, remarkable for an author who tended to be very outspoken and very critical towards worldly potentates. In chapter 48, Erchempert tells the story of Gaideris (or Guaifer), the short-time prince of Benevento (878–881), who fled to the Byzantines at Bari after having been deposed as a result of a conspiracy: ‘Gaideris […]slipped away into flight and reached Bari, where there were Greeks staying; he was sent by them to the royal city [Constantinople], to the pious emperor Basil, by whom he was honoured and enriched with imperial gifts, and he received the city of Oria, to live there as the emperor’s guest’.85 Basil is called pious: even though the epithet is of course one that went with the imperial title, it bears religious connotations. These in turn are in obvious and stark contrast to the passage above, where the Greeks are ‘Christians only in name’. Basil does not figure often in our text after this episode. At his death, we learn that ‘the most serene emperor Basil died at this time’ and was succeeded by two of his sons.86 Again, we receive very little information, no résumé of his reign for example, but he is ‘serenissimus augustus’ also at this point, which is again, clearly a usual epithet, but still one that shows the emperor in favourable light. The general picture provided for the Byzantine emperor is even more striking when we take into consideration that it was surely known in the West that Basil had ascended the throne in Constantinople by murdering his patron and predecessor Michael III. It will, however, have helped him that Michael seems to have been rather unpopular in Italy, at least with the Carolingians and especially the papacy.87 Also, 84 See Itinerarium Bernardi Monachi, ed. by Josef Ackermann, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Studien und Texte, 67 vols (Hannover: Hahn, 1991–2020), l (2010), pp. 113–35 (pp. 117 and 129) (translation); Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, ad 300–900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 134–38 (Bernard/slaves) and 741–77 (slave trade); Clemens Gantner, ‘New Visions of Community in Ninth-Century Rome: The Impact of the Saracen Threat on the Papal World View’, in Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World: The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1000, ed. by Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, and Richard Payne (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 403–21. 85 Erchempert, c. 48, ed. by Berto, pp. 166–67; trans. by Ferry, p. 203. 86 Erchempert, c. 52, ed. by Berto, pp. 170–71; trans. by Ferry, p. 209. 87 See Klaus Herbers, ‘Der Konflikt Papst Nikolaus’ I. mit Erzbischof Johannes VII. von Ravenna (861)’, in Diplomatische und chronologische Studien aus der Arbeit an den Regesta Imperii, ed. by Paul-Joachim Heinig, Beihefte zu Regesta Imperii, 8 (Köln: Böhlau, 1991), pp. 51–66; Klaus Herbers, ‘Papst Nikolaus und Patriarch Photios. Das Bild des byzantinischen Gegners in lateinischen Quellen’, in Die Begegnung des Westens mit dem Osten, ed. by Odilo Engels and Peter Schreiner (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1993), pp. 51–74; Klaus Herrbers, ‘Rom oder Westfranken? Papst Nikolaus I. (858–67) in Überlieferung und Erinnerung’, in Erinnerungswege. Kolloquium zu Ehren von Johannes Fried, ed. by Janus Gudian, Johannes Heil, Michael Rothmann, and Felicitas Schmieder, Frankfurter Historische Abhandlungen, 49 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2018), pp. 25–35. See also Clemens Gantner,

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Basil at first got rid of Patriarch Photios and reinstated Ignatios, something that could only be applauded in western ecclesiastical circles. Photios’ eventual re-instatement in 878 is not blamed on Basil in the short report on his death and succession, but strangely rather on Pope John VIII, who had agreed to this move.88 In the Chronicon Salernitanum, the image of the emperor is also rather positive, albeit always citing Erchempert in these instances, even the verdict on Photios is taken from this source.89 The Chronicon, however, also includes Louis II’s very aggressive letter sent to Basil in 871, reproaching the Byzantines for many problems and failed communications that had occurred over the past years in Southern Italy. If I may say so: A little vanity was also part of the problem on both sides. The author included the letter in its full text (without the ‘eschatocol’).90 This was in essence an unfavourable move towards Basil, whereas Louis II was permitted, a century after the events, to present his side of the story of the reconquest of Bari.

Conclusion As expected at the outset to this article, both the Byzantine Greeks and the Franks to a certain extent remained outsiders and thereby distinct Others in Lombard southern Italian texts. Even the dukes of Spoleto, whose role would certainly merit a detailed study of its own, remained just that, despite exerting some real influence and despite kin relations with the southern Lombards. True, the Saracens in general remained the ultimate Other in Southern Italy.91 The Greeks were to come a close second in Latin sources from the region around the turn of the tenth century, with the cited outburst by Erchempert as a first example. Likening the Greeks to beasts and the Saracens was a very obvious form of Othering indeed. The case of the Greeks is especially instructive, as it shows that even in one text, Erchempert in this case, Othering was dynamically applied when the author felt it was necessary. It is interesting that both Franks and Greeks were subject to quite consequent Othering in some of our texts. The Othering was certainly more consequently applied to the Greeks, but the Frankish test case has proven equally intriguing: Several sources neatly distinguish Emperor Louis II from his own supporters and his army.

‘Ludwig II. von Italien und Byzanz’, in Menschen, Bilder, Sprache, Dinge. Wege der Kommunikation zwischen Byzanz und dem Westen, vol. ii: Menschen und Worte, ed. by Falko Daim, Christian Gastgeber, Dominik Heher, and Claudia Rapp (Mainz: Schnell und Steiner, 2018), pp. 103–12 (pp. 107–08). 88 Erchempert, c. 52, ed. by Berto, pp. 170–71; trans. by Ferry, p. 209. See Dorothee Arnold, Johannes VIII. Päpstliche Herrschaft in den karolingischen Teilreichen am Ende des 9. Jahrhunderts, Europäische Hochschulschriften, 797 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2005), pp. 214–18. 89 Chronicon Salernitanum, c. 131, ed. by Westerbergh, p. 143, is a near verbatim reproduction of Erchempert, c. 52, for example, as is Chronicon Salernitanum, c. 129, ed. by Westernbergh, p. 142, with the Gaideris/Guaifer episode on Basil and Constantinople (Erchempert c. 48). 90 Chronicon Salernitanum, c. 107, ed. by Westerbergh, pp. 107–21. 91 Gantner, Freunde Roms, pp. 244–81; Wolf, ‘Auf dem Pfade’; ‘Guerra santa’, ed. by Di Branco and Wolf.

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A general reverence for the imperial office will have influenced our authors, above all, it seems, Erchempert of Montecassino. This also shows in the favourable, if lightly indifferent image of Emperor Basil in the same work. However, whereas Basil only remained detached from troubles with Greeks in general, his counterpart Louis II is a different case: he is the object of Sameing by several authors. Divisive elements tended to be concealed or downplayed. The notion that Louis II was an emperor from the outside is certainly there at times in the sources, but in general, he tended to be presented as rightful emperor of all the West and as responsible for south-Italian affairs.92 This Sameing was even reinforced by separating him as far as possible from the Frankish Other. In his case, we may go as far as to say that Sameing and Othering required each other. This stands in contrast to the case of Basil, where the Greeks could be Othered while simply excluding their emperor. Erchempert’s text is the one where we get the clearest picture of how an author consciously shaped the image of the Other, certainly to further his narrative, but also to shape the opinions of his audience — in this sense, other historiographers in the region, like the anonymous author from Salerno, followed a quite different scheme, laying more emphasis on the ambivalence they found. Erchempert interestingly also applied his narrative strategy to enemies within his southern Lombard community — we will see that in the contribution by Sophie Gruber in this volume. In reaction to his hybrid and complex South Italian environment, Erchempert tried to categorize the Others he encountered as good or bad if at all possible and thereby to convey a clearer sense of order in his text.

Works Cited Primary Sources Annales Bertiniani, ed. by Félix Grat (Paris: Société de l’histoire de France, 1964) Chronica Sancti Benedicti Casinensis, ed. by Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum, 1 vol. (Hannover: Hahn, 1878), pp. 467–88 Chronicon Salernitanum, ed. by Ulla Westerbergh, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Studia Latina Stockholmiensia, 3 (Lund: Almquist & Wiksell, 1956) Divisio principatus Beneventani, ed. by Jean-Marie Martin, Guerre, accords et frontières en Italie méridionale pendant le haut Moyen Âge. Pacta de Liburia, Divisio principatus Beneventani, Sources et documents d’histoire du Moyen Âge, 7 (Roma: École française de Rome, 2005), pp. 201–17 Erchempert, Ystoriola, ed. by Luigi Andrea Berto, Erchemperto, Piccola Storia dei Longobardi di Benevento (Naples: Liguori, 2014)

92 See again Ackermann, Das Eigene, p. 147: ‘Denn die Identifikation mit dem Vertrauten bringt die Andersheit des Anderen zum Verschwinden und verhindert so jegliche Fremderfahrung’.

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‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards of Benevento: A Translation and Study of its Place in the Chronicle Tradition’, trans. by Joan Rowe Ferry (unpublished PhD thesis, Rice University, 1995) Itinerarium Bernardi Monachi, ed. by Josef Ackermann, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Studien und Texte, 67 vols (Hannover: Hahn, 1991–2020), l (2010) John the Deacon, Gesta episcoporum Neapolitorum, ed. by Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum (Hannover: Hahn, 1878), pp. 398–439 Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma, ed. by Giuseppe Zucchetti, Il chronicon di Benedetto, Monaco di s. Andrea del Soratte e il Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma, Fonti per la storia d’Italia, 55 (Roma: Tipografia del Senato, 1920), pp. 189–210 Vita Athanasii, ed. by Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum (Hannover: Hahn, 1878), pp. 439–49 Secondary Works Ackermann, Andreas, ‘Das Eigene und das Fremde: Hybridität, Vielfalt und Kulturtransfers’, in Handbuch der Kulturwissenschaften, ed. by Friedrich Jäger and Jörg Rüsen, vol. iii (Stuttgart: Metzler 2004), pp. 139–50 Arnold, Dorothee, Johannes VIII. Päpstliche Herrschaft in den karolingischen Teilreichen am Ende des 9. Jahrhunderts, Europäische Hochschulschriften, 797 (Frankfurt-am-Main: Lang, 2005) Berto, Luigi Andrea, ‘Erchempert, a Reluctant Fustigator of His People: History and Ethnic Pride in Southern Italy at the End of the Ninth Century’, Mediterranean Studies, 20.2 (2012), 147–75 ———, ‘The Image of the Byzantines in Early Medieval South Italy: The Viewpoint of the Chroniclers of the Lombards (9th–10th Centuries) and Normans (11th Century)’, Mediterranean Studies, 22.1 (2014), 1–37 Bhabha, Homi K., The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994) Bougard, François, ‘Ludovico II’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 66 (2006), Castro-Varela, Maria Do Mar, and Nikita Dhawan, Postkoloniale Theorie. Eine kritische Einführung (Bielefeld: transcript, 2015) Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, ‘Introduction: Midcolonial’, in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (New York: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 1–17 ———, ed., The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave, 2000) di Branco, Marco, and Kordula Wolf, eds, ‘Guerra santa’ e conquiste islamiche nel Mediterraneo, VII--XI secolo (Roma: Viella, 2014) di Carpegna Falconieri, Tommaso, ‘Guido’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 61 (2004), Foucault, Michel, L’ordre du discours (Paris: Gallimard, 1971)

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Gantner, Clemens, Freunde Roms und Völker der Finsternis. Die päpstliche Konstruktion von Anderen im 8. und 9. Jahrhundert (Wien: Böhlau, 2014) ———, ‘A King in Training? Louis II of Italy at Rome in 844’, in After Charlemagne: Carolingian Italy and its Rulers, ed. by Clemens Gantner and Walter Pohl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 164–81 ———, ‘The Label “Greeks” in the Papal Diplomatic Repertoire in the Eighth Century’, in Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 303–49 ———, ‘Louis II and Rome: On the Relationship of the Carolingian Emperor of Italy with “his” Popes Nicholas I and Hadrian II’, in Through the Papal Lens: Shaping History and Memory in Late Antique and Early Medieval Rome, 300–900, ed. by Mark Humphries and Giorgia Vocino, Translated Texts for Historians Series (in press, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press) ———, ‘Ludwig II. von Italien und Byzanz’, in Menschen, Bilder, Sprache, Dinge. Wege der Kommunikation zwischen Byzanz und dem Westen, vol. ii: Menschen und Worte, ed. by Falko Daim, Christian Gastgeber, Dominik Heher, and Claudia Rapp (Mainz: Schnell und Steiner, 2018), pp. 103–12 ———, ‘New Visions of Community in Ninth-Century Rome: The Impact of the Saracen Threat on the Papal World View’, in Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World: The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1000, ed. by Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, and Richard Payne (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 403–21 ———, ‘“Our common enemies shall be annihilated!” How Louis II’s Relations with the Byzantine Empire Shaped his Policy in Southern Italy’, in Southern Italy as Contact Area and Border Region during the Early Middle Ages: Religious-Cultural Heterogeneity and Competing Powers in Local, Transregional and Universal Dimensions, ed. by Kordula Wolf and Klaus Herbers, Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 80 (Köln: Böhlau, 2017), pp. 295–314 ———, ‘The Saracen Attack on Rome in 846 and its Impact on the Italian Carolingian Empire’, in Social Cohesion and its Limits, ed. by Walter Pohl and Andreas Fischer (in press, Wien: Austrian Academy Press) Gramsci, Antonio, Quaderni del carcere. Edizione critica dell’Istituto Gramsci, ed. by V. Gerratana, Collana NUE, 164, 4 vols (Torino: Enaudi, 1975) Granier, Thomas, ‘La captivité de l’empereur Louis II à Bénévent (13 août – 17 septembre 871) dans les sources des IXe–Xe siècles’, in L’écriture de l’histoire, de la fausse nouvelle au récit exemplaire, ed. by Claude Carozzi and Huguette Taviani-Carozzi (Aix-enProvence: Publications de l’Universite de Provence, 2007), pp. 13–39 Heath, Christopher, ‘Third/Ninth-century Violence: “Saracens” and Sawdān in Erchempert’s Historia’, Al-Masāq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean, 27.1 (2015), 24–40 Herbers, Klaus, ‘Der Konflikt Papst Nikolaus’ I. mit Erzbischof Johannes VII. von Ravenna (861)’, in Diplomatische und chronologische Studien aus der Arbeit an den Regesta Imperii, ed. by Paul-Joachim Heinig, Beihefte zu den Regesta Imperii, 8 (Köln: Böhlau, 1991), pp. 51–66 ———, ‘Papst Nikolaus und Patriarch Photios. Das Bild des byzantinischen Gegners in lateinischen Quellen’, in Die Begegnung des Westens mit dem Osten, ed. by Odilo Engels and Peter Schreiner (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1993), pp. 51–74

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———, ‘Rom oder Westfranken? Papst Nikolaus I. (858–67) in Überlieferung und Erinnerung’, in Erinnerungswege. Kolloquium zu Ehren von Johannes Fried, ed. by Janus Gudian, Johannes Heil, Michael Rothmann, and Felicitas Schmieder, Frankfurter Historische Abhandlungen, 49 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2018), pp. 25–35 Kahf, Mohja, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999) Kreutz, Barbara M., Before the Normans: Southern Italy in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991) Lankila, Tommi P., ‘The Saracen Raid of Rome in 846: An Example of Maritime Ghazw’, in Travelling through Time: Essays in Honour of Kaj Öhrnberg, ed. by Sylvia Akar, Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, and Inka Nokso-Koivisto (Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society, 2013), pp. 93–120 Martin, Jean-Marie, Guerre, accords et frontiers en Italie méridionale pendant la haut Moyen Âge. Pacta Liburia, Divisio principatus Beneventani et autres actes (Roma: École français de Rome, 2005) McCormick, Michael, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, ad 300–900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) Musca, Giosuè, L’emirato di Bari, 847–71 (Bari: Dedalo, 2nd edn 1978, 1st edn 1967) Ohnsorge, Werner, ‘Das Kaiserbündnis von 842–44 gegen die Sarazenen. Datum, Inhalt und politische Bedeutung des Kaiserbriefes aus St Denis’, Archiv für Diplomatik, Schriftengeschichte, Siegel- und Wappenkunde, 1 (1955), 88–131 Pohl, Walter, ‘Introduction’, in Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800, ed. by Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz, The Transformation of the Roman World, 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 1–15 ———, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification. A Methodological Profile’, in Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 1–64 ———, ‘Telling the Difference: Signs of Ethnic Identity’, in Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800, ed. by Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz, The Transformation of the Roman World, 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 17–69 ———, Werkstätte der Erinnerung. Montecassino und die Gestaltung der langobardischen Vergangenheit, Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Ergänzungsband, 39 (Wien: Oldenbourg, 2001) Regesta imperii, vol. 1,3,1, ed. by Herbert Zielinski (Köln: Böhlau, 1991) Said, Edward, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003, 1st edn 1978) Schieffer, Rudolf, ‘Die Politik der Karolinger in Süditalien und im Mittelmeerraum’, in Southern Italy as Contact Area and Border Region during the Early Middle Ages. Religious-Cultural Heterogeneity and Competing Powers in Local, Transregional and Universal Dimensions, ed. by Kordula Wolf and Klaus Herbers, Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 80 (Köln: Böhlau, 2017), pp. 65–78 Signes Codoñer, J., The Emperor Theophilos and the East, 829–842: Court and Frontier in Byzantium during the Last Phase of Iconoclasm (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014) Southern Italy as Contact Area and Border Region during the Early Middle Ages: ReligiousCultural Heterogeneity and Competing Powers in Local, Transregional and Universal

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Dimensions, ed. by Kordula Wolf and Klaus Herbers, Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 80 (Köln: Böhlau, 2017) Spivak, Gayatri C., ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271–313 ———, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999) Tolan, John V., Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002) Varisco, Daniel Martin, Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007) Wolf, Kordula, ‘Auf dem Pfade Allahs. Ğihād und muslimische Migrationen auf dem süditalienischen Festland (9.–11. Jahrhundert)’, in Transkulturelle Verflechtungen im mittelalterlichen Jahrtausend. Europa, Ostasien, Afrika, ed. by Michael Borgolte and Matthias M. Tischler (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2012), pp. 120–66 Wolf, Kordula, and Klaus Herbers, eds, Southern Italy as Contact Area and Border Region during the Early Middle Ages: Religious-Cultural Heterogeneity and Competing Powers in Local, Transregional and Universal Dimensions, Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 80 (Köln: Böhlau, 2017) Wolf, Kordula, and Marco di Branco, ‘Terra di conquista? I musulmani in Italia meridionale nell’epoca aghlabita (184/800–269/909)’, in ‘Guerra santa’ e conquiste islamiche nel Mediterraneo, VII–XI secolo, ed. by Marco di Branco and Kordula Wolf (Roma: Viella, 2014), pp. 125–65

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The Construction of Allegiance and Exclusion in Erchempert’s Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum*

Introduction: The Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum Near the end of the ninth century, the monk Erchempert wrote a History of the Beneventan Lombards, the Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum (or, as Erchempert himself called it: Historiola).1 From the text he composed, we learn that he belonged to the community of Montecassino, and that he was a ‘grammaticus’ — meaning

* I would like to thank Clemens Gantner and Walter Pohl for the valuable feedback from which this article has benefited enormously. I also want to thank Rutger Kramer for his corrections and precious feedback, and Thom Gobbitt for proofreading this article. My deepest gratitude goes to the editors of this volume for all their suggestions. This article is partly a product of my work for the Special Research Program ‘Visions of Community’ in the sub-project on early medieval Europe, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): F42–G18. 1 Erchempert, Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum, ed. by Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum, 1 vol. (Hannover: Hahn, 1878), pp. 234–64. Since Erchempert’s chronicle was edited by Waitz under this title (and therefore will be cited accordingly, or briefly Historia, in the footnotes). Erchempert himself called his work Historiola, a title that will be used in the text. On Erchempert cf. Faustino Avagliano, ‘Erchempert von Montecassino’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. iii (München: Artemis, 1986), cols 2124–25; Luigi Andrea Berto, ‘Erchempert, a Reluctant Fustigator of His People: History and Ethnic Pride in Southern Italy at the End of the Ninth Century’, Mediterranean Studies, 20.2 (2012), 147–75; Giorgio Falco, ‘Erchemperto’, in Albori d’Europa. Pagine di Storia medievale (Roma: Edizioni del lavoro, 1947), pp. 264–92; Joan Rowe Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s ‘History of the Lombards of Benevento’: A Translation and Study of its Place in the Chronicle Tradition’ (Unpublished dissertation, Rice University, 1995), pp. 43–48; Walter Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung. Montecassino und die Gestaltung der langobardischen Vergangenheit, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Ergänzungsband, 39 (Wien: Oldenbourg, 2001), pp. 33–42. Sophie Gruber  •  ([email protected]) studied Theatre, Film, and Media Studies, German Philology and History at the University of Vienna. From 2015 to 2019 she coordinated an ERC grant at the University of Vienna and a Special Research Programme at the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Since 2019 she has been working as ‘Referent’ at the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna. She is preparing her Ph.D. in history at the University of Vienna. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 117–137 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123588

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he was both well-educated and had a large corpus of essential texts at his disposal.2 The Historiola also shows how he was involved in the political dynamics of the world around him, and that he acted as a representative of his community in Montecassino to help resolve conflicts with other players in the region.3 The Historiola survives in a single manuscript produced near the end of the thirteenth century, the Codex Vaticanus latinus 5001, and covers the period from the fall of the Lombard kingdom in 774 to around the year 889, where it abruptly ends.4 The composition of the Historiola is strongly connected to the hopeless situation within which Montecassino found itself due to the political instability around the monastery. A part of the Historiola was most likely written while the monks of Montecassino were in exile at Teano and Capua, following the destruction of their monastery by the Saracens in 883.5 Other than that, not much can be said with certainty, especially with regard to the author, possible revisions, or sponsors.6

2 Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, pp. 45–46. 3 As you can see in Erchempert, Historia, c. 69, ed. by Waitz, p. 261: ‘qua de re missus ab Angelario venerabili abate ego ipse vestifia apostolorum, adii Stephanum summum pontificem, postulaturus pro rebus nostris ablates’; cf. Pohl, Werkstätte, pp. 34–35. Erchempert appears a second time in the Historiola. In Erchempert, Historia, c. 44, ed. by Waitz, p. 254, Erchempert was taken captive and robbed when Pandenolf stormed the fortress of Pilanus together with Neapolitan troops. 4 See Pohl, Werkstätte, especially pp. 14–33: The Codex Vaticanus latinus also contains the Chronicon Salernitanum and other miscellaneous sources such as catalogues, funerary inscriptions, contracts, and poems. 5 For assumptions on the dating of the writing process and the source see: Christopher Heath, ‘Third/Ninth–Century Violence. “Saracens” and Sawdān in Erchempert’s Historia’, Al–Masaq, 27.1 (2015), 24–40; Pohl, Werkstätte, pp. 9–13, 33–42; Walter Pohl, ‘Fragmente der Erinnerung. Die Historiographie von Montecassino, 9. bis 11. Jahrhundert’, in Fragmente. Der Umgang mit lückenhafter Quellenüberlieferung in der Mittelalterforschung, ed. by Christian Gastgeber, Christine Glassner, and others, Denkschriften der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.–hist. Kl., 415 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. 161–66; Luigi Andrea Berto, ‘The Image of the Byzantines in Early Medieval South Italy: The Viewpoint of the Chroniclers of the Lombards (9th–10th Centuries) and Normans (11th Century)’, Mediterranean Studies, 22.1 (2014), 1–37 (p. 5): Berto points out the fact that the Byzantines are portrayed extremely harsh at the end of the Historiola. This may show that these lines were been written while the Byzantines occupied Benevento in the 890s. For explanations why the destruction of the monastery was barely mentioned: Berto, ‘Erchempert’, p. 158; Armand O. Citarella, ‘The Political Chaos in Southern Italy and the Arab Destruction of Monte Cassino in 883’, in Montecassino: Dalla prima alla seconda distruzione. Momenti e aspetti di storia cassinese (Secc. VI–IX), ed. by Faustino Avagliano, Miscellanea Cassinese, A cura dei monaci di Montecassino, 55 (Montecassino: Montecassino, 1987), pp. 163–80 (pp. 163, 173); Pohl, Werkstätte, p. 175; Walter Pohl, ‘History in Fragments: Montecassino’s Politics of Memory’, Early Medieval Europe, 10.3 (2001), 343–74 (p. 367). 6 Regarding possible sponsors see Pohl, Werkstätte, pp. 37–42: The dedication poem in the same manuscript was originally created for Aio prince of Benevento (884–890) and belongs to the Historiola. Erchempert changes his opinion on Aio and on Atenolf of Capua and of Benevento (900– 910) in the text. Atenolf is the only contemporary who is praised by Erchempert in the Historiola. In opposition to that, Erchempert does not even mention Aio’s death. This makes a planned revision of the poem in favour of Atenolf likely.



The Co n s t r u ct i o n o f Al l eg i a n c e a n d E xclu si o n i n Erche mpe rt

The Historiola presents the situation in late eighth- and early ninth-century Benevento, under Arichis II and his successors, Grimoald III and Grimoald IV, as a time of unity (758–817) — a rhetorical conceit that makes it appear as if the text and its author were connected to the rulers of a united Benevento, or, more likely, to a united and thus stable reign which guaranteed Montecassino’s safety.7 This portrayal changes from the rule of Sico (817–832) and his successors Sicard (832–839) and Siconolf (839–849). The civil war under the latter’s rule in Benevento ended and led to the ‘divisio’ of 848, when the principality of Benevento was split into the dominions of Benevento and Salerno. As the ninth century continued, a third Lombard dominion, centred on Capua, emerged, ruled by the successors of Landolf I (840–843), who were involved in permanent conflicts within the family until the end of the ninth century.8 Bishop Landolf II (863–879) ousted his rivals within the family and dominated Capua for some time, and is the most prominent negative figure in Erchempert’s Historiola.9 Due to the ‘divisio’ in 84810 the Frankish emperor Louis II became the patron of Montecassino until his death in 875.11 After that, Montecassino was unable to find a similarly reliable protector. Towards the end of the ninth century the power of the Byzantine Empire in Southern Italy began to

7 See for example Erchempert, Historia, c. 2, ed. by Waitz, p. 235 (english translation by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, pp. 122–23): Arichis rules as ‘princeps’ and is ‘a most Christian man and greatly distinguished and energetic in matters of warfare’ (vir christianissimus et valde illustris atque in rebus bellicis strenuissimus). In Erchempert, Historia, c. 3, ed. by Waitz, p. 236 (trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, pp. 124–25), Arichis built a church ‘as a man who loved god’ (Deo amabili viro). Erchempert, Historia, c. 5, ed. by Waitz, p. 236 (trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, p. 127): in chapter 5 his successor Grimoald III is portrayed as a man in opposition to the Franks, he could never understand how to scope with the wildness of the barbaric Franks (‘Hoc quidem callide licet egerit, efferitatem tamen supradictarum barbararum gentium sedare minime quivit’). In the same passage it is mentioned that he gets divorced from his Byzantine wife who has been moved back ‘to her own home’ (‘ad proprios lares eam vi transvexit’). Both events draw a line to the Franks and the Byzantines and imply an in-group. 8 On the ‘divisio’, see Clemens Gantner, ‘“Our Common Enemies Shall Be Annihilated!” How Louis II’s Relations with the Byzantine Empire Shaped his Policy in Southern Italy’, in Southern Italy as Contact Area and Border during the Early Middle Ages: Religious Cultural Heterogeneity and Competing Powers in Local, Transregional and Universal Dimensions, ed. by Kordula Wolf and Klaus Herbers (Köln: Böhlau, 2017), pp. 295–314 (p. 308). 9 Berto, ‘Erchempert’, pp. 151 and 153. 10 Divisio principatus beneventani, in Jean–Marie Martin, Guerre, accords et frontières en Italie méridionale pendant le haut Moyen Âge: Pacta de Liburia, Divisio principatus Beneventani et autres actes, Sources et documents d’histoire du Moyen Âge, 7 (Roma: École française de Rome, 2005), pp. 201–17. 11 Gantner, ‘“Our Common Enemies”’, pp. 308–09; Paolo Delogu, ‘Lombard and Carolingian Italy’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. ii: c. 700–c. 900, ed. by Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 290–319 (pp. 311–12); Chris Wickham, Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400–1000 (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1981), p. 62; Barbara M. Kreutz, Before the Normans: Southern Italy in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), pp. 33–35.

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grow stronger.12 The situation was also worsened through the expansive leadership of Athanasius of Naples (878–898).13 All of these new powers contributed to a very dynamic political situation. This short description of the basic historical background should reveal that Erchempert’s Historiola is very much a product of its time: the author’s overarching goal was to explain the decline of Lombard authority, and to give an ‘exemplum’ by narrating how you should not act as the leader of a people.14 The Historiola focuses on the Lombard rulers of Southern Italy, the military conflicts they had, and the shifting alliances between them. According to these circumstances, the text provides many different, sometimes contradictory points of view, as the dynamic structure of the Historiola appears to mirror the politically instable, confusing, and insecure times for the Lombard citizens and especially for the community of Montecassino. These dynamics also apply to the strategies employed by Erchempert to express the idea of the ‘Us’ within the narrative and the idea of the monks of Montecassino as the ‘in-group’. Opinions about different groups and individuals found within the text seem to change from time to time, which at its most basic level implies that the Historiola went through various redaction phases, and was most likely written over a long period, during which the political situation had regularly changed.15 One way of reading the Historiola as a series of interconnected events composed under continuously changing circumstances is to take a closer look at the way the text expresses various strategies of exclusion and inclusion. Specifically, it is interesting to look more closely at how various forms of allegiances are described, and how these allegiances serve to relate the ‘in-group’ of Montecassino to the various ‘others’ — including the notion of an ‘in-group’ or ‘Us’ that is produced in the course of defining differences. Although the Historiola reflects the dynamics of the region at its moment of writing, we can say for certain that the author employs a wide range of narrative strategies to cover various constellations of political and military allies within the Lombard principalities and their surrounding regions.16 The most obvious ‘Other’, and object of strategies of ‘othering’ in ninth-century Southern Italy are the ‘Saracens’, who were a familiar and threatening presence

12 Kreutz, Before the Normanns, p. 57 mentions the year 873 and the attack on a Saracen group in Otranto as ‘reappearance of Byzantium on the scene’. 13 On the conflict regarding the succession in Capua, see Dorothee Arnold, Johannes VIII. – Päpstliche Herrschaft in den karolingischen Teilreichen am Ende des 9. Jahrhunderts, Europäische Hochschulschriften, XXIII/797 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2005), pp. 217–21. See also Erchempert, Historia, c. 44 and 46–50, ed. by Waitz, pp. 251 and 254–56. 14 Erchempert, Historia, c. 1, ed. by Waitz, p. 234; Berto, ‘Erchempert’, 147. 15 Compare Pohl, Werkstätte, pp. 33–42. 16 Contributions which have dealt specifically with ‘others’ in the Historiola and other sources in this region: Luigi Andrea Berto, ‘The Others and their Stories, Byzantines, Franks, Lombards and Saracens in Ninth-Century Neapolitan Narrative Texts’, The Medieval History Journal, 19.1 (2016), 34–56; Luigi Andrea Berto, ‘The Image of the Byzantines in Early Medieval South Italy: The Viewpoint of the Chroniclers of the Lombards (9th–10th Centuries) and Normans (11th Century)’, Mediterranean Studies, 22.1 (2014), 1–37; Luigi Andrea Berto, ‘The Muslims as Others in the

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in the area as Muslim mercenaries and raiders. Perceptions of these Muslims are already well-researched.17 What is most remarkable about them that in spite of strong anti-Saracen stereotypes, textual strategies of othering are less consistent and sometimes more ambivalent than we would assume. Two further groups of foreigners, Greeks and Franks, receive a full treatment in Clemens Gantner’s paper in this volume. The present paper focuses on a different aspect of ‘othering’ in Erchempert’s text: strategies of in- and exclusion within Southern Italian Lombard society that is, in a social world familiar and more or less close to the author. This analysis leads us into a small world of shifting allegiances, small-scale political conflict, scathing critique of corrupt or inefficient rulers and personal grudges. It worked on several levels: first, the author’s attempt to affirm his community’s identity by highlighting the otherness of individuals and/or groups. Of course, otherness on this level is often constituted by reference to religious visions, and by demarcating the community’s belief from (in their eyes) sinful or heretical tendencies of other groups or individuals.18 Second, in a wider scale of the never-ending conflicts and wars within the principality of Benevento, political critique is often accentuated by what may well be regarded as strategies of ‘othering’. Individuals and groups within a community which Erchempert explicitly regarded as ‘Us’ are not only criticized, they are marked off as enemies of the community, even their princes are tendentially excluded from it. Due to the low social cohesion of an ‘othering’ there could be a strategy to sort out ‘good’ Christians from ‘bad’ Christians within the community of the Lombards. Thus, the focus of this contribution is to explore to what extent the mechanism of ‘othering’ may also work within a given society in times of heavy conflicts. Erchempert belongs to the community of the Christian people, to the community of the Lombards, and to the community of Montecassino. We will consider in what way his strategy towards ‘other’ bad Christian rulers from the wider community of Beneventan Lombards is at the same time an attempt to reaffirm the identity and the authority of the community of Montecassino, which serves as a basis for his ‘pastoral concept’.

Chronicles of Early Medieval Southern Italy’, Viator, 45.3 (2014), 1–24; Berto, ‘Erchempert’; Clemens Gantner, Freunde Roms und Völker der Finsternis. Die päpstliche Konstruktion von Anderen im 8. und 9. Jahrhundert (Wien: Böhlau, 2014); Heath, ‘Third/Ninth–Century Violence’. 17 Berto, ‘The Others and their Stories’, pp. 47–50; Berto ‘The Muslims as Others’. 18 Hans-Werner Goetz, Die christlich-abendländische Wahrnehmung anderer Religionen im frühen und hohen Mittelalter. Methodische und vergleichende Aspekte, Wolfgang-Stammler-Gastprofessur für Germanische Philologie, Vorträge, 23 (Berlin: De Gruyter 2013), pp. 11–46 (p. 13 and pp. 20–23): Goetz points to ‘religious visions’ which influences the author’s way of thinking and he also underlines that religion can become secondary (e.g., when Saracens become allies); on pp. 27–28 and p. 45 he refers to heresy and that excluded individuals or groups are consciously marked as infidels; see to strategies of identification: Walter Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification. A Methodological Profile’, in Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 1–64 (p. 49).

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Setting the Stage and Defining Terms of ‘Otherness’ Theoretical Framework

‘Othering’ here is also partly based on Gantner’s approach, who defined the pope and his entourage according to his source material as an ‘in-group’.19 ‘Others’, according to Gantner, are defined by being placed outside this ‘in-group’. Moreover, in his analysis, different grades of otherness exist, which means that some individuals or groups are closer to the pope and his community and some further away. Gantner also points out that differences and similarities are applied situationally to individuals and groups, and also that in his example it was the papacy that shaped the discourse; something that can also be assumed about the community of Montecassino, which was an important participant in Christian discourse, especially because of the Regula Benedicti, which left a deep imprint on its surroundings.20 Another point is that, although there are diverse interests in one ‘in-group’, there can also be a common strategy by which one group constructs ‘others’. Montecassino also operates, argues, and exists as a mode of Christian discourse, integrating manifold sources.21 Christian 19 Gantner, Freunde Roms, pp. 13, 48–59. 20 For the significance of Montecassino and the cultural importance of the Regula Benedicti, see for an overview of the discussion: Albrecht Diem, ‘Inventing the Holy Rule: Some Observations on the History of Monastic Normative Observance in the Early Medieval West’, in Western Monasticism ante litteram: The Spaces of Monastic Observance in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Hendrik Dey and Elizabeth Fentress, Disciplina Monastica, 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 53–84 (pp. 54–55 and 67–76); Albrecht Diem, ‘The Carolingians and the Regula Benedicti’, in Religious Franks. Religion and Power in the Frankish Kingdoms: Studies in Honour of Mayke de Jong, ed. by Rob Meens, Dorine van Espelo, Bram van den Hoven van Genderen, Janneke Raaijmakers, Irene van Renswoude, and Carine van Rhijn(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 243–61, pp. 245–49; Pohl, Werkstätte, p. 79; Diem, ‘Inventing the Holy Rule’, pp. 75–76: Diem concludes that the Regula Benedicti and Montecassino ‘were combined into a powerful master–narrative, which served as a major tool for monastic reform.’; Johannes Fried, Der Schleier der Erinnerung. Grundzüge einer historischen Memorik (München: Beck, 2012), pp. 344–57; Mayke de Jong, ‘Carolingian Monasticism: The Power of Prayer’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History 2: c. 700–c. 900, ed. by Rosamund McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 622–53, p. 630: ‘When Carolingian rulers and their ecclesiastical advisers sought to establish religious unity in the realm of the Chosen People of the Franks, they turned to the Roman abbot [= Benedict of Nursia], and to Monte Cassino’. Rutger Kramer, Great Expectations: Imperial Ideologies and Ecclesiastical Reforms from Charlemagne to Louis the Pious, 813–22 (Amsterdam: Ridderkerk, 2014), pp. 280–95. For the Terra Sancti Benedicti, see Michela Cigola, ‘La Terra Sancti Benedicti. Origine e sviluppo del territorio governato da Montecassino’, in La Vie dei Mercanti. Rappresentare il Mediterraneo, ed. by Carmine Gambardella, Massimo Giovannini, and Sabina Martusciello (Napoli: La Scuola di Pitagora, 2008), pp. 501–06; Herbert Bloch, Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 167–464 and 631–73 (on privileges to Montecassino by popes from 858). 21 On the influence of patristic texts on Western Christendom and especially on the texts of the Church Fathers, which are an important influence for the institutionalization and formation of Christianity also in regard of building a new ‘genealogy of power’ (Peter Brown, Autorität und Heiligkeit. Aspekte der Christianisierung des Römischen Reiches (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1998)) in the Latin West, see Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom. Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200–1000, The Making of Europe, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell Wiley, 2003), pp. 190–216; Peter Brown, Macht und Rhetorik in

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culture serves as a strong basis for the ‘process of othering’. This is linked to the construction of a monastic or institutional identity and finally helps to emphasize special characteristics, a particular perspective, which differentiates ‘others’ from the ‘Us’. Thus, ‘others’ should be taken to mean all who cannot be counted among the community of Montecassino in a broader sense, for which Christianity was a defining factor.22 In his monograph Werkstätte der Erinnerung, Walter Pohl argued that the ‘WirGefühl’ of the monks of Montecassino was linked to their confrontation with the Saracens which evoked a ‘spiritual battle against a profane pagan infestation’.23 This is also Erchempert’s most important motivation for writing the Historiola: conserving an autonomous status and seeking a powerful patron to provide protection against the devastating situation facing the community, which was attacked and finally expelled from its ‘power centre’ by Saracens. The flight of the community in 883, as will be shown, and its powerless situation is not simply related to the Saracen threat, it is multi-causal, and the Historiola is far too complex and contradictory to offer simple solutions. Therefore, the focus of interest is the ‘process of othering’ elaborated in the source, which includes the questions of why and how certain groups or individuals were singled out to be excluded, what defines the ‘Us’ of the monks and why it is important for them to exclude others, and which rhetorical strategy is used to build allegiances or to exclude others from the specific identity they construct. In order to define more precisely the concept of the community’s identity, the ‘Us’, within the text, and its rhetorical strategy, we need to analyse what cannot be the actual or constant in-group in the narrative and, more generally, which ‘in’- and ‘out-groups’ the author constructs to show allegiances and exclusion. With reference to the beginning of the narrative which indicates close association with the Beneventan ruler Arichis II and his successors, the potential ‘Us’ in the text would be the Lombards living in a united Benevento.24 This includes the monastic community of Montecassino which provided the vantage point from which Erchempert was writing his Historiola. The nearby abbey of San Vincenzo al Volturno can be counted as part of this wider ‘in-group’ but also has to be seen as an autonomous entity. Potential ‘out-groups’ which appear in the source would then be the neighbours of this united Benevento. Some ‘duces’ of Spoleto are of Lombard origin as well or have kinship relationship with Lombard Beneventans, so they cannot be completely excluded from a wider ‘in-group’. This shows that we have to differentiate among the ‘Lombards’ as well.

der Spätantike. Der Weg zu einem christlichen Imperium (München: dtv Wissenschaft, 1995), pp. 97–99; Brown, Autorität und Heiligkeit, pp. 23–25, p. 35; Conrad Leyser, ‘The Memory of Gregory the Great and the Making of Latin Europe, 600–1000’, in Making Early Medieval Societies: Conflict and Belonging in the Latin West, 300–1200, ed. by Conrad Leyser and Kate Cooper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 181–201; Conrad Leyser, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 65–80. 22 This passage is based on Gantner, Freunde Roms, pp. 48–59. 23 Pohl, Werkstätte, p. 175. 24 The ‘united’ Benevento is regarded to a not fragmented Lombard political unity in Benevento before the ‘divisio’.

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Rome and the papacy are politically and geographically ‘outsiders’, but here the ‘strategy of othering’ also has to be differentiated. Nominally, the papacy itself is strongly related to the abbey of Montecassino. However, individuals in this group, such as Pope John VIII, are criticized by the author. The nominally Byzantine coastal towns of Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi, which became more and more autonomous, are a kind of ‘real’ outsiders, in which Athanasius II of Naples plays an important part for the perception of this group. Linked to them is the Byzantine Empire as a political player which can also be seen as ‘out-group’; nevertheless, individuals in this entity can be framed nearer to the in-group (in Erchembert’s construction) than to the group to which they really belonged. The same is true for the Frankish Empire, in which individuals such as Louis II, the protector of Montecassino, are framed very benevolently by the author.25 Saracens, who were not only ‘the other’ in a political, but also in a cultural sense, are formally seen as clear ‘out-group’, but are also portrayed with a bit more diversity than we might expect. ‘Othering’ here works more through a strategy of distinction, especially when individual actors are singled out and framed differently from the group to which they ostensibly belonged. Individual groups are weighted differently, some show clearer traces of alliance and some individuals represent a group and are in- or excluded by their actions in relation to Montecassino. Of course, due to formal criteria, Capua has a different relationship with the ‘in-group’ than, for example, Naples, and the demands on these potential ‘in-’ and ‘out-groups’ are weighted differently. From this relatively static point of departure, the distinction between ‘in-’ and ‘out-groups’ becomes more muddled after the division of united Benevento into the Capuans, the Salernitans, and, of course, the Beneventans. The Historiola navigates through the ever-changing political configurations in the Lombard principalities by anchoring itself to the community of Montecassino — which in the end seems to be the only constant ‘Us’ in the text, as shall be shown step by step in the analysis. Othering for this text works especially by relating individuals and groups to the text’s identity, which is given through the ‘Us’ of the monks of Montecassino. Especially the temporary exclusion of Lombard rulers shows that this text must have been written for its own, that is, monastic purposes. The Text’s Christian Principles and Rhetorical Strategy

Erchempert implies that the community had a collective ‘divine mission’, which explained its position and involvement in the unfolding events, as we will see. He juxtaposes political diversity to the essential unity of the monastery itself.26 Yet this unity was not immune to the internal conflicts of its members which were 25 On Louis II, see Clemens Gantner’s contribution in this volume. 26 Especially in the Cronicae Sancti Benedicti Casinensis (CSBC) there is a lot of evidence of the importance of the community, their abbots, who are also named as pastors, and the Holy Benedict and his Rule. Compare: CSBC, c. 1, ed. by Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum, 1 vol. (Hannover: Hahn, 1878), p. 468; CSBC, c. 6, ed. by Waitz, p. 472 and c. 22, p. 480.

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also assigned to different political fractions.27 The rhetorical strategy is aimed at effectuating changes for the situation of Montecassino, which found itself in a rather powerless position caused by the ongoing power struggles and the Saracen attacks. The author of the text has to deal with a complex web of loyalties and identities due to the permanently changing political situation in the region. Although Erchempert takes care to highlight the monks’ connection to a Lombard identity, as analysis also will show, this represents a monk’s point of view and should not be seen as reflecting a Lombard ‘gens’ per se. This mode of identification, full of self-awareness, is actually a part of the Christian argumentation and pastoral rhetoric within the Historiola, and reflects the use of the many different identities the author had at his disposal. Above all, the ‘Us’ of the monastic community is defined through the common Christian identity and mission, which overlays the individual political intentions some people in that community might have. To build this ‘Us’ requires a strong Christian rhetoric, which is applied through the text in many different ways. Foucault coined the concept of ‘pastoral power’. Pastoral power means a specific way of leading individuals by relating their doing to God’s will and the holy precepts of the Bible and Jesus Christ. In simplified terms it can be described through the relation between ‘shepherds’ and their flocks, one in which the shepherds are also part of the flock. This leads to the scenario in which a ‘pastor’, in the form of a political or clerical leader (such as an abbot) guides the souls of a Christian community, defined through a common belief (a belief that is strengthened by ‘monastic rituals’ and collective memory), by employing a Christian rhetoric and exerting Christian rules (which also apply to the ‘pastor’), developed in Late Antiquity and in the early Middle Ages by various Church Fathers, as Foucault pointed out. An important point is that the role of controlling the Christian flock is assigned to all within the flock, including the shepherd. The whole flock is connected through a relationship of responsibility.28 Foucault underpinned his concept with sources such as the Regula Pastoralis by Gregory the Great, and the Regula Benedicti.29 The Historiola does, at

27 Compare Pohl, Werkstätte, p. 52 and p. 55; Pohl, ‘History in Fragments’, p. 373, who points to the tension between deacon Dauferius and Erchempert (Dauferius appears in Erchempert, Historia, c. 65, c. 80) which can be interpreted as political rivalry within the community. 28 Or the development of the concept of pastoral power, see Michel Foucault, Sicherheit, Territorium, Bevölkerung. Geschichte der Gouvernementalität, I, stw, 1808, 3rd edn (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2014), pp. 173–200 and pp. 217–67. A contribution which deals with ‘pastoral power’ in the contexts of the Carolingian Empire can be found here: Monika Suchan, Mahnen und Regieren. Die Metapher des Hirten im früheren Mittelalter, Millennium–Studien zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends n. Chr., 56 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015); Monika Suchan, ‘Der gute Hirte. Religion, Macht und Herrschaft in der Politik der Karolinger- und Ottonenzeit’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 43 (2009), 95–112; Marianne Pollheimer, ‘Of Shepherds and Sheep: Preaching and Biblical Models of Community in the Ninth Century’, in Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Pohl and Heydemann, pp. 233–56. 29 Foucault, Geschichte der Gouvernementalität, i, 224, and on 243–44 he points to more sources, i.e.: De sacerdotio by John Chrysostom, the letters by Cyprianus, De officiis ministrorum by Ambrosius and Collationes patrum by Cassianus; Michel Foucault, Analytik der Macht, stw, 1759, 5th edn (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2013), p. 190: Foucault refers in particular to the Regula Benedicti, in which this

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different moments, imply this kind of power strategy through the use of pastoral rhetoric, as we will see in the following passage.

Analysis Allegiance in Political Confusing Times The Community of Montecassino

For defining allegiances, there needs to be a strong anchor point. Members of the community of Montecassino rarely appear on the scene, but when they do, they show a strong presence, which can be seen for example in the story in which the abbot Bassacius, together with the abbot of San Vincenzo, begs the ‘most pious emperor’ Louis II to help them against the Saracens raiding Benevento and Salerno.30 Louis, who is portrayed as a part of a wider ‘in-group’, helps them, which shows how monks played an important role in gaining help against the Saracen threat. Louis loses this sublime position later in the text, but remains the only ruler who is portrayed as a ‘pastor’, which puts him in a close allegiance with the community.31 In another story, during the civil war between the Capuans after Bishop Landolf II’s death, the abbot Bertharius and the bishop of Teano asked Pope John VIII not to consecrate Pandonolf ’s brother Landonolf as the bishop of Capua. This was mostly because the city already had a bishop in Lando’s son Landolf, and the ensuing schism would be sinful and destroy the land. They predicted that a great fire would come if the

‘individualizing power’ that wants to direct individuals ‘continuously and permanently’, is strongly emphasized. He also points to the fact that in the Regula Benedicti the abbot’s task is compared to that of a shepherd. 30 Erchempert, Historia, c. 20, ed. by Waitz, p. 242. 31 Erchempert, Historia, c. 34, ed. by Waitz, p. 247: ‘Impletusque est sermo Domini ex prophetia sumptus: “Percute”, inquid, “pastorem, et dispergentur oves gregis”. Consistente itaque augusto in custodia, excitavit Deus spiritum Hismaelitum, eosque ab Africa regione protinus evexit, ut ulciscerentur augusti obprobrium, sicuti Filii Dei passionem Vespasianus et Titus ulti sunt. Set defensio Domini dilatata est in annos 42, iuxta prophetiam Elisei, qui 42 pueros, a quibus illusus est, duobus ursis dedit in commestionem; huius autem contemptum nec in 40 distulit dies. Ex quo datur intelligi, quali quantusve vir iste fuerit, qui tam cito defensus est’ (trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, pp. 178–79: ‘And the word of God taken from prophecy was fulfilled: “Persecute the shepherd, and the sheep of his flock will be dispersed”. With the emperor in custody, God roused the spirit of the Ismaelites and immediately raised them up from Africa, so that he might avenge the disgrace of the emperor, just as Vespasian and Titus took vengeance for the passion of the Son of God. But the defense of the Lord was delayed for forty-two years, rather like the prophecy of Elijah, who gave forty-four boys, by whom he had been ridiculed, to two bears to be eaten; however, the contempt of the emperor was not prolonged for even forty days. From this it can be understood what sort of man and how great a man was the emperor, who was defended so quickly’). Also see Clemens Gantner’s contribution in this volume.

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pope were to invest Landonolf as bishop.32 The monks again represent reasonable Christian behaviour for everyone’s welfare. However, the pope, who was a corrupt and sinful person in the eyes of the author, did not listen to them and the abbot’s prophecy came true. In these examples, the monks thus show their moral superiority, which according to Erchempert also gave them a powerful voice in contemporary political discourse. Their monastic way of life proved to be a stabilizing force in a turbulent period. We cannot ignore that these scenes of active participation by members of the community in the political arena are very rare.33 This leads to the conclusion that in Erchempert’s eyes the community asserted its identity more through a pastoral rhetoric in the text than through active involvement in public affairs. The Beneventans

Erchempert makes clear in chapter 1 that he wants to write the story of the ruin of the Lombards at Benevento; he seems to be emotionally involved by mourning the Beneventans falling apart when he notes that all these events draw ‘a profound sigh’ from his ‘innermost heart’.34 This shows allegiance to the Beneventan Lombards and an ‘Us’ of the monastic community’s identity that is tightly connected with Lombard Benevento in the beginning.35 For instance, when Charlemagne marched against Benevento, Erchempert notes that God fought for us and decided the issue on our behalf (set Deo decertante pro nobis, sub cuius adhuc regimine fovebamur, innumerabilibus de suis peste perditis’).36 Similarly, while Sergius of Naples fought a war against Capua it happened exactly ‘Nam octavo Ydus Maias quo beati Michahelis archangeli sollempnia nos sollempniter celebramus, quo etiam die priscis tem­poribus a Beneventanorum populis Neapolites fortiter cesos legimus’ (on the eighth day before the Ides of May, on which we solemnly celebrate the ceremonies of the blessed Archangel Michael, and on which […] the Neapolitans were boldly killed by the people of Benevento).37 Erchempert draws a very gloomy picture in chapter 75, where he reflects on passages from the Bible (such as Revelation 18. 6: ‘Pay her back as she herself has paid back others, and repay her double for her deeds; mix a

32 Erchempert, Historia, c. 47, ed. by Waitz, pp. 254–55; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, p. 201: ‘imploring him with supplication not to perform so grave a sin, from which there would doubtless come ruin of the land and bloodshed. The abbot distinctly told him: “Surely, if your power is used for this, you will light such a fire there that it will reach all the way to you […]”’. 33 Monks and abbots appear in the following chapters of the Historiola: 13, 20, 31, 32, 47, 61, 65, 69, 78, and 80. 34 Erchempert, Historia, c. 1, ed. by Waitz, pp. 234–35; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, pp. 120–22. 35 Berto has worked out all ‘us’ and ‘we’ references in the Historiola, see Berto, ‘The Muslims as Others’, p. 4. Berto examines that Erchempert uses ‘us’, ‘we’, ‘our people’ even though it is not always clear to which group the term refers. 36 Erchempert, Historia, c. 6, ed. by Waitz, p. 236; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, p. 128. 37 Erchempert, c. 27, ed. by Waitz, p. 244‘; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, p. 164.

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double portion for her in the cup she mixed’). Then, he makes a digression: he asks himself how he could interpret the apostle’s words: ‘Is not the one who robs also the one who shall have profited?’ (Isaiah 33. 1). He concludes: ‘Sicuti enim Neapolites vastantur, qui vastarunt, ita et nos forsan devorabimur, qui nunc devorantes sumus. Beati ergo, qui Domino custodiente immunes ab hac seculi procella existent, ubi omne malum et nullum sine Domino bonum regnat’ (Indeed just as the Neapolitans are ravaged, who are themselves ravaging, thus also may we perhaps be devoured, who are now devourers. Blessed therefore are those who by the watchfulness of the Lord are immune from this stormy age […]).38 This passage shows Erchempert’s ambivalent position to this extended ‘Us’ consisting of the monastic community and the Beneventan Lombards — the seemingly obvious, but blurred in-group. The Lombard ‘gens’ amalgamates effortlessly with the monastic community’s ‘Us’ here, although it is not clear if Erchempert’s ‘we’ refers to all Beneventan Lombards or to his righteous readers. This contrasts neatly with other instances where Lombards, or at least their leaders, are strictly excluded from the ‘in-group’ of Montecassino as well, as shall be shown soon.39 Another example of how the community builds allegiance is when Guaiferus of Salerno is portrayed as an ‘anointed of the Lord’, who gains God’s support in an intrigue against him set by the Capuans Pando and Bishop Landolf in the early 860s.40 Connected to these examples is also the question of the audience. The fact that the community of Montecassino and its members are portrayed in a purely positive way leads to the assumption that this text might be intended as a self-confidence boost for a community in a difficult situation. The pastoral rhetoric also gives the impression that the readers (among whom may also be rulers) should be convinced by the monk’s moral superiority and listen to his ‘admonitio’. The community seems to adopt the role of the pastoral voice in the turbulence around it, and allegiances work with this rhetoric. Exclusion Sicard

Contrary to the Beneventan rulers Arichis II and his successors, Sico and his son Sicard had lost divine favour. Erchempert records that Sicard is a man ‘[…] Beneventanos bestiali efferitate persequitur, atque se superstite filium suum Sicardum nomine heredem principatu effecit, virum satis lubricum, inquietum et petulante animique elatione tumidum’ (who would persecute the Beneventans with beastly wildness,

38 Erchempert, Historia, c. 75, ed. by Waitz, p. 263; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, p. 242. 39 See Berto, ‘Erchempert’, pp. 151–58 for the ‘bad’ Lombard rulers in this source. 40 Erchempert, Historia, c. 28, ed. by Waitz, p. 245; for a better translation cf. Erchemperto, Piccola Storia dei Longobardi di Benevento / Ystoriola Longobardorum Beneventum degentium, ed. and trans. by Luigi Andrea Berto (Napoli: Liguori, 2013); see footnote 169: most probably Guaiferius is the anointed one.

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a quite lewd man, unquiet and puffed up with impudence and exaltation of will).41 In another passage, Sicard began out of inconstancy of character [...] to persecute with beastly greed the people entrusted to him, and cruelly tear them to pieces (coepitque populum sibi commissum ex levitate animi beluina voracitate insequi ac crudeliter laniare).42 Sicard is portrayed as a danger for his own people, the Beneventans, even as a threat for his flock. With Sico and Sicard Erchempert starts to criticize Lombard rulers. In Erchempert’s representation it becomes clear that those rulers acted against the ‘holy rules’ by persecuting their own people and forging intrigues.43 Interestingly, Erchempert does not label Sico as ‘foreigner’ as the author of the Chronicon Salernitanum does.44 This would give the critique of this ruler’s family a stronger link to ‘othering’. Nevertheless, the ‘bad’ Lombard rulers are framed differently from a ‘good’ Christian ‘in-group’ in the Historiola. Erchempert never tires of telling his readers about Sicard’s wickedness. Sicard commits another wrongdoing:45 he prefers Rofridus, ‘[…] cuius consilii subversione multa sacrilega ac blasmia patrabat’ (by whose ruinous council he carried out many irreverent acts and desecrations against God).46 Sicard carries out misdeeds such as the assassination of loyal companions, making irrational and wrong decisions, and banning his brother Siconolf. Sicard’s wrongdoing has consequences for the Beneventans: ‘Tuncque factum est ingens periurium in Benevento, ex quo conicitur, iram Dei primum fore provocatam ad perdendam terram’ (At that time a great perjury was accomplished at Benevento, from which it may be conjectured that for the first time the anger of God was called forth for the destruction of their land).47 As far as Erchempert could discern, the moral collapse in Benevento was thus caused by Lombard leadership. Things had become so bad that God’s anger was aroused and He was forced to punish the Beneventans. The destiny of Benevento was therefore caused by the failure of its leaders, making the fall of the Beneventans inevitable at this point. When Sicard ‘out of greed’ removed Abbot Deusdedit of Montecassino (828–834) from his pastoral office and arrested him (besides stealing property from the church of Montecassino, Christian communities, aristocrats, and simple persons) the situation could not become worse. Sicard died, according to Erchempert, as a result of God’s vengeance for his misdeeds and those committed by his father Sico, who was guilty of Grimoald’s death. Sicard’s was ‘heaven-struck in spirit as well as in flesh’ and by 41 Erchempert, Historia, c. 10, ed. by Waitz, p. 238; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, p. 135. 42 Erchempert, Historia, c. 12, ed. by Waitz, p. 239; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, p. 138. 43 Berto, ‘Erchempert’, pp. 151–52. 44 Pohl, Werkstätte, p. 167. 45 His wrongdoing is juxtaposed with a passage in the Bible. It is the same misdeed which was made by Asuerus with Ama. This is probably a reference to the book Esther in the Old Testament. 46 Erchempert, Historia, c. 12, ed. by Waitz, p. 239; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, p. 139. 47 Erchempert, Historia, c. 12, ed. by Waitz, p. 239; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, pp. 139–40.

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‘God’s swift retribution’, as well as ‘God’s punishment’.48 The implications of this interesting line in the text need to be drawn out: the source preaches and admonishes by pointing to the Beneventan Lombards’ misdeeds and the justice brought by God, who punishes all sinners. One focus is on what Sicard did to the abbot and the Church. This passage marks the first climax of the beginning of the end, with the ‘divisio’ of 848 as its consequence. Bishop Landolf

The text generally casts a sorrowful eye on such developments within the Beneventan flock, by pointing out the evil coming from in- and outside, which threatened the salvation of the people. Even worse, this unstable situation also threatened the powerful position of the community at Montecassino, which nonetheless became ever more vulnerable to the whims of the elite, even while their own immediate influence was decreasing. Bishop Landolf of Capua serves as an anti-hero par excellence acting against the community of Montecassino, the people of Capua and true Christian belief. Princes acted against the interests of the monastery, and at the same time they were involved in increasing inner conflict on several levels, threatening the peace and prosperity of the country. Erchempert’s strategy of exclusion goes beyond simple critique of rulers. He identifies the interests of the country, those of Montecassino and of Christendom altogether, and thus pinpoints bad princes as enemies of all three communities, as true outsiders. This demarcation of a wrong way of believing is most clearly shown in the portrayal of Bishop Landolf who is, although a bishop and a Lombard, strictly excluded from all that Montecassino stands for. Erchempert dedicates a whole chapter full of defamations to Landolf. He was ‘[…] more exalted than it is possible to believe, and an attacker and plunderer of monks, […]’. He also ‘acted against the precept of the apostle, who said: “Put yourself under all authority, whether of the king on high, or of leaders sent by him”’. And Erchempert concludes: ‘There is no power unless from God; therefore whoever resists power resists the command of God’.49 By the ‘most righteous judgement of God’ Landolf would be tormented in the future, however: in fact, he is the only person doomed to Hell in the entirety of the Historiola.50 His sin

48 Erchempert, Historia, c. 13, ed. by Waitz, p. 239: ‘Prius enim quam obiret, ut cumulus suae perditionis iustius augeretur, pro amore pecuniae spectabilem et Deo dignum virum, sanctitate conspicuum, Deus dedit nomine, beatissimi Benedicti vicarium, a pastorali monasterio monachorum seculari magis potentia quam congrua ratione deposuit ac custodiae mancipavit. Cuius que nunc usque cineres, quo recubat humatus, nonnullos febre retentos variisque langoribus oppressos ex fide poscentes creberrime curare noscuntur / ipse caelitus spiritu pariter et carne perculsus interiit […] Deo iuste retribuente […] ulciscente Deo’; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, pp. 140–41. 49 Erchempert, Historia, c. 31, ed. by Waitz, p. 246; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, pp. 173–74. 50 Berto, ‘Erchempert’, p. 157.

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is abusing his Christian authority, pretending to follow shared Christian values, but in fact counter-acting the version of Christianity represented by the communities’ pastoral voice. The special position of the community and the monks as representatives of a wider community is emphasized. They are holders of Christian morality and thereby represent pure belief. The text teaches us that the bishop of Capua, who should act as a ‘pastor’ of the Christian people, fell into sin because he, too, became caught up in the politics of his time. Instead of supporting monastic communities or adopting his role as a shepherd, he rather operated as a political figure with a vested interest in worldly power. That is why his behaviour is characterized as the worst in the source.51 The pastoral voice expressed in Erchempert’s text retrospectively excludes Landolf from the community of true Christians. One thing that becomes clear when looking at the particular expression of ‘Us’ in passages such as these is the special connection Erchempert creates between his community and God: God’s judgement and especially the expression of a morally blameless lifestyle in regard to the Scripture are a leitmotif in the source, which is applied especially to people of influence, such as dukes, bishops, or kings, but less frequently to an entire people. Those who do not fit into this pattern are excluded in the sense of not belonging to the version of Christianity represented by the Benedictine community. Moral fortitude becomes an identity marker here just as pastoral power. In fact, this strategy predominantly excludes the community’s enemies, or all who worsen their situation, and includes their sponsors and protectors. Pastoral Power as a Rhetorical Strategy

Before the ‘divisio’ of 848, during the heavy battles between Siconolf and Radelgis, Benevento is described as a place of sin. Erchempert draws a picture which culminates in a scenario where people wandered ‘like beasts without a shepherd’ into the wilderness. The Lombards were in a permanent state of civil war, and an ‘utmost loss of spirit and heart’ occurred, especially because Saracens living in Benevento troubled the local aristocracy whom they whipped and commanded like ‘incompetent servants’.52 In short, it was poor or missing leadership that had brought the Christian people of Benevento to this hopeless situation. The text exposes this misbehaviour and simultaneously illustrates how those events could have been avoided, for instance by listening to the principles of God and his shepherds, Jesus and his apostles, and

51 Berto, ‘Erchempert’, p. 156, describes him as ‘antihero par excellence’. 52 Erchempert, Historia, c. 17, ed. by Waitz, p. 241: ‘Erat autem adhuc inter Siconolfum et Radelgisum frequentissima pugnae concertatio et cotidiana litium seditio, unde et ex diversa parte quibus via iustitiae displicebat alternatim ab uno in alterum confugiebant, fiebantque crebra par rapinae incestaeque fornicationes. Erant siquidem universi erranei et ad malum prompti, quasi bestiae sine pastore oberrantes in saltum. Set cum iugiter civili bello invicem inter se lacerarentur essetque omnium pernicies et, ut ita dicam, animae et cordis extrema perditio, maxime quia Saraceni Benevento degentes, quorum rex erat Massari, intra extraque omnia funditus devastavit, ita ut etiam optimates illius pro nihilo ducerent atque ut ineptos servulos taureis duriter flagellarent’; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, p. 151.

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by internalizing and fulfilling God’s plan for the salvation of the flock. The raiding Saracens are one consequence of Beneventan mismanagement and, as Berto has argued, the fact that the Lombard nobles were commanded like incompetent servants by them expresses the poor opinion Erchempert had of the Lombard elites.53 This can be also interpreted as a strong image of the moral collapse ensuing from this missing ‘true’ Christian leadership. Saracens, a term that actually included many different groups, are the closest we get to an ‘other’ in the traditional sense of the term. The text also differentiates between different groups of Saracens.54 In the Historiola they appear or do evil because God sent them as a punishment for his Beneventan people’s misbehaviour, or because Lombard counts had actually given them the opportunity to raid, murder, and capture citizens of opposing factions by hiring them as mercenaries. For example, in the Historiola, the Lombard Pando55 is a ‘traitor’ to ‘gens’ and ‘patria’, because he gave the Saracens the opportunity to kill Christian citizens by stationing them near Bari.56 Saracens thus became important allies to nearly all parties involved in southern Italian conflicts in the ninth century.57 On the other hand, Erchempert compares Saracens with vipers,58 and writes that they are ‘[…] ut sunt natura callidi et prudentiores aliis in malum […]’ (by nature clever and more skilled in evil).59 Their belief and the different cultural background is, in comparison with the portrayal of the Lombards, a characteristic that he uses to exclude them. In comparison to Lombards they are never given the chance to become part of the ‘in-group’, as Erchempert uses their nature to mark them out. Thus, they can also serve to emphasize the incompetence and the failure of other excluded individuals or groups.

53 Berto, ‘Erchempert’, p. 153. 54 The text mentions a variety of Muslim groups and different terms are used: Arageni, Saraceni, Aegyptii, Spanish Ismaelites (‘Hismaelitas Hispanos’), Libyan Agareni (‘Agarenos Libicos’), Seductors — stationed in Sicily, Bari, and Northern Africa. See Berto, ‘The Others’, pp. 47–50 (footnote 63). 55 No further information exists on Pando. His name points to an inheritance relation to a Landolf and Pandolf, thus to the Capuan dynasty. One of Landolf ’s sons, Pando, is ‘dux’ in Capua from 861–862. 56 Erchempert, c. 16, ed. by Waitz, p. 240: ‘supradictum vero proditorem gentis et patriae […]’; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, p. 146. 57 On Saracens in Southern Italy see: Marco Di Branco and Kordula Wolf, ‘Terra di conquista? I musulmani in Italia meridionale nell’epoca aghlabita (184/800–269/909)’, in “Guerra santa” e conquiste islamiche nel Mediterraneo (VII–XI secolo), ed. by Marco Di Branco and Kordula Wolf, I libri di Viella, 179 (Roma: Viella, 2014), pp. 125–66, pp. 152–59; Giosuè Musca, L’emirato di Bari, 847–871, Nuova Biblioteca Dedalo. Serie Nuovi saggi, 138, 2nd edn (Bari: Dedalo, 1992), pp. 35–36; Heath, ‘Third/Ninth–Century Violence’, pp. 31–34; Kreutz, Before the Normans, pp. 18–74; Berto, ‘The Muslims as Others’, pp. 1–24; Clemens Gantner, ‘New Visions of Community in Ninth–Century Rome: The Impact of the Saracen Threat on the Papal World View’, in Visions of Community in the Post–Roman World. The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1100, ed. by Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, and Richard Payne (Burlington: Routledge, 2012), pp. 403–21 (pp. 411–12). 58 Erchempert, Historia, c. 15, ed. by Waitz, p. 240: ‘[…] cum quibusdam de genere Seductorum, animo et gente crudelibus viperis […]’; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, p. 144. 59 Erchempert, Historia, c. 16, ed. by Waitz, p. 240; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, p. 146.

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This can be also seen in the passage where Guaiferius of Salerno started a war with the Capuans and raided them with the help of Saracen mercenaries. Because of this, and again through God’s will, an African Saracen was summoned. His encouragement united the Saracens, and they moved to Calabria in 884 and killed all Greeks at Santa Severina.60 This passage shows perfectly that although Saracens are also represented as strangers committing cruel deeds, they are not the main problem. They can be helpful allies, mercenaries, or — important for my approach — adaptable as a punishment of God for the people Erchempert identifies as the real problem, the real threat to Lombard unity. Moreover, the ‘Agarenus’ who ends up conquering Calabria is even able to bring his people together, in stark contrast to the inability of the Lombards to establish unity because they lack a strong leader or ‘pastor’. The Saracens are used here as a foil for the audience to emphasize the Christian ruler’s inability of fulfilling his role. The real problem the text wants to focus on is the corrupt leadership of the incompetent Lombard leaders, who were in fact responsible for the decline of the abbey of Montecassino.

Conclusion One of the main strategies of exclusion employed by Erchempert is his emphasis on superior Christian morality, and the claim that monks, and especially those of Montecassino, were the most perfect examples of ‘proper’ Christian behaviour. They voiced the concerns of the people suppressed by their political leaders, although often to no avail. The pastoral rhetoric, the claim to admonish all involved parties and to judge the deeds of the rulers and groups through God’s name corresponded to the high ambition of the monastic community and is applied to various situations in the Historiola. This strategy of distinction is strongly related to the particular holiness of the community and its prestige. It is based on the ‘collective memory’ of the community of Montecassino, its influence and importance in Christian culture. Surrounded by enemies and misfortunes, Erchempert can only react by contracting his sense of identity to the moral high ground of a monastic community with a glorious past, and by maintaining the pretence of its unity. Nevertheless, of course, within this community we can assume that there was diversity, and individuals of different political origin with different interests.61 Interestingly, the text excludes the darkest hours of Montecassino. When their abbey was plundered, destroyed and the abbot and monks were killed in 883, Erchempert just mentions this in passing and without giving details. Maybe the Historiola was 60 Erchempert, Historia, c. 51, ed. by Waitz, p. 256: ‘Tunc nutu Dei, a quo omne procedit bonum, quendam Agarenum ab Africa evocans, regia de stirpe generi sui procreatumc, Agropolim, inde Garilianum, quo residebant agmina Hismaelitica, misit, atque omnium illorum mentem accendens, eius hortatus universi Saraceni tam de Gariliano quam de Agropoli comuniter collecti, Calabriam, qua residebat Graecorum exercitus super Saracenos in sancta Severina commorantes, properarunt’; trans. by Ferry, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards’, pp. 207–08. 61 Pohl, Werkstätte, pp. 53–55.

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intended to emphasize the strength of the community of Montecassino, not its weakness; which leads to the conclusion, that it was a text of a community eager to gain power (again), and written for the purpose of convincing the readers of its moral strength. It is also imaginable that Erchempert recognizes that the strength of the monastery lay not in its buildings but in its monks, the individuals whose beliefs kept the community together, and in their will to admonish and to preach as a pivot of Christianity. It seems clear that the community was eager to find a strong patron after Louis II.62 The political origin of this person, who should primarily serve the community, was not important. The text shows its allegiance to those who fight for the common goal: a united Lombard principality under strong leadership, or rather: a safe surrounding for the community of Montecassino to prosper again. The community’s version of ‘belief ’ is its strongest weapon. Erchempert’s criticism of his own people serves to strengthen these beliefs and to reassure his community in times of trouble. Otherness works here from the viewpoint of a wider ‘in-group’, including all good Christian Lombards. The basis for the assessment who is good (included) and who is bad (excluded) seems to lie in the community of Montecassino’s particular claim to Christian authority. This approach shows how many identities actually are in an assumed identity (or group) and how a strategy of identification can work, and be used dynamically by political actors. The Historiola reveals that identities were permanently in the making. Using Christian religion and its rhetoric of pastoral authority was employed for strategies of ‘othering’, for staking claims, and for proposing strong visions of inclusion and exclusion within a society that was in fact deeply entangled.63

Works Cited Primary Sources CSBC: Cronicae Sancti Benedicti Casinensis, ed. by Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum (Hannover: Hahn, 1878), pp. 467–88 Erchempert, Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum, c. 69, ed. by Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum (Hannover: Hahn, 1878), pp. 234–64 ———, Piccola Storia dei Longobardi di Benevento / Ystoriola Longobardorum Beneventum degentium, ed. and trans. by Luigi Andrea Berto (Napoli: Liguori, 2013) Divisio principatus beneventani, in Jean-Marie Martin, Guerre, accords et frontières en Italie méridionale pendant le haut Moyen Âge: Pacta de Liburia, Divisio principatus Beneventani et autres actes, Sources et documents d’histoire du Moyen Âge, 7 (Roma: École française de Rome, 2005), pp. 201–17

62 Pohl, Werkstätte, p. 72. 63 Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification’, p. 49.

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Secondary Works Arnold, Dorothee, Johannes VIII. – Päpstliche Herrschaft in den karolingischen Teilreichen am Ende des 9. Jahrhunderts, Europäische Hochschulschriften, XXIII/797 (Frankfurt-amMain: Lang, 2005) Avagliano, Faustino, ‘Erchempert von Montecassino’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, ed. by Robert-Henri Bautier, Gloria Avella-Widhalm, Ulrich Mattejiet, and Robert Auty, vol. iii (München: Artemis, 1986), cols 2124–25 Berto, Luigi Andrea, ‘Erchempert, a Reluctant Fustigator of His People: History and Ethnic Pride in Southern Italy at the End of the Ninth Century’, Mediterranean Studies, 20.2 (2012), 147–75 ———, ‘The Image of the Byzantines in Early Medieval South Italy: The Viewpoint of the Chroniclers of the Lombards (9th–10th Centuries) and Normans (11th Century)’, Mediterranean Studies, 22.1 (2014), 1–37 ———, ‘The Muslims as Others in the Chronicles of Early Medieval Southern Italy’, Viator, 45.3 (2014), 1–24 ———, ‘The Others and their Stories, Byzantines, Franks, Lombards and Saracens in Ninth-Century Neapolitan Narrative Texts’, The Medieval History Journal, 19.1 (2016), 34–56 Bloch, Herbert, Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986) Brown, Peter, Autorität und Heiligkeit. Aspekte der Christianisierung des Römischen Reiches (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1998) ———, Macht und Rhetorik in der Spätantike. Der Weg zu einem christlichen Imperium (München: dtv Wissenschaft, 1995) ———, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200–1000, The Making of Europe, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell Wiley, 2003) Cigola, Michela, ‘La Terra Sancti Benedicti. Origine e sviluppo del territorio governato da Montecassino’, in La Vie dei Mercanti. Rappresentare il Mediterraneo, ed. by Carmine Gambardella, Massimo Giovannini, and Sabina Martusciello (Napoli: La Scuola di Pitagora, 2008), pp. 501–06 Citarella, Armand O., ‘The Political Chaos in Southern Italy and the Arab Destruction of Monte Cassino in 883’, in Montecassino: Dalla prima alla seconda distruzione. Momenti e aspetti di storia cassinese (Secc. VI–IX), ed. by Faustino Avagliano, Miscellanea Cassinese, A cura dei monaci di Montecassino, 55 (Montecassino: Montecassino, 1987), pp. 163–80 Delogu, Paolo, ‘Lombard and Carolingian Italy’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. ii: c. 700–c. 900, ed. by Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 290–319 Di Branco, Marco, and Kordula Wolf, ‘Terra di conquista? I musulmani in Italia meridionale nell’epoca aghlabita (184/800–269/909)’, in “Guerra santa” e conquiste islamiche nel Mediterraneo (VII–XI secolo), ed. by Marco Di Branco and Kordula Wolf, I libri di Viella, 179 (Roma: Viella, 2014), pp. 125–66 Diem, Albrecht, ‘The Carolingians and the Regula Benedicti’, in Religious Franks. Religion and Power in the Frankish Kingdoms: Studies in Honour of Mayke de Jong, ed. by Rob

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Meens, Dorine van Espelo, Bram van den Hoven van Genderen, Janneke Raaijmakers, Irene van Renswoude, and Carine van Rhijn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 243–61 ———, ‘Inventing the Holy Rule: Some Observations on the History of Monastic Normative Observance in the Early Medieval West’, in Western Monasticism ante litteram: The Spaces of Monastic Observance in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Hendrik Dey and Elizabeth Fentress, Disciplina Monastica, 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 53–84 Falco, Giorgio, ‘Erchemperto’, in Giorgio Falco, Albori d’Europa. Pagine di Storia medievale (Roma: Edizioni del lavoro, 1947), pp. 264–92 Ferry, Joan Rowe, ‘Erchempert’s History of the Lombards of Benevento: A Translation and Study of its Place in the Chronicle Tradition’ (Unpublished dissertation, Rice University, 1995) Foucault, Michel, Sicherheit, Territorium, Bevölkerung. Geschichte der Gouvernementalität, I, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft, 1808, 3rd edn (Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp, 2014) ———, Analytik der Macht, stw, 1759, 5th, edn (Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp, 2013) Fried, Johannes, Der Schleier der Erinnerung. Grundzüge einer historischen Memorik (München: Beck, 2012) Gantner, Clemens, Freunde Roms und Völker der Finsternis. Die päpstliche Konstruktion von Anderen im 8. und 9. Jahrhundert (Wien: Böhlau, 2014) ———, ‘New Visions of Community in Ninth-Century Rome: The Impact of the Saracen Threat on the Papal World View’, in Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World: The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1100, ed. by Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, and Richard Payne (Burlington: Routledge, 2012), pp. 403–21 ———, ‘“Our Common Enemies Shall Be Annihilated!” How Louis II’s Relations with the Byzantine Empire Shaped his Policy in Southern Italy’, in Southern Italy as Contact Area and Border during the Early Middle Ages: Religious Cultural Heterogeneity and Competing Powers in Local, Transregional and Universal Dimensions, ed. by Kordula Wolf and Klaus Herbers (Köln: Böhlau, 2017), pp. 295–314 Goetz, Hans-Werner, Die christlich-abendländische Wahrnehmung anderer Religionen im frühen und hohen Mittelalter. Methodische und vergleichende Aspekte, WolfgangStammler-Gastprofessur für Germanische Philologie, Vorträge, 23 (Berlin: De Gruyter 2013) Heath, Christopher, ‘Third/Ninth-Century Violence. “Saracens” and Sawdān in Erchempert’s Historia’, Al–Masaq, 27.1 (2015), 24–40 Jong, Mayke de, ‘Carolingian Monasticism: The Power of Prayer’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History 2: c. 700–c. 900, ed. by Rosamund McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 622–53 Kramer, Rutger, Great Expectations: Imperial Ideologies and Ecclesiastical Reforms from Charlemagne to Louis the Pious, 813–822 (Amsterdam: Ridderkerk, 2014) Kreutz, Barbara M., Before the Normans: Southern Italy in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996) Leyser, Conrad, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

The Co n s t r u ct i o n o f Al l eg i a n c e a n d E xclu si o n i n Erche mpe rt

———, ‘The Memory of Gregory the Great and the Making of Latin Europe, 600–1000’, in Making Early Medieval Societies: Conflict and Belonging in the Latin West, 300–1200, ed. by Conrad Leyser and Kate Cooper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 181–201 Musca, Giosuè, L’emirato di Bari, 847–871, Nuova Biblioteca Dedalo Serie Nuovi saggi, 138, 2nd edn (Bari: Dedalo, 1992), Pohl, Walter, ‘Fragmente der Erinnerung. Die Historiographie von Montecassino, 9. bis 11. Jahrhundert’, in Fragmente. Der Umgang mit lückenhafter Quellenüberlieferung in der Mittelalterforschung, ed. by Christian Gastgeber, Christine Glassner, Kornelia HolznerTobisch, and Renate Spreitzer, Denkschriften der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.–hist. Kl., 415 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. 161–66 ———, ‘History in Fragments: Montecassino’s Politics of Memory’, Early Medieval Europe, 10.3 (2001), 343–74 ———, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification. A methodological profile’, in Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 1–64 ———, Werkstätte der Erinnerung. Montecassino und die Gestaltung der langobardischen Vergangenheit, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Ergänzungsband, 39 (Wien: Oldenbourg, 2001) Pollheimer, Marianne, ‘Of Shepherds and Sheep: Preaching and Biblical Models of Community in the Ninth Century’, in Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann, ed. by Pohl and Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 233–56 Suchan, Monika, ‘Der gute Hirte. Religion, Macht und Herrschaft in der Politik der Karolinger- und Ottonenzeit’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 43 (2009), 95–112 ———, Mahnen und Regieren. Die Metapher des Hirten im früheren Mittelalter, Millennium– Studien zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends n. Chr., 56 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015) Wickham, Chris, Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400–1000 (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1981)

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Other Genders, Other Sexualities Crises of Identity in Medieval French Ovidian Narratives

This essay seeks to explore late medieval French reflections on human gender and sexuality — in particular, the relationship between gender and sexuality and the ways that the one may inflect the other — as areas that all too easily lapse into forms of otherness perceived as deeply disturbing: otherness from the natural world, otherness from the rational paradigm of ideal humanity, otherness even from oneself.1 Within this vast topic, I will focus on examples of Ovidian myths retold and glossed in the fourteenth-century Ovide moralisé (henceforth OM), in which the entire Metamorphoses (henceforth Met.) is subjected to elaborate moral and theological glossing; and Christine de Pizan’s Epistre Othea (c. 1400), a collection of 100 mythological exempla with illustrations and moral and allegorical commentary, which drew on the OM along with other sources.2 My discussion of Othea will include the evidence of illustrations from one of the earlier manuscripts — British Library, Harley 4431 — in which the iconography was influenced by Christine herself.3 I will also touch on the treatment of some of these figures in Evrart





1 I am grateful to Blake Gutt and Charlotte Cooper-Davis for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. 2 I cite the following editions: Ovide moralisé. Poème du commencement du quatorzième siècle, ed. by Cornelius de Boer, Martina G. de Boer, and Jeannette Th. M. van ‘t Sant, Verhandelingen des Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam. Afdeeling Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, 15 (1915), 1–374; 21 (1920), 1–394; 30 (1931), 1–303; 37 (1936), 1–478; 43 (1938), 1–429; and Christine de Pizan, Epistre Othea, ed. by Gabriella Parussa, Textes Littéraires Français, 517 (Genève: Droz, 2008). All translations are mine unless otherwise stated. 3 Christine’s role in the preparation of her manuscripts has long been recognized. For detailed studies of the Othea illustrations, see Sandra Hindman, Christine de Pizan’s ‘Epistre Othéa’: Painting and Politics at the Court of Charles VI, Studies and Texts, 77 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986); Marilynn Desmond and Pamela Scheingorn, Myth, Montage, and Visuality in Late Medieval Manuscript Culture: Christine de Pizan’s ‘Epistre Othea’ (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003); Charlotte E. Cooper, ‘Learning to Read Christine de Pizan’s Epistre Othea’, Pecia. Le Livre et l’écrit, 17 (2014), 41–63. Hindman notes that each of the three earliest surviving manuscripts, all produced during the first decade of the fifteenth century, ‘has autograph features. The first and second were penned by Christine and the third was supervised by her. It can now be demonstrated that she also determined the contents of the pictures in all three manuscripts’ (p. i). Sylvia Huot  •  is Professor Emeritus of Medieval French Literature and an Emeritus Fellow of Pembroke College, at the University of Cambridge. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 139–163 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123589

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de Conty’s Livre des Eschez amoureux moralisés (c. 1390–1405) (henceforth EAM), a voluminous prose commentary on the fourteenth-century verse Eschéz d’Amours.4 The aura of ‘otherness’ attached to the characters I will examine is imposed by the medieval authors, for whom divergence from cultural norms of exogamy, heteronormativity, and fixed gender identity can only be seen as unacceptable deviance. This, then, is an otherness conjured up only to be condemned and deplored; but also, if possible, to be resolved through a change of perspective into a configuration that conforms to cultural norms after all. The principal means through which this is accomplished is that of allegorical gloss. By presenting a reading of fictional events as other than what they literally appear to be, these authors can transform lamentable or unspeakable deviance into a more readily articulated lesson in proper or improper behaviour, or even an admirable moral or spiritual truth: what is seen as ‘unnatural’ may comprise the shameful otherness of sin, or the awe-inspiring otherness of the divine. Yet the underlying, unspoken interpretation still lurks in the background, so to speak, such that one, unequivocal meaning can emerge. In the end, these tales offer multiple forms of erotic, moral, and spiritual ‘otherness’, both implicit and explicit. Human sexualities and gender identities are often defined in ancient and medieval texts with recourse to ‘nature’ and animal models, yet this never works as seamlessly as the literary characters invoking the naturalistic trope might wish; human otherness from animals is in fact unavoidable. As an example I take the motif of incest. Myrrha, great-grand-daughter of Pygmalion, falls hopelessly in love with her father; and wrestling with her conscience, she thinks longingly of the freedom of animals. In the OM she laments that ‘Li bues o sa fille s’assamble; / L’eque au cheval qui l’engendra. / […] / La loi et li drois nous desvoie / Ce que nature nous otroie’ (10. 1179–80, 1188–89) (The bull mates with his daughter; the mare with the stallion that sired her […] Law and justice divert us from what nature allows us).5 But people are not animals, and the very means by which this incestuous maiden seeks to satisfy her desires shows up that difference: passionate love pleas, agonizing moral dilemmas, attempted suicide, and deceptive disguises are not found in the animal kingdom. Misplaced desire leads ultimately to a loss of human form, as the weeping Myrrha becomes a tree that ‘weeps’ droplets of myrrh. Yet her human subjectivity lives on in the form of eternal mourning. One might draw an analogy of sorts with medieval texts like Guillaume de Lorris’s Roman de la Rose, where a narrative love quest gives way to the stasis of



4 Evrart de Conty, Le Livre des Eschez amoureux moralisés, ed. by Françoise Guichard-Tesson and Bruno Roy, Bibliothèque du Moyen Français, 2 (Montreal: CERES, 1993). For the poem itself, see Les Eschéz d’Amours: A Critical Edition of the Poem and Its Latin Glosses, ed. by Gregory Heyworth and Daniel E. O’Sullivan, with Frank Coulson, Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts, 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2013). 5 Ovid’s Myrrha makes much the same complaint: ‘nec habetur turpe iuvencae / ferre patrem tergo, fit equo sua filia coniunx / […] / […] humana malignas / cura dedit leges, et quod natura remittit, / invida iura negant’ (Met. 10. 325–26, 329–31) (nor is it thought base for a heifer to endure her sire, nor for his own offspring to be a horse’s mate […] Human civilization has made spiteful laws, and what nature allows, the jealous laws forbid). I cite text and translation from Ovid, Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. by Frank Justus Miller, Loeb Classical Library, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977).

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an endlessly reiterated lyric lament. This is an experience so fundamentally human as to be featured in love poetry throughout the millennia, yet Myrrha’s trajectory is inflected in a way that alienates its perpetrator from human society, indeed from the human race. In the end Myrrha prays to be excluded from both the living and the dead: ‘Pour ce que les mors ne les vis / Ne corrompe o m’iniquité / Ne la tache de ma vilté, / Tolez moi vie sans morir’ (OM 10. 1921–24) (So that I do not corrupt the dead nor the living with my iniquity and the stain of my vile behaviour, take my life without letting me die).6 Within the original Ovidian narrative, this is the way the story ends, unravelling into the mystery of impossible desire. Just as Myrrha is ultimately excluded from both life and death, she is also excluded from both nature and culture. A person who attempts to follow a code appropriate only for irrational animals ends up in a kind of limbo, not quite human and yet not quite anything else, either, for trees do not naturally weep tears of contrition, or give birth to human children. Incest reaches the same dehumanizing culmination in the tale of Byblis, who initially attempted to justify her love for her brother by noting that incest is permitted to the gods — ‘Li dieu vaudrent lor suers avoir’ (OM 9. 2172) (the gods are able to have their sisters) — before conceding that mortals and immortals do not operate according to the same code: ‘Moult seroit folz qui se vaudroit / Aus diex comparager ne prendre’ (OM 9. 2184–85) (Whoever wishes to compare themselves to the gods is foolish indeed).7 In the end her ceaseless weeping leads to her transformation into an endlessly flowing fountain. Like Myrrha, she neither lives nor dies, but simply passes into the natural world in a form that both continues her human subjectivity — her unending production of metaphorical tears — while also excluding her from human society, indeed, from human identity of any kind. As sites of trauma posing as natural features of the landscape, both girls inhabit an uneasy space of irreducible otherness that hovers between human culture and raw nature, without being assimilable to either one. But while the OM poet retains the narrative trajectories found in Ovid, he imposes both meaning and closure with his glosses.8 On the one hand, allegory is a means of redeeming taboo desires, as the story is subjected to a theological reading. Since the logic of divinity is not that of humanity, the very concept of incest becomes meaningless. Ironically, in this sense, Byblis was right: neither God, nor gods, are







6 The same despairing wish is voiced by Ovid’s Myrrha: ‘sed ne violem vivosque superstes / mortuaque exstinctos, ambobus pellite regnis / mutataeque mihi vitam necemque negate!’ (Met. 10. 485–87) (but lest, surviving, I offend the living, and, dying, I offend the dead, drive me from both realms; change me and refuse me both life and death!). 7 The justification is adapted directly from Ovid’s Byblis: ‘di nempe suas habuere sorores’ (Met. 9. 497) (But surely the gods have loved their sisters); ‘quid ad caelestia ritus / exigere humanos diversaque foedera tempto?’ (Met. 9. 500–01) (Why should I try to measure human fashions by divine and far different customs?). 8 See Stefania Cerrito, ‘Histoires de femmes, jeux de formes et jeux de sens’, in Nouvelles Etudes sur l’Ovide moralisé, ed. by Marylène Possamaï-Pérez, Essais sur le Moyen Age, 42 (Paris: Champion, 2009), pp. 72–97 (pp. 90–96).

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bound by human laws.9 As the OM poet explains, Myrrha is Mary, bride of God the Father; Byblis is Divine Sapience, ‘wedded’ to humanity in the Incarnation of Christ. On the other hand, remaining within the human realm, their transformation is rewritten as Christian penance: the death that Myrrha avoids is not bodily death, but the spiritual death of eternal damnation. True contrition, after all, allows even the worst of sinners to redeem their fallen humanity and to be subsumed back into the community of the saved — a transformation, as Sarah Kay has noted, far more fundamental than the mere adaptation of bodily form to express more fully a person’s inner character.10 The OM poet reminds us that no human soul can be excluded from divine judgement. People may behave like animals, but they cannot die like animals. Whether in Heaven or in Hell, their fundamentally human nature lives on. The tales and their glosses probe without really resolving the paradoxical condition of human beings, who partake both of the divine and of the animal, without quite belonging to either.

The Ambiguity of Gender I move now to stories touching on the enigma of gender and its role in sexuality, an even more fraught arena, and one that both epitomizes and problematizes human exceptionality in the cosmos. Here too, an appeal may be made to the animal world, though not necessarily in justification of what are seen as ‘unnatural’ desires. Directly following the tale of Byblis in Ovid’s Metamorphoses is that of Iphis: a girl who was raised from birth as a boy, and whose situation erupts into crisis when she, or he, is betrothed to another girl, Ianthe, who assumes that her intended husband is male. The two are in love, but Iphis can see no way forward: ‘Quel vache seult vache requerre / Ne quel eque autre eque atoucher? / Les brebis ont le moton cher, / Et la vache dou tor s’acointe’ (OM 9. 2934–36) (What cow seeks out another cow, and what mare couples with another mare? The ewes desire the ram, and the cow is intimate with the bull).11 In lamenting her condition, Iphis, still identifying herself with a female subject position, considers herself more depraved, more irrational even than Pasiphaë, whose desire for the bull at least targeted a male creature with whom she had the possibility for a fruitful mating, however monstrous the result.



9 The final conclusion is that reached by Ovid’s Byblis: ‘sunt superis sua jura’ (Met. 9. 500) (But the gods are a law unto themselves!). The Byblis of the OM similarly reflects that ‘Il loit aus damediex à faire / Quanqu’il lor plaist, soit tort, soit droit’ (OM 9. 2182–83) (the gods are permitted to do whatever they please, be it wrong or right). 10 For reflections on the ways in which the OM seems both to deny and to affirm the inviolable uniqueness and stability of the human being, see Sarah Kay, The Place of Thought: The Complexity of One in Late Medieval French Didactic Poetry (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), pp. 42–69. 11 The lamentation is almost identical to that found in Ovid: ‘nec vaccam vaccae, nec equas amor urit equarum: / urit oves aries, sequitur sua femina cervum’ [Met. 9. 731032] (Cows do not love cows, nor mares, mares; but the ram desires the sheep, and his own doe follows the stag).

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In the whole of the animal kingdom, she cannot find another species in which the female lusts after another female like herself. Yet Iphis of all examples turns out to be able to marry the girl she loves after all, as through the intervention of Isis, she miraculously becomes the man that, in effect, she — he — always already was in all but bodily form. Ovid’s account explicitly portrays Iphis as undergoing a transformative change of gender, while nonetheless also implicitly suggesting that humans differ from animals not only in their different structures of family and kinship, and their different uses of artifice and language, but also in having a gendered identity that may be distinguishable from bodily sex markers such as musculature, facial appearance, stance and stride, and — though he does not mention it explicitly — genitalia. Perhaps indeed a cow does not desire another cow, but if one of the cows is really a bull, then their mutual attraction is no cause for surprise. And while animal gender and sexual identity may seem straightforwardly grounded in the body and in heterosexual reproduction, at least within the economy of the Ovidian text and its medieval adaptations, such is clearly not the case with the far more complex human psyche, which may require the body to adapt to it rather than the other way around. Again, as with incest and the structuring of lineage, humans stand strangely apart from the animal world: contained within nature on the one hand, as the story confirms that two girls cannot marry; yet not entirely or seamlessly part of it, on the other, as one of the girls may turn out not to be a girl after all. Though Iphis has always ‘passed’ successfully as a boy and presumably has, at least in some sense, a masculine bearing, Ovid insists upon deep-seated, visible changes to the body: the miracle wrought by Isis is not portrayed as a restoration of true identity, but as a metamorphosis, albeit a welcome one. As he explains, Iphis now walks ‘maiore gradu, nec candor in ore / permanet, et vires augentur, et acrior ipse est / vultus, et incomptis brevior mensura capillis’ (Met. 9. 787–89) (with a longer stride … Her face seemed of a darker hue, her strength seemed greater, her features sharper, and her locks, all unadorned, were shorter than before).12 The OM poet repeats the same details: Hyphis, sa fille, la sivoit A plus grant pas qu’el ne seult faire, S’a mains de blanchour ou viaire Qu’elle n’y avoit ains eüe. Force et fierté li est creüe, Et si chevoul sont abregié. (OM 9. 3082–87)

12 The feminine pronouns used in the English translation are those of Miller, translator of the Loeb edition; Latin grammar allowed Ovid to leave the question of gender unspecified in these verses. I have nonetheless retained Miller’s usage in view of Ovid’s explicit insistence that Iphis does indeed undergo a radical transformation from female to male identity, which might at this point still be in process. It is worth noting that the OM poet made a similar choice in his use of feminine pronouns for this passage, switching to masculine pronouns only after that point, as my continued discussion shows.

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(Iphis, her daughter, followed her with a longer stride than she had been accustomed to, and her face was less white than it had been before. Her strength and proud confidence grew, and her hair was shorter). Ovid further highlights the transformation as his narrator apostrophizes Iphis: ‘nam quae / femina nuper eras, puer es!’ (9. 790–91) (In fact, you who but lately were a girl are now a boy!). The OM poet similarly dwells on the miracle as a watershed moment when one identity is replaced by another: Tout ot son estat et son estre Et sa nature femeline Chanchiee, et prise masculine: Yphis fille est devenus filz. (OM 9. 3092–95) (His entire stature and being and feminine nature was changed, and become masculine: Yphis the daughter has become a son). The shift from the feminine pronoun ‘elle’ or ‘el’ — still used with reference to Yphis in vv. 3085 and 3090 — to the masculine ‘devenus’ of v. 3095, clearly marks this moment as transformative. Iphis, then, is portrayed as struggling with a conflicted identity, in which she was in some sense ‘other’ not only from the natural world, but from her very self: female in body, but a heterosexual male in terms of emotions, desires, and cultural conditioning. The resolution does suggest that cultural and emotional identity is the more powerful factor, winning out in the end, even as it also implies that the body itself is the ultimate determinant of gender: however masculine her character, Iphis remains ‘femina’ until her body takes on a fully male physiology. That this process is possible, however, belies the fears of an Iphis who still regards herself as — tragically — female, and thus even more maddened than Pasiphaë. The Cretan queen’s body remained stubbornly non-bovine and thus of no interest to the bull she longed for, until she resorted to artificial means and, with the ruse of an ingeniously constructed cow costume, finally consummated her desire. The OM poet, perhaps nervous about recourse to outright gender malleability as a solution to the cultural taboo against same-sex love and desire, first adapts Iphis to this model: she was a sinful young woman inflamed with lust for another, more innocent, girl. Driving the point home, he stresses that this desire arose despite the unequivocally female status of her person — ‘Tout n’eüst elle point de vit / Ne de membre a ce convenable’ (9. 3130–31) (even though she had no penis nor other member appropriate to this) — and that she resorted to a fraudulent disguise, using a dildo (‘membre apostis’ [9. 3149]) to deceive the unfortunate object of her desire. The medieval poet uses the story to condemn same-sex desire as well as the refusal to conform to the gendered identity implied by one’s bodily sex, linking the one with the other.13

13 On the OM poet’s treatment of Iphis, see Robert Mills, Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), pp. 98–120.

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Insofar as he is willing to consider transgender identity, it is — like incest — only possible in the realm of allegory, transposing gender into the purely human arena of moral character and spiritual development: to become male is to ascend to a superior state of virtue. Iphis’s parents, he explains, are God the Father and Mother Church. The Father initially damns the sinful soul, gendered female: ‘Dona sentence amere et dure / Contre femeline nature, / C’est contre l’ame pecherresse’ (OM 9. 3201–03) (he passed a harsh and bitter sentence on female nature, that is, on the sinful soul). But the nurturing of the Church allows errant souls to repent and, through penance, to become ‘Filz Dieu’ (9. 3242) (sons of God). Transgendered identities are only acceptable for the OM poet, indeed they are only conceivable at all, if they are carefully detached from sexuality and from the body in general. We see a similar use of Iphis with Christine de Pizan’s famous allegorical account of her own ‘sex change’ in La Mutacion de Fortune (1403), whereby she became a man after the death of her husband: in other words, she acquired the spiritual fortitude and intellectual vigour to take charge of her life and to pursue the career of writer, thinker, and philosopher that had been denied to her as a woman.14 Though Christine does state that her body became stronger and her voice deeper, it is clear that these masculine traits form part of the allegory of the sea voyage, whereby she was enabled to assume control of the ship after its pilot, her husband, fell overboard. The real point of her transformation is her greater confidence and the ‘fort et hardi cuer’ (1359) (strong and bold heart) that allow her to pursue the career that will sustain her financially, intellectually, and emotionally. Christine further takes care to assure us that, despite these changes, she retains the affections of her mother ‘Qui tousjours m’ot esté amie’ (1425) (who has always been a friend to me), and that she continues to rely on the feminine moral attributes that her mother had taught her as a girl. Indeed, referring back to the allegorical voyage, she notes that ‘certes par leur vertu vins / A port’ (1446–47) (it was certainly by virtue of these that I returned to port). Somewhat differently from Iphis, Christine has not so much abandoned femininity as she has enhanced it by taking on selective traits normally reserved for men. Still, her account comes uncomfortably close to acknowledging the OM poet’s assertion that a movement from female to male represents a process of moral progression and spiritual renewal. Crucially, Christine’s account includes the loss of her wedding ring. Having become in some sense a man — ‘A parler selon methafore’ (1033) (to speak metaphorically), as she puts it — she is placed beyond the possibility of marriage or amorous liaisons, whether with a new husband or with a wife. And her account of Iphis, offered as a parallel to her own experience, acknowledges the marriage but omits all of Iphis’s

14 Le Livre de la Mutacion de Fortune, ed. by Suzanne Solente, Société des Anciens Textes Français, 4 vols (Paris: Picard, 1959–1966). Christine describes her frustrated desire to emulate her father’s scholarly life (413–68) before narrating the metaphorical sex change that finally allowed her to do so (1025–1416).

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introspective love monologues and expressions of anguished desire.15 Christine’s effort to redefine femininity in terms compatible with behaviour traditionally coded as masculine, which pervades her entire oeuvre, decidedly excludes any possibility whatsoever of homoerotic relations — literal or metaphorical — between either women or men. For these medieval writers, the renegotiation of gender must take place outside the domain of sexuality, as an androgynous figure cannot be paired with either a male or a female partner.16 A fixed gender binary may be either affirmed or questioned in these texts, then, but they share a common ground of compulsory heterosexuality: a trait so thoroughly naturalized and so essential that gender itself may shift in order to preserve sexual difference within a couple, and no couple can be formed if gender identity remains uncertain or liminal. But if a ‘manly woman’ can be admired, the same is not true of an effeminate man. In the masculine domain, gender ambiguity is equated with a loss of virility and moral integrity. For Christine, in particular, male effeminacy can become a screen that allows her to condemn homoerotic desire without having actually to name it. I would like now to focus on the implicit or explicit treatment of this delicate issue across a range of Ovidian characters, as figured in the medieval adaptations under discussion. My first example is the well-known tale of Narcissus. Christine would have known Narcissus not only from Ovid and the OM but also from numerous other vernacular texts. Most of these portray him as gripped with desire for a figure that he perceives as male; a notable exception is the twelfth-century Lai de Narcisse, in which Narcissus perceives the figure in the water as female, wondering only if it is ‘ninphe’, ‘duesse’, or ‘fee’ (685–86) (nymph, goddess, or fairy).17 In Othea, Christine likewise portrays Narcissus in terms of deviation from heterosexual desire, though without dwelling on his choice of a male love object. It is standard to condemn Narcissus for his rejection of Echo, but Christine chooses to include his story twice, in separate exempla, first presenting Narcissus as a negative exemplum of pride and self-love (Fig. 6.1), and later criticizing him for his lack of mercy towards Echo (Fig. 6.2).18

15 See Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Reading Myth: Classical Mythology and Its Interpretations in Medieval French Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 176–83; Judith L. Kellogg, ‘Transforming Ovid: The Metamorphosis of Female Authority’, in Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference, ed. by Marilynn Desmond, Medieval Cultures, 14 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), pp. 181–94; Mills, Seeing Sodomy, pp. 121–28. 16 For a discussion of how a necessarily heterosexual orientation informs the gender identity of the heroines in the thirteenth-century Roman de Silence and Chanson d’Yde et Olive, see my ‘Self and Society’, in A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Medieval Age, ed. by Linda Kalof (Oxford: Berg, 2010), pp. 203–18, 257–58 (pp. 206–11). 17 Pyrame et Thisbé, Narcisse, Philomena, ed. and trans. by Emmanuèle Baumgartner (Paris: Gallimard, 2000). 18 All images are published under the Creative Commons Public Domain license of the British Library. The complete Harley 4431 manuscript can be accessed on the British Library website: . © British Library Board, Harley 4431.

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Figure 6.1 Narcissus at the fountain. © British Library Board, London, BL, Harley MS 4431, fol. 104r, c. 1410/1414.

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Figure 6.2 Narcissus and Echo. © British Library Board, London, BL, Harley MS 4431, fol. 134r.

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The inclusion of an image of Narcissus specifically rejecting Echo, and a discussion of that event as a separate episode, is a little unusual. The most ubiquitous images of Narcissus in the later Middle Ages were in manuscripts of the Roman de la Rose. This text does cite — and indeed condemn — his rejection of Echo. As in the Lai de Narcisse — and unlike Ovid’s version, where Narcissus is pursued by male and female admirers and finally cursed by a spurned youth — she is apparently his only would-be lover and the one responsible for his anguished experience at the fountain. But she is rarely included in the illustrations; there, the focus is usually on Narcissus’s desire for what he sees reflected in the water, as in Christine’s first image.19 The Rose does, however, note that after his ‘desdaing’ [scorn] and ‘fierté’ (pride or arrogance) towards Echo (1448), Narcissus was captivated by the vision of ‘un esfant bel a desmesure’ (1486) (an overwhelmingly beautiful boy).20 And if the Lover of the Rose seems, at least most of the time, to be pursuing a female love object, the text nonetheless carries innuendos of auto-eroticism or homoeroticism in his unwitting imitation of Narcissus, his desire to grasp the phallic rose bud on its stiff stem, and his infatuation with the male-gendered Bel Acueil.21 The OM, which closely adapts a number of lines from Guillaume de Lorris’s summary of the story, remains true to Ovid in having Narcissus spurn both male and female admirers, including of course Echo, before finally succumbing to what he thinks is a beautiful boy just beneath the surface of the water.22 Narcissus’ overall trajectory, however, departs subtly from Ovid and more closely resembles Guillaume’s account in portraying Narcissus as having turned, specifically, from rejection of women to infatuation with a young man. Ovid insists on the illusory nature of Narcissus’s love object, but the OM poet expands on this with a line that reminds us of the absence of any specifically female beloved: ‘Or l’a si fole amours conquis, / Qu’il aime […] Et cui? […] Ce qui n’est mie. / Il aime et si n’a point d’amie’ (3. 1616–18) (Now foolish love has so overpowered him that he loves […] And whom? […] Something that does not exist. He loves and yet he has no girlfriend). And while Ovid’s Narcissus merely comments that nymphs have loved him, offering this as evidence that he is indeed a ‘good catch’, the Narcissus of the OM stresses the singular and special quality of his love for the mysterious ‘enfes’ (boy) in noting that these many female suitors had failed to arouse his interest: ‘M’ont aimé dames et puceles / Plusieurs, moult plesans et moult beles, / Mes n’avoie d’eles que faire’ (3. 1701–03) (Many ladies and maidens have loved me, very agreeable and beautiful, but I had no interest in any of them).

19 Digital copies of Rose manuscripts, most of which include at least one miniature depicting Narcissus, can be consulted at (accessed 9 February 2018). 20 Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, ed. by Félix Lecoy, Classiques Français du Moyen Age, 3 vols (Paris: Champion, 1965–1970). 21 See Simon Gaunt, ‘Bel Acueil and the Improper Allegory of the Romance of the Rose’, New Medieval Literatures, 2 (1998), 65–93; and my Dreams of Lovers and Lies of Poets: Poetry, Knowledge, and Desire in the ‘Roman de la Rose’, Research Monographs in French Studies, 31 (London: Legenda, 2010), pp. 66–78. 22 See OM 3. 1541–42 and Rose, 1463; OM 3. 1546 and Rose, 1466; OM 3. 1547 and Rose, 1468; OM 3. 1551 and Rose, 1525; OM 3. 1577–79 and Rose, 1487–89.

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Even more explicitly than Guillaume de Lorris, the OM poet presents Narcissus as one who refused heterosexual liaisons only to commit himself whole-heartedly to homoerotic love. The moral commentary, however, ignores this point, portraying Narcissus first as a figure of worldly vanity who failed to value a good reputation, as represented by Echo, the disembodied voice; and then as one who, like the fallen angels of old, shunned God in preference for the ephemeral and illusory beauty of worldly things: ‘Pert la grant joie pardurable, / Et se mire ou tenebrous font / D’enfer et d’asbisme parfont’ (3. 1900–02) (he loses eternal joy and gazes into the dark pit of Hell and the deep abyss). Narcissus’s preference for same-sex love is not, then, itself the point of the exemplum; rather, this turn from hetero- to homoerotic desire becomes a metaphor for the turn from spiritual to worldly goods, and the misdirection of love from God to mere vanities, and ultimately to Hell itself. To be male in body, while exhibiting a form of desire that the medieval poet would identify as feminine, is treated as a perversion of the natural order: one that can be allegorized as the otherness of sin itself. Christine, with her wish to promote the love and honour of women, appropriates this model of male homoeroticism as an allegory for pride and misdirected desire, while sharpening the focus on misogyny and disdain for women and their emotional needs. Christine follows the Rose in making Echo responsible for the prayer that caused Narcissus’s fateful and fatal love. She also reverses the order of events, such that the account of Narcissus spurning Echo (Othea 86) comes considerably after we have already seen him gazing rapturously at his own (male) image (Othea 16). The image of Narcissus turning away from Echo even includes the fountain in which he enjoys his beloved image, despite the fact that in most other accounts, the misadventure at the fountain occurred well after Echo’s death — and always after Narcissus spurned her. In Othea, it could almost seem not that Narcissus was punished with irrational, eroticized self-love because he refused Echo, but that he wanted nothing to do with the love of a lady because he was already besotted with his own image. Here, then, his crime emerges even more clearly as that of indifference to a female love object, in preference for a vision of masculine beauty. And while Christine does not make that point explicitly, glossing Narcissus only as a figure of pride and hard-hearted cruelty towards one in need of mercy, the implicit identification of these faults with misogynistic homoerotic bonding cannot be missed. Christine builds on a long tradition in which pride is the common ground linking the misdirected love of Narcissus to the Satanic defiance of God that informs all human sin, and more specifically to the defiance of Nature exemplified by the sodomites who, according to Jean de Meun’s Genius, scorn reproductive sex because of their ‘orgueil’ (Rose 19611). The fourteenth-century Eschéz d’amours, a recasting of the Rose, describes the Garden of Love as containing not just the Fountain of Narcissus, but also that of Hermaphroditus, who rejected the love of Salmacis but came into his famously intersex identity when her body fused permanently with his in the fateful pool (EA 3084–3100). Both pools are perilous: the former causes an overwhelming but ultimately sterile and fatal love for one’s own reflection, while the latter ‘fait l’omme en son venir / Femme a moitïé devenir, / Et du tout femme le feroit / Se longuement

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y demouroit’ (3091–94) (causes the man who comes there to become half-woman, and it would transform him completely into a woman if he stayed there for long). The juxtaposition of the two fountains is telling, for in fact one could see the Fountain of Narcissus as effecting a subtle gender change as well: a site for the punishment of a man who, we know, rejected the love of a lady, but then replicated her experience of loving an unresponsive man. If Narcissus is an exemplar of male same-sex desire, one could also see him as adumbrating a confusion of gender: his behaviour, already stereotypically feminine in its haughty resistance to love, culminates in obsessive desire for a masculine love object. The pool of Salmacis similarly punishes men unreceptive to feminine love objects, again by making them into a feminine figure themselves — though in this case the ambiguity is located in bodily fusion rather than in mirrored desire. In both cases, resistance to heterosexual love robs a man of his masculine nature, resulting in a state where he is somehow both self and other. Such an interpretation is implied in the EA poet’s comment that when a man gazes into the Fountain of Narcissus, ‘amours tout le desfigure’ (3086) (love completely deforms him). Mythographers often shied away from explicitly condemning Hermaphroditus for his disinterest in Salmacis; after all, male celibacy was more commonly seen as a virtue, not a vice. The OM poet, for example, ignores the fact that Hermaphroditus resisted Salmacis, and glosses him as a young man corrupted by lascivious pleasures. His gender transformation is not identified with the supposed effeminacy of homosexuality, but with the moral degradation caused by consorting with loose women. Salmacis is not defended in the same way that Echo often is, or even granted a positive allegorical role: she is glossed as a ‘fole feme’ (OM 4. 2276) (wanton temptress), ‘assez plus perilleuse / Que serpent male et cavilleuse’ (2280–81) (craftier and more malicious than a serpent), and is even identified with ‘cele pute / … / dont dist l’Apocalipse’ (2291–93) (that whore spoken of in the Apocalypse). This reading is also prominent in Evrart de Conty’s commentary on the Echéz d’amours. Despite having explained that Hermaphroditus steadfastly refused Salmacis’s advances, Evrart ends up glossing him as ‘les jones damoiseaux qui ont l’oeil et le cuer as vanités du monde […] qui se veulent tous plongier en la fontaine de delectation’ (EAM, 412–13) (young men whose eye and heart are set on worldly vanities […] who wish to plunge completely into the fountain of pleasure). Christine, with a very different bent, presents Hermaphroditus in Othea as one who arrogantly rejected the love of a maiden, displaying cruelty and rudeness; she further identifies him with Narcissus by inventing the detail that it was after a day of hunting that he came upon Salmacis and her pool (Othea, Glose 82). As with Echo, she refrains from any criticism of Salmacis, sharply criticizing Hermaphroditus for refusing something that he should by all rights have done: ‘laide chose est et villaine reffuser ou ottroyer a grant danger ce qui ne peut tourner a prejudice ne a vice ester ottroyé’ (Othea, Glose 82) (it is a vile and despicable thing to refuse, or to grant only with great reluctance, something that can be granted without disrepute or vice). A man who cannot respond to the love of a virtuous maiden, it would seem, is something other than a real man. Christine once again avoids any explicit mention of homoeroticism, but her implicit condemnation of it comes

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through; that she considers Hermaphroditus to be stained with some unspeakable sin is clear in her comment that he was ‘plain de felonnie’ (Othea, Glose 82) (full of wickedness). Christine normally condemns illicit love affairs, placing a high value on feminine modesty.23 The fact that she valorises the initiative — one might even say aggression — of both Echo and Salmacis, alerts us to the fact that the real stakes here are the inability of both Narcissus and Hermaphroditus to respond sexually to a woman. For her, Narcissus and Hermaphroditus are implicitly linked as exemplars of an unnatural resistance to ‘proper’ love born not of pious chastity, but of pride, an effeminate preoccupation with one’s own delicate beauty, and misogyny. Like the OM poet in his glosses on Narcissus, however, she refrains from making this the explicit point, instead allowing the implications of homoerotic disdain for women to act, in both cases, as the vehicle for a lesson about mercy and compassion. Echo’s tragic fate teaches the knight that ‘il doit avoir pitié des souffreteux qui le requierent’ (Glose 86) (he should take pity on the unfortunates who implore him), while the fusion of Hermaphroditus with Salmacis indicates that ‘cellui ne peut proprement reconforter le dolent qui ne s’accorde a sa douleur’ (Allegorie 82) (he who does not share in the pain of those suffering cannot comfort them properly).

Dangerous Desires and Unspeakable Acts Christine also suppresses explicit homoerotic elements from the story of Hyacinthus, whom she calls ‘Ganymede’, thereby conflating two young men loved by gods whose stories are juxtaposed in the song of Orpheus. Ganymede was snatched up to Mount Olympus by Jove’s eagle, where he served as lover and cup-bearer to Jove; Hyacinthus, beloved of Apollo, was accidentally killed in a game of discus-throwing with the god, or in Christine’s account in Othea, tossing an iron bar. In Christine’s gloss, the death of Hyacinthus/Ganymede arose because he dared to vie with one stronger than himself: a classic instance of hubris. As with Narcissus, her treatment results in an implicit condemnation of homosexual love. The use of the name ‘Ganymede’ already carries a powerful association with homoeroticism, which is even more explicit in the Ovidian tale of Ganymede himself than in that of Hyacinthus, and it is impossible that Christine was not fully aware of this. The OM poet explicitly condemns same-sex desire in his historical gloss on Ganymede, noting that Jupiter ‘mainte fois se deporta / Avuec lui par non de luxure, / Contre droit et contre nature’ (10. 3383–85) (many times disported himself with him in the name of lust, contrary to law and nature). As with other examples we have seen, this deviant behaviour is 23 See for example Christine’s Livre du duc des vrais amans, ed. by Thelma S. Fenster, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Binghamton: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1995). Fenster’s Introduction provides an excellent survey of Christine’s pro-marriage agenda and her critique of illicit love affairs (19–33). Charlotte Cooper, ‘Présences, publics et portraits ambigus du manuscript British Library Harley 44431’, Le Moyen Français, 78–79 (2016), 1–15, discusses Christine’s warnings in Othea against following Venus, as underscored by subtle iconographic details.

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Figure 6.3 Apollo and ‘Ganymede’. © British Library Board, London. London, BL, Harley MS 4431, 119v.

redeemed only in the realm of allegory, as the poet offers first a meteorological and then a theological reading that de-sexualize the tale completely.24 The moral Christine draws from Ganymede/Hyacinthus is that ‘soy jouer avec les hommes de malgracieux gieux est signe d’orgueil et fine communement par yre’ (Othea, Glose 53) (to play at distasteful games with other men is a sign of pride, and commonly ends badly); this could be read as referring either to any sort of inappropriate athletic games, or more specifically to ‘distasteful’ sex play, while the identification with pride might remind us of both Narcissus and Hermaphroditus. The Othea manuscripts made under Christine’s supervision depict ‘Ganymede’ being struck in the eye by an iron tossed by Apollo (Fig. 6.3). As critics have noted, this adds erotic overtones to the scene by assimilating him to the Lover in the Rose, struck in the eye by Cupid’s arrow: ‘et tret a moi par tel devise / que par mi l’ueil m’a ou cuer mise / sa saiete’ (1691–93) (and he shot me in such a way that his arrow struck me in the eye and lodged in my heart).25 24 See Mills, Seeing Sodomy, pp. 227–28. For a discussion of allegory and metaphor throughout the OM poet’s treatment of the song of Orpheus, see Virginie Minet-Mahy, Esthétique et pouvoir de l’oeuvre allégorique à l’époque de Charles VI, Bibliothèque du XVe Siècle, 58 (Paris: Champion, 2005), pp. 107–45. 25 See Desmond and Scheingorn, Myth, Montage, and Visuality, pp. 112–18, for a comparison of Christine’s iconography with that of the Rose on the one hand, and the depictions of Ganymede and Hyacinthus in OM manuscripts on the other. I do not concur with Desmond and Scheingorn’s reading of Christine’s image as sympathetic to homoerotic love.

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In Christine’s image, the poses of both men are sensuous, bending towards each other as if in mutual attraction; Apollo reaches out to the boy, who seems about to fall into his arms. But Christine implies no sympathy for this image of male sexual domination of a younger man; indeed, it is portrayed as lethal. The moral she draws about distasteful sport, which is not found in her sources, is in direct response to Apollo’s lamentation in the original story, in which he reassures himself that neither his sport with Hyacinthus nor his love for the youth can be considered a crime: ‘Ce jeus et ce que je t’amoie / N’est apelez coulpe et pechié!’ (OM 10. 837–38) (This game and the fact that I loved you cannot be called fault or sin).26 Though Christine refutes only half of Apollo’s lament, her response to the other half is easily discernible. One can also discern an implicit association here with Adonis, the mythological figure known for having died because he hunted excessively ferocious beasts. Like Christine’s Ganymede/Hyacinthus, Adonis was guilty of a prideful confrontation with one much stronger than himself. Adonis also, somewhat like Narcissus and later Hermaphroditus, spurned the advice of the woman who loved him — point that is highlighted when his story is told in the Rose, where he is presented as a warning to those who might doubt the word of their lady: Vos qui ne creez voz amies, Sachiez mout fetes granz folies; […] Se cist s’amie eüst creüe, Mout eüst sa vie creüe. (Rose, 15723–24, 15733–34) (You who do not believe your girlfriends, be sure that you’re committing a great folly; if this man had believed his girlfriend, his life would have been much longer). Venus’s admonition against hunting dangerous animals features prominently in Christine’s account (Othea, Glose 65). And anyone who knew the Ovidian text, which surely included all of Christine’s readers, would know that like Hyacinthus and Narcissus, Adonis metamorphosed into a flower. Christine identifies Adonis as one too much given over to the idle pleasures of the hunt, but places emphasis on his wilful pursuit of excessively dangerous prey with her admonition that if a knight must hunt, it is best that ‘il se gard de tel chace dont mal lui puist venir’ (Othea, Glose 65) (he refrain from hunts that could cause him harm). That is really the point that is underscored in the miniature, where a dead Adonis is menaced by a huge boar with prominent tusks (Fig. 6.4). Like the portrayal of Apollo and Ganymede/Hyacinthus, this depiction of Adonis has subtly erotic innuendos, with the exposure of his undergarment and the suggestive position of the boar’s snout and tusks. 26 Ovid’s Apollo similarly asks: ‘quae mea culpa tamen, nisi si lusisse vocari / cupla potest, nisi culpa potest et amasse vocari?’ (Met. 10. 200–01) (Yet what is my fault, unless playing can be called a fault, unless loving can be called a fault?).

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Figure 6.4 Adonis and the boar. © British Library Board, London, BL Harley MS 4431, 124v.

Again, we might think of the extremely well-known example of the Rose, where the Lover is hunted down by Cupid, is shot full of arrows that cause him to collapse on the ground, and submits wholly to him. In contrast to the Rose, when Christine does portray the God of Love the image is not one of aggressive domination, but of courteous cooperation (Fig. 6.5). And the love in question is not the forceful pursuit of a hunter, but a measured and respectful affection for a virtuous lady: ‘il ne messiet point a jeune chevalier estre amoureux de dame honoree et sage, ains en peuent mieulx valoir ses condicions, mais que le moyen y sache garder’ (Othea, Glose 47) (it is not unfitting for a young knight to be in love with an honourable and modest lady, indeed it can increase the worthiness of his character, as long as he can do it in moderation). Christine’s view, repeated throughout her oeuvre, is that love should ennoble a man, not humiliate him; it should inspire respect for women, not sexual exploitation or misogynistic disdain; it should support, rather than undermine, the institution of marriage.27 By recalling the rapacious and irresponsible love of the infamous Rose in the portrayals of ‘Ganymede’ and Adonis, while transforming the God of Love himself

27 See for example Poems of Cupid, God of Love: Christine de Pizan’s ‘Epistre au dieu d’Amours’ and ‘Dit de la Rose’, Thomas Hoccleve’s ‘The Letter of Cupid’, with George Sewell’s ‘The Proclamation of Cupid’, ed. and trans. by Thelma S. Fenster and Mary Carpentar Erler (Leiden: Brill, 1990); and the analysis

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Figure 6.5 Cupid and a young knight. © British Library Board, London, BL, Harley MS 4431, 117r.

into an overtly pederastic figure and a violent boar respectively, Christine suggests that both youths are submitting to a sinister and soul-destroying form of lust: one associated, as she explains, with ‘l’ennemi’ (Allegorie 65) (the devil). Adonis is clearly not homosexual, but the boar is after all male, and that is the figure he decides to pursue despite Venus’s pleas to the contrary. The OM poet eroticizes Adonis’s behaviour with a gloss that identifies the boar as ‘l’ordure / De luxure et de lecherie’ (OM 10. 3733–34) (the filth of lust and lechery), and tells us that Adonis’s transformation into a trembling, wind-blown flower arising from his blood represents the contamination and degradation that takes place through association with men of ill repute: ‘Adonis florete devint / Sanguine, ce est home vilz, / Qui contamine, ce m’est vis, / Cel qui l’acompaignent et suivent’ (OM 10. 3737–40) (Adonis became a blood-red flower, that is, a base man who, as I see it, contaminates those who associate with him). The corrupting influence of dissolute companions can lead to any sort of sexual dalliance; but the fragility of the anemone blossom implicitly recalls the widespread stereotype of male homosexuals as effeminate and cowardly. As is so often the case, Adonis’s behaviour becomes positive only in the inverted realm of

of the Epistre and the Dit de la Rose by Kevin Brownlee, ‘Discourses of the Self: Christine de Pizan and the “Romance of the Rose”’, in Rethinking the ‘Romance of the Rose’: Text, Image, Reception, ed. by Kevin Brownlee and Sylvia Huot (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), pp. 234–61.

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allegory, where he becomes a figure for Christ: one whose willing embrace of shame, degradation, and death led to spiritual redemption and glorification. The OM poet’s assessment of Adonis as representing the harmful effects of ill-chosen companions is echoed in Christine’s gloss on ‘Ganymede’ about avoiding distasteful sporting with the wrong sort of men. In effect, Christine has not only conflated the two juxtaposed exemplars of homoerotic desire — Hyacinthus and Ganymede — but further associated this fused pair with Adonis by adapting the gloss formerly applied to him. Christine thus establishes an implicit thread connecting these figures, all of whom appear in the song of Orpheus (Met. 10. 155–61 [Ganymede]; 162–219 [Hyacinthus]; 519–739 [Adonis]). This is no surprise; she would undoubtedly have seen that legendary originator of pederasty, renouncing the love of women in favour of boys, as celebrating a male homosocial disdain for women extending to the sinister and for her unspeakable otherness of homoeroticism: a corruption of masculine virtue into degenerate effeminacy. Indeed, Orpheus himself figures in Othea as an exemplar of the corrosive effects of effete sensual pleasures. In her warning to shun the seductive music of Orpheus’s lyre, Christine notes that ‘tieulx instrumens assottent souvent les cuers des hommes’ (Glose 67) (such instruments often degrade the hearts of men), and ‘moins est stimuli des aguillons de la char le solitaire qui ne frequente point en la frequentise des voluptez’ (Allegorie 67) (he who does not frequent voluptuous company is less affected by the goads of the flesh). Her reflections on the danger of unsavoury companions have led from Apollo and Ganymede/Hyacinthus to Orpheus himself, while passing through Adonis, the figure to whom that warning was originally applied in her most important source text. Similarly, her warning against the enjoyment of ‘instrumens ne autres oysivitez’ (Glose 67) (musical instruments or other idle pleasures) links the Orphic lyre both to the pleasures of the hunt — the pastime of Narcissus, Hermaphroditus, and Adonis among others, repeatedly condemned by Christine as ‘oysivité’ (idleness) — and the sodomites denounced by Genius in the Rose for leaving women to be sexually ‘oiseuses’.28

Conclusions There are different possible threads here, then, linking the mythological figures under discussion as the authors endeavour to understand, condemn, or explain away the ‘otherness’ of their fictional characters, and the dangers it poses to received social conventions. One thread, discernible in the OM glosses, highlights the lethal effects of overpowering desire for an unattainable object, be it Narcissus’s love of worldly rather than spiritual beauty, Iphis’s love for a partner with whom she could never hope to establish a legitimate marriage or to produce children, or Adonis’s pursuit

28 See Christine’s comments on Diana (Glose 63), Adonis (Glose 65), Acteon (Glose 69). Genius, in his tirade against the sodomites, notes that Nature did not provide men and women with metaphorical pens and tablets ‘por estre oiseuses’ (Rose 19602) (to remain idle).

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of inappropriate prey. Hermaphroditus in turn represents the opposite danger: a man ruined by the all too easy accessibility of a wanton seductress. Evrart de Conty takes a similar view of Hermaphroditus, as we have seen. And he reads Adonis as representing — among other things — the ill-advised love of a man for an implacably resistant woman: Les bestes donc crueles … nous pevent donner a entendre qu’il y a ou vergier amoureux dessusdit dames et damoiselles de grant fierté et de grant resistence, qui n’ont cure d’amer […] Il ne faut pas bon donc telx dames assaillir ne trop metre y son cuer. (EAM, 407) (The cruel beasts tell us that in the aforementioned garden of love there are ladies and damsels of great pride and resistance, who do not care for love […] It is not good to pursue such ladies, nor to set one’s heart on them). Even Narcissus, though briefly identified as a man so absorbed in his own perfection that he had no interest in ladies (EAM, 590), is portrayed at greater length as deceived by a woman who feigned interest as a means of exploiting her admirer. Noting that ‘la femme est aussi come le ymage et la similitude de l’homme’ (EAM, 592) (woman is, as it were, the image and likeness of man), Evrart further elaborates an interpretation of Narcissus as the victim of misdirected heterosexual desire: On pourroit bien aussi raisonablement dire que cely aime son umbre et son ymage, qui aime celle ou il ne peut trouver amour correspondant ne riens de ce que on desire en amours, quant a vraie existence, se n’est par apparence deceptoire et come umbre inutile […] Et telle amour, selon verité, est en femme trouvee moult souvent. (EAM, 592) (He who loves a lady in whom he cannot find a reciprocal love nor anything that is desired in love, in terms of real existence, but only in deceptive appearance and like a useless reflection, can reasonably be said to love his own reflection and his own image […] And such love, in truth, is often found in women). Within this framework, the overall emphasis is on the pitfalls of sexual — nearly always heterosexual — desire; and its potential failure, through the absence or impossibility of reciprocal love and Holy Matrimony, to produce a future in the form of lineage. Even when the stories feature men who rejected their female admirers or refused their wise advice, the culprits blocking the ‘natural’ progression and fulfilment of love most often turn out to be women, whose capricious natures, at once lustful and cruelly resistant, are frequently highlighted by the commentators. Another thread, more prominent in Othea, exonerates the women while highlighting the ‘unnatural’ behaviour of the men, linking Narcissus, Hermaphroditus, and Hyacinthus/Ganymede as figures for the effeminizing effects and ultimate sterility of excessive male homosocial, and implicitly homoerotic, desire. And while Adonis is not identified as desiring a male love-object, he is nonetheless one who died because he spurned the counsel of his lady, and pursued a hyper-masculine object of competition or desire — one specifically forbidden by the goddess of

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Figure 6.6 Achilles unmasked by Ulysses. © British Library Board, London, BL Harley MS 4431, 127v.

love herself. The OM does associate him subtly with that other hunter, Narcissus, by noting that he delighted in his own beauty and was thereby inflamed with lust: ‘Cil fu biaus, si se delitoit / En sa biauté. Venus estoit / S’amie, quar luxure habite / En biau cors qui trop se delite’ (OM 10. 3710–13) (He was handsome, and delighted in his own beauty. Venus was his beloved, because lust resides in one who takes too much pleasure in being beautiful). Christine’s sources contained a wealth of material with which, through subtle changes and careful juxtapositions, she could construct her warnings about the emasculating and corrupting effects of misogyny, arrogant self-absorption, and homoerotic indulgences. Finally, I touch briefly on a figure that Christine seems to have included in Othea as a counter-example to these ‘failed’ men: Achilles, who lived for a time in female disguise because of his mother’s efforts to prevent him from joining the war against Troy. The wily Ulysses unmasked the fake princess, or in Christine’s account the fake Vestal Virgin, by offering the assembled ladies gifts that included feminine fashion accessories and chivalric weaponry.29 The real women went for the former, but Achilles reached for the latter: ‘Et adont, comme toute chose traye a sa nature, les dames coururent aux joyaulx et Achilés saisi les armes’ (Glose 71) (And then, since 29 Classical sources, chief of which is the Achilleid by Statius, state that Achilles’s mother disguised him as a princess or lady-in-waiting at the court of Lycomedes, king of Skyros. Christine, however, taking her cue from the OM, asserts that his mother ‘voiler le fist comme nonne en l’abbaye la deesse Vesta’ (Othea, Glose 71) (had him take the veil as a nun in the abbey of the goddess Vesta).

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each thing is attracted according to its nature, the ladies ran for the pretty ornaments and Achilles seized the weaponry). Christine also notes that while living in the temple, he had fathered a son with one of the other ladies, and she refrains from condemning what was clearly an illicit, non-marital affair. Her point is that true masculinity or femininity lie within, and are revealed in values and behaviour, not in clothing or crafted presentation. Narcissus, Adonis, and Hyacinthus/Ganymede are all portrayed as exemplars of high-fashion aristocratic masculinity, and they engage in manly sport and dangerous hunting; but in the end, their preference for idle pleasures, their disdain of women, their infatuation with male beauty or their sensuous submission to a more powerful, predatory man show that they are not, in fact, ‘real men’. Achilles, on the other hand, may be dressed as a nun and posing as such, but his preference for chivalric warfare and his heterosexual potency absolve him of any suspected effeminacy, assuring us that he is, indeed, a prime specimen of aristocratic manhood. The ‘otherness’ exhibited by the cross-dressed Achilles is in fact only a passing disguise. That of the other characters discussed above, though masked for a time by their overt presentation of masculine garb and athleticism, is ultimately far more damaging and irreversible in its effects. The motif of cross-dressing offers an intriguing parallel to a key moment in Christine’s Cité des dames (1404–1405), completed two years after the Mutacion and five years after Othea. In a now famous passage, Christine — having succumbed to a crisis of self-loathing brought on by her internalization of the misogyny she encountered everywhere in her studies — is chastised by the personification of Reason, who compares her to ‘le fol … qui en dormant au molin fu revestu de la robe d’une femme et au resveiller, pour ce que ceulx qui le moquoyent lui tesmoignoient que femme estoit, crut mieulx leur faulx dis que la certaineté de son estre’ (46/48) (the fool who while sleeping at the mill, had his clothing replaced with a woman’s dress and when he awoke, because those mocking him insisted he was a woman, believed their false words more than the certainty of his own being).30 Christine has gone too far towards embracing a socially determined male identity that is, itself, flawed and incompatible with her innate femininity. Reason and her allegorical companions explain that Christine must reconnect with her own feminine nature, uncompromized by her adoption of certain activities culturally coded as masculine. In effect, she must ‘feminize’ her writing to produce an exposition of the virtues and valuable cultural contributions of women throughout the ages: the Cité des dames itself.31 The comparison with the fool confused by his feminine garb becomes stronger if we imagine it as mediated by a figure such as Achilles: despite his dress, he retains full awareness of his masculine identity, his sexual attraction to women, and his identity as warrior. One could imagine him replacing Iphis as the model for Christine’s own trajectory, which might now be seen not as a change of gender but simply as a new

30 Christine de Pizan, La Città delle dame, ed. by Earl Jeffrey Richards, trans. by Patrizia Caraffi (Milano: Luni, 1998). 31 On this point, see my ‘Seduction and Sublimation: Christine de Pizan, Jean de Meun, and Dante’, Romance Notes, 25 (1985), 361–73.

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understanding of the gendered identity she has had all along. Christine may have been aware of departing from classical sources in placing Achilles among the Vestal Virgins, whom she considers nuns, and who are depicted as such in the manuscripts made under her supervision. No longer posing as a princess at court, he runs no risk of an arranged marriage to another man and thereby avoids the predicament faced by Iphis. With the changed perspective of a vantage point two years beyond the Mutacion, Christine sees the pitfalls of a way of life that would hopelessly estrange her from herself. Iphis’s ambiguous marriage, so scathingly criticized by the OM poet and redeemed only if understood allegorically as a leap from feminine inferiority to masculine exaltation, in fact reflects Christine’s own wholesale internalization of male literary traditions and cultural biases. Shaking off such misconceptions, she must freely and confidently pursue the poetic and scholarly avocation to which she is suited, not despite her feminine character but because of it. Just as Achilles publicly embraced his hitherto closeted masculinity and assumed his natural role as warrior, Christine must stop trying to be a man and assert herself as a female writer. Initially portrayed as a traumatic but inescapable othering of her very self, Christine’s career is now revealed to be the truest and most positive realization of her natural potential. Christine, then, prefers not to confront openly the question of homoerotic desire; unlike the OM poet and both authors of the Rose, she does not even acknowledge its potential existence to the extent of condemning it.32 But among them, these figures, with their glosses, create a composite and implicit critique — and a fairly savage one at that — of an unspoken but obviously well-known sexual practice. This unnamable love, or lust, is associated with arrogant misogyny and the rejection of legitimate feminine love. Christine’s views, though much farther-reaching in their negative judgement, are reflected in Noah Guynn’s assessment of male homosocial and homosexual desires in the Rose, which he sees as informed by ‘a clerical ideology predicated on male solidarity and the exclusion and subordination of women’.33 Homosexual liaisons, in her presentation, are a form of corruption and degradation visited by older, more powerful men onto younger ones. Since the heterosexual model is inescapable even at the expense of binary gender stability, the attentions of a dominant male lover feminize the love object, be they male or female in body, just as betrothal to a maiden imparts masculinity to the one who loves her; resistance to the love of a lady robs the male culprit of his manhood. For Christine, this failure or misdirection of masculinity is identified with idleness and indulgence in sensual, worldly pleasures — improper

32 Though Guillaume de Lorris does not explicitly criticise same-sex love in connection with Narcissus, he does include a warning against make-up, adapted from Ovid’s Ars amatoria, in the God of Love’s instructions to the Lover: this practice, he says, is only for ladies or ‘cels de mauves renon, / qui amors par male aventure / ont recovrees sanz droiture’ (2160–62) (those of ill repute who have, through unfortunate circumstances, entered into an illegitimate love). The allusion to homosexuality is even clearer in the numerous manuscripts bearing the variant ‘ont trovee contre nature’ (have found [a love] contrary to nature) for v. 2162. Jean de Meun inserts condemnations of male homosexuality into the discourses of Reason (4313–15) and, famously, Genius (19599–658). 33 Noah Guynn, Allegory and Sexual Ethics in the High Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 195 n. 62.

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games, seductive music, hunting — at the expense of more edifying and constructive pursuits. It is also identified with inappropriate longing for something one cannot possibly have, something that lies outside the bounds of ‘natural’ desire. As she says with reference to Orpheus: ‘bien quiert Euridice en enfer qui quiert chose impossible […] Ce meismes dit Solon: “Somme follie est de querre ce qui est impossible a avoir”’ (Glose 70) (he surely seeks Eurydice in Hell, who seeks the impossible […] Solon says the same: ‘It is the highest folly to seek that which cannot be had’). For all that, however, Christine, like the OM poet and many others, believes that gender can be inflected for the better when a woman is capable of taking on stereotypically masculine traits; and like other contemporary writers, she is careful to de-sexualize this. In both the OM and the Mutacion de Fortune, Iphis is praised when she is read as a woman who exceeds the natural limitations of her gender; the marriage is not so much the ‘happy ending’ as it is the narrative device allowing for the story to unfold and yield up its true allegorical significance of moral improvement, intellectual rigour, and spiritual redemption. She is condemned only in the OM, in an alternative gloss that reads her as a woman seeking to gratify her lust for a female love-object. For a man, however, effeminacy is inevitably a sign of moral degeneracy and carries implicit overtones of same-sex desire, or at least of haughty resistance to heterosexual love. In either case, gender malleability in the service of homoerotic attraction, like the redefinition of blood kinship necessary for the realization of incestuous love, is taken as a sign of human alienation from nature. Only in the realm of allegory can these ‘unnatural’ desires and identities be comprehended as moral or spiritual transformation, or indeed as the manifestation of sacred — and thus equally ‘unnatural’ — mysteries: the Incarnation of divinity in human flesh, the mystical love of God for a sinless virgin who is at once his daughter, his mother, and his bride. Human beings, with their rational, immortal, yet also sinful souls, are themselves a site of otherness within the natural world — one that can lift them above, or plunge them below, the moral condition of other animals. When the effort to negotiate the complexity of human sexuality goes awry, the unfortunate subject takes on an otherness that sets him or her apart from what authors like Christine or the OM poet see as the very essence of humanity. For Christine in particular, this deviation from what she regards as the natural trajectory of heterosexual love and marriage can lead to identities that lie beyond the reach of explicit discourse itself: a queer sort of otherness, we might say, whose name she dares not speak.

Works Cited Primary Sources Christine de Pizan, La Città delle dame, ed. by Earl Jeffrey Richards, trans. by Patrizia Caraffi (Milano: Luni, 1998) ———, Dit de la Rose, in Poems of Cupid, God of Love: Christine de Pizan’s ‘Epistre au dieu d’Amours’ and ‘Dit de la Rose’, Thomas Hoccleve’s ‘The Letter of Cupid’, with George Sewell’s ‘The Proclamation of Cupid’ ed. and trans. by Thelma S. Fenster and Mary Carpentar Erler (Leiden: Brill, 1990), pp. 92–101

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———, Epistre au dieu d’Amours, in Poems of Cupid, God of Love: Christine de Pizan’s ‘Epistre au dieu d’Amours’ and ‘Dit de la Rose’, Thomas Hoccleve’s ‘The Letter of Cupid’, with George Sewell’s ‘The Proclamation of Cupid’ ed. and trans. by Thelma S. Fenster and Mary Carpentar Erler (Leiden: Brill, 1990), pp. 34–89 ———, Epistre Othea, ed. by Gabriella Parussa, Textes Littéraires Français, 517 (Genève: Droz, 2008) ———, Le Livre de la Mutacion de Fortune, ed. by Suzanne Solente, Société des Anciens Textes Français, 4 vols (Paris: Picard, 1959–1966) ———, Livre du duc des vrais amans, ed. by Thelma S. Fenster, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Binghamton: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1995) Les Eschéz d’Amours: A Critical Edition of the Poem and Its Latin Glosses, ed. by Gregory Heyworth and Daniel E. O’Sullivan, with Frank Coulson, Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts, 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2013). Evrart de Conty, Le Livre des Eschez amoureux moralisés, ed. by Françoise Guichard-Tesson and Bruno Roy, Bibliothèque du Moyen Français, 2 (Montreal: CERES, 1993) Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, ed. by Félix Lecoy, Classiques Français du Moyen Age, 3 vols (Paris: Champion, 1965–1970) Ovid, Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. by Frank Justus Miller, Loeb Classical Library, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977) Ovide moralisé. Poème du commencement du quatorzième siècle, ed. by Cornelius de Boer, Martina G. de Boer, and Jeannette Th. M. van ‘t Sant, Verhandelingen des Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam. Afdeeling Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, 15 (1915), 1–374; 21 (1920), 1–394; 30 (1931), 1–303; 37 (1936), 1–478; 43 (1938), 1–429 Pyrame et Thisbé, Narcisse, Philomena, ed. and trans. by Emmanuèle Baumgartner (Paris: Gallimard, 2000) Secondary Works Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate, Reading Myth: Classical Mythology and Its Interpretations in Medieval French Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997) Brownlee, Kevin, ‘Discourses of the Self: Christine de Pizan and the “Romance of the Rose”’, in Rethinking the ‘Romance of the Rose’: Text, Image, Reception, ed. by Kevin Brownlee and Sylvia Huot (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), pp. 234–61 Cerrito, Stefania, ‘Histoires de femmes, jeux de formes et jeux de sens’, in Nouvelles Etudes sur l’Ovide moralisé, ed. by Marylène Possamaï-Pérez, Essais sur le Moyen Age, 42 (Paris: Champion, 2009), pp. 72–97 Cooper, Charlotte E., ‘Learning to Read Christine de Pizan’s Epistre Othea’, Pecia. Le Livre et l’écrit, 17 (2014), 41–63 ———, ‘Présences, publics et portraits ambigus du manuscript British Library Harley 44431’, Le Moyen Français, 78–79 (2016), 1–15 Desmond, Marilynn, and Pamela Scheingorn, Myth, Montage, and Visuality in Late Medieval Manuscript Culture: Christine de Pizan’s ‘Epistre Othea’ (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003)

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Gaunt, Simon, ‘Bel Acueil and the Improper Allegory of the Romance of the Rose’, New Medieval Literatures, 2 (1998), 65–93 Guynn, Noah. Allegory and Sexual Ethics in the High Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) Hindman, Sandra, Christine de Pizan’s ‘Epistre Othéa’: Painting and Politics at the Court of Charles VI, Studies and Texts, 77 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986) Huot, Sylvia, Dreams of Lovers and Lies of Poets: Poetry, Knowledge, and Desire in the ‘Roman de la Rose’, Research Monographs in French Studies, 31 (London: Legenda, 2010) ———, ‘Seduction and Sublimation: Christine de Pizan, Jean de Meun, and Dante’, Romance Notes, 25 (1985), 361–73 ———, ‘Self and Society’, in A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Medieval Age, ed. by Linda Kalof (Oxford: Berg, 2010), pp. 203–18, 257–58 Kay, Sarah, The Place of Thought: The Complexity of One in Late Medieval French Didactic Poetry (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), pp. 42–69 Kellogg, Judith L., ‘Transforming Ovid: The Metamorphosis of Female Authority’, in Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference, ed. by Marilynn Desmond, Medieval Cultures, 14 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), pp. 181–94 Mills, Robert, Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015) Minet-Mahy, Virginie, Esthétique et pouvoir de l’oeuvre allégorique à l’époque de Charles VI, Bibliothèque du XVe Siècle, 58 (Paris: Champion, 2005)

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Astrid Kelser

The Jew as the ‘Other’ in Word and Deed

Introduction1 The medieval period, and particularly the crusading age of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is often portrayed as xenophobic. In particular, tracts written in the ‘adversus Iudaeos’ (against the Jews) tradition, most notably Peter the Venerable’s Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews,2 support the misconception that all medieval theologians hated the Jews and branded them as ‘Others’. This unpalatable impression has itself contributed to the ‘Othering’ of the medieval age by modern readers, who actively distance themselves from the unsavoury attitudes of that era by dismissing them as atavistic. Indeed, our unspoken response to ‘adversus Iudaeos’ texts is that while medieval theologians reacted poorly against what they did not understand, we as a modern society are different and would never react so ‘illogically’ to the unknown. Such fallacies are not restricted to the modern age; Humanist thinkers first perpetuated the false dichotomy contrasting the ‘dark’ medieval period with their ‘enlightened’ present. This paradigm burdened both historiography and public perception for centuries: Lucie Varga lamented in 1931 that the ‘Dark Middle Ages’ (‘finsteres Mittelalter’) was tantamount to a ‘catchphrase’ (‘Schlagwort’) in the popular imagination.3 In recent years, medievalists have picked away at this cliché by either demonstrating that the medieval world held more ‘progressive’ attitudes than are usually imagined, or by questioning our right to call the past ‘dark’, given that the modern West is not quite as inclusive as its proponents claim. Kyle Harper belongs to the former camp, highlighting that even though the medieval period did entail widespread social disintegration and oppression, its cultural vitality means that



1 I would like to thank Irene Malfatto for her input on the earliest drafts of this paper, which was originally presented during Session 1623 of the 2017 Leeds International Medieval Congress, as well as Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood for their patient advice on revising the manuscript for publication. 2 Peter the Venerable, Adversus Iudeorum inveteratam duritiem, ed. by Yvonne Friedman, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis, 58 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985). 3 Lucie Varga, Das Schlagwort vom ‘finsteren Mittelalter’ (Baden: R. M. Rohrer, 1932). Astrid Kelser  •  ([email protected], BA, King’s College London) is a Presidential Scholar on the Ancient History track in the Department of Classics at Harvard University. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 165–182 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123590

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the misnomer ‘Dark Ages’ is inaccurate, being ‘hopelessly redolent of Renaissance and Enlightenment prejudices’.4 One of the strongest voices in the latter group is Norman Daniel, who suggests that Islamophobia has been a constant in so-called ‘intellectual’ discourse from the Crusades to the present day.5 In this chapter, my intention is not to point out that seemingly ‘medieval’ anti-Judaism persists in the present world. I will instead explore how we can evaluate the extent to which medieval texts were anti-Judaic, and in what ways we can present a more nuanced view of the Jew as the ‘Other’ in medieval literature. For even though it is unquestionable that the texts chosen for this case study — theological letters and dialogues on the subject of the Jewish community by Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Abelard, and Thomas Aquinas — were anti-Judaic in their outlook, it is worth determining how their authors reconciled such a polemical approach to their professed scholasticism, a system of thought based on Aristotelian logic rather than blind prejudice. Before embarking on this analysis, it is necessary to establish what is meant by ‘anti-Judaism’ in a medieval context. This term was coined by Gavin Langmuir, who characterized ‘anti-Judaic’ sentiment as hate emanating from Christians towards Jews on account of competing religious systems, as opposed to ‘anti-Semitic’ feelings, which stem from perceived racial differences between Jewish and Christian populations. These pseudo-biological distinctions often manifest in the exaggerated facial features of Jews in medieval art, for example the hook-nosed caricatures which populate manuscript illuminations of Old Testament figures, as well as in negative archetypes such as the immortal and monstrous ‘Wandering Jew’.6 Langmuir views such stereotypes as coetaneous to the spread of anti-Semitic thought and dates both phenomena to 1300.7 According to these definitions, the twelfth and thirteenth century theological writings discussed in this chapter are ‘anti-Judaic’ rather than ‘anti-Semitic’. Hence, I shall focus on the former phenomenon, which Langmuir thus outlines in detail: Anti-Judaism I take to be a total or partial opposition to Judaism — and to Jews as adherents of it — by people who accept a competing system of beliefs and practices and who consider certain genuine Judaic beliefs and practices as inferior […]





4 Kyle Harper, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), p. 12. 5 Norman Daniel, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009). 6 For caricatures, see e.g. British Library Additional MS 48985, fol. 7r; on the Wandering Jew as a negative archetype — this figure is said to have cursed Christ on the cross, following which he was condemned to wander the world as an ‘Other’ for all time — see Richard I. Cohen, ‘The “Wandering Jew” from Medieval Legend to Modern Metaphor’, in The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times, ed. by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jonathan Karp (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 147–75; cf. also the essays in Galit Hasan Roqem and Alan Dundes, eds, The Wandering Jew: Essays in the Interpretation of a Christian Legend (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986). 7 Gavin I. Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 61.

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The Christian acceptance of Jewish scripture and the Christian claim to be the true Israel meant that, for Christians, Jews were the central element of God’s providential plan. Moreover the continued existence of Judaism after Jesus was the physical embodiment of doubt about the validity of Christianity. Unlike pagan anti-Judaism, Christian anti-Judaism was a central and essential element of the Christian system of beliefs. The elaboration of anti-Judaic doctrine and polemics and the effort to prove that Christianity was foreshadowed in the Old Testament would be a major theological enterprise for centuries. Christian anti-Judaism can be separated into three aspects: the doctrinal, the legal, and the popular.8 Although I concur with Langmuir’s conceptualization for the most part, especially his characterization of anti-Judaic thought as a religious rather than socio-cultural phenomenon, my argument diverges from his theory in two respects. First, I do not see anti-Judaism as necessary — ‘central and essential’ — to the Christian world-view. Instead, as the theological texts analysed in this chapter highlight, anti-Judaic rhetoric was a carefully moderated strategy which could be emphasized or minimized based on an individual theologian’s needs. It is not a foregone conclusion that every Christian writer must denigrate the Jews in order to promote his or her own belief system. Moreover, Langmuir sub-divides anti-Judaism into three categories, namely ‘the doctrinal, the legal, and the popular’; he identifies the first of these as intellectual ‘justifications’ against the Jewish faith, the second as measures and prohibitions which restricted the freedom of Jews throughout Western Christendom, and the third as an unquantifiable ‘sentiment’ which pervaded Christian societies in the medieval period.9 In practice, however, it is difficult to cleanly distinguish between these categories. To name but one example, the practice of forcing Jews to wear a distinct ‘habitus’, or ‘style of dress’, results from all three categories of anti-Judaism; the thirteenth-century legal code of southwest Germany, the Schwabenspiegel (mirror of the Swabians), harnessed popular sentiments against Jews and employed doctrinal rationalizations to legally impose the wearing of funnel-shaped hats upon local Jewish populations.10 Hence, in this chapter I will instead partition the broad concept of anti-Judaism into two components: anti-Judaic wording and exhortations toward anti-Judaic actions. The former refers to the use of nouns, adjectives, and adjectival participles to denigrate Jewish characters, and the latter to the advocacy or endorsement of actions meant to cause harm — be it bodily, psychological, or financial — to members of the Jewish community or obstruct Jewish religious practice more generally. This alternative approach, which emphasizes the often wide gulf between anti-Judaic ‘words’ and ‘deeds’, is more suited to the literary 8 Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism, pp. 57–58. 9 Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism, pp. 58–61. 10 Eric Silverman, A Cultural History of Jewish Dress (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), p. 56. The Swabians were far from the only medieval community to impose restrictions on Jewish daily life. Further examples include the law code of Castile, which by 1313 mandated by Jewish men could only choose from a restricted pool of names; on which see Irven Resnick, ‘Race, Anti-Jewish Polemic, Arnulf of Séez, and the Contested Papal Election of Anaclet II (A.D. 1130)’, in Jews in Medieval Christendom: Slay Them Not, ed. by Kristine T. Utterback and Merrall L. Price, Études sur le judaïsme médiéval, 60 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 45–70 (p. 49).

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analysis which this chapter provides and will therefore help to qualify the degree to which each of the analysed texts demonstrates anti-Judaic tendencies. In a theological context, anti-Judaic wording is the use of negatively connoted nouns, adjectives, and adjectival participles to denigrate Jewish characters. It can either be applied to individual characters who have been identified as Jewish or, in the case of Bernard of Clairvaux, utilized against the Jewish people as a whole. Bernard refers to Jews as ‘enemies’ by quoting Psalm 58: ‘Ostendit mihi super inimicos meos, ne occidas eos’ (God shall let me see over my enemies; slay them not).11 This saying is nevertheless devoid of exhortations toward anti-Judaic actions. Bernard’s point is that the Jews should not be killed, even though he considers them ‘enemies’; as he emphasizes, ‘slay them not’, and so his words do not fall into this category. Indeed, anti-Judaic wording and exhortations are not always correlated with one another. What is more, that Bernard, in a seemingly paradoxical manner, utilizes anti-Judaic wording in order to discourage anti-Judaic actions indicates that these two types of anti-Judaism can even go some way to cancelling each other out. As we have seen, his reference to Jews as ‘enemies’ is an anti-Judaic expression; this hostile and indeed militarized appellation suggests that the Jews are a population to be fought and killed. However, as his prohibition to kill them indicates, he possesses a lesser level of anti-Judaic exhortation than implied by his choice of words, and so his overall level of anti-Judaism is moderate at most. It is worth emphasizing, however, that just because Bernard is less anti-Judaic than his wording indicates does not render his choice to call Jews ‘enemies’ wholly insignificant. Even though neither Bernard of Clairvaux nor Peter Abelard exhort anti-Judaic actions in the aforementioned works, their wording reveals that they tolerated Jews to very different degrees. By calling them ‘enemies’, Bernard advances the idea that Jews are inherently opposed to the Christians, even though he makes clear that this is not sufficient reason to murder them. In contrast, Abelard utilizes pro-Judaic wording; he avoids vitriolic appellations and endows his Jewish interlocutor with eloquent speech, thus portraying Jews in general as intellectual figures with whom constructive debates on faith and dogma could be held.12 Authors can likewise promote anti-Judaic actions without displaying any anti-Judaic wording. Aquinas’ choice of words for the Jews is neutral, unlike that of Bernard, but by advocating that they be bound by sumptuary laws he persecutes that group far more directly than Bernard does.13 This approach is not without its limits. Even though subtle gradations between anti-Judaic wording and action add nuance to the viewpoints expressed by medieval theologians, these variations should not disguise the fact that all three texts discussed in this chapter are anti-Judaic to at least some extent. Bernard exhorts Christians to defend Jews because he views the latter as a marginalized population requiring 11 Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola 363, in Sancti Bernadi Opera, ed. by Jean Leclercq and Henry M. Rochais, vol. viii (Roma: Ed. Cistercienses, 1975), pp. 311–17. All translations in this chapter are my own. 12 Peter Abelard, Collationes, ed. by John Marenbon and Giovanni Orlandi, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 13 Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula Omnia S. Thomae Aquinatis, ed. by Pierre Mandonnet (Paris: Lethielleux, 1927).

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external assistance; similarly, Abelard casts his Jew as a debate opponent who expouses a divergent — and ultimately inferior — point of view as opposed to those of the Philosopher and Christian, and Aquinas’ letter is written because the Jews are legally so distinct from Christians that they require unique legislation.14 By thus enforcing the legal and socio-cultural barriers between the Jewish minority and the overwhelming Christian majority, each theologian operates within an overall framework that places Jews at an inherent disadvantage; this principle permeates their writings even if their wording and message is pro-Judaic in parts. The ostracism which they impose upon Jewish characters is moreover intriguing because it clashes with the seemingly rational genres of didactic colloquia (Abelard) and epistolography (Bernard, Aquinas). Bernard’s Letter 363 is a persuasive tour-deforce, circulated to European potentates in order to muster support for the Second Crusade,15 Abelard’s Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian is Platonic in style and therefore draws upon a long tradition of philosophical reasoning,16 and Aquinas’ On the Government of the Jews is a carefully-articulated, point-by-point response to questions asked by his aristocratic patroness.17 In what follows, therefore, apart from exploring the anti-Judaic undercurrents of medieval theology which are presented within these texts, I will also determine whether anti-Judaism can ever be rationalized within the frameworks and strictures of scholastic philosophy. Bernard of Clairvaux: Wording versus Intention

The first text in my analysis is Bernard of Clairvaux’s famous encyclical, circulated as part of his 1146 campaign for the Second Crusade of 1147–1149 and commonly known under the title Sermo mihi ad vos (My speech to you).18 Numerous versions of this text were sent out to key decision-makers across Europe, ranging from high-ranking clergymen such as Bishop Manfred of Brescia and to secular rulers including Duke Wladislas of Bohemia.19 The version analysed in this chapter was sent out to the Kingdom of Germany, a territory rich with both political and historical significance.20 It is immediately apparent that this letter does not exhort its readers toward anti-Judaic actions, for Bernard’s key point is that Christians should also come to the

14 Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola 363, ed. by Leclercq and Rochais; Peter Abelard, Collationes, ed. by Marenbon and Orlandi; Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula, ed. by Mandonnet. 15 Jonathan Phillips, The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 61–79. 16 Aryeh Leo Motzkin, Philosophy and the Jewish Tradition: Lectures and Essays (Leiden: Brill, 2012), p. 33. 17 Shadia B. Drury, Aquinas and Modernity: The Lost Promise of Natural Law (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), p. 63. 18 On this conflict see Phillips, The Second Crusade, pp. 1–16. 19 Brian Patrick McGuire, A Companion to Bernard of Clairvaux (Leiden: Brill, 2011), p. 292. 20 Robert Edwin Herzstein, The Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages: Universal State or German Catastrophe? (Lexington: Heath, 1966), p. 9.

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aid of the persecuted Jews during their conquest of the Holy Land.21 The justification for this intervention is expressed in roundabout terms; while Bernard appears to be more concerned with the pollution of Christian holy sites by the Muslims than with the well-being of Jewish inhabitants, the emphasis which he places on the verb ‘depopulari’ (to ravage, but literally to massacre) suggests that he is not solely concerned with preserving historical sites, but also the people who inhabit the region:22 Depopulantes in ore gladii terram benedictam, terram promissionis. Prope est, si non fuerit qui resistat, ut in ipsam Dei viventis irruant civitatem, ut officinas nostrae redemptionis evertant, ut polluant loca sancta, Agni immaculati purpurata cruore. ([The invaders] are ravaging with the edge of the sword the blessed land, the land of promise. If there is no resistance, they will soon break forth into the very city of the living God, and destroy the workshops of our redemption, polluting the sacred places which have been stained purple with the blood of the immaculate Lamb).23 More explicitly, in another section of his letter, Bernard states that the Jews should ‘neither be persecuted nor killed nor even routed’ and argues that they must be protected as ‘living signs of the Lord’s passion’: Non sunt persequendi Iudaei, non sunt trucidandi, sed nec effugandin quidem. Interrogate eos divinas paginas […] Vivi quidam apices nobis sunt representantes jugiter Dominicam passionem: propter hoc dispersi sunt in omnes regiones, ut, dum iustas tanti facinoris poenas luunt, testes sint nostrae redemptionis. Unde et addit in eodem psalmo ecclesia: ‘Disperge illos in virtute tua, et depone eos, protector meus Domine’. Ita factum est: dispersi sunt, depositi sunt; duram sustinent captivitatem sub principibus Christianis. (The Jews should neither be persecuted nor killed nor even routed. Look upon those divine pages […] They are living signs to us, continually representing the Lord’s Passion. For this reason, they have been scattered into all the provinces, so that, until they should pay the just penalty for such a great crime, they will remain as witnesses of our redemption. Hence, the Church has added in that same Psalm [58]: ‘Scatter them in your virtue, and place them down, Lord my guardian’. So it was done; they were scattered and placed down, and now undergo a harsh captivity under Christian princes).24

21 Alex Carmel, Ottoman Haifa: A History of Four Centuries under Turkish Rule (London: Tauris, 2010), pp. 16–17 identifies up to fifty Jewish settlements in the Holy Land during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, thus suggesting that Bernard’s exhortations were grounded in real necessity and not simply invented for rhetorical purposes. 22 On the force of the related noun ‘depopulatio’ in medieval battle discourse, see Karl Leyser, ‘The Battle at the Lech, 955. A Study in Tenth-Century Warfare’, History: The Journal of the Historical Association, 50 (1965), 1–25 (p. 5). 23 Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola 363, ed. by Leclercq and Rochais, p. 316. 24 Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola 363, ed. by Leclercq and Rochais, p. 317.

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This passage encapsulates Bernard’s attitude towards the Jews of the Holy Land. Just as in the quotation discussed in the Introduction to this chapter, where he equated Jews with the ‘enemies’ (inimicos) of Psalm 58, he employs a high level of anti-Judaic wording. To name but a few examples, he reduces Jews into ‘signs’ (apices), thus classifying them as objects whose main purpose is to remind Christians of their salvation. This objectification contributes greatly to their perceived ‘Otherness’, for instead of being autonomous and individual, they are massed together and defined solely by their collective difference from Christians; as Ann Cahill observes, drawing upon the theories of Martha Nussbaum and Rae Langton, Objectification […] is a degrading reduction, treating a person (who is bodyplus-something-else) not only as reduced, but as reduced to the least important part of the equation.25 Furthermore, Bernard openly admits that the Jews are second-class citizens throughout Western Christendom, subject as they are to a ‘harsh captivity’ (duram […] captivitatem) and having been ‘scattered’ and ‘brought down’ (dispersi, dispositi) without a stable place of habitation.26 He does not mention these sufferings out of sympathy for the Jewish people, nor does he advocate changes in their living situation. On the contrary, he considers their present struggles to be insufficient recompense for the ‘great crime’ of executing Christ (‘tanti facinoris’). Nevertheless, as we have seen, Bernard emphasizes that the Jews should not be harmed by being left in the path of the Saracens and goes as far as to identify their rescue as a key objective of the Second Crusade. Hence, his letter promotes a far lower level of anti-Judaic action than its wording suggests at first glance. Abelard: Surface Inclusivity, Intellectual Exclusivity

In contrast, the second text to be analysed in this chapter, Peter Abelard’s ‘Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian’ (Dialogus Inter Philosophum, Iudaeum, et Christianum), demonstrates a low level of anti-Judaic wording but a comparatively higher level of anti-Judaic actions.27 This work, written in the late 1130s under the title Collationes (Comparisons), is designed to prove, through ‘rational’ debate, that Christianity is superior both to Judaism and to the Philosopher’s paganism.28 This 25 Ann J. Cahill, Overcoming Objectification: A Cultural Ethics, Routledge Research in Gender and Society (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 19. 26 By emphasizing this narrative of dispersal, Bernard may be echoing medieval Jewish discourse, which centers upon the themes of ‫( הָצּו ּפְת‬diaspora) and ‫( תּו ּלָג‬exile), a state which began after the destruction of the Second Temple (ad 70) and which, according to some, has continued to this day; see Eliezer DonYehiya, ‘The Negation of Galut in Religious Zionism’, Modern Judaism, 12 (1992), 129–55; William Safran, ‘The Jewish Diaspora in a Comparative and Theoretical Perspective’, Israel Studies, 10 (2005), 36–60. 27 Peter Abelard, Collationes, ed. by Marenbon and Orlandi. 28 ‘Collationes’ in the plural is a sensible title, for the title translated as ‘Dialogue’ today in fact prefaces a text divided into two parts: one conversation between a Jew and a philosopher, and another between a Christian and the philosopher; see Marilyn McCord Adams, ‘Introduction’, in Peter Abelard. Ethical Writings, ed. by Paul Vincent Spade (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995), pp. vii–xxvii.

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work is a medieval anomaly in terms of its characterization: Abelard’s Jew is invested with an extraordinary amount of personal and intellectual agency, for he participates in the dialogue as a walking, talking, philosophizing character.29 The unorthodoxy of this depiction reflects Abelard’s renegade authorial persona, which permeates the work given that the dialogues are presented as his ‘dreams’.30 This frame narrative suggests that everything which follows is part of Abelard’s imagination, and indeed he ‘resort[s] to the dialogue form as a way of exploring his thoughts, allowing each of his characters […] to develop to their full the implications of their positions’.31 As part of this process, Abelard eloquently words the speeches of the Jewish interlocutor. In sharp contrast to Bernard’s ‘objectification’ of the Jews, Abelard’s character possesses, to quote Shakespeare’s Shylock, ‘hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions’:32 Ecce inter quales nostra exsulat peregrinatio et de quorum nobis est patrocinio confidendum! (Look at the kind of people our wandering banishes us to live among, and in whom it is necessary for us to place our trust for patronage!)33 This impassioned exclamation bears testament to Abelard’s conception of the fictional Jew as a sympathetic figure, invested with human emotions, a strong sense of self, and an independent voice with which he expresses his feelings and identities. Moreover, his use of the possessive pronoun ‘nostra’ (our) and the dative pronoun ‘nobis’ (for us) constructs a sense of personal agency which is simply not found in Bernard’s descriptions of Jews in the Holy Land, where they constitute, by comparison, a huddling and nameless mass who are put upon by the Saracens and who should be rescued by Christian knights.34 As Table 7.1 indicates, moreover, the high frequency of imperative verb forms in the dialogue accorded to the Jew, as opposed to the lines spoken by the Christian, demonstrate Abelard’s commitment to presenting both characters on equal terms, at least from a linguistic point of view.

29 Perhaps due to his unusual keenness of mind, Abelard’s Jew has received extensive scholarly attention. Most influential are Hans Liebeschutz, ‘The Significance of Judaism in Peter Abaelard’s “Dialogus”’, Journal of Jewish Studies, 12 (1961), 1–18 and Anna Sapir Abulafia, ‘“Intentio Recta an Erronea”? Peter Abelard’s Views on Judaism and the Jews’, in Medieval Studies in Honour of Avrom Saltman, ed. by Giles Constable (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1995), pp. 13–30. See also Peter von Moos, ‘Les Collationes d’Abélard et la “question juive” au XIIe siécle’, Journal des Savants, 2 (1999), 449–89. 30 Peter Abelard, Collationes, ed. by Marenbon and Orlandi, pp. 1–7. On Abelard as an ‘intellectual renegade’, see Nancy A. Jones, ‘By Woman’s Tears Redeemed: Female Lament in St Augustine’s Confessions and the Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise’, in Sex and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Texts: The Latin Tradition, ed. by Barbara K. Gold, Paul Allen Miller, and Charles Platter (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 15–39 (p. 24). 31 John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 67. 32 Spoken by Shylock in Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III Scene I. 33 Peter Abelard, Collationes, ed. by Marenbon and Orlandi, p. 20. 34 For examples of how grammatical forms can change both discourse and public opinion, see Julia M. Allen and Lester Faigley, ‘Discursive Strategies for Social Change: An Alternative Rhetoric of Argument’, Rhetoric Review, 14 (1995), 142–72.

t h e j e w as t h e ‘ot he r’ i n wo rd and d e e d Table 7.1.  The Number of Paragraphs Which Abelard’s Jew and Christian Use Imperative Verb Forms (A) Expressed as a Percentage of the Number of Paragraphs in Which They Speak (B)35

Character Number of Paragraphs in Which the Character Uses Imperative Verb Forms (A)

Number of Paragraphs Ratio of A to B, in Which the Character Expressed as a Speaks (B) Percentage (%)

Jew Christian

28 107

5 2

17.86 1.87

Column A contains the number of paragraphs in which Abelard assigns imperative verb forms — to name but one example, ‘collige’ (gather)36 — to the speech of the Jew and the Christian. To avoid ambiguity, iussive subjunctives, ‘ut’ clauses, or other constructions with which commands can be issued in Latin have not been counted as ‘imperative verb forms’. Also excluded are imperative forms that do not carry a direct command, such as ‘esto’, which properly derives from the second-person future active imperative of ‘esse’ (to be) but is more often used to mean ‘although’ in Abelard’s dialogue.37 This term has therefore lost its imperative force, and no longer serves as a reliable indicator of agency and authority, attributes which are typically connoted by the use of the imperative mood.38 As Table 7.1 indicates, even though the Christian speaks almost four times as often, the Jew uses imperative verb forms in five paragraphs, while the Christian only does so in two paragraphs.39 The ratio of passages containing imperative verb forms to total passages in which each character appears is therefore 5: 28 (17.86%) for the Jew and 2: 107 (1.87%) for the Christian; when the former does speak, therefore, his speech is 8.6 times more heavy in imperative forms than that of the latter. These conclusions are somewhat problematic in that only a very specific subset of the imperative has been chosen for analysis; hence, they are no substitute for a full semantic analysis which takes into account other ways in which the imperative might be constructed. However, the Jew’s speech indubitably takes on a certain forcefulness from his

35 In the edition of the Collationes, ed. by Marenbon and Orlandi, there are 227 numbered paragraphs in total. For the purpose of comparison, paragraphs with more than one instance of the subjunctive are still counted as ‘one’ paragraph under Column A. The Philosopher has not been included in this comparison as he functions as a moderator in the debate, and therefore his aggressiveness in performing that duty cannot be used as a metric for Abelard’s views on paganism. 36 Peter Abelard, Collationes, ed. by Marenbon and Orlandi, p. 56. 37 See e.g. Peter Abelard, Collationes, ed. by Marenbon and Orlandi, p. 20. Similarly, quotations (e.g. on pp. 44–45) containing imperatives have not been counted. 38 For cross-linguistic analyses of the imperative mood, see Troni Y. Grande, Marlovian Tragedy: The Play of Dilation (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1999), p. 105; Alexandra Yurievna Aikhenvald, ‘Multilingual Imperatives: The Elaboration of a Category in North West Amazonia’, International Journal of American Linguistics, 74 (2008), 189–255, and Alexandra Yurievna Aikhenvald, Imperatives and Commands (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 39 Peter Abelard, Collationes, ed. by Marenbon and Orlandi.

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relatively frequent use of imperative verb forms. Hence, while Bernard objectifies Jews by describing them using the word ‘enemies’ and reducing them to passive objects, Abelard can be said to empower the character of the Jew by placing him at the forefront of a philosophical-theological debate. Nevertheless, as Anna Sapir Abulafia has argued, it would be inaccurate to suggest that Abelard wholly tolerates Judaism.40 While his language cannot be termed anti-Judaic — not only because of the agency granted to the Jew-figure, as discussed above, but also since the Philosopher character criticizes both Jews and Christians41 — the underlying purpose of his dialogue is to refute Judaism altogether and, by extension, to convert educated Jews away from their creed and deter Christians from embracing Judaism. This intention is evident from the ultimate defeat of the Jew by the pagan Philosopher, who is in turn defeated by the Christian: Abelard thus presents a hierarchy of thought in which Judaism is at the very bottom and Christianity at the very top. Hence, Abelard in fact encourages a greater degree of anti-Judaic actions than Bernard does, for while the latter encourages Christians to save the Jews as part of their conquest of the Holy Land, the former instead sets out to attack Judaism by demonstrating its weaknesses. Peter von Moos thus perceives Abelard’s dialogue to be so anti-Judaic in sentiment that it epitomizes the ‘adversus Iudaeos’ tradition: On peut constater que, dans cette première Collatio, les arguments du Philosophe se réduisent à l’opposition entre le ritualisme traditionaliste des Juifs et la valeur permanente et universelle de la loi naturelle, ce qui n’aurait rien d’original, comparé aux lieux communs de l’apologétique médiévale ‘adversus Iudaeos’ […] Gilbert Dahan n’a pas entièrement tort de classer ce dialogue parmi les oeuvres polémiques contre le judaïsme, pour la seule raison qu’il contient une démonstration implicite de l’insuffisance et de l’inactualité de l’Ancien Testament […] Le judaïsme y est surtout attaqué en tant que symbole d’une mentalité rétrograde, qui, loin de lui être particulière, se retrouve également dans le christianisme. (We can see that, in this first Collatio, the Philosopher’s arguments are reduced to the opposition between the traditionalist ritualism of the Jews and the permanent and universal value of natural law, an argument which is not original [since] it is one of the themes featuring frequently in the medieval apologetics of the ‘adversus Iudaeos’ tradition […] Gilbert Dahan is not entirely wrong to classify this dialogue among the polemical works against Judaism, for the sole reason that it contains an implicit proof of the inadequacy and outdatedness of the Old Testament […] In particular, Judaism is attacked as a symbol of a retrograde mentality, [a flaw] which, far from being original to that belief system, is also found in Christianity).42

40 Abulafia, ‘Peter Abelard’s Views on Judaism’, p. 21. 41 Peter Abelard, Collationes, ed. by Marenbon and Orlandi, pp. 4–5: Comperi Iudeos stultos, Christianos insanos (I found the Jews to be crazy, and the Christians mad). 42 Von Moos, ‘Les Collationes d’Abélard’, p. 468.

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By refuting Judaism, Abelard casts its adherents as ‘Others’. This alienation does not only occur on a religious level, but also on a social one: as non-conformists to the Christian faith, a religion advocated by the social and political macrostructures of medieval Western Europe, Jews also find themselves outside these very institutions. As we have seen, moreover, Abelard draws up an intellectual barrier between Jews and Christians. By proving wrong the Jew in his so-called logical argument, and having that character lose not just to the Christian (indirectly) but also directly to the pagan Philosopher, Abelard excludes them from the intellectual framework of medieval discourse.43 This result may seem surprising given that Abelard does not exhibit anti-Judaic wording, but it is precisely the false linguistic equality drawn up between the Jew and Christian which completes the former’s alienation. For even though the Jew has had ample opportunity to present his case, his belief system still fails in the face of pagan philosophy and Christian rationality. Abelard’s readers can only infer, therefore, that Judaism is an inferior and even invalid belief system, which cannot defend itself in what seems to be a ‘fair’ debate.44 The take-away from this analysis is that there is no correlation between anti-Judaic wording and exhortation toward anti-Judaic actions; just as in Bernard’s Letter 363 an excess of the former does not necessitate the presence of the latter, in Abelard’s Dialogus the eloquent and powerful speech of the Jew intensifies the ultimate defeat of that character’s viewpoint by pagan and Christian thought. Aquinas and Rationalizing Anti-Judaism

The third text analysed in this chapter is by Thomas Aquinas, who lived more than a century after Bernard and Abelard; his major work involving the question of Judaism was accordingly written late in the thirteenth century, at some point between 1270 and 1271. It variously been known as De regimine Iudaeorum, ‘On the Government of the Jews’, and Epistola ad Ducissam Brabantiae, ‘Letter to the Duchess of Brabant’; often both titles are cited, although the former is far more preferable, as the latter is historically inaccurate.45 As Leonard Boyle explains, Aquinas was actually writing to Margaret II, Countess of Flanders, but not Margaret the Duchess of Brabant. This Duchess was also known as Margaret of Flanders, but only married into the Duchy of Brabant in 1273, two years after this letter was written.46 43 This conclusion is an uncommon one, but it is nevertheless compatible with the common acknowledgement that Abelard’s Jew is allowed to develop, to the full, the implications of his position; on which cf. Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, p. 67. 44 The key word here is ‘belief system’; as Von Moos, ‘Les Collationes d’Abélard’, p. 469 cautions, it is against the religion and not the Jewish people that Abelard polemicizes. 45 Bernhard Blumenkranz, ‘Le De regimine Iudaeorum: Ses modèles, son exemple’, in Aquinas and the Problems of His Time, ed. by Gérard Verbeke and Daniël Verhelst (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1976), pp. 101–17. 46 Leonard E. Boyle, ‘Thomas Aquinas and the Duchess of Brabant’, Proceedings of the Patristic, Mediaeval, and Renaissance Conference, 8 (1983), 25–35 (pp. 25–30). This confusion has most likely arisen due to scribal misattribution, which itself stems from the coincidence that both women were named Margaret and connected to Flanders. The conflation between the two Margarets has given

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Due to its explicatory tone and itemized format, Aquinas’ letter appears to have been written in response to a now-lost list of questions by Margaret — the Countess of Flanders — on how she should treat the Jews in her realm. Aquinas’ letter is comparatively moderate in terms of anti-Judaic wording. He does not call Jews anything other than ‘Iudaei’, a neutral term in Latin not unlike the English noun ‘Jew’. This appellation is far milder than Bernard’s use of ‘inimic[i]’, enemies, to designate the Jewish population.47 However, Aquinas’ language is far from pro-Judaic: he associates Jews with negative gerundives, most notably ‘puniendus Iudaeus’ (The Jew must be punished).48 Aquinas’ letter explicitly exhorts its readers towards anti-Judaic actions; most notably, it advocates for the imposition of sumptuary laws on the Jewish communities in Margaret’s domain. More specifically, Aquinas advocates for the identification of Jews using distinctive garments, thus forcibly drawing attention to their religious Otherness through visual differentiation:49 Iudaei utriusque sexus in omni christianorum provincia et in omni tempore aliquo habitu ab aliis populis debent distingui. ( Jews of each sex in every Christian province and at all times should be distinguished from other peoples by their dress).50 While justly unpalatable to the twenty-first century reader, Aquinas’ measure would not have been considered extreme within the medieval Christian milieu in which it was proposed.51 Sumptuary laws targeted at Jews were common during this period, and even help to explain why theologians such as Bernard, Abelard, and Aquinas were able to publicly display anti-Judaic wording and/or exhortations toward anti-Judaic actions without compromising, at least in their own opinion and in that of their readers, the Christian value of universal brotherhood as well as the rational thought demanded by scholastic philosophy: When one starts out to study scholasticism […] it may be tempting to organize one’s analysis in the way of a scholastic query. This then is how one might proceed.

47 48 49

50 51

rise to further conjecture, for example Hyacinthe François Dondaine’s argument that the letter was addressed to either Adelaide of Burgundy or Marguerite of France (‘Preface’, Leonine, 42 (1979), 360–78 (pp. 360–62)). This theory is nevertheless far less convincing than Boyle’s, not least because of the style of Aquinas’ letter. Both Adelaide and Marguerite ruled as temporary regents, but Aquinas clearly addresses a female ruler who possessed permanent power, as is perceptible from how he closes his letter with a stock phrase for lifelong seat-holders: Valeat dominatio vestra per tempora longiora (May your rule flourish for a long time; Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula, ed. by Mandonnet, p. 488). Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola 363, ed. by Leclercq and Rochais, p. 317. Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula, ed. by Mandonnet, p. 488. Theorists of shame draw attention to the alienating effect of forced dress codes; as Victor H. Matthews, ‘Avoiding Shame in Ancient Israel’, in The Shame Factor: How Shame Shapes Society, ed. by Robert Jewett, Wayne Alloway, and John G. Lacey (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2011), pp. 117–42 (p. 127) points out with relation to clothing laws in ancient Israel, a person ‘takes on the outward appearance of their social status’. Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula, ed. by Mandonnet, p. 489. Norman Roth, Daily Life of the Jews in the Middle Ages (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2005), p. 67.

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One launches a thesis or a so-called ‘quaestio’, which is often divided into various articles, each representing specific aspects of the central question […] Next the tension is resolved in a reply (‘responsio’), a kind of synthesis which follows the general drift of the arguments.52 Anti-Judaic measures did not clash with this tendency towards evidence-based analysis and argument, since they were — to many medieval philosophers — defensible through legal precedent. Aquinas’ recommendation that Jews should be marked out through clothing thus derives its authority from Canon 68 of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215): Statuimus ut tales utriusque sexus, in omni christianorum prouincia et omni tempore, qualitatem habitus publice ab aliis populis distinguantur. (We have decreed that [ Jews] of both sexes, in every Christian province and at all times, should be publicly distinguished from other peoples by the type of their dress).53 This decree reverberates both linguistically and ideologically in Aquinas’ recommendation, which contains eighteen words, twelve of which, reproduced in bold, are identical to Canon 68; a further three words (italicized) are synonyms, with only small morphological differences such as that between the jussive subjunctive ‘distinguantur’ (Canon 68) and the modal construction ‘debent distingui’ (Aquinas), both of which translate as ‘they should be distinguished’. The three new words which Aquinas adds — ‘aliquo’, ‘Iudaei’, and the ‘in’ before ‘omni tempore’ — are merely used to clarify the meaning of the sentence. These concordances make clear that Aquinas’ proposal of sumptuary law for the Jewish community possesses the sanction of ecclesiastical authority. He likewise rationalizes his conception of the Jew as ‘Other’ by citing Scripture; in a parallel to Leviticus 25. 33, ‘ne accipias usuras’ (do not receive usurious money), Aquinas stereotypes the Jew as ‘having nothing besides usurious money’ (cum nihil habeat praeter usuras).54 Apart from biblical law, it is also easy to see how medieval theologians might have thought anti-Judaic measures ‘defensible’ through historical precedent. As early as 1200, local parishes were requiring Jews should distinguish themselves through their dress; the council of Alais in France was one of the first assemblies to pass such a resolution.55 These measures intensified following the Fourth Lateran Council, so that by 1217, the Jews of Paris wore white or yellow ‘rotae’ (wheels) sown on their garments.56 Sumptuary laws against Jews were first introduced by lay authorities in 1269, when King Louis IX of France required all members of the Judaic community from thirteen or fourteen years of age onwards to either wear ‘wheels’ or pay a 52 Willemien Otten, ‘Medieval Scholasticism: Past, Present, and Future’, Dutch Review of Church History, 81 (2001), 275–89 (p. 277). 53 Fourth Lateran Council, Canon 68, in Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation, and Commentary, ed. by Henry Schroeder (St Louis: Herder, 1937), p. 239. 54 Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula, ed. by Mandonnet, p. 489. 55 Roth, Daily Life, pp. 67–69. 56 Israel Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (Mineola: Dover Publications, 2004), p. 299.

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fine of ten livres (= 240 deniers).57 For most of the Jewish population, this would have been a choice in name only; while comparing medieval prices is notoriously challenging due to the high rate of inflation, the average wage of a French tradesman (blacksmith) in 1307 — four deniers a day — indicates that he would have to work sixty days just to bring in ten livres in revenue, much of which would, in reality, have been consumed by workers’ wages, operating costs, food, clothing, and other bills.58 Having ten livres at hand would therefore be out of reach for most, if not all, of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Jews affected by Louis IX’s edict. These legislative precedents indicate that by the time of Aquinas, imposing clothing restrictions upon the Jews of her realm was not at all abnormal. Such a suggestion would not have been viewed as particularly cruel or illogical, but as a way to bring Flanders’ laws in line with those enacted across Western Europe. Sumptuary laws would moreover have operated in tandem with related legislation — most notably the Synod of Oxford’s 1222 declaration forbidding new synagogues from being built59 — which isolated Jews as ‘Others’ by portraying their religious and community structures as illegitimate.

Conclusion By drawing upon these precedents and contemporary laws either implicitly or explicitly, medieval theologians enabled themselves to openly denigrate the Jew as ‘Other’ without compromising their scholastic values. Within their social and legal milieu, anti-Judaism was not an emotional reaction, but a position endorsed by both civil and ecclesiastical authorities. This link between academic reasoning and religious discrimination sits uncomfortably with modern readers; however, as Table 7.2 emphasizes there is no clear correlation between anti-Judaic wording and exhortations toward anti-Judaic actions in medieval theology. Table 7.2. Presence or Absence of Anti-Judaic Wording and Level of Exhortations toward Anti-Judaic Actions as Observed in Selected Works by Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Abelard, and Thomas Aquinas

Theologian

Anti-Judaic Wording

Exhortations towards AntiJudaic Actions

Bernard of Clairvaux Peter Abelard Thomas Aquinas

Present (‘inimici’) Absent Present (‘puniendus’)

Low High High

57 Rebecca Rist, Popes and Jews, 1095–1291 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 171. 58 For these and other economic statistics concerning medieval France see Jean–Michel-Constant Leber, Essai sur l’appréciation de la fortune privée au moyen age (Paris: Chez Guillaumin et Compagnie, 1847). 59 Shmuel Almog and Nathan H. Reisner, eds, Antisemitism Through the Ages ( Jerusalem: Pergamon Press, 1988), pp. 113–14.

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These findings carry significant implications not only for our study of medieval literature but also for that of anti-Judaic attitudes in the present. By remaining aware that the content of medieval tracts about Judaism is not always as negative nor as positive as their wording suggests, we as medievalists learn to read between the lines, and even against the lines, when analysing theologians’ tracts on the Jew as ‘Other’. In addition, my rereading of these texts by Bernard, Abelard, and Aquinas constitutes a cautionary tale against associating scholastic philosophy with modern-day conceptions of rationality, which we take to mean a mode of ‘objective’ analysis that precludes religious discrimination. The point might moreover be made that the objectivity which we attribute to ourselves is, to some extent, a mirage: that Pope Benedict XVI still found it necessary to specify in a 2011 publication that Jews should not be accused of deicide by Christians highlights that anti-Judaic attitudes, stemming from perceived religious injustices, persist in some quarters of contemporary society.60 In the course of this investigation, I introduced a novel framework for the study of anti-Judaism in medieval literature, which is based on comparing relative levels of anti-Judaic wording and exhortations toward anti-Judaic actions at the intratextual level. I have also applied this method to three medieval texts portraying Jews as ‘Others’ by Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Abelard, and Thomas Aquinas. In so doing, I have demonstrated how and why the logic-based methods of argument which modern readers typically associate with scholastic philosophy were used to reinforce anti-Judaic positions: Medieval scholasticism considered unbelievers or non-Christians from the viewpoint of the intellectual difficulties that they possessed concerning the truths of Christianity. Scholastic theologians applied scholastic philosophy with its problem-solving methods to confrontation and conversion of nonbelievers. Reason in scholastic philosophy demonstrated and validated the existence of Christian revelation, but it also was extended to the defense of Christian faith against rival religious systems.61 Indeed, the intellectual sphere which Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Abelard, and Thomas Aquinas inhabited was an environment where anti-Judaic attitudes were not only common but also widely accepted. This exclusionary mindset, which authors perpetuated by citing scriptural and historical precedent, thus constitutes an integral puzzle-piece in our analyses of medieval literature. Only by reminding ourselves of its existence are we able to fully explore the ‘Othering’ of Jews in medieval Europe and to defuse the ostracizing assumptions from which anti-Judaic rhetoric derives its power.

60 Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011), pp. 183–85. 61 Robert E. Goss, ‘The First Meeting of Catholic Scholasticism with dGe-Lugs-Pa Scholasticism’, in Scholasticism: Cross-Cultural and Comparative Perspectives, ed. by José Ignacio Cabezón (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 65–90 (p. 69).

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Works Cited Primary Sources Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistolae, ed. by Jean Leclercq and Henry M. Rochais, Sancti Opera, vol. viii (Roma: Ed. Cistercienses, 1975) Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation, and Commentary, ed. by Henry Schroeder (St Louis: Herder, 1937) Peter Abelard, Collationes, ed. by John Marenbon and Giovanni Orlandi, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) Peter the Venerable, Adversus Iudeorum inveteratam duritiem, ed. by Yvonne Friedman, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis, 58 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985) Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula Omnia S. Thomae Aquinatis, ed. by Pierre Mandonnet (Paris: Lethielleux, 1927) Secondary Works Abrahams, Israel, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (Mineola: Dover Publications, 2004) Abulafia, Anna Sapir, ‘Intentio Recta an Erronea? Peter Abelard’s Views on Judaism and the Jews’, in Medieval Studies in Honour of Avrom Saltman, ed. by Giles Constable (RamatGan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1995), pp. 13–30 Aikhenvald, Alexandra Yurievna, Imperatives and Commands (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) ———, ‘Multilingual Imperatives: The Elaboration of a Category in North West Amazonia’, International Journal of American Linguistics, 74 (2008), 189–255 Allen, Julia M., and Lester Faigley, ‘Discursive Strategies for Social Change: An Alternative Rhetoric of Argument’, Rhetoric Review, 14 (1995), 142–72 Almog, Shmuel, and Nathan H. Reisner, eds, Antisemitism Through the Ages ( Jerusalem: Pergamon Press, 1988) Blumenkranz, Bernhard, ‘Le De regimine Iudaeorum: Ses modèles, son exemple’, in Aquinas and the Problems of His Time, ed. by Gérard Verbeke and Daniël Verhelst (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1976), pp. 101–17 Boyle, Leonard E., ‘Thomas Aquinas and the Duchess of Brabant’, Proceedings of the Patristic, Mediaeval, and Renaissance Conference, 8 (1983), 25–35 Cahill, Ann J., Overcoming Objectification: A Cultural Ethics, Routledge Research in Gender and Society (London: Routledge, 2011) Carmel, Alex, Ottoman Haifa: A History of Four Centuries under Turkish Rule (London: Tauris, 2010) Cohen, Richard I., ‘The “Wandering Jew” from Medieval Legend to Modern Metaphor’, in The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times, ed. by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jonathan Karp (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 147–75 Daniel, Norman, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009) Don-Yehiya, Eliezer, ‘The Negation of Galut in Religious Zionism’, Modern Judaism, 12 (1992), 129–55

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Dondaine, Hyacinthe François, ‘Preface’, Leonine, 42 (1979), 360–78 Drury, Shadia B., Aquinas and Modernity: The Lost Promise of Natural Law (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008) Goss, Robert E., ‘The First Meeting of Catholic Scholasticism with dGe-Lugs-Pa Scholasticism’, in Scholasticism: Cross-Cultural and Comparative Perspectives, ed. by José Ignacio Cabezón (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 65–90 Grande, Troni Y., Marlovian Tragedy: The Play of Dilation (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1999) Harper, Kyle, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017) Hasan Roqem, Galit, and Alan Dundes, eds, The Wandering Jew: Essays in the Interpretation of a Christian Legend (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986) Herzstein, Robert Edwin, The Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages: Universal State or German Catastrophe? (Lexington: Heath, 1966) Jones, Nancy A., ‘By Woman’s Tears Redeemed: Female Lament in St Augustine’s Confessions and the Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise’, in Sex and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Texts: The Latin Tradition, ed. by Barbara K. Gold, Paul Allen Miller, and Charles Platter (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 15–39 Langmuir, Gavin I., Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) Leber, Jean-Michel-Constant, Essai sur l’appréciation de la fortune privée au moyen age (Paris: Chez Guillaumin et Compagnie, 1847) Leyser, Karl, ‘The Battle at the Lech, 955. A Study in Tenth-Century Warfare’, History: The Journal of the Historical Association, 50 (1965), 1–25 Liebeschütz, Hans, ‘The Significance of Judaism in Peter Abaelard’s Dialogus’, Journal of Jewish Studies, 12 (1961), 1–18 Marenbon, John, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) Matthews, Victor H., ‘Avoiding Shame in Ancient Israel’, in The Shame Factor: How Shame Shapes Society, ed. by Robert Jewett, Wayne Alloway, and John G. Lacey (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2011), pp. 117–42 McCord Adams, Marilyn, ‘Introduction’, in Peter Abelard: Ethical Writings, ed. by Paul Vincent Spade (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995), pp. vii–xxvii McGuire, Brian Patrick, A Companion to Bernard of Clairvaux (Leiden: Brill, 2011) Motzkin, Aryeh Leo, Philosophy and the Jewish Tradition: Lectures and Essays (Leiden: Brill, 2012) Otten, Willemien, ‘Medieval Scholasticism: Past, Present, and Future’, Dutch Review of Church History, 81 (2001), 275–89 Phillips, Jonathan, The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007) Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011), pp. 183–85 Resnick, Irven, ‘Race, Anti-Jewish Polemic, Arnulf of Séez, and the Contested Papal Election of Anaclet II (A.D. 1130)’, in Jews in Medieval Christendom: Slay Them Not,

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ed. by. Kristine T. Utterback and Merrall L. Price, Études sur le judaïsme médiéval, 60 (Leiden: Brill, 2013) pp. 45–70 Rist, Rebecca, Popes and Jews, 1095–1291 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) Roth, Norman, Daily Life of the Jews in the Middle Ages (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2005) Safran, William, ‘The Jewish Diaspora in a Comparative and Theoretical Perspective’, Israel Studies, 10 (2005), 36–60 Silverman, Eric, A Cultural History of Jewish Dress (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013) Varga, Lucie, Das Schlagwort vom ‘finsteren Mittelalter’ (Baden: R. M. Rohrer, 1932) Von Moos, Peter, ‘Les Collationes d’Abélard et la “question juive” au XIIe siècle’, Journal des Savants, 2 (1999), 449–89

Nike Koutrakou

Layers of ‘Otherness’ Appearance Defining and Disguising ‘Otherness’ in Byzantine Monasticism

This paper starts with the suggestion that monks themselves constituted an issue of ‘otherness’ in Byzantium. Although monks are not among those usually considered as ‘others’ in Byzantine studies, there are several figures of Byzantine monasticism which would fit such a description; similarly, forms of exclusion and inclusion were not absent from Byzantine coenobitic monasticism:1 monks were considered both as part of society and as outsiders. Through their role and influence, especially during ecclesiastical/political conflicts, such as the Christological controversies of the first Christian centuries, the Iconoclast crisis of the eighth/ninth century, or the ‘Hesychast’ movement in Late Byzantium, monks constituted an integral part of Byzantine society.2 At the same time, however, monks by their very nature, which involved withdrawal from society, were perceived as ‘others’, that is, as a specific segment of the Byzantine population. From the very beginning of monasticism in early fourth-century Egypt where the Greek word for a monk, ‘monachos’,



1 Cf. the examples in Margaret Mullet, ‘The “Other” in Byzantium’, in Strangers to Themselves: The Byzantine Outsider. Papers from the Thirty-Second Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. University of Sussex, Brighton, March 1998, ed. by Dion C. Smythe, Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Publications (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), pp. 1–22 (pp. 8, 12–14). 2 Bibliography on Byzantine Church and Byzantine monasticism is extensive. For an introduction see The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. by Alexander P. Kazhdan, Alice-Mary Talbot, Anthony Cutler, Timothy E. Gregory, and Nancy P. Ševčenko (New York: Oxford University Press 1991), s.v. Monk, Monasticism, Monastery, ‘Koinobion’, Hermit; Alice-Mary Talbot, ‘An Introduction to Byzantine Monasticism’, Illinois Classical Studies, 12 (1987), 229–41. For a comprehensive account see Joan M. Hussey and Andrew Louth, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Nike E. Koutrakou  •  ([email protected]) is a byzantinist and diplomat. She holds a PhD degree with Honours in History from the Université de Paris I (Sorbonne) with a thesis on Byzantine imperial propaganda (published Athens 1994). Since 2005 she has been an external collaborator with the Program ‘Hagiography of the Late Byzantine Period’ of the Institute of Historical Research at the National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens. Her scholarly interests include the history of ideas and mentalités, diplomatic and military affairs and foreign relations (in particular Byzantium and the Arabs), women’s studies and hagiography. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 183–213 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123591

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literally ‘solitary’,3 was applied to the desert fathers, and in the later development of coenobitic monasticism, more widespread in Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor, monks were set apart from the rest of the population. They were distinguished both by their external appearance, characterized by a particular attire (a hermit’s garments or a distinctive monastic habit — in Greek monastic ‘Schema’, a word which also alludes to a specific attitude), and by their character displaying specific behavioural patterns defined by well-known monastic virtues (in Greek ‘Ethos’). High morals, orthodox faith, prayers, humility, abstinence, and obedience to the monastic superior were expected signs of monastic ‘Ethos’. Behaviour based on the above morals as well as the monastic garb defined the monks’ ‘otherness’ in Byzantium. The monks’ abode, be it as anchorites and hermits or as coenobitic monks following the specific rules of their monastic communities was also an element of ‘otherness’. Renouncing the world for the love of God and a life of prayer and virtue, cutting all links with previous life, abandoning family, friends, and worldly goods, was in the Byzantine mentality the foremost impulse of the ascetic monk. It was visualized by the simplicity of the monks’ external appearance, which, however, should be substantiated by the corresponding spiritual aspirations and monastic virtues;4 the latter were necessary since monks, despite withdrawal from the world, as well as monasteries in their role as spiritual, cultural, artistic, and economic centres, continued to impact on Byzantine society.5 Theodore, the famous eighth/ ninth-century abbot of the Constantinopolitan Stoudios monastery expressed this attitude in a homily, underlining that external appearance without the ‘Ethos’ did not, by itself, confer the monastic condition: ‘you think […] that to be monks means





3 Edwin Arthur Judge, ‘The Earliest Use of Monachos for Monk and the Origin of Monasticism’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, 20 (1977), 73–86; Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003). On the ideology of renouncing the world and its promotion through scriptural exegesis: Elisabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). On its political repercussions: Dimitrios Moshos, ‘The Emperors and the Desert – the Attitude of Egyptian Monasticism towards Constantine and the Prospect of a Christian Empire’, in Tsveti Tsar Konstantini i Christianstvo (Saint Emperor Constantine and Christianity), International Conference Commemorating the 1700th Anniversary of the Edict of Milan, ed. by Dragiša Bojovič, vol. i (Niš: The Centre of Church Studies, 2013), pp. 157–64. 4 Adorning saintly monks with all virtues became commonplace in hagiographical literature: Thomas Pratsch, Der hagiographische Topos. Griechische Heiligenviten im mittelbyzantinischer Zeit, Millenium Studies, 6 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005), pp. 205–12. 5 On the various approaches to Byzantine Monasticism see, among others, Peter Charanis, ‘The Monk as an element of Byzantine Society’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 25 (1971), 61–84. Demosthenes Savramis, Zur Soziologie des byzantinischen Mönchtums (Leiden: Brill, 1962); Albert Failler, ‘Le monachisme byzantin aux XIe-XIIe siècles. Aspects sociaux et économiques’, Cahiers d’Histoire, 20 (1975), 279–302; Alexander P. Kazhdan, ‘Hermitic, Cenobitic and Secular Ideals in Byzantine Hagiography of the Ninth to Twelfth Centuries’, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 30 (1985), 473–87.

lay e rs o f ‘ot he rne ss’

merely to put on black clothing, to cut your hair or to grow a long beard?’6 Byzantine monasticism’s inherent spirituality to which members or the secular clergy often aspired,7 conferred a sense of superiority and authority to the bearers; it was easily perceived by the general population and sublimely externalized when a priest/monk acceded to a high ecclesiastical office, bishop or archbishop,8 as often happened in Late Antiquity and Byzantium.9 By the same token, if one or several features of the monks’ ‘Ethos’ and virtues which conditioned it ceased to exist (or to be displayed by the bearer as in the following example of monks’ fake ‘marriages’) monastic ‘otherness’ ceased to be perceived as such. Most notably, when Byzantine authorities viewed monks as opponents to their (usually ecclesiastical, but also other) policies and wanted to negate monastic ‘otherness’ they targeted specific monastic features and virtues such as abstinence: the fake ‘marriage ceremonies’ of iconophile monks organized by the iconoclast Emperor Constantine V in the Hippodrome of Constantinople as recorded in the Chronicle of Theophanes constitute a most obvious example of such action designed to nullify one of the basic tenets of monasticism. It was an attempt to discredit the iconophile opposition by dishonouring and thus negating the distinct external elements of the solitaries’ appearance (by presenting them hand in hand with women in marriage) as well as the specific monastic virtue of abstinence.10 The Emperor nullified the monks’ ‘otherness’, making them appear as members of the laity and

6 Theodore Studite, Magna Catechesis, Sermo 82, ed. by Ioseph Cozza-Luzi, in Nova Patrum Bibliotheca, ed. by Angelo Mai and Ioseph Cozza-Luzi, vol. x i (Rome: Typis Sacri Consilii Propagando Christiano Nomini, Typisque Vaticanis, 1905), p. 25. On Theodore the Studite see Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit (henceforth PmbZ), Abteilung 1 (641–867), ed. by Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Claudia Ludwig, Thomas Pratsch, Ilse Rochow and Beate Zielke, in collaboration with Wolfram Brandes and John Robert Martindale, vol. iv (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001), # 7574, pp. 429–33, and recently Torstein Theodore Tollefsen, St Theodore the Studite’s Defence of the Icons: Theology and Philosophy in Ninth-Century Byzantium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 7 Michel Kaplan, ‘Les moines et le clergé séculier à Byzance’, in Moines et monastères dans les sociétés de rite grec et latin, ed. by Jean Loup Lemaitre, Michel Dmitriev, and Pierre Gonneau, École Pratique des Hautes Études, IVe Section, Études médiévales et modernes, 76 (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1996), pp. 293–311 (pp. 306–07); Armin Hohlweg, ‘Bischof und Stadtherr im frühen Byzanz’, Jahrbuch der Ȍsterreichischen Byzantinistik, 20 (1971), 51–62. 8 Andrea Sterk, Renouncing the World Yet Leading the Church: The Monk-Bishop in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); throughout Byzantine history several monks/ bishops were venerated as saints and eulogized as such by hagiographers: Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 290–98. 9 Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops, pp. 56–99, particularly pp. 95–99. 10 Theophanis, Chronographia, ed. by Carolus de Boor, vol. i (Leipzig: Teubner, 1883), pp. 437–38; Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 213–84. On Theophanes: Panagiotis Yannopoulos, Théophane de Sigriani le confesseur (759–818). Un héros orthodoxe du second iconoclasme, Collection Histoire, 5 (Bruxelles: Editions Safran, 2013), esp. pp. 215–82. On Theophanes’ authorship of the Chronographia, see also the relevant chapters in Studies in Theophanes, ed. by Marek Yankowiak and Federico Montinaro, Travaux et Mèmoires, 19 (Paris: Association des Amis du Centre d'Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, 2015), esp. pp. 9–117.

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discredited them in the eyes of their iconophile brotherhood. As apparent from the above, external signs (monastic habit and specific character/behaviour and morals) identified monks as following a vocation which set them apart from society and made them part of a spiritual family, that is, their own monastic brethren. I would term this form of ‘otherness’ a ‘normal’ one for medieval mentalities, easily perceived and accepted by the society at large.

Monks’ ‘Particular Otherness’ versus ‘Normal Otherness’: Some Methodological Considerations In this paper I propose to discuss types of ‘otherness’ which went beyond the ‘normal’ one and differentiated monks as belonging to a particular type of ‘other’. I submit that there were many different cases of what I would term ‘particular otherness’ throughout Byzantine History, but for reasons of space I will deal with the more striking ones, leaving out the case of heresies and heretics which did not, in principle, depend on appearance. Thus I will discuss cases in which ‘otherness’ in a monk was perceived as outside the ‘normal’ one, as more ‘extreme’, more ‘separate’ than usual, although not as ‘abnormal’. As already underlined in the Introduction there are several questions to be addressed in the context of ‘otherness’: for instance, did the monks’ provenance, nationality or origin play a role, even a secondary one, in their being considered ‘other’ by the laity, their local community, or other monks? Or were they subsumed by their characteristics of ‘Ethos’ and ‘Schema’? Which differentiating elements defined a monk’s more specific ‘otherness’? Did they disguise or cover a deeper ‘otherness’? Was the perception of a ‘particular otherness’ limited to one type or were there more than one perceived simultaneously as in layers by the same person(s) or by different persons? Often appearance and character/ behaviour which did not conform to the idea of what a monk should be or do according to his superiors, his peers, the authorities, or the average Byzantine man, marked him as ‘other’. If so, how were such non-conformity elements recorded in Byzantine texts and what social customs and mentality did they denote? And were the monks in question consciously assuming their ‘otherness’ or was it imposed upon them? I will discuss the above issues by using specific examples in which monks were perceived as ‘others’ in various contexts: by their own confraternity in the first place and by the society in which they found themselves in the second place, in order to address specific features of ‘particular otherness’, their evolution and the degree of recognition (negative, positive, ambivalent) they received by mainstream Byzantine society. ‘Otherness’ based on race, language, origins was easily perceived in Byzantine Greek through a terminology combining the word ‘ἄλλος’, other: such as ‘ἀλλότριος’ different, ‘ἀλλογενής’, of different origin, ‘ἀλλόφυλος’, of different race, ‘ἀλλόγλωσσος’ of different language, etc. These terms that denoted ‘otherness’ were often used in conjunction with ambivalent words such as ‘ξένος’ meaning foreign/strange and ‘παράδοξος’, in the sense of strange/miraculous, or ‘θαυμάσιος’ which could mean strange/wonderful/miraculous. The terminology implies that ‘otherness’ could be

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perceived and acknowledged in different ways, accepted or rejected by different people or societal strata. As is well known, the most common sources on Byzantine monks and society, barring historiography, are hagiographical texts,11 mostly Lives of saintly monks which I shall use as primary sources for this paper. In fact Byzantine hagiographical literature underlined, throughout the centuries, a saint/monk’s ‘otherness’, that is, whatever distinguished him/her from the common man. Other sources, such as treatises or letters exchanged between monastic men, describing a monk’s ‘particular otherness’, and usually referring to examples of monks who, in one way or another, transgressed the monastic ‘Ethos’ or the expected monastic behaviour will be used on a case-by-case basis. The early ninth-century Patriarch Nikephoros I of Constantinople, for instance, disparaging the worldly attitudes of iconoclast monks and prelates and their interest in the pleasures of food and sexual intercourse,12 thus infringing the usual monastic abstinence, presents an obvious example of such ‘particular otherness’: iconoclast monks’ display of such non-monastic traits should be condemned by devout (in this case, iconophile) monks and Christians in general. Another example of a specific form of ‘otherness’, this time viewed with affection rather than condemnation, is a ‘jolly’ wandering monk named Elias for whom the eleventh-century intellectual and statesman Michael Psellos wrote letters of introduction to several of his correspondents, in particular provincial judges. Psellos in a letter to the judge of Thrakesion presented Elias as a person with ‘a glib tongue, a pleasant disposition and knowing how to render a service’, who ‘would make [the judge] laugh and fill [him] with every pleasure and delight’.13 In another letter Psellos presented Elias as recalling ‘not Mount Carmel or some other place of retreat but all the brothels in the City, all the taverns’,14 while for another correspondent he described Elias as ‘singing a great

11 For a general overview see Alice-Mary Talbot’s General Introduction, in Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in English Translation, ed. by Alice-Mary Talbot (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1996), pp. vii–xvi and recently the various articles, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, vol. i, Periods and Places, ed. by Stephanos Efthymiadis (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011) as well as The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, vol. ii, Genres and Contexts, ed. by Stephanos Efthymiadis (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). 12 Nicephori Patriarchae, Antirrheticus III, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series graeca, ed. by JacquesPaul Migne, 161 vols (Paris, 1857–1866), 100 (1865), col. 488 Β–C: ἀκρατεῖς […] φιλήδονοι μᾶλλον ἤ φιλόθεοι […] κόσμῳ καὶ τοῖς ἐν τῶ κόσμῳ ἡττώμενοι καὶ […] ὅσα περὶ τὴν γαστέρα σπουδάζοντες; another contemporary source, the Life of Stephen the Younger called the iconoclasts, echoing St John Damascene, ‘belly minded and stomach enslaved’ (La Vie d’Étienne le Jeune par Étienne le Diacre, Introduction, édition et traduction, ed. by Marie-France Auzépy, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs, 3 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), § 28, p. 126 (henceforth: Life of Stephen the Younger); underlining their gluttony and absence of monastic abstinence; Nike Koutrakou, ‘Defying the Other’s Identity: Language of Acceptance and Rejection in Iconoclastic Byzantium’, Byzantion, 69 (1999), 107–18. 13 George T. Dennis, ‘Elias the Monk, Friend of Psellos’, in Byzantine Authors: Literary Activities and Preoccupations: Texts and Translations dedicated to the Memory of Nicholas Oikonomides, ed. by John W. Nesbitt, The Medieval Mediterranean, 49 (Leiden: Brill 2003), pp. 43–62 (p. 53). 14 Dennis, ‘Elias the Monk, Friend of Psellos’, p. 55.

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deal and delighting in rhythms and melodies’.15 Obviously this Elias was regarded as ‘other’ when judged by the usual monastic standards, more like a ‘friar Tuck’ or as J. Ljubarskij called him in his study on Psellos, a ‘Rabelaisian monk’,16 quite different from the average Byzantine monk. In the above example Elias’ behavioural pattern was alien to what was expected from a monk as expressed in the ‘typika’, that is the rules governing each monastic foundation: the monk was to profess, in the stability of his chosen path, poverty, humility and obedience,17 as well as abstinence from all bodily pleasures; he was expected to offer hospitality, to pray and to achieve in the ‘hesychia’, supreme tranquillity, fasting and absence of earthly distractions, a state of ‘parrhēsia’ i.e. of a kind of freedom to address God, of intimacy with God (derived from the meaning of the Greek word ‘boldness of speech’), who received and granted the monks’ prayers and requests. Deviation from the above which constituted a form of ‘particular otherness’ in a monk’s case would scarcely meet with approval. In Elias’s case it was tolerated, even treated with a kind of grumpy affection by Psellos, probably because Elias was viewed as a friend and presented features which linked him to the direct line of another type of ‘particular otherness’, the holy fool whose mocking and provocative behaviour, variously interpreted as madness and/or as signs of sanctity, was not rejected by the Byzantines.18

Monks’ ‘Otherness’ and Monastic Communities: Inclusion and Exclusion If Elias did not meet with rejection for his transgressions, this was not the case when a monk was perceived as ‘other’ by his own confraternity. A brief story recorded in the Life of Euthymius, a fifth-century abbot, illustrates this ‘particular otherness’: it is a scene from the daily life in the monastic community, the ‘Lavra’ established by Euthymius in Palestine, where a monk, ‘an Asian by race named Auxentius’, refused 15 Dennis, ‘Elias the Monk, Friend of Psellos’, p. 57. 16 Jakov N. Ljubarskij, Michail Psell. Lichnost’ i Torchestvo. K Istorii Vizantijskogo Predgumanizma (Moscow: Nauka, 1978), Greek Translation by Argyro Tzelesi, Η προσωπικότητα και το έργο του Μιχαήλ Ψελλού, 2nd revised edn (Athens: Kanakis, 2004), pp. 119–25 (p. 125). 17 Professing such virtues was the norm in monastic rules as stated, in the teachings of Euthymius, the fifth-century Palestinian saint, according to his sixth-century hagiographer Cyril of Scythopolis: ‘Those who renounce this life must not have a wish of their own but […] acquire humility and obedience’: Life of Euthymius, ed. by Edward Schwartz, Kyrillos von Skythopolis. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, 49/2 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1939), pp. 5–86 (§ 9, p. 17); English translation by Richard M. Price in Cyril of Scythopolis: The Lives of the Monks of Palestine, ed. by John Binns, Cistercian Studies Series, 114 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1991), pp. 1–83 (§ 9, p. 13). On Cyril of Scythopolis and his works, see John Binns, Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ: The Monasteries of Palestine 314–631, 2nd edn (: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 23–34, as well as Bernard Flusin, ‘Palestinian Hagiography’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, vol. i, Periods and Places, ed. by Stephanos Efthymiadis (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 199–226 (pp. 208–09). 18 Sergey A. Ivanov, Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 104–38 (p. 123).

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to act as muleteer and go to Jerusalem to buy provisions. As the hagiographer Cyril of Scythopolis tells the tale, the steward of the ‘Lavra’ asked Auxentius to undertake the office of muleteer because of his aptitude as ‘a practical man’. Auxentius however declined. He stated as reason for his refusal ‘first, lack of acquaintance with the country and ignorance of local language, secondly fear of fornication and thirdly fear that such distractions […] would prevent me from […] enjoying “hesychia”’.19 The dialogue comprises various elements of ‘otherness’ which distinguished Auxentius from the other monks: one element was his Asian origin, foreign to the Palestinian region of the monastery, as implied by the ignorance of local customs and language; another was his character, which was assessed as more inclined to practical matters. The latter gave rise to a fear of failing in spiritual matters, in following the expected sexual abstinence and of achieving the state of tranquillity required for reaching for God. Auxentius’s form of ‘particular otherness’ as perceived by his monastic community included a transgression of monastic rules, especially of the rule of obedience, by his refusal to act as a muleteer. It subjugated more usual elements of ‘otherness’ such as race, language and customs and overlaid the ‘normal otherness’ of a monk’s condition. Also, in this case ‘otherness’ coincided with ‘self-otherness’ according to the self-assessment of the person in question, the monk Auxentius himself, a fact that accentuates his being perceived as ‘other’ within a monastic community. Origins and local customs as features of a person’s ‘otherness’ were also at the root of a ‘particular otherness’ perceived in one of the correspondents of ninth-century Patriarch Photius of Constantinople, a Sicilian monk by the name of Mark. In his letters to Mark, Photius adopted a tone of censure, reminding him of the old gods, namely Saturn, Venus, and Persephone, venerated in the West ‘at the time of impiety’, that is in pagan times. The patriarch closed his letter with the remark that Mark ‘being of Western origin, did not have anything wise to do or to say’ and he would need most strenuous efforts and studies in order to reform the customs obtained in his native land.20 The patriarch did not explain in what respect Mark needed to reform his ways and thinking. However, the reference to pagan gods having to do with body desires points towards a perception of Mark as ‘other’ because of the latter’s non-conformity with monastic virtues and, possibly, of his adherence to some pagan traditions presumably surviving in Sicily. In his case ‘otherness’ was assumed not proven. It was also a case of double ‘otherness’, one of provenance and behaviour, Mark’s Western origins marking him as a transgressor of monastic ‘Ethos’.21 His ‘otherness’ met with rejection rather by association with his origins than by personal condition.

19 Life of Euthymius, § 18, ed. by Schwartz, p. 28; English translation by Richard M. Price in Cyril of Scythopolis, ed. by Binns, p. 24. 20 Photii patriarchae Constantinopolitani, Epistulae et Amphilochia, ed. by Basil Laourdas and Leendert G. Westerink (Leipzig: Teubner, 1983), letter 85, vol. i, p. 125: εἰ καὶ σὺ τὸ γένος ἔλκων ἐξ ἑσπέρας […] μεγίστῃ γὰρ σπουδῇ καὶ πόνοις καὶ μελέταις τὰ ἐξ ἔθους καὶ πατρίδος μόλις ποτὲ φιλεῖ μεταρρυθμίζεσθαι. 21 Stephanos Eftymiadis, ‘Le “premier classicisme byzantin”: mythes grecs et reminiscences paiennes chez Photios, Léon VI le Sage et Aréthas de Césarée’, in Pour l’amour de Byzance. Hommage à Paolo Odorico, ed. by Christian Gastgeber, Charis Messis, Dan Ioan Muresan, and Filippo Ronconi (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2013), pp. 99–114, (p. 105).

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As suggested by the previous cases, perception of a monk’s ‘particular otherness’ occurred primarily within the Church or within one’s own community, which was the first to react to differences in ‘Schema’ and or ‘Ethos’. Byzantine hagiography contains several such examples of ‘particular otherness’. The reactions presented various forms at different stages, ranging from marginalization and punishment to gradual acceptance and reverence. A brief story about the entrance to the monastery of a ninth-century Byzantine saint, Euthymius the Younger, illustrates this point. According to his tenth-century Life, the saint, in contrast to the usual ‘topos’ of one’s introduction to monastic life,22 was presented by his abbot-to-be and subsequently perceived by other monks as a murderer when he first arrived to a monastery in Bithynia and asked to be allowed to become a novice.23 Euthymius the Younger joined the assembled monks ‘ἐν σχήματι λαικῷ’, bearing the ‘Schema’, the garb of laity. As a newcomer he was unknown to the other monks who, when asked by the monastery’s abbot, Ioannikios, denied knowing him. Their abbot decided to test Euthymius’s monastic vocation, his obedience and his willingness to endure in humility: he claimed that the young novice was a murderer trying to escape secular justice and he should be kept behind bars.24 So it was done and when young Euthymius bore everything without complaint, Abbot Ioannikios accepted the young man among the brethren, explaining that since a novice still untrained and coming from the society could bear to be accused of a crime with such forbearance, it boded well for his success in monastic endeavours.25 In terms of monastic normalcy the test proved the novice’s renunciation of will, as required in coenobitic monasticism. In terms of ‘otherness’ the test constituted a reversal of the usual perception of a monk relying on the ‘Schema’, the external appearance, and the ‘Ethos’, the monastic behavioural pattern, purposefully placing the tested person apart as a murderer, at the margins of the Christian community. Moreover, in external appearance Euthymius still presented himself as part of the society he should have renounced, that is, he still bore the dress of laity. However, in his soul he was a monk and his ‘Ethos’, his behaviour, followed the monastic patterns of humility and obedience to the monastic superior. This is an example of several layers of ‘otherness’, variously perceived by the abbot, who devised the test, the assembled monks who saw and heard only what was in front of them, and the audience to which Euthymius’s forbearance was a sign of future sanctity, in a game of perceived ‘otherness’ on the hagiographer’s part.

22 On the hagiographical ‘topos’ of one’s introduction to monastic life: Pratsch, Der hagiographische Topos, pp. 118–27. 23 Life of Euthymius the Younger, ed. by Louis Petit, ‘Vie et Office de saint Euthyme le Jeune’, Révue de l’Orient Chrétien, 8 (1903), 155–205, 503–36 (§ 7, 174). 24 Life of Euthymius the Younger, ed. by Petit, p. 174. 25 Life of Euthymius the Younger, ed. by Petit, p. 175.

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‘Extreme Otherness’ in ‘Schema’: Hermits, Wild Men, and Wild Women The most usual form of monks’ ‘particular otherness’ perceived in casual encounters, relied on external appearance and attitude, seen as not in conformity with what was expected. Holy hermits and the holy fools probably constitute the most obvious examples of such ‘particular otherness’, which produced varying reactions. Byzantine hagiographical literature, following relevant Old Testament examples,26 included depictions of monks’ physical ascetic appearance which inspired fear and awe. Scenes of fearsome saints/hermits making their appearance in front of travellers are often found in hagiography. In the above cited Life of Euthymius by Cyril of Scythopolis, the saint and a companion of his met some herdsmen from a nearby desert village who were frightened by the monks’ appearance. According to the Life’s tale, ‘the fathers understood their panic and called to them […] saying “do not fear brethren: we are men like yourselves but inhabit this place for our sins”’.27 The solitary monks resembled wild men and frightened those they encountered. This kind of ‘particular otherness’ in ‘Schema’, external appearance of wild men, quite usual in hermits and other ascetics,28 overlaid the usual ‘otherness’ of the monastic life. The story, in the choice of words used by the monks which recall those of Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin asking her not to be afraid of his appearance,29 contains also a hint to a third layer of ‘otherness’: the saintly, angelic one, since the monks had chosen the ‘angelic Schema’ that is the monastic way of life. This kind of encounter with the ‘other’ in the wilderness became a ‘topos’ in hagiographical literature. In such encounters, especially in cases of female solitaries, the boundaries between civilized and wild man became blurred, and the solitaries’ ‘particular otherness’ as a ‘wild one’ was emphasized. For instance in the Life of Mary of Egypt, the well-known story of the repentant harlot who lived in the desert, attributed to the seventh-century patriarch Sophronios of Jerusalem, there is a scene about one

26 Derek Krueger, ‘The Old Testament and Monasticism’, in The Old Testament in Byzantium, Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia. Selected Papers from a Symposium held December 1–3, 2006 at Meyer Auditorium of Freer Gallery, ed. by Paul Magdalino and Robert Nelson (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2010), pp. 199–229. 27 Life of Euthymius, § 8, ed. by Schwartz, p. 16; Cyril of Scythopolis, ed. by Binns, p. 11. 28 Several examples in Otto A. Meinardus, Monks and Monasteries of the Egyptian Deserts, 3rd revised en (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1999); Janet Rutherford, ‘Byzantine Asceticism – a Stranger to the Church?’, in Strangers to Themselves: The Byzantine Outsider. Papers from the ThirtySecond Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. University of Sussex, Brighton, March 1998, ed. by Dion C. Smythe (Aldershot: Ashgate 2000), pp. 39–46; Nancy Ševčenko, ‘The Hermit as Stranger in the Desert’, in Strangers to Themselves, ed. by Smythe, pp. 75–86; most recently from a different perspective, Arietta Papaconstantinou, ‘The Desert and the City: The Rhetoric of Savagery and Civilization in Some Early Byzantine Narratives’, in Identity and the Other in Byzantium: Papers from the Fourth International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium, ed. by Koray Durak and Ivana Jevtič (Istanbul: Koç University and Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Center for Antique and Byzantine Studies, 2016), pp. 83–92. 29 Luke 1. 30.

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of her encounters with Zosimas, a priestly monk.30 He ‘saw the shadowy illusion of a human body appear to the right of where he was […]’. The apparition induced fear in the onlooker who took it for a ‘demonic phantom’ but then understood that it was someone walking ‘in a southward direction’. The description of that person is quite awful: Zosimas saw ‘a naked figure, whose body was black […], by the scorching of the sun. It had on its head “hair white as wool” (Revelation 1. 14) and even this was sparse’.31 He followed the creature ‘in the hope of meeting something extraordinary’. When finally he overtook it, they spoke across a ravine and Mary told him her story. The above scene presents several types and several layers of ‘otherness’ in cross-cutting patterns: the ‘normal otherness’ of Zosimas, a monk behaving in conformity with his monastic rules which specified his going to pray in the desert, as well as the more ‘extreme otherness’ of Mary, an anchorite who, with the appearance of a wild creature, was fleeing ‘normalcy’ both in acts and signs. In the development of the story, Zosimas will recount a vision of Mary ‘elevated about one cubit above the earth’,32 that is as another kind of ‘other’, a saint, performing miracles. As a literary device, Zosimas’ ‘normal otherness’ served by contrast to underline Mary’s ‘extreme otherness’, as a wild woman having left behind the civilized human condition and itself concealing a third kind of ‘otherness’, that is her holiness, which is the focus of the story. The understanding of Mary’s ‘holy otherness’ comes gradually, only at the end, by Zosimas, who initially believes her a demon, while the reader has some hints about her holiness from the expectation of ‘παράδοξον’ the extraordinary and unexpected, that Zosimas was pursuing. The ‘topos’ of the encounter with the unexpected was used as a literary device in order to underline a saint monk’s entering the scene, and to set him apart not only from the common man but also from other monks or men performing various heroic deeds, in order to underline his ‘otherness’. The first reaction to it was initially fear and the last, gradually, reverence towards holiness. Thus this type of encounter scene was repeated twice in the early tenth-century Life of Theoktiste of Lesbos, by Niketas Magistros, inspired by the above-cited Life of Mary of Egypt: first in the appearance of a saintly hermit by the name of Symeon on the Cycladic island of Paros, where Theoktiste died after she escaped from the Arab raiders33 who had captured her on Lesbos and taken her to Paros, and second in the appearance of Theoktiste who told her story to Symeon, who in turn reported it to the author of the Life, Niketas 30 Life of St Mary of Egypt, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series graeca, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 161 vols (Paris, 1857–1866), 87 (1865), cols 3697–726. English translation by Maria Kouli in Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in English Translation, ed. by Alice-Mary Talbot (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1996), pp. 70–93 (§ 10–32, pp. 76–88). On the repentance and redemption of ‘holy harlots’ see Lynda L. Coon, Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), pp. 71–94. 31 Life of St Mary of Egypt, ed. by Migne, col. 3705; English translation of the Life of St Mary of Egypt, § 10, trans. by Kouli, p. 76. 32 English Translation of the Life of St Mary of Egypt, § 15, trans. by Kouli, p. 79. 33 On the Arab raids in the Aegean, see Vassilios Christides, ‘The Raids of the Moslems of Crete in the Aegean Sea, Piracy and Conquest’, Byzantion, 51 (1981), 76–111; Panagiotis Yannopoulos, ‘Byzantins et Arabes dans l’espace grec aux IXe et Xe siècles selon les sources hagiographiques locales et

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Magistros. The monk Symeon himself looked like a hermit of long standing: ‘a monk who emerged from the wilderness … his face was pale, his cheeks drawn, his feet bare […]. He was as hairy as a beast, as kind as an angel’. The description hints at an unsubstantial being who lived ‘in a world like the abode of virtues, or even of God himself ’.34 In the hagiographical depiction, the monk’s extreme ‘otherness’ loses its fleshy nature and reaches a kind of ‘Godlike’ nature. Similarly, in Symeon’s tale, the woman he encountered, Theoktiste, presented the same features of ‘particular otherness’. She had ‘the shape of a woman but the appearance of a superhuman being. Her hair was white, her face black […]. The skin alone kept the bones in place […]. She was almost a shadow […]’.35 In both cases ‘particular otherness’ was extreme and easily perceived both by whoever encountered it and by the listener/reader of the tale. It transgressed humanity and became a sign of holiness, of sainthood. The monk Symeon as well as Theoktiste shared the external appearance, the ‘Schema’, of a solitary hermit in the desert; also they both presented the bearing (‘Ethos’) of beast and angel. Their ‘otherness’ was finally perceived as the ‘otherness’ of the holy. Thus, taken to the extreme, ‘otherness’ defying conformity was stressed in Byzantine hagiography as a kind of external sign of holiness.

Extreme ‘Otherness’ in ‘Ethos’: Stylites and Holy Fools This was not limited to solitary hermits in the desert. It also concerned monks returning to the city to pursue their ascetic endeavours in contact with people living in society, a fact already marking them as ‘other’ in relation to a monk’s ‘normal otherness’. There were even more specific examples of such ‘otherness’: the extreme asceticism and mortification of flesh of the ‘Stylites’, the pillar saints, living high on their columns in the outskirts of the city, or the ‘dendrites’ living on their trees, etc.; The Life of Symeon Stylites the Elder († 459/460), the first pillar saint, calling his lifestyle ‘ξένον καὶ παράδοξον’ (foreign/strange and miraculous/strange),36 provides a significant example of the ‘otherness’ that was perceived in the behaviour of such solitaries: on

contemporaines’, in East and West, Essays on Byzantine and Arab worlds in the Middle Ages, Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies, 15, ed. by Juan-Pedro Monferrer-Sala, Vassilios Christides, and Theodoros Papadopoulos (Piscataway: Gorgias, 2009), pp. 91–105. 34 Life of Theoctiste of Lesbos, in Acta Sanctorum […] collegit, digestit, notis illustruuit J. Bollandus, operam et studium contulit G. Henschenius (Antuerpiae-Bruxellis [Antwerpen-Bruxelles]: typis regiis, 1643– 1940) (henceforth Acta Sanctorum), Novembris IV, pp. 224–33 (§ 5, p. 226); ‘Life of St. Theoktiste of Lesbos’, trans. by Angela Hero, in Holy Women of Byzantium : Ten Saints’ Lives in English Translation, ed. by Alice-Mary Talbot (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1996), pp. 101–16 (p. 105). On Theoctiste: PmbZ, vol. 4 (2001), # 8027, pp. 571–72. 35 Life of Theoctiste of Lesbos, § 13, p. 228. , ‘Life of St. Theoktiste of Lesbos’ § 17, trans. by Hero, p. 110. 36 Life of Symeon Stylites, ed. by Athanasios Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Συλλογὴ Παλαιστίνης καὶ Συριακής Ἁγιολογίας, i, 1907 (repr. Thessalonica: Pournaras, 2001), pp. 60–74 (§ 1, p. 60). On Symeon Stylites’ extreme asceticism which gave birth to various traditions and local legends including those concerning the veneration of his bodily remains: Béatrice Caseau, ‘Syméon Stylite l’Ancien entre puanteur et parfum’, Revue des Études Byzantines, 63 (2005), 71–96 (pp. 86–92)); recently also Volker

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the basis of their external appearance and lifestyle they were immediately perceived as different, ‘other’, both by other monks and by the general population. However reactions to them varied. Usually they were accepted by the men in their vicinity, including other monks, but only after they had established themselves on their columns or in their abodes, and in fact, had proved themselves (usually by miracles), so that their eccentricity was perceived as induced by the grace of God and consequently accepted. In fact, with their acceptance, their ‘particular otherness’ was almost ‘normalized’, returned within the boundaries of what the Church accepted from a monk. The Church historian Evagrius reports how Symeon Stylites was initially perceived as ‘other’ within his own monastic community: the historian depicts a scene in which the elders of the desert and local abbots sent a messenger to the saint’s pillar in Telanissa near Antioch, to test Symeon by asking him to come down from it.37 When Symeon started to obey, that is, when he established a kind of ‘normalcy’ by demonstrating his willingness to come back to conformity by obeying the monastic elders, he was left on his pillar to follow behavioural patterns of extreme fasting and prayers. Symeon’s ‘otherness’, by way of his endurance, was finally perceived by everyone as a sign of holiness. His death and especially the ‘translatio’ of his remains to Constantinople at the time of Emperor Leo I (457–474) which is described in the Life of another pillar saint, Daniel ‘Stylites’, became public events. The Stylites’ ‘otherness’ as something strange and unexpected which produced a kind of shock to the onlooker and was interpreted as a sign of celestial Grace is best illustrated in a short story about a certain Titus, a former mercenary soldier, inserted in the Life of Daniel Stylites, heir to Symeon’s ‘παράδοξον’, strange lifestyle. In this story, Titus, ‘beholding the holy man (Daniel), marvelled at the strangeness of his appearance “τὸ ξένον τοῦ σχήματος” and his endurance’; inspired by the Stylites’ example, he abandoned his military career, converted on the spot and joined the followers of Daniel as a monk.38 Thus, in the end the Stylites’ ‘particular otherness’ was recognized as provoking feelings of wonderment and admiration. Perceived and acknowledged by public opinion as a sign of holiness, it became almost ‘normalized’. However, the culmination of ‘particular otherness’, and its most easily perceived type in a Byzantine monk was, arguably, that of a ‘salos’, the holy fool who assumed the guise of madness and scandalizing behaviour for purposes of his own salvation and the edification of others. The appearance and behaviour of the holy fools were

Menze, ‘The Transformation of a Saintly Paradigm: Simeon the Elder and the Legacy of Stylitism’, in Religious Identities in the Levant from Alexander to Muhammed: Continuity and Change, ed. by Michael Blömer, Achim Lichtenberger, and Rubina Raja (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 213–26. 37 Evagrius, The Ecclesiastical History, ed. by Joseph Bidez and Léon Parmantier (London: Methuen, 1898), i, 13, pp. 20–22 (p. 21); Hippolyte Delehaye, Les Saints Stylites, Subsidia Hagiographica, 14 (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1923), p. xviii. 38 S. Danielis Stylitae Vita, ed. by Hippolyte Delehaye, in Les Saints Stylites, §58 and § 60, Subsidia Hagiographica, 14 (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1923), pp. 56–57 and 58–59. On Titus’ even more strange stylites’ schema see Michel Kaplan, ‘L’espace et le sacré dans la vie de Daniel le Stylite’ in Le sacré et son inscription dans l’espace à Byzance et en Occident, ed. by Michel Kaplan, Byzantina Sorbonensia, 18 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2001), pp. 199–217 (p. 210).

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considered ‘other’, that is strange, not only within monastic communities but by everyone. They developed as a specific religious phenomenon.39 Not only did they not conform to the accepted rules and expected behaviour for monks, but their adoption of provocative attitudes often defied common logic. A sixth-century monk, St Symeon the Fool, for instance, is described, while in the town of Emesa in Syria, as adopting provocative attitudes on purpose in order to irritate everyone and ‘in particular the monks’.40 He was going around naked, thrown out of women’s public baths, eating meat during fasting periods, consorting with courtesans and prostitutes and dancing publicly with them, tripping and hitting the passers-by, etc.41 He walked in strange ways, sometimes copying cripples and at other times jumping and dancing around, declaiming, occasionally in blasphemous words, his ideas to all who wanted to listen. He did all that on purpose, commenting in fact that the declaiming attitude was the most useful to those who simulated madness.42 According to his mid-seventh-century biographer, Leontios of Neapolis, the saint strove to hide his working miracles by doing something incongruous and illogical and, in a paradox of logical thought, by moving his home to a different neighbourhood till people had forgotten his miraculous intervention.43 This kind of ‘other’, in the sense of ‘strange’, mode of life was met with ambivalent reactions. Many people considered Symeon simply mad, while others acknowledged his holiness and sought his advice. An episode from his Life aptly illustrates this dual perception: when two elders from a nearby monastery sought him for advice on issues related to the teachings of Origen, they were discouraged from doing so because, as the people said, Symeon Salos offered offences, hit, and ridiculed everyone. Despite that judgement they proceeded to put their question to Symeon who answered them in riddles, which, however, also contained hints of an answer as to Origen’s theology. Symeon’s ‘otherness’ was thus perceived as comprising several layers: the ‘otherness’ of ‘μωρία’ madness and innocence was a veil assumed on purpose, in order to disguise his ‘otherness of holiness’. It was 39 Ivanov, Holy Fools, p. 134. On the vocabulary used for the phenomenon: Caroline Macé and Thomas Wauters, ‘“Les mots et la chose”: Quelques réflexions sur le vocabulaire de la folie chez Maxime le Confesseur et Jean Damascène’, Byzantinische Forschungen, 32 (2016), 383–89 (pp. 385–86); from a literary perspective: Julie van Pelt, ‘Saints in Disguise: Performance in the Life of John Kalyvites (BHG 868), the Life of Theodora of Alexandria (BHG 1727) and the Life of Symeon Salos (BHG 1677)’, in Storytelling in Byzantium. Narratological approaches to Byzantine Texts and Images, ed. by Ch. Messis, Margaret Mullet, and Ingela Nilsson, Acta Univesitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia, 19 (Uppsala: Uppsala Univesitet, 2018), pp. 137–57 (pp. 152–54). 40 Leontios of Neapolis, Life of Symeon Salos, ed. by Lennart Rydén, Das Leben des heiligen Narren Symeon von Leontios von Neapolis, in Leontios de Néapolis, Uppsala 1963, reprint in André Jean Festugière, Vie de Syméon le fou et de Jean l’Aumonier (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1974), p. 87: κατ’ἐξαίρετον δὲ τοὺς μοναχούς. 41 Analysis in Ivanov, Holy Fools, pp. 104–21, esp. pp. 117–19. 42 Leontios of Neapolis, Life of Symeon Salos, ed. by Rydén, Symeon, in Festugière, Vie de Syméon, p. 89: Ἔλεγεν γὰρ […] συμβάλλεσθαι τὸ τοιοῦτον σχῆμα τοῖς προσποιουμένοις μωρίαν. 43 Leontios of Neapolis, Life of Symeon Salos, ed. by Rydén, Symeon, in Festugière, Vie de Syméon, p. 81; Vincent Déroche, Études sur Leontios de Neapolis, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Byzantina Upsalensia, 3 (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1995), with special analysis of the salos’ spirituality of innocence as well as his miracles and sanctity.

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recognized on both levels: his irrational behaviour was ‘other’ in contrast to what should have been the logical behaviour of an average person, and it challenged social decency; at the same time his ‘otherness of holiness’, that is, his simulated madness for ascetic and educational purposes,44 the salvation of his soul and that of others, and thereby his status as a saint in the making, was acknowledged by many of his contemporaries, and finally the Church and his hagiographer.

‘Otherness’ in Disguise: Transvestites and Agents As attested by the story of the ‘salos’, a ‘particular otherness’ was not only what could define a monk/saint in the perception of others. It was also what could disguise him and disguise his endeavours in his way to sanctity. However, the most usual ‘particular otherness’ in the context of disguise produced by Byzantine hagiography is to be found in the ‘topos’ of the disguised saint or the transvestite nun. One of the oldest such tales relates the case of a couple, Andronikos and Athanasia who followed their monastic vocation in separate monasteries in Egypt. After years, they met on their way to the Holy Land, while Athanasia was dressed ‘ἐν σχήματι ἀνδρικῷ’ as a male monk. She recognized her husband, while he failed to recognize her, because ‘her beauty had withered away due to her asceticism and she looked like an Ethiopian’.45 After their return they lived side by side as monks, in complete silence. Only after her death Athanasia was recognized as a woman and as Andronikos’s wife because of a letter she wrote to him and entrusted to their abbot with the request to give it to Andronikos after her demise.46 For her endurance she was recognized as holy by their monastic community and was joined in burial and holiness by her husband. A similar story has survived and is related in a short notice in the tenth-century Synaxarium of Constantinople: it is the story of a certain Anastasia, of patrician descent, who, according to that pious tale, at the time of emperor Justinian fled the world — and incidentally the envy of empress Theodora — and found refuge in a monastery in Alexandria, as a monk, with the full knowledge of its abbot, the ‘hegoumenos’ Daniel.47 The

44 Ivanov, Holy Fools, p. 7. On the ambivalent appreciation of the Holy Fool: Christopher D. L. Johnson, ‘“Base but nevertheless holy”: Lessons in Liminality by Symeon the Holy Fool’, Studies in Religion/ Sciences religieuses, 43 (2014), 592–612. An inter-disciplinary analysis of the Holy Fool phenomenon and the example of Symeon Salos is provided by Youval Rotman, Insanity and Sanctity in Byzantium: The Ambiguity of Religious Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), pp. 15–16, 27–33. 45 Life of Andronikos and Athanasia: De SS. Andronico et Athanasia Confessoribus in Aegypto, in Acta Sanctorum, Octobris IV (Bruxellis typis regiis, 1780), pp. 997–1001 (p. 999C). On the Life of Andronikos and Athanasia and on marital life and asceticism in hagiography, see Ann P. Alwis, Celibate Marriages in Late Antique and Byzantine Hagiography: The Lives of Saints Julian and Basilissa, Andronikos and Athanasia and Galaktion and Episteme (London: Continuum, 2011). 46 Life of Andronikos and Athanasia, p. 1000E. 47 Synaxarium Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae e codice Sirmondiano, ed. by Hippolyte Delehaye (Mensis Martius dies X) (Brussels: apud socios Bollandianos, 1902), p. 526: [The abbot] ἐνέδυσεν αὐτὴν στολὴν ἀνδρῴαν, ὀνομάσας αὐτὴν Ἀναστάσιον τὸν εὐνοῦχον.

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abbot presented her as a eunuch by the name of Anastasios and ordered that she lived in a cave near the monastery, without contact with other monks. The abbot protected her from the emperor’s search and maintained the perception of her as a eunuch monk even after her death: only he and a monk who helped bury her knew that she was a woman. The usual form taken by such stories, often preserving elements of popular folklore48 is that of saintly women who joined monasteries disguised as men and persisted in their apparent identity even when falsely accused of rape, such as the one encountered in the Life of St Mary or St Marinos; the preserved text of this Life dates to the tenth century although the story goes back to a sixth-century Vita prior. In this case Mary had joined the monastery as a monk, when her father did so, at her own initiative, having cut her hair and in man’s clothes;49 accused of rape, she was expelled by her abbot and was condemned to live outside the gates of the monastery.50 Eventually at Mary/Marinos’s death she was discovered to be a woman, obviously innocent in the matter and subsequently venerated as a saint. What is of interest in all the above stories is the multiple ‘otherness’ of the female protagonist. It is not a banal case of mistaken identity, as it can be surmised in the tale of Andronikos and Athanasia. The transvestite nun assumes the identity of a male monk with the willingness to be perceived as such, as ‘other’ within the monastic community and everywhere. She makes her ‘otherness’ a cover of normality as a monk among other monks, before being perceived as ‘other’ again, and put outside the common fold (in Mary/Marinos’ case both literally and figuratively) on account of a transgression. Similarly, Athanasia lives under a vow of silence and Anastasia dwells apart from other monks; they both assume outward signs of ‘otherness’ in comparison to the monks of their monastic communities. So, in the case of the transvestite nun several layers of ‘otherness’ converge: first as a person living a double life, that is as a monk in a monastic community of men, in which she was in reality ‘other’ because of her sex; second as perceived ‘other’ in behaviour by the superior and the brotherhood, that is, either as someone who had transgressed the code of conduct of abstinence or as someone assuming a different form of asceticism. Finally, through her death, sometimes as in Anastasia’s case

48 André Jean Festugière, ‘Lieux communs littéraires et thèmes de folklore dans l’Hagiographie primitive’, Wiener Studien, 73 (1960), 123–52. On transvestism disguising holy womanhood in such hagiographical stories see Crystal Lynn Lubinsky, Removing Masculine Layers to Reveal a Holy Womanhood: The Female Transvestite Monks of Late Antique Eastern Christianity, Studia Traditionis Theologiae, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013). pp. 109–85. 49 Léon Clugnet, ed., ‘Vie et office de sainte Marine’, Revue de l’Orient Chrétien, 6 (1901), 572–92, text of Life A pp. 575–77 (p. 575): οὐκ εἰσελεύσωμι ἐν γυναικείῳ σχήματι ἀλλὰ ἀποθρίξουσα τὴν κεφαλήν μου καὶ ἀνδρικῷ σχήματι ἐνδυσαμένη, συνεισέλθω σοι ἐν τῷ μοναστηρίῳ᾿. ‘Life of St. Mary/Marinos’, trans. by Nicholas Constas in Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in English Translation, ed. by AliceMary Talbot (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1996), pp. 7–12. On the custom of cutting one’s hair when embracing the monastic life recently: Daniel Oltean, ‘Les origines de la tonsure monastique. Les sources grecques’, Byzantion, 87 (2017), 259–97 (pp. 277–81). 50 Clugnet, ed., ‘Vie et office de sainte Marine’, p. 576; ‘Life of St. Mary/Marinos’, trans. by Constas, p. 9.

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accompanied by a miracle of light,51 she is perceived as something entirely ‘other’, that is, as a saint. In the above cases of the transvestite nuns the monk’s ‘Schema’ was a willing disguise and the outward signs of alterity assumed, served to disguise a deeper ‘otherness’ of female sex, under the apparent normalcy of a monk’s ‘normal otherness’. There was a will of the person in question to be perceived as ‘other’, relying on the ‘otherness’ of non-conformity in order to disguise a different ‘otherness’. ‘Otherness’ perceived by exterior signs, which could be used deliberately as a disguise, was not employed solely by the transvestite nuns. The story of a stratagem played by iconoclast emperor Constantine V on the iconophile monk faction headed, according to the iconophile tradition by St Stephen the Younger, illustrates this point. It is reported by Stephen the Deacon, an iconophile author who wrote the Life of Stephen the Younger, one of the most influential texts of the iconoclast era,52 around 807–809.53 The emperor used as an ‘agent provocateur’ a young courtier named George Synkletous, whom he planted among the saint’s monastic followers, in order to trick St Stephen the Younger into openly defying iconoclast policy, and thus give him reason for persecution. George arrived at the monastery, pretended that he had repented of his iconoclast ways and infiltrated the saint’s followers; then he came back to Constantinople, in monk’s habit, to be used by the emperor as proof of iconophile proselytism and conspiracy against iconoclast policy, in a public display during which he abandoned the monastic garb and adopted again court attire. What is of interest for this study is George’s ‘particular otherness’ within his apparent ‘normal otherness’ as a monk. He was accepted as a repentant iconoclast by the iconophile monks, although recognized as coming from the imperial (iconoclast) court by his external appearance: he was close shaved as was the fashion

51 Synaxarium, ed. by Delehaye, pp. 526–27. 52 Joseph Gill, ‘The Life of Stephen the Younger by Stephen the Deacon: Debts and Loans’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 6 (1940), 114–39. Other saints’ Lives as for instance the Lives of Theophylaktos of Nicomedia, Makarios of Pelekete, Nikephoros of Sebaze or Theophanes the Confessor copied scenes, dialogues, and argumentation from the Life of Stephen the Younger. The Life of Saint Andrew in Crisi used it as a blueprint: Marie-France Auzépy, ‘De Philarète de sa famille et de certains monastères de Constantinople’, in Les Saints et leur Sanctuaire à Byzance, Textes, images et monuments, ed. by Catherine Jolivet-Lévy, Michel Kaplan, and Jean-Pierre Sodini (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1993), pp. 117–35 (pp. 129–31); see also, Alexander P. Kazhdan, Lee F. Sherry and Christine Angelidi, A History of Byzantine Literature, (650–850), Research series, 2 (Athens: The National Hellenic Research Foundation, Institute for Byzantine Research, 1999), pp. 183–98 and most recently, Dmitry Afinogenov, ‘Integration of Hagiographic Texts into Historical Narrative: The Cases of the Lives of St Stephen the Younger and Niketas of Medikion’, in Byzantine Hagiography, Texts, Themes & Projects, ed. by Antonio Rigo, in collaboration with Michele Trizio and Elefterios Despotakis, Byzantios, Studies in Byzantine History and Civilization, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 325–40. 53 Auzépy, La Vie d’Étienne le Jeune par Étienne le Diacre (in the introduction of the Life of Stephen the Younger), pp. 9 and 18; Vincent Déroche, ‘Note sur la Vie d’Étienne le Jeune et sa chronologie interne’, Revue des études byzantines, 60 (2002), 179–88, dates the Life of Stephen the Younger to 807.

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for iconoclasts,54 possibly in order to underline a more virile appearance. However, the Life of Stephen the Younger also presents George as being of a rather effeminate appearance by the use of his surname — Synkletous is a form used in Greek for a female of the Senate. This might have been noted by the iconophile author, as the editor of the Life pointed out, in order to allude to and to castigate the emperor’s alleged homosexual tendencies.55 It might also, easily, have been part of the emperor’s stratagem: a calculated risk, consciously choosing someone of inoffensive appearance whose ‘otherness’ once recognized, as it happened, could be assumed by Stephen the Younger’s followers to be easily changeable and become the monks’ ‘normal otherness’, that is, George’s embracing the monastic condition. That this happened on purpose, as a disguise, on the part of George constitutes a case in which a layer of monk’s ‘normal otherness’ covered a deeper one: the ‘otherness’ of iconoclast agent among iconophiles.

‘Otherness’ in Mobility: Wandering Beggars, Peregrinating Monks, and Espionage Suspects Byzantine hagiography also offers cases of ‘otherness’ in the meaning of non-conformity with the monks’ standards of external appearance and behaviour, regardless of the perceived person’s intention. It was a type of ‘otherness’, connected to differentiating elements such as origin, language, race, etc., and was observed in cases of travelling monks who were perceived as ‘others’, almost ipso facto as a result of their being foreigners and unknown in the locality in which they found themselves. Normally, one of the characteristics of behavioural patterns for a monk was stability, meaning that when he renounced the world and joined a monastery it was for the rest of his life. He was not to leave his abode, except for the needs of the monastery or to live as a solitary. He was not supposed to travel around, again with the exception of departing to visit an elder or in some cases in order to establish or join another monastic community, or to go for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land or to a specific site.56 However, in the tradition of beggars of Late Antiquity, another type of monks’ ‘otherness’ developed: that of the wandering beggar-monk, who, by living in extreme poverty and begging alms made obvious his rejection of worldly goods; thus, following the example of 54 Life of Stephen the Younger, § 38, ed. by Auzépy, pp. 137–38. For the impact of the Life of Stephen the Younger on the formation of a perception of Byzantine monasticism as ‘other’, that is, as being diverse from the prevailing iconoclast monasticism of that period, and as the mainstream opposition to the iconoclast movement, cf. Marie-France Auzépy, L’hagiographie et l’Iconoclasme byzantin: le cas de la vie d’Etienne le Jeune, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies 5 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999). On the author of this Life, Stephen the Deacon, see, most recently, the remarks by A. Binggeli and S. Efthymiadis in their edition of the Life of Bacchos the Younger written by the same author: ‘Vie et Passion de Bacchos le Jeune par Étienne le Diacre’, ed. by André Binggeli and Stéphanos Efthymiadis, in Les Nouveaux Martyrs à Byzance, ed. by André Binggeli and Sophie Métivier, Byzantina Sorbonnsia, 31 (Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2021), pp. 7–211 (pp. 53–55). 55 Life of Stephen the Younger, ed. by Auzépy, p. 232 n. 249. 56 Pratsch, Der Hagiographische Topos, pp. 156–59.

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the Apostles, he acquired a measure of spiritual authority and by accepting alms also bestowed it on his benefactors.57 This view was hardly unanimous. Byzantines called such monks, when encountered in the Empire’s towns, ‘ἀγοραίους’ ‘those of the market place’ and ‘γυραβαγούς’ ‘wanderers’ and, already in Late Antiquity, there were voices, such as Neilos of Sinai’s, disparaging their aimless wanderings which often provoked the indignation of urban populations and caused them to hate the previously admired monastic life.58 This quite critical attitude towards wandering monks probably reflected the sentiments of most of the Byzantine population who viewed them as ‘pseudo-monks’ (in the words of Neilos of Sinai), who had abandoned the spiritual aspirations of their vocation. However in Byzantine hagiography, travelling and wandering monks are not a rare phenomenon: despite reservations their habit provided them with a measure of protection and hospitality from locals in return for prayers and possibly for news or for knowledge of medicine, and for aid to the uneducated in writing letters; so they became one of the most mobile segments of the Byzantine population: some texts even hint at them being hired out as guides to other travelling pilgrims.59 On the other hand, a travelling monk was almost by definition ‘other’, in the sense of stranger, for local populations and he was viewed with suspicion, especially in troubled times. Thus, the story of a saint, usually a wandering monk, arrested as a spy, came to be almost commonplace in middle-Byzantine hagiography, especially in the context of Arab-Byzantine relations. There are several such examples, three of them being quite striking: St Gregory Dekapolites, from Asia Minor when he found himself in Otranto, in Southern Italy, St Elias the Younger from Sicily and his disciple Daniel in Butrint on the Adriatic coast, and St Basil the Younger in the Byzantine heartland of the mountains of Asia Minor. According to the text of his Life, St Gregory Dekapolites arrived in Otranto from Syracuse during the Iconoclastic controversy and the Arab-Byzantine conflicts of the ninth century; he was almost lynched by the local population, who accused him of having come to Otranto ‘ἐπὶ προδοσίαν χριστιανῶν’ as a traitor to Christians.60 After having put a ‘soudarion’, that is a kind of turban, on his head the inhabitants of the town were ready to put him to death. However, the saint persuaded them to desist and to bring him to the local bishop for judgement. Finally Gregory left the town

57 Daniel Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity, Transformation of the Classical Heritage, 33 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire, The Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures (Hanover: University of New England Press, 2002), pp. 45–73, (pp. 49–53). 58 Neilos of Sinai, Letter 119, in S. Nili Epistolarum Liber III, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series graeca, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 161 vols (Paris, 1857–1866), 79 (1865), col. 437C: ὁ πρώην περιπόθητος […] τῶν μοναζόντων βίος νῦν βδελυρὸς γέγονε […] βαροῦνται μὲν πᾶσαι πόλεις καὶ κῶμαι ὑπὸ τῶν ψευδομονάχων, περιτρεχόντων μάτην καὶ ὡς ἔτυχεν […]. 59 Hippolyte Delehaye, ʻVita S. Pauli Junioris in Monte Latro’, Analecta Bollandiana, 11 (1892), 5–74 and 136–82 (§ 3, 22). 60 Life of Gregory Dekapolites, in Ignatios Diakonos und die Vita des hl. Gregorios Dekapolites, ed. by Georgios Makris, Byzantinisches Archiv, 17 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1997) § 33, pp. 96–98 (p. 96). On Dekapolites: PmbZ, ed. by Lilie and others, ii, # 2486, pp. 96–99, and on his hagiographer Ignatios Diakonos, PmbZ, ed. by Lilie and others, ii, # 2665, pp. 166–72.

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unmolested, evaded a Saracen ambush, crossed the sea, and reached Thessalonica. The above scene has been read differently by various scholars. Cyril Mango61 postulated that the saint was mistaken for an Arab spy, and that the action of the inhabitants was due to their fear that he would pass information on the town’s defences to an Arab raiding fleet nearby, something of particular importance to the city of Otranto at a time when the Arab naval raids in the region were quite common.62 Also, the next scene in the Life depicts St Gregory escaping death at the hands of an Arab raider somewhere near Otranto,63 which seems to strengthen the interpretation of a wandering monk being perceived as ‘other’, that is as a spy, foreigner, and enemy. The importance of the external appearance of the ‘Schema’ — in this case emphasized by the Oriental style headdress instead of a monk’s hood — in establishing a person’s ‘otherness’ and in distinguishing friend from foe, is further substantiated by a small story concerning another, somewhat later (tenth/eleventh century) saintly monk, Neilos the Younger, of Grottaferrata. St Neilos, while in Calabria, encountered a small party of cavalrymen dressed and armed as Saracens. He expected to be made prisoner but instead the horsemen expressed their respect,64 and removed their Saracen headdresses revealing themselves as Byzantine soldiers scouting the region.65

61 Cyril Mango, ‘On the Re-Reading the Life of Gregory the Decapolite’, Byzantina, 13.1 (1985), 633–46, (637). 62 Saracen raids were a recurrent Leitmotiv in Byzantine hagiographical texts from Southern Italy echoing the dangers of the time: Enrica Follieri, ‘I santi dell’Italia greca’, Rivista di studi bizantini e neoellenici, 34 (1997), 10–28 (reprint in Histoire et culture dans l’Italie Byzantine, ed. by André Jacob, Jean-Marie Martin, and Ghislaine Noyé, Collection de l’École française de Rome, 363 (Roma: École française de Rome, 2006), pp. 103–21; also, Stephanos Efthymiades, ‘Les saints d’Italie méridionale (IXe–XIIe s.) et leur rôle dans la société locale’, in Byzantine Religious Culture: Studies in Honor of Alice-Mary Talbot, ed. by Denis Sullivan, Elizabeth A. Fisher, and Stratis Papaioannou, The Medieval Mediterranean, 92 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 347–72 (pp. 349, 365); most recently Vera von Falkenhausen, ‘Il mare nell’agiografia italogreca (con un’appendice di Vivien Prigent)’, in Ein Meer und seine Heiligen. Hagiographie im mittelalterlichen Mediterraneum, ed. by Nikolas Jaspert, Christian A. Neumann, and Marco di Branco (Leiden: Wilhelm Fink, 2018), pp. 137–57, esp. pp. 142–43. On the narrative motifs of hagiographical texts from Southern Italy: Mario Re, ‘Italo-Greek Hagiography’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, vol. i, Periods and Places, ed. by Stephanos Efthymiadis (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 227–58 (pp. 238–41). 63 Life of Gregory Dekapolites, § 34, ed. by Makris, p. 98. 64 Life of Neilos the Younger, ed. by P. Germano Giovanelli, Βίος καὶ Πολιτεία τοῦ Ὁσίου πατρὸς ἡμῶν Νείλου τοῦ Νέου. Testo originale Greco e Studio introduttivo (cod. Greco criptense B.b II) (Grottaferrata: Badia greca di Grottaferrata, 1972), § 30, p. 77. 65 Life of Neilos the Younger, § 30, ed. by ed. by Germano Giovanelli, p. 77. On this Life: Vera von Falkenhausen, ‘La Vita di S. Nilo come fonte storica per la Calabria bizantina’, in Atti del Congresso internazionale su s. Nilo di Rossano (28 settembre-1ottobre 1986) (Rossano-Grottaferrata: Scuola tipografica italo-orientale ‘S. Nilo’, 1989) pp. 271–305; Andrea Luzzi, ‘La vita di San Nilo da Rossano tra genere letterario e biografia storica’, in Les Vies des saints à Byzance. Genre littéraire ou biographie historique? Actes du IIe colloque international philologique ERMHNEIA, Paris 6–7–8 juin 2002, ed. by Paolo Odorico and Panagiotis A. Agapitos, Dossiers Byzantins, 4 (Paris: Centre d’Études byzantines néo-helléniques et sud-est européennes, 2004), pp. 175–89, (pp. 176–77); most recently several articles in Greek Monasticism in Southern Italy: The ‘Life of Neilos’ in Context, ed. by Barbara Crostini and Ines Angeli Murzuku (London: Routlege, 2017).

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Another explanation of Gregory’s adventure in Otranto could be that the enmity of the inhabitants was due to the saint’s iconophile persuasion, at a time when the prevailing ‘orthodoxy’ (followed by the local bishop) was the imperial one of Iconoclasm. In both cases the scene denoted that foreigners were suspect in the eyes of local populations. The headdress which was imposed on the saint emphasized his alien provenance, his foreign/Arab/Oriental external appearance, and made evident his ‘otherness’. This monk from Dekapolis in Southern Asia Minor was quite a traveller and was perceived as ‘other’ almost everywhere, beginning with the monastery he first joined in his native region; the abbot of that monastery was an iconoclast and Gregory took upon himself to debate with him and to call him unworthy to bear the monastic habit.66 Afterwards, he had to leave that monastery and take refuge with an abbot of an iconophile monastery, who was a relative of his. Anyway, his ‘otherness’ as far as his religious persuasion was concerned, was perceived by the other monks in Dekapolis in the same way in which his ‘otherness’ in being a foreigner, iconophile and/or presumed spy was perceived by the heathen/iconoclasts (‘κακοδαίμονες’, i.e. evil, demonic) inhabitants of Otranto. St Gregory had a similar adventure when he left Asia Minor and crossed to the Ainos region in Thrace, where a young man, apparently insane, almost killed him by beating him savagely, asking who he was, and what were his beliefs — something that implies a guard testing for signs of ‘otherness’.67 The author of this Life, Ignatios the Deacon was a repentant iconoclast, so we can hypothesize that Gregory’s ‘otherness’ which was easily perceived by those he encountered, probably had to do both with his external appearance and with his ‘Ethos’, relating not only to monastic virtues but also to his professed iconophile beliefs that the author wanted to stress. Possibly, also his ‘otherness’ was stressed by other external signs such as the way he spoke, since Greek dialectal accents were quite different from East to West. Presumably, the way he spoke sounded foreign to the people of Southern Italy. His case is of particular interest because it exemplifies the multiple layers of perceived ‘particular otherness’ in a Byzantine monk: otherness in persuasion (iconophile among iconoclasts), in provenance (from the East while in the West), of presumed race (Arab and enemy spy) possibly in language, all within a monk’s ‘normal otherness’ of monasticism in a society which understood it and covering the ‘otherness’ of holiness perceived by his disciples. Something similar happened, according to his Life, to another Byzantine wandering monk, the Sicilian St Elias the Younger, travelling with a disciple from Sparta to Italy around ad 880/881. When the travellers reached the port of Butrint, opposite the island of Corfu, from where they wanted to cross the Strait of Otranto, they found themselves under investigation by the local authorities. A local deputy of the governor — someone with judicial authority since he could order them to be

66 Life of Gregory Dekapolites, § 5, ed. by Makris, p. 66. 67 Life of Gregory Dekapolites, § 20, ed. by Makris, p. 84. On the usual identifying questions in Byzantium, see, most recently, Anthony Kaldellis, ‘Byzantine Identity Interrogated, Declared, Activated’, in Identities: Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium ‘Days of Justinian I’, ed. by Mitko Panov (Skopje: Institute for National History, 2020), pp. 21–36 (pp. 25–26).

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imprisoned — called them Agarenes and impious, and accused them of being ‘spies of towns’.68 The circumstances underline that it was quite easy for someone to be perceived as an enemy spy especially in cases of strangers without local links, although the Life states that the saint was known to the military governor of the place, but that the accuser overruled him in this matter. The accusation of ‘Agarene’ possibly was due to the saint’s provenance from Enna in Sicily, which at the time was mostly in Arab hands, since the Sicilian capital Syracuse had fallen to the Arabs of Gaffar ibn Mohammed in 878.69 The hagiographer, referring to the accuser who imprisoned the monks, underlined that he was wicked of soul and so he had no discernment and was confused in his perceptions.70 Fortunately, the following day the accuser died in a horse-riding accident, which was seen as divine retribution by the local population.71 The locals are presented in this case as being on the side of the monks, who were liberated, and crossed to Corfu and then to Calabria. The fact that the local population rejoiced in the monks’ liberation implies that their ‘otherness’ was not perceived in the same way by everyone. Possibly, it was again an issue of language. The Sicilian accent would have been known in those parts, thus making Elias appear less ‘other’, since there was continuous travelling (and probably refugees fleeing the Arab advance in Sicily, although mostly they went to Calabria)72 between Sicily and both the coasts of the Ionian Sea, despite the Arab raids in the region. The case of St Basil the Younger is similar. His Life describes how the saint was mistaken for a spy at the time of emperor Leon VI (886–912): some imperial agents happened to meet him while taking a shortcut through the mountains in Asia Minor. The saint’s rather ‘strange’ ‘ξένον’ aspect (according to the Latin translation of the Life he was wearing a hermit’s woollen garment) both in ‘Schema’ and ‘Ethos’ did not inspire confidence as to his intentions. So, perceiving him as ‘other’ and as a possible threat, they interrogated him about his origins and his reason to be there and upon receiving no answer, arrested him, and led him directly to the capital.73 The text does not provide many details about the arrest. However,

68 Life of Elias the Younger, ed. by Giuseppe Rossi-Taibbi, Vita di sant’ Elia il Giovane, Testi 7 (Palermo: Istituto siciliano di studi bizantini e neogreci, 1962) § 28, p. 42. 69 Bruno Lavagnini, ‘Siracusa occupata dagli Arabi e l’epistola di Teodosio monaco’, Byzantion, 29–30 (1959–1960), 267–79. 70 Life of Elias the Younger, § 28, ed. by Rossi-Taibbi, p. 42. 71 Life of Elias the Younger, § 29, ed. by Rossi-Taibbi, p. 44. 72 von Falkenhausen, ‘il mare nell’agiografia italogreca’, pp. 137–59. 73 Life of St Basil the Younger, in The Life of St Basil the Younger. Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of the Moscow Version, ed. by Dennis F. Sullivan, Alice-Mary Talbot, and Stamatina McGrath, Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 45 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2014), § 4, p. 70: Ὁρῶντες οὖν τὸ ξένον τοῦ ἤθους καὶ τοῦ σχήματος αὐτοῦ, ἐπηρώτων αὐτὸν λέγοντες ‘τὶς εἶ καὶ πῶς ἐνταῦθα διατρίβεις’; version in Latin, Vita S. Basillii Iunioris, Acta Sanctorum Martii III (Antuerpiae-Bruxellis [AntwerpenBruxelles]: typis regiis, 1668), pp. 668–81 (§ 2, p. 668). On the importance of external appearance in such adventures cf. Anthony Kaldellis, ‘Etnicity and Clothing in Byzantium’, in Identity and the Other in Byzantium, Papers from the Fourth International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium, ed. by Koray Durak and Ivana Jevtič Jevtič (Istanbul: Koç University and Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Center for Antique and Byzantine Studies, 2016), pp. 41–52 (p. 42).

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the terms ‘magistrianoi’ and ‘exploratores’ used for the imperial agents suggest a reconnaissance mission, probably in preparation for a Byzantine expedition. Any encounter during such a mission could be suspect. This is further substantiated as the text proceeds with the story of the saint in Constantinople. He was brought to Samonas, a high-ranking Byzantine official of Arab origin and one of Emperor Leo VI’s most trusted collaborators, often involved in sensitive Arab-Byzantine negotiations.74 Samonas, according to St Basil the Younger’s Life, asked the saint questions aiming at providing identifying elements such as his name, origins, and the purpose of his being where he was apprehended. The ensuing dialogue in the hagiographical text, although following the hagiographical ‘topos’ of a saint’s confrontation with a tyrant, is one of a continuous double entendre: Samonas asked realistic questions and even stated that the saint was arrested on a charge of espionage, while the saint either remained silent or answered metaphorically that he was a stranger not to a country or town but to mortal life. The questions were aimed at identifying elements that might expose him as ‘other’, while Basil’s answers introduced a different element of ‘otherness’, pertaining to the monastic condition and to the tenet that all mortal beings are in fact ‘strangers’ in relation to Heaven. There was a difference in the perception of ‘otherness’ itself between Basil and his interrogators, which can be inferred as an element in the formation of his being perceived as ‘other’, superseding the saint’s ‘otherness’ in origins, appearance, and behaviour which caused his imprisonment.75 The perception of ‘otherness’ was double-edged. That a monk was defined as ‘other’ in relation to society in general, by his external appearance and an expected behavioural pattern also meant that his identity as a monk could be counterfeit, that is, that persons not being in fact in holy orders could present themselves as such. This accounts for the suspicion which met Byzantine monks travelling around in Byzantine lands and abroad. There are also testimonies concerning espionage missions, in which Byzantine monks acted as agents. For instance, the Chronicle of the Continuator of Theophanes preserves a small story, probably echoing a folktale, about John the Grammarian, a ninth-century intellectual monk, and preceptor of Emperor Theophilos (829–842), and later the last Iconoclast patriarch (837–842),76 who conducted several diplomatic missions on behalf of 74 Samonas, possibly due to his feud with members of the Byzantine aristocracy of the time, is presented as a rather ‘shady’ figure in Byzantine chronicles: trying to flee to Arab lands, engineering the downfall of general Andronikos Doukas, involved in the forced retirement of Patriarch Nicholas I of Constantinople, etc.: Theophanes Continuatus in Scriptores post Theophanem. Theophanes Continuatus, Ioannes Cameniata, Symeon Magister, Georgius Monachus, ed. by Immanuel Bekker, Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae (Bonn: Weber, 1838), pp. 368–77; Romilly J. H Jenkins, ‘The “Flight” of Samonas’, Speculum, 23 (1948), 217–35. 75 Life of St Basil the Younger, ed. by Sullivan and others, pp. 74–78; Vita S. Basillii Iunioris § 4–5, pp. 668–69. 76 On John the Grammarian: PmbZ, ed. by Lilie and others, ii, # 3199, pp. 322–27; also Paul Lemerle, Le premier humanisme byzantin. Notes et remarques sur enseignement et culture à Byzance des origines au Xe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971), pp. 135–47; Louis Bréhier, ‘Un patriarche sorcier à Constantinople’, Revue de l’Orient Chrétien, 9 (1904), 261–68; Ralph-Johannes Lilie, ‘Ioannes VII.

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the emperor.77 In one of those he joined a group of Iberian pilgrims, and reached Baghdad where, disguised as a mendicant, he made contact with a Byzantine defector, General Manuel, on the pretext of asking for alms, and passed him the emperor’s safe-conduct letter which enabled the general to come back to the Byzantine side.78 This episode, as well as other hagiographical evidence, indicates awareness as to what ‘otherness’ in visiting monks might imply. It was again a form of ‘particular otherness’, the one of a wandering monk, in conjunction with the ‘otherness’ of a foreigner, a pilgrim from a foreign land, as well as the ‘otherness’ of a beggar monk, all within the ‘normal otherness’ of monks and covering a third type of ‘other’: the secret agent. This type of ‘otherness’ of a spy/agent within the ‘otherness’ of the wandering monk, itself being within the ‘normal otherness’ of the monastic condition persisted in Byzantine hagiographical literature till the end of the empire. Sabas the Younger of Mount Athos, constitutes a very prominent such example from Late Byzantium. He was a fourteenth-century peregrinating saint, who visited, among others, Cyprus, Jerusalem, and the nearby desert, possibly Egypt, Damascus and Antioch, Crete, Thrace, and Constantinople before returning, after twenty years, to the Athonite monastery of Vatopedi, which he had left in 1308. Sabas had adopted, at different times during his peregrinations, several types of ‘particular otherness’: he had embraced the extreme nudity or the rags of desert hermits, the vow of absolute silence of the ‘hesyhasts’ or even the simulated madness of the holy fools.79 His nudity and impoverished appearance made him suspect in the eyes of the inhabitants of Cyprus who followed the Latin Church, both friars whose hospitality he sought, and who refused him,80 and men in authority. It was his ‘otherness’, obvious in his strange external appearance which induced a local nobleman to suspect him, ‘τὸ τοῦ σχήματος ὑποπτεύσας’ and ask for him to be identified. He asked his followers to identify Sabas. Their answer, that ‘to judge by appearances, “ἀπὸ τοῦ φαινομένου”, he must be a spy’, is indicative of the perception of ‘otherness’ held by local populations. For them Sabas’s ‘otherness’ in wearing a strange kind of habit made of woollen rags and a hood, functioned as a

Grammatikos (21. Januar 838–4. März 843)’, in Die Patriarchen der ikonoklastischen Zeit. Germanos I. – Methodios I. (715–847), ed. by Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Berliner Byzantinische Studien, 5 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1999), pp. 169–82. 77 Nicolas Drocourt, Diplomatie sur le Bosphore. Les ambassadeurs étrangers dans l’empire byzantin des années 640 à 1204 (Leuven: Brill, 2015), vol. 2, pp. 678 ns 3232, 709, 719. 78 Theophanes Continuatus, pp. 119–20. On Manuel: Juan Signes Codoñer, ‘Dead or Alive? Manuel the Armenian’s (after) life after 838’, in Pour l’amour de Byzance. Hommage à Paolo Odorico, ed. by Christian Gastgeber, Charis Messis, Dan Ioan Muresan, and Filippo Ronconi (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2013), pp. 231–42 (p. 235). 79 Ivanov, Holy Fools, pp. 225–32. 80 Philotheos Kokkinos, Life of Sabas, in Φιλόθεος Κόκκινος, Πατριάρχης Κωνσταντινουπόλεως, Αγιολογικά έργα Α’, ed. by Demetrios Tsamis, Θεσσαλονικεῖς Βυζαντινοί συγγραφεῖς, 4 (Thessalonica: Aristoteleion University of Thessalonica, 1985), pp. 161–325, (pp. 206–07) accessed through the Database ‘Hagiography of the Late Byzantine Period’, of the National Hellenic Research Foundation: byzhadb.eie.gr/26.06.2021.

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disguise, and he must therefore be a spy who came from abroad, and who simulated being a holy fool in order to deceive the citizens.81 In conclusion, Byzantines were used to perceiving monks’ as ‘others’ both positively and negatively. Elements of their ‘otherness’, the ‘Schema’ and the ‘Ethos’, designating external appearance and character/behaviour, as well as expressed beliefs and ideas, could both define a monk as ‘other’ and disguise his being ‘other’, by underlining one or more features, creating what was perceived as a ‘particular otherness’. The perception of the latter depended on the viewer and how he/she felt as to what a monk should be and what he/she considered him to be: madman, wonderworker, spy, or all of the above. Thus, the monks ‘normal otherness’, distinguished by their habit and their mode of life, which defined them as being apart from society, could be perceived as double or multiple, disguising other types of ‘otherness’, as in cases of transgressors of monastic rules and females in monks’ habits. Furthermore, when monks’ ‘otherness’ reached extreme heights of asceticism as in cases of solitaries of wild appearance, pillar ascetics, and holy fools, society reacted: in these cases their ‘otherness’ was perceived as a double one, the second being their holy character. The assessment was a positive one: their ‘otherness’ became a sign of holiness if not of sainthood, and was stressed as such. In other words, one kind of ‘otherness’ functioned directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously as a cover for an ‘otherness’ of another type. There were layers of ‘otherness’, each pertaining to different identifying signs creating different identities of the person concerned in the eyes of the viewer, answering to different needs and stimulating different perceptions. The more close-knit a community the more easily signs of ‘otherness’ were perceived, as it happened with signs of ‘particular otherness’ within monastic communities. However, ‘otherness’ in monks could be assessed in a negative way, as a sign of deception, if not of enmity. In this case ‘otherness’ had to be explained, and its elements were those investigated for every foreigner: identification of origins, family, purpose, and precepts. Reactions were conditioned by the answers. In both cases manipulation of ‘otherness’ for political or other purposes was possible: in the positive case, in order to underline a holy character of a saint and his interaction with local societal elements as in the case of saints accused of spying and safeguarded by the population of the region. In the negative perception the possibilities of manipulation were even greater, as indicated by the near lynching of Gregory Dekapolites in Otranto, or by John the Grammarian’s making undercover contact with Manuel in Baghdad. Thus, the monks’ condition in Byzantium allowed for different types of ‘otherness’, within what I termed their ‘normal otherness’, to be elaborated and perceived by the Byzantine population. There were layers upon layers of ‘otherness’. Monks being viewed both as ‘ξένοι’ strangers/foreigners (to the world and to specific circumstances) and of ‘παράδοξον σχῆμα’, strange/miraculous appearance, in cases of non-conformity to people’s usual expectations, their ‘otherness’ was almost a given. Monastic ‘otherness’ could and did impact on Byzantine mentality, producing or exacerbating behavioural patterns ranging from distrust of foreigners in action (and, especially in times of 81 Philotheos Kokkinos, Life of Sabas, ed. by Tsamis, pp. 198–210, 214.

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troubles and wars, of their perception as enemies), to forms of worship of holiness. After all ‘otherness’ was in the eye of the beholder.

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Life of Neilos the Younger, ed. by P. Germano Giovanelli, Βίος καὶ Πολιτεία τοῦ Ὁσίου πατρὸς ἡμῶν Νείλου τοῦ Νέου. Testo originale Greco e Studio introduttivo (cod. Greco criptense B.b II) (Grottaferrata: Badia greca di Grottaferrata, 1972) Life of Paul the Younger on Mount Latros, ed. by Hippolyte Delehaye, ʻVita S. Pauli Junioris in Monte Latro’, Analecta Bollandiana, 11 (1892), 5–74 and 136–82 Life of Sabas the Younger: Philotheos Kokkinos, Life of Sabas, ed. by Demetrios Tsamis, Φιλόθεος Κόκκινος, Πατριάρχης Κωνσταντινουπόλεως, Αγιολογικά έργα Α’, Θεσσαλονικεῖς Βυζαντινοί συγγραφεῖς, 4 (Thessalonica: Aristoteleion University of Thessalonica, 1985), pp. 161–325 Life of Stephen the Younger, ed. by Marie-France Auzépy, La Vie d’Étienne le Jeune par Étienne le Diacre, Introduction, édition et traduction, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs, 3 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997) Life of Symeon Salos: Leontios of Neapolis, Life of Symeon Salos, ed. by Lennart Rydén, Das Leben des heiligen Narren Symeon von Leontios von Neapolis, in Leontios de Néapolis, Uppsala 1963, reprint in André Jean Festugière, Vie de Syméon le fou et de Jean l’Aumonier (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1974) Life of Symeon Stylites, ed. by Athanasios Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Συλλογὴ Παλαιστίνης καὶ Συριακής Αγιολογίας, i, 1907 (reprint Thessalonica: Pournaras, 2001), pp. 60–74 Life of Theoctiste of Lesbos : Vita S. Theoctistae, in Acta Sanctorum […] collegit, digestit, notis illustruuit J. Bollandus, operam et studium contulit G. Henschenius (Antuerpiae-Bruxellis [Antwerpen-Bruxelles]: typis regiis, 1643–1940), Novembris IV, pp. 224–33; ‘Life of St. Theoktiste of Lesbos’, trans. by Angela Hero, in Holy Women of Byzantium : Ten Saints’ Lives in English Translation, ed. by Alice-Mary Talbot (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1996), pp. 101–16 Nicephori Patriarchae, Antirrheticus III, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series graeca, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 161 vols (Paris, 1857–1866), 100 (1865), cols 375–534 Neilos of Sinai, Letters, in S. Nili Epistolarum Liber III, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series graeca, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 161 vols (Paris, 1857–1866), 79 (1865), cols 364–544 Photii patriarchae Constantinopolitani, Epistulae et Amphilochia, ed. by Basil Laourdas and Leendert G. Westerink (Leipzig: Teubner, 1983) Synaxarium Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae e codice Sirmondiano, ed. by Hippolyte Delehaye (Bruxelles: apud socios Bollandianos, 1902) Theodore Studite, Magna Catechesis, Sermo 82, ed. by Ioseph Cozza-Luzi, in Nova Patrum Bibliotheca, ed. by Angelo Mai and Ioseph Cozza-Luzi, vol. x i (Roma: Typis Sacri Consilii Propagando Christiano Nomini, Typisque Vaticanis, 1905) Theophanes Continuatus in Scriptores post Theophanem. Theophanes Continuatus, Ioannes Cameniata, Symeon Magister, Georgius Monachus, ed. by Immanuel Bekker, Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae (Bonn: Weber, 1838) Theophanis, Chronographia, ed. by Carolus de Boor, vols i–ii (Leipzig: Teubner, 1883– 1885)

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Secondary Works Afinogenov, Dmitry, ‘Integration of Hagiographic Texts into Historical Narrative: The Cases of the Lives of St Stephen the Younger and Niketas of Medikion’, in Byzantine Hagiography, Texts, Themes & Projects, ed. by Antonio Rigo, in collaboration with Michele Trizio and Elefterios Despotakis, Byzantios. Studies in Byzantine History and Civilization, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 325–40 Alwis, Ann P., Celibate Marriages in Late Antique and Byzantine Hagiography: The Lives of Saints Julian and Basilissa, Andronikos and Athanasia and Galaktion and Episteme (London: Continuum, 2011) Auzépy, Marie-France, L’hagiographie et l’Iconoclasme byzantin: le cas de la vie d’Etienne le Jeune, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies, 5 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999) ———, ‘De Philarète de sa famille et de certains monastères de Constantinople’, in Les Saints et leur Sanctuaire à Byzance, Textes, images et monuments, ed. by Catherine JolivetLévy, Michel Kaplan, and Jean-Pierre Sodini (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1993), pp. 117–35 Binggeli, André, and Stéphanos Efthymiadis, ‘Vie et Passion de Bacchos le Jeune par Étienne le Diacre, éditée, traduite et commentée par André Binggeli et Stéphanos Efthymiadis’, in Les Nouveaux Martyrs à Byzance, ed. by André Binggeli and Sophie Métivier, Byzantina Sorbonensia, 31 (Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2021), pp. 7–211 Binns, John, Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ: The Monasteries of Palestine 314–631, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) Bréhier, Louis, ‘Un patriarche sorcier à Constantinople’, Revue de l’Orient Chrétien, 9 (1904), 261–68 Brown, Peter, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) ———, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire, The Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures (Hanover: University of New England Press, 2002) Caner, Daniel, Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity, Transformation of the Classical Heritage, 33 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002) Caseau, Béatrice, ‘Syméon Stylite l’Ancien entre puanteur et parfum’, Revue des Études Byzantines, 63 (2005), 71–96 Charanis, Peter, ‘The Monk as an Element of Byzantine Society’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 25 (1971), 61–84 Christides, Vassilios, ‘The Raids of the Moslems of Crete in the Aegean Sea, Piracy and Conquest’, Byzantion, 51 (1981), 76–111 Clark, Elisabeth A., Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) Coon, Lynda, L., Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997) Crostini, Barbara, and Ines Angeli Murzuku, eds, Greek Monasticism in Southern Italy, The Life of Neilos in Context (London: Routlege, 2017) Delehaye, Hippolyte, Les Saints Stylites, Subsidia Hagiographica, 14 (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1923)

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Dennis, George T., ‘Elias the Monk, Friend of Psellos’, in Byzantine Authors: Literary Activities and Preoccupations: Texts and Translations dedicated to the Memory of Nicholas Oikonomides, ed. by John W. Nesbitt, The Medieval Mediterranean, 49 (Leiden: Brill 2003), pp. 43–62 Déroche, Vincent, Études sur Leontios de Neapolis, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Byzantina Upsalensia, 3 (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1995) ———, ‘Note sur la Vie d’Étienne le Jeune et sa chronologie interne’, Revue des études Byzantines, 60 (2002), 179–88 Drocourt, Nicolas, Diplomatie sur le Bosphore. Les ambassadeurs étrangers dans l’empire byzantin des années 640 à 1204, 2 vols (Leuven: Brill, 2015) Dunn, Marilyn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003) Eftymiadis, Stephanos, ed., The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, vol. i, Periods and Places (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011) ———, ed., The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, vol. ii, Genres and Contexts (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014) ———, ‘Le “premier classicisme byzantin”: mythes grecs et reminiscences païennes chez Photios, Léon VI le Sage et Aréthas de Césarée’, in Pour l’amour de Byzance. Hommage à Paolo Odorico, ed. by Christian Gastgeber, Charis Messis, Dan Ioan Muresan, and Filippo Ronconi (Frankfurt-am-Main: Lang, 2013), ———, ‘Les saints d’Italie méridionale (IXe–XIIe s.) et leur rôle dans la société locale’, in Byzantine Religious Culture: Studies in Honor of Alice-Mary Talbot, ed. by Denis Sullivan, Elizabeth A. Fisher, and Stratis Papaioannou, The Medieval Mediterranean, 92 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 347–72 Failler, Albert, ‘Le monachisme byzantin aux XIe-XIIe siècles. Aspects sociaux et économiques’, Cahiers d’Histoire, 20 (1975), 279–302 Falkenhausen von, Vera, ‘Il mare nell’agiografia italogreca (con un’appendice di Vivien Prigent)’, in Ein Meer und seine Heiligen. Hagiographie im mittelalterlichen Mediterraneum, ed. by Nikolas Jaspert, Christian A. Neumann, and Marco di Branco (Leiden: Wilhelm Fink, 2018), pp. 137–57 ———, ‘La Vita di S. Nilo come fonte storica per la Calabria bizantina’, in Atti del Congresso internazionale su s. Nilo di Rossano (28 settembre-1ottobre 1986) (Rossano-Grottaferrata: Scuola tipografica italo-orientale ‘S. Nilo’, 1989), pp. 271–305 Festugière, André Jean, ‘Lieux communs littéraires et thèmes de folklore dans l’Hagiographie primitive’, Wiener Studien, 73 (1960), 123–52 Flusin, Bernard, ‘Palestinian Hagiography’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, vol. i, Periods and Places, ed. by Stephanos Efthymiadis (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 199–226 Follieri, Enrica, ‘I santi dell’Italia greca’, Rivista di studi bizantini e neoellenici, 34 (1997), 10–28; reprint in Histoire et culture dans l’Italie Byzantine, ed. by André Jacob, JeanMarie Martin, and Ghislaine Noyé, Collection de l’École française de Rome, 363 (Roma: École française de Rome, 2006), pp. 103–21 Gill, Joseph, ‘The Life of Stephen the Younger by Stephen the Deacon: Debts and Loans’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 6 (1940), 114–39

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Hohlweg, Armin, ‘Bischof und Stadtherr im frühen Byzanz’, Jahrbuch der Ȍsterreichischen Byzantinistik, 20 (1971), 51–62 Hussey, Joan M., and Andrew Louth, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) Ivanov, Sergey A., Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) Jenkins, Romilly J. H, ‘The “Flight” of Samonas’, Speculum, 23 (1948), 217–35 Johnson, Christopher D. L., ‘“Base but nevertheless holy”: Lessons in Liminality from Simeon the Holy Fool’, Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses, 43 (2014), 592–612 Judge, Edwin Arthur, ‘The Earliest Use of Monachos for Monk and the Origin of Monasticism’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, 20 (1977), 73–86 Kaldellis, Anthony, ‘Byzantine Identity Interrogated, Declared, Activated’, in Identities: Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium ‘Days of Justinian I’, ed. by Mitko B. Panov, (Skopje: Institute for National History, 2020), pp. 21–36 ———, ‘Ethnicity and Clothing in Byzantium’, in Identity and the Other in Byzantium: Papers from the Fourth International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium, ed. by Koray Durak and Ivana Jevtič (Istanbul: Koç University and Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Center for Antique and Byzantine Studies, 2016), pp. 41–52 Kaplan, Michel, ‘L’espace et le sacré dans la vie de Daniel le Stylite’ in Le sacré et son inscription dans l’espace à Byzance et en Occident, ed. by Michel Kaplan, Byzantina Sorbonensia, 18 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2001), pp. 199–217 ———, ‘Les moines et le clergé séculier à Byzance’, in Moines et monastères dans les sociétés de rite grec et latin, ed. by Jean Loup Lemaitre, Michel Dmitriev, and Pierre Gonneau, École Pratique des Hautes Études, IVe Section, Études médiévales et modernes, 76 (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1996), pp. 293–311 Kazhdan, Alexander P., ‘Hermitic, Cenobitic and Secular Ideals in Byzantine Hagiography of the Ninth to Twelfth Centuries’, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 30 (1985), 473–87 Kazhdan, Alexander P., Lee F. Sherry and Christine Angelidi, A History of Byzantine Literature, (650–850), Research series, 2 (Athens: The National Hellenic Research Foundation, Institute for Byzantine Research, 1999) Koutrakou, Nike, ‘Defying the Other’s Identity: Language of Acceptance and Rejection in Iconoclastic Byzantium’, Byzantion, 69 (1999), 107–18 Krueger, Derek, ‘The Old Testament and Monasticism’, in The Old Testament in Byzantium, Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia: Selected Papers from a Symposium held December 1–3, 2006 at Meyer Auditorium of Freer Gallery, ed. by Paul Magdalino and Robert Nelson (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2010), pp. 199–229 Lavagnini, Bruno, ‘Siracusa occupata dagli Arabi e l’epistola di Teodosio monaco’, Byzantion, 29–30 (1959–1960), 267–79 Lemerle, Paul, Le premier humanisme byzantin. Notes et remarques sur enseignement et culture à Byzance des origines au Xe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971) Lilie, Ralph-Johannes, ‘Ioannes VII. Grammatikos (21. Januar 838–4. März 843)’, in Die Patriarchen der ikonoklastischen Zeit. Germanos I. – Methodios I. (715–847), ed. by Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Berliner Byzantinische Studien, 5, (Frankfurt-am-Main: Lang, 1999)

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Ljubarskij, Jakov N., Michail Psell. Lichnost’ i Torchestvo. K Istorii Vizantijskogo Predgumanizma (Moscow: Nauka, 1978); Greek Translation by Argyro Tzelesi, Η προσωπικότητα και το έργο του Μιχαήλ Ψελλού, 2nd revised edition (Athens: Kanakis, 2004) Lubinsky, Crystal, L., Removing Masculine Layers to Reveal a Holy Womanhood: The Female Transvestite Monks of Late Antique Eastern Christianity, Studia Traditionis Theologiae, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) Luzzi, Andrea, ‘La vita di San Nilo da Rossano tra genere letterario e biografia storica’, in Les Vies des saints à Byzance. Genre littéraire ou biographie historique? Actes du IIe colloque international philologique ERMHNEIA, Paris 6–7–8 juin 2002, ed. by Paolo Odorico and Panagiotis A. Agapitos, Dossiers Byzantins, 4 (Paris: Centre d’Études byzantines néohelléniques et sud-est européennes, 2004), pp. 175–89 Macé, Caroline, and Thomas Wauters, ‘“Les mots et la chose”: Quelques réflexions sur le vocabulaire de la folie chez Maxime le Confesseur et Jean Damascène’, Byzantinische Forschungen, 32 (2016), 383–89 Mango, Cyril, ‘On Re-Reading the Life of Gregory the Decapolite’, Byzantina, 13/1 (1985), 633–46 Meinardus, Otto A., Monks and Monasteries of the Egyptian Deserts, 3rd revised edition (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1999) Menze, Volker, ‘The Transformation of a Saintly Paradigm: Simeon the Elder and the Legacy of Stylitism’, in Religious Identities in the Levant from Alexander to Muhammed: Continuity and Change, ed. by Michael Blömer, Achim Lichtenberger, and Rubina Raja (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 213–26 Moshos, Dimitrios, ‘The Emperors and the Desert – the Attitude of Egyptian Monasticism towards Constantine and the prospect of a Christian Empire’, in Tsveti Tsar Konstantini i Christianstvo (Saint Emperor Constantine and Christianity): International Conference Commemorating the 1700th Anniversary of the Edict of Milan, ed. by Dragiša Bojovič, vol. i (Niš: The Centre of Church Studies, 2013), pp. 157–64 Mullet, Margaret, ‘The “Other” in Byzantium’, in Strangers to Themselves: The Byzantine Outsider. Papers from the Thirty-Second Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. University of Sussex, Brighton, March 1998, ed. by Dion C. Smythe, Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies, Publications (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), pp. 1–22 Oltean, Daniel, ‘Les origines de la tonsure monastique. Les sources grecques’, Byzantion, 87 (2017), 259–97 The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. by Alexander P. Kazhdan, Alice-Mary Talbot, Anthony Cutler, Timothy E. Gregory, and Nancy P. Ševčenko (New York: Oxford University Press 1991) Papaconstantinou, Arietta, ‘The Desert and the City: The Rhetoric of Savagery and Civilization in Some Early Byzantine Narratives’, in Identity and the Other in Byzantium: Papers from the Fourth International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium, ed. by Koray Durak and Ivana Jevtič (Istanbul: Koç University and Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Center for Antique and Byzantine Studies, 2016), pp. 83–92 Pratsch, Thomas, Der hagiographische Topos. Griechische Heiligenviten im mittelbyzantinischer Zeit, Millennium Studies, 6 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005)

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The ‘Others’ from Within Herders between Rural Communities and Venetian Governance on Late Medieval Korčula

Introduction On 30 April 1440, the Venetian governor on Korčula was informed by the communal ‘gastaldiones’ of the village of Blato of a complaint brought to them by Ser Scimonetus Vidoscy, a local patrician who claimed the loss of two of his sheep. Led to the place where the sheep had allegedly been stolen, the four rural law-enforcement officials encountered two herders. By virtue of their office, which temporarily entrusted them with extensive investigative and executive powers, they interrogated both herders as to whether they had an ‘alien animal’ among their herds.1 The first herder, Antonius Ghagletich, answered that no foreign animal had entered his goat shed and that he did not know about the sheep, since he was not a shepherd but a goatherd. The other herder, Antonius Misigovich, tending the flock of sheep belonging to Petrus Simchovich, a local priest, likewise claimed that he had no foreign animals among his sheep, but that he would immediately consider himself culpable if one were to be identified. Mistrusting the herders’ statements, the four ‘gastaldiones’ asked Ser Scimonetus Vidoscy and another herder to search the flocks of the accused herders for the two missing sheep. Shortly thereafter, the village officials and the herders



* The research for this article was partially funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): F42 Visions of Community. 1 Zadar, Državni Arhiv u Zadru [Croatian State Archive in Zadar], Općina Korčula (1338–1797), Commune insulae et civitatis Curzolae, box 7, fascicle 10.2 (hereafter HR-DAZD-11: 7/10.2), fol. 19v: ‘si aliquod animal habent alienum inter ipsorum animales’. On the medieval holdings of the Croatian State Archive in Zadar, cf. Sascha Attia and Fabian Kümmeler, ‘A Gem Hidden Under the Dust of Centuries: The State Archive in Zadar’, News On The Rialto, 33 (2014), 27–30; Oliver Jens Schmitt, ‘L’apport des archives de Zadar à l’histoire de la Méditerranée orientale au XVe siècle’, in Venise et la Méditerranée, ed. by Sandro G. Franchini, Gherardo Ortalli, and Gennaro Toscano (Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2011), pp. 45–54; Elisabeth Gruber, Christina Lutter, and Oliver Jens Schmitt, eds, Kulturgeschichte der Überlieferung im Mittelalter: Quellen und Methoden zur Geschichte Mittel- und Südosteuropas, UTB Geschichte, 4554 (Wien: Böhlau, 2017), pp. 397–401. Fabian Kümmeler  •  is APART-GSK Fellow at the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies (IHB) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna.* ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 215–234 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123592

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quarrelled about whether or not some of their herds’ brandings resembled those of the missing animals. Meanwhile, Ser Scimonetus Vidoscy began arguing with Petrus Simchovich and accused him of having broiled and eaten his sheep. Although doubting the truthfulness of his accusations, the priest told Ser Scimonetus Vidoscy that he would sooner trust him as a patrician than believe the words of a shepherd: ‘magis credo tibi quam pastoribus’.2 Taking the incident of the two allegedly stolen sheep as our starting point, this contribution addresses herders as the ‘Others’ within the communal society of the Dalmatian island of Korčula (‘Curzola’) in the fifteenth century. Following a brief introduction, the contribution delves into both the island’s communal statutes, dating back to the thirteenth century, and its abundant administrative and juridical records compiled on Korčula under Venetian suzerainty in the fifteenth, which today are held in the Croatian State Archive in Zadar. As a first step, it analyses the statutory and contractual legal basis upon which animal husbandry was practised, and scrutinizes how the island’s laws already laid the foundation for the ‘Otherness’ of herders within Korčula’s complex social fabric. As a second step, the focus shifts towards the conflicting dynamics of the islanders’ socioeconomic interaction and rural communal life, studying the fluid communitarian dimensions of conflict and exploring the circumstances under which herders constituted the close ‘Other’ to both rural communities and Venetian governance on fifteenth-century Korčula.

Between Venice and the Western Balkans: Korčula in the Fifteenth Century Late medieval Korčula, from both an Adriatic and a wider Southeast European perspective, was well connected within both the region’s trade network and socio-political sphere of communication within and beyond the Venetian realm.3 The political, legal, and socioeconomic peculiarities of Korčula’s medieval history up to 1420 have been elucidated in great detail by Vinko Foretić, Ludwig Steindorff, and Serđo Dokoza.4 By contrast, the history of Korčula as part of the Venetian Stato da mar from 1420 onwards did not receive much scholarly attention until Oliver Jens Schmitt’s pioneering lecture



2 HR-DAZD-11: 7/10.2, fol. 19v. 3 Cf. Oliver Jens Schmitt, ‘Das venezianische Südosteuropa als Kommunikationsraum (ca. 1400– ca. 1600)’, in Balcani occidentali, Adriatico e Venezia fra XIII e XVIII secolo / Der westliche Balkan, der Adriaraum und Venedig (13.–18. Jahrhundert), ed. by Gherardo Ortalli and Oliver Jens Schmitt (Venezia: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2009), pp. 77–101. 4 Cf. Vinko Foretić, Otok Korčula u srednjem vijeku do godine 1420. (Zagreb: Tisak Narodne Tiskare, 1940); Ludwig Steindorff, Die dalmatinischen Städte im 12. Jahrhundert: Studien zu ihrer politischen Stellung und gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung, Städteforschung, A/20 (Köln: Böhlau, 1984); Ludwig Steindorff, ‘Hvar und Korčula – der Aufstieg zweier Städte an der Adriaostküste’, in Tusculum slavicum: Festschrift für Peter Thiergen, ed. by Elisabeth von Erdmann, Aschot Isaakjan, Roland Marti, and Daniel Schümann, Basler Studien zur Kulturgeschichte Osteuropas, 14 (Zürich: Pano, 2005), pp. 725–37; Serđo Dokoza, Dinamika otočnog prostora: Društvena i gospodarska povijest Korčule u razvijenom srednjem vijeku, Biblioteka znanstvenih djela, 161 (Split: Književni Krug, 2009).

t he ‘ot he rs’ f ro m w i t hi n

series on ‘Power, Economy, and Everyday Life on Fifteenth-Century Korčula under Venetian Suzerainty’ at the Collège de France in 2011.5 Most recently, a comprehensive study of Korčula’s rural communities from 1420 to 1499 unveiled fresh insights into socio-cultural, judicial, administrative, and economic practices of rural dwellers in relation to both urban dwellers and Venetian governance.6 Throughout the Middle Ages, the town of Korčula — the island’s administrative, economic, and social centre — sat on a tiny peninsula on the island’s north-eastern tip, while four villages (the largest of them the abovementioned village of Blato) and several seasonal hamlets spread across its rural area. In addition to traditional Dalmatian export goods such as wine, figs, almonds, and fish, the island’s port registries show an export growth of rural products like pinewood-based pitch, cheese, animal skin, and wool. Offering not only extensive resources and lands for cultivation and pasture, but also habitation for major parts of the island’s population, Korčula’s rural area constituted a socioeconomic counterpoint to the town and its harbour. Moreover, intensive trade relations across the Adriatic Sea — predominantly with Venice and its ports of trade in the Eastern Mediterranean on a north-south axis, to the East with Albania and the Neretva Delta and to the West with Apulia and the Marches — fostered a prevalence of Venetian dialect use in addition to the Slavic vernacular among both Korčula’s commercial elite and large parts of its rural population. Furthermore, Korčula’s statute transcended urban boundaries by largely incorporating rural regulations into its legal code, notably underlining the socioeconomic significance of winegrowers, farmers, and herders.7 After the patricians of Korčula submitted the island to the Most Serene Republic on 24 April 1420, Korčula was integrated into the Venetian Commonwealth, like most Dalmatian and many Italian mainland cities before it.8 On 12 September 1420, after

5 Cf. Oliver Jens Schmitt, Korčula sous la domination de Venise au XVe siècle: Pouvoir, économie et vie quotidienne dans une île dalmate au Moyen Âge tardif (Paris: Collège de France, 2011), DOI: 10.4000/ books.cdf.1501 [references given according to the PDF pagination]. See also Oliver Jens Schmitt, ‘Storie d’amore, storie di potere: La tormentata integrazione dell’isola di Curzola nello Stato da mar in una prospettiva microstorica’, in Venezia e Dalmazia, ed. by Uwe Israel and Oliver Jens Schmitt (Roma: Viella, 2013), pp. 89–109; Oliver Jens Schmitt, ‘“Altre Venezie” nella Dalmazia tardomedievale? Un approccio microstorico alle comunità socio-politiche sull’isola di Curzola/Korčula’, in Il Commonwealth veneziano tra 1204 e la fine della Repubblica: Identità e peculiarità, ed. by Gherardo Ortalli, Oliver Jens Schmitt, and Ermanno Orlando (Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2015), pp. 203–33. 6 Cf. Fabian Kümmeler, Korčula. Ländliche Lebenswelten und Gemeinschaften im venezianischen Dalmatien (1420-1499), Südosteuropäische Arbeiten, 165 (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021). 7 Cf. Kümmeler, Korčula, pp. 112–14, 145–55; Sabine Florence Fabijanec, ‘Le rôle économique des îles croates médiévales’, in Proceedings of the 4th Mediterranean Maritime History Network Conference: Barcelona, 7–9 May 2014, ed. by Jordi Ibarz Gelabert, Enric García Domingo, Inma González Sánchez, and Olga López Miguel (Barcelona: Museu Marítim de Barcelona, 2017), pp. 857–76; Schmitt, Korčula, pp. 17, 33–34, 46–50; Dokoza, Dinamika, pp. 127–48; Foretić, Otok Korčula, pp. 268–303. 8 On the concept of the Venetian Commonwealth, cf. Gherardo Ortalli, ‘The Genesis of a Unique Form of Statehood, between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age’, in Il Commonwealth veneziano tra 1204 e la fine della Repubblica: Identità e peculiarità, ed. by Gherardo Ortalli, Oliver Jens Schmitt, and Ermanno Orlando (Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2015), pp. 3–11; Benjamin Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire in the Early Modern Period’, in A Companion to Venetian History,

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months of negotiations, the Korčulan patricians and the Venetian Doge concluded a treaty in which the degrees of Venetian suzerainty and Korčula’s communal autonomy were codified. Corresponding to the Venetian ideal of peace and justice, Venice guaranteed to preserve the island’s statutes and customary laws, including its power and administrative structures and distribution of property. In return, Korčula accepted a Venetian representative as the island’s governor and supreme judge.9 Both the contractual nature and the consensual pattern of Venetian statehood reflected back onto Korčula’s daily life, whose inhabitants, ‘in a variety of ways, acted as guarantors […] and allowed these dry legal agreements to work in practice’.10 First codified under the auspices of Venice in the thirteenth century (1214/1265), by the fifteenth century, Korčula’s communal statutes served as a fundamental guideline for organizing public and private life and individual legal claims, and as a prime reference for socio-cultural interaction on the island. Reflecting general developments of urban legal culture in Italy and the Adriatic realm, Korčula’s statutory ‘communitas’, as a legal abstractum, addressed both a social and a spatial dimension: on the one hand, Korčula’s constitutional ‘communitas’ denoted a collective social entity of either all of the island’s inhabitants or the more narrowly defined ‘commune’ of citizens and patricians who had sworn an oath of loyalty and in return enjoyed substantial rights of political participation. On the other hand, the term ‘communitas’ conceptually encompassed the whole island as a legally and politically framed communal space, manifested in both judicial and administrative practices and in architecture and material culture.11 Accordingly, the social interaction of Korčula’s rural population unveiled a 1400–1797, ed. by Eric R. Dursteler, Brill’s Companions to European History, 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 125–253; Schmitt, Korčula, pp. 5–6; Oliver Jens Schmitt, ‘Venezianische Horizonte der Geschichte Südosteuropas: Strukturelemente eines Geschichtsraums in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit’, Südost– Forschungen, 65–66 (2006–2007), 87–116 (pp. 100–13). 9 For Korčula’s ‘actus deditionis’ and the ‘privilegium communitatis Curzole’, see Statuta et leges civitatis et insulae Curzulae (1214–1558), ed. by Jaromir J. Hanel, Monumenta historico-juridica slavorum meridionalium, 1 (Zagreb: Academia Scientiarum et Artium Slavorum Meridionalium, 1877), pp. 138–43; Gli accordi con Curzola, 1352–1421, ed. by Ermanno Orlando, Pacta Veneta, 9 (Roma: Viella, 2002), pp. 54–89. 10 Monique O’Connell, ‘The Contractual Nature of the Venetian State’, in Il Commonwealth veneziano, ed. by Ortalli, Schmitt and Orlando, p. 61. 11 A full edition of Korčula’s statutes is provided by Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, and Korčulanski statut: Statut grada i otoka Korčule iz 1214. godine, ed. and trans. by Antun Cvitanić (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti, 1987). On the fundamental role of Korčula’s statutes, cf. Gherardo Ortalli, ‘Il ruolo degli statuti tra autonomie e dipendenze: Curzola e il dominio veneziano’, Rivista storica italiana, 98 (1986), 195–220; Ludwig Steindorff, ‘Pravo kao sredstvo stvaranja gradskog identiteta: Slučaj dalmatinskih gradova’, in Splitski statut iz 1312. godine: Povijest i pravo, povodom 700. obljetnice, ed. by Željko Radić, Marko Trogrlić, Massimo Meccarelli and Ludwig Steindorff, Biblioteka knjiga mediterana, 84 (Split: Književni Krug, 2015), pp. 53–67; Ermanno Orlando, ‘Politica del diritto, amministrazione, giustizia: Venezia e la Dalmazia nel basso medioevo’, in Venezia e Dalmazia, ed. by Israel and Schmitt, pp. 9–61; Ludwig Steindorff, ‘Städtische Lebensformen im Spiegel spätmittelalterlicher istrischer und dalmatinischer Statuten’, in Die Urbanisierung Europas von der Antike bis in die Moderne, ed. by Gerhard Fouquet and Gabriel Zeilinger, Kieler Werkstücke, E 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2009), pp. 173–90; Antun Cvitanić, ‘Korčulansko statutarno pravo’, in Iz dalmatinske pravne povijesti, ed. by Antun Cvitanić (Split: Književni Krug, 2002), pp. 575–620.

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dynamic fabric of multiply-entangled communities which was interpersonally and institutionally closely interwoven with both the political elite and the urban milieu.12 In the social practice of both Korčula’s urban and rural communities, therefore, a variety of social rituals, conflicts, and litigations were used to construct, enact, negotiate, and consolidate the social cohesion, collective solidarity, shared values, and joint visions of community and the communitarian belonging of individuals and/or groups. Disputes about belonging accordingly triggered not only a ‘highly emotional discourse (“we” and the “other”, existential fears)’, but also constantly referred to Korčula’s statutory law when evoking idealized visions of community and calling for judicial mediation of conflicts.13 Analysing the complex interplay between statutory norms and their adaptation in social practice is thus of crucial importance when examining processes of ‘Othering’ on a late medieval Dalmatian island. Since Korčula was no isolated microcosm, ‘Otherness’ can easily be analysed in the islanders’ myriad encounters and conflicts with foreigners (‘forenses’) — predominantly merchants, sailors, pilgrims, mercenaries, and pirates — in the island’s harbours. Korčula’s statutory laws contrasted these short-term visitors as ‘foreigners residing outside the island’ (forenses habitantes extra insulam) with native islanders and permanent residents (alicuius Curçulensis, seu habitatoris insule).14 In social and legal practice, however, once foreigners settled and permanently contributed to communal life, for example as craftsmen, merchants, surgeons, notaries, and teachers, they were soon labelled ‘habitatores’ and usually experienced extensive social, legal, and economic integration on Korčula. The ‘Otherness’ of such newcomers consequently faded into the island’s multi-layered fabric of community, which on the surface nevertheless reflected a rather homogenous communal identity, since neither Jews, nor Orthodox Christians, and only a very few marginalized people are documented in Korčula’s fifteenth-century archival records.15

12 Cf. Kümmeler, Korčula, pp. 215–416. 13 Oliver Jens Schmitt, ‘Addressing Community in Late Medieval Dalmatia’, in Meanings of Community across Eurasia: Comparative Approaches, ed. by Eirik Hovden, Christina Lutter, and Walter Pohl, Brill’s Series on the Early Middle Ages, 25 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 125–47 (p. 140). Cf. Kümmeler, Korčula, pp. 215–416. See also the interdisciplinary volume Practising Community in Urban and Rural Eurasia (1000–1600): Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Fabian Kümmeler, Judit Majorossy, and Eirik Hovden (Leiden: Brill, 2021). 14 Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, pp. 50, 127. Cf. Antun Cvitanić, ‘Pravni položaj stranaca u srednjovjekovnoj korčulanskoj komuni’, in Iz dalmatinske pravne povijesti, ed. by Cvitanić, pp. 643–60 (p. 648), first publ. in Zbornik Pravnog fakulteta u Zagrebu, 36 (1986), pp. 591–605; Tomislav Raukar, ‘Cives, habitatores, forenses u srednjovjekovnim dalmatinskim gradovima’, Historijski zbornik, 29–30 (1976–1977), 139–49 (p. 141). 15 On the role of foreigners on Korčula, see Fabian Kümmeler, ‘The World in a Village: Foreigners and Newcomers on Late Medieval Korčula’, in Towns and Cities of the Croatian Middle Ages: The City and the Newcomers, ed. by Irena Benyovski Latin and Zrinka Pešorda Vardić (Zagreb: Croatian Institute of History, 2020), pp. 195–211; Schmitt, ‘Adressing Community’, pp. 141–43. On early modern Dalmatia see Egidio Ivetic, ‘Tolerance towards the “Others” in the Cities of Venetian Dalmatia (1540–1645)’, in Tolerance and Intolerance on the Triplex Confinium: Approaching the ‘Other’ on the Borderlands. Eastern Adriatic and beyond, 1500–1800, ed. by Egidio Ivetic and Drago Roksandić (Padova: Cleup, 2007), pp. 265–81. On medieval terminology, perceptions, and concepts of alterity, otherness and ‘Fremdheit’

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Instead, in analysing herders as ‘Others’ from within Korčula’s island society,16 this paper focuses on the island’s intersecting layers of communal belonging. ‘Otherness’ thus cannot be understood as an antagonistic, albeit relational, concept opposing the ‘Self ’ of its beholder to the unfamiliar ‘Other’ of any kind, but is used as ‘a relative term [that …] is only understandable as a reference to another [whose …] being is not (like) the being of the other’, but still is an integral part of the own familiar socio-cultural sphere.17 As such, ‘Otherness’ mirrors notions of community, since it interconnects dimensions of belonging and alterity as much as it presupposes the need to define a close ‘Other’ and to identify the ‘Self ’ also within a community. This paper thus addresses both notions of the ‘Other’ and processes of ‘Othering’ towards herders within Korčula’s island society instead of focusing on its encounters with foreigners. Aiming at avoiding an indiscriminate ‘“fetishization of alterity” that imposes a convenient name on a more complex reality’, it analyses the legal and situational (and localized) ‘Otherness’ of herders within Korčula’s communal society and how such close ‘Otherness’ was articulated and exploited in socioeconomic conflicts with fellow villagers on the basis of a common legal framework.18

see the introduction to this volume by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood; further Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Sarazenen als “Fremde”? Anmerkungen zum Islambild in der abendländischen Geschichtsschreibung des frühen Mittelalters’, in Fremde, Feinde und Kurioses: Innen- und Außenansichten unseres muslimischen Nachbarn, ed. by Benjamin Jokisch, Ulrich Rebstock, and Lawrence I. Conrad, Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), pp. 39–66 (pp. 43–46); Martin Baisch, ‘Alterität und Selbstfremdheit: Zur Kritik eines zentralen Interpretationsparadigmas in der germanistischen Mediävistik’, in Die Aktualität der Vormoderne: Epochenentwürfe zwischen Alterität und Kontinuität, ed. by Klaus Ridder and Steffen Patzold, Europa im Mittelalter, 23 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), pp. 185–206 (pp. 187–91); Nikolas Jaspert, ‘Fremdheit und Fremderfahrung: Die deutschspanische Perspektive’, in ‘Das kommt mir Spanisch vor’: Eigenes und Fremdes in den deutsch-spanischen Beziehungen des späten Mittelalters, ed. by Klaus Herbers and Nikolas Jaspert, Geschichte und Kultur der Iberischen Welt, 1 (Münster: Lit, 2004), pp. 31–62; Hans-Henning Kortüm, ‘“Advena sum apud te et peregrinus”: Fremdheit als Strukturelement mittelalterlicher “conditio humana”’, in Exil, Fremdheit und Ausgrenzung im Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed. by Andreas Bihrer, Sven Limbeck, and Paul Gerhard Schmidt, Identitäten und Alteritäten, 4 (Würzburg: Ergon, 2000), pp. 115–35; Marina Münkler, Erfahrung des Fremden: Die Beschreibung Ostasiens in den Augenzeugenberichten des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000), pp. 147–60; Kathryn L. Reyerson, ‘The Merchants of the Mediterranean: Merchants as Strangers’, in The Stranger in Medieval Society, ed. by F. R. P. Akehurst and Stephanie Van D’Elden, Medieval Cultures, 12 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 1–13. 16 On medieval island societies and the concept of insularity in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, cf. Roxani Eleni Margariti, ‘An Ocean of Islands: Islands, Insularity, and the Historiography of the Indian Ocean’, in The Sea: Thalassography and Historiography, ed. by Peter Miller (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), pp. 198–229 (pp. 200–11). 17 Gergely Tibor Bakos, On Faith, Rationality, and the Other in the Late Middle Ages: A Study of Nicholas of Cusa’s Manuductive Approach to Islam, Princeton Theological Monograph, 141 (Eugene: Pickwick, 2011), p. 177. Cf. Goetz, ‘Sarazenen’, p. 43; Julia Kristeva, Étrangers à nous-mêmes (Paris: Fayard, 1988), pp. 153–86. 18 Paul Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), p. 301, quoting from Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 159. For the concept of close ‘Otherness’, cf. Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz, ‘The Close “Other”: Medieval and Modern Perspectives on Hollanders and the Hanse’, German History, 31.4 (2013), 453–72 (pp. 454–55).

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Herders as Legally and Contractually Shaped ‘Others’ from Within In late medieval Dalmatia, sedentary herders pastured their livestock in the coastal hinterland and on the various islands and islets, while transhumant herding communities of Vlachs and Morlachs, after grazing their herds on meadows in the Dinaric Alps in summer, seasonally migrated to warmer coastal areas in winter. Vlach and Morlach shepherds thus intermingled with local Dalmatian herders, renting pastures in karst areas and entering into business relations with people in the hinterland of Zadar, Trogir, and Šibenik. While historiography often instrumentalized the former for narratives of ethnic and national origins, the latter have — until very recently — been studied only secondarily either by legal historians analysing the genesis of statutory law or by economic historians quantifying the economic impact of animal husbandry.19 On fifteenth-century Korčula, by contrast, animal husbandry can indeed be considered the most important branch of the island’s economy, but the island was too small to practise long-distance transhumance and, apart from that, its vast archival records reveal no evidence of the presence of Vlach or Morlach shepherds on the island. Instead, Korčula’s herders were sedentary villagers who pastured their animals in the island’s rural area and on its surrounding islets. Although no feudalism limited personal freedom on Korčula — and in 1418 the island’s Grand Council incorporated a law into the statutes prohibiting engaging in and even aiding slave trading20 —, rural dwellers often substantially depended on the economic strength of local patricians. Transcending urban boundaries by largely incorporating rural law regulations, Korčula’s communal statutes therefore protected herders with a special legal status unparalleled by other professions and crafts, regulating their pasturing rights and legal obligations in great detail. Against that background, herders predominantly tended and bred sheep and goats on behalf of wealthier islanders, with whom they entered 19 A comprehensive historiographical bibliography is to be found in Fabian Kümmeler, ‘Herdsmen as a Socio-Professional Community in Late Medieval Dalmatia’, in Comunità e società nel Commonwealth veneziano, ed. by Gherardo Ortalli, Oliver Jens Schmitt, and Ermanno Orlando (Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2018), pp. 111–27. Cf. Dana Caciur, ‘Considerations Regarding the Status of the Morlachs from the Trogir’s Hinterland at the Middle of the 16th Century: Being Subjects of the Ottoman Empire and Land Tenants of the Venetian Republic’, Res Historica, 41 (2016), 95–110; Kristijan Juran, ‘Doseljavanje Morlaka u opustjela sela šibenske Zagore u 16. stoljeću’, Povijesni prilozi, 46 (2014), 129–60; Esad Kurtović, ‘“Ad usum boni pasculatoris et boni viri”: Uzgoj konja u dubrovačkom zaleđu kroz prizmu ugovora o uzgoju’, in Spomenica Ibrahima Karabegovića: Zbornik radova, ed. by Husnija Kamberović (Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2013), pp. 35–68; Zef Mirdita, Vlasi: Starobalkanski narod od povijesne pojave do danas (Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2009); Drago Roksandić, ‘The Dinaric Vlachs/Morlachs in the Eastern Adriatic from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries: How many Identities?’, in Balcani occidentali, ed. by Ortalli and Schmitt, pp. 271–85; Mladen Ančić, ‘Srednjovjekovni Vlasi kontinentalne Dalmacije’, in Dalmatinska zagora: Nepoznata zemlja, ed. by Vesna Kusin and others (Zagreb: Galerija Klovićevi dvori, 2007), pp. 161–67; Grga Novak, ‘Morlaci (Vlasi) gledani s mletačke strane’, Zbornik za narodni život i običaje Južnih Slavena, 45 (1971), 579–603; Nicoară Beldiceanu, ‘Sur les Valaques des Balkans slaves à l’époque ottomane (1450–1550)’, Revue des études islamiques, 34.1 (1966), 83–132. 20 Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, p. 105.

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into mutual herding contracts in order to secure both the animal owner’s investment of livestock and the herder’s reward for his service and to share wool, milk, cheese, offspring, and other profits gained during the herder’s care.21 Until the summer of 1417, both owners and herders preponderantly followed customary law traditions when arranging joint herding contracts, although Korčula’s statutes had already contained a foundational normative framework for the practice of animal husbandry since the thirteenth century. On 22 August 1417, the Grand Council of Korčula passed a statute that provided a comprehensive legal basis for the arrangement, conclusion, and termination of herding contracts and determined legal obligations arising from such agreements. Labelled ‘ad pasculandum’ or ‘ad pascendum’, these herding contracts were based on the principle of mutual partnership, by which both owners of livestock and herders joined together ‘in societate animalium’.22 Despite often significant differences in social status and wealth among the parties, within such a contract-based herding society both animal owners and herders met, from a legal perspective, as mutual business partners on an (almost) equal footing. It is precisely on the level of mutual partnership that the contractual herding societies (‘societates animalium’) differed most from other agricultural working contracts on Korčula, usually referred to as ‘conventiones’.23 Many of the latter working contracts, emphasizing the pivotal economic role of agriculture, were officially documented in writing in the communal chancery and are thus well represented in Korčula’s archival holdings. In contrast to continental Dalmatia, where emphyteutic traditions of decade-long land leases and work obligation prevailed, the average period of agricultural working contracts on Korčula was approximately three years, albeit slightly longer when the cultivation of cereals was concerned. Two types of agricultural working contracts have been distinguished: whereas contracts ‘ad plantandum’ were assigned either for planting vineyards and fig, olive, and almond trees or to cultivate grain and vegetables on untilled plots, contracts ‘ad laborandum’ referred to maintaining existing plantations, mostly vineyards, fig, and olive trees.24 The binary typology of agricultural working contracts, however, hardly reflects the complexity of Korčula’s archival records: for instance, in 1448, Mihovil Marcovich from Žrnovo and his brothers accepted an eight-year contract on a plot of land for sowing, committing themselves ‘ad ipsum plantandum, laborandum totum et gubernandum ad modum et laudem boni laboratoris dandum sibi portionem suam secundum consuetudinem Curzole’.25 Altogether, the three types of contract reflected Korčula’s constitutional trisection of agricultural space, based on the soil’s fertility, into areas to be either farmed as

21 Cf. Dokoza, Dinamika, pp. 100–11; Schmitt, Korčula, pp. 22–23, 33–34. 22 Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, p. 65. Cf. Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, pp. 52, 101; Schmitt, Korčula, pp. 33–36; Dokoza, Dinamika, pp. 103–07. 23 HR-DAZD-11: 6/6.3, fol. 40r. Cf. Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, p. 65. 24 Cf. Dokoza, Dinamika, pp. 75–87, 103–08; Foretić, Otok Korčula, pp. 270–81; Kurtović, ‘Ad usum’, pp. 37–44; Josip Defilippis, Dalmatinska poljoprivreda u prošlosti, Biblioteka znanstvenih djela, 114 (Split: Književni Krug, 2001), pp. 17–38. 25 HR-DAZD-11: 9/12.2, fol. 81v.

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fields (‘pro seminationibus’), planted with vineyards, fig, olive, and almond trees (‘pro plantationibus’), or used for pasturing animals (‘pro pasculis animalium’).26 Interestingly, the records contain relatively few herding contracts compared to a myriad of agricultural working contracts, in spite of the herders’ overall economic significance and their strong general presence in the archival documents. Vinko Foretić and Serđo Dokoza explained this ‘discrepancy’ in terms of the predominant role of verbal agreements in the island’s rural area.27 In contrast, however, the 1417 statute suggests another explanation for this apparent paradox, obliging animal owners to ‘make a tally stick’ (tessera) immediately when handing over their livestock to herders.28 Conversely, it is not the lack of written herding contracts that is remarkable, but the documentation of relatively many agreements with respect to both the statutory norm and the extensive use of tally sticks in the fifteenth century. As legal tools fluctuating between literacy and orality, split tallies granted weather-proof protection against unilateral forgery and thus were considered a proto-written legal document on Korčula, proving the herding contract’s legal validity, value, and herd size. The herder had to check the notches on the tally stick before it was split in two between both contractual partners, the owner keeping the larger half of the split tally and the herder wearing its smaller half on his belt while pasturing.29 In the case of legal dispute, litigants had to take their split tallies to court in order to prove the legitimacy of both their claim and the controversial contract. Such was the case in August 1427, when the herder Xivoe Tonixich rejected the claim of a wealthy priest who demanded his share of annual herding profits. Xivoe argued that he had not been working for him as a herder, nor could the priest legally support his claim of a herding contract with a tally stick, and hence he, Xivoe, was not obliged to share his profits with him. Xivoe instead suggested the court summon a herder called Parvosius, ‘with whom he, the priest, had formed a contract-based herding society […] and with whom he also had a tally stick as is the custom of herders’.30 Other than farmers and lesser rural workers, Korčula’s herders moreover enjoyed the statutory privilege of extending their bilateral contract-based ‘societas animalium’ with an owner of livestock. On the one hand, herders could accept further herders

26 Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, pp. 159–60. On the organization of rural space on late medieval Korčula cf. Fabian Kümmeler and Johann Heiss, ‘Balancing a Community’s Food and Water Supply: The Social Impact of Rural-Urban Interdependencies in Dalmatia and Yemen’, in Practising Community in Urban and Rural Eurasia (1000–1600), ed. by Kümmeler, Majorossy, and Hovden , pp. 76–102. 27 Dokoza, Dinamika, p. 100: ‘najveći nerazmjer’. Cf. Dokoza, Dinamika, p. 104; Foretić, Otok Korčula, p. 281. 28 Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, p. 64: ‘facere tesseram’. 29 Cf. Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, pp. 64–65; Ludolf Kuchenbuch, ‘Kerbhölzer in Alteuropa – Zwischen Dorfschmiede und Schatzamt’, in The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways: Festschrift in Honor of János M. Bak, ed. by Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebők (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), pp. 303–25; Moritz Wedell, Zählen: Semantische und praxeologische Studien zum numerischen Wissen im Mittelalter, Historische Semantik, 14 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), pp. 288–304. 30 HR-DAZD-11: 6/6.3, fol. 32r: ‘cum quo dictus habuisse societatem […] et cum ipso numquam habuisse tesseram ut moris est pastorum’.

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into their herding society as subcontractors. Upon the owner’s approval, the initial herder formally became chief herder of the society, referred to as the ‘celnich’, and was thus responsible for remunerating his subcontractors, referred to as ‘socii’. The statutes promoted such extended herding partnerships by capping the annual tithe to either one lamb or one goat, to be collected by the bishop in person only. On the other hand, herders were also legally entitled to form their own herding societies without formally involving an owner of livestock as the contracting party. Against that background, in 1435, two herders from the village of Blato, who already ‘mutually kept all their animals under one brand’, demanded written documentation of their agreement to ‘keep and faithfully guard their animals jointly for the next three years’ in a herding society.31 Despite its broad regulatory efforts, Korčula’s statutes left essential contractual elements open for negotiation, such as the contract period, the herder’s remuneration, and the apportionment of mutual profits. In most cases, contracts were set up for periods from one to seven years, including annual profit and loss accounts at the end of each herding season. Moreover, three typical components of remunerating herders for their services can be identified: first and foremost, natural produce in kind, often by sharing herding profits like milk, wool, cheese, and offspring, but also wine, grain, and vegetables; secondly, money, mostly as wages and rarely as interest-free loans; and thirdly, temporary herding assistance of shepherd boys paid by the owners of livestock. Based on the statutory principle of partnership, herders and owners assembled these components according to their individual needs and preferences. In 1428, for instance, the herder Bogdan Tulia agreed to pasture a flock for five years, receiving as remuneration a total of eight ‘quartas’ of wine, the same amount of millet, and one goat and one sheep for the first year and for the remaining contract period solely one animal per year.32 In 1431, the herder Paulus Letilovich and his brothers agreed with a local patrician in the town’s chancery that they would pasture his animals and cultivate his lands in return for twenty-five ‘yperpera’, five ‘modi’ of barley, and ten animal skins for each of the brothers.33 In 1447, Anthonius Dobrichievich, moreover, accepted an interest-free loan of thirty-three ‘yperpera’, repayable after five years, and an annual share of his herding profits in kind in exchange for pasturing the livestock of Archdeacon Junius for five years ‘well, diligently and faithfully according to the custom of herders’.34 A year later, finally, the herder Milat accepted an offer to pasture twenty-five animals jointly with his own herd, while the

31 HR-DAZD-11: 7/8.1, fol. 12r: ‘ambo posuerunt ad invicem omnia eorum animalia minuta sub uno signo […] tenere ipsa animalia minuta utriusque partis usque ad tres annos proxime futuros et fideliter custodire ipsa animalia’. Cf. Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, p. 80; Foretić, Otok Korčula, p. 254; Dokoza, Dinamika, pp. 103–04. 32 HR-DAZD-11: 6/6.3, fol. 40r. 33 HR-DAZD-11: 6/6.8, fol. 13v. 34 HR-DAZD-11: 9/12.1, fols 106v–107r:‘ad pasculandum animalia […] a modo usque quinque annos proxime futuros secundum consuetudinem pastorum bene diligenter et fideliter’.

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owners, Mixa and Zuane de Piero, agreed to cover his expenses for food and garments and to pay him an annual salary of eight ‘yperpera’.35 As a result, herders often tended livestock from various owners and pastured them together with their own animals, often accumulating significant numbers of animals, varying from several dozen to up to 500 animals per herd. When grazing, according to local custom, herders used bells and brands on the animals’ ears in order to find the animals and identify their owners. In 1440, however, a herder complained that identifying brands was difficult, as too ‘many brands on Korčula resembled each other’.36 Korčula’s preserved fifteenth-century herding contracts furthermore indicate that herders and owners, besides relying on the notches on split-tallies, also occasionally preferred to document complex herding agreements in written form. In light of the paramount significance of statutory law and the outstanding acceptance of Venetian jurisdiction in Korčula’s rural area, it seems that both expected a higher degree of legal certainty when invoking notary records rather than tally sticks in litigation.37 Legal certainty in fact constituted a crucial prerequisite for coping with contractual issues and socioeconomic conflicts, making statutory law both a basis and a reference for the dynamics of ‘Othering’ towards herders in social interaction within Korčula’s late medieval island society. Every year on 15 August, the feast of St Mary, herders were statutorily obliged to join their split-tallies with their contract partner, count the herds, and render their accounts of the herding year. Whereas profits were shared pursuant to individual contracts, the statutes, moreover, defined a fixed indemnification rate for livestock losses of either two unbranded young animals or the sum of eight ‘grossi’ per capita. Owners were obliged to claim for compensation within a year, while herders, if unable to provide compensation, had the right to compensate with offspring bred later during the remaining contract period.38 Just like many legal codes of various Italian cities, Korčula’s statutes determined that, in all disagreements on herding accounts, the owner should be granted ‘a summary procedure (“ius summarium”) against his herder or herders […] at any time and day’.39 In jurisdictional practice, however, even though both owners and herders very often took their disagreements on herding accounts to court, exacerbated by mutual accusations of inaccuracy and fraud, applying summary procedure was hardly compatible with the pivotal role of law in Korčula’s rural area. This statutory deadlock for instance

35 HR-DAZD-11: 12/20.1, fol. 23v. 36 HR-DAZD-11: 7/10.2, fol. 123v: ‘quod multa signa in Corcula similia’. 37 Cf. HR-DAZD-11: 12/20.2, fol. 123v; Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, pp. 23, 42–43; Kümmeler, Korčula, pp. 349–64; Kuchenbuch, ‘Kerbhölzer’, p. 306. 38 Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, pp. 64–66, 92–93. 39 Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, pp. 65–66: ‘ius summarium […] contra pastorem seu pastores […] omni tempore et die’. On the ius summarium and its restricted application on Korčula, cf. Kümmeler, Korčula, pp. 358–60; Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, pp. 65–70, 116–17, 124; Sven Ufe Tjarks, Das ‘venezianische’ Stadtrecht Paduas von 1420: Zugleich eine Untersuchung zum statuaren Zivilprozess im 15. Jahrhundert, Studi, N.F., 7 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013), pp. 264–79; Sarah R. Blanshei, Politics and Justice in Late Medieval Bologna, Medieval Law and Its Practice, 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 408–98.

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arose in the summer of 1426, when the aforementioned herder Xivoe Tonixich, at that time working as ‘celnich’ for a patrician widow, was sentenced to compensate for four lost animals ‘by paying eight “grossi” per capita according to the custom of Korčula’.40 Torn between apparently contradictory laws, the Venetian governor did not restrict the herder’s plea pursuant to the ‘ius summarium’, but granted him the ‘right to take action and have recourse against his subcontractors’.41 Against that background, the particular statutory status of Korčula’s herders set the stage for both fierce socioeconomic conflicts and emotively charged patterns of ‘Otherness’ in their social interaction within the island’s late medieval rural communities.

The ‘Others’ from Within: Conflicts between Herders and Villagers In social practice, Korčula’s late medieval rural society was manifested as a complex and dynamic social fabric, characterized by multiple, at times competing layers of community that were closely interwoven with both the island’s urban milieu and its political elite. Within rural lifeworlds, Korčula’s village communities played a key administrative, legal, and socio-cultural role: while the Venetian governor, as the island’s supreme judge, also directed its communal administrative and judicial system, local villagers carried out extensive administrative and executive tasks as communal officials. As statutory communities of rights, liability, and protection, villagers engaged in legal transactions and litigated jointly, just as they were collectively liable as a village community. Also periodically used as places of jurisdiction, the island’s villages moreover provided a territorial link to overlapping layers of community, whose concepts of ‘Otherness’ merged with the village’s internal dynamics of conflict, solidarity, and communication.42 Throughout the year, Korčula’s herders followed a versatile seasonal routine, reaching its annual climax, both legally and in customary tradition, on the feast of St Mary, when contracts started and expired and the partners met for accounting. In September, herders started to prepare their winter pastures, referred to as ‘simiaca’, which they often shared with fellow herders, again by forming a contract-based ‘societas’. These pastures were fenced enclosures on communal lands, mostly equipped with wooden stables, in which up to several hundred animals were kept during the cold season. In order to safeguard cultivation areas from escaping animals, herders had to keep a buffer zone of at least half a mile ‘to the four winds’.43 In spring, sheep and goats were shorn, highly dependent on weather conditions, from a few days before Saint George’s Day (April 23), which traditionally marked the beginning of spring, 40 HR-DAZD-11: 6/6.3, fol. 10r: ‘solvendo secundum consuetudinem Corzule ad rationem grosso VIII quodlibet’. 41 HR-DAZD-11: 6/6.3, fol. 10r: ‘ius agendi et habendi regressum contra eius socios’. 42 Cf. Kümmeler, Korčula, pp. 215–318, 417–34; Schmitt, ‘Storie d’amore’, pp. 91–109. 43 Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, p. 120: ‘in alijs vero villis per miliare dimidium a quatuor ventis’. Cf. Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, pp. 119–20.

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until mid May. In the warm season, statutory law barred herders from crossing the territorial borders of their village district and from pasturing livestock in the vicinity of the island town or other major zones of agriculture. In May and June, however, herders were allowed to graze the herds on their contractor’s private lands while farming a share of his land in their own favour.44 In search for patterns of rural ‘Othering’, seasonal routine represents a distinctive feature that subdivided Korčula’s late medieval rural population. Due to their unsteady and itinerant, albeit sedentary lifestyle, and the economic unreliability ascribed to them, fellow urban and rural dwellers held the island’s herders in rather low esteem. This can be observed in a letter from the Venetian Doge Francesco Foscari, dated 26 February 1441, concerning grievances of the Franciscan friars from the islet of Badija, located opposite the town of Korčula. Referring to a privilege from 1394 that allegedly granted them the right to ‘peacefully and quietly’ inhabit their islet, the friars had complained that ‘now there are indeed several [people] who disparage the honour of the Almighty God and the glorious Virgin [Mary] by pasturing their goats and animals on the islet’ — emphasizing the harassment caused by the herders’ seasonal routine and the noise, dirt, and stench of their sheep and goats.45 However, in addition to their legally-framed seasonal routine that differed significantly from both the villages’ farmers and fishermen, emotive patterns of ‘Othering’ against herders were particularly stirred up by the structural fact that communal pastures lay mostly scattered and dispersed throughout the island’s rural area. Hence herders, constantly traversing cultivated arable land in search of fresh pastures, regularly became drawn into conflicts over compensation for crop damage.46 In order to balance agricultural and pastoral interests, Venetian governance attempted to control the conflicting dynamics of overlapping land use, repeatedly decreeing that fields and vineyards needed to be fenced so that neither large nor small animals could enter, and that nobody was to pasture animals within the villages’ settlement area, in its surrounding vineyards, or along its roads.47 Within Korčula’s rural realm itself, a close-knit network of communal officials — local villagers biannually appointed by the island’s Grand Council — enforced the rule of law, market regulations, and taxation. In every village, four ‘gastaldiones’ monitored the village and conducted criminal investigations, a herald (‘plazarius’) conveyed proclamations, judgements and council decisions, and a judicial officer (‘iustitiarius’) implemented judgements and recovered debts. Moreover, varying numbers of vineyard guards (‘pudarii’) and field guards (‘posticii’) protected vineyards, grain fields, and fruit-bearing tree plantations from straying livestock and ensured the compensation for crop damage. Being predominantly local villagers, the administration of village officials, although remunerated by the community and 44 Cf. Kümmeler, Korčula, pp. 335–49. 45 Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, p. 156: ‘quiete et pacifice […] nunc uero nonnulli sunt, qui honorem omnipotentis Dei ac gloriosissimae Virginis paruipendentes, capras et animalia sua ad pascendum super ipsum scopulum mittere’. Cf. Foretić, Otok Korčula, pp. 342–48; Josip Belamarić, ‘Franjevačka crkva i samostan na otoku kod Korčule’, Prilozi povijesti umjetnosti u Dalmaciji, 23 (1983), 149–91. 46 Cf. Kümmeler, Korčula, pp. 335–64. 47 Cf. HR-DAZD-11: 10/13.1, fol. 183r.

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subordinated to the Venetian governor, nevertheless often interfered in the village community’s private social conflicts. A plethora of lawsuits directed against herders for crop damage and animal theft consequently demonstrate not only a high level of administrative and jurisdictional activities, but also a huge gap between statutory norms and everyday socioeconomic practice in Korčula’s rural area.48 From these lawsuits, conflicts with herders over crop damage and animal theft emerge as emotive stimuli for both patterns of ‘Othering’ and social tensions within Korčula’s village communities. This is reflected in the verdict De animalibus non tenendis prope casalia by the Venetian governor Alvise Barbarigo of 23 June 1485. Barbarigo’s ‘decisio’ was the result of fierce complaints by numerous patricians and villagers concerning how the ‘herders of the villages pasture their animals in the villages to the great detriment both of many people and in gardens, crops, vineyards and other fruit-bearing plants in the villages’.49 Furthermore, the plaintiffs portrayed the herders as a threat to the community’s subsistence and survivability, claiming that they not only caused severe crop damage with their animals, but also violated statutory law by contaminating the ponds and wells used by the village communities for potable water. Korčula’s herders, however, rejected the accusations after collectively electing an advocate who ‘tamquam aduocato ipsorum pastorum’ claimed in vain that the herders’ customary practices outranked economic damage to fellow islanders.50 Rural patterns of ‘Othering’ thus reflected the conflict lines of agriculture, pastoralism, and governance. In conflicts over crop damage, for instance, three key players can be identified: first, farmers as the damaged party; second, herders as damagers; and third, village officials. While herders and farmers competed economically and topographically, both parties relied on communal officials and Venetian jurisdiction in litigations. Korčula’s communal village officials, representing Venetian jurisdiction in the island’s rural area, were however caught in-between, as their administration not only satisfied farmers seeking compensation for damage, but also fuelled social tensions with herders, whom the rural guards prosecuted for damaging crops while pasturing their herds. Beyond the pastures, these tensions reflected back onto the village’s communal life, fuelling intra-communal conflicts, since farmers, herders, and rural officials often lived together in the same village and were thus integral members of its community. In everyday interaction, these economic conflicts and social tensions, driven by the low esteem in which herders were held, could easily turn even a mere encounter between villagers and herders into violent confrontations both on the island’s pastures and within its villages. The latter was the case in December 1443, when two herders accused four fellow villagers from Blato of attacking them with knifes, throwing stones at them, beating them with their fists, and pulling their hair, leaving them bleeding from many wounds, while insulting them badly right within the village. Several

48 Cf. HR-DAZD-11: 16/31.5, fols 52r–61v; Kümmeler, Korčula, pp. 174–99, 215–47. 49 Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, p. 199: ‘pastores casalium pasculari eorum animalia in casalibus in graui damno quam plurimarum personarum tam in hortis, bladis, uineis et alijs nascentibus in casalibus fructibus’. 50 Statuta et leges, ed. by Hanel, p. 199.

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witnesses confirmed that the two herders were about to pasture their animals outside the village when they took a shortcut through the village and by the house of one of the perpetrators. The accused villagers by contrast argued that they had initially gathered to go on a hare hunt when the herders attempted to break in through the roof and attacked them with a knife so aggressively that ‘sparks of fire were emitted when the knife struck the stone wall’.51 The herder Micula Mratinovich of Smokvica, on the other hand, experienced violence on a peripheral pasture area in April 1461, when he coincidentally met an itinerant shoe seller from the village of Blato and his companion while pasturing a flock of sheep in the border area between the village territories of Smokvica and Blato. Xifcus, the shoe seller, impetuously urged the herder to give him a lamb and the sachet that he carried on his belt, which Micula refused to do. Consequently losing his temper with the herder, Xifcus first knocked him down, then pounded him with a stone with the effect that his leg became swollen and finally seized his knife from its sheath just to torture his hands with its handle, causing Micula great agony and harm. Whereas Xifcus denied all charges brought against him, his companion confirmed that Xifcus had knocked down the herder, taken his knife, and fought with him, but insisted that it all happened in jest (‘iocandi’) and that nobody was injured.52 The villagers’ propensity for violence towards herders certainly reflects not only personal motives, but also a distinct general disdain for them as a common pattern of ‘Othering’ within Korčula’s village communities. In both cases, herders experienced disdain, hostility, and violence when herding animals, that is in conflict settings connected to their pastoral profession, whereas they were otherwise constitutive members both of their respective village community and of the island’s comprehensive statutory community. Against that background, in the latter case, the Venetian count condemned Xifcus to pay a fine of three ‘yperpera’ to the island’s community and to cover the herder’s medical expenses.53

Conclusion As sedentary villagers, herders on late medieval Korčula were constitutive members of the island’s village communities and yet situationally confronted as ‘Others’ from within by fellow villagers. Given that statutory and customary law served as a key reference for everyday social interaction on the island, its laws already formed a basis for the ‘Otherness’ of herders within Korčula’s rural society. Herders stood out from fellow villagers particularly due to their special legal status, regulating their pasturing rights and legal obligations and enabling them to form contract-based herding societies as equal partners with the island’s economic elite. Whereas both wooden split-tallies and written contracts served as legal proof for herding agreements in court, the latter

51 HR-DAZD-11: 10/13.1, fol. 37v: ‘cum ipsa cultella percussit in lapidem emittens vi ictus ex lapide ignem’. 52 HR-DAZD-11: 16/30.6, fol. 19v. 53 Cf. HR-DAZD-11: 16/30.6, fol. 19v; Schmitt, ‘Addressing Community’, p. 128.

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reflected the affinity of Korčula’s rural society to written legal culture, while the former served as a distinctive mark in social interaction, symbolizing the statutory ‘Otherness’ of herders within the island’s village communities. Against this background, the herders’ mobile, albeit sedentary seasonal routine was largely met with disdain, since it differed significantly from that of fellow islanders, who were mostly engaged in farming, fishing, crafts, and trade. Myriad socioeconomic conflicts over crop damage and lost animals moreover exacerbated the stigmatization of herders as the ‘Other’ interfering with the agricultural supply and economic subsistence of Korčula’s rural communities. The situational patterns of ‘Othering’ directed against herders essentially reflected the conflicting dynamics of the triangular antagonism between pastoralism, agriculture, and governance, whose protagonists often jointly lived in the same village. It is thus the villages and their surrounding rural area that set the scene for condescending attitudes of mistrust and disdain and situational violent behaviour towards the island’s herders, turning economic disputes into social conflicts in which herders were perceived as adversaries by fellow villagers, and thus embodied an ‘Other’ from within Korčula’s communal society in the fifteenth century.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Zadar, Državni Arhiv u Zadru [Croatian State Archive in Zadar], Općina Korčula (1338– 1797), Commune insulae et civitatis Curzolae (referred to as HR-DAZD-11), boxes 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 16 Primary Sources Gli accordi con Curzola, 1352–1421, ed. by Ermanno Orlando, Pacta Veneta, 9 (Roma: Viella, 2002) Korčulanski statut: Statut grada i otoka Korčule iz 1214. godine, ed. and trans. by Antun Cvitanić (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti, 1987) Statuta et leges civitatis et insulae Curzulae (1214–1558), ed. by Jaromir J. Hanel, Monumenta historico-juridica slavorum meridionalium, 1 (Zagreb: Academia Scientiarum et Artium Slavorum Meridionalium, 1877) Secondary Works Ančić, Mladen, ‘Srednjovjekovni Vlasi kontinentalne Dalmacije’, in Dalmatinska zagora: Nepoznata zemlja, ed. by Vesna Kusin and others (Zagreb: Galerija Klovićevi dvori, 2007), pp. 161–67 Arbel, Benjamin, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire in the Early Modern Period’, in A Companion to Venetian History, 1400–1797, ed. by Eric R. Dursteler, Brill’s Companions to European History, 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 125–253

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Attia, Sascha, and Fabian Kümmeler, ‘A Gem Hidden Under the Dust of Centuries: The State Archive in Zadar’, News On The Rialto, 33 (2014), 27–30 Baisch, Martin, ‘Alterität und Selbstfremdheit: Zur Kritik eines zentralen Interpretationsparadigmas in der germanistischen Mediävistik’, in Die Aktualität der Vormoderne: Epochenentwürfe zwischen Alterität und Kontinuität, ed. by Klaus Ridder and Steffen Patzold, Europa im Mittelalter, 23 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), pp. 185–206 Bakos, Gergely Tibor, On Faith, Rationality, and the Other in the Late Middle Ages: A Study of Nicholas of Cusa’s Manuductive Approach to Islam, Princeton Theological Monograph, 141 (Eugene: Pickwick, 2011) Belamarić, Josip, ‘Franjevačka crkva i samostan na otoku kod Korčule’, Prilozi povijesti umjetnosti u Dalmaciji, 23 (1983), 149–91 Beldiceanu, Nicoară, ‘Sur les Valaques des Balkans slaves à l’époque ottomane (1450–1550)’, Revue des études islamiques, 34.1 (1966), 83–132 Blanshei, Sarah R., Politics and Justice in Late Medieval Bologna, Medieval Law and Its Practice, 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2010) Caciur, Dana, ‘Considerations Regarding the Status of the Morlachs from the Trogir’s Hinterland at the Middle of the 16th Century: Being Subjects of the Ottoman Empire and Land Tenants of the Venetian Republic’, Res Historica, 41 (2016), 95–110 Cvitanić, Antun, ‘Korčulansko statutarno pravo’, in Iz dalmatinske pravne povijesti, ed. by Antun Cvitanić (Split: Književni Krug, 2002), pp. 575–620 ———, ‘Pravni položaj stranaca u srednjovjekovnoj korčulanskoj komuni’, in Iz dalmatinske pravne povijesti, ed. by Antun Cvitanić (Split: Književni Krug, 2002), pp. 643–60 (first publ. in Zbornik Pravnog fakulteta u Zagrebu, 36 (1986), pp. 591–605) Defilippis, Josip, Dalmatinska poljoprivreda u prošlosti, Biblioteka znanstvenih djela, 114 (Split: Književni Krug, 2001) Dokoza, Serđo, Dinamika otočnog prostora: Društvena i gospodarska povijest Korčule u razvijenom srednjem vijeku, Biblioteka znanstvenih djela, 161 (Split: Književni Krug, 2009) Fabijanec, Sabine Florence, ‘Le rôle économique des îles croates médiévales’, in Proceedings of the 4th Mediterranean Maritime History Network Conference: Barcelona, 7–9 May 2014, ed. by Jordi Ibarz Gelabert, Enric García Domingo, Inma González Sánchez, and Olga López Miguel (Barcelona: Museu Marítim de Barcelona, 2017), pp. 857–76 Foretić, Vinko, Otok Korčula u srednjem vijeku do godine 1420. (Zagreb: Tisak Narodne Tiskare, 1940) Freedman, Paul, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999) Goetz, Hans-Werner, ‘Sarazenen als “Fremde”? Anmerkungen zum Islambild in der abendländischen Geschichtsschreibung des frühen Mittelalters’, in Fremde, Feinde und Kurioses: Innen- und Außenansichten unseres muslimischen Nachbarn, ed. by Benjamin Jokisch, Ulrich Rebstock, and Lawrence I. Conrad, Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), pp. 39–66 Gruber, Elisabeth, Christina Lutter, and Oliver Jens Schmitt, eds, Kulturgeschichte der Überlieferung im Mittelalter: Quellen und Methoden zur Geschichte Mittel- und Südosteuropas, UTB Geschichte, 4554 (Wien: Böhlau, 2017)

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Ivetic, Egidio, ‘Tolerance towards the “Others” in the Cities of Venetian Dalmatia (1540– 1645)’, in Tolerance and Intolerance on the Triplex Confinium: Approaching the ‘Other’ on the Borderlands. Eastern Adriatic and beyond, 1500–1800, ed. by Egidio Ivetic and Drago Roksandić (Padova: Cleup, 2007), pp. 265–81 Jaspert, Nikolas, ‘Fremdheit und Fremderfahrung: Die deutsch-spanische Perspektive’, in ‘Das kommt mir Spanisch vor’: Eigenes und Fremdes in den deutsch-spanischen Beziehungen des späten Mittelalters, ed. by Klaus Herbers and Nikolas Jaspert, Geschichte und Kultur der Iberischen Welt, 1 (Münster: Lit, 2004), pp. 31–62 Juran, Kristijan, ‘Doseljavanje Morlaka u opustjela sela šibenske Zagore u 16. stoljeću’, Povijesni prilozi, 46 (2014), 129–60 Kortüm, Hans-Henning, ‘“Advena sum apud te et peregrinus”: Fremdheit als Strukturelement mittelalterlicher “conditio humana”’, in Exil, Fremdheit und Ausgrenzung im Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed. by Andreas Bihrer, Sven Limbeck, and Paul Gerhard Schmidt, Identitäten und Alteritäten, 4 (Würzburg: Ergon, 2000), pp. 115–35 Kristeva, Julia, Étrangers à nous-mêmes (Paris: Fayard, 1988) Kuchenbuch, Ludolf, ‘Kerbhölzer in Alteuropa – Zwischen Dorfschmiede und Schatzamt’, in The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways: Festschrift in Honor of János M. Bak, ed. by Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebők (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), pp. 303–25 Kümmeler, Fabian, ‘Herdsmen as a Socio-Professional Community in Late Medieval Dalmatia’, in Comunità e società nel Commonwealth veneziano, ed. by Gherardo Ortalli, Oliver Jens Schmitt, and Ermanno Orlando (Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2018), pp. 111–27 ———, Korčula. Ländliche Lebenswelten und Gemeinschaften im venezianischen Dalmatien (1420-1499), Südosteuropäische Arbeiten, 165 (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021) ———, ‘The World in a Village: Foreigners and Newcomers on Late Medieval Korčula’, in Towns and Cities of the Croatian Middle Ages: The City and the Newcomers, ed. by Irena Benyovski Latin and Zrinka Pešorda Vardić (Zagreb: Croatian Institute of History, 2020), pp. 195–211 Kümmeler, Fabian, Judit Majorossy, and Eirik Hovden, eds, Practising Community in Urban and Rural Eurasia (1000–1600): Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 2021) Kümmeler, Fabian, and Johann Heiss, ‘Balancing a Community’s Food and Water Supply: The Social Impact of Rural-Urban Interdependencies in Dalmatia and Yemen’, in Practising Community in Urban and Rural Eurasia (1000–1600): Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Fabian Kümmeler, Judit Majorossy, and Eirik Hovden (Leiden: Brill, 2021), pp. 76–102 Kurtović, Esad, ‘“Ad usum boni pasculatoris et boni viri”: Uzgoj konja u dubrovačkom zaleđu kroz prizmu ugovora o uzgoju’, in Spomenica Ibrahima Karabegovića: Zbornik radova, ed. by Husnija Kamberović (Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2013), pp. 35–68 Margariti, Roxani Eleni, ‘An Ocean of Islands: Islands, Insularity, and the Historiography of the Indian Ocean’, in The Sea: Thalassography and Historiography, ed. by Peter Miller (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), pp. 198–229

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Mirdita, Zef, Vlasi: Starobalkanski narod od povijesne pojave do danas (Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2009) Münkler, Marina, Erfahrung des Fremden: Die Beschreibung Ostasiens in den Augenzeugenberichten des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000) Novak, Grga, ‘Morlaci (Vlasi) gledani s mletačke strane’, Zbornik za narodni život i običaje Južnih Slavena, 45 (1971), 579–603 O’Connell, Monique, ‘The Contractual Nature of the Venetian State’, in Il Commonwealth veneziano tra 1204 e la fine della Repubblica: Identità e peculiarità, ed. by Gherardo Ortalli, Oliver Jens Schmitt, and Ermanno Orlando (Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2015), pp. 57–72 Orlando, Ermanno, ‘Politica del diritto, amministrazione, giustizia: Venezia e la Dalmazia nel basso medioevo’, in Venezia e Dalmazia, ed. by Uwe Israel and Oliver Jens Schmitt (Roma: Viella, 2013), pp. 9–61 Ortalli, Gherardo, ‘The Genesis of a Unique Form of Statehood, between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age’, in Il Commonwealth veneziano tra 1204 e la fine della Repubblica: Identità e peculiarità, ed. by Gherardo Ortalli, Oliver Jens Schmitt, and Ermanno Orlando (Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2015), pp. 3–11 ———, ‘Il ruolo degli statuti tra autonomie e dipendenze: Curzola e il dominio veneziano’, Rivista storica italiana, 98 (1986), 195–220 Raukar, Tomislav, ‘Cives, habitatores, forenses u srednjovjekovnim dalmatinskim gradovima’, Historijski zbornik, 29–30 (1976–1977), 139–49 Reyerson, Kathryn L., ‘The Merchants of the Mediterranean: Merchants as Strangers’, in The Stranger in Medieval Society, ed. by F. R. P. Akehurst and Stephanie Van D’Elden, Medieval Cultures, 12 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 1–13 Roksandić, Drago, ‘The Dinaric Vlachs/Morlachs in the Eastern Adriatic from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries: How many Identities?’, in Balcani occidentali, Adriatico e Venezia fra XIII e XVIII secolo / Der westliche Balkan, der Adriaraum und Venedig (13.–18. Jahrhundert), ed. by Gherardo Ortalli and Oliver Jens Schmitt (Venezia: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2009), pp. 271–85 Schmitt, Oliver Jens, ‘Addressing Community in Late Medieval Dalmatia’, in Meanings of Community across Eurasia: Comparative Approaches, ed. by Eirik Hovden, Christina Lutter, and Walter Pohl, Brill’s Series on the Early Middle Ages, 25 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 125–47 ———, ‘“Altre Venezie” nella Dalmazia tardo-medievale? Un approccio microstorico alle comunità socio-politiche sull’isola di Curzola/Korčula’, in Il Commonwealth veneziano tra 1204 e la fine della Repubblica: Identità e peculiarità, ed. by Gherardo Ortalli, Oliver Jens Schmitt, and Ermanno Orlando (Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2015), pp. 203–33 ———, ‘L’apport des archives de Zadar à l’histoire de la Méditerranée orientale au XVe siècle’, in Venise et la Méditerranée, ed. by Sandro G. Franchini, Gherardo Ortalli, and Gennaro Toscano (Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2011), pp. 45–54 ———, Korčula sous la domination de Venise au XVe siècle: Pouvoir, économie et vie quotidienne dans une île dalmate au Moyen Âge tardif (Paris: Collège de France, 2011), DOI: 10.4000/books.cdf.1501

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———, ‘Storie d’amore, storie di potere: La tormentata integrazione dell’isola di Curzola nello Stato da mar in una prospettiva microstorica’, in Venezia e Dalmazia, ed. by Uwe Israel and Oliver Jens Schmitt (Roma: Viella, 2013), pp. 89–109 ———, ‘Venezianische Horizonte der Geschichte Südosteuropas: Strukturelemente eines Geschichtsraums in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit’, Südost–Forschungen, 65–66 (2006–2007), 87–116 ———, ‘Das venezianische Südosteuropa als Kommunikationsraum (ca. 1400–ca. 1600)’, in Balcani occidentali, Adriatico e Venezia fra XIII e XVIII secolo / Der westliche Balkan, der Adriaraum und Venedig (13.–18. Jahrhundert), ed. by Gherardo Ortalli and Oliver Jens Schmitt (Venezia: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2009), pp. 77–101 Steindorff, Ludwig, Die dalmatinischen Städte im 12. Jahrhundert: Studien zu ihrer politischen Stellung und gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung, Städteforschung, A/20 (Köln: Böhlau, 1984) ———, ‘Hvar und Korčula – der Aufstieg zweier Städte an der Adriaostküste’, in Tusculum slavicum: Festschrift für Peter Thiergen, ed. by Elisabeth von Erdmann, Aschot Isaakjan, Roland Marti, and Daniel Schümann, Basler Studien zur Kulturgeschichte Osteuropas, 14 (Zürich: Pano, 2005), pp. 725–37 ———, ‘Pravo kao sredstvo stvaranja gradskog identiteta: Slučaj dalmatinskih gradova’, in Splitski statut iz 1312. godine: Povijest i pravo, povodom 700. obljetnice, ed. by Željko Radić, Marko Trogrlić, Massimo Meccarelli, and Ludwig Steindorff, Biblioteka knjiga mediterana, 84 (Split: Književni Krug, 2015), pp. 53–67 ———, ‘Städtische Lebensformen im Spiegel spätmittelalterlicher istrischer und dalmatinischer Statuten’, in Die Urbanisierung Europas von der Antike bis in die Moderne, ed. by Gerhard Fouquet and Gabriel Zeilinger, Kieler Werkstücke, E 7 (Frankfurt-amMain: Lang, 2009), pp. 173–90 Thomas, Nicholas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) Tjarks, Sven Ufe, Das ‘venezianische’ Stadtrecht Paduas von 1420: Zugleich eine Untersuchung zum statuaren Zivilprozess im 15. Jahrhundert, Studi, N.F., 7 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013) Wedell, Moritz, Zählen: Semantische und praxeologische Studien zum numerischen Wissen im Mittelalter, Historische Semantik, 14 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011) Wubs-Mrozewicz, Justyna, ‘The Close “Other”: Medieval and Modern Perspectives on Hollanders and the Hanse’, German History, 31.4 (2013), 453–72

Eduardo Manzano Mor eno

Assimilating ‘Otherness’ in Early Islam

Introduction During Late Antiquity, the disappearance of the classical legacy fostered the emergence of an increasing number of different and usually conflicting communities. As the cloak of ‘romanitas’ gradually wore out, new garments were hastily tailored that marked out specific groups from the rest. Communities came to be defined either by ethnic and cultural traits, or by the new political entities that had replaced the Roman Empire. Although not all of their members had the same social status and, therefore, not everyone shared their cultural or political values to the same degree, it is also true that a strong sense of belonging to these new communities shadowed previous forms of social alignment. In this connection, it is significant that religious affiliation to the novel forms of monotheism that emerged in this period became one of the main markers which expressed identity.1 In some cases, these religious affiliations tended to mould (and be moulded by) existing cultural, ethnic, or political divisions, as witnessed by the role played by Arianism in the characterization of peoples like the Visigoths or the Lombards, or the religious specificity that was increasingly championed by the Byzantine empire. One of the outcomes of this multiplication of communities is that they drew stark boundaries by interacting among themselves. An obvious result of this interaction was the creation of a new kind of ‘otherness’, an element that clung to medieval societies as a signal of their fragmentation; as a feature that described their conflictive making. In fact, recognition of ‘otherness’ increasingly entailed the articulation of these societies in a way that was radically different from those of Classical Antiquity, where more often than not the ‘others’ were comfortably confined beyond the physical or mental frontiers of empires or civilizations. In contrast, during the Middle Ages the ‘others’

1 Walter Pohl, ‘Introduction. Strategies of Identification: A Methodological Profile’, in Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 21–22. Eduardo Manzano Moreno  •  is research professor at the Instituto de Historia of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Madrid and Global History Research Professor at the University of St Andrews. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 235–252 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123593

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could become a constituent part of many societies that witnessed social and cultural processes of exclusion, coexistence, exchange, or assimilation, and that promoted the undeniable dynamism that is a feature of this period.­­ The advent of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries was a crucial event in these processes, as it fostered a double long-lasting effect: on the one hand, the sharp definition of a frontier against Christianity, which was not only physical but also polemical, helped to shape the complex territorial configuration and ideological reaffirmation of the medieval world in the Mediterranean. On the other hand, Islam also had to deal with ‘otherness’ in its own realm, as lands conquered by the Arab expansion were home to Christian and Jewish communities, whose pacts with the conquerors granted them the possibility of living under the new rule, thus laying the foundations of the characteristic multiculturalism that was the landmark of Islamic societies in medieval and modern times. Therefore, ‘otherness’ was a crucial factor in the formation of Arab-Muslim societies. Islam became a different faith by portraying itself as the final abrogation of previous creeds, a narrative that began with the preaching of the prophet Muḥammad in a hostile environment and culminated after a long-lasting process of elaboration that occurred in a social milieu characterized by religious diversity. The Arab conquests extended across huge regions, in which the conquerors encountered a whole variety of populations and cultures that forced them to implement social and political frameworks in order to manage this diversity. It is my contention that these circumstances left an indelible mark on the definition of Islamic and Arab identity. In the following pages, I will tackle the issue of ‘otherness’ taking both the emergence of Islam and the early Arab conquests as a point of departure, and the case of Muslim Iberia, al-Andalus, as a point of arrival. This land was on the fringe of the Arab Empire after its conquest in ad 711 (91 ah), but came to display the same powerful identities that were prevalent in the central lands of Islam vis-à-vis both the external and the internal ‘others’. My analysis is based on the idea that the early conquests resulted in a process of Arab ethnogenesis that emerged as the outcome of a sharp definition of ethnic and cultural boundaries against other communities. This process went hand in hand with the formulation of a salvation creed that also needed to differentiate itself from previous monotheist religions. In these processes early Islam ended up dealing with ‘otherness’ using institutional and conceptual tools that were inherited from the world of Late Antiquity. These tools were originally adapted to meet the novel situations created by the Arab expansion, but became firmly embedded in later Muslim tradition, even though social conditions had totally changed in relation to those that had prevailed in the early period.

The Dominated ‘Others’ Modern scholars like Robert Hoyland or Greg Fisher have addressed the difficult issue of whether an Arab identity widely shared by populations living in the

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Arabian Peninsula existed in the pre-Islamic period.2 Language may be considered a distinctive sign of such identity, but the almost complete absence of records written in Arabic script before the sixth century, and the scarcity of epigraphic texts makes it difficult to assess how the Arabs viewed themselves before their expansion. This lack of evidence runs in parallel with a powerful but also late narrative that portrayed the Arabs before the advent of Islam as a destitute and impoverished people while other peoples enjoyed worldly wealth. Ninth-century works like the life of caliph ‘Umar by the Egyptian ‘Abd Allāh b. ‘Abd al-Ḥakam (d. 829/214 ah) or a contemporary work of polemic against Christians stressed the idea that the revelation of God to his Prophet was a divine gift bestowed on the Arabs who suddenly became exalted ‘while the others were deprived of the bounties and advantages that they had previously possessed’.3 The idea that the Arabs were outcasts who became the masters of others, who had previously dominated them, also resonates in some early reactions to the conquests by Christian writers: in the middle of the seventh century Maximus the Confessor speaks of the ‘barbarous people of the desert overrunning another´s lands as though they were their own’, whereas several decades later the Chronicler of Zuqnin acknowledged that ‘because we sinned, slaves gained authority over us’.4 However, and notwithstanding how evocative the notion that God’s revelation changed the misfortunes of Arab peoples is, or how suggestive the lamentations of monks who were terrified by the unexpected arrival of these conquerors are, it is puzzling to see how rapidly these destitute ‘slaves’ and ‘barbarians’ became the able and efficient administrators of the newly founded empire. As early as 643, for instance, the Arab conquerors of Egypt were issuing bilingual papyri written in Arabic and Greek, which dealt with the collection of taxes or the supplying of the army. P. Sijpensteijn has pointed out that the use of a terminology reflecting a distinctive scribal tradition means that ‘the ideas, habits, and approaches that the Arabs brought with them could deal with the administration of such a highly developed and extensive entity as Egypt’.5







2 Robert Hoyland, ‘Epigraphy and the Emergence of an Arab Identity’, in From al-Andalus to Khurasan: Documents from the Medieval Muslim World, ed. by Petra Sijpesteijn, Robert G. Hoyland, Jonathan J. Price, and David J. Wasserstein (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 217–42 (pp. 234–37); also Robert Hoyland, ‘Arab Kings, Arab Tribes and the Beginnings of Arab Historical Memory in Late Roman Epigraphy’, in From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East, ed. by Hannah M. Cotton, Lennart Sundelin, Sofía Torallas Tovar, and Amalia Zomeño (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 374–400 (pp. 388–91); Greg Fisher, Between Empires: Arabs, Romans, and Sasanians in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 144–53. 3 Milka Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 94; ‘Abd Allāh b. ‘Abd al-Ḥakam, Sīrat ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz, ed. by Aḥmad ‘Ubayd (Beirut: ‘Ālam al-Kutub, 1984), pp. 65–66; Dominique Sourdel, ‘Un pamphlet musulmane anonyme contre les Chrétiens’, Revue des Etudes Islamiques, 34 (1966), 1–33 (p. 26). 4 Robert Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1997), pp. 77–78 and p. 412. 5 Petra Sijpensteijn, Why Arabic? (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2012), pp. 15–16.

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Therefore, there seems to have been a pre-existing and distinctive Arab culture that was seamlessly adopted by the new empire as its uncompromising political identity. This culture rapidly became the backbone of the imperial programme of expansion that was executed during the conquests. It was boosted by a number of decisions that were taken at this early period, which were designed to prevent assimilation of the conquerors by populations that clearly outnumbered them. Paramount among these decisions was the decree by the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (685–705/65–86 ah) in which he ordered the arabization of the administration of the empire.6 We do not really know how this bold resolution was enforced and how it came to be shared ultimately by broad sections of the conquered populations, but the fact is that, despite their very different languages, historical backgrounds, and cultural traditions, ‘Abd al-Malik’s decision was hugely successful among them. The result was that they became integrated into the Arab imperial project, whose final and more durable final byproduct was the creation of the ‘dār al-islām’, i.e. the ‘abode of Islam’. In this connection, post-conquest Iberia is an excellent example of the implementation of this policy. Al-Andalus was conquered in ad 711 (91 ah), six years after the death of ‘Abd al-Malik. One of the first things the conquerors did was to start issuing golden coinage which had Latin inscriptions proclaiming the unity of God and the prophetic mission of Muḥammad. This coinage, however, was shortlived. As early as 716–717 (98 ah) inscriptions were bilingual (Arabic and Latin) and less than a decade later ‘dirhams’ minted in al-Andalus were displaying the same typologies displayed by the reformed coinage that had been also decreed by caliph ‘Abd al-Malik and was already circulating in the central lands of the empire.7 The message was unequivocal: notwithstanding the huge distance that separated al-Andalus from the centre of the caliphate and notwithstanding the fact that the conquerors were a minority in this territory, they were not ready to compromise with the locals, who found themselves in a position which obliged them to understand Arabic. The same purpose of breaking with former structures is conveyed by accounts, which show a distinctive pattern of behaviour by virtue of which the conquerors fiercely tried to distinguish themselves from the customs and practices of the conquered. In the same way as Persians coming to visit caliph ‘Umar in Medina were struck by the simplicity of his dress and style of living that was so different from the apparatus of their former empire, a well-known story in the Latin Chronicle of 754 recounts what happened to ‘Abd al-‘Azīz b. Mūsà, the son of the conqueror Mūsà b. Nuṣayr, who succeeded his father as governor of the new territory: having married the widow of King Rodericus, who had been defeated and killed in the battle of Guadalete, he yielded to the insistent petitions of his wife secretly to wear a crown, as the Visigothic kings had done; this was discovered by a member of the army and



6 Chase F. Robinson, ‘Abd al-Malik, (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005), pp. 174–75; Wadād al-Qāḍī, ‘The Names of Estates in State Registers Before and After the Arabization of the Dīwāns’, in Umayyad Legacies: Medieval Memories from Syria to Spain, ed. by A. Borrut and P. Cobb (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 255–56. 7 Eduardo Manzano Moreno, Conquistadores, emires y califas. Los omeyas y la formación de al-Andalus (Barcelona: Crítica, 2006), pp. 56–59.

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provoked the killing of the governor by his companions, who deemed his conduct utterly unacceptable to their values.8 The elaboration of the monotheist creed of the conquerors also sported a programme of religious salvation that was based on a similar unwillingness to compromise. A good number of Muslim traditions that are said to go back to the Prophet instructed the believers to follow a number of ritual and daily life practices that were explicitly different from those performed by Jews, Christians, or Zoroastrians. Muslims, for instance, were enjoined to pray in a way that was different to pagans, were told by the Prophet to shave their curls ‘because this was the fashion of the Jews’, and were ordered to greet each other ‘with the shaking of hands and the greeting of “salām”’. The rationale behind these admonitions was expressed in a widely circulated utterance of the Prophet that said: ‘do not assimilate yourselves’ (la tashabbahū). According to Kister, these traditions originated at an early period and reflected a social milieu of religious diversity in which Muslims were concerned with the possibility of being absorbed by pre-existing communities.9 Therefore, many aspects that defined the daily practices of Muslims took shape with the explicit aim of drawing boundaries with neighbouring communities at a time when they were a minority and had become so dispersed that the danger of being absorbed by Christians or Jews was acutely felt by the new rulers. Again, it is significant to learn that similar injunctions were duly followed in al-Andalus. One of the earliest Andalusi treatises of law is a work called al-‘Utbiyya, which was composed by a scholar called al-‘Utbī (d. 869/255 ah) and gathers legal questions addressed to fellow scholars, who answered them following the principles that had been established by the Medinese scholar, Mālik b. Anas (d. 795/179 ah), whose rulings had become predominant in the territory of al-Andalus. As A. Hernández Félix has shown, a number of these questions, or ‘masā’il’, have regard to the topic of the ritual purity of Muslims and how this could be polluted by contacts with Jews and Christians. The latter in particular were considered as ‘najas’, or liable to transmit ritual impurity in their contact with Muslims. Hence questions like whether it was acceptable to make ritual ablutions with water used by Christians, or to buy sandals from them, or to wear clothes made by them, ‘bearing in mind that they consume wine’ (no sandals and yes for clothes, according to Mālik). Some of the questions came down to precise points of detail: can the Christian father of a Muslim son wash his corpse if he dies? and what if the supply of meat is scarce and the only butchery belongs to a Jew, is it permissible to buy from him (Mālik did not like the idea)?10 These and other examples show that the need to organize daily life in social milieus marked by religious diversity, and the need to establish a visible hierarchy among the different communities were the cause of considerable elaboration by early Muslim 8 Crónica mozárabe de 754. Continuatio Isidoriana Hispana, ed. by José Eduardo López Pereira (León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro, 2009), pp. 232 and 234. 9 Meir J. Kister, ‘Do not assimilate yourselves: lā tashabbahū’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 12 (1989), 321–71 (p. 340). 10 Ana Hernández Félix, Cuestiones legales en el islam temprano: La ‘Utbuyya y el proceso de formación de la sociedad andalusí (Madrid: CSIC, 2003), pp. 438–58.

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scholars, who were the continuators of a late antique reflection concerning the definition of rigid boundaries among religious communities. As early as the fourth century, for instance, John Chrysostom had lambasted those Christians who went to the synagogue to watch Jews blowing trumpets or joined them in their festivals, and in the fifth century the councils of Elvira and Laodicea forbade Christians from receiving gifts from Jews or to eat with them on the occasion of their festivals.11 The peculiarity of Islam lies in the fact that this stark definition of the community’s boundaries became a distinctive hallmark of its ethos. Similar concerns regarding the possibility of assimilation of Muslims by their neighbours were still expressed in twelfth-century al-Andalus, at a time when they had ceased to be a minority. The Christians who lived under Muslim rule in al-Andalus celebrated the Nativity (‘mīlād’) and the beginning of the new solar year. Men and women, we are told in religious rulings or ‘fatwas’, prepared exquisite meals and exchanged expensive presents on those days, and Muslims joined Christians in their celebratory mood. Muslim scholars, however, unanimously condemned these practices and considered them as dangerous innovations. They also drew support for this view from an utterance of the Prophet which said: ‘Whoever imitates those peoples, he becomes one of them’; or as a companion of the Prophet was reported to have said: ‘A Muslim must beware of becoming a Jew or a Christian without even noticing’.12 As I have already remarked, the origins of this elaboration were initially triggered by the fact that in the early period Muslims were a minority in the lands they had just conquered; however, it is also important to bear in mind that they were also a dominant minority, whose relations with the conquered were the subject of considerable debate. The conquests had resulted in agreements that had granted ‘protection’ or ‘dhimma’ to the conquered communities now under their Muslim rule. These agreements had provided them with a legal status, but had not regulated daily dealings between Muslims and non-Muslims. This matter was addressed in a text known as the Šurūṭ ‘Umar, or the ‘Stipulations of Umar’, which included specific rulings concerning how the conquered should behave vis-à-vis the conquerors. Although the rulings are attributed to the Umayyad caliph ‘Umar II (d. 720/101 ah), the text in its present form dates from the end of the eighth century, but nevertheless it tells us a lot about the issues that were raised as a result of the interaction with the conquered communities.13 Apart from restrictions regarding the construction or restoration of churches, or the public display of their religion, ‘dhimmis’ were ordered not to prevent anyone from converting to Islam; they were banned from imitating the garments of Muslims, wearing turbans, or having their hair parted as Muslims did. Non-Muslims were also forbidden from mounting on saddles, from engraving Arab inscriptions on their seals, from selling fermented drinks, from burying their 11 Robert Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century (Berkeley: University of California, 1983), pp. 71–72. 12 Fernando de la Granja, ‘Fiestas cristianas en al-Andalus (Materiales para su estudio)’, al-Andalus, 35 (1970), 119–42 (pp. 134–38). 13 Mark Cohen, ‘What Was the Pact of ‘Umar? A Literary-Historical Study’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 23 (1999), 100–57 (p. 128).

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dead near the Muslims, and from keeping pigs in their vicinity. Christians were also told to wear a belt called ‘zunnar’ around their waist so that they would be easily recognized, and also to rise from their seat whenever Muslims wanted to sit, thus showing respect for them. All these boundaries may strike us as being particularly harsh, but it is interesting to note that again Muslims were not innovating in this regard. Milka Levy Rubin has shown that Byzantine law included restrictions and prohibitions regarding the building or restoration of synagogues, the marriage of Christians with Jews, or conversion to Judaism, all or which incurred very heavy penalties. Also, according to this legislation, Christian dogma and practices had to be respected by Jews, very much in the same way that Muslims demanded consideration for their interdictions on food and drink. Concerning the distinguishing marks that the Šurūṭ ‘Umar imposed on non-Muslims, Levy Rubin has found them inspired by Sasanian social practices that also established strong class distinctions and rigid codes regarding clothing, arms bearing, property of authority seals, or etiquette.14 The late antique pattern by virtue of which citizens were divided according to their religious identity was taken over by Muslims, who adapted pre-existing social and religious practices of discrimination in order to build a new hierarchy dominated by their own creed. It is obvious that the enforcement of this hierarchy and the marking of these distinctions vis-a-vis the ‘others’ differed very much depending on time and place. But what it is paradoxical is the fact that these sharp boundaries had to be set up, in part because of the relative weakness of the conquerors, who had dispersed across huge territories, but also because they were the dominant players in the new social and political landscapes that the conquests brought about. The outcome of these situations was as contradictory as the new political and social order of the conquerors. A telling anecdote concerning an Arab chieftain called al-Ṣumayl, who had settled in al-Andalus a few decades after the conquest, describes him passing by a teacher who was instructing children to recite verse 140 of the Quranic sūra number 3, known as ‘The Family of ‘Imrān’, which reads: ‘If a wound afflicts you, a like wound has already afflicted those people; and We make such vicissitudes rotate among mankind, so that Allāh may ascertain those who have faith, and that He may take martyrs from among you, and Allāh does not like the wrongdoers’. Al-Ṣumayl stood by, but could not resist the temptation of correcting the teacher: surely he was wrong, because the verse did not refer to ‘mankind’ but to the ‘Arabs’. When the teacher told him that this was not the case and that the verse had been revealed referring to mankind, he exclaimed: ‘Then, by God, it means we are associated with serfs, scum and scoundrels’.15 This haughty perception of the ‘others’ was part and parcel of the process of ethnogenesis that defined a strong Arab identity, which was shared by the new elite

14 Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims, pp. 121–36 and 144–62. 15 Ibn al-Qūṭiyya, Ta’rīkh iftitāḥ al-Andalus, ed. by Pascual de Gayangos, Eduardo Saavedra, and Francisco Codera, and trans. by Julián Ribera (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1926), pp. 40–41; English trans. by David James, Early Islamic Spain: The History of Ibn al-Qūṭiya (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), p. 77.

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that had emerged triumphant from the conquests and was fully aware of its dominant position vis-à-vis the conquered peoples. In this situation, the conquerors considered themselves not only as the spearhead of an Arab empire that had a programme of universal dominion, but also as members of a community of believers, who were the recipients of a message of salvation that, notwithstanding the fact that many of its aspects had not as yet been fully developed, still had a number of essential traits that were very well defined, like the idea that the final revelation had been bestowed upon an Arab prophet, the staunch belief in the unity of God, and a number of straightforward ritual prescriptions.16 The new rulers were also in control of the administration and had to ensure that taxes were paid, roads were safe, and that the lives and properties of the conquered were respected, if they agreed to abide to the new rules. Crucially, they performed these and many other tasks from cities recently occupied or founded, which centralized the administration. As a matter of fact, instead of the usual map that portrays the early Islamic expansion as a uniform and instant layer covering huge territories from Central Asia to Iberia, we should consider a cartography based on the emergence of multiple urban hubs increasingly connected by land and sea routes that were first threaded by conquering armies, then by administrators, and finally by scholars (ulamā’) and traders. Once it was settled in these hubs, the new dominant class was mainly concerned with those who had submitted to its rule and was less interested with those who had rejected it, as far as they did not disturb the new status quo. An Arab account of the beginning of Christian resistance in northern Iberia in the 720s describes how the conquerors decided not to chase Pelayo, the local chieftain who had taken shelter in the Asturian mountains with his followers, because they did not seem to pose an immediate threat on their rule.17 The interconnection among these hubs and their local expansion resulted in a network of shared ideological and socio-cultural traits that defined the ‘dār al-islām’ as a distinctive unity, which overran political boundaries. The ‘dār al-islām’ was, therefore, the creation of urban communities, which elaborated the theory and practice of the new cultural and religious systems of expression and belief. There are two aspects that are particularly striking in this process: first, the high degree of homogeneity which this cultural shift achieved across distant regions — even sectarian movements in early Islam agreed on a number of fundamental aspects with the rest of the community —; and second, how rapidly this cohesion was accomplished. Again, the case of Iberia is particularly telling, as this was a land that had been conquered only 91 years after the ‘Hijra’ by conquerors who were outnumbered by the local population, but who still managed to arabize and islamize a territory that not only was far away from the central lands of Islam, but also had severed its political links with the ‘Abbāsid caliphate four

16 Fred Donner, Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 203–12. 17 Akhbār Majmū‘a, Colección de tradiciones, ed. by Lafuente Alcántara (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1867), p, 28 among others; Eduardo Manzano Moreno, ‘La rebelión de los astures en las fuentes árabes’, Mainaké, 36 (2016), 279–88 (pp. 283–87).

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decades after its conquest. The feat is even more remarkable if we bear in mind the fact that the conquerors included a considerable number of North African Berbers in their ranks, who at this early stage were only superficially islamized and arabized. To make things even more difficult, the neighbouring Maghrib al-aqṣà was only superficially islamized in this period — even in the tenth century Andalusi writers still referred to the land on the other side of the Straits of Gibraltar as a place where there was ‘no science or culture’ (lā ‘ilm wa lā adab) — so that cultural and economic links had to be established with the main hubs of Ifrīqiya or Egypt, like Qayrawān or Alexandria.18 ‘Hispania’ became ‘al-Andalus’, among other reasons, because of the fact that the conquerors managed to create a tightly knitted and well-defined Arab and Muslim community that had stronger cultural and political links with the central and distant cities of the Near East than with the neighbouring Christian territories that were impregnated with a culture and a religion, which were increasingly deemed as alien and hostile.

The Assimilated Others In the long run, however, and this is essential for my argument, neither the religious nor even the ethnic community remained closed to members of conquered groups and this opened the door for their assimilation. Conversion was an obvious choice for Jews or Christians willing to enrol in the ranks of the religion that had come to end with all other religions. What is interesting, though, is that early conversions followed the same pattern of political domination and social discrimination that we have seen prevailing during the formative period of Islam. When a non-Arab wanted to convert to Islam, he had to do so by also becoming the client of an Arab who sponsored his conversion. This was called ‘walā’’ and it ensured that the new Muslim became the client or ‘mawlà’ of that Arab, thus becoming personally attached to him. The patron gained certain rights over the client or ‘mawlà’, like the possibility of inheriting from him if he died without heirs. These ‘mawālī’ were considered as inferiors and, at least in theory, were prohibited from marrying Arab women and deemed unsuitable for holding positions in government.19 These discriminations rapidly dissolved and some of them were never really enforced. But they show again how early Islam used institutional tools borrowed from the legacy of Late Antiquity, in this case patronage, in order to build a new political and social hierarchy in relation to the others. The ‘walā’’ system also generated an unexpected effect. Despite the subaltern status of the new converts, many of them held dominant positions in their original 18 Ibn Ḥayyān, al-Muqtabis fī akhbār balad al-Andalus, ed. by ‘Abd al-Raḥmān ‘Alī al-Ḥaŷŷī (Beirut: Dār al-ḥikma, 1965), p. 160; trans. by Emilio García Gómez, El califato de Córdoba en el Muqtabis de Ibn Ḥayyān. Anales Palatinos del califa de Córdoba al-Ḥakam II por ‘Īsà ibn Aḥmad al-Rāzī (360–64 = 971–75 J.C.) (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia: 1967), p. 200. 19 Patricia Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patronate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 89–91; Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs, 2nd edn (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2007), s.v. ‘mawlà’.

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communities: their wealth, their learning, or their social standing did not vanish, even though now they were considered to be inferior to the conquering Arab Muslims. The logic of social processes and interactions tended to prevail, and the result was that the hierarchy that the ‘walā’’ system was trying to enforce, met with a much more complex social reality, something that helps to explain some of the tensions that affected Muslim societies in the eighth and ninth centuries. In the course of time, these tensions led to significant changes in prevailing political and social conditions and, in turn, this resulted in the disappearance of the mechanisms of hierarchization that had existed during the formative period. But the memory of institutions like the ‘walā’’ still remained, and later legal and political commentators were well aware of their importance in the early period. By the tenth century, for instance, someone who converted to Islam did not become the client of an Arab any longer, but an Andalusian legal scholar still felt it necessary to make it clear that the witness who was present at the act of conversion did not become the patron of the new Muslim, nor did he have any legal claim to his inheritance.20 At that time, the gate of conversion was fully open, social hierarchies depended on other factors, and there was no need to keep using the preventions against the ‘others’ that had prevailed during the formative period, but the identity mark that had been forged at the early stages of Islam was still well remembered. Whereas islamization allowed converts to knock down boundaries across religious communities, arabization affected the whole society. This also tended to blur the early supremacy of the Arabs. ‘Serfs, scum and scoundrels’ adopted Arab language, Arab culture, or even Arab identity, in some cases very rapidly. Although claiming pristine Arab ethnic origins was always a handy argument in terms of social competition, something that kept genealogists busy, the trend towards the definition of most conquered societies as Arab — with the notable exception of Iran — was overwhelming. Al-Andalus is again a good example of this. Berbers from north Africa who had arrived in the ranks of the Arab army at the time of the conquest and the indigenous population gradually joined the conquerors to create a society which, notwithstanding the diverse origins of its members, came to be defined by unmistakably Arab and Muslim patterns. We can assess this outcome in the case of religious scholars or ‘ulamā’’, whose number increased in some regions of al-Andalus from the middle of the eighth century onwards. Take the case of a certain Abū Mūsà al-Hawwārī, a Berber who lived in the second half of that century (he died in 796/180 ah) and was described as someone who had mastered the knowledge of the Arabs (‘‘ilm al-‘arab’) and the knowledge of religion (‘‘ilm al-dīn’). Also noteworthy was the case of Yaḥyà b. Yaḥyà b. Kathir b. Wislas, a Berber who had been born in c. 769/152 ah His great-grandfather had converted less than a century before, which means that after three generations Yaḥyà had such a good command of Arabic and such an in-depth

20 Ibn al-‘Aṭṭār, Kitāb al-wathā’iq wa l–sijillāt, ed. by Pedro Chalmeta (Madrid: Instituto Hispano Árabe de Cultura, 1983), p. 410; study and translation by by Pedro Chalmeta y Marina Marugán, Formulario notarial y judicial andalusí (Madrid: Fundación Matritense del Notariado, 2000), p. 637.

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knowledge of Islam as to make him one of the most prominent Mālikite scholars of his time.21 Examples like these reveal an extraordinary capacity of integration of other communities, something that helped Muslim converts to overcome ethnic boundaries. By the tenth century the assimilation process had gone so far, that the caliph al-Ḥakam II (961–976/350–366 ah) showed his surprise when a judge he had just appointed did not hide the fact that his ancestors were indigenous: the caliph recognized that a simple fabrication of a bogus genealogy would have linked him to pure Arab origins.22 By the eleventh century Berber rulers in al-Andalus were claiming Arab origins with no one contradicting their claims. Muslims of non-Arab origin were not the only ones to become arabized. Christian and Jewish communities also became assimilated. A well-known indicator of this arabization is a famous text by a ninth-century Christian writer from Cordoba, called Alvarus, who complained that only one among a thousand Christians was able to write a letter in Latin. Young Christians in Cordoba preferred the beauty of poetry to the study of religious texts and were obsessed with reading the works of the Arabs. Exactly the same anxieties were expressed by the Egyptian writer of the tenth-century text known as Apocalypse of Samuel Calamun, who also lamented the use of Arabic by Copts: ‘Disaster, double disaster! In these times they [the Copts] imitate the Muslims. They give their children Muslim names…and they do something so terrible that your hearts will definitively fill with sadness if I tell you about it: they abandon the beautiful Coptic language, teaching their children from an early age to speak Arabic’.23 These complaints hardly made any impact. By the tenth century the Gospels, the Psalms and even the proceedings of the Christian councils were being translated into Arabic in al-Andalus, an indication that bears witness that even among Christian populations that language was more widespread than was Latin. Jewish communities were also deeply arabized. But here a significant difference should also be borne in mind. In a short but thought-provoking article, David Wasserstein has argued that the emergence of Islam and the early Arab conquests saved Judaism from extinction. His argument is that in the sixth and seventh centuries Jewish communities across the Mediterranean and the Middle East were on the brink of disappearance, due to widespread persecution, forced conversion to Christianity, and an increasing isolation due to the decline of regular contacts across the sea. The expansion of Islam helped Jews to survive, first because it granted them the status of ‘dhimmis’, which despite enforcing a subaltern status, still conferred on them a protection they had been denied before, and second, because the making of the ‘dār

21 Maribel Fierro, ‘Yaḥyà b. Yaḥyà (m. 234/848), El inteligente de al-Andalus’, in Biografías y género biográfico en el occidente islámico, ed. by María Luisa Ávila Navarro (Madrid: CSIC, 1997), pp. 269–344 (pp. 277–78). 22 al-Khushanī, Kitāb al-quḍāt bi Qurṭuba, ed. and trans. by Julián Ribera, Historia de los jueces de Córdoba por Aljoxani (Madrid: Ibérica, 1914), pp. 239 and 192. 23 Albarus, Indiculus Luminosus, ed. by Juan Gil, Corpus Scriptorum Muzarabicorum (Madrid: CSIC, 1973), pp. 270–315 (pp. 314–15); Samuel Calamoun, Apocalypse, ed. and trans. by Joseph Ziadeh, ‘L´Apocalypse de Samuel, supérieur de deir-elqalamoun’, Revue de l´Órient Chrétien, 20 (1915–1917), pp. 379 and 394–95. The English translation I quote is by Sijpensteijn, Why Arabic, p. 17.

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al-islām’ as a homogeneous cultural realm allowed Jewish communities to gradually restart communicating among themselves.24 Wasserstein’s interpretation would explain why, in contrast with the resistance of some Christians to Arabization, Jews welcomed it or, at least, made creative use of it. Esperanza Alfonso has shown the existence of a distinctive pattern among Jewish poets in al-Andalus, who praised bilingualism of Hebrew and Arabic, as demonstrated by a much-quoted poetic fragment by a tenth-century Jewish poet called Dunash ben Labrat, which says: ‘May the garden of our delights be the sacred books, and your orchard the books of the Arabs’.25 Even authors who were mainly interested in the description of the Hebrew language as a sign of identity of the Jews, were influenced by the development of the sophisticated considerations that Arab grammarians were making on Arabic as a sacred language.26 In this connection, it is possible to assess an identity reaffirmation of the ‘others’, in this case the Jewish communities, who took elements from the dominant group in order to build a new sense of belonging that could confront the challenges posed by increasing processes of islamization. Therefore, and in the same way that Romanization integrated the ‘others’ into the structures of the Roman Empire, ‘arabization’ and ‘islamization’ also managed to assimilate ‘otherness’. The early phase in which the conquerors drew a sharp political and ideological divide with the conquered, did not last long, as new situations were rapidly evolving. Neither the religious nor even the ethnic community remained closed to members of other groups and this opened the door for an assimilation that took different and, sometimes, contradictory paths. There is an increasing trend to call these societies ‘islamicate’ following the neologism coined by Marshall Hodgson to refer to those regions where Muslims were culturally dominant but not unique, as other cultures came to coexist with them.27 Once the ‘dār al-islām’ had been formed, the definition of boundaries against the external others was just a matter of adapting a very well-established narrative.

The External Others One of the most enduring consequences of the Arab expansion was the long-lasting fragmentation of the Mediterranean; a fragmentation that was not only political but also cultural and, to some degree, social. The initial programme of universal rule 24 David Wasserstein, ‘¿Cómo salvó el islam a los judíos?’, Hesperia. Culturas del Mediterráneo, 10 (2015), 223–28. (pp. 227–28). 25 Quoted by Esperanza Alfonso, Islamic Culture Through Jewish Eyes: Al-Andalus from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), p. 12. 26 Alfonso, Islamic Culture Through Jewish Eyes, p. 12. 27 Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization (Chicago: The Chicago University Press, 1974), pp. 57–60.

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stopped at the medieval frontiers or ‘thugūr’ that emerged in Iberia, Anatolia, Central Asia, and the Indian sub-continent. Beyond these limits, a disparate set of peoples, cultures and religions confronted the unity that was defined by the ‘dār al-islām’. In the same way as the Roman frontier or ‘limes’ separated imperial lands from the foreigners or ‘barbarians’, the ‘thugūr’ also defined a precise political and ideological division. Muslim legal experts and political theorists of the classical period drew a stark distinction between the lands of the so-called ‘dār al-islām’, the abode of Islam, and those pertaining to the ‘dār al-ḥarb’, or abode of war, where Islamic law was not observed, the lives and properties of Muslims had no security, and the practice of Holy War (‘jihād’) was legitimate. This division was reminiscent of the sharp distinction that classical authors perceived between the Roman Empire and the ‘externae gentes’, usually portrayed as enemies of the ‘humanitas’ that characterized Roman society and safely kept in check on the other side of the imperial ‘limes’. As a matter of fact, it is striking to realize how Romans and Muslims shared a similar perception of the peoples who lived beyond their boundaries. Authors like Cicero linked the terms ‘barbarus’, ‘barbaria’ or ‘homines barbari’ to a number of moral and cultural traits that included an instinctive and savage life, a rudimentary technology, ignorance, or moral debauchery. Horace went even further by insisting that the main duty of Rome was to fight against the barbarians and to avoid being contaminated by them. This perspective explains why there are so few descriptions by Roman authors of peoples and lands that lay outside the ‘limes’, Tacitus’ De origine et situ Germanorum being a notable exception.28 A similar pattern can be discerned in the intellectual production of Islamicate societies several centuries later. The few Arab descriptions of kingdoms and populations living outside the ‘abode of war’ were dominated by stereotypes, hostility, and terseness at least until the late Middle Ages. In Iberia, for instance, Arab chroniclers mention dozens of military expeditions of Muslim armies against the Christian north from the eighth century onwards, but they never bother to describe who were these enemies: only the lands are identified (‘Jillīqiya’, ‘Alaba wa l-Qila’, ‘Ifranj’) and occasionally the rulers with whom the Muslims engaged on war, but the identities of the peoples were covered by general epithets, like ‘‘ulūj’, or ‘rude, ignorant men’ (which seems to be an exact translation of ‘barbarus’) or ‘rūm’, which is mentioned in the Quran to designate the Byzantines and is employed by Andalusi authors to refer to the northern Christians.29 In the same vein, Arab geographers described the ‘dār al-islām’ as occupying the central climate of the seven climate zones into which the earth was divided, while other peoples lived in less favoured areas, something that resulted in their lack of science and civilization. In his Ṭabaqāt al-umam, the eleventh-century Andalusian writer Ibn Ṣā‘id al-Andalusī (d. 1070/462 ah) described the inhabitants of

28 Yves Albert Dauge, Le Barbare. Recherches sur la conception romaine de la barbarie et de la civilisation (Bruxelles: Latomus, 1981), pp. 127–31 and 161; Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (Den Haag: Mouton, 1979), pp. 11–12. 29 Eva Lapiedra Gutiérrez, Cómo los musulmanes llamaban a los cristianos hispánicos (Valencia: Instituto de Cultura Juan Gil-Albert: 1997), pp. 114–40 and pp. 189–243.

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the West as dominated by ignorance, tyranny, and violence, whereas other peoples of the past and the present, like the Indians, the Persians, the Chaldeans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Arabs, and the Hebrews, certainly did cultivate science.30 Many other examples of the classical period could be drawn from Arab writers which display a splendid contempt for strangers that is not very different from the disdain that those who lived within the boundaries of the ‘Romanitas’ showed for the barbarians. Obviously, I am not suggesting that Arab authors were familiar with the works of antiquity, not even that there was a line of thought that survived across the centuries connecting both perceptions. The point I am trying to make is that both Roman and Arab cultures showcased a similar self-confidence and a sense of cultural superiority that deemed ‘otherness’ as an inferior form of humanity. The Roman abhorrence of the barbarians has never been a matter of judgement in our days, as a widespread contention tends to support their own idea that their values and civilization were far superior than those held by the ‘externae gentes’ who lived beyond their frontiers. Islam has been less fortunate. The discussion of how Muslims viewed peoples living beyond Islamic societies in the so called ‘dār al-ḥarb’ has become a controversial topic since Bernard Lewis wrote The Muslim Discovery of Europe, a book in which he claimed that the medieval Muslim world hardly knew anything about Europe due to a mixture of arrogance, indifference, and self-indulgence. According to Lewis, this long-lasting view had devastating consequences when the economic development of the West began, and the long-term consequences of its political expansion took by surprise Muslim societies, which tried to react to it when it was too late.31 There are many reasons to criticize Lewis’ views, as authors like Edward Said and many others have rightly shown.32 Broad generalizations on the one hand, and far-fetched comparisons between the Muslim East and the West on the other make up an argument full of implicit and explicit political implications, but also void of a proper analysis of the consequences that entailed Western political, economic, and cultural expansionism in the colonial era. In a recent work, Daniel König has advocated a view that leaves aside stereotypes and concentrates on the ‘perceptions’ produced by different contexts, which also require specific analysis.33 This approach is correct and there is no doubt that in different times and places, and for a variety of reasons, medieval Islamicate societies had a vested interest on what was happening beyond their frontiers. However, and instead of trying to identify any shred of evidence that can lead us to dismiss the ‘moral’ charge against medieval Islam for having shown a distinctive haughtiness vis à vis the others, it is more interesting to analyse the issue from a 30 Ibn Ṣā‘id al-Andalusī, Kitāb ṭabaqāt al-umam, ed. by Louis Cheikho (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1912), pp. 7–8. 31 Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1982), pp. 296–302. 32 Edward Said, ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’, Cultural Critique, 1 (1985), 89–107 (p. 96). 33 Daniel König, Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West: Tracing the Emergence of Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 23.

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strict historical perspective — no need therefore to draw post facto conclusions à la Lewis — and to accept that in the early period the ‘dār al-islām’ certainly became a self-contained cultural and ideological realm that hardly needed additional inputs from peoples who lived outside its limits; in this connection, a telling parallel can be established between the wide circulation of peoples, ideas, and goods within the realm of Islam and the sporadic and dire contacts with the West. * In this paper I have tried to explain why this was the case. If the configuration of early Islam and the great Arab conquests can be compared to a physical process, this would be that of the Big Bang, in which elements and particles attracted or repelled each other in a variety of forms and under a number of different circumstances, thus giving way to the cosmological stages of a universe that was constantly evolving. The same holds true for the rapid changes that we see from the middle of the seventh century onwards. At a first stage strict religious and ethnic boundaries were drawn, because the conquerors were hastily configuring new identities in a hostile environment. The concepts that defined this early opposition to the ‘others’ owed a good deal to ideas and practices that were inherited from Late Antiquity. As a result of this early stage, by the time that Muslims were no longer a minority and to be an Arab did not necessarily mean to be a member of the ruling elite, boundaries had been drawn and enforced in more or less restrictive ways depending on times and places. In the long run, however, the implementation of these boundaries changed. Language, descent, or culture no longer belonged only to the Arabs, as these qualities could also be shared by ‘others’; Islam had an undisputable social and political pre-eminence, but it was not infrequent to see Arabized Christians or Jews in top-ranking positions of the administration or even dominating the social scale. These conditions reflected some fundamental changes in Islamicate societies that gradually became more homogeneous as artisans, traders, bureaucrats, officials, scholars, and other urban classes formed their backbone irrespective of their religious affiliation. However, and this is important, the differentiating mechanisms and criteria remained in place, as they became embedded in notions that were still extant even though social conditions were not any longer those that had prevailed at the formative period. In the Middle Ages, those notions were ignored, reworked, or implemented depending on changing political or social circumstances, as they were not essential traits that determined reality. From all this there is still a further conclusion that might be useful for us today. Western views on the history of Islamicate societies have frequently been based on unacceptable generalizations and essentialist notions. The extraordinary dynamism of these societies and their social and cultural evolution has been denied or, even worse, has been considered as incomprehensible and irrational. The more we know about them, however, the more it becomes clear that they were deeply transformed by comprehensible and fascinating historical factors.

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Works Cited Primary Sources ‘Abd Allāh b. ‘Abd al-Ḥakam, Sīrat ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz, ed. by Aḥmad ‘Ubayd (Beirut: ‘Ālam al-Kutub, 1984) Albarus, Indiculus Luminosus, ed. by Juan Gil, Corpus Scriptorum Muzarabicorum (Madrid: CSIC, 1973), pp. 270–315 Akhbār Majmū‘a, Colección de tradiciones, ed. by Emilio Lafuente Alcántara (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1867) Crónica mozárabe de 754. Continuatio Isidoriana Hispana, ed. by José Eduardo López Pereira (León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro, 2009) Ibn al-‘Aṭṭār, Kitāb al-wathā’iq wa l–sijillāt, ed. by Pedro Chalmeta (Madrid: Instituto Hispano Árabe de Cultura, 1983); study and translation by Pedro Chalmeta and Marina Marugán, Formulario notarial y judicial andalusí (Madrid: Fundación Matritense del Notariado, 2000) Ibn Ḥayyān, al-Muqtabis fī akhbār balad al-Andalus, ed. by ‘Abd al-Raḥmān ‘Alī al-Ḥaŷŷī (Beirut: Dār al-ḥikma, 1965); trans. by Emilio García Gómez, El califato de Córdoba en el Muqtabis de Ibn Ḥayyān. Anales Palatinos del califa de Córdoba al-Ḥakam II por ‘Īsà ibn Aḥmad al-Rāzī (360–64 = 971–75 J.C.) (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1967) Ibn al-Qūṭiya, Ta’rīkh ifititāḥ al-Andalus, ed. by Pascual de Gayangos, Eduardo Saavedra, and Francisco Codera, and trans. by Julián Ribera (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1926); English trans. by David James, Early Islamic Spain: The History of Ibn al-Qūṭiya (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009) Ibn Ṣā‘id al-Andalusī, Kitāb ṭabaqāt al-umam, ed. by Louis Cheikho (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1912) al-Khushanī, Kitāb al-quḍāt bi Qurṭuba, ed. and trans. by Julián Ribera, Historia de los jueces de Córdoba por Aljoxani (Madrid: Ibérica, 1914) Samuel Calamun, Apocalypse, ed. by Joseph Ziadeh, ‘L´Apocalypse de Samuel, supérieur de deir-elqalamoun’, Revue de lÓrient Chrétien, 20 (1915–1917), 374–404 Secondary Works Alfonso, Esperanza, Islamic Culture through Jewish Eyes: Al-Andalus from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008) Al-Qāḍī, Wadād, ‘The Names of Estates in State Registers Before and After the Arabization of the Dīwāns’, in Umayyad Legacies: Medieval Memories from Syria to Spain, ed. by A. Borrut and P. Cobb (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 255–80 Cohen, Mark, ‘What Was the Pact of ‘Umar? A Literary-Historical Study’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 23 (1999), 100–57 Crone, Patricia, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patronate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) Dauge, Yves Albert, Le Barbare. Recherches sur la conception romaine de la barbarie et de la civilisation (Bruxelles: Latomus, 1981)

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Donner, Fred, Muḥammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010) Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs, 2nd edn (Leyden: Brill 1960–2007) Fierro, Maribel, ‘Yaḥyà b. Yaḥyà (m. 234/848). El inteligente de al-Andalus’, in Biografías y género biográfico en el occidente islámico, ed. by María Luisa Ávila Navarro (Madrid: CSIC, 1997), pp. 269–344 Fisher, Greg, Between Empires: Arabs, Romans, and Sasanians in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) Granja, Fernando de la, ‘Fiestas cristianas en al-Andalus. (Materiales para su estudio)’, alAndalus, 35 (1970) 119–42 Hernández Félix, Ana, Cuestiones legales en el islam temprano: La ‘Utbuyya y el proceso de formación de la sociedad andalusí (Madrid: CSIC, 2003) Hodgson, Marshall, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization (Chicago: The Chicago University Press, 1974) Hoyland, Robert, ‘Arab Kings, Arab Tribes and the Beginnings of Arab Historical Memory in Late Roman Epigraphy’, in From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East, ed. by Hannah M. Cotton, Lennart Sundelin, Sofía Torallas Tovar, and Amalia Zomeño (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 374–400 ———, ‘Epigraphy and the Emergence of an Arab Identity’, in From al-Andalus to Khurasan: Documents from the Medieval Muslim World, ed. by Petra Sijpesteijn, Robert G. Hoyland, Jonathan J. Price, and David J. Wasserstein (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 217–42 ———, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1997) Kister, Meir J., ‘Do not assimilate yourselves: lā tashabbahū’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 12 (1989), 321–71 König, Daniel G., Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West: Tracing the Emergence of Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) Lapiedra Gutiérrez, Eva, Cómo los musulmanes llamaban a los cristianos hispánicos (Valencia: Instituto de Cultura Juan Gil-Albert: 1997) Levy-Rubin, Milka, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011) Lewis, Bernard, The Muslim Discovery of Europe (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1982) Manzano Moreno, Eduardo, Conquistadores, emires y califas. Los omeyas y la formación de al-Andalus (Barcelona: Crítica, 2006) ———, ‘La rebelión de los astures en las fuentes árabes’, Mainaké, 36 (2016), 279–88 Peters, Rudolph, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (Den Haag: Mouton, 1979) Pohl, Walter, ‘Introduction. Strategies of Identification: A Methodological Profile’, in Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013)

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Robinson, Chase F., ‘Abd al-Malik (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005) Said, Edward, ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’, Cultural Critique, 1 (1985), 89–107 Sijpesteijn, Petra, Why Arabic? (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2012) Sourdel, Dominique, ‘Un pamphlet musulman anonyme d’epoque ‘abbāside contre les Chrétiens’, Revue des Etudes Islamiques, 34 (1966), 1–33 Wasserstein, David, ‘¿Cómo salvó el islam a los judíos?’, Hesperia. Culturas del Mediterráneo, 10 (2015), 223–28 Wilken, Robert, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century (Berkeley: University of California, 1983)

Patrick S. Mar schner

The Familiar Stranger Biblical Perception and Depiction of Muslims in Christian Chronicles of the Iberian Peninsula, c. 900

Introduction When I came up with the title for my paper, I only later discovered that ‘the familiar stranger’ was in fact the name of a theory by Stanley Milgram, who, with reference to one of his students, defines ‘the familiar stranger’ as follows: ‘To become a familiar stranger a person (1) has to be observed, (2) repeatedly for a certain time period, and (3) without any interaction’.1 This last point raises an essential difference with what I wanted to call a ‘familiar stranger’ here. It simply does not fit with the encounter of Christians and Muslims around the year 900, because they did interact. Nevertheless, mere interaction is not the only way to get to know the cultural and religious ‘Other’, who in the case of this paper are the Arabs depicted by Christian chroniclers. Another kind of perceived familiarity could be transmitted knowledge. This is what I want to focus on.2 To begin, it is necessary to give a brief introduction to the history of the Umayyad conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, to bring to mind the contemporary circumstances as well as occurrences that caused the chroniclers to depict their history as they did. In 711, the Visigothic kingdom fell in the face of the Umayyad invasion of the Peninsula. The last Visigothic king, Roderic, died in battle trying to defend his

1 Stanley Milgram, ‘The Familiar Stranger: An Aspect of Urban Anonymity’, in The Individual in a Social World: Essays and Experiments, ed. by John Sabini and Maury Silver, McGraw-Hill Series in Social Psychology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992), pp. 68–71 (p. 68). 2 Thus, what I am going to explain here is similar to the third distinction of ‘Other’ in the introduction. Yet, the short distanced ‘Self ’ that seems foreign, thematized in the introduction, differs from the here investigated ‘Other’, coming from far away but nevertheless seeming familiar. In any case, this study predominantly deals with the introductions’ fifth distinction of ‘Other’, the world-view based conceptions of ‘Otherness’ and, furthermore, the process of their emergence. Dr Patrick S. Marschner  •  ([email protected]) worked for the FWF-project ‘Bible and Historiography in Transcultural Iberian Societies, 8th to 12th centuries’ at the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and wrote his PhD thesis at the University of Vienna on the biblical elements in Christian-Iberian historical writing. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 253–274 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123594

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kingdom. By the 730s nearly the entire Iberian Peninsula was under Umayyad rule. Only the territories in the Northwest remained under Christian control. In the first third or perhaps middle of the eighth century, the Asturian kingdom emerged.3 Abd ar-Rahman I established the Emirate of Córdoba in 756.4 Hence, from then on there were two rival political powers in the Peninsula. Shortly before the foundation of the Emirate, the earliest surviving ChristianLatin chronicles after the Umayyad invasion were written in the South of the Iberian Peninsula. They already thematized the conquest and the cultural and religious ‘Other’, but in a manner that was, in comparison with later historiographical testimonies, very careful and non-polemical.5 After a gap of over one hundred years, the next surviving chronicles were written at the court of the Asturian King Alfonso III in 881 and 883. They are known as the Chronicle of Albelda6 and the Prophetic Chronicle.7 These works will be the main points of reference for the argument I would like to present

3 Ludwig Vones, Geschichte der Iberischen Halbinsel im Mittelalter (711–1480): Reiche – Kronen – Regionen (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1993), p. 35. 4 Vones, Geschichte, p. 28. 5 These are the Chronica anni 741 vel Chronica Byzantia Arabica, ed. by Juan Gil [Fernández], in Chronica Hispana saeculi viii et ix, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 65 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 307–23, and the Chronica anni 754 vel Chronica Muzarabica, ed. by Juan Gil [Fernández], in Chronica Hispana saeculi viii et ix, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 65 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 325–82. 6 Chronica Albeldensis, ed. by Juan Gil [Fernández], in Chronica Hispana saeculi viii et ix, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 65 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 435–84. 7 Chronica Prophetica, ed. by Yves Bonnaz, in Chroniques Asturiennes (Fin ixe Siècle), Sources d’histoire médiévale, 20 (Paris: Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1987), pp. 2–9. The first, who identified and edited the Prophetic Chronicle as independent text was Manuel Gómez-Moreno, ‘Las primeras crónicas de la Reconquista: El ciclo de Alfonso iii’, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 100 (1932), 562–628 (pp. 575–76). The discussion about the independence of the Prophetic Chronicle continues until today. Examples of scholars, who exclude the Prophetic Chronicle from the Chronicle of Albelda are Jan Prelog, Die Chronik Alfons’ iii: Untersuchung und kritische Edition der vier Redaktionen, Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe III, Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften, 134 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1980), pp. cxliii–cxlvi; Yves Bonnaz, Chroniques Asturiennes (fin IXe siècle), Sources d’histoire médiévale, 20 (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1987), pp. lx–lxiii; Alexander Pierre Bronisch, Reconquista und Heiliger Krieg: Die Deutung des Krieges im christlichen Spanien von den Westgoten bis ins frühe 12. Jahrhundert, Spanische Forschungen der Görresgesellschaft, zweite Reihe, 35 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1998), p. 145, who pleads for the separation of the Prophetic Chronicle due to its independent appearance in the famous Codex of Roda; Rodrigo Furtado, ‘The Chronica Prophetica in MS. Madrid, RAH Aem. 78’, in Forme di accesso al sapere in età tardoantica e altomedievale 6: Raccolta delle relazioni discusse nell’incontro internazionale di Trieste, Biblioteca Statale, 24–25 settembre 2015, ed. by Lucio Cristante and Vanni Veronesi, Polymnia. Studi di filologie classica, 19 (Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2016), pp. 75–100 (pp. 77–80). The main opponent to the independence of the Prophetic Chronicle, who recently revived the discussion, is Juan Gil [Fernández], Chronica Hispana saeculi viii et ix, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis, 65 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 212–15. I will not commit myself to one of these standpoints. Since my approach to the Asturian testimonies differs essentially from these scholars, the actual independence or non-independence of the Prophetic Chronicle plays no role in my argumentation. Nevertheless, every time the name ‘Prophetic Chronicle’ is mentioned in this article, I refer to those passages of the text corpus called the Chronicle of Albelda that some

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here. They belong to the group of chronicles, known as Asturian Chronicles, which also involve the different redactions of the Chronicle of Alfonso III. Since the Chronicle of Albelda and the Prophetic Chronicle do not differ essentially from the strategies of identifying the cultural and religious ‘Other’ and together form one text corpus, it is appropriate to first describe the emergence of the biblical depiction in these texts. Afterwards, this article will investigate how these strategies of identification were advanced in the Chronicle of Alfonso III, composed some years later at the same court. It is common opinion in modern scholarship that the authors of these ‘Asturian Chronicles’ made use of reports about the martyrs of Córdoba. Such reports could have been brought to the North by Mozarabic refugees — or at least migrants — fleeing the repression against them following political changes in the Emirate of Córdoba in the middle of the ninth century.8 Christian-Muslim encounters also took place on the frontiers of the Asturian kingdom. These two facts — Christian-Muslim encounters and the knowledge of the situation of the Mozarabs, brought from the South to the North of the Peninsula — can be classified as the category of ‘empirical ways’ to make a stranger familiar. They are based on experience. Yet, as we will see, the depiction of the cultural and religious ‘Other’ in the historical writing of the Asturian kingdom was not only based on these experiences. It was also combined with Bible-based ‘traditional knowledge’ of ‘Others’, which I will explore in what follows.

The Ethnonyms for the Foreign Rulers in Ninth-Century Asturian Historical Writing Saracens

The Chronicle of Albelda offers at least two narrative threads. One of them draws a line from Roman history, beginning with Romulus as founder of Rome, via the classical Roman emperors and the Byzantine emperors to the Visigothic kings, who are mentioned partly in parallel.9 This combined order of Byzantine emperors and Visigothic kings ends with the reigns of the Emperor Leo in Constantinople and,

identify as independent text. Furthermore, I chose the edition of Yves Bonnaz, since the style of the Prophetic Chronicle differs a lot from the other parts of the Chronicle of Albelda and, therefore, his separate edition of the respective passages is more practical for the present study. 8 Cf. Thomas Deswarte, ‘La prophétie de 883 dans le royaume d’Oviedo: attente adventiste ou espoir d’une liberation politique?’, Mélanges de Science Religieuse, 58 (2001), 39–56 (p. 47). See also Ann Christys, Christians in al-Andalus (711–1000), Culture and civilization in the Middle East (Richmond: Curzon Press, 2002), pp. 92–94. Furthermore, Igor Pochoshajew, Die Märtyrer von Cordoba: Christen im muslimischen Spanien des 9. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main: Lembeck, 2007), pp. 157–60. See also Christofer Zwanzig, ‘Monastische Migration aus dem Andalus im 8.–10. Jahrhundert: Selbst- und Fremdwahrnehmungen’, in Von Mozarabern und Mozarabismen: Zur Vielfalt kultureller Ordnungen auf der mittelalterlichen Iberischen Halbinsel, ed. by Matthias Maser, Klaus Herbers, Michele Camillo Ferrari, and Hartmut Bobzin, Spanische Forschungen der Görresgesellschaft, zweite Reihe, 41 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2014), pp. 217–33 (p. 217). 9 Cf. Chronica Albeldensis, cap. xiii, ed. by Gil [Fernández], pp. 444–54.

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depending on the manuscript, the Kings Wittiza and Roderic in Hispania.10 In four surviving manuscripts the cultural and religious ‘Other’ is mentioned for the first time during Leo’s reign: ‘Tunc Sarraceni Spania obtenta regnum Gotorum exterminator’ (At that time, the Saracens occupied Hispania and destroyed the kingdom of the Goths),11 and ‘Tunc Sarrazeni (sic) Spaniam possederunt et regnum Gotorum era dcclii’ (At that time, in the era 752, the Saracens occupied Hispania and the kingdom of the Goths).12 Apparently, the invaders are called ‘Saracens’ in the Chronicle of Albelda. This, so far, offers no concept of identification, other than the fact that the chronicler had an ethnonym for the invading group. The meaning of this specific ethnonym in the Chronicle of Albelda will be clarified below. The next passage, referring to the cultural and religious ‘Other’, can be found in the description of the reign of King Sisebut, which is already in the second narrative thread that deals with the kings of the Goths and the Visigoths.13 The final sentence on the reign of Sisebut states: ‘Tunc nefandus Mahomat in Africa nequitiam legis stultis populis predicabit’ (At that time, the abominable Muhammad preached his law of worthlessness in Africa to a foolish people).14 Although, this statement has no concept of identification per se, yet it is a judgement that is important for the author’s understanding of the following terms of identification. At the end of the list of Gothic and Visigothic kings the chronicler writes about the last Visigothic king Roderic: Rudericus rg. an. iii. Istius tempore era dcclii farmalio terre Sarraceni euocati Spanias occupant regnumque Gotorum capiunt, quem aduc usque ex parte pertinaciter possedunt. Et cum eis Xp̅iani die noctuque bella iniunt et cotidie confligunt […]. (Roderic reigned for three years. During that time, in the era 752, the Saracens, profiting from unrest in the kingdom, occupied Hispania and took the rule over the kingdom of the Goths, which they kept occupied continuously until today. And the Christians fight against them every day and night […]).15

10 Chronica Albeldensis, cap. xiii, § 69, ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 454. 11 If not mentioned otherwise, all translations by Patrick S. Marschner. Latin text in Chronica Albeldensis, cap. xiii, § 69 EPS, ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 454. 12 Latin text in Chronica Albeldensis, cap. xiii, § 69 A marg., ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 454. The Spanish Era is an alternative calender. The era 752 corresponds to the year ad 714. In the Asturian Chronicles it was common but false opinion that the last Visigothic king Roderic ruled for three years and died in 714, whereas he died in his first year in 711. For the reasoning of this false statement on the length of his reign see Juan Gil [Fernández], ‘Judíos y Cristianos en Hispania (s. viii y ix)’, Hispania Sacra, 31 (1978–1979), pp. 9–88 (p. 66). See also Prelog, Die Chronik, pp. 152 and cli; Bronisch, Reconquista, pp. 383–85; Furtado, ‘The Chronica Prophetica’, pp. 81–82 and Gil [Fernández], Chronica Hispana, pp. 219–20. 13 Cf. Chronicla Albeldensis, cap. xiv, § 24, ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 458. 14 Latin text in Chronica Albeldensis, cap. xiv, § 24, ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 458. Cf. Bronisch, Reconquista, p. 141. 15 Latin text in Chronica Albeldensis, cap. xiv, § 34, ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 460.

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This is basically a revision of the abovementioned passage, adding only the reign of Roderic to it. The continuation of this passage is important for the further investigation. In three of the surviving manuscripts we read: ‘dum predestinatio usque diuina dehinc eos expelli crudeliter iubeat’ (until the divine predestination commands that they will be cruelly damned).16 This addition points towards an Ezekiel-based prophecy that is part of the Prophetic Chronicle, in which it is predicted that the enemies of the Chosen People will soon be expelled from the Promised Land due to God’s order.17 This will be thematized later. What can be seen so far, is that from the chronicler’s point of view God played a major role in the interaction with the transcultural and religious ‘Other’ invading the former Visigothic kingdom. Therefore, the identification of the Saracens somehow relates to religious knowledge. Ishmaelites and Hagarenes

The next reference to the Saracens in the Chronicle of Albelda occurs in the description of Pelayo and his rebellion against the foreign rulers. Et postquam a Sarracenis Spania occupata est, iste primum contra eis sumsit reuellionem in Asturias, regnante Iuzeph in Cordoba et in Iegione cibitate Sarracenorum iussa super Astures procurante Monnuzza. Sicque hab eo hostis Ismahelitarum cum Alcamane interficitur et Oppa episcopus capitur postremoque Monnuzza interficitur. Sicque ex tunc reddita est libertas populo Xp̅iano. Tunc etiam qui remanserunt gladio de ipsa oste Sarracenorum in Libana monte ruente iudicio Dei opprimuntur et Astororum regnum diuina prouidentia exoritur. (And after Hispania has been occupied by the Saracens, he was the first, who started a rebellion against them in Asturias while Yusuf ruled in Córdoba and Munuza commanded over Asturias from Gijón, the city ruled by the Saracens. Thus, the Ishmaelite enemy was killed by him along with Alqamah, bishop Oppa was captured and finally Munuza was killed. In such way, freedom returned to the Christian people. At that time, those of the hostile Saracens, who could escape his [Pelayo’s] sword, were buried by an avalanche near Liébana, by divine judgement. Afterwards, the kingdom of the Asturias rose due to divine providence).18

16 Latin text in Chronica Albeldensis, cap. xiv, § 34 A Vat Moiss, ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 460. 17 Cf. John Wreglesworth, ‘The Chronicle of Alfonso III and its Significance for the Historiography of the Asturian Kingdom 718–910 ad: A Critical Study of the Content, Purpose and Themes of a Late 9th-Century Historical Text’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 1995), p. 195 (available online at . 18 Latin text in Chronica Albeldensis, cap. xv, § 1, ed. by Gil [Fernández], pp. 463–64. Concerning the presumably false dated reign of Yusuf see Juan Gil Fernández, Cronicas Asturianas. Crónica de Alfonso III (Rotense y ‘A Sebastián’), Crónica Albeldense (y ‘Profética’), Universidad de Oviedo, publicaciones del Departemento de Historia Medieval, 11 (Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, Servicio de publicaciones, 1985), p. 247 n. 233.

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The chronicler does not seem to differentiate between Ishmaelites and Saracens. In the narration, the Saracens invaded Hispania and Pelayo rebelled against the Saracens. Yet, in this passage the term ‘Ishmaelites’ appears. Nevertheless, it cannot be understood as different group with a different name. Additionally, the following explanation from the Chronicle of Albelda shows the synonymous meaning of ‘Saracens’ and ‘Ishmaelites’ in the context of the Asturian chronicles. Sarraceni perberse se putant esse ex Sarra; uerius Agareni ab Agar et Smaelite ab Smael […]. (The Saracens perversely think themselves to be descended from Sarah. In truth, they are Hagarenes from Hagar and Ishmaelites from Ishmael).19 According to this definition, which is clearly influenced by Isidore’s Etymologies,20 in the textual corpus that constitutes the Chronicle of Albelda the Saracens are equal to the Ishmaelites as well as to the Hagarenes, yet, in the opinion of the chronicler, they just gave themselves a wrong name. Apparently, the basis of the chronicler’s identification is biblical knowledge. The ‘Ishmaelites’ are the descendants of Ishmael, the son of Abraham and Hagar. This is also why the ‘Ishmaelites’ are ‘Hagarenes’. Finally, the chronicler identifies the ‘Ishmaelites’ and the ‘Hagarenes’ with the so-called ‘Saracens’, assuming that this ethnonym was chosen wrongly by themselves according to the biblical story of Abraham, his wife, his bondwoman, and his two sons, each born from one of the women.21 He correlates the contemporary cultural and religious ‘Other’ with a biblical figure. Furthermore, he disagrees with the use of the ethnonym ‘Saracens’, knowing that in Christian tradition the Jews, and also the Christians, were the descendants of Isaac, the son of Sara, who was the wife of Abraham and not just his bondwoman. The reason for arguing against using the ethnonym ‘Saracens’ for the invaders could be based on a hierarchy of the women

19 Latin text in Chronica Albeldensis, cap. xvi, § 1, ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 474; trans. by Kenneth B. Wolf, ‘Chronica Prophetica’, in Medieval Texts in Translation [accessed 12 June 2017]. For the sake of uniformity, I turned ‘Agarenes’ in Wolf ’s translation into ‘Hagarenes’. 20 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri xx, ed. by Wallace Martin Lindsay, in Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri xx, 1 (Oxford: E. Typographeo Clarendoniano, 1987), ix, ii, 6: ‘Ismael filius Abraham, a quo Ismaelitae, qui nunc corrupto nomine Saraceni, quasi a Sarra, et Agareni ab Agar’ (A son of Abraham was Ishmael, from whom arose the Ishmaelites, who are now called, with corruption of the name, Saracens, as if they descended from Sarah, and the Hagarenes from Hagar). English translation: The Etymologies, trans. by Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof, in The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, ed. by Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 33–406 (p. 192). For the sake of uniformity, I changed ‘Agarenes’ and ‘Agar’ into ‘Hagarenes’ and ‘Hagar’. Cf. Hans-Werner Goetz, Die Wahrnehmung anderer Religionen und christlich-abendländisches Selbstverständnis im frühen und hohen Mittelalter (5. – 12. Jahrhundert), vol. i (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013), p. 251. 21 Cf. Genesis 16 and 21. 1–21. The same interpretation appears already in the works of Jerome. Cf. Dolores Oliver Pérez, ‘Sarraceno: su etimología e historia’, Al-qantara: Revista de estudios árabes, 15.1 (1994), 99–130 (pp. 100 and 104).

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from the biblical story and their sons in Christian tradition. The hierarchical interpretation of Sara and Hagar, respectively Isaac and Ishmael, appears in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians: scriptum est enim quoniam Abraham duos filios habuit unum de ancilla et unum de libera sed qui de ancilla secundum carnem natus est qui autem de libera per repromissionem quae sunt per allegoriam dicta haec enim sunt duo testamenta unum quidem a monte Sina in servitutem generans quae est Agar Sina enim mons est in Arabia qui coniunctus est ei quae nunc est Hierusalem et servit cum filiis eius illa autem quae sursum est Hierusalem libera est quae est mater nostra scriptum est enim laetare sterilis quae non paris erumpe et exclama quae non parturis quia multi filii desertae magis quam eius quae habet virum nos autem fratres secundum Isaac promissionis filii sumus sed quomodo tunc qui secundum carnem natus fuerat persequebatur eum qui secundum spiritum ita et nunc sed quid dicit scriptura eice ancillam et filium eius non enim heres erit filius ancillae cum filio liberae itaque fratres non sumus ancillae filii sed liberae qua libertate nos Christus liberavit. (For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the Mount Sinai, which gendered to bondage, which is Hagar. […] Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless what said the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free).22 Thus, in the Chronicle of Albelda the Saracens are identified with the Ishmaelites and the Hagarenes and all three of these ethnonyms are used synonymously, even though the chronicler protests against the Saracens calling themselves like this. Since biblical knowledge produced this identification, one can state that the appearance of the cultural and religious ‘Other’ has been adapted to a story of ethnic identification, which was already known, or which the chronicler was familiar with. Furthermore, in the so-called Prophetic Chronicle, written at the Asturian court in 883, ‘Ishmaelites’ is a term used to identify the Saracens. The following passage marks the beginning of the text. Factum est uerbum Domini ad Ezechiel dicens: Fili hominis, pone faciem tuam contra Ismael et loquere ad eos dicens: ‘Fortissimum gentibus dedi te […] Verumtamen, quia dereliquisti Dominum Deum tuum, circumagam te, et derelinquam te […] et finibus Libyae peries, tu et omnia agmina tua […]’.

22 Galatians 4. 22–31.

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(The word of the Lord was made known to Ezekiel, saying: Son of man, set your face against Ishmael and speak to them saying: ‘I gave you power over the other people […] But because you forsook your Lord God I will turn you about, I will forsake you […] and in the territory of Libya you and all of your multitude will perish […]’).23 This is an alleged quote from the book of Ezekiel. The original Ezekiel verse reads: et factus est sermo Domini ad me dicens fili hominis pone faciem tuam contra Gog terram Magog principem capitis Mosoch et Thubal et vaticinare de eo et dices ad eum haec dicit Dominus Deus ecce ego ad te Gog principem capitis Mosoch et Thubal et circumagam te et ponam frenum in maxillis tuis et educam te et omnem exercitum tuum equos et equites vestitos loricis universos multitudinem magnam hastam et clypeum arripientium et gladium. (The word of the Lord came to me saying: Son of Man, set your face towards Gog […] and say: thus says the Lord God: I am against you, Gog […] I will turn you round and put hooks into your jaws […]).24 Obviously, the chronicler adapted this quote to the Iberian situation. Neither Ishmael nor the Ishmaelites appear in the book of Ezekiel. In the Bible, the word of God should be made known to ‘Gog’, a negatively connoted people, a punishment of God, coming from the North to bring foreign rule over the Promised Land. Therefore, the role of the contemporary enemy has been allocated to the biblical enemy of the Chosen People. Simultaneously, the role of Iberian Christians has been allocated, too: due to this depiction of the ‘Other’, they became the new Chosen People, punished for their sins and their own history was depicted in a biblical context to bring substance to a moral statement with essential political consequences and to identify the cultural and religious ‘Other’ as well as the ‘Self ’.25 Consequently, in the Prophetic Chronicle the ethnonym ‘Ishmaelites’ is also loaded with negative connotations. The conquerors 23 Latin text in Chronica Prophetica, ed. by Bonnaz, p. 2; trans. by Wolf, Chronica Prophetica. 24 Ezekiel 38. 1–4. 25 Additionally, one has to mention, that the ‘good people’ in the quote of the Prophetic Chronicle are Gog, whereas in Ezekiel they are the Israelites. Latin text in Chronica Prophetica, ed. by Bonnaz, p. 2: ‘Et ingredieris terram Gog pede plano, et concides Gog gladio tuo, et pones pedem in ceruicem eius, et facies eos tibi seruos tributaries’ ([…] and so that you would enter the land of Gog on foot and kill Gog with your sword and put your foot on his neck and make them tributaries to you […]), trans. by Wolf, Chronica Prophetica. The reason for this is the tradition of an etymological coherence between ‘Gog’ and the ‘Goths’, going back to Ambrose and later put in words again by Isidore. Cf. Herwig Wolfram, Die Goten: Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechsten Jahrhunderts, Entwurf einer historischen Ethnographie (München: Beck, 2009), pp. 39–40. The chronicler himself reminds on this: ‘Gog quidem gens Gothorum est et sicut pro omne genus Ismaelitarum solus Ismael suprascribitur cum dicit propheta: “pone faciem tuam contra Ismael”, ita et pro omne genus Gothorum Gog nominator’ (Certainly Gog is to be understood as the people of the Goths and just as Ishmael is written above to signify all of the race of the Ishmaelites when the prophet says, ‘Set your face against Ishmael’, so Gog represents all of the people of the Goths); Latin text in Chronica Prophetica, ed. by Bonnaz, p. 2; trans. by Wolf, Chronica Prophetica.

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of the Iberian Peninsula are twice identified with an Old Testament people — first, nominally, with the descendants of Abraham’s son Ishmael and second, analogously, with the people of Gog, sent by God to punish his Chosen People for having sinned against him. The alleged Ezekiel quote implies the regaining of Christian rule over the Iberian Peninsula. It appears as a threat of punishment against the Ishmaelites and refers to a biblical passage, in which the addressees of this threat actually lose against God’s Chosen People. Since passages with exactly this subject embrace the rest of the text, this statement of the imminent end of foreign rule is the main topic of the Prophetic Chronicle. The texts ends stressing this eschatological thought: Remanent usque ad diem Sancti Martini iii idus novembris, menses vii, et erunt complete anni clxviiii, et incipiet annus centesimus septuagesimus quo, dum Sarraceni complerint, secundum praedictum Ezechielis prophetae superius adnotatum, expectabitur ultio inimicorum advenire et salus christianorum adesse. Quod praestet omnipotens Deus ut, sicut filii eius Domini nostril Iesu Christi cruore universum mundum dignatus est a potestate diabolic redimere, ita, proximiori tempore, Ecclesiam suam iubeat ab Ismaelitarum iugo eripere; ipse qui vivit in saecula saeculorum. Amen. (They [that is, the Saracens] will remain until St Martin’s Day, the third day of the Ides of November; in seven months they will have completed 169 years, and the one hundred seventieth year will have begun, the year when the Saracens will have completed [their allotted time], according to the above-noted prediction of the prophet Ezechiel. [At that time] we expect vengeance against our enemies to come and the salvation of the Christians to begin. Omnipotent God commands this so that just as the unclean universe was deemed worthy to be ransomed from the power of the devil by the blood of His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, so in the coming year he will order his church to be snatched from the yoke of the Ishmaelites. He who lives and rules forever and ever. Amen).26 Hence, the author argues for the imminent end of foreign rule with two arguments — the true fate in Christ and the reference to an authoritative text, the Old Testament. Its content was understood as foretelling the course of history. Therefore, the adaptation of Ezekiel to current circumstances justified the statement of the upcoming demise of the Saracens. The biblical story, combined with the role allocation of the Saracens as a contemporary Gog, was understood as a pre-announcement of their ‘own’ course of the history.27

26 Latin text in Chronica Prophetica, ed. by Bonnaz, p. 9; trans. by Wolf, Chronica Prophetica. 27 Generally on ethnonyms and biblical elements in the Prophetic Chronicle cf. Patrick Sebastian Marschner, ‘The Depiction of the Saracen Foreign Rule in the Prophetic Chronicle Through Biblical Knowledge’, Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies, 5.2 (2018), 215–39.

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Chaldeans

While describing the contemporary circumstances in the Emirate of Córdoba during the reign of Emir Muhammad I in the late ninth century, the author of the Chronicle of Albelda adds another ethnonym: Mahomat qui nunc rex in Cordoua extat, sub quo Caldeorum regnum dirutum erit, si Domino placuerit. (Under Muhammad, who now is king in Córdoba, the realm of the Chaldeans has been ruined, as it delights the Lord).28 Muhammad I was an Umayyad, ruling over those, who already were called ‘Saracens’ or ‘Ishmaelites’. Thus, ‘Chaldeans’ is another ethnonym for that same group of people. Again, it is an ethnonym of biblical origin. Almost every time the Chaldeans appear in the Bible they play a negative role. They are a punishment, sent by God against his Chosen People.29 Through this identifier the foreign rule in the Iberian Peninsula as well as the invasion back in 711 was perceived as being the punishment of God.30 A further insight, besides the synonymous use of now four ethnonyms and the depiction of the cultural and religious ‘Other’ as punishment from God, is the self-identification involved with this designation. In identifying the foreign rulers with the Chaldeans, a scourge of God against the Israelites, the chronicler identifies the cultural and religious ‘Self ’ as the new Chosen People. Through this depiction of the ‘Other’, Iberian Christians became the spearhead of Christianity against the threat of rival peoples and, furthermore, the focus of salvation history. For the chronicler, the role of the leading people in salvation history has been transferred to the Asturian kingdom.31 This fits perfectly into the structure of the Chronicle of Albelda, which explains universal history from the creation to Roman history and its rulers to Iberian History and the Iberian Christians, understood as the new Chosen People. The identification of the cultural and religious ‘Other’ with the Chaldeans also appears in the Prophetic Chronicle. Here, the author stresses the parallels to the Chaldeans by adding a biblical quote to the description of the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. Occulto quoque Dei iudicio qui olim per prophetam dixerat: ‘Ecce ego suscitabo super uos Chaldaeos gentem amaram et uelocem, ambulantem super latitudinem terrae, ut possideat tabernacula non sua, cuius equi uelociores lupis uespertinis et facies eorum, uentus urens, ad arguendos fideles et terram in solitudinem redigendam’, nocere eos permittit. (God, with his inscrutable judgement who once said through the prophet: ‘For behold I will raise up the Chaldeans, a bitter and swift people, wandering

28 29 30 31

Latin text in Chronica Albeldensis, cap. xvi, § 43 EPS, ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 475. Cf. for instance iv Kings 24. 2; iv Kings 25. 8–10; Job 1. 17; Isaiah 23. 13. Concerning the understanding as punishment, see Goetz, Die Wahrnehmung, p. 247. Cf. Johan Chydenius, Medieval Institutions and the Old Testament, Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Commentationes humanarum litterarum, 37, 2 (Helsinki: Suomen Tiedeseura, 1965), pp. 12 and 67.

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over the breadth of the earth, to possess the tents that are not their own, whose horses are swifter than evening wolves, and their appearance like the burning wind, reducing the land to emptiness as a demonstration to the faithful’ permitted them to inflict injury).32 This quote is taken from the book of Habakkuk:33 quia ecce ego suscitabo Chaldeos gentem amaram et velocem ambulantem super latitudinem terrae ut possideat tabernacula non sua horribilis et terribilis est ex semet ipsa iudicium et onus eius egredietur leviores pardis equi eius et velociores lupis vespertinis et diffundentur equites eius equites namque eius de longe venient volabunt quasi aquila festinans ad comedendum omnes ad praedam venient facies eorum ventus urens et congregabit quasi harenam captivitatem. (For behold, I will raise up the Chaldeans, a bitter and swift nation, marching upon the breadth of the earth, to possess the dwelling places that are not their own. They are dreadful, and terrible: from themselves shall their judgment, and their burden proceed. Their horses are lighter than leopards, and swifter than evening wolves; and their horsemen shall be spread abroad: for their horsemen shall come from afar, they shall fly as an eagle that maketh haste to eat. They shall all come to the prey, their face is like a burning wind: and they shall gather together captives as the sand).34 In addition, in this case the ‘Chaldeans’ offer a biblical example to depict the contemporary Iberian circumstances. They are a negatively connoted people, sent by God as a punishment, taking away the Promised Land from the Chosen People, who had sinned. From the chronicler’s point of view, the historical role of the Saracens corresponds with the role of this scourge from the Old Testament. This strategy not only identifies the cultural and religious ‘Self ’ and ‘Other’ but also situates present and historical protagonists within salvation history. In the chronicle, ‘Chaldeans’ remains an identifier for the Emirate of Córdoba as the following example shows. Tunc Abadella, ipse qui Mahomat iben Lup, qui semper noster fuerat amicus sicut et pater eius, ob inuidiam de suos tios, cui rex filium suum Ordonium ad creandum dederat, cum Cordouenses pacem fecit fortiamque suorum in hostem eorum misit. Sicque hostis Caldeorum, in terminos regni nostril intrantes, primum ad Celloricum castrum pugnauerunt et nicil egerunt, sed multos suos ibi perdiderunt. (Then Ababdella — also known as Muhammad ibn Lope, who had always been, like his father, a friend to us — made peace with the Cordobans and sent the strongest of his men to their army out of envy for his uncles to whom the king Alfonso had entrusted his son Ordoño to be reared. Thus the army

32 Latin text in Chronica Prophetica, ed. by Bonnaz, p. 5; trans. by Wolf, Chronica Prophetica. 33 Cf. Bronisch, Reconquista, p. 151 n. 533. 34 Habakkuk 1. 6–9.

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of the Chaldeans, entering the confines of our kingdom, first attacked the fortress at Cellorigo but accomplished nothing except to lose many of their own men).35 The ethnonym ‘Chaldeans’ as used in these texts is a novelty. Until the Chronicle of Albelda, this ethnonym has not been used to depict or denominate the invaders or foreign rulers in post-conquest Christian-Iberian historical writing. Even though this term may appear once in each of the earliest Christian chronicles after the Umayyad invasion, in these cases it does not refer to the cultural and religious ‘Other’. It is far rather an attribute of the city Ur, which admittedly originates from the Bible,36 but does not correlate with any contemporary group in eighth-century Hispania. In these chronicles the mentioned city is named ‘Ur, (city) of the Chaldeans’.37 Therefore, ‘Chaldeans’ does not become a new category of identification in Christian-Iberian historical writing before the ninth century. Since this ethnonym appears only three times in the Chronicle of Albelda, and once in the Prophetic Chronicle, it was not as entrenched as ‘Saracens’ or ‘Ishmaelites’, both of which appear distinctly more often in these texts. As will be explained below, however, ‘Chaldeans’ becomes the most important ethnonym in the Chronicle of Alfonso III. Arabs

In the Chronicle of Albelda, the invaders are given another ethnonym, albeit this one is not of biblical origin.38 Arabes tamen, regionem simul cum regno possessam, omnis decor Gotice gentis pabore uel ferro periit […] Vrbs quoque Toletana, cunctarumque gentium uictrix

35 Latin text in Chronica Albeldensis, cap. xv, § 13, ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 470; English translation: Chronicle of Albelda (883), trans. by Kenneth B. Wolf, in Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources, ed. by Olivia Remie Constable, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), pp. 67–74 (pp. 71–72). 36 Cf. Genesis 11. 28 and 31; Genesis 15. 7. 37 The Byzantine-Arab Chronicle of 741, trans. by Robert G. Hoyland, in Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings in Early Islam, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 13 (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1997), pp. 612–27 (p. 622): ‘[…] which lies between Ur of the Chaldees […]’. Latin text in Chronica Byzantia Arabica, § 34, ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 319: ‘[…] que inter Vr Caldaeorum […]’; English translation: The Chronicle of 754, trans. by Kenneth B. Wolf, in Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain, Translated Texts for Historians, 9 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011), pp. 91–128 (p. 101): ‘[…] between Ur of the Chaldeans […]’. Latin text in Chronica Muzarabica, § 28, ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 342: ‘[…] inter Vr Chaldaeorum […]’. 38 Even though the Arabs appear in the Bible (cf. ii Paralipomenon 17. 11, ii Paralipomenon 22. 1, ii Paralipomenon 26. 7, Esra 4. 7, i Maccabees 11. 17, i Maccabees 11. 39, ii Maccabees 5. 8, ii Maccabees 12. 11, Acts 2. 11), there is no indication that this ethnonym is based on the Bible or used in a biblical manner in the here investigated texts. Cf. Ekkehart Rotter, Abendland und Sarazenen, Das okzidentale Araberbuld und seine Entstehung im Frühmittelalter, Studien zur Sprache, Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift ‘Der Islam’, Neue Folge, 11 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1986), pp. 77–122.

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Ismaeliticis triumfis uicta subcumbuit eisque subiecta deseruit. Sicque peccatis concruentibus Ispania ruit […]. (But, when the Arabs simultaneously occupied the region and the realm, all the glory of the Gothic people was gone due to fear and iron […] Furthermore, the city of Toledo and the entire people were defeated by the Ishmaelites and are now submissively serving them).39 This again is a recap of the invasion of the former Visigothic kingdom. This is the third example of the description of this event, yet it offers the third ethnonym for the invaders. Therefore, in this text corpus the ethnonyms ‘Arabs’, ‘Ishmaelites’, and ‘Saracens’ are connected to the same event in Iberian history. Hence, these denominations were synonyms either for the author or at least for the compiler of the Chronicle of Albelda. Also the term ‘Chaldeans’ — as shown in the quotes above — belongs to this array of ethnonyms used to identify the cultural and religious ‘Other’ on the Iberian Peninsula in late ninth century. They all refer to the foreign rulers, specifically to the Emirate of Córdoba.40 What attracts attention is that, with the exception of ‘Arabs’, all the ethnonyms referring to the emirate or to foreign rulers, are of biblical origin.41 The culturally- and religiously-different rival power in the Iberian Peninsula was depicted as a biblical enemy of the Chosen People. This connection with biblical names as well as the quotation of biblical texts during the description of the Iberian history adapts the Christian author’s own history and contemporary circumstances to salvation history. Accordingly, this depiction of the foreign rulers, denominating them by biblical ethnonyms and quoting from the Bible while describing events in which they were involved, is both an interpretation of salvation history and a role-allocation of the protagonists in this history. The author connected the identification of the ‘Other’ with knowledge about the course of history. Even though these ‘Other’ might have been unknown from a certain point of view when they arrived in Hispania in the early eighth century, they were familiar as soon as the chroniclers chose a biblical approach for their identification. This world-view or strategy of interpretation made it possible to see the historical events in the Iberian Peninsula as echoes of the Bible.

Typology as Principle for Connecting One’s Own History and Salvation History This form of parallelization between past and present, which includes a meaningful connection drawn between two events or phenomena separated in time and space, with 39 Latin text in Chronica Albeldensis, cap. xvii, § 3a, ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 477. 40 Also the terms ‘Moors’ and ‘Getules’ appear occasionally in the composition of the Chronicle of Albelda, yet they do not refer to the same group as the ethnonyms investigated above. They denominate the Berbers, who are strictly distinguished from the Arabs by the chronicler. Hence, they are not relevant for this article. Concerning the synonymous use of the above-analysed ethnonyms, cf. Goetz, Die Wahrnehmung, p. 255. 41 Concerning ‘Arabs’ see above, fn. 38.

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one being the pre-announcement42 and the other its fulfilment, is called typology.43 With this way of thinking it was possible to give a religion-based interpretation of historical events, and therefore to find orientation in history. Additionally, typology offered ways to identify the ‘foreigners’, who did not believe in Christ as the son of the Lord and, yet, who still invaded the Iberian Peninsula and overthrew the Christian Visigothic kingdom. With the certainty, or better, the belief, that the events in profane history should be understood as fulfilments of earlier pre-announcements, which can be found in the Bible, the chroniclers could answer the question of who the Arabs were and why they were able to defeat the Visigothic kingdom. In typological thinking history is a net of connected events, each being a pre-announcement or fulfilment of another. Seeing history through the eyes of biblical typology must have been comforting for the chroniclers, because they were able to classify the cultural and religious ‘Other’ into both the familiar genealogy of peoples and salvation history. Furthermore, the typological connection to specific biblical books hints of the purpose of expressing hope. Ezekiel and Habakkuk not only offered fitting comparisons between contemporary history and Holy Scripture. Both of these books tell the story of the Chosen People losing and regaining their status before God. The punishment of the Chosen People always comes to an end. Equally, the main statement of the Prophetic Chronicle, which is so named because of its foretelling that the foreign rule over Hispania would end during the reign of Alfonso III, is that, since they remain the new Chosen People of God, even though Iberian Christians sinned and were punished by God, this punishment will end. Times will get better, when they have atoned for their errors. The beginning of the Prophetic Chronicle as well as the little addition about the reign of Roderic in three manuscripts of the Chronicle of Albelda correlate with this typological understanding of history and therefore stress the hope for an end to the foreign rule.

Further Biblical Elements In the Chronicle of Albelda, a comment on the coronation of King Ramiro, the grandfather of Alfonso III, may contain a Biblical allusion, which hints at a turn of eras. ‘Ramiro ruled for seven years. He had a just sceptre’.44 Alexander Pierre Bronisch states that the formula ‘just sceptre’ (virga iustitiae) was based on the Letter to the

42 Not to be confused with the term ‘prophecy’, which in deed is foretelling, whereas a preannouncement per se does not aim to give a prediction. Rather, it is a phenomenon, which reappears in a different form later. Only retrospectively, can one realise the connection between pre-announcement and fulfilment. 43 Cf. Friedrich Ohly, ‘Probleme der mittelalterlichen Bedeutungsforschung und das Taubenbild des Hugo de Folieto’, in Friedrich Ohly, Schriften zur mittelalterlichen Bedeutungsforschung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977), pp. 32–92 (p. 42). 44 Latin text in Chronica Albeldensis, cap xv, § 10, ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 466: ‘Ranemirus rg. an. vii. Virga iustitie fuit’.

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Hebrews.45 He connects this phrase to this passage: ‘ad Filium autem thronus tuus Deus in saeculum saeculi et virga aequitatis virga regni tui’ (But to the Son: Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of justice is the sceptre of thy kingdom).46 If, on account of the term ‘virga’, this correlation with the Bible is appropriate, then the meaning would not only be that Ramiro was a just ruler, but it would also imply an eschatological argument. The beginning of the Letter to the Hebrews describes the contemporary situation of the biblical Israelites as the ‘last days’: Multifariam et multis modis olim Deus loquens patribus in prophetis novissime diebus istis locutus est nobis in Filio quem constituit heredem universorum per quem fecit et saecula. (Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds).47 Thus, the connection to the Letter to the Hebrews implies the expectation of a decisive turning point in the chronicler’s near future, which in this case is not to be understood as the end of the world, but rather as a significant change in the political circumstances in the Iberian Peninsula. With Ramiro being the grandfather of Alfonso III, this passage could hint to the prophecy from the Prophetic Chronicle, declaring that Alfonso III would become the king of the entire Iberian Peninsula, ending the foreign rule of the Saracens. The salvation, thematized in this letter, in that case was the pre-announcement for the regaining of a certain status of the Iberian Christians, in terms of their own salvation, contextualized in a contemporary situation of hostile interaction with the cultural and religious ‘Other’. A clear allusion to the Bible is the denomination of the former Visigothic kingdom in the Prophetic Chronicle. The author states that due to the sins of the Visigoths and the inability of Roderic to do adequate penance, their kingdom fell, and so they lost their ‘promised land’. Arabes tamen regionem simul cum regno possessam, omnis decor Gotice gentis pabore vel ferro periit. Quia non fuit in illis pro suis delictis digna penitentia, et quia dereliquerunt precepta Domini et sacrorum canonum instituta, derelinquid illos Dominus ne possiderent desiderabilem terram. (The Arabs took control of the region along with the kingdom. All of the beauty of the Gothic people perished through both panic and the sword because they had not performed appropriate penance for their sins. And because they forsook the precepts of the Lord and the laws of the sacred canons, the Lord forsook them so that they would no longer retain their beloved territory).48

45 Cf. Bronisch, Reconquista, p. 143. 46 Hebrews 1. 8. 47 Hebrews 1. 1–2. 48 Latin text in Chronica Prophetica, ed. by Bonnaz, p. 7; trans. by Wolf, Chronica Prophetica.

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This translation of ‘terra desiderabilis’ with ‘beloved territory’ by Wolf is not a good choice. Rather it is a biblical term, referring to the Promised Land of God’s Chosen People. The term ‘terra desiderabilis’ appears several times in the Old Testament, each time with exactly this meaning.49 What Israel is in the Old Testament, the former Visigothic kingdom is in Christian-Iberian historical writing. This terminology depicts the Iberian Christians as the new Chosen People and in conclusion, their enemies, the foreign Saracen rulers in the Iberian Peninsula, are the enemies of the Chosen People. As the quote above shows, the loss of their ‘Promised Land’ was caused by their sins. Thus, the Saracens appear as a tool of God to punish his Chosen People — just as he punishes the Israelites several times in the Old Testament.

Strategies of Identification in the Chronicle of Alfonso III The strategies of identifying the cultural and religious ‘Other’ in the Chronicle of Albelda as well as the Prophetic Chronicle basically do not differ from those in the Chronicle of Alfonso III,50 also written at the Asturian court and composed in relation to the aforementioned historiographical works.51 The ethnonyms used remain the same, only the numeric proportion between the ethnonyms differs. Regardless of which redaction of the Chronicle of Alfonso III one refers to, the ethnonym used most often is ‘Chaldeans’, which occurs more often than the term ‘Saracens’. Hence, the depiction of the foreign rulers as ‘Chaldeans’ seemed more important in the early tenth century, when at least the second redaction of the Chronicle of Alfonso III was most likely written.52 In contrast with the term ‘Ishmaelites’, which is the term most frequently used in the Prophetic Chronicle, because of its reference to the alleged Ezekiel quote, where ‘Israel’ is represented by the Asturians, named ‘Gog’, and the biblical ‘Gog’ is changed into ‘Ishmael’, ‘Chaldeans’ lacks genealogical character and is rather a judgemental denomination. Based on the amount that each ethnonym was used, the depiction of the cultural and religious ‘Other’ as divine punishment and the avowed enemy of the Chosen People was more important than their genealogy. Therefore, ‘Chaldeans’ reached the peak of its use in the post-conquest Christian-Iberian historical writing in the Chronicle of Alfonso III. In neither the earlier chronicles nor in any later chronicle did this ethnonym achieve the same significance. The basic strategy of

49 Cf. Psalms 105. 24; Jeremiah 3. 19; Azariah 7. 14; Malachi 3. 12. 50 Chronica Adephonsi III, ed. by Juan Gil [Fernández], in Chronica Hispana saeculi viii et ix, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 65 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 383–433. 51 Cf. Prelog, Die Chronik, pp. cxliii–clxii; Wreglesworth, ‘The Chronicle of Alfonso III’, pp. 261–66; Gil [Fernández], Chronica Hispana, pp. 211–17. 52 Cf. Thomas Deswarte, ‘The Chronicle of Alfonso III’, in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, vol. i (600–900), ed. by David Thomas and Barbara Roggema, History of Christian-Muslim Relations, 11 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 882–88 (pp. 883–84).

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identification through biblical terminology remained, but the choice of specific ethnonyms changed. Yet the other ethnic denominations also appear in the Chronicle of Alfonso III, although they differ only in a numeric proportion from the earlier chronicles. Apart from the use of biblical ethnonyms, the Chronicle of Alfonso III also depicts the cultural and religious ‘Other’ as the fulfilment of biblical phenomena, adapting events of the post-conquest Iberian Peninsula to biblical episodes. Perhaps the most famous is the narration of the battle of Covadonga. The chronicle reports that Pelayo, former swordbearer of the Visigothic kings Wamba and Roderic, lead a small group of Christian rebels in the mountains north of Oviedo. In the cave called the Covadonga 187,000 Saracens lead by Alqamah surrounded this small group. Bishop Oppa, a collaborator and companion of the Saracens, tried to convince Pelayo to surrender. Yet Pelayo, praying to God, refused and therefore provoked the attack of the superior Saracen force. As the author states, 124,000 Saracens died in battle and 63,000 fled, but were buried by an avalanche. The chronicler himself interprets the event as follows: Non istud inannem aut fabulosum putetis, sed recordamini quia, qui Rubri maris fluenta ad transitum filiorum Israhel aperuit, ipse hos Arabes persequentes eclesiam Domini immenso montis mole oppressit. (Do not think this to be unfounded or fictitious. Keep in mind that he who once parted the waters of the Red Sea so that the children of Israel might cross, has now crushed, with an immense mass of mountain, the Arabs who were persecuting the church of God).53 Clearly, the event has been connected to the Old Testament story of the Egyptians chasing the Israelites through the Red Sea, yet drowning in the floods.54 Another redaction of the chronicle correlates the end of the battle of Covadonga with the book of Exodus even more precisely, mentioning the Egyptians.55 Again, Christian-Iberian historical writing after the Umayyad invasion of the former Visigothic kingdom connects the ‘Other’ with a familiar episode from the Old Testament. Thus, the chroniclers were able to organize the foreign rulers into a context of salvation history, which was already known from biblical knowledge.56 Furthermore, the numeric proportions of the encountering armies are reminiscent of a specific biblical story. Gideon, the judge from the Old Testament, was able to win with only 300 men against the kings of Midian and their army

53 Latin Text in Chronica Adephonsi iii, Rotense version, cap. 10, ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 408; English translation: The Chronicle of Alfonso III, trans. by Wolf, pp. 129–43 (p. 136). 54 Cf. Exodus 13. 17–14. 31. 55 Chronica Adephonsi iii, Ovetense version, cap. 10, ed. by Gil [Fernández], p. 409: ‘Non istud miraculum inane aut fabulosum putetis, sed recordamini quia, qui in Rubro mari Egyptios Israhelem persequentes dimersit, ipse hos Arabes eclesiam Domini persequentes immenso montis mole oppressit’. 56 Cf. Goetz, Die Wahrnehmung, pp. 292–93.

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of 120,000 soldiers.57 Accordingly, the chronicler not only gave the Saracens a role as new Egyptians, but he also connected the Covadonga story with another Old Testament episode of the Chosen People vanquishing a hostile superior force — another episode of hope and salvation for God’s people. In a typological manner, everything that happened at Covadonga was interpreted as if it was familiar, foretold by the Bible.

Conclusions The ethnonyms that were used by the Asturian chroniclers to name the Arabs were: ‘Saracens’, ‘Hagarenes’, ‘Ishmaelites’, ‘Chaldeans’, and, of course, ‘Arabs’. The last ethnonym is the only one used without any biblical allusion. Through the terms ‘Hagarenes’ and ‘Ishmaelites’ it was possible to classify the cultural and religious ‘Other’ within Old Testament genealogy. The question of who the invaders are, therefore, was answered by biblical knowledge.58 Moreover, the ethnonym ‘Chaldeans’ not only signalled who they were, but also why they came and conquered the Visigothic kingdom. They were understood as God’s punishment, which was especially obvious when the chronicler connected the book of Habakkuk to the Iberian situation. In addition, allocating the role of the people of Gog from the book of Ezekiel to the ‘Ishmaelites’ is based on the same motivation. Biblical knowledge was drawn upon to depict a contemporary phenomenon as divine punishment. The quote was adapted to the chronicler’s situation so that he could argue that already in the Bible the ‘Ishmaelites’ appear as punishment for the Chosen People. Thus, the depiction and identification of the ‘Other’ was likewise a depiction and identification of the ‘Self ’ and the role of the Chosen People was relocated to the Christians of Hispania.59 To sum up, the book of Genesis — in particular the story of Abraham, Sara, Hagar, Isaac, and Ishmael — offered a genealogical reference to identify the Arabs. Most likely, the Epistle to the Galatians was a resource of knowledge to create a hierarchy of the sons of Abraham and therefore their descendants: the Christians thus became the descendants of Isaac and the Muslims the descendants of Ishmael. The book of Habakkuk enabled an explanation for the demise of the Visigothic kingdom and the foreign rule of the Arabs. This in turn allowed an identification of them as the Old Testament Chaldeans, and therefore as the punishment of God. Finally, connecting the foreign rulers with the people of Gog from the book of Ezekiel has the same implications as the citation of the ‘Chaldeans’ — a divine punishment, brought on by the sins of the (new) Chosen People, that however

57 Cf. Judges 8. 4–10. See also José Álvarez Junco, Historia y mito: Saber sobre el pasado o cultivo de identidades (Madrid: Universidad Complutense Madrid, 2011), p. 12. 58 Speaking with the words of Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood in this volume’s introduction: ‘“Otherness” is a label’. 59 Cf. the Introduction.

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would end someday. Thus, these biblical tropes do not just build a typological connection to the biblical past and, in doing so, help contemporaries understand their world; they also created hope for the future of the Iberian Peninsula in the representation of the chroniclers. The realization of the cultural and religious ‘Other’ from a Christian-Iberian point of view was, in conclusion, based on two elements: experience and traditional knowledge. Around 190 years after the Umayyad invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, Christian chroniclers, of course, knew a lot about the ‘foreign’ rulers from experience (both their own and the experiences of refugees from the south, coming to the Asturian kingdom and disseminating their knowledge). Through this experience as well as from knowledge of Arab sources, the ‘stranger’ became more and more known. Yet, due to biblically-oriented modes of thought, it was possible to categorize the religious and cultural ‘Other’. Accordingly, the Bible was a repository of knowledge and therefore a reference for interpreting and perhaps construing the contemporary present, and a medium of justification. The Bible was the resource that made it possible to identify the Arabs genealogically and as a phenomenon of salvation history. No matter how ‘strange’ the ‘Other’ were, due to traditional and biblical knowledge, the chroniclers ‘knew’ them. They were convinced of a tradition-based image. Consequently, this biblical categorization and identification made the cultural and religious ‘Other’ ‘familiar’.

Works Cited Primary Sources The Byzantine-Arab Chronicle of 741, trans. by Robert G. Hoyland, in Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings in Early Islam, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 13 (Princeton: Darwin, 1997), pp. 612–27 Chronica Adephonsi iii, ed. by Juan Gil [Fernández], in Chronica Hispana saeculi viii et ix, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 65 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 383–433 Chronica Albeldensis, ed. by Juan Gil [Fernández], in Chronica Hispana saeculi viii et ix, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 65 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 435–84 Chronica anni 741 vel Chronica Byzantia Arabica, ed. by Juan Gil [Fernández], in Chronica Hispana saeculi viii et ix, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 65 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 307–23 Chronica anni 754 vel Chronica Muzarabica, ed. by Juan Gil [Fernández], in Chronica Hispana saeculi viii et ix, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 65 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 325–82 Chronica Prophetica, ed. by Yves Bonnaz, in Chroniques Asturiennes (Fin ixe Siècle), Sources d’histoire médiévale, 20 (Paris: Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1987), pp. 2–9

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Chronicle of Albelda (883), trans. by Kenneth B. Wolf, in Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources, ed. by Olivia Remie Constable, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), pp. 67–74 The Chronicle of Alfonso III, trans. by Kenneth B. Wolf, in Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain, Translated Texts for Historians, 9 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011), pp. 129–43 The Chronicle of 754, trans. by Kenneth B. Wolf, in Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain, Translated Texts for Historians, 9 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011), pp. 91–128 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri xx, ed. by. Wallace Martin Lindsay, in Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri xx, 2 vols (Oxford: E. Typographeo Clarendoniano, 1911, repr. 1987) ———, The Etymologies, trans. by Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach and Oliver Berghof, in The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, ed. by Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 33–406 Secondary Works Álvarez Junco, José, Historia y mito: Saber sobre el pasado o cultivo de identidades (Madrid: Universidad Complutense Madrid, 2011) Bonnaz, Yves, Chroniques Asturiennes (fin ixe siècle), Sources d’histoire médiévale, 20 (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1987) Bronisch, Alexander Pierre, Reconquista und Heiliger Krieg: Die Deutung des Krieges im christlichen Spanien von den Westgoten bis ins frühe 12. Jahrhundert, Spanische Forschungen der Görresgesellschaft, zweite Reihe, 35 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1998) Christys, Ann, Christians in al-Andalus (711–1000), Culture and civilization in the Middle East (Richmond: Curzon Press, 2002) Chydenius, Johan, Medieval Institutions and the Old Testament, Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Commentationes humanarum litterarum, 37, 2 (Helsinki: Suomen Tiedeseura, 1965) Deswarte, Thomas, ‘The Chronicle of Alfonso III’, in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, vol. i (600–900), ed. by David Thomas and Barbara Roggema, History of Christian-Muslim Relations, 11 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 882–88 ———, ‘La prophétie de 883 dans le royaume d’Oviedo: attente adventiste ou espoir d’une liberation politique?’, Mélanges de Science Religieuse, 58 (2001), 39–56 Furtado, Rodrigo ‘The Chronica Prophetica in MS. Madrid, RAH Aem. 78’, in Forme di accesso al sapere in età tardoantica e altomedievale 6: Raccolta delle relazioni discusse nell’incontro internazionale di Trieste, Biblioteca Statale, 24–25 settembre 2015, ed. by Lucio Cristante and Vanni Veronesi, Polymnia. Studi di filologie classica, 19 (Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2016), pp. 75–100 Gil [Fernández], Juan, Chronica Hispana saeculi viii et ix, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis, 65 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018) ———, Cronicas Asturianas. Crónica de Alfonso III (Rotense y ‘A Sebastián’), Crónica Albeldense (y ‘Profética’), Universidad de Oviedo, publicaciones del Departemento de Historia Medieval, 11 (Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, Servicio de publicaciones, 1985)

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———, ‘Judíos y Cristianos en Hispania (s. viii y ix)’, Hispania Sacra, 31 (1978–1979), 9–88 Goetz, Hans-Werner, Die Wahrnehmung anderer Religionen und christlich-abendländisches Selbstverständnis im frühen und hohen Mittelalter (5. – 12. Jahrhundert), 2 vols (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013) Gómez-Moreno, Manuel, ‘Las primeras crónicas de la Reconquista: El ciclo de Alfonso III’, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 100 (1932), 562–628 Hoyland, Robert G., Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings in Early Islam, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 13 (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1997) Marschner, Patrick Sebastian, ‘The Depiction of the Saracen Foreign Rule in the Prophetic Chronicle Through Biblical Knowledge’, Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies, 5.2 (2018), 215–39 Milgram, Stanley, ‘The Familiar Stranger: An Aspect of Urban Anonymity’, in The Individual in a Social World: Essays and Experiments, ed. by John Sabini and Maury Silver, McGraw-Hill Series in Social Psychology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992), pp. 68–71 Ohly, Friedrich, ‘Probleme der mittelalterlichen Bedeutungsforschung und das Taubenbild des Hugo de Folieto’, in Friedrich Ohly, Schriften zur mittelalterlichen Bedeutungsforschung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977), pp. 32–92 Oliver Pérez, Dolores, ‘Sarraceno: su etimología e historia’, Al-qantara: Revista de estudios árabes, 15.1 (1994), 99–130 Pochoshajew, Igor, Die Märtyrer von Cordoba: Christen im muslimischen Spanien des 9. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt-am-Main: Lembeck, 2007) Prelog, Jan, Die Chronik Alfons’ III.: Untersuchung und kritische Edition der vier Redaktionen, Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe iii, Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften, 134 (Frankfurt-am-Main: Lang, 1980) Rotter, Ekkehart, Abendland und Sarazenen, Das okzidentale Araberbuld und seine Entstehung im Frühmittelalter, Studien zur Sprache, Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift ‘Der Islam’, Neue Folge, 11 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1986) Vones, Ludwig, Geschichte der Iberischen Halbinsel im Mittelalter (711–1480): Reiche – Kronen – Regionen (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1993) Wolf, Kenneth Baxter, Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain, Translated Texts for Historians, 9 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011) Wolfram, Herwig, Die Goten: Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechsten Jahrhunderts. Entwurf einer historischen Ethnographie, 5th edn (München: Beck, 2009; 1st edn 1979) Wreglesworth, John, ‘The Chronicle of Alfonso III and its Significance for the Historiography of the Asturian Kingdom 718–910 ad: A Critical Study of the Content, Purpose and Themes of a Late 9th-Century Historical Text’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 1995) Available online at Zwanzig, Christofer, ‘Monastische Migration aus dem Andalus im 8.–10. Jahrhundert: Selbst- und Fremdwahrnehmungen’, in Von Mozarabern und Mozarabismen: Zur Vielfalt kultureller Ordnungen auf der mittelalterlichen Iberischen Halbinsel, ed. by Matthias Maser, Klaus Herbers, Michele Camillo Ferrari, and Hartmut Bobzin, Spanische Forschungen der Görresgesellschaft, zweite Reihe, 41 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2014), pp. 217–33

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Internet Resources Wolf, Kenneth Baxter, ‘Chronica Prophetica’, in Medieval Texts in Translation

Ralph W. Mathisen

Not ‘the Other’ Barbarians and the End of the Western Roman Empire

Past studies of Romans and barbarians presume that in very significant ways barbarians and Roman were different. Indeed, something of a cottage industry has grown up focusing on creating models for understanding barbarian ‘otherness’.1 Particular attention has been given to barbarian ‘ethnogenesis’, the process by which barbarians created this ‘other’ sense of ethnic identity.2 Michael Kulikowski even has created

1 e.g., Iain Ferris, ‘Insignificant Others: Images of Barbarians on Military Art from Roman Britain’, in TRAC 94: Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, ed. by Sally Cottam, David Dungsworth, Sarah Scott, and Jeremy Taylor (Oxford: Oxbow, 1994), pp. 24–31; Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs, eds, ‘To See Ourselves as Others See Us’: Christians, Jews and ‘Others’ in Late Antiquity (Chico: Scholars, 1985); Yves A. Dauge, Le barbare. Recherches sur la conception romaine de la barbarie et de la civilisation (Bruxelles: Latomus, 1981), pp. 393–66, 648–53; Henry Kahane and Renée Kahane, ‘On the Meanings of “Barbarus”’, Hellenika, 37 (1986), 129–32; Edmund Lévy, ‘Naissance du concept de barbare’, Ktema, 9 (1984), 5–14; Dennis B. Saddington, ‘Roman Attitudes to the “externae gentes” of the North’, Acta classica 4 (1961), 90–102 (p. 91); Lieven van Acker, ‘“Barbarus” und seine Ableitungen im Mittellatein’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 47 (1965), 125–40; Lorenzo Viscido, ‘Sull’uso del termine barbarus nelle “Variae” di Cassiodore’, Orpheus, 7 (1986), 338–44 (p. 343); Barbara Funck, ‘Studie zu der Bezeichnung bárbaros’, in Soziale Typenbegriffe. Untersuchungen ausgewählter altgriechischer sozialer Typenbegriffe und ihr Fortleben in Antike und Mittelalter = Soziale Typenbegriffe im alten Griechenland und ihr Fortleben in den Sprachen der Welt, ed. by Elisabeth Welskopf, vol. iv (Berlin: Akademie, 1981), pp. 26–51; Greg Woolf, Tales of the Barbarians: Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2011). 2 e.g., Walter Pohl, ‘Strategie und Sprache – zu den Ethnogenesen des Mittelalters’, in Entstehung von Sprachen und Völkern, ed. by Sture Ureland (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1985), pp. 93–102; Lotte Hedeager, ‘The Creation of Germanic Identity: A European Origin-Myth’, in Frontières d’empire: Nature et signification des frontières romaines, ed. by Patrice Brun, Sander van der Leeuw, and Charles R. Whittaker (Nemours: Ed. de l’Association pour la promotion de la recherche archéologique en Ile-de-France, 1993), pp, 121–31; David Chappell, ‘Ethnogenesis and Frontiers’, Journal of World History, 4 (1993), 267–75; Walter Pohl, ‘Tradition, Ethnogenese und literarische Gestaltung: eine Zwischenbilanz’, in Ethnogenese und Überlieferung. Angewandte Methoden der Frühmittelalterforschung, ed. by Karl Brunner and Brigitte Merta (München: Oldenbourg, 1994), pp. 9–26; Charles R. Bowlus, ‘Ethnogenesis Models and the Age of Migration: A Critique’, Austrian History Yearbook, 26 (1995), 147–64. Ralph W. Mathisen  •  is professor of history, classics and medieval studies in the Department of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 275–287 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123595

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a useful taxonomy of three models of barbarian ethnicity:3 (1) The views of what is termed the ‘Vienna School’, in which barbarians are culturally heterogeneous until elite families bearing a ‘Traditionskern’, a ‘genuine ethnic memory’, acquire larger followings that adopt this same set of traditions,4 (2) What he calls a ‘stable identity […] widely spread through a broad class of warrior freemen’ who identified as Goths, Franks, Vandals, and so on, and (3) An evanescent ‘situational construct’, ‘available for the using as individuals found it worthwhile to do so’.5 These models, and others like them, speak of barbarian ethnicity in hushed and reverent tones and piously presume that barbarians were so different that Greek and Roman authors did not even have a sufficient vocabulary or sense of ethnic sensitivity to be able to discuss barbarian ethnicity usefully. From this perspective, we are led to believe, one cannot possibly bridge the gap between Greco-Roman social values and the infinitely different barbarian world of otherness. What one might propose, however, is that barbarians were not ‘the other’ but an integral part of the Roman world. Barbarians, one might argue, were just one more group, like women, slaves, rural populations, and non-elite provincials, that fell outside the social circles of elite male authors. Of course, when such writers discussed these other categories of individuals they manifested their own standards, prejudices, and agendas, but there was nothing inherent in barbarians that made them any different in the way they were treated by elite authors. Thus, one might suggest that if we can usefully make corrections in our interpretations of elite perceptions of women, slaves, and provincials, we likewise certainly can do the same regarding ancient perceptions of barbarians. We do not need to worship at the altar of barbarian ‘otherness’ to such an extent as to presume that we cannot learn anything useful about them from classical authors. Thus, Kulikowski perhaps overstates the case when he characterizes Hans Hummer’s suggestion that Ammianus’ accounts can give insights into the barbarian world as a ‘bizarre assertion’.6 In the past, the Roman government had settled hundreds of thousands of barbarians on Roman territory. In the early third century the historian Cassius Dio, speaking of the first century ce, had commented, ‘The barbarians […] were adapting themselves to the Roman world. They were setting up markets and peaceful meetings. They did not find it difficult to change their life, and they were becoming different without



3 Michael Kulikowski, ‘Nation vs. Army: A Necessary Contrast?’, in On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Andrew Gillett (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 69–84. 4 As Reinhard Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung. Das Werden der frühmittelalterlichen Gentes (Köln: Böhlau, 1961), and Walter Pohl, ‘Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies’, in Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed. by Lester K. Little and Barbara H. Rosenwein (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 13–24 (p. 16). 5 As Patrick Geary, ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct in the Early Middle Ages’, Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 13 (1988), 15–26. 6 Kulikowski, ‘Nation’, p. 71: ‘Apart from Jordanes, I know of only one claim for a barbarian voice from antiquity, viz. the bizarre assertion of Hans. J. Hummer’, citing Hans J. Hummer, ‘The Fluidity of Barbarian Identity, the Ethnogenesis of Alemanni and Suebi, ad 200–500’, Early Medieval Europe, 7 (1998), 1–27.

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realizing it’.7 These barbarians were not ferocious invaders but migrants from one part of the wider Roman world to another. In 212 ce, the Antonine Constitution made nearly all provincials, including resident barbarians, into Roman citizens. Barbarian immigrants gained the opportunity to make full use of Roman civil law. They were property owners, paid taxes, and served in the Roman military. Subsequent barbarian immigrants likewise had the benefits of Roman citizenship8 and assimilated the Roman cultural heritage.9 The frontier served more as a highway than a barrier to cultural interaction, and barbarians and Romans passed freely back and forth. In 361, for example, a king of the Alamanni crossed the Rhine, chatted with the Roman military commander, and was invited to dinner.10 Barbarians would have looked and behaved little differently from frontier Romans. They were not ‘outsiders’.

Deconstruction of Segregating Factors Recent scholarship has seen several revisions in conceptualizations of cultural factors that supposedly separated barbarians and Romans during Late Antiquity. (1) For example, it often was suggested that settlements of invading barbarians could be localized by their use of ‘Reihengräberfelder’ (row grave cemeteries) in which male graves contained arms and weapons. But it now is clear that such graves developed on the Roman side of the frontier, and that that this burial style was adopted later by barbarian newcomers.11 7 Cassius Dio, Hist. Rom. 56.18.2: Gulielmus Xylandrus, ed., Dionis Cassii Nicaei Romanae historiae libri (tot enim hodie extant) XXV nimirum a. XXXVI ad LXI (Lyon: Gulielmus Rovillius, 1559). 8 Ralph W. Mathisen, ‘“Peregrini”, “Barbari”, and “Cives Romani”: Concepts of Citizenship and the Legal Identity of Barbarians in the Later Roman Empire’, American Historical Review, 111 (2006), 1011–40; Ralph W. Mathisen, ‘Barbarian Immigration and Integration in the Late Roman Empire: The Case of Barbarian Citizenship’, in Minderheiten und Migration in der Antike: Rechtliche, religiöse, kulturelle und politische Aspekte, ed. by Patrick Sänger (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2016), pp. 153–67; Ralph W. Mathisen, ‘Becoming Roman, Becoming Barbarian: Roman Citizenship and the Assimilation of Barbarians into the Late Roman World’, in Migration and Membership Regimes in Global and Historical Perspective, ed. by Ulbe Bosma, Gijs Kessler, and Leo Lucassen (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 191–217; Ralph Mathisen, ‘Concepts of Citizenship in the Late Roman Empire’, in Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. by Scott Johnson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 744–63. 9 Ralph W. Mathisen, ‘“Provinciales”, “Gentiles”, and Marriages between Romans and Barbarians in the Late Roman Empire’, Journal of Roman Studies, 99 (2009), 140–55; Ralph W. Mathisen, ‘Les mariages entre Romains et Barbares comme stratégie familiale pendant l’Antiquité tardive’, in Les stratégies familiales dans l’Antiquité tardive, ed. by Christophe Badel and Mireille Corbier (Paris: De Boccard, 2012), 153–66. 10 Ammianus 21.4.3 (p. 361): ‘Transgressus Vadomarius flumen […] viso praeposito militum ibi degentium, pauca locutus ex more […] ad convivium eius venire promisit’ (Vadomarius, having crossed the river […], visited the commander of the soldiers stationed there and having conversed a bit, as was customary […], he promised to come to have dinner with him). 11 Guy Halsall, ‘The Origins of the Reihengräberzivilisation: Forty Years On’, in Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity?, ed. by John Drinkwater and Hugh Elton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 196–207; also Dieter Quast, ‘Vom Einzelgrab zum Friedhof. Beginn der

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(2) Secondly, whereas it once was thought that the use of elaborate ‘fibulae’ betrayed barbarian artistry and was a sign of barbarian origin, it now is clear that such ‘fibulae’ had a long history in the Roman world and that many stylish ‘fibulae’ found in ‘barbarian’ contexts were presented to barbarian chieftains by the Roman government.12 (3) In addition, one of the most persistent stereotypes about barbarians, that they were unable or unwilling to engage in literary activities, the characteristic pastime of the Roman elite, now is seen as a canard. Barbarian ‘litterati’ such as the mid fifth-century Master of Soldiers Merobaudes, the author of poetry and panegyrics, participated enthusiastically in late Roman literary culture.13 (4) Moreover, it long was assumed that a law of 373 placed a ban on marriages between Romans and barbarians. But this law in fact applied only to barbarian auxiliary soldiers on the North African frontier. Otherwise, barbarians and Romans were free to marry, up to and including the imperial family.14 (5) In addition, the most cited case of Roman-barbarian segregation, Roman Nicene Christianity versus barbarian Arian Christianity, was, on the ground, not much of an issue at all, for so-called barbarian Arianism was not Arianism at all but rather homoian Christianity, which had been legitimated in a law of 386.15 Homoian

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Reihengräbersitte im 5. Jahrhundert’, in Die Alamannen, ed. by Karlheinz Fuchs, Martin Kempa, Rainer Redies, Barbara Theune-Grosskopf, and André Wais (Stuttgart: Theiss, 1997), pp. 171–90; Frauke Stein, Alamannische Siedlung und Kultur: Das Reihengraberfeld in Gammertingen (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1991); and Patrick Périn and Michel Kazanski, ‘Identity and Ethnicity during the Era of Migrations and Barbarian Kingdoms in the Light of Archaeology in Gaul’, in Romans, Barbarians, and the Transformation of The Roman World: Cultural Interaction and the Creation of Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. by Ralph Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 299–330: ‘The so-called Reihengräberfelder (row grave fields) in which they are found represent a new, unique frontier culture uncharacteristic of either the barbarian or Roman homelands’. Michael Frassetto, The Early Medieval World: From the Fall of Rome to the Time of Charlemagne (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2013), p. 339: ‘The Visigoths and Lombards especially were influenced by imperial models of jewelry’; Peter Wells, The Barbarians Speak: How the Conquered Peoples Shaped Roman Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 158: By the first century ce, ‘fibulae no longer served as bearers of information about the wearer’s identity’. For Merobaudes as a Frank, probably a descendant of Fl. Merobaudes, the Frankish western Master of Soldiers between 365 and 388, see The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire: Volume 2, AD 395– 527, ed. by J. R. Martindale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 756–58, ‘His name suggests that he was descended from the Fl. Merobaudes who was “mag.mil.” under Gratian […] if so, he was presumably of Germanic descent’; also Frank M. Clover, Flavius Merobaudes. A Translation and Historical Commentary (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1971), p. 7: ‘The rhetorician was a Romanized Frank of high birth, perhaps originally from Gaul’. Another fifth-century barbarian ‘litteratus’ was the Master of Soldiers Flavius Valila qui et Theodobius: see Helmut Castritius, ‘Zur Sozialgeschichte der Heermeister des Westreichs nach der Mitte des 5. Jh.: Flavius Valila qui et Theodovius’, Ancient Society, 3 (1972), 233–43; and Helmut Castritius, ‘Zur Sozialgeschichte der Heermeister des Westreiches: Einheitliches Rekrutierungsmuster und Rivalitäten im spätrömischen Militäradel’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 92 (1984), 1–34. Mathisen ‘Provinciales’; Mathisen, ‘Les mariages’. Ralph W. Mathisen, ‘Ricimer’s Church in Rome: How an Arian Barbarian Prospered in a Nicene World’, in The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity, ed. by Noel Lenski and Andrew Cain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 307–26; Ralph W. Mathisen, ‘Barbarian “Arian” Clergy, Church Organization, and

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barbarians participated in mainstream Christian life. Thus, in the 460s the homoian barbarian Master of Soldiers Ricimer endowed the apse decoration of what later became the church of Sant’Agata in Rome.16 (6) All of this raises the matter of barbarian ‘identity’, and the widespread supposition that concepts of barbarian and Roman self-identity were very different from each other. But this idea is difficult to sustain given that the designation ‘Roman’ itself no longer was an indicator of ethnic identity. Romans and barbarians now self-identified on the basis of their geographical, national, or citizenship origin.17 Thus, one could be, ‘by nationality’, a Greek, a Thracian, a Spaniard, or a Hermundurus; or a citizen of Greece, Pannonia, the Alamanni, or the Franks. In late antique contexts, the term ‘barbarian’ became a generic means of describing persons whose family had originated outside the imperial frontiers but who also were part of the Roman world. Just as the Roman Empire initially had been populated by ‘citizens’ and ‘provincials’, during Late Antiquity it was inhabited by ‘Romans’ and ‘barbarians’, all of whom were part of the ‘Roman’ population. None of these considerations are what one would expect from two fundamentally incompatible populations whose interactions were primarily manifestations of their otherness. Nor were they. By the onset of Late Antiquity (c. 250–750 ce), barbarians had lived in close contact with the Roman world for centuries and had become an integral part of it.

Barbarians and the End of the Roman Empire So, if there was no great cultural divide separating Romans and barbarians, if, in practice, barbarians were not really ‘the other’, what does that say about traditional ideas regarding the role of barbarians in the end of the western Roman Empire? Ever since antiquity, barbarians have been perceived as skin-clad savages who defeated Roman armies and beat down the gates of Rome, who not only brought down the western empire but also created a period of cultural barrenness still known as the

Church Practices’, in Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed, ed. by Guido Berndt and Roland Steinacher (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 145–92. 16 Mathisen, ‘Ricimer’s Church’. 17 Charlotte Roueché, ‘Asia Minor and Cyprus’, in The Cambridge Ancient History, ed. by Averil Cameron, Bryan Ward-Perkins, and Michael Whitby, vol. 14 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 570–87 (p. 572), ‘by the sixth century many people chose to describe themselves as inhabitants of their province — as “the Lydian” or “the Cappadocian” — rather than as citizens of particular towns’; Ralph W. Mathisen, ‘“Natio”, “Gens”, “Provincialis”, and “Civis”: Geographical Terminology and Personal Identity in Late Antiquity’, in Shifting Genres in Late Antiquity, ed. by Geoffrey Greatrex (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 277–89; Ralph W. Mathisen, ‘Le statut personnel et juridique de provincialis pendant le Bas-Empire’, in Confinia: Confins et périphéries dans l’Occident romain, ed. by Robert Bedon (Limoges: Presses Universitaires de Limoges, 2014), pp. 35–46.

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‘Dark Ages’. And ever since the fifth century scholars and theologians have tried to explain how this could have happened. Salvian of Marseille reasoned, Si […] deus […] curat […] cur nos […] vinci a barbaris patitur? […] brevissime […] nos perferre haec mala patitur quia meremur ut ista patiamur. (If God […] cares for us […] Why does he suffer us to be conquered by the barbarians? […] To answer very briefly […], he suffers us to endure these trials because we deserve to endure them).18 In this model, Romans were just getting what they deserved for their sinfulness. In the modern day, the end of the western empire still is seen as resulting from a underlying animosity between ‘barbarians’ and ‘Romans’. The so-called ‘Catastrophe’ Model can be traced back to Edward Gibbon, who in the late eighteenth century spoke of ‘the triumph of barbarism and religion’. In modern models, barbarians still get the blame, with barbarian hordes engaging in ‘waves of invasion’ that caused the decline and fall of a feeble western Roman Empire. In a book ominously entitled, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, a distinguished Oxford scholar recently proposed, ‘The civilization of Greece and Rome was destroyed in the West by hostile invasions’.19 Recent decades, moreover, have seen the development of a different model, the ‘Transformation Model’, which sees largely peaceful integration and assimilation of barbarian peoples in the Roman world.20 Both models, however, presume that there was a fundamental adversarialness, a condition of otherness, between barbarians and Romans.21 But if, as just suggested, that underlying otherness was not there, if there was in fact a great degree of common ground between Romans and barbarians, how are we to explain the end of the western Roman Empire without hostile antagonistic culturally differentiated barbarians as one of the primary causative factors? What does this say about the barbarian ‘conquest’ of the western Roman Empire?

18 Salvian, De gubernatione dei 4.12. 19 Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 1. 20 See, e.g., Donald Kagan, The End of the Roman Empire: Decline or Transformation? (Lexington: Heath, 1978); Samuel Barnish, ‘Transformation and Survival in the Western Senatorial Aristocracy, c. A.D. 400–700’, Papers of the British School at Rome, 56 (1988), 120–55; Leslie Webster and Michelle Brown, eds, The Transformation of the Roman World ad 400–900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Mathisen and Shanzer, eds, Romans, Barbarians, pp. 43–53; Rob Collins, ‘Decline, Collapse, or Transformation? The Case for the Northern Frontier of Britannia’, in Social Dynamics in the Northwest Frontiers of the Late Roman Empire: Beyond Decline or Transformation, ed. by Nico Roymans, Stijn Heeren, and Wim De Clercq (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), pp. 203–20. 21 Thus, even authors such as Goffart who downplay the extent of adversarialness, ‘antagonism cannot be the last word’, still implicitly subscribe to the theme of the barbarian invasions, ‘Costly barbarian invasions undeniably took place’: Walter Goffart, ‘Rome’s Final Conquest: The Barbarians’, History Compass, 6.3 (2008), 855–83 (pp. 858, 870).

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Problems with the ‘Barbarian Conquest’ Model One thus next might like to take a quick look at what traditionally have been called the ‘barbarian invasions’ and the ‘barbarian conquest’ of the western Roman Empire. Popular models of a weak Roman Empire overcome by invading barbarians have some significant issues: (1) Even Peter Heather, a powerful advocate for the role of barbarians in the ‘fall’ of the western empire, identifies only two periods of barbarian invasions, the settlement of the Visigoths in 376, and the invasions of Radagaisus [in 405] and the Vandals, Burgundians, Alans, and Suevi [in 406] during 405–406.22 But the Visigoths entered the eastern not the western empire, and the invasion by Radagaisus in 405, not to mention that of the Huns in 451–452, failed and left little lasting legacy. And given that Heather characterizes the ‘decade of glory’ of Attila the Huns as a ‘sideshow in the drama of western imperial collapse’, we are left with only a single successful invasion of the western empire, the crossing of the Rhine in 406.23 It thus is difficult to find evidence for waves of barbarian invasions that brought down the western empire. (2) Another problem with the ‘barbarian invasion’ model is that the end of the western empire came seventy-five years after the only successful western invasion. Although Heather suggests that ‘the two phenomena are causally connected’,24 this still is a very long time to argue for cause and effect. (3) It also is hard to find examples of barbarians conquering anything. Most of the marquee battles, such as Pollentia (402), Faesulae (406), Vicus Helena (440s), and the Mauriac Plain (451),25 were won by the Romans. Indeed, one can point to only a few significant western battles, such as the defeat of Litorius in 439 and Cap Bon in 468, both of which were defensive rather than offensive battles, won by barbarians. One does note, moreover, that as of the 440s, Roman victories often were won with the aid of barbarian auxiliaries, such as the Visigoths and Franks. (4) Nor were barbarians particularly destructive. The genteel ‘Sack’ of Rome in 410, for example, and the Vandal sack of Rome in 455 were old-fashioned lootings, akin

22 Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire. A New History of Rome and the Barbarians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 435, 445–46. 23 Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 435. 24 Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 434. 25 For general histories of the period, note, e.g., John Moorhead, The Roman Empire Divided, 400–700 (London: Longman, 2001); Averil Cameron, The Later Roman Empire. ad 284–430 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); John R. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian (London: Macmillan, 1923); Ernst Stein, Geschichte des spätrömischen Reiches vom römischen zum byzantinischen Staate (284–476 n. Chr.) (Wien: Seidel, 1928) = Histoire du Bas-Empire. Tome premier. De l’état romaine à l’état byzantine (284–476), trans. by Jean-Rémy Palanque (Paris: Brouwer, 1959; repr. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1968).

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to the lootings that occurred during Roman civil wars, as in 69 and 238.26 Neither caused much actual destruction.27 There is very little evidence for barbarians destroying much of anything. In general, barbarians like the Vandals, Visigoths, and Franks prevailed more by persistence, by infiltration, and by taking advantage of Roman lack of preparedness then by military conquest. (5) Nor does a model based on barbarian invasions explain why for 750 years the Romans had been able to deal with any barbarian threats quite effectively. Why was it only in the fifth century that the west collapsed in the face of supposed barbarian onslaughts? All of these considerations suggest that there was something else going on in the end of the western empire. The lack of evidence for a military conquest and the evidence that barbarians were not just ‘the other’, and that there was a great deal of common ground between persons and peoples traditionally described as ‘Romans’ and ‘barbarians’, now seems too overwhelming to be consistent with a model for the end of the western empire based so heavily on adversarialnesss. For an alternate model, one might consider the primary venue in which barbarians and Romans encountered each other and created a composite culture: the Roman military, which was increasingly dependent on the recruitment of barbarian soldiers, especially after the Battle of Adrianople in 378. In this context, we encounter Hariulfus, ‘a prince of the Burgundian people’, who served as a ‘Protector domesticus’, that is, as a member of the imperial guard, in the late fourth century.28 At about the same time, an unnamed Frank described himself as ‘a citizen of the Franks, but a Roman soldier in arms’.29 One might suggest that what in the past have been called ‘barbarian invasions’ in fact were either civil wars or consolidations of authority by what one could call ‘Independent Military Contractors’, leaders of bands of mostly barbarian auxiliary troops — including individuals ranging from Alaric, Odovacar, and Theoderic the Great to Count Boniface, Aegidius, and Ecdicius — who them 26 Sack of 455: e.g., Malchus, Chronicon 366: The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus, and Malchus, ed. by R. C. Blockley, 2 vols (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1981–1983); sack of 69 ce: Aur. Vict. Caes. 8.5: Sexti Aurelii Victoris de caesaribus liber, ed. by Franz Pichlmayer (Leipzig: Teubner, 1892); Tac. Hist. 3.71–83; 4.1: Cornelii Taciti Historiarum liber, ed. by Charles D. Fisher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922); sack of 238 ce: HA Maximini duo 10.4–8; also HA Severi 7.3: Scriptores historiae augustae, ed. by Hermann Peter (Leipzig: Teubner, 1894). 27 e.g., Ralph W. Mathisen, ‘Roma a Gothis Alarico duce capta est’: The Sack of Rome in 410 ce’, in 410 – The Sack of Rome, ed. by Johannes Lipps, Philipp von Rummell, and Carlos Machado (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2013), pp. 87–102. 28 Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum 13: Inscriptiones trium Galliarum et Germaniarum Latinae, ed. by O. Hirschfield, C. Zangenmeister, A. von Domaszewski, O. Bohn, and E. Stein (Berlin, 1899–1943, repr. Faenza, 1979), 3682: ‘Hariulfus protector / domesticus filius Han/havaldi regalis genti/s Burgundionum qui / vicxit annos XX et men/sis nove(m) et dies nove(m) / Reutilo avunculu/s ipsius fecit’. 29 Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum, Vol.11: Inscriptiones Aemiliae, Etruriae, Umbriae Latinae, ed. by E. Bormann (Berlin, 1888–1926; repr. Faenza, 1979), 3576 = H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae selectae (Berlin, 1892–1916), 2814: ‘Francus ego cives, Romanus miles in armis’.

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selves could be either barbarians or Romans.30 Perhaps it was only an accident of history that the western empire fragmented into barbarian kingdoms as opposed to breakaway Roman enclaves. Which brings one back to the prevalent concept of ‘otherness’ that often has been used to define and explain relations between barbarians and Romans during Late Antiquity. It was suggested above that a model for the interactions between Romans and barbarians, and for the end of the Roman Empire in the west, that is based on adversarialness and difference just does not work. Not when all the evidence suggests that barbarians were not ‘the other’ in the late Roman world but rather were included under a wide umbrella that incorporated all the peoples living within and on the fringes of the imperial frontiers. A model that incorporates the lack of barbarian ‘otherness’ might be better equipped to explain not only the tenor of Roman-barbarian interactions during the last century of the western empire but also the nature of the transformation of the Roman world to the medieval world than a model based on hostility, difference, and otherness.

Works Cited Primary Sources Cornelii Taciti Historiarum liber, ed. by Charles D. Fisher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922) Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum, Vol.11: Inscriptiones Aemiliae, Etruriae, Umbriae Latinae, ed. by E. Bormann (Berlin, 1888–1926; repr. Faenza, 1979) Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum 13: Inscriptiones trium Galliarum et Germaniarum Latinae, ed. by O. Hirschfield, C. Zangenmeister,. A. von Domaszewski, O. Bohn, and E. Stein (Berlin, 1899–1943, repr. Faenza, 1979) Dessau, H., Inscriptiones Latinae selectae (Berlin, 1892–1916) The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus, and Malchus, ed. by R. C. Blockley, 2 vols (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1981–1983) Gulielmus Xylandrus, ed., Dionis Cassii Nicaei Romanae historiae libri (tot enim hodie extant) XXV nimirum a. XXXVI ad LXI (Lyon: Gulielmus Rovillius, 1559) The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire: Volume 2, AD 395–527, ed. by J. R. Martindale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971) Scriptores historiae augustae, ed. by Hermann Peter (Leipzig: Teubner, 1894) Sexti Aurelii Victoris de caesaribus liber, ed. by Franz Pichlmayer (Leipzig: Teubner, 1892)

30 See Ralph W. Mathisen, ‘The End of the Western Roman Empire in the Fifth Century ce: Barbarian Auxiliaries, Independent Military Contractors, and Civil Wars’, in The Fifth Century: Age of Transformation, ed. by Noel Lenski and Jan-Willem Drijvers (Bari: Edipuglia, 2019), pp. 137–56.

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Secondary Works Barnish, Samuel, ‘Transformation and Survival in the Western Senatorial Aristocracy, c. A.D. 400–700’, Papers of the British School at Rome, 56 (1988), 120–55 Bowlus, Charles R., ‘Ethnogenesis Models and the Age of Migration: A Critique’, Austrian History Yearbook, 26 (1995), 147–64 Bury, John R., History of the Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian (London: Macmillan, 1923) Cameron, Averil, The Later Roman Empire. ad 284–430 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993) Castritius, Helmut, ‘Zur Sozialgeschichte der Heermeister des Westreichs nach der Mitte des 5. Jh.: Flavius Valila qui et Theodovius’, Ancient Society, 3 (1972), 233–43 ———, ‘Zur Sozialgeschichte der Heermeister des Westreiches: Einheitliches Rekrutierungsmuster und Rivalitäten im spätrömischen Militäradel’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 92 (1984), 1–34 Chappell, David, ‘Ethnogenesis and Frontiers’, Journal of World History, 4 (1993), 267–75 Clover, Frank M., Flavius Merobaudes: A Translation and Historical Commentary (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1971) Collins, Rob, ‘Decline, Collapse, or Transformation? The Case for the Northern Frontier of Britannia’, in Social Dynamics in the Northwest Frontiers of the Late Roman Empire: Beyond Decline or Transformation, ed. by Nico Roymans, Stijn Heeren, and Wim De Clercq (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), pp. 203–20 Dauge, Yves A., Le barbare. Recherches sur la conception romaine de la barbarie et de la civilisation (Bruxelles: Latomus, 1981) Ferris, Iain, ‘Insignificant Others: Images of Barbarians on Military Art from Roman Britain’, in TRAC 94: Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, ed. by Sally Cottam, David Dungsworth, Sarah Scott, and Jeremy Taylor (Oxford: Oxbow, 1994), pp. 24–31 Frassetto, Michael, The Early Medieval World: From the Fall of Rome to the Time of Charlemagne (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2013) Funck, Barbara, ‘Studie zu der Bezeichnung bárbaros’, in Soziale Typenbegriffe. Untersuchungen ausgewählter altgriechischer sozialer Typenbegriffe und ihr Fortleben in Antike und Mittelalter = Soziale Typenbegriffe im alten Griechenlandund ihr Fortleben in den Sprachen der Welt, ed. by Elisabeth Welskopf, vol. iv (Berlin: Akademie, 1981), pp. 26–51 Geary, Patrick, ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct in the Early Middle Ages’, Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 13 (1988), 15–26 Goffart, Walter, ‘Rome’s Final Conquest: The Barbarians’, History Compass, 6.3 (2008), 855–83 Halsall, Guy, ‘The Origins of the Reihengräberzivilisation: Forty Years On’, in Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity?, ed. by John Drinkwater and Hugh Elton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 196–207 Heather, Peter, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)

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Hedeager, Lotte, ‘The Creation of Germanic Identity: A European Origin-Myth’, in Frontières d’empire: Nature et signification des frontières romaines, ed. by Patrice Brun, Sander van der Leeuw, and Charles R. Whittaker (Nemours: Ed. de l’Association pour la promotion de la recherche archéologique en Ile-de-France, 1993), pp, 121–31 Hummer, Hans J., ‘The Fluidity of Barbarian Identity, the Ethnogenesis of Alemanni and Suebi, ad 200–500’, Early Medieval Europe, 7 (1998), 1–27 Kagan, Donald, The End of the Roman Empire: Decline or Transformation? (Lexington: Heath, 1978) Kahane, Henry, and Renée Kahane, ‘On the Meanings of “Barbarus”’, Hellenika, 37 (1986), 129–32 Kulikowski, Michael, ‘Nation vs. Army: A Necessary Contrast?’, in On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Andrew Gillett (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 69–84 Lévy, Edmund, ‘Naissance du concept de barbare’, Ktema, 9 (1984), 5–14 Mathisen, Ralph W., ‘Barbarian “Arian” Clergy, Church Organization, and Church Practices’, in Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed, ed. by Guido Berndt and Roland Steinacher (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 145–92 ———, ‘Barbarian Immigration and Integration in the Late Roman Empire: The Case of Barbarian Citizenship’, in Minderheiten und Migration in der Antike: Rechtliche, religiöse, kulturelle und politische Aspekte, ed. by Patrick Sänger (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2016), pp. 153–67 ———, ‘Becoming Roman, Becoming Barbarian: Roman Citizenship and the Assimilation of Barbarians into the Late Roman World’, in Migration and Membership Regimes in Global and Historical Perspective, ed. by Ulbe Bosma, Gijs Kessler, and Leo Lucassen (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 191–217 ———, ‘Concepts of Citizenship in the Late Roman Empire’, in Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. by Scott Johnson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 744–63 ———, ‘The End of the Western Roman Empire in the Fifth Century ce: Barbarian Auxiliaries, Independent Military Contractors, and Civil Wars’, in The Fifth Century: Age of Transformation, ed. by Noel Lenski and Jan-Willem Drijvers (Bari: Edipuglia, 2019), pp. 137–56 ———, ‘Les mariages entre Romains et Barbares comme stratégie familiale pendant l’Antiquité tardive’, in Les stratégies familiales dans l’Antiquité tardive, ed. by Christophe Badel and Mireille Corbier (Paris: De Boccard, 2012), 153–66 ———, ‘“Natio”, “Gens”, “Provincialis”, and “Civis”: Geographical Terminology and Personal Identity in Late Antiquity’, in Shifting Genres in Late Antiquity, ed. by Geoffrey Greatrex (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 277–89 ———, ‘“Peregrini”, “Barbari”, and “Cives Romani”: Concepts of Citizenship and the Legal Identity of Barbarians in the Later Roman Empire’, American Historical Review, 111 (2006), 1011–40 ———, ‘“Provinciales”, “Gentiles”, and Marriages between Romans and Barbarians in the Late Roman Empire’, Journal of Roman Studies, 99 (2009), 140–55 ———, ‘Ricimer’s Church in Rome: How an Arian Barbarian Prospered in a Nicene World’, in The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity, ed. by Noel Lenski and Andrew Cain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 307–26

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———, ‘Roma a Gothis Alarico duce capta est’: The Sack of Rome in 410 ce’, in 410 – The Sack of Rome, ed. by Johannes Lipps, Philipp von Rummell, and Carlos Machado (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2013), pp. 87–102 ———, ‘Le statut personnel et juridique de provincialis pendant le Bas-Empire’, in Confinia: Confins et périphéries dans l’Occident romain, ed. by Robert Bedon (Limoges: Presses Universitaires de Limoges, 2014), pp. 35–46 Moorhead, John, The Roman Empire Divided, 400–700 (London: Longman, 2001) Neusner, Jacob, and Ernest S. Frerichs, eds, ‘To See Ourselves as Others See Us’: Christians, Jews and ‘Others’ in Late Antiquity (Chico: Scholars, 1985) Périn, Patrick, and Michel Kazanski, ‘Identity and Ethnicity during the Era of Migrations and Barbarian Kingdoms in the Light of Archaeology in Gaul’, in Romans, Barbarians, and the Transformation of The Roman World: Cultural Interaction and the Creation of Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. by Ralph Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 299–330 Pohl, Walter, ‘Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies’, in Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed. by Lester K. Little and Barbara H. Rosenwein (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 13–24 ———, ‘Strategie und Sprache – zu den Ethnogenesen des Mittelalters’, in Entstehung von Sprachen und Völkern, ed. by Sture Ureland (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1985), pp. 93–102 ———, ‘Tradition, Ethnogenese und literarische Gestaltung: eine Zwischenbilanz’, in Ethnogenese und Überlieferung. Angewandte Methoden der Frühmittelalterforschung, ed. by Karl Brunner and Brigitte Merta (München: Oldenbourg, 1994), pp. 9–26 Quast, Dieter, ‘Vom Einzelgrab zum Friedhof. Beginn der Reihengräbersitte im 5. Jahrhundert’, in Die Alamannen, ed. by Karlheinz Fuchs, Martin Kempa, Rainer Redies, Barbara Theune-Grosskopf, and André Wais (Stuttgart: Theiss, 1997), pp. 171–90 Roueché, Charlotte, ‘Asia Minor and Cyprus’, in The Cambridge Ancient History, ed. by Averil Cameron, Bryan Ward-Perkins, and Michael Whitby, vol. 14 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 570–87 Saddington, Dennis B., ‘Roman Attitudes to the “externae gentes” of the North’, Acta classica 4 (1961), 90–102 Stein, Ernst, Geschichte des spätrömischen Reiches vom römischen zum byzantinischen Staate (284–476 n. Chr.) (Wien: Seidel, 1928) = Histoire du Bas-Empire. Tome premier. De l’état romaine à l’état byzantine (284–476), trans. by Jean-Rémy Palanque (Paris: Brouwer, 1959; repr. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1968) Stein, Frauke, Alamannische Siedlung und Kultur: Das Reihengraberfeld in Gammertingen (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1991) van Acker, Lieven, ‘“Barbarus” und seine Ableitungen im Mittellatein’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 47 (1965), 125–40 Viscido, Lorenzo, ‘Sull’uso del termine barbarus nelle “Variae” di Cassiodore’, Orpheus, 7 (1986), 338–44 Ward-Perkins, Bryan, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) Webster, Leslie, and Michelle Brown, eds, The Transformation of the Roman World ad  400–900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)

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Wells, Peter, The Barbarians Speak: How the Conquered Peoples Shaped Roman Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) Wenskus, Reinhard, Stammesbildung und Verfassung. Das Werden der frühmittelalterlichen Gentes (Köln: Böhlau, 1961) Woolf, Greg, Tales of the Barbarians: Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)

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Meghan Mattsson McGinnis

How ‘Other’ Was the Viking Otherworld?

One thing that is quickly revealed when delving into Old Norse mortuary culture — whether from a religious historical, literary, or archaeological approach — is the wide range of practices and suggestions of diverse worldviews operating in parallel, intertwining, and even seemingly contradictory relations to one another. This includes hints of a great variety in the ways the living could relate to, and how they might define themselves in connection with or against, the dead. In Old Icelandic literature especially there are notable incidents both where deceased persons and areas associated with them appear to be seen as familiar and benevolent, and which point in the entirely opposite direction towards an attitude of alterity and fear (Fig. 13.1). The impression given, for example, by Skarp-Hedin and Hogni’s encounter with the hero Gunnar in his light-filled burial mound, singing, happy with ‘exultant face’ in Njäl’s Saga, and the bestial Aran with ‘blood streaming down from his mouth all the while he was eating’ and tearing Asmund’s ears off in his grave in the Saga of Egil One-Hand and Asmund Berserkers-Slayer could hardly be more different. In Viking Age Scandinavia1 the presence of the dead, both physically and psychologically, must have been a fact of daily life for most people, with grave-fields delimiting villages and avowed ancestral ties helping shape individual and group identities. What are we to make then of the fact that despite this nearness, deceased persons were also likely to be (if we take the sagas as reflecting earlier attitudes to some degree, and compare with other circumpolar cultures)2 perceived as dangerous

1 ‘Viking Age Scandinavia’ is taken to mean the areas of Scandinavia where the group(s) of North Germanic-speaking peoples now popularly known as ‘Vikings’ dwelt between the eighth and the twelfth centuries ce. 2 A comparative perspective employed here as it is now clear through the work of scholars such as Dag Strömback, Neil Price, Thomas DuBois, and Alexandra Sanmark that great similarities existed between Old Norse religion(s) and that of neighbouring northern peoples, particularly in regard to animistic and shamanistic aspects of indigenous ritual practices. Meghan Mattsson McGinnis  •  ([email protected]) completed her M.A. in archaeology at Stockholm University, specializing in the study of Viking Age ritual life. She is currently employed as a PhD student in archaeology at the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, Stockholm University, working on a project investigating Vendel and Viking period rituals involving amulet rings. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 289–318 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123596

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Figure 13.1 An unwelcome encounter with the dead — Gudrun accosted by the ghost of þorkell in Laxdæla Saga. 1898 illustration by Andreas Bloch from Vore fædres liv, ed. by Nordahl Rolfsen (PD).

h ow ‘ot h e r’ was t he vi k i ng ot he rwo rld?

or even monstrous? Were the dead seen as the ultimate ‘other’ or perceived as ideal insiders in Old Norse culture? Or could they be both? It is not easy on the basis of the scant written sources alone to pin down just how ‘other’ those people living in Viking Age Scandinavia considered their otherworld and its inhabitants to be, and what role they saw them as playing in the world of the living. The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore these questions by investigating what the archaeological record suggests about how the Viking Age dead were — or were not — integrated into their society. This is a task that will be accomplished by touching on certain pertinent archaeologically visible patterns of practice in how the dead, their resting places, and their possessions were treated during and after burial.

Identity, Otherness, and Archaeology Before delving into these specifics, however, the special problems and advantages entailed in investigating otherness and other issues of identity in archaeology must be understood. Questions about identity — or more precisely, the relationship between the material record and past identities — have been debated since the inception of the field. Though this issue has always been (and continues to be) one tied up with both theoretical and urgently practical and political controversies, it is nevertheless undeniably interwoven into the origins of archaeological thought and concerns at the very heart of the discipline. It is the study of identity that allows us to go beyond the creation of chronologies and typologies to personalize the past, moving analyses from the level of simply asking what a feature or artefact might be and how old it is towards deeper inquiries such as who made it (and/or used it, moved, buried or discarded it, etc.)? What else was it associated with and influenced/influenced by? And how/what might it have functioned and signified within the culture?3 The ‘archaeology of identities’ no matter — or rather exactly because of — how urgently problematic it can be forms part of ‘the total endeavor of archaeology […] part of a perilous, but necessary, search for the things that bind and divide human groups locally and globally. The issue is really whether one can actually have an archaeology that is not concerned with identity’.4 Archaeological theory and methodology do not come into being in a vacuum any more than any other aspect of academic inquiries. Thus prevailing late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century concerns with the categorization of races and building of nations were reflected in the flourishing of culture-historical approaches seeking to define historical societies in terms of discretely bounded ethnic groups.5 This is a

3 Adrian Maldonado and Anthony Russell, ‘Introduction: Creating Material Worlds’, in Creating Material Worlds: The Uses of Identity in Archaeology, ed. by Anthony Russell, Elizabeth Pierce, Adrián Maldonado, and Louisa Campbell (Oxford: Oxbow, 2016), pp. 1–15 (p. 1). 4 Timothy Insoll, ‘Introduction: Configuring Identities in Archaeology’, in The Archaeology of Identities: A Reader, ed. by Timothy Insoll (New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 1–18 (p. 1). 5 Margarita Díaz-Andreu, A World History of Nineteenth-Century Archaeology: Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 4.

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view of identities and their material expression that proved untenable. First through the shift towards a wider appreciation of the role of individual agency in creating and manipulating symbols in the post-processual archaeology of the 1980s and 1990s, and then in the growing recognition within the globalized and networked world of a post-modern twenty-first century that neither personal nor communal identity is ever fixed, but rather plural, fluid, and multi-scalar in nature.6 Archaeologists increasingly understand identity as both intersectional and situational, with each individual carrying an array of social identities that can be varyingly activated in different ways and to different degrees during the various encounters of their everyday life.7 The emphasis in the archaeological study of identities has therefore changed from the search for sameness to multiplicity, from the identification of imagined bounded ethnic and other categories to the exploration of how identity is constructed and maintained. It is as part of this wider endeavour — what Timothy Insoll describes as ‘the complex process of attempting to recover an insight into the generation of self at a variety of levels: as an individual, within a community and public and private contexts’8 — that archaeology has come to engage with ideas of ‘the other’ and ‘otherness’. For several decades anthropologists had already been employing and extending traditional philosophical and psychological notions of the ‘constitutive Other’ as the counterpart against whose presumed radical difference the ‘individual Self ’ is defined as a tool to help contextualize group awareness in living cultures.9 Archaeologists began to do the same for past communities in the early 1990s, attending more and more to how material culture could be deployed in creating and reproducing hierarchies, and demarcating in-groups and out-groups:10 looking for traces of what actions may have been employed to foster a sense of belonging in different contexts, or to exclude segments of a population from this belonging. Furthermore, since postcolonial and feminist critique has initiated much-needed work on the ways in which archaeology as a discipline has all too often been complicit in the imperialist project, the marginalization of certain groups, and the naturalization of categories and power relations, ‘othering’11 has become a topic of ethical discussion within the field with increasing frequency and intensity.12

6 Lynn Meskell, ‘Archaeologies of Identity’, in The Archaeology of Identities, ed. by Insoll, pp. 37–57 (p. 24). 7 Johan Callmer, Ingrid Gustin and Mats Roslund, ‘Identity Formation and Diversity: Introduction’, in Identity Formation and Diversity in the Early Medieval Baltic and Beyond: Communicators and Communication, ed. by Johan Callmer, Ingrid Gustin, and Mats Roslund (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 1–16 (p. 5). 8 Insoll, ‘Configuring Identities’, p. 14. 9 J. Mitchell Miller, ‘Otherness’, in The Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, ed. by Lisa M. Given (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2008), pp. 588–90 (p. 2). 10 Gerritsen, Fokke, Local Identities: Landscape and Community in the Late Prehistoric Meuse-DemerScheldt Region (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010) (p. 112). 11 As famously defined by Edward Said in the context of its use as a tool of colonialist oppression. 12 As discussed e.g. by Díaz-Andreu, A World History, Insoll, ‘Configuring Identities’, and Meskell, ‘Archaeologies of Identity’, among others.

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Despite this difficult history — or all the more because of it and the self-reflection it is now inspiring — archaeology today still brings its own unique and valuable perspective to understanding (pre)historical constructions and experiences of otherness. Archaeological methods and theory also offer tools for challenging received histories, and helping groups who have been and still are ‘other-ed’ in mainstream society recover and express their own views of the past.13 This should perhaps not be so surprising, ‘since the practice of archaeology has long been about the “categorization of others” — the denizens of the past — it follows that archaeology is a way of interrogating our own social structures in the present’.14 Just like historians, archaeologists are constantly grappling with the otherness of the past, with how much a contemporary person can truly hope to access of the world-view of people located in such different times and cultural milieu. This project is made even more complicated in instances where no or only very little direct testimony is preserved from the subjects of our study. But that we approach this problem from an explicitly material starting point is also our greatest strength.15 There is no better source than material culture for nuanced small-scale stories and varied perspectives, for ground-up information about specific situations and actions.16 This focus on materiality has also led to the essential insight that though identities are always in process — they are not endlessly mutable and untethered, but rather grounded in the material world in which they take shape —, their social malleability framed by the material fixity of the body and its surrounding environments.17 Identities are formed not only by abstract ideals but through performance. They are rooted in practice, and shaped, communicated, transformed, and conveyed through generations by material culture, and formed through reference to our own corporeality, and our embodied experience of other people, and things and places invested with cultural meaning.18 Archaeology contributes to our understanding of identities in the past by uncovering physical traces of the social practices that operated to form and reproduce them, and of the materialized worlds in which these practices were embedded. It gives us the most direct access possible to aspects of what Melanie Giles describes as the ‘web’ of relational identity, the ‘very substance of agents [and] set of material conditions under which connections can be established, and from which relations are

13 As discussed e.g by Alfredo González-Ruibal, ‘Vernacular Cosmopolitanism: An Archeological Critique of Universalistic Reason’, in Cosmopolitan Archaeologies, ed. by Lynn Meskell (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), pp. 113–39, and Sonya Atalay, ‘Multivocality and Indigenous Archaeologies’, in Evaluating Multiple Narratives, ed. by Junko Habu, Clare Fawcett, and John M. Matsunaga (New York: Springer, 2008), pp. 29–44. 14 Maldonado and Russell, ‘Introduction’, p. 3. 15 Åsa Berggren and Liv Nilsson Stutz, ‘From Spectator to Critic and Participant: New Role for Archaeology in Ritual Studies’, Journal of Social Archaeology, 10.2 (2010), 171–97 (p. 172). 16 Callmer and Roslund, ‘Identity Formation’, p. 7. 17 Meskell, ‘Archaeologies of Identity’, p. 27. 18 Howard Williams, ‘Hall of Mirrors: Death and Identity in Medieval Archaeology’, in Mortuary Practices and Social Identities in the Middle Ages: Essays in Burial Archaeology in Honour of Heinrich Härke, ed. by Duncan Sayers and Howard Williams (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2009), pp. 1–22 (p. 2).

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“spun”’.19 It provides an opportunity to see just when, where, how, and in what way conceptions of self and other were practically activated within particular mesh-works of societal and material relations at specific moments in time.

Identity, Otherness, and Otherworlds Though everything from pots to farming techniques can play a part in the expression of social identities, mortuary practices have always occupied a uniquely prominent role in the archaeology of identity. On one level this focus is a matter of availability, it is most often in their graves that we encounter the inhabitants of the past whose identities we seek to explore. But it is also because burials have long been regarded in archaeology as special, not only because they are the remains of intentional and ritualistic processes, but because of their importance as contexts for the overt, discursive constitution and display of identities. Over the past three decades the relationship between death and identity, like the issue of identity in general, has been interrogated with ever increasing nuance. Earlier views of burial evidence as either a straightforward ‘mirror’ of social organization in the living community, or simply a ‘mirage’ of symbolic allusions with no grounding in real conditions are no longer taken for granted.20 New approaches to mortuary archaeology emphasize that all elements of burial ritual, as well as how the grave and body are treated subsequently, can play a role in the construction of identities. They recognize that at funerals varied aspects — both real and/or idealized — of group and individual identities are performed; both in regards to the deceased (for whom different treatments of their remains can highlight or mask different lived or imagined qualities), and to the surviving members of the community (whose collective status, piety, power, etc. are also reflected in the ceremony).21 They also open an arena for social contest, where identity conflicts between different groups may be brought to the fore and negotiated.22 These are negotiations which may have serious consequences not only for the redistribution of status and inheritance, but even the very boundaries of the community. Acts of shared mourning, for example, can frequently serve to both bring participants together in an emotionally charged sense of solidarity and at the same time also highlight who is not a part of the celebrating congregation.23

19 Melanie Giles, A Forged Glamour: Landscape, Identity and Material Culture in the Iron Age (Oxford: Windgather, 2012), p. 38. 20 Heinrich Härke, ‘The Nature of Burial Data’, in Burial and Society: The Chronological and Social Analysis of Archaeological Burial Data, ed. by Karen Høilund Nielsen and Claus Kjeld Jensen (Århus: Århus University Press, 1997), pp. 19–27 (p. 22). 21 Giles, A Forged Glamour, p. 125. 22 i.e. claims over critical resources such as the inheritance of wealth or land. 23 Chris Fowler, ‘Identity Politics: Personhood, Kinship, Gender and Power in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Britain’, in The Archaeology of Plural and Changing Identities, ed. by Eleanor Casella and Chris Fowler (New York: Springer, 2005), pp. 109–34 (p. 121).

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Furthermore, death rituals also change relationships between individuals and their communities. As Howard Williams asserts, funerals are arenas of identity-shift too, where both the survivors and the deceased undergo ‘ontological, social and cosmological realignments as they deal with and selectively remember and forget aspects of the dead person’. They are events in which previous identities may be reinforced and/or new identities created: where individual and communal identities are both rooted in the past, and defined in relation to ‘aspired futures both in this world and the next’.24 The outcomes for persons implicated in rituals surrounding death can range from exaltation to being irrevocably other-ed. Designated heirs may for instance often take up prestigious positions vacated by the deceased and increase their standing, but there also a myriad of historical examples of the death of a spouse making the widow(er) an outcast. Similarly, passing on to their respective culture’s otherworld has changed many individuals into archetypical heroes revered by the lineages who claim association with them,25 but in other cases a change in personhood from healthy to sick and then living to dead means no longer even being considered a part of the same ethnic group.26 The relationally constructed identities of the dead, including their identification as insider or outsider, are in short just as negotiable as those of the living — or even more so. The position of dead persons in relation to the rest of the community to which they belonged in life is in many ways always an inherently paradoxical one. On the one hand, beliefs concerning ancestors frequently play a role in the formation of individual and group identities.27 The question of who identifies and/or is identified as belonging to a given kinship community or ethnic group is more often than not based at least in part on notions of descent (whether real or imagined) from shared forebears (whether documented or mythical). These forebears are typically idealized, and set up as archetypes of the traits and behaviours most highly valued by the community. Regardless of exactly how they are characterized, ancestors are always past personages that some segment of the living population identifies with on some level. But at the same time they are inexorably ontologically other. Our dead were once just like us, but no longer — this is what can make them at once beloved and familiar but also abhorred and alien. What our ancestors, whether immediate or distantly related, all have in common is that they are no longer alive — whatever

24 Williams, ‘Hall of Mirrors’, p. 3. 25 The classic statement of this idea is in Fustel de Coulanges, La Cité Antique: Étude Sur Le Culte, Le Droit, Les Institutions De La Grèce Et De Rome, Cambridge Library Collection – Classics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, first published 1866). 26 i.e. as Judith Okely, ‘An Anthropological Contribution to the History and Archaeology of an Ethnic Group’, in Space, Hierarchy and Society: Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Area Analysis, ed. by Barry C. Burnham and John Kingsbury (Oxford: BAR, 1979), pp. 81–92, discusses in her 1979 study of Romani mortuary practices, which involve the expulsion of the dead from their society into the world of ‘gorgios’. 27 Eva Thäte, Monuments and Minds: Monument Re-Use in Scandinavia in the Second Half of the First Millennium ad (Lund: Institutionen för arkeologi och antikens historia, 2007), p. 32.

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‘living’ may be taken to mean in the given historio-cultural moment.28 Instead they have transitioned to a different state of being, and (in most cultures are supposed to have) crossed over into an-other world. Precisely how this ‘otherworld’ and its denizens are perceived as interfacing (or not) with the ‘everyday’ world of course varies between cultural communities, and sometimes even between individuals within a community. The traditional cosmologies of a number of circumpolar peoples, for example, propose that the world of the dead as the exact opposite of that of the living: as in several Sámi groups’ conceptions of an inverted otherworld, where the ancestors are ‘those who walk with their feet against our feet’, but who for all this difference may still be approached by those with the proper skills.29 The dead and their abode may be viewed as both otherworldly and still intimately connected to the affairs of the living, for good or ill, or even to varying degrees at different times, in different conditions, and/or contingent on the different ritual mechanisms at play. The ongoing relationship between a society and its dead can be — and most often is — an unstable and ambiguous affair. Which brings us back to the main issue at hand: the information we currently possess about the Old Norse world-view certainly suggests that just this sort of ambivalent attitude was probably current throughout the late Iron Age/early medieval north. But it is only through exploring the material evidence we have preserved from this period that we can really make inroads towards illuminating how the complicated connections taken to exist between the living and the dead in Viking Scandinavia were actually played out in practice. The treatment of the dead will always reveal much about the position of ancestors (and the deceased generally) in a society. Including the degree to which the dead were or were not materially other-ed by their surviving counterparts. This is a cognitive archaeological conundrum which will be approached in the remainder of this paper by investigating three broad aspects of Viking Age mortuary practice: where the dead were located physically (and in turn possibly cosmologically), burial (or lack thereof), and ritualistic acts involving the dead after initial funerary proceedings.

Over the Hills, or not so Far Away? Otherness is often communicated spatially, i.e. in the erection of boundaries around spaces considered sacred and/or taboo, or the segregation (whether self-imposed or enforced from without) of the homes of one group from the rest of a community. This frequently applies just as well to places reserved for the dead as the living; and thus spatial associations between grave sites and other areas (and between individual graves within a site) can indicate a good deal about attitudes towards the dead.30 In the case

28 Since, as discussed below, the line between living and dead is not necessarily straightforward in all cultures and may also encompass different ‘in between’ states. 29 Håkan Rydving, The End of Drum-Time: Religious Change among the Lule Saami, 1670s–1740s (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1995), p. 142. 30 Gerritsen, Local Identities, p. 146.

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Figure 13.2 An example of the spatial relationship between grave-fields and farmsteads, Vallentuna kommun, Sweden (white x’s indicate grave-fields, black x’s indicate farms, circles a 1 km radius). GIS rendering by the author.

of Viking Age Scandinavia burials are sometimes found singly, but were more usually arranged in ‘grave-fields’ — clusters of graves that can range from around a dozen or so burials gathered in ‘family plots’ attached to individual farms, up to the thousands occurring in the great cemeteries of early urban centres like Birka and Hedeby. On the Scandinavian mainland grave-fields were typically located relatively close to the houses of the living, on the border where the enclosed fields and meadows belonging to a settlement ended, and the pastures and other outlying land began: right on the boundary between the space belonging to a specific community and the ‘outside’ of common lands shared with other settlements and wilderness beyond (Fig. 13.2). Often several grave-fields surround a village, frequently located on ridges or other prominent locations in the landscape visible from a long way off. The dwellings of the dead, in other words, seem to be placed as an extended component of the inhabited area, forming the outside limit of the settlement’s ‘insider’ world both literally and symbolically, with ancestral graves standing as highly visible proof of descendants’ rights of ownership to the enclosed lands.31 This is a fact still reflected in later medieval laws, where the presence of graves is often cited as valuable evidence in land disputes. Such land claims involved not only the graves of the roughly contemporary deceased, but also the remains of what might be termed the ‘monumentalized ancestral dead’ as well, who formed a focus of intense interest throughout the Viking Age. Old Norse religion became very retrospective at this period, as displayed in the

31 Jan-Henrik Fallgren, ‘Farm and Village in the Viking Age’, in The Viking World, ed. by Stefan Brink and Neil Price (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 67–76 (p. 73).

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Figure 13.3 Trollakistan, Skåne, Sweden — Neolithic passage grave with Viking Age deposits of cremated bone. Photo by Ingrid Bergquist, Frosta härads hembygdsförening (PD).

development of a wide array of practices centred on grave sites from earlier periods, such as the repeated reuse of older burial monuments, or new graves and monuments being placed very near or even superimposed directly on top of old graves.32 For example Neolithic dolmens such as Trollakistan in Skåne (Fig. 13.3) were reused as burial places during the Viking Age,33 as were Migration Age stone-cists. Bronze Age mounds were especially favoured as central points for later monumental layouts, as in the site of Hojrup in Jutland, where an older mound was surrounded by a radiating construction of Viking Age graves.34 While the impulse to connect spatially with the ancient dead seems to have been so strong, at Gamle Lejre it overrode functional considerations. Both the Viking Age cemetery and settlement at this Danish site were constructed around Bronze Age ship settings and Neolithic and Bronze Age mounds respectively, even when placing the new constructions elsewhere in the area would have been more convenient in terms of avoiding erosion and having a better vantage point on the surrounding countryside.35

32 Anders Andrén, ‘The Significance of Places: the Christianization of Scandinavia from a Spatial Point of View’, World Archaeology, 45.1 (2013), 27–45 (p. 41). 33 Marten Strömberg, Der Dolmen Trollasten in St Köpinge, Schonen (Lund: Gleerup, 1968), p. 36. 34 Anne Pedersen, ‘Ancient Mounds for New Graves: An Aspect of Viking Age Burial Customs in Southern Scandinavia’, in Old Norse Religion in Long-term Perspectives, ed. by Kristina Jennbert, Anders Andrén, and Catharina Raudvere (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2006), pp. 346–53 (p. 350). 35 Julie Lund and Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladh, ‘Divergent Ways of Relating to the Past in the Viking Age’, European Journal of Archaeology, 19.3 (2016), 415–38 (p. 422).

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Figure 13.4 The islet of Holmen off the southern tip of Helgøya (the holy island) in Lake Mjøsa, Norway — Site of grave mound and hof reachable by foot part of the year. 1885 photo by Jacob Tollesen Hoel, Domkirkeodden Samling (PD).

Yet despite this very apparent desire for closeness with their distant and/or more immediate forebears, Viking Age sites also exist where a much more definitive separation seems to have been enforced between the lands of the dead and the living. For example in some cases local grave-fields are — while still being located very close to the corresponding settlements — separated from the village by a small stream or other watercourse. Large burial mounds such as those at Borre in southwest Norway were sometimes surrounded by ditches which would be flooded at certain times of the year (as evidenced by traces of pollen from water plants). Most strikingly of all are regions, notably in northern Norway, where large numbers of Viking graves have been discovered far from centres of habitation on so-called grave islets,36 located in the middle of lakes or offshore (Fig. 13.4): places which to access one would actually have to go far outside a settlement and travel in a boat — or in some cases, across a very narrow spit of land only sometimes visible.

36 Eldar Heide, ‘Holy Islands and the Otherworld: Places Beyond Water’, in Isolated Islands in Medieval Nature, Culture and Mind, ed. by Gerhard Jaritz and Torstein Jørgensen (Budapest: Central European University, 2011), pp. 57–80 (p. 60).

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Figure 13.5 Chamber grave Bj 581 — burial of the now famous female warrior. Illustration by Evald Hansen based on the original plans of Hjalmar Stolpe’s excavations at Birka (PD).

Given that the siting of monuments always reflects and shapes cognitive as much as physical landscapes, this duality present in the placement of Viking Age burial places in relation to living spaces raises the possibility of a corresponding paradox in the presumed cosmological location of the dead. This is an area of ambiguity also reflected in the literature. In some tales (for example Hervör, Njal’s, and Laxdaela sagas) dead individuals are portrayed as ‘living’ inside their burial sites, where they remain and watch over the nearby households — a concept coinciding with instances of graves that in fact seem to be fitted out like ‘houses’ for the dead. For example the elaborate chamber graves found at Birka in central Sweden in which the deceased was inhumed in a timber lined room complete with furniture, tapestries, food, and so forth (Fig. 13.5). But other stories (such as those surrounding the death of Balder) describe the dead as dwelling in faraway places like Valhalla or the underworld realm of Hel that can only be reached by a long journey, often across water. This is an idea which has its own support in the practice of boat burial (where the dead were inhumed or cremated inside a vessel), and the frequent occurrence of spiked footwear in Viking

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Figure 13.6 Shoe spikes found by the feet of the skeleton in Birka grave Bj.918. Photo by Yliali Asp, Swedish Historical Museum; license CC-BY 2.5 SE.

Age graves (Fig. 13.6) — as if the dead were expected to need to sail and/or walk across ice as a part of their afterlife journey.37 In terms of both the non-canonical nature of pre-Christian Nordic religion(s), and in light of ethnographic comparison, this double position of the dead is perhaps only to be expected. In Finnish-speaking areas, for example, parallel concepts of the graveyard as a ‘village’ where the dead ‘live’ and can be interacted with near the local living community and a distant realm of the dead requiring a long and arduous journey both appear in Kalevala poetry and have existed side-by-side in folk traditions into the last century.38 In fact in most indigenous religions the relationships between ancestral spirits and the living community is at once extremely intimate and characterized by a mixture of love, respect, and fear that encourages keeping the dead both nearby but also somehow apart and contained. Or as anthropologist R. Hertz puts it (as paraphrased by Sanmark), ‘Despite the fact that they are often supposed to dwell in some remote otherworld, [the dead] continue to appear among the living, as well as in or close to their graves, [and] as a consequence of this, death becomes nothing but a “temporary exclusion from society”’.39 However, as a closer look at the treatment of individual Viking Age dead displays, the level of fear, love, and exclusivity involved was hardly the same in every case.

37 Anna-Leena Siikala, Mythic Images and Shamanism: A Perspective to Kalevala Poetry (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2002), p. 147. 38 Siikala, Mythic Images and Shamanism, p. 139. 39 Alexandra Sanmark, ‘Living On: Ancestors and the Soul’, in Signals of Belief: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited, ed. by Martin Carver, Alex Sanmark, and Sarah Semple (Oxford: Oxbow, 2010), pp. 162–84 (p. 164).

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To Be or not to Be Buried As aforementioned, burial rituals in Viking Age Scandinavia (as elsewhere) fulfilled a number of different but often interrelated social functions, such as expressing communal values, and making statements about or renegotiating the status of both the deceased and survivors. These functions could apparently be accomplished in a great variety of ways — a wide array of different choices are evidenced in Viking burials in regards to everything from the disposition of the body (both cremations and inhumations were, for example, rites practised simultaneously throughout the period, often literally found side-by-side), and the exact placement and position of human and animal remains, to the internal and external compositions of the grave site and the quantity and quality of grave goods (or lack thereof).40 One common theme identifiable within all this variability, however, is that a number of these mortuary trends also seem to have involved the reinvention of older rites and monument types. For example, ship settings and monumental cairns both first appear in Scandinavia during the Bronze Age (Fig. 13.7a), fall out of favour in the earlier Iron Age, and then begin to be built again in earnest during the Viking Age (Fig. 13.7b). Much like the placement of grave-fields near villages the particulars of individual burials could also serve as material citations that helped maintain relations to real (and/or reinvented) ancestors.41 Not all of the dead were, however, commemorated and implicated in the boundary-making and power-politicking of the living in this way — or even commemorated at all. Probably the most serious way an individual might be definitively other-ed in death in the Viking Age would be by not being given any memorial or burial rites. And this does indeed appear to have been what happened to a large proportion of the Viking Age populace; it is evident from settlement-burial correlations that in some places possibly up to 50% of the people in any given area of early medieval Scandinavia were not accorded a formal burial site,42 or at least, not one still visible to us in the material record. There have, for example, been as yet no securely identifiable instances discovered of thralls being buried in their own right, rather than as apparent sacrifices in the graves of other wealthier persons (Fig. 13.8). While some of this number may doubtless be accounted for by archaeologically invisible forms of funerary treatment — the iconic ‘Viking funeral’ on the water, for example, would leave little if any trace — it may be reasonably assumed that many (if not most) of these missing dead were slaves, very poor persons, or individuals who had otherwise been deemed ‘unworthy’ of being granted full rites of translation and memorialization.

40 To quote Neil Price, ‘Dying and the Dead: Viking Age Mortuary Behaviour’, in The Viking World, ed. by Brink and Price, pp. 257–73 (p. 257): ‘Perhaps the central element of Viking Age Scandinavian funerary ritual was its individual character. After more than a century of excavations there can remain no doubt whatever that we cannot speak of a standard orthodoxy of burial practice common to the whole Norse world’ (p. 257). 41 Lund and Arwill-Nordbladh, ‘Divergent Ways’, p. 431. 42 Price, ‘Dying and the Dead’, p. 259.

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Figure 13.7a Tjelvar’s Grave, Bronze Age ship setting on Gotland, Sweden. Photo by Mårten Stenberger, Swedish National Heritage Board (PD).

Figure 13.7b Viking Age ship settings at Lindholm Høje, Denmark. Photo by Gunnar Bach Pedersen, Wikimedia Commons (PD).

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Figure 13.8 Reconstruction of grave FII from Stengade, Denmark — double burial of noble and sacrificed thrall. Photo by the staff at Viking Museum Ribe, used with kind permission.

Even the most hallowed and monumentalized dead were not necessarily approached in a straightforward fashion. Very old graves and newer graves are for instance often treated quite differently within the same site. As Fredrik Fahlander observes, for example, in a number of Swedish grave-fields mounds from the Roman Iron Age or earlier are rebuilt during the Viking Age and added to in a more subtle fashion than more recent cremations, which are often cross-cut directly by later inhumations. This may reflect how perceptions of the past can encompass both genealogical history (involving the lineage of ancestors, ‘real’ history), and mythic history (evoking for example a distant, heroic, and supernatural past). The more recent dead might be therefore seen as more approachable as one’s specific and direct forebears. Those from the very distant past were experienced as something quite different, more ideal than personal, more supernatural, more ‘other’, perhaps even treated more as a powerfully magical materiality rather than the remains of individual agencies.43 In the cultures of pre/proto-historic Europe distinctions were evidently made between different kinds of human ancestors — and ancestry need not even be exclusive to humans.44 ‘Ancestors’ or ‘the dead’ generally can hardly be assumed to have been understood as one generic category during the Viking Age. Even if the criteria employed to distinguish among them are not always obvious to our modern eyes. 43 Fredrik Fahlander, ‘The Materiality of the Ancient Dead: Post-Burial Practices and Ontologies of Death in Southern Sweden ad 800–1200’, Current Swedish Archaeology, 24 (2016), 137–62 (p. 154). 44 Robert Wallis, ‘Animism, Ancestors and Adjusted Styles of Communication: Hidden Art in Irish Passage Tombs’, in Archaeological Imaginations of Religion, ed. by Thomas Meier and Petra Tillessen (Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2009), pp. 283–314 (p. 299).

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This is especially apparent when considering the remains of individuals who were given so-called ‘deviant burials’ (around which archaeological discussions of otherness and death have most frequently hinged).45 It is of course easy to imagine that, as the term suggests, these peculiar practices can be taken as straightforward evidence of their subjects having been viewed by the communities who buried them as definitively other. For instance, a number of these strange assemblages include evidence of decapitation and/or prone burial (Fig. 13.9a), or stones being placed on top of the corpse (Fig. 13.9b) — all actions which appear in literary and ethnographic accounts of apotropaic rites employed when a person was considered to have died a ‘bad death’, or committed a horrible crime, or had special powers or been otherwise odd in a way that made them particularly likely (if they had not already done so) to come back and trouble the living.46 But nevertheless, even such ‘deviants’ treated in these extreme fashions were buried, and seem to have not been so outcast as to necessitate their being quarantined in a separate cemetery — deviant burials are typically found right amongst other graves in ‘normal’ grave-fields.47 There was clearly diversity even in deviance, and the oddity of a particular grave need not necessarily signal that the people responsible for its composition regarded the deceased with contempt. As Leszek Gardela cautions, some acts — although violent and repulsive to modern Western minds — may have been seen by Viking Age people as sanctioned and necessary, and funerary violence might therefore signal not only fear, but also affection.48 Old Norse rituals surrounding death were after all religious rites of passage, and their spiritual dimensions cannot be discounted. They were acts directed both towards dealing with the changes death enforces in the social networks of the living and also in the ontological and physical status of the dead.49 This was a risky business in which ‘the afterlife and identity of the deceased (and their goodwill towards the living) was in jeopardy’.50 One of these ritual purposes was to integrate the deceased into their new state of existence in the otherworld, and some people may have been seen as needing more help than others in effecting a proper transition, both during and after their initial interment. Viking Age mortuary rites may be understood as a process

45 ‘Deviant burial’ is a rather amorphous term coined by modern archaeologists and applied to many different instances of burials which are considered unusual in one way or another. As Eva Thäte, Monuments and Minds, p. 27, defines it, ‘a burial has been regarded as “deviant” when it differed from the normative burial custom’, and within this category she includes the following aspects: marked variations of orientations, non-normative positions of bodies in graves, and multiple burials, re-used graves (within same period), or intersecting graves (within same period). 46 i.e. the escalating steps taken by Thorolf Twist-Foot’s family in Eyrbyggja saga. 47 Thäte, Monuments and Minds, p. 272. 48 Leszek Gardeła, ‘The Dangerous Dead? Rethinking Viking-Age Deviant Burials’, in Conversions: Looking for Ideological Change in the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Leszek Shepecki and Rudolf Simek (Wien: Fassbaender, 2013), pp. 99–136 (p. 120). 49 Howard Williams, ‘Death, Memory and Material Culture: Catalytic Commemoration and the Cremated Dead’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, ed. by Liv Nilsson Stutz and Sarah Tarlow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 195–208 (p. 198). 50 Giles, A Forged Glamour, p. 213.

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Figure 13.9a Detail of the deviant double burial in mound 29 at Bollstanäs, Sweden — two male skeletons found decapitated and placed in a prone position heads to feet. Photo by Ove Hemmendorff, Swedish National Heritage Board; license CC-BY 2.5 SE.

Figure 13.9b Plan of the Gerdrup Grave — Denmark, a woman buried with three large stones placed atop her beside a bound man with a broken neck. Illustration Mette Høj, Museum Organization ROMU, used with kind permission.

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of making ancestors as well as memorializing them. Through these rituals a new relation was set up between deceased and survivors that acted to change the former from a once-living person and potentially dangerous ghost into an ancestor. This was a shift in being and status which ascribed new functions in the community (and new powers) to the dead, and new obligations (and potential boons) to the living,51 a new set of relationships that in turn entailed other, new avenues of maintenance and negotiation going forward.

After the Funeral and into Eternity It is these post-burial interactions with the dead and their places — how those considered as having completed their transition (or not) were treated and treated with in their new state — that may in fact be most evocative of the dead’s perceived continued involvement and integration in the community. There is ample evidence that grave sites, both old and new, were not just places for the negotiation of power and relationships to a hallowed past in the Viking Age, but were also cult sites viewed as active and effective in the present,52 places where the otherworld and this world were thought to intersect, and where the living habitually returned to carry out a number of different rituals outside of funerals.53 This attitude is evidenced in the traces of repeated depositions of objects in grave-fields, not just as a part of the primary burial sequence, but as both secondary deposits in graves and at other points in the cemetery entirely outside of burials themselves as well. For example, traces of fires, ceramics, and foodstuffs like animal bones and grains found in the surface layers of cemeteries (i.e. inside some of the massive ‘empty’ ship settings set among burials at Jelling in Denmark, and even as far afield as Finland) are probably the remains of commemorative feasts held at grave sites.54 In the Mälar valley in central Sweden a number of stone-edged features occur in grave-fields — either attached to the side of mounds and settings (as in the case of the so-called south-west portals; Fig. 13.10),55 or completely separate from any actual grave (Fig. 13.11)56 — that probably functioned as altars and/or

51 Chris Fowler, ‘Identities in Transformation: Identities, Funerary Rites, and the Mortuary Process’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, ed. by Stutz and Tarlow, pp. 511–26 (p. 511). 52 Leszek Gardela, ‘Worshipping the Dead. Viking Age Cemeteries as Cult Sites?’, in Germanische Kultorte. Vergleichende, historische und rezeptionsgeschichtliche Zugänge, ed. by Matthias Egeler, Münchner Nordistische Studien, 24 (München: Herbert Utz, 2016), pp. 169–205 (p. 117). 53 Andreas Nordberg, ‘Vägen till Hel går neråt och nordvart: om mytologi och ritual i yngre brandgravskick på Lovö’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, Stockholm University, 1997) (p. 9). 54 Anna Wessman, Death, Destruction and Commemoration: Tracing Ritual Activities in Finnish Late Iron Age Cemeteries (ad 550–1150), Iskos, 18 (Helsinki: The Finnish Antiquarian Society, 2010), p. 94. 55 Marianne Hem Eriksen, ‘Doors to the Dead. The Power of Doorways and Thresholds in Viking Age Scandinavia’, Archaeological Dialogues, 20.2 (2013), 187–214 (p. 200). 56 Lena Thålin-Bergman, Det vikingatida Frescati (Stockholm: Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien, 1984), p. 25.

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Figure 13.10 Part of the Viking Age cemtery at Tuna, Västerljung, Sweden with southwest portals highlighted. Plan after Gräslund, A.-S. ‘Living with the Dead’, 2001: 227, figure 1, additional markings by the author.

miniature ritual enclosures. Assemblages whose contents closely resemble offerings left at other places generally identified as cult sites were also frequently left by large earth-fast stones in cemeteries. They indicate that, just as objects left at other cult places were given as in request or thanksgiving to the gods or spirits venerated there, such networks of supernatural exchange involved the dead as well during the Viking Age. Depositions in and around graves might function among other things as gifts from mourners, either to close debts, or set up new ones and ensure the ancestors’ future favour.57 —Certain offerings like amulet rings (Fig. 13.12) — objects which may be connected with the oath-rings mentioned in various sagas, and have been found inside burials and at other points in Vendel and Viking period cemeteries all over middle Sweden — may even have been specifically created to act as mediating agents in contracts between the living and dead.58 All types of continual, repeated actions point to the dead (or more specifically some of those dead who were granted the rituals for transition) having being seen as still active components of their communities. They were objects of what Anne-Sofie

57 Giles, A Forged Glamour, p. 124. 58 Meghan Mattsson McGinnis, ‘Ring Out Your Dead: Distribution, Form, and Function of Iron Amulets in the Late Iron Age grave Fields of Lovö’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, Stockholm University, 2016), p. 50.

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Figure 13.11 The ‘offering mound’ discovered in grave-field Raä 223, Lilla Frescati, Stockholm — round stone setting enclosing small stone cairns and deposits of fire-steel shaped amulet rings. Plan by Erik Sörling, Stockholms Stadsmuseum; license CC-BY 2.5 SE.

Figure 13.12 Some of the over 200 amulet rings from the Vendel period cult place recently discovered in connection with grave-field RAÄ 122:1, Spånga, Sweden. Photo by Ingela Harrysson, Stiftelsen Kulturmiljövård, used with kind permission.

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Gräslund defines as ‘ancestor cult’: the ‘continuous worship of dead family members, [that] usually means a continuous feeling of solidarity and community with deceased ancestors, as well as dependence on and care of these past family members’.59 This is an animistic aspect of pre-Christian spirituality that, though initially rather neglected in studies of Old Norse religion, is now increasingly recognized as actually having played an extremely significant part in Viking Age ritual life.60 It has even retained influence in rural areas of Scandinavia into the modern day. According to Terry Gunnell, for example, people in the Norwegian countryside were still placing bread and beer on their local grave mounds at certain times of the year in order to ensure the well-being of the farm in the early twentieth century,61 and Louise Hagberg notes a similar custom in nineteenth-century Småland, Sweden.62 They are kinds of post-burial activities also engaged in by followers of indigenous Sámi and Finno-Ugric traditions, wherein the family as social unit is taken to contain members in both the living and other world. And the dead are thus treated as a distinct, but no less important, half of the kinship group, in constant interchange with their living counterparts through rituals like the exchange of offerings and memorial visits to grave sites (Fig. 13.13).63 They are able (depending on the state of relations) to either cause illness and suffering, or be helpful to their descendants, i.e. by guarding reindeer and children or give useful information in dreams,64 much as the dead occasionally do in Old Norse literature and law as well, where the practice of ‘útiseta’ (literally ‘sitting out’)65 on graves is cited as method for gaining hidden wisdom.66 Though burial places were clearly popular places for interchange with the departed in Viking Age Scandinavia, the dead could evidently also be made present in the community outside of their graves. For example, ancestors were, as is well known, invoked in textual and material citations on rune-stones,67 which carved in stone the memories of deceased relatives and asserted the continued link between them and the living, with all that could imply in matters of inheritance and prestige (Fig. 13.14). The conservation and display of heirlooms during the Viking Age period is visible, for example, in collections of objects in wealthy female graves,68 such as the rich

59 Anne-Sofie Gräslund, ‘Living with the Dead: Reflections on Food Offerings on Graves’, in Kontinuitäten und Brüche in der Religionsgechichte. Festschrift für Anders Hultgård zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Michael Stausberg (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001), pp. 222–35 (p. 224). 60 Sanmark, ‘Living On’, p. 163. 61 Terry Gunnell, ‘Hof, Halls, Godar and Dwarves: An Examination of the Ritual Space in the Pagan Icelandic Hall’, Cosmos, 17.1 (2001), 3–36 (p. 1). 62 Louise Hagberg, När döden gästar (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1937), p. 660. 63 Marja-Liisa Keinänen, ‘Feeding the Dead’, in Finnish Women Making Religion, ed. by Terhi Utriainen and Paivi Salmesvuori (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 21–42 (p. 25). 64 Rydving, The End of Drum-Time, p. 140. 65 Also referred to as ‘sitja á haugi’ or ‘sit on a mound’, where ‘haugi’ is the root of the modern Scandinavian ‘haug’/‘hög’. 66 Stephen Mitchell, Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), p. 80. 67 Ing-Marie Back Danielsson, ‘More Theory for Mortuary Research of the Viking World’, European Journal of Archaeology, 19.3 (2016), 519–31 (p. 523). 68 Lund and Arwill-Nordbladh, ‘Divergent Ways’, p. 423.

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Figure 13.13 Memorial ritual (muistajaiset) at the festival of Semyk, 2002 — Shorunzha, Morki, Mari Republic. Photo by Lehtinen Ildikó, Finnish National Board of Antiquities — Musketti, Finnish-Ugrian picture collection; license CC-BY 4.0.

grave from Aska, Sweden where several pieces of jewellery placed in this woman’s grave were already 100 to 200 years old at the time they were buried (Fig. 13.15). Post-burial interactions of this kind could even get extremely physical, involving the literal reopening of graves and removal of objects which would then come back into

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Figure 13.14 Ög 66 Bjälbo kyrkogård — runestone inscribed ‘Ingevald raised this stone after Styvjald, his brother, an excellent young man, Spjalbude’s son of the dynasty. But I perfected it’. Photo by Bengt A. Lundberg, Swedish National Heritage Board, license CC-BY 2.5 SE.

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Figure 13.15 Heirloom (c. 300 ce) pendant found in the Viking Age mound at Aska, Hagebyhöga, Sweden. Photo by Christer Åhlin, Swedish Historical Museum; license CC-BY 2.5 SE.

circulation among the living. Such activities are visible, for instance, at several of the most famous and wealthy of late Scandinavian Iron Age ‘royal’ cemeteries like Oseberg (Fig. 13.16), Vendel, and Gamla Uppsala. These acts were evidently not just a matter of straightforward robbing either, but could also be a means for collecting family ‘relics’ or deliberate provocation — with another family’s grave re-opened and/or objects taken as an offensive act within the wider context of feud.69 All of this again points to the continuing importance of the dead within the social network, as well as to the close connection taken to exist between the physical location and contents of graves and deceased persons as continued animate presences. The majority of Viking Age cremation burials do not even contain anything like the totality of the ash and bone that would result from burning a body, and theories as to the fate of the ‘missing bones’ involve their scattering in other ritually significant places such as sacred groves, the ritual enclosures known as ‘vi’, or even in the fields where crops

69 Alison Margaret Klevnäs, ‘“Imbued with the Essence of the Owner”: Personhood and Possessions in the Reopening and Reworking of Viking-Age Burials’, European Journal of Archaeology, 19.3 (2016), 456–76 (p. 470).

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Figure 13.16 A hole cut in the roof of the burial chamber of the Oseberg ship by grave re-openers. After Shetelig, H., Falk, H. and Brøgger, A. W. Osebergfundet, 1917: 32, fig. 11.

were grown.70 It is even possible some ‘missing’ bones employed as bone-coal used in steel-making, reconstituting the dead into weapons used by the living.71 In Viking Age Scandinavia the inhabitants of this and the otherworld were, in short, frequently in touch with each other in a very literal sense.

Conclusion – The Spectrum of Otherworldly Otherness In the end, what examining the kaleidoscope of diverse rites and relationships surrounding the dead, their abode, and artefacts brings most sharply into focus is that the otherness of the Viking Age otherworld was above all a contextual and contingent thing. Simply ‘crossing over’ did not confer any monolithic degree of otherness on the person in question, and the divide between this world and the other was seen as a fluid boundary at best. What the archaeological evidence reveals for us is a whole spectrum of ways in which the dead might be handled as more or less close or far away, insider or outsider, worshipped or unworthy, personal or hieratic, dangerous or familiar. It provides a glimpse of a world in which even interacting with those dead who were positioned as ancestors — those most ideal of insiders — was carried out in varying fashions, and taken to involve highly variable degrees of intimacy or safety. 70 Gunnar Andersson, ‘Among Trees, Tones, and Stones: The Sacred Grove at Lunda’, in Old Norse Religion in Long-term Perspectives, ed. by Kristina Jennbert, Anders Andrén, and Catharina Raudvere (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2006), pp. 195–99 (p. 196). 71 Terje Gansum, ‘Role the Bones – from Iron to Steel’, Norwegian Archaeological Review, 37.1 (2004), 41–57 (p. 45).

h ow ‘ot h e r’ was t he vi k i ng ot he rwo rld?

For Viking Age Scandinavians the defining other(worldly) quality was, it seems, not the ontological fact of death in itself, but rather the perception of differences amongst the dead: differences which could result from a number of factors having to do with their former lives; circumstances of death, how their transition to the afterlife was seen to go, or their distance from the present and consequently varying perceived levels of importance to and/or activity and involvement in survivors’ current affairs. It was a state of affairs in fact wholly in keeping with the complex and diverse ways in which personhood and identity was evidently constructed in proto-historic Europe generally, where complex collapsing of temporalities, and imbrications of dead and living were invoked in the many ways deceased individuals (both whole and fragmentary) might be treated as having agency, and made figuratively and/or physically present in the life of their communities. And where the categories of ‘life’ and ‘death’ themselves overlapped, and past and present could not be neatly divided. Otherness in death, just like other aspects of identity formations in life, was situated on — or rather across — the boundaries of reality in Viking Age Scandinavian culture as no simple dichotomy, but was a shifting semantic field at once as persistent as memory and as hard to pin down as a ghost.

Works Cited Secondary Works Andersson, Gunnar, ‘Among Trees, Bones, and Stones: The Sacred Grove at Lunda’, in Old Norse Religion in Long-term Perspectives, ed. by Kristina Jennbert, Anders Andrén, and Catharina Raudvere (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2006), pp. 195–99 Andrén, Anders, ‘The Significance of Places: The Christianization of Scandinavia from a Spatial Point of View’, World Archaeology, 45.1 (2013), 27–45 Atalay, Sonya, ‘Multivocality and Indigenous Archaeologies’, in Evaluating Multiple Narratives, ed. by Junko Habu, Clare Fawcett, and John M. Matsunaga (New York: Springer, 2008), pp. 29–44 Back Danielsson, Ing-Marie, ‘More Theory for Mortuary Research of the Viking World’, European Journal of Archaeology, 19.3 (2016), 519–31 Berggren, Åsa and Liv Nilsson Stutz, ‘From Spectator to Critic and Participant: A New Role for Archaeology in Ritual Studies’, Journal of Social Archaeology, 10.2 (2010), 171–97 Callmer, Johan, Ingrid Gustin, and Mats Roslund, ‘Identity Formation and Diversity: Introduction’, in Identity Formation and Diversity in the Early Medieval Baltic and Beyond: Communicators and Communication, ed. by Johan Callmer, Ingrid Gustin, and Mats Roslund (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 1–16 Casella, Eleanor, and Chris Fowler, ‘Beyond Identification: An Introduction’, in The Archaeology of Plural and Changing Identities, ed. by Eleanor Casella and Chris Fowler (New York: Springer, 2005), pp. 1–18 de Coulanges, Fustel, La Cité Antique: Étude Sur Le Culte, Le Droit, Les Institutions De La Grèce Et De Rome, Cambridge Library Collection – Classics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)

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Díaz-Andreu, Margarita, A World History of Nineteenth-century Archaeology: Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) Eriksen, Marianne Hem, ‘Doors to the Dead: The Power of Doorways and Thresholds in Viking Age Scandinavia’, Archaeological Dialogues, 20.22 (2013), 187–214 Fahlander, Fredrik, ‘The Materiality of the Ancient Dead: Post-Burial Practices and Ontologies of Death in Southern Sweden ad 800–1200’, Current Swedish Archaeology, 24 (2016), 137–62 Fallgren, Jan-Henrik. ‘Farm and Village in the Viking Age’, in The Viking World, ed. by Stefan Brink and Neil Price (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 67–76 Fowler, Chris, ‘Identities in Transformation: Identities, Funerary Rites, and the Mortuary Process’ in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, ed. by Liv Nilsson Stutz and Sarah Tarlow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 511–26 ———, ‘Identity Politics: Personhood, Kinship, Gender and Power in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Britain’, in The Archaeology of Plural and Changing Identities, ed. by Eleanor Casella and Chris Fowler (New York: Springer, 2005), pp. 109–34 Gansum, Terje, ‘Role the Bones – from Iron to Steel’, Norwegian Archaeological Review, 37.1 (2004), 41–57 Gardeła, Leszek, ‘The Dangerous Dead? Rethinking Viking-Age Deviant Burials’, in Conversions: Looking for Ideological Change in the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Leszek Shepecki and Rudolf Simek (Wien: Fassbaender, 2013), pp. 99–136 ———, ‘Worshipping the Dead. Viking Age Cemeteries as Cult Sites?’, in Germanische Kultorte. Vergleichende, historische und rezeptionsgeschichtliche Zugänge, ed. by Matthias Egeler, Münchner Nordistische Studien, 24 (München: Herbert Utz, 2016), pp. 169– 205 Giles, Melanie, A Forged Glamour: Landscape, Identity and Material Culture in the Iron Age (Oxford: Windgather, 2012) Gerritsen, Fokke, Local Identities: Landscape and Community in the Late Prehistoric MeuseDemer-Scheldt Region (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010) González-Ruibal, Alfredo, ‘Vernacular Cosmopolitanism: An Archeological Critique of Universalistic Reason’, in Cosmopolitan Archaeologies, ed. by Lynn Meskell (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), pp. 113–39 Gräslund, Anne-Sofie, ‘Living with the Dead: Reflections on Food Offerings on Graves’, in Kontinuitäten und Brüche in der Religionsgeschichte. Festschrift für Anders Hultgård zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Michael Stausberg (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001), pp. 222–35 Gunnell, Terry, ‘Hof, Halls, Godar and Dwarves: An Examination of the Ritual Space in the Pagan Icelandic Hall’, Cosmos, 17.1 (2001), 3–36 Hagberg, Louise, När döden gästar (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1937) Härke, Heinrich, ‘The Nature of Burial Data’, in Burial and Society: The Chronological and Social Analysis of Archaeological Burial Data, ed. by Karen Høilund Nielsen and Claus Kjeld Jensen (Århus: Århus University Press, 1997), pp. 19–27 Heide, Eldar, ‘Holy Islands and the Otherworld: Places Beyond Water’, in Isolated Islands in Medieval Nature, Culture and Mind, ed. by Gerhard Jaritz and Torstein Jørgensen (Budapest: Central European University, 2011), pp. 57–80 Insoll, Timothy, ‘Introduction: Configuring Identities in Archaeology’, in The Archaeology of Identities: A Reader, ed. by Timothy Insoll (New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 1–18

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Keinänen, Marja-Liisa, ‘Feeding the Dead’, in Finnish Women Making Religion, ed. by Terhi Utriainen and Paivi Salmesvuori (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 21–42 Klevnäs, Alison Margaret, ‘Imbued with the Essence of the Owner’: Personhood and Possessions in the Reopening and Reworking of Viking-Age Burials’, European Journal of Archaeology 19.3 (2016), 456–76 Lund, Julie, and Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladh, ‘Divergent Ways of Relating to the Past in the Viking Age’, European Journal of Archaeology, 19.3 (2016), 415–38 Maldonado, Adrian, and Anthony Russell, ‘Introduction: Creating Material Worlds’, in Creating Material Worlds: The Uses of Identity in Archaeology, ed. by Anthony Russell, Elizabeth Pierce, Adrián Maldonado, and Louisa Campbell (Oxford: Oxbow, 2016), pp. 1–15 Mattsson McGinnis, Meghan, ‘Ring Out Your Dead: Distribution, Form, and Function of Iron Amulets in the Late Iron Age Grave Fields of Lovö’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, Stockholm University, 2016) Meskell, Lynn, ‘Archaeologies of Identity’, in The Archaeology of Identities: A Reader, ed. by Timothy Insoll (New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 37–57 Miller, J. Mitchell, ‘Otherness’, in The Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, ed. by Lisa M. Given (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2008), pp. 588–90 Mitchell, Stephen, Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) Nordberg, Andreas, ‘Vägen till Hel går neråt och nordvart: om mytologi och ritual i yngre brandgravskick på Lovö’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, Stockholm University, 1997) Okely, Judith, ‘An Anthropological Contribution to the History and Archaeology of an Ethnic group’, in Space, Hierarchy and Society: Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Area Analysis, ed. by Barry C. Burnham and John Kingsbury (Oxford: BAR, 1979), pp. 81–92 Pedersen, Anne, ‘Ancient Mounds for New Graves: An Aspect of Viking Age Burial Customs in Southern Scandinavia’, in Old Norse Religion in Long-term Perspectives, ed. by Kristina Jennbert, Anders Andrén, and Catharina Raudvere (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2006), pp. 346–53 Price, Neil, ‘Dying and the Dead: Viking Age Mortuary Behaviour’, in The Viking World, ed. by Stefan Brink and Neil Price (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 257–73 Rydving, Håkan, The End of Drum-Time: Religious Change among the Lule Saami, 1670s–1740s (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1995) Sanmark, Alexandra, ‘Living on: Ancestors and the Soul’, in Signals of Belief: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited, ed. by Martin Carver, Alex Sanmark, and Sarah Semple (Oxford: Oxbow, 2010), pp. 162–84 Siikala, Anna-Leena, Mythic Images and Shamanism: A Perspective to Kalevala Poetry (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2002) Strömberg, Marten, Der Dolmen Trollasten in St Köpinge, Schonen (Lund: Gleerup, 1968) Thålin-Bergman, Lena, Det vikingatida Frescati (Stockholm: Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien, 1984) Thäte, Eva, Monuments and Minds: Monument Re-Use in Scandinavia in the Second Half of the First Millennium ad (Lund: Institutionen för arkeologi och antikens historia, 2007) Wallis, Robert, ‘Animism, Ancestors and Adjusted Styles of Communication: Hidden Art in Irish Passage Tombs’, in Archaeological Imaginations of Religion, ed. by Thomas Meier and Petra Tillessen (Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2009), pp. 283–314

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Wessman, Anna, Death, Destruction and Commemoration: Tracing Ritual Activities in Finnish Late Iron Age Cemeteries (ad 550–1150), Iskos, 18 (Helsinki: The Finnish Antiquarian Society, 2010) Williams, Howard, ‘Artefacts in Early Medieval Graves: A New Perspective’, in Debating Late Antiquity in Britain ad 300–700, ed. by Rob Collins (Oxford: BAR, 2004), pp. 89–102 ———, ‘Death, Memory and Material Culture: Catalytic Commemoration and the Cremated Dead’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, ed. by Liv Nilsson Stutz and Sarah Tarlow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 195–208 ———, ‘Hall of Mirrors: Death and Identity in Medieval Archaeology’, in Mortuary Practices and Social Identities in the Middle Ages: Essays in Burial Archaeology in Honour of Heinrich Härke, ed. by Duncan Sayers and Howard Williams (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2009), pp. 1–22

Yu Onuma

Otherness as an Ideal The Tradition of the ‘Virtuous’ Indians

Otherness and the ‘Virtuous’ Indians The idea of otherness is an age-long issue that runs alongside its counterpart, the Self. These two are inseparable, two sides of the same coin, but the boundaries between them have been set at certain times but blurred at others — occasionally even both at the same time — in various texts. Naturally, this has given rise to diverse representations of the Other, such as through exotic monsters and people; of these specimens of otherness, this essay focuses on the motif of the ‘virtuous’ Indians (henceforth ‘virtuous Indians’), or naked Eastern philosophers. This motif has long been one of the most representative examples of otherness for Europeans, often appearing in classical and medieval texts. Its literary migration from the classical to the medieval period shows how its essentially favourable otherness was tamed by the Self as it was adopted into Christian culture over the course of its development. Concerning the first associated key term in the title, otherness, this can be classified in many ways. In this essay, it is classified into three types: negative, positive, and neutral.1 Negative otherness is related to feelings such as fear and hatred. Here, the Self experiences the Other as something completely different, something connected to alterity. The Other becomes the wall constructed against the Self through its difference from it.2 In contrast, positive otherness is related to feelings such as awe and respect, and functions as a model or ideal. It is still different, but the object is

1 A similar idea is explained in terms of inclusion and exclusion in the Introduction to the present volume (cf. Introduction, fn. 4). 2 This negative otherness is comparable to the concept of ‘foreign’ in relation to difference and xenophobia, as discussed by Régine Le Jan, ‘Remarques sur l’étranger au haut Moyen Âge’, in L’image de l’autre dans l’Europe du Nord-Ouest à travers l’histoire, ed. by Jean-Pierre Jessenne, Histoire et littérature du Septentrion (IRHiS), 14 (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Publications de l’Institut de recherches historiques du Septentrion, 1996), pp. 23–32. Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London: Reaktion, 1992), p. 14, also introduces the idea that the marginal Other attracts fear. Yu Onuma  •  is Professor of English at Doshisha University, Kyoto. She received her Ph.D. (2009) in Literature from Keio University, Tokyo, and her research interests lie primarily in the reception of classical literature in the Middle Ages. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 319–338 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123597

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something to approach and aim for rather than function as simple alterity.3 The last category, neutral otherness, is not connected either with fear or awe, but appears only as something different from the Self. In a sense, this can be expressed as ‘proper’ or absolute otherness.4 Of these three, the most prevalent in medieval texts is probably negative otherness. However, the virtuous Indians can be said to be representatives of its opposite, positive and ideal otherness.5 This enhances the peculiar status of the Other in connection with them. It is also important to define the second key term: ‘virtuous Indians’. They represent, at the most basic level, ascetic philosophers living in India. For medieval people, they were surely associated with nothing more than the attributes of unknown people living somewhere far away in the East. Yet India itself was, for classical and medieval Europeans, a concept as well as a place: a vast and uncertain area in Asia stretching down as far even as northeast Africa.6 The vagueness of this conceptualization became an important factor in the later imaginative development of the motif. In the classical world virtuous Indians were named Brahmans (βραχμᾶνες) and Gymnosophists (Γυμνοσοφισταί). The latter literally means ‘naked sages’ in Greek, and in European writings this points to the naked philosophers that Alexander the Great (356–323 bc) is said to have encountered on his expedition to India. Hence, earlier descriptions of the Gymnosophists can be found among the Alexander Historians.7 On the other hand, the terms Brahmans, Brahmins, or Bragmanni, with several other variants, tended to be used to signify a specific tribe by classical writers, although it must have been rooted in the Brahmins, the priests and highest rank of the four castes in Hinduism. They are also simply referred to as ‘Sophists’ (σοφισταί), or sages/philosophers, in



3 Positive and negative feelings towards unfamiliar objects can coexist too, as mentioned in Stephen T. Asma, On Monsters: An Unnatural History of our Worst Fears (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 5–6. 4 Cf. Michael Uebel, Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of Alterity in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 19–22, who labels India as a ‘neutral space’, which possesses the ‘ideological fixity’ to include basically any kind of otherness. 5 Cf. George Cary, The Medieval Alexander, ed. by D. J. A. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), p. 92; Thomas Hahn, ‘The Indian Tradition in Western Medieval Intellectual History’, Viator, 9 (1978), 213–34 (pp. 233–34); Irina Metzler, ‘Perceptions of Hot Climate in Medieval Cosmography and Travel Literature’, Reading Medieval Studies, 23 (1997), 69–105 (p. 89); Kim M. Phillips, Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writings, 1245–1510 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), pp. 20, 22, 56; Paul Freedman, ‘The Medieval Other’, in Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations, ed. by Timothy S. Jones and David A. Sprunger, Studies in Medieval Culture, 42 (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 2002), pp. 1–24 (pp. 3–5, 10–11); Grant Parker, The Making of Roman India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 251; Francis Tobienne, Jr, Mandeville’s Travails: Merging Travel, Theory, and Commentary (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2016), p. xii. 6 Uebel, Ecstatic Transformation, p. 20; Marianne O’Doherty, The Indies and the Medieval West: Thought, Report, Imagination, Medieval Voyaging, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), p. 2. 7 The entry for ‘γυμνοσοφισταί’ in A Greek-English Lexicon, ed. by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, rev. by Henry Stuart Jones, ninth edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) gives the definition ‘the naked philosophers in India’ (p. 363; original italics), with reference to various materials related to Alexander.

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Greek texts.8 The Brahmans and Gymnosophists were later conflated, and the terms came to be used to refer to naked philosophers living ascetically, including by Arrian (ad 92–175), who is generally taken to be the most reliable source of Alexander historiography.9 Therefore, originally the terms referred to different groups, but later they were fused to signify one entity, and treated collectively and interchangeably.10 In any case, Brahmans/Gymnosophists are depicted as wise and ascetic people in the texts, and the imagery associated with them predominantly remained positive, although not entirely without negative elements, over the course of their textual development.11 The virtuous Indians are one example of the Self-and-Other binary adopted by medieval Europeans. Geographically speaking, in the accounts they are clearly said to live in an area beyond the world of the Self, and so naturally attain the status of otherness. Their habit of living naked is also a sign of this otherness and could be developed into a greater sign of difference; indeed, it went on to be treated as one of the characteristics of the barbarous races in the East.12 However, presumably owing to the virtue of the sages, nakedness was attributed to their simple and natural lifestyle, based on their religious and philosophical ideas; it therefore pointed towards their respectability instead.13 Thus, while the virtuous Indians represent the Other in their habitat and lifestyle, at the same time their venerable minds are presented as closer to the Self, or at least are described as something with which the Self can feel sympathetic. This part is where the Western Self intruded and tamed the Other towards the end of the Middle Ages.



8 Richard Stoneman, ‘Naked Philosophers: The Brahmans in the Alexander Historians and the Alexander Romance’, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 115 (1995), 99–114 (pp. 100–02); A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, ed. by William Smith (London: Murray, 1873; repr. New York: AMS, 1966), p. 427. However, we should still take note that ‘Brahman’ and its variants do not necessarily denote the real Brahmins; cf. Legends of Alexander the Great, trans. and ed. by Richard Stoneman (London: Dent, 1994), p. xx. 9 Arrian mentions ‘οἱ σοφισταί’ in Indica, 11. 1–8; cf. Arrian, Nicomediensis Scripta Minora, ed. by Rudolf Hercher and Alfred Eberhard (Leipzig: Teubner, 1885), also in the Perseus Digital Library [accessed 28 January 2019]. He says they are the most respected of the seven races in India, servicing the gods and living naked. This description thus includes both aspects of Brahmans and Gymnosophists, combined under the name Sophists. 10 Stoneman, ‘Naked Philosophers’, pp. 100–03; John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000), pp. 12–13; Metzler, ‘Perceptions of Hot Climate’, pp. 74–75. 11 According to Hahn, ‘The Indian Tradition’, p. 213, Western writers started to describe the Indian philosophers favourably in the fourth century, and the tradition was established by the twelfth century and reinforced towards the fourteenth century. 12 Friedman, The Monstrous Races, pp. 31–32. For example, Marco Polo reports that people in the Nicobar Islands live naked and beast-like; cf. Marco Polo, Il milione: Prima edizione integrale, 3. 12, ed. by Luigi Foscolo Benedetto (Firenze: Olschki, 1928), p. 175. Similarly, Mandeville’s Travels claims that people there are dog-headed and wear only loincloths; cf. Mandeville’s Travels, ed. by M. C. Seymour (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), p. 144. 13 On the equivocality of nakedness, see Phillips, Before Orientalism, pp. 125–28.

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The nature and function of the texts in which virtuous Indians appear also need to be taken into consideration, as inevitable differences in the descriptive attitude towards them arise according to each textual ‘genre’. Generally speaking, there are three kinds of focus when they appear in texts: historical, geographical, and didactic. From the historical viewpoint they are described as people living in the East; in other words, their existence is described as a natural fact, and encountering them is described as a natural event. In other texts, their living in India attracts attention in a geographical context. In such cases their exoticism is emphasized. Finally, virtuous Indians could be employed didactically, to exemplify good religious practice, since their behaviour was readily recognized as venerable even through Western eyes. Some texts combine several of these perspectives; overall, however, the ways in which Indian philosophers are described differ greatly relative to these three criteria.

Development of the Motif from the Classical to Medieval Periods The origin of the motif was not as positive as its later development might suggest. One of the most informative descriptions of Indian philosophers in the classical texts comes from Plutarch (ad 45–127). He introduces the episode of Alexander’s encounter with the Gymnosophists: τῶν δὲ Γυμνοσοφιστῶν […] παρασχόντας λαβὼν δέκα, δεινοὺς δοκοῦντας εἶναι περὶ τὰς ἀποκρίσεις καὶ βραχυλόγους, ἐρωτήματα προὔβαλεν αὐτοῖς ἄπορα, φήσας ἀποκτενεῖν τὸν μὴ ὀρθῶς ἀποκρινάμενον πρῶτον, εἶτα ἐφεξῆς οὕτω τοὺς ἄλλους.14 (Then [Alexander] captured ten of the Gymnosophists, who were reputed to be clever and brief in speech regarding answers, [so Alexander] threw very difficult questions at them, declaring that he would kill those who answered incorrectly first, and the others in a row in this way.) Here, the Gymnosophists appear as rebellious wise men, and Alexander tests their wisdom by asking them questions. After the inquisition, Alexander frees them with rewards. Their answers must have satisfied him, although Plutarch does not infer his feelings. Their wisdom is thus proven, but no other details are provided about them. The focus is on Alexander, and there is no didactic or religious meaning attached to the scene. As a result, they come across as not very different to Western people. In short, they might be the Other, but the differences between their otherness and the Self are not highlighted particularly strongly. Plutarch refers to Indian philosophers elsewhere too. He mentions ‘οἱ φιλόσοφοι’ (the philosophers) in India in ‘Alexander’ (59), but only in passing.15 They are again 14 Plutarch, Vitae Parallelae, ‘Alexander’, 64. 1, ed. by Carl Heinrich Sintenis, vol. iii (Leipzig: Teubner, 1853, repr. 1869), p. 351. The translation is my own, as are all subsequent translations attached to quotations. 15 Plutarch, Vitae Parallelae, ed. by Sintenis, p. 346.

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depicted as rebellious and hostile to Alexander; the context is how Alexander eliminated them in the course of his conquest. In addition, philosophers named Calanus and Dandamis appear as two sages who enjoy the highest esteem (‘Alexander’, 65).16 The episode in which the latter philosopher appears is used to explain that he is a rebellious sage, and is not very long, while the former philosopher’s episode is allocated longer descriptive passages. Calanus first rejects Alexander, but is persuaded to come with him, and gives him a clue about how to rule cleverly. His end is described in a different chapter (‘Alexander’, 69. 3–4). Having fallen ill, he chooses to burn himself, and tells Alexander to meet him again in Babylon — where Alexander dies. Thus, Calanus has somewhat supernatural wisdom. It is clear that the wisdom of the Indian philosophers is notable, and may be a sign of their difference from the Self. However, they are treated more as individuals, not as a symbol of difference. At this stage, they can function as part of the factual events Alexander experiences in India rather than as a device to show otherness. Geographical and encyclopaedic works have a somewhat different perspective. For example, in the Geography by Strabo (63 bc–ad 23) — chronologically earlier than Plutarch’s Parallel Lives — the focus is on the Indian philosophers rather than on Alexander: Ὀνησίκριτος […] φησιν […]: ἀκούειν […] τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ὡς γυμνοὶ διατελοῖεν καὶ καρτερίας ἐπιμελοῖντο οἱ ἄνθρωποι ἐν τιμῇ τε ἄγοιντο πλείστῃ.17 (Onesicritus says that Alexander heard that the people stayed naked and devoted themselves to patient endurance, and were held in the greatest honour.) Alexander is mentioned as a source of information, but the focus of the text is predominantly on the appearance, behaviour, and culture of the Indian philosophers: they are virtuous ascetics, much respected by the locals. Apart from the cited part, which is based on several writers, Strabo offers detailed accounts of diverse kinds of Indian philosophers, including the aforementioned meetings with Dandamis (here called Mandanis) and Calanus (15. 1. 58–66). The change in focus can be attributed to textual function: Chapter xv of the Geography is dedicated to descriptions of India and Persia. The purpose of the account is thus to provide information on Asia, and naturally the Indian philosophers come to the fore as one example of the people and cultures there. Nonetheless, there is one commonality with the historical accounts, which is that no didactic interpretation is made of the philosophers. They are simply

16 The episodes of Dandamis and Calanus are also recorded in Arrian, Anabasis, 7. 2–3, with more details; cf. Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri, ed. by A. G. Roos (Leipzig: Teubner, 1907), also in the Perseus Digital Library [accessed 28 January 2019]. Here, the narrative concentrates even more on telling the episode about Alexander. Neither Calanus nor Dandamis are particularly noted as the Other, even though they are grandly introduced as sages — although not without some negative comments on Calanus’s self-discipline, which will be emphasized in the later forged letters of Dandamis (or Dindimus). 17 Strabo, Geographica, 15. 1. 63, ed. by Augustus Meineke, 3 vols (Leipzig: Teubner, 1877), also in the Perseus Digital Library [accessed 28 January 2019].

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described objectively as ‘facts’. The same writing style is common to both, although they focus on opposite sides of the narrative. The treatment of the naked philosophers indicated another phase of development, unrelated to Alexander. An example can be found in the Natural History by Pliny the Elder (ad 23–79). He mentions the Gymnosophists when introducing various people, mainly the so-called monstrous races, in India: philosophos eorum, quos gymnosophistas vocant, ab exortu ad occasum perstare contuentes solem inmobilibus oculis, ferventibus harenis toto die alternis pedibus insistere.18 ([It is known that] their sages, whom they call Gymnosophists, continue standing from sunrise to sunset, beholding the sun with unmoving eyes, [and] stand all day on alternate feet in the boiling hot sands.) As with Strabo, Pliny’s focus is on geographical and ethnographical knowledge. The account expounds on what is in all probability the ascetic training of the Gymnosophists. However, the section in question of the Natural History is about various nations, and the Gymnosophists are juxtaposed with monstrous races such as dog-headed people, one-legged people, and mouthless people. The behaviour of the philosophers is thus a sign of otherness set in this context. To sum up, in the classical period, Indian philosophers are described as people with customs very different from those of the Greek and Roman world. When they are embedded in the context of Alexander’s campaign, they are simply depicted as people whom Alexander encounters. This means that the difference between the Other and the Self is not emphasized. Of all these examples, only Pliny, who does not focus on Alexander, emphasizes otherness by concentrating on their behaviour and remoteness. The naked philosophers in classical literature are described from historical or geographical viewpoints which do not go beyond representing them as the simple Other. They are wise, living a strange or praiseworthy life, but not functioning as a shining beacon or ideal. They are ultimately treated only as ‘people’ in a distant land. This changes as we enter the Christian medieval period — after people came to acquire more knowledge of the real India.19 Initially, as stated above, the imagery associated with the Indian philosophers was generally positive, but some exceptions did appear. Although their behaviour was seen as respectable even according to Christian standards, it is clear that they were heathens. In some Christian treatises, the focus is on this point, and Indian philosophers are dealt with negatively, especially

18 Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, 7. 7, ed. by Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff (Leipzig: Teubner, 1905), also in the Perseus Digital Library [accessed 28 January 2019]. This section is labelled 7. 2 in some editions. 19 There was regular contact between India and the West in the second and third centuries, and Indian philosophy was known too; cf. Richard Stoneman, ‘Who are the Brahmans? Indian Lore and Cynic Doctrine in Palladius’, De Bragmanibus and Its Models’, The Classical Quarterly, 44 (1994), 500–10 (p. 504).

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by the early Fathers of the Church around the third to the fifth centuries.20 One of the most extreme examples can be found in The City of God by Augustine of Hippo (ad 354–430): Ad eam namque pertinent etiam, qui deuiantes ab huius fide diuersas haereses condiderunt; secundum hominem quippe uiuunt, non secundum Deum. Et Indorum gymnosophistae, qui nudi perhibentur philosophari in solitudinibus Indiae, ciues eius sunt, et a generando se cohibent. Non est enim hoc bonum, nisi cum fit secundum fidem summi boni, qui Deus est.21 (For to [the earthly city] also belong those who, deviating from their faith, established various heresies; since they live according to man, not according to God. And the Gymnosophists of Indians, who are said to philosophize naked in the solitude of India, are its citizens, and from procreation they restrain themselves. This is not good indeed, except when it is done according to faith in the highest good, that is God.) The Gymnosophists are treated as those who erroneously imitate Christians, while being ignorant of God. Whereas Augustine admits that their customs may have some goodness, he insists that the ways in which they practise them is not correct, because they do not know about Providence. Augustine also talks negatively about the Gymnosophists in 14. 17 of the same work.22 The point of blame here is that they have no shame or modesty driving them to cover their private parts. Overall, the fact that they are not Christians is a hindrance, and the behaviour of the otherwise good sages cannot escape severe judgement. As time went by, however, the role of Indian philosophers gradually changed. They began to be seen as exemplary figures, and/or teachers of the Self.23 Hahn says that this change had already started in Augustine’s lifetime, among the Fathers of the Church, and that this change approximately coincided with their emergence in the ‘forged’ literature.24 The bridge between classical and medieval texts, as well as roughly between factual and fictional texts, of the Indian philosophers is probably the so-called Alexander romance. Its origin goes back to the Hellenistic period, but it enjoyed great popularity in the Middle Ages.25 It is clearly fictitious, but was still

20 Hahn, ‘The Indian Tradition’, p. 217; Parker, The Making of Roman India, p. 277; Yitzhak Hen, ‘Alcuin, Seneca and the Brahmins of India’, in Religious Franks: Religion and Power in the Frankish Kingdoms. Studies in Honour of Mayke de Jong, ed. by Rob Meens, Dorine van Espelo, Bram van den Hoven van Genderen, Janneke Raaijmakers, Irene van Renswoude, and Carine van Rhijn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 148–61 (p. 152). 21 Augustine, De civitate Dei, 15. 20, ed. by Bernhard Dombart and Alphons Kalb, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 48 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), ii, 482. 22 Augustine, De civitate Dei, ed. by Dombart and Kalb, ii, 440. 23 Cf. O’Doherty, The Indies, p. 46. 24 Hahn, ‘The Indian Tradition’, pp. 217–18. 25 The original Greek source, now lost, of the romance is thought to have been written in Alexandria in the early third century ad, and was adopted into various romances in virtually every vernacular language in the medieval period. For details, see Cary, The Medieval Alexander, pp. 9–74.

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inspired by historical facts about Alexander, and naturally deals with the meeting of the king with the Indian sages. It describes the teachings of the Brahmans as told to Alexander, mainly by Dindimus, the leader of the Brahmans.26 Meanwhile, this episode of Alexander and the Brahmans was separately circulated in a longer, more detailed form. In fact, parts of such works were sometimes incorporated into the romances.27 It is these independent materials on Alexander and the Brahmans that typically show the burgeoning changes in the methods used to describe the naked philosophers. One such work is The Correspondence of Alexander and Dindimus, compiled around the third to fifth centuries. The work portrays Dindimus and Brahmans as if they are Christians.28 It purports to be letters between Alexander and Dindimus, who must have originated from the character of Dandamis introduced by historians such as Plutarch. Here, Alexander demands that Dindimus teach him, saying he is ready to accept the Brahmans’ philosophy: ‘ego quoque, si fieri potest, disciplinae sectator huius exsistam’ (I too, if it is possible to be, will become a follower of the teaching).29 The correspondence thus starts with Alexander’s intellectual quest for a better life. Yet it does not go as smoothly as Alexander might have imagined. Dindimus replies with a criticism of Alexander’s way of life as a conqueror, and of his religion. Alexander then fights back in his letter: Aut deos esse profitentur aut invidere Deo, cuius tam pulcherrimam vituperant creaturam. Haec iudicio meo dementiae potius quam philosophiae numeranda sunt.30 (Either [Brahmans] display themselves as gods or as envying God, whose most beautiful creation they criticize so much. These [ideas] are, in my opinion, to be counted as follies rather than philosophy.) Alexander thus turns to criticize the Brahmans, and the correspondence continues likewise; in short, both of them criticize the other, claiming they themselves are

26 The Greek Alexander Romance, trans. with intro. and notes by Richard Stoneman (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991), pp. 130–33. The romance was also adopted into Islamic literature, and descriptions of the Indian sages appear there too. In addition, the riddles between Alexander and the sage(s) occur in Arabic wisdom literature; cf. Z. David Zuwiyya, ‘Alexander the Great in the Arabic Tradition’, in A Companion to Alexander Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. by Z. David Zuwiyya, Brill’s Companion to the Christian Tradition, 29 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 73–112 (pp. 90–91, 111–12). Williams argues that the episode of encountering the naked wise men in the romance is the central part of the tale, showing Alexander’s contradictive character: cf. David Williams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996), pp. 231–48 (esp. pp. 237–40). 27 Cary, The Medieval Alexander, pp. 12–14. 28 Hahn, ‘The Indian Tradition’, pp. 219–20. 29 Collatio Alexandri et Dindimi, Collatio 1. 1, ed. by Marc Steinmann, Alexander der Große und die ‘nackten Weisen’ Indiens: Der fiktive Briefwechsel zwischen Alexander und dem Brahmanenkönig Dindimus, Klassische Philologie, 4 (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2012), pp. 125–89 (p. 126). 30 Collatio Alexandri et Dindimi, Collatio 3, ed. by Steinmann, p. 170.

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right.31 In this case, it is not clear if Alexander sees the Brahmans as virtuous after all. Interpretations of this work vary. In the original form it was considered as supporting Alexander, but then it came to be regarded as an attack on him from a Cynic (i.e. ascetic) approach. Later, the general interpretation changed back yet again: the Cynics and the Brahmans, as well as the early Church Fathers who had accused Alexander, were criticized. In turn, as the tradition of the virtuous Indians was firmly established, interpretation leaned in favour of Dindimus.32 The work explicitly has a didactic function, yet it can be understood as favouring either side, and is didactically unstable in that sense.33 The Correspondence of Alexander and Dindimus can be placed in between the later established Christian didacticism and the earlier, didactically neutral descriptions of the Indian philosophers. It possibly made people reflect on how to behave, but the naked philosophers did not clearly represent an ideal role model for Westerners.34 Among the Brahmans, Dindimus receives particular praise. This can be seen in writings by Peter Abelard (c. 1079–1142). He raises the status of Dindimus as one of the most respectful of all the virtuous pagans,35 one of the four most important sages of the ancient non-Christians, along with Nebuchadnezzar, David, and Solomon.

31 Cizek points out that ‘collatio’ should be understood as disputation: cf. Alexandru Cizek, ‘Zur literarischen und rhetorischen Bestimmung der Schrift Collatio Alexandri Magni, regis Macedonum, et Dindimi, regis Bragmanorum, de philosophia per litteras facta’, Rhetorica, 4 (1986), 111–36 (p. 114). 32 Cary, The Medieval Alexander, pp. 13, 91–92; Hahn, ‘The Indian Tradition’, p. 219; Telfryn Pritchard, ‘The Collatio Alexandri et Dindimi: A Revised Text’, Classica et Mediaevalia, 46 (1995), 255–83 (p. 256). 33 The roles of Alexander and Dindimus can be interpreted in different ways as well. Cary says that Dindimus represents Christians as set against the pagan Alexander: cf. George Cary, ‘A Note on the Mediaeval History of the Collatio Alexandri cum Dindimo’, Classica et Mediaevalia, 15 (1954), 124–29 (pp. 126–29). On the other hand, through his analysis of the Middle English Alexander and Dindimus — which ultimately goes back to the Latin Collatio Alexanderi et Dindimi discussed here, although it directly relies on the version incorporated into the Alexander romance — Grady claims that both Alexander and Dindimus are virtuous pagans used in the discussion of the merits of ‘worldly action versus ascetic withdrawal’: cf. Frank Grady, Representing Righteous Heathens in Late Medieval England (New York: Palgrave, 2005), p. 97. Another claim is that neither side is victorious and that the whole work is a disputation between the active and contemplative relationships of human beings with nature: cf. David Salter, Holy and Noble Beasts: Encounters with Animals in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Brewer, 2001), pp. 139–46. For his part, Orchard claims that the work is a reconciliation of the two elements of Alexander stories, pride and prodigies, with Alexander representing pride and Indian philosophers prodigies here: cf. Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the ‘Beowulf’-Manuscript (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), pp. 117–18. 34 There is another work on the discourse of Alexander with naked sages, ‘On the Brahmans’, ascribed to Palladius of Galatia, Bishop of Helenopolis (c. 363–c. 431), who is suspected of Origenism, the idea that all are saved irrespective of religious belief. The treatise has Cynic origin, but Brahmans are lauded from a Christian viewpoint (Hahn, ‘The Indian Tradition’, p. 218; Legends of Alexander the Great, trans. and ed. by Stoneman, p. xxii; The Greek Alexander Romance, trans. with intro. and notes by Stoneman, p. 13); hence, unlike The Correspondence of Alexander and Dindimus, the advantage is always on Dindimus’s side. Brahmans with natural wisdom are in fact favoured by early Christian writers for the purpose of criticizing Greek philosophy (Parker, The Making of Roman India, p. 287). 35 Hahn, ‘The Indian Tradition’, p. 226.

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He extols them as the key figures associated with Christian truths in his Theologia scholarium: [S]intque hii quatuor reges quasi quatuor rotȩ nobilis quadrigȩ summi regis, per quas uidelicet fides quatuor euangeliorum de sancta trinitate per uniuersum deferatur mundum.36 (And these four kings are like the four wheels of the four-horsed chariot of the most renowned king; namely, through them truths of the four Gospels about the sacred Trinity would be brought over the whole world.) The four ‘pagans’ are thus counted as almost indispensable for interpreting the four Gospels. This seems extraordinary, but, as Abelard is known for asserting the salvation of virtuous heathens,37 the inclusion of Dindimus here can be considered a natural outcome of the Brahmans’ quasi-monastic lifestyle. It is also notable that whereas the other three kings listed are from the Old Testament, Dindimus alone originates from a secular text.38 His otherness is almost masked here as a result of his Christian colouring. The connection between Indian philosophers and Christians then continues and even increases. There are examples in secular writings too. A typical instance is Prester John’s Letter.39 This was a letter circulated in Western Europe in the twelfth century purporting to be from Prester John, a legendary Christian emperor of the East, to the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus (1118–1180, r. 1143–1180). In this work, the Bragmanni or Brahmans live under the reign of Christian Prester John, and so they are integrated into Christen realms. In the text, their behaviour and way of living are first lauded and then expanded upon: Sancti sunt in carne viventes. Quorum sanctitate et iusticia universa fere christianitas ubique sustentatur, ut credimus, et ne a dyabolo superetur, oracionubus eorum

36 Peter Abelard, Theologia ‘summi boni’, Theologia ‘scholarium’, 1. 195, ed. by Eligius M. Buytaert and Constant J. Mews, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1987), p. 402. 37 Hahn, ‘The Indian Tradition’, p. 226. 38 Abelard is one of the earliest theologians to treat Indian philosophy as being on a par with the Jewish tradition. He also argues that ancient philosophers of every culture understand some aspects of Christianity better than genuine Christians; cf. Constant J. Mews, Abelard and Heloise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 133–34. The Hebrew tradition could even be lowered in status relative to other pagan beliefs; cf. Eileen C. Sweeney, ‘Abelard and the Jews’, in Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. by Barbette S. Hellemans, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 229 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 37–59 (pp. 40–43). 39 There are also some Christian works in which Brahmans are possibly associated with terrestrial paradise. See Cizek, ‘Zur literarischen und rhetorischen Bestimmung’, p. 132; Richard Stoneman, ‘Tales of Utopia: Alexander, Cynics and Christian Ascetics’, in Philosophy and the Ancient Novel, ed. by Marília P. Futre Pinheiro and Silvia Montiglio, Ancient Narrative Supplements, 20 (Eelde: Barkhuis, 2015), pp. 51–63 (pp. 55–56, 61); Corinne Jouanno, ‘Des Gymnosophistes aux Réchabites: Une utopie antique et sa christianisation’, L’Antiquité Classique, 79 (2010), 53–76 (esp. pp. 61, 66–68).

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defenditur. Isti serviunt maiestati nostrae solummodo oracionibus suis nec nos aliud ab eis habere volumus.40 ([Brahmans] are saints living in the flesh. By their sanctity and justice almost all Christians are sustained everywhere, so we believe, and are not to be conquered by the Devil, [as Christians are] defended by their prayers. These men serve our majesty merely through their prayers, nor do we want to have anything else from them.) They are now revered as saints, and serve Prester John only through their prayers, through which the Christian world is protected from the Devil. The work no longer mentions their ascetism; in fact, if the label Bragmanni were not present, they could pass as a group of people associated with Christianity. Furthermore, the lord of the Bragmanni, Prester John himself, is a model figure for Christian monarchs,41 and the Brahmans are included in his feudal system. The entire scheme thus follows that of Christendom. This is clearly an example of taming the Other, as the Other is now included in the system that the Self is familiar with. This approach of praising the Indian philosophers is also recognized in intellectual writings, as seen in the Latin writings of Jacques de Vitry (c. 1160–1240) and Thomas of Cantimpré (1201–1272).42 The former, in his historiography, introduces the Gymnosophists as living in honest poverty, and describes the correspondence between Alexander and Dindimus at length.43 In the case of Thomas, he even presents the Brahmans as knowing God before the advent of Christ in his encyclopaedic work.44 For them, Indian philosophers surely represent Christian virtues. It is notable that although they are both theologians, their opinions show a marked contrast with that of their predecessor Augustine. He excluded Gymnosophists as being heathens who merely imitate the surface of belief without knowing religious truth. Augustine’s treatment of them resulted in the intensification of their otherness, but by the later Middle Ages, theologians could take the opposite attitude, as the above two sources

40 ‘Prester John’s Letter to the Byzantine Emperor Emanuel, with a Note by B. Hamilton on Additional Latin Manuscripts of the Letter’, ed. by F. Zarncke, in Prester John: The Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes, ed. by Charles F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996), pp. 39–102 (p. 85). 41 Phillips, Before Orientalism, p. 48. 42 Friedman, The Monstrous Races, pp. 169–71. 43 Jacques de Vitry, Histoire orientale: Historia orientalis, ch. xcii, ed. and trans. with intro. by Jean Donnadieu, Sous la Règle de saint Augustin, 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 384–405. Christiane Deluz, Le ‘Livre’ de Jehan de Mandeville: Une ‘géographie’ au xive siècle, Université Catholique de Louvain. Publications de l’Institut d’études médiévales: Textes, études, congrès, 8 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d’études médiévales de l’Université Catholique de Louvain, 1988), p. 487, points out that Jacques de Vitry’s work is one of the sources for the descriptions about the Gymnosophists in Mandeville’s Travels discussed below. 44 Thomas Cantimpratensis, Liber de natura rerum: Editio princeps secundum codices manuscriptos, 3. 4, ed. by H. Boese, vol. i (Berlin: Gruyter, 1973), p. 98.

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exemplify.45 Indian philosophers here are gathered under the roof of Christian virtue, and then incorporated into the Self. Incorporation again appears in a popular fictitious travel narrative, Mandeville’s Travels (c. 1357), in yet another form. There are two kinds — although probably they are mere variants — of virtuous heathens related to Alexander, as expounded in Chapter xxxii. Neither of them is Christian, but both are still beloved by God. First, there are those from ‘the yle of Bragman’, also known as ‘the lond of feyth’, where righteous people live without troubles such as thievery and murder.46 The description of a Utopian land then compares the Other and the Self: And because thei ben so trewe and so rightfulle and so fulle of alle gode condicouns, thei weren neuere greued with tempestes ne with thonder ne with leyt ne with hayl ne with pestylence ne with werre ne with hunger ne wit[h] non other tribulacioun as wee ben many tymes amonges vs for oure synnes. Wherefore it semeth wel that God loueth hem and is plesed with hire creance for hire gode dedes.47 As the underlined part shows, the narrator of the tale, John Mandeville, says that the people there, or Brahmans, are so virtuous that they do not suffer the tribulations that sinful Europeans suffer. Here, the peaceful land of the Brahmans is set against a Europe afflicted with terrible suffering. He concludes that the Brahmans are loved by God, even though they are heathens. The story then goes on to describe Alexander’s attempt to conquer them. After he learns what kind of people they are, Alexander eventually restrains himself from pursuing his original purpose, as he thinks ‘he sholde do gret synne for to trouble hem’.48 The worldly Self should not intervene with the virtuous Other. The narrator, and the compiler behind him too, thus criticize the Western Self through the mirroring imagery of the Eastern Other. Europeans should take the path of Alexander the Great and reflect on themselves and their society. In the meantime, the Brahmans are incorporated into the Christian ideal by being translated into a people with an idealized society from the point of view of the European Self. The taming of the Other thus continues. Mandeville’s Travels takes a step further with one more example. In the tale, Alexander visits another kind of faithful people, living on the islands of ‘Oxidrate’ and ‘Gynosophe’.49 The latter is plainly a corruption of Gymnosophists, and the

45 There are of course some later medieval theologians who position the West over the East as well, even though their accounts are based on classical texts, like the two theologians here; cf. Claire Weeda, ‘The Fixed and the Fluent: Geographical Determinism, Ethnicity and Religion c. 1100–1300 ce’, in The Routledge Handbook of Identity and the Environment in the Classical and Medieval Worlds, ed. by Rebecca Futo Kennedy and Molly Jones-Lewis (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 93–113 (p. 101). 46 Mandeville’s Travels, ed. by Seymour, p. 211. It has already been pointed out that Mandeville’s Travels takes a favourable attitude towards (virtuous) pagans, and Chap. xxxii is the culmination of this; cf. Shirin A. Khanmohamadi, In Light of Another’s Word: European Ethnography in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), pp. 127–31 (esp. pp. 129–30). 47 Mandeville’s Travels, ed. by Seymour, p. 212 (underlines added; square brackets are original). 48 Mandeville’s Travels, ed. by Seymour, p. 213. 49 Mandeville’s Travels, ed. by Seymour, p. 213.

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former is also a corruption of a name erroneously attached to the Brahmans.50 This time, Alexander visits the islands to examine their customs, and, knowing ‘hire gret feyth and hire trouthe’, he decides to give them a reward, only to realize there is nothing he can offer them.51 They accuse Alexander of pride, and the anecdote ends with the humiliation of the king: ‘Alisandre was gretly astoneyed and abayset and alle confuse[d] departed from hem’.52 Compared to the case of the first example discussed above, Alexander acts more like a fool. In the previous example, Alexander is wise enough to learn by himself, but here he merely runs away, having been made to realize his folly by the virtuous people. This can be seen as a severe criticism of the Western Self by employing the role of the Eastern Other. Mandeville’s Travels goes further in the passage which directly follows Alexander’s flight. It provides an expanded version of the argument that virtuous people can receive God’s love even if they are heathens: And alle be it that theyse folk han not the articles of oure feyth as wee han, natheles for hire gode feyth naturelle and for hire gode entent I trowe fully that God loueth hem and that God take hire seruyse to gree, right as He did of Iob that was a paynem and held him for His trewe seruant. And therfore alle be it that there ben many dyuerse lawes in the world, yit I trowe that God loueth alweys hem that louen Him and seruen Him mekely in touthe, and namely hem that dispysen the veyn glorie of this world, as this folk don and as Iob did also.53 Here, the narrator, Mandeville, again asserts that these people are not Christians, but they are nevertheless pious and holy. As a result, God loves them.54 Mandeville even claims that it is not doctrine but behaviour that determines those who are beloved by God. Virtuous heathens are likened to Job in the Old Testament in order to show the legitimacy of the claim. Later in the chapter he adds that they prophesized the

50 In fact, the French original of Mandeville’s Travels, as shown in Jean de Mandeville: Le Livre des merveilles du monde, ed. by Christiane Deluz, Sources d’histoire médiévale: Publiées par l’Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes, 31 (Paris: CNRS, 2000), p. 459, correctly has ‘Oxidrate’ and ‘Gynosophe’ as people. There is a tribe called Oxydracae in India (e.g. Arrian, Anabasis, 6. 14) who are actually related neither to the Brahmans nor the Gymnosophists; cf. Stoneman, ‘Naked Philosophers’, pp. 100–02. Although the name of ‘Oxydracae’ is used, erroneously, as another name for the Brahmans, the second example of virtuous heathens in Mandeville’s Travels in fact deals with ‘Gymnosophists’, rather than ‘Oxydracae’. The first example clearly represents the Brahmans, as it takes place on ‘the yle of Bragman’, and there people wear ‘a sely litylle clout’ (Mandeville’s Travels, ed. by Seymour, p. 212), while in the second example the people’s nudity is emphasized. 51 Mandeville’s Travels, ed. by Seymour, p. 213. 52 Mandeville’s Travels, ed. by Seymour, p. 214 (original square brackets). 53 Mandeville’s Travels, ed. by Seymour, p. 214 (underlines added). 54 This is said to be the quintessence of Mandeville’s belief; cf. Rosemary Tzanaki, Mandeville’s Medieval Audiences: A Study on the Reception of the ‘Book’ of Sir John Mandeville (1371–1550) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), p. 236. Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 44–48, claims that Mandeville’s Travels blurs the boundary between the Self and the Other, and has an aspect that can be heterodox through its tolerance towards Eastern religious practices.

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Incarnation as well.55 In a sense, their otherness has been diluted. It is still different from the Self, but it now receives virtually the same treatment from God as the Self does. Thus, the Indian philosophers here represent otherness as an ideal: something totally different from the Self, but at the same time something to be viewed with awe and as a means of self-reflection. Their society is an implicit indictment of their European equivalent, and Alexander the Great stands for the worldly Self, ashamed when set against the virtuous Other. Thus, the Western Self is doubly criticized in these cases. The episodes are deeply connected with Christian ideas and morality. Especially in the second episode, accounts of God’s love based on the behaviour of the virtuous heathens are devoted a space almost as long as the description of the people themselves. They clearly had a didactic and religious function for Christian readers. Meanwhile, interestingly, in a genuine travel record we witness the opposite handling of the pagan Other and the Christian Self. Giovanni de’ Marignolli (1290–1360), a missionary to China, left records of his travels, and on his way back he stayed in Columbum (Malabar) for more than a year, where he met an old man who was most likely a true naked sage in India: ‘homo nudus a lumbis supra […] solo pallio coopertus cordula nodosa ad modum stole dyaconi’ (a man naked upwards from the loins, covered only with a mantle and knotty thread in the manner of stole of a deacon).56 Technically, then, he is not entirely naked, but wears sparse clothes. The following part reveals that he had lived an ascetic life and came to visit Marignolli according to a revelation. After three months of receiving Christian instruction, he was baptized. Marignolli writes that it is divine will to show the way to salvation for everyone who lives in harmony with the law:57 Hec hystoria utilis est ad ostendendum, […] quod ‘non est personarum exceptio apud Deum’, sed quicumque legem scriptam in corde a Deo servat […], acceptus est illi et docet eum viam salutis.58 (This story is useful to show that God makes no exceptions among people, but whoever keeps the law written in the heart by God is accepted by him and is taught the way of salvation.) This final remark, that salvation is promised to all people, is, on the surface, rather similar to what is written in Mandeville’s Travels. However, in this text, conversion

55 Mandeville’s Travels, ed. by Seymour, p. 215. 56 Giovanni de’ Marignolli, Chronicon Bohemorum, 15. 1, ed. by Irene Malfatto, ‘Le digressioni sull’Oriente nel Chronicon Bohemorum di Giovanni de’ Marignolli’, p. 20, available only online in E Codicibus (Firenze: SISMEL, 2013) [accessed 28 January 2019]. The knotty thread here can be the Yagyopavita, or the sacred thread. 57 Yule is highly skeptical about the credibility of the whole episode; cf. Giovanni de’ Marignolli, Recollections of Travel in the East, by John de’ Marignolli, in Cathay and the Way Thither: Being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China, trans. and ed. by Henry Yule, vol. ii (London: Hakluyt Society, 1866), pp. 335–94 (p. 382). 58 Giovanni de’ Marignolli, Chronicon Bohemorum, 15. 3, ed. by Malfatto, p. 21.

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and baptism are the keys to salvation, as one has to be a Christian to be saved.59 In this case, the Christian Self instructs the pagan Other, while in fictional works the Other works as a guide. In both cases the Other is approximate to the Self, but with the roles reversed.60 All in all, the development of the naked philosopher as a literary motif in the different medieval periods provides a means to tame the Other. At the most basic level, the most notable points of otherness common to the representation of these philosophers are their lifestyle and wisdom. This stays the same in both classical and medieval texts. Nonetheless, as their otherness has a positive quality, in the Middle Ages they gradually came to be likened to Christians as a moral and religious ideal for the Self, or as prospective Christians. Except for what are (probably) actual travel writings written from a ‘historical’ viewpoint, they are treated more as symbols than as people, which marks the most fundamental change from the classical period.61

Otherness as an Ideal The development of the motif of the virtuous Indians discussed so far sheds light on one aspect of the relationship between the Self and the Other. In classical literature, Indian sages are simply recorded as existing: either primarily as the Indian race, as in the accounts of Strabo and Pliny, or as subsidiary figures alluded to in the course of narrating the deeds of Alexander the Great, as in the case of Plutarch. Either way, the sages are the Other whom the Self witnesses. On entering the Christian medieval period, the way they are introduced starts to become more diverse. There are some negative views of them, such as Augustine’s, but in principle the imagery used to describe them is consistently positive, which then invites another change of direction. They come to display how the Self reflects on itself through the Other. In earlier medieval works, such as The Correspondence between Alexander and Dindimus, the Other and the Self stand on an equal basis. However, gradually the balance changes as Indian philosophers gain an established position as ‘Christian’ models. Although they are not Christians, for later medieval theologians such as Abelard, Jacques de Vitry, and Thomas of Cantimpré they can nevertheless represent Christian virtues. In 59 O’Doherty, The Indies, pp. 219–20, claims that the compiler of Mandeville’s Travels is also careful about commenting on salvation. He lauds the natural reason of virtuous Indians, but this is not enough for salvation. On the other hand, according to Iain Macleod Higgins, Writing East: The ‘Travels’ of Sir John Mandeville (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), p. 232, the possibility of attaining salvation outside the Church is implied. 60 Marignorlli’s account has a different hue to other literary works, presumably because it is based on real experience. Similarly, Marco Polo, Il milione, 3. 20, ed. by Benedetto, pp. 189–92, describes Brahmans in a totally different way from fictional literary texts. He reports that Brahmans are the best merchants, who live long as a result of their ascetic life. He also says they are idolaters. 61 In discussing The Correspondence between Alexander and Dindimus, Uebel, Ecstatic Transformation, p. 107, states that Brahmans are simply symbols (‘the material or imagistic vehicle for a specific ideology’), although he does not mention Alexander’s criticisms of the Brahmans and didactic complexities around them.

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fictional works such as Prester John’s Letter and Mandeville’s Travels, virtuous Indians even serve as models for Western people. In Prester John’s Letter, the Bragmanni live under the Christian king and are protectors of the world on behalf of Christians. Mandeville’s Travels even grants them the love of God. Mandeville’s comments on the behaviour of the Other show how the Self should behave in accordance with God, implying criticism of the society of the Self. As a result, the virtuous Indians have now become a role-model for the Self. In contrast, for the missionary Giovanni de’ Marignolli, the Christian Self represents the supreme authority through which the pagan Other is enlightened. Works of the later Middle Ages unanimously laud Indian sages, but then, because they are objects of high praise, the Self tries to absorb them. Brahmans/Gymnosophists are likened to Christians, and, as in Mandeville’s Travels, they are used to criticize the society of the Self, or, as Marignolli shows most plainly, turned into Christians. As the origin of the virtuous Indians is historical, the dichotomy between fact and fiction is related as well. For example, the earliest descriptions of Indian philosophers are, broadly speaking, what are taken today as ‘historical’ writings. The reliability of accounts in factual collections describing them may not necessarily be high, but they are based on facts, and tend to focus on Alexander himself and his expedition. Compared to later ‘forged’ records, earlier descriptions focus on Alexander’s deeds, and their narrative style is observational. On the other hand, in medieval times, the Indian philosophers were developed into a motif to be described, just as Alexander himself was turned into a more literary figure. They started to appear in fictitious narratives in which Alexander is employed as a textual device to introduce them. Consequently, the focus is on their otherness, and texts that include them have an even more fictional aspect. Having started as mere exotic foreigners, the otherness of Indian philosophers is exaggerated when they enter the area of fiction. Thus, the change in the descriptive style and character of the figures, from historical people to literary motif, is deeply related to the nature of the texts as well. From a historical standpoint, the Brahmans/Gymnosophists are recorded factually, as truly living in a remote land. They can be the Other, but this does not matter greatly, since the focus of the texts is on recording facts. They can be introduced as elements of descriptions about exotic places, and this can also apply to later travel narratives. The otherness is associated with exotic wonders here, while their behaviour is interpreted through religious didacticism. Christian writers eventually criticized their own society by praising Indian philosophers. The philosophers’ respectful behaviour provided an ideal for Christians to emulate.62 On the other hand, as Friedman points out, the idealized presentation of Indian philosophers does not mean that medieval Europeans tried to live in a similar

62 Brahmans are said to be ‘an intriguing alternative to the West that challenges Western identity’; cf. Partha Mitter, with Asa Simon Mittman and Peter Dendle, ‘Postcolonial Monsters: A Conversation with Partha Mitter’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. by Asa Simon Mittman with Peter J. Dendle (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 329–41 (p. 332).

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way.63 Rather, the philosophers had the virtue that Westerners lacked, and such an aspect of otherness was used to criticize the behaviour of the Self. Thus, otherness had become what usefully serves for the didacticism of the Self. In a sense, it could now be reached for in the territory of the Self, as a useful device. Consequently, they were no longer exclusively othered, as they now demonstrated what the Self should aim for, and invited the Self to reflect on itself. This adjustment occurred because Europeans found value in the Indian philosophers. Mere wonders, such as the riches and monsters of the East, did not receive the same treatment. In other words, the philosophers were tamed because they were virtuous. They were distant, but their way of life appealed as an ideal to Christians. Therefore, Western people tried to connect them to Christianity and bring them close to the Christian world. Accordingly, the Other was transformed into a Self-like existence. As the Other had worth and was useful for the Self, the boundary between them gradually blurred. This can also be understood in a different way. The ideal model can be sought as it is different from the present state of the Self. Hence, recognizing the Indian philosophers as an ideal means for perceiving their difference. In that sense, they still function as the Other, but they are something that the Self can sympathize with. Therefore, taming of the Other by the Self signifies both recognizing and blurring the difference between the Self and the Other: the development of the treatment of the Indian philosophers is the history both of bringing the Other and the Self together, while paradoxically setting the two apart.

Works Cited Primary Sources Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri, ed. by A. G. Roos (Leipzig: Teubner, 1907), also in the Perseus Digital Library ———, Nicomediensis Scripta Minora, ed. by Rudolf Hercher and Alfred Eberhard (Leipzig: Teubner, 1885), also in the Perseus Digital Library Augustine, De civitate Dei, ed. by Bernhard Dombart and Alphons Kalb, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 47–48, 2 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955) Collatio Alexandri et Dindimi, ed. by Marc Steinmann, Alexander der Große und die ‘nackten Weisen’ Indiens: Der fiktive Briefwechsel zwischen Alexander und dem Brahmanenkönig Dindimus, Klassische Philologie, 4 (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2012), pp. 125–89 Giovanni de’ Marignolli, Chronicon Bohemorum, ed. by Irene Malfatto, ‘Le digressioni sull’Oriente nel Chronicon Bohemorum di Giovanni de’ Marignolli’, in E Codicibus (Firenze: SISMEL, 2013) [accessed 28 January 2019]

63 Friedman, The Monstrous Races, p. 164.

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———, Recollections of Travel in the East, by John de’ Marignolli, in Cathay and the Way Thither: Being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China, trans. and ed. by Henry Yule, vol. ii (London: Hakluyt Society, 1866), pp. 335–94 The Greek Alexander Romance, trans. with intro. and notes by Richard Stoneman (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991) Jacques de Vitry, Histoire orientale. Historia orientalis, ed. and trans. with intro. by Jean Donnadieu, Sous la Règle de saint Augustin, 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008) Jean de Mandeville: Le Livre des merveilles du monde, ed. by Christiane Deluz, Sources d’histoire médiévale: Publiées par l’Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes, 31 (Paris: CNRS, 2000) Legends of Alexander the Great, trans. and ed. by Richard Stoneman (London: Dent, 1994) Mandeville’s Travels, ed. by M. C. Seymour (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967) Marco Polo, Il milione: Prima edizione integrale, ed. by Luigi Foscolo Benedetto (Firenze: Olschki, 1928) Peter Abelard, Theologia ‘summi boni’, Theologia ‘scholarium’, ed. by Eligius M. Buytaert and Constant J. Mews, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1987) Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, ed. by Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff (Leipzig: Teubner, 1905); also in the Perseus Digital Library Plutarch, Vitae Parallelae, ed. by Carl Heinrich Sintenis, vol. iii (Leipzig: Teubner, 1853, repr. 1869 and more often) ‘Prester John’s Letter to the Byzantine Emperor Emanuel, with a Note by B. Hamilton on Additional Latin Manuscripts of the Letter’, ed. by F. Zarncke, in Prester John: The Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes, ed. by Charles F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996), pp. 39–102 Strabo, Geographica, ed. by Augustus Meineke (Leipzig: Teubner, 1877); also in the Perseus Digital Library Thomas Cantimpratensis, Liber de natura rerum: Editio princeps secundum codices manuscriptos, ed. by H. Boese, vol. i (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973) Secondary Works Asma, Stephen T., On Monsters: An Unnatural History of our Worst Fears (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) Camille, Michael, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London: Reaktion, 1992) Cary, George, The Medieval Alexander, ed. by D. J. A. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956) ———, ‘A Note on the Mediaeval History of the Collatio Alexandri cum Dindimo’, Classica et Mediaevalia, 15 (1954), 124–29 Cizek, Alexandru, ‘Zur literarischen und rhetorischen Bestimmung der Schrift Collatio Alexandri Magni, regis Macedonum, et Dindimi, regis Bragmanorum, de philosophia per litteras facta’, Rhetorica, 4 (1986), 111–36

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Deluz, Christiane, Le ‘Livre’ de Jehan de Mandeville: Une ‘géographie’ au xive siècle, Université Catholique de Louvain publications de l’Institut d’études médiévales: Textes, études, congrès, 8 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d’études médiévales de l’Université Catholique de Louvain, 1988) Freedman, Paul, ‘The Medieval Other’, in Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations, ed. by Timothy S. Jones and David A. Sprunger, Studies in Medieval Culture, 42 (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 2002), pp. 1–24 Friedman, John Block, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000) Grady, Frank, Representing Righteous Heathens in Late Medieval England (New York: Palgrave, 2005) Greenblatt, Stephen, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) Hahn, Thomas, ‘The Indian Tradition in Western Medieval Intellectual History’, Viator, 9 (1978), 213–34 Hen, Yitzhak, ‘Alcuin, Seneca and the Brahmins of India’, in Religious Franks: Religion and Power in the Frankish Kingdoms. Studies in Honour of Mayke de Jong, ed. by Rob Meens, Dorine van Espelo, Bram van den Hoven van Genderen, Janneke Raaijmakers, Irene van Renswoude, and Carine van Rhijn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 148–61 Higgins, Iain Macleod, Writing East: The ‘Travels’ of Sir John Mandeville (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997) Jouanno, Corinne, ‘Des Gymnosophistes aux Réchabites: Une utopie antique et sa christianisation’, L’Antiquité Classique, 79 (2010), 53–76 Khanmohamadi, Shirin A., In Light of Another’s Word: European Ethnography in the Middle Ages, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) Le Jan, Régine, ‘Remarques sur l’étranger au haut Moyen Âge’, in L’image de l’autre dans l’Europe du Nord-Ouest à travers l’histoire, ed. by Jean-Pierre Jessenne, Histoire et littérature du Septentrion (IRHiS), 14 (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Publications de l’Institut de recherches historiques du Septentrion, 1996), pp. 23–32 Liddell, Henry George, and Robert Scott, eds, A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. by Henry Stuart Jones, ninth edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) Metzler, Irina, ‘Perceptions of Hot Climate in Medieval Cosmography and Travel Literature’, Reading Medieval Studies, 23 (1997), 69–105 Mews, Constant J., Abelard and Heloise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) Mitter, Partha, with Asa Simon Mittman, and Peter Dendle, ‘Postcolonial Monsters: A Conversation with Partha Mitter’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. by Asa Simon Mittman with Peter J. Dendle (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 329­–41 O’Doherty, Marianne, The Indies and the Medieval West: Thought, Report, Imagination, Medieval Voyaging, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) Orchard, Andy, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the ‘Beowulf’-Manuscript (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995)

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Parker, Grant, The Making of Roman India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) Phillips, Kim M., Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writings, 1245–1510 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) Pritchard, Telfryn, ‘The Collatio Alexandri et Dindimi: A Revised Text’, Classica et Mediaevalia, 46 (1995), 255–83 Salter, David, Holy and Noble Beasts: Encounters with Animals in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Brewer, 2001) Smith, William, ed., A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (London: Murray, 1873; repr. New York: AMS, 1966) Stoneman, Richard, ‘Naked Philosophers: The Brahmans in the Alexander Historians and the Alexander Romance’, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 115 (1995), 99–114 ———, ‘Tales of Utopia: Alexander, Cynics and Christian Ascetics’, in Philosophy and the Ancient Novel, ed. by Marília P. Futre Pinheiro and Silvia Montiglio, Ancient Narrative Supplements, 20 (Eelde: Barkhuis, 2015), pp. 51–63 ———, ‘Who are the Brahmans? Indian Lore and Cynic Doctrine in Palladius’ De Bragmanibus and Its Models’, The Classical Quarterly, 44 (1994), 500–10 Sweeney, Eileen C., ‘Abelard and the Jews’, in Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. by Barbette S. Hellemans, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 229 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 37–59 Tobienne, Francis, Jr, Mandeville’s Travails: Merging Travel, Theory, and Commentary (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2016) Tzanaki, Rosemary, Mandeville’s Medieval Audiences: A Study on the Reception of the ‘Book’ of Sir John Mandeville (1371–1550) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003) Uebel, Michael, Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of Alterity in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) Weeda, Claire, ‘The Fixed and the Fluent: Geographical Determinism, Ethnicity and Religion c. 1100–1300 ce’, in The Routledge Handbook of Identity and the Environment in the Classical and Medieval Worlds, ed. by Rebecca Futo Kennedy and Molly JonesLewis (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 93–113 Williams, David, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996) Zuwiyya, Z. David, ‘Alexander the Great in the Arabic Tradition’, in A Companion to Alexander Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. by Z. David Zuwiyya, Brill’s Companion to the Christian Tradition, 29 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 73–112

Maria Port m ann

Distinctive Signs and Otherness The Depiction of Prophets, in the Late Fourteenth Century in the Cathedral of Toledo (Spain)

Distinctive Signs This contribution focusses, from the perspective of art history, on the visual representation of distinctive markers of religious identity, particularly of Jews, in medieval sculpture after the year 1215 in order to observe how far and by what means typical features of Jewish ‘otherness’ are ‘translated’ in pictorial representations. Departing from current mainstream in research, the essay aims at analysing a particular sequence of sculptural scenes from late fourteenth century in the cathedral of Toledo by comparing it with materials originating from different source types, including literature and the arts, medieval legislation, and theology. The analysis is meant as a re-evaluation of the issue of Jewish ‘otherness’ in medieval Christian and other multicultural societies, thereby unravelling the complexities of interreligious inclusion and exclusion during a period marked by an ongoing search for new modes of unity between Catholic faith and political power. The Catholic Church had prohibited moneylending and usury for Christians in 1215, considering them as deadly sins and the sign of an unwillingness of the Jews to convert to Christianity. Their refusal to believe in the Incarnation and in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist was considered as ‘acedia’ (the deadly sin of sloth) or as blindness according to St Augustine.1 The Church stated that Judas was responsible for Jesus’s death and considered him as a traitor, because he had sold Jesus to the priests of the temple. By extension, all Jews were responsible for Jesus’s death. Since that time, Jews were no longer permitted to have any type of relationship



1 Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York: Doubleday, 2008), p. xii. Maria Portmann  •  is External PostDoc Fellow, University of Zurich and Chief conservator of Historic Monuments in the Canton of the Valais, Sion. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 339–369 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123598

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with Christians and had to wear a clear distinctive sign on their clothes when they were walking in the streets of Christian cities: In nonnullis prouinciis a christianis Iudeos seu Saracenos habitus distinguit diuersitas, set in quibusdam sic quedam inoleuit confusio ut nulla differentia discernantur. Vnde contingit interdum quod per errorem christiani Iudeorum seu Saracenorum et Iudei seu Saraceni christianorum mulieribus commiscentur. Ne igitur tam dampnate commixitionis excessus per uelamentum erroris huiusmodi excusationis ulterius possit habere diffugium, statuimus ut tales utriusque sexus, in omni christianorum prouincia et omni tempore, qualitate habitus publice ab aliis populis distinguantur, cum et per Moysen hoc ipsum eis legatur iniunctum. In diebus autem lamentationum et dominice passionis, in publicam minime prodeant, eo quod nonnulli ex ipsis talibus diebus, sicut accepimus, et ornatius non erubescunt incedere, ac christianis, qui sacratissime passionis memoriam exhibentes lamentationis signa pretendunt, illudere non formidant. Illud autem districtissime inhibemus ne in contumeliam Redemptoris aliquatenus prosilire presumant. Et quoniam illius dissimulare non debemus opprobrium qui probra nostra deleuit, precipimus presumptores huiusmodi per principes seculares condigne animaduersionis adiectione compesci, ne crucifixum pro nobis aliquatenus blasphemare presumant. (In some provinces a difference [in clothes]2 distinguishes Jews and Saracens from Christians, but in others confusion has [reached] such proportions that a difference can no longer be perceived. Whence [sometimes] it [has occurred] that Christians [have had contact] with Jewish and Saracen women in error, or that Jews and Saracens [have had contact] with Christian women in error. Therefore, [to prevent] that such ruinous commingling through [the veil of] error of this kind [or] as a refuge for further excuses for [such] excesses, we decree that men and women (that is, Jews and Saracens) in every Christian province and[,] at all times[,] be distinguished in public from other people by a difference [in] dress, since this was also enjoined on them by Moses. On the days of the Lamentations and on Passion Sunday they may not appear in public, because some of them, as we understand, on those days are not ashamed to show themselves more ornately attired and do not fear to amuse themselves at the expense of the Christians, who in memory of the sacred passion go about attired in robes of mourning. That we most strictly forbid, lest they should presume in some measure to burst forth suddenly in contempt of the Redeemer. And, since we ought not to be ashamed of Him who blotted out our offenses, we command that the secular princes restrain presumptuous persons of this kind by condign punishment lest they presume to blaspheme in some degree the One crucified for us.3)



2 In the following translation, my changes are set into […]. 3 Geneva, Fond. Bodmer, CB 80, Canones Concili Lateranensis, 1215; Hans J. Schroeder, Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation and Commentary (St Louis: Herder, 1937), pp. 290–91; Jessie Sherwood and Laurence Foschia (trans.), Notice n°30326: Concilium Lateranense IV, canon

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This sign was imposed on Jews in order to avoid sexual intercourse between Christians and non-Christians. The main reason was that non-Christians were considered to be ‘polluting’ the Christian community, because they denied the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and the Incarnation (the fact that Jesus is considered by the Church as the son of God). Although neither the colour nor the form of the distinctive sign was described by Pope Innocent III, during the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, Pope Alexander IV stated in 1257 that a round yellow piece of cloth had to be worn by Jews as a distinguishing sign.4 At that time, it was also ordained that a red mantle be worn by Jewish women to distinguish them from Christian women.5 In the Kingdom of Castile, in 1219, Pope Honorius III allowed the bishop of Toledo to not impose this distinctive sign on Jews in order to prevent them from fleeing to the Kingdom of the Moors.6 But King Alfonso X’s laws, in the Fuero real and Las Siete Partidas (1263), imposed distinctive signs on Jews and servants, in order to regulate the life of the inhabitants in Castile.7 Jews were considered as property of the king. In 1313, the Infant don Juan accepted the decisions of the Cortes of Palencia and imposed a round, yellow, distinctive sign on all Jews to be worn on their mantles as in France.8 In the Kingdom of Aragon, in 1268, King James I. imposed a ‘capa juhega’ ( Jewish headdress) on all the Jews and a ‘tocado’ (a round button on their headdress) on all Jewish women.9 In 1348, the Black Death (for which the bad morals of the Jews were thought to be responsible)10 had a strong influence on the social behaviour and regulations for Jews. In Castile, after 1391, a round red distinctive sign is depicted on the left shoulder of Jews in Christian manuscripts. In the Castigos of King Don Sancho IV (written in 1391), the Pharisees who asked Jesus to pay tribute money to Caesar are pictured

68, 1st edn (2013) [accessed 14 February 2019]; Constitutiones quarti Lateranensis una cum Commentariis glossatorum, ed. by Antonio García García (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1981), p. 108. 4 B. M. Ansbacher, ‘Jewish Badge’, Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. xi (2007) [accessed 23 November 2015]; Norman Roth, ‘Badge, Jewish’, in Medieval Jewish Civilization: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Norman Roth (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 68. 5 Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews (Roma: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988), p. 531. 6 Fritz Baer, Die Juden im christlichen Spanien (London: Gregg, 1970), § 46. 7 Alfonso el Sabio, Las ‘Siete Partidas’ del Rey Don Alfonso el Sabio cotejadas con varios codices antiguos por la Real Academia de la Historia, 1252–-1284 (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1972), Partida 7. 8 Baer, Die Juden, § 138; Marina Fierro, ‘Red and Yellow: Colours and the Quest for Political Legitimacy in the Islamic West’, in And Diverse are their Hues. Color in Islamic Art and Culture, ed. by Jonathan M. Bloom and Sheila S. Blair (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), p. 92. 9 Joseph Jacobs, An Inquiry into the Sources of the History of the Jews in Spain (London: David Nutt, 1894), p. 137; Irven M. Resnick, Marks of Distinction. Christian Perceptions of Jews in the High Middle Ages (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), p. 4. 10 Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death: The Arts, Religion, and Society in the Mid-Fourteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 75.

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wearing a red round distinctive sign on their mantle.11 In this case, this image is linked to Jesus’ death, for which the Jews were held to be responsible. As Sonia Fellous has pointed out, after the destruction of the ‘aljamas’ ( Jewish communities), the Jewish commentator, Moisés Arragel of Guadalajara, the rabbi of Maqueda, translated the Old Testament into Spanish in the Bible of Alba (1422–1430) for Don Luis de Guzmán, Grand Master of the Order of Calatrava, with the help of Don Vasco de Guzmán and Brother Arias de Encinas, the Superior of the Franciscan monastery in Toledo.12 In the Bible, Moises Arragel is depicted wearing a large dark violet dress with a red distinguishing sign on the left shoulder.13 The manuscript was written and illustrated during the reign of King John II of Castile. The Talmud influenced the iconography of the Bible of Alba.14 Thus we may expect that also in other pictorial representations, in books as well as on sculptures, the Jews are distinguished by their clothes and by their profile as well as by the depiction of rituals. It is linked to a visual system in which the viewer’s emotions are used in order to stress their fear of the death of their soul without being saved.15 Therefore, we will analyse the distinctive signs of the Hebrew people on a particular object: the cycle of images on the choir screen of Toledo cathedral, made under Bishop Pedro Tenorio in or shortly after 1388, by comparing it with miniatures, religious and legislative texts, in order to understand where they come from, for whom they were made and how Christians created an image of ‘themselves’ and ‘the other’, which does not always have to be interpreted in a negative way. Political and Social Context

After 1085 the Jews of Toledo belonged to the Kingdom of Castile. The ‘aljama’ ( Jewish community) was the largest one in Castile (i.e. one-quarter of the entire population of the city). Jews lived among Christians and Muslims and took part in the political and economic life of the city. Although the relationships between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Spain have been interpreted as positive and often romanticized as

11 Hugo O. Bizzarri, Castigos del rey don Sancho IV (Madrid: Vervuert, 2001), p. 171. For the image, see Jews Paying the Tribute in Coins in Castigos del Rey don Sancho IV, fol. 25r, prov. San Lorenzo el Real. Maria Portmann, ‘The Depiction of Jews on Spanish Altarpieces during the Early Modern Period’, in Identidades cuestionadas. Coexistencia y conflictos interreligiosos en el mediterráneo (ss. XIV–XVIII), ed. by Borja Franco Llopis, Bruno Pomara Saverino, Manuel Lomas Cortés, and Barbara Ruiz Bejarano (Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, 2016), p. 332. 12 Carl-Otto Nordström, The Duke of Alba’s Castilian Bible: A Study of the Rabbinical Features of the Miniatures (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksells, 1967), pp. 13–16 about the colophon and p. 17 about the scrutiny which seems to have been similar with public disputation. 13 ‘Rabbi Moisés Arragel de Guadalajara discussing with Brother Arias de Encinas, the Superior of the Franciscan monastery in Toledo’, in the Bible of Alba, finished in Maqueda in 1430–1433, Madrid, Biblioteca del Palacio de Liria, fol. 11v. 14 Sonia Fellous, Histoire de la Bible de Moïse Arragel. Quand un rabbin interprète la Bible pour les Chrétiens (Paris: Somogy, 2001). 15 Anthony Bale, Feeling Persecuted: Christians, Jews and Images of Violence in the Middle Ages (London: Reaktion, 2000), p. 113.

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the ‘convivencia’, there were violent outbursts against the Jews.16 These worsened at the end of the thirteenth century when Andalusia had been reconquered from the Muslims. During that period, the legislation for Jews, who were considered ‘foreign’ people changed.17 While the Church condemned usury, Talmudic interpretations of the Bible18 allowed Jews to lend money to non-Jews, which would have been a very interesting situation for them.19 This activity was meant to cover the financial needs of Christians. Context of the Disputes between Jews and Christians

Therefore, distinctive signs, such as headdresses, had to be reinterpreted within a larger context, taking into consideration the content of the disputes that opposed Jewish converts, Christians, and Jews. The first dispute took place in Barcelona in 1263. It was between Moses ben Nahmam, called Nahmanides (whose exegesis influenced the Sarajevo Haggadah and indirectly also the Toledan choir screen),20 and Pablo Christiani, who was under pressure from the Catholic Church that had rejected the Talmud but not the Torah and had permitted the Talmud to be burned in Paris by King Louis IX (1240). In another dispute (1285) Abraham ibn Adret answered Raymond Marti (author of the Pugio Fidei, 1278), who recognized the legacy of Hebrew scripture, but not its interpretation by Jews, saying that their false interpretations were due to their long exile. Only Jews who observed the Commandments as the prophets had done gave proof of the legitimation of Holy Scripture since Moses.21

16 Maya Soifer Irish, Jews and Christians in Medieval Castile: Tradition, Coexistence, and Change (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016), p. 2; Olivia R. Constable and Damian Zurro, Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), p. xxxi. 17 Soifer Irish, Jews and Christians, pp. 4–12; Vivian B. Mann, Uneasy Communion: Jews, Christians, and the Altarpieces of Medieval Spain, exh. cat. (Museum of Biblical Art, New York 2010) (London: Giles, 2010); Vivian B. Mann, Jewish Texts on the Visual Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Bale, Feeling Persecuted; David Nirenberg, ‘Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities. Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain’, Past and Present, 174 (2002), 3–41; David Nirenberg, ‘Conversion, Sex and Segregation. Jews and Christians in Medieval Spain’, American Historical Review, 107 (2002), 1065–93; Pamela A. Patton, Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), p. 32. 18 Deuteronomy 23, 19–20; Jonathan Ray, The Jew in Medieval Iberia: 1100–1500, Jews in Space and Time (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012); Norman Roth, Jews, Visigoths and Muslims in Medieval Spain: Cooperation and Conflict (Leiden: Brill, 1994); Ariel Toaff, Blood Passover: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murder, trans. by Gian M. Lucchese and Pietro Gianetti, 2007, revised 2016), p. 146, available at (accessed 24 April 2020). 19 Michele Cassandro, Intolleranza e accettazione. Gli ebrei in Italia nei secoli XIV–XVIII. Lineamenti di una storia economica e sociale (Torino: Giappichelli, 1996), p. 15. 20 Heinz Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld (13. – 20. Jh.) (Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 1994), pp. 208–19. 21 Sarit Shalev-Eyni, Jews among Christians: A Hebrew School of Illumination (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 45–48.

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From the thirteenth century onwards, Catholic missionaries were begged to talk with Jews and Muslims in order to convert them. Dominicans and Franciscans played an essential role in the conversion of the others (i.e. Jews and Muslims) and in the spread of anti-Jewish theology, images and legends. They rejected the works of Jewish philosophers and criticized new Jewish spiritual currents such as ‘the Kabbalah’.22 Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews also had contact with each other, since Ashkenazic philosophy was introduced in Spain during the Middle Ages. But in Castile, under the influence of Nahmanides, the Jews rejected Maimonides’s philosophy and adhered rather to ‘the Kabalah’.23 This mystical text as well as Talmudic exegesis could have been introduced on the choir screen in the Cathedral in Toledo either as a special interest in the culture of ‘the other’ or as a manner of catching the attention of ‘the other’, in order to convert them. Religious relationships between both communities could never have been possible without the legislation that implied Jews could lend money. As Soifer Irish has shown, although Jews and Christians had economic contacts since the tenth century, during the thirteenth century anti-Jewish legislation was passed to regulate moneylending, to forbid Christians to use the services of Jewish wet nurses, to have sexual relationships with Jews, or to own books forbidden to Christians (‘The Talmud’).24 These regulations restricted Jewish dealings with Christians and were followed by pogroms and forced conversion of the Jews during the fourteenth century. This context influenced the manner of depicting not only medieval Jews, but also of the Protoplasts, the Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Hebrew people, etc. Although paintings and sculptures were made to be venerated in churches, in Spain 22 Anne Derbes, Picturing the Passion in Late Medieval Italy: Narrative Painting, Franciscan Ideologies and the Levant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, ‘Jews and Judaism in the Rhetoric of Popular Preachers. The Florentine Sermons of Giovanni Dominici (1356– 1419) and Bernardino da Siena (1380–1444)’, Jewish History, 14 (2000), 175–200; Elias H. Füllenbach, Dominikaner und Juden: Personen, Konflikte und Perspektiven vom 13. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert = Dominicans and Jews Personalities, Conflicts, and Perspectives from the 13th to the 20th century (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015); St Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica: translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York, 1947) [accessed 7 June 2020]; Robin Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Moshe Idel, ‘Jewish Kabbalah and Platonism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance’, in Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, ed. by Lenn E. Goodman (New York: State University of New York Press, 1992); Nina Caputo, Nahmanides in Medieval Catalonia. History, Community & Messianism (Notre-Dame: Indiana University of Notre Dame Press, 2007); Mario Di Giacomo, ‘Maimónides y Tomás: El triunfo de la negación’, Apuntes Filosóficos, 35 (2009), 109–26. 23 Joseph Jacobs, Wilhelm Bacher, and Isaac Broydé, ‘Moses Ben Nahman Gerondi. (RaMBaN; known also as Naḥmanides and Bonastruc da Porta)’, in The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. by JewishEncyclopedia. com (2002–2011), pp. 88–92; Alfonso el Sabio, Las ‘Siete Partidas’; Soifer Irish, Jews and Christians, p. 166; Alfonso el Sabio, Las ‘Siete Partidas’; Soifer Irish, Jews and Christians, p. 166; Ronda Kasl, The Making of Hispano-Flemish Style, Art, Commerce, and Politics in fifteenth-century Castile (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), p. 18. 24 David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: Norton, 2014); David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015); Mann, Uneasy Communion; Anthony Bale, ‘The Jew in Profile’, in New Medieval Literatures, ed. by Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 125–51; Soifer Irish, Jews and Christians, pp. 183–86.

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details coming from Jewish rituals and exegesis are depicted in Christian scenes: why and for what reason were these images made? Our purpose here will focus on the question of the visual construction of the Christian identity, including Jewish and Arabic culture, on the choir screen in the cathedral of Toledo in the scenes of Genesis and Exodus. We will analyse which type of clothes, rituals, gestures can be identified as part of Jewish daily life at that time. We will examine whether these elements can be interpreted as distinctive Jewish marks, as well as why and for what purpose they were made at that place. Finally, we will ask why these visual details that come from the culture of ‘the other’ are visible and which function they could have had in the process of conversion of Jews.

Bishop Pedro Tenorio and the Choir Screen In 1388, Bishop Tenorio (1377–1399) commissioned the decoration of the choir screen25 after the civil war between Kings Peter I and Henry II. King Peter I had protected the Jews.26 In the cathedral of Toledo, the choir screen was built as a frame in front of the sanctuary. Although people could see the mass, such as the Eucharist behind this barrier, its liturgical function was to preach to lay men and women. The central position of the choir screen enhanced its authority.27 According to Jacqueline Jung, this division of holy space from profane space derives from the commandment that God had given to Moses (Exodus 19. 12; 19. 23) to enclose the sacred place.28 Its main particularity is that its iconographic programme is related to both Christian and Jewish cultures. This cycle of images begins with the Hexaemeron. It continues with the Patriarchs and the story of Moses. Each scene is divided from the others by architectural elements that are pierced by windows. In the upper part of the scene is a baldachin sculpted in stone with pointed arches in a Gothic style. This architectural decoration gives rhythm to the composition. The choir screen was rebuilt during the 1570s. Bishop Tenorio had been engaged by the papacy to deal with the Spanish kingdom in Italy and Portugal.29 He also travelled in the Kingdom of Aragon, where he could have been in contact with Jewish illuminated manuscripts and Christian artists. A Valencian sculptor, named Juan de Valencia, was employed in the cathedral in 1355. Stylistic and iconographic similarities with the north transept portal in the Cathedral of Valencia have been noted by Nickson, illustrating the fact that the Valencian sculptors had worked on that choir screen (Fig. 15.1). The sculptures are similar to those in the Santa Caterina Chapel, the southern tympanum (Fig. 15.2),

25 Diana Olivares Martínez, ‘Albornoz, Tenorio y Rojas. Las empresas artísticas de tres arzobispos de Toledo en la baja Edad Media. Estado de la cuestión’, Estudios Medievales Hispánicos, 2 (2013), 129–74. 26 Soifer Irish, Jews and Christians, pp. 244–47. 27 Jacqueline E. Jung, The Gothic Screen: Space, Sculpture, and Community in the Cathedrals of France and Germany, ca. 1200–1400 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 3–7. 28 Jung, The Gothic Screen, p. 17. 29 Michael Foster, Spiritual Temporalities in Late-Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publisher, 2010), p. 100.

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Figure 15.1 Scenes from the Genesis (Genesis 1–4): from God’s spirit swept over the face of the waters of creation until Cain Killing Abel, after 1288, Valencia, Cathedral, Porch of the Charity. Photo © Maria Portmann.

Figure 15.2 Scenes from Jesus’ Childhood, 1388, Toledo, Cathedral, Southern Porch. Photo © Urs Portmann.

and at the entrance to Bishop Tenorio’s burial chapel. Not only the bishop’s travels, but also letters regarding Jews,30 and his large biblical knowledge had an impact on

30 AA. VV., Documentos de Enrique III: Fondo Mercedes Gaibrois de Ballesteros (Madrid, 2016) [accessed 7 June 2020]. All rights of reproduction of the photos: Urs Portmann and Maria Portmann, Archive

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his artistic commands — as the donation of his library in 1383 shows.31 Finally, it is possible that Bishop Tenorio’s Jewish doctor, Rabbi Hayyim,32 who converted in 1390 and took the name of Pedro could have had significant influence on the choice of the scenes depicted on the choir screen, because they quote the Old Testament in two ways: they refer to both the text of the Haggadah, ‘The Talmud’, Jewish and Patristic exegesis, Adamic exegesis, a Bible moralisée of Saint Louis and descriptions of the wall paintings in the Old St Peter in Rome.33 Therefore, we can assume that the commendatory on the choir screen (or at least the sculptor) had a certain knowledge of Jewish interpretations of ‘the Old Testament’.34

The Haggadah The Haggadah (the story) was written by Jews under the influence of Christians during the Late Antiquity (Mishnaic and Tannaic Period, first – fourth centuries): it is a narration that is used during the ritual meal of ‘Pessah’ (Easter) by Jewish families. It recalls the Exodus from Egypt including verses taken from Genesis, Exodus, and the Psalms (which differ in both Ashkenazic and Sephardic tradition).35 One of them, the Sarajevo Haggadah manuscript was written and illustrated in Barcelona for wealthy Jews and was read during the evening of the ‘Seder’ (the meal on the eve of ‘Pessah’). In the absence of a colophon, we can only suppose that the miniatures in the Sarajevo Haggadah were done by a painter who was in close contact with the royal workshop of Ferrer Bassa in Barcelona and was commissioned by a member of the social elite before the ‘aljamas’ ( Jewish communities) were destroyed in Spain in 1391.36 The king’s doctor, Menahem Bezalel, commissioned a

Maria Portmann, Switzerland. 31 María J. Lop Otín, ‘Los “espacios” de la catedral de Toledo y su funcionalidad durante la Edad Media’, in Sacra loca toletana: Los espacios sagrados en Toledo, ed. by J. C. Vizuete Mendoza and Julio Martín Sánchez (Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2008), p. 256; Charles B. Faulhaber, Libros y bibliotecas en la España medieval: Una bibliografía de fuentes impresas (London: Grant and Cutler, 1987), p. 169. 32 Archivo Catedralicio de Toledo, A.8.H.1.4. (1383, October 15) in Baer, Die Juden, p. 241. 33 Tom Nickson, ‘Reframing the Bible. Genesis and Exodus on Toledo Cathedral’s Fourteenth-Century Choir Screen’, Gesta, 50 (2011), pp. 71–89; Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible moralisée (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); María Ángela Franco Mata, ‘Relaciones artísticas entre la Haggadah de Sarajevo y la cerca exterior del coro de la catedral de Toledo’, Espacio Tiempo y Forma. Serie VII, Historia del Arte, 6 (1993), 65–80; Shalom Sabar, ed., The Sarajevo Haggadah: History and Art (Sarajevo: The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2018). 34 Tom Nickson, ‘The First Murder: Picturing Polemic c. 1391’, in Hebrew Bible in Fifteenth-Century Spain, ed. by Jonathan Decter and Arturo Prats (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 46–50. 35 Adin Steinsaltz and Frank Lalou, La Hagadah: La Pâque juive expliquée à tous (Paris: Michel, 2013), p. 33. 36 Rosa Alcoy i Pedrós, ‘Aspectos formales en la marginalia del Maimónides de Copenhague’, Espacio Tiempo y Forma. Serie VII, Historia del Arte, 6 (1993), 37–64, explains that the images depicted in Hebrew manuscripts illuminated in Barcelona before the Black Death (Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed,

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Figure 15.3 Creation of the Birds; the Sun, Stars, Moon; the Angels; the Fall of the Rebel Angels; the Creation of Adam, 1388, Toledo, Cathedral, Choir Screen. Photo © Urs Portmann.

Hebrew manuscript written by Maimonides and copied by Levi bar Isaac in 1348, to be illuminated by the royal workshop of Ferrer Bassa. According to Rosa Alcoy i Pedrós, in these Jewish and Christian manuscripts iconographic details are similar. Therefore we can assume that they were made in the same context.37

The Scenes of the Creation on the Choir Screen In the Creation, God is represented as an old man (Fig. 15.3). The edge of His robe is painted with gold. After the creation of the sky, the earth and the stars, two scenes represent the creation of the angels and their fall.38 Both scenes refer to Jewish

fol. 114a, written for the Jewish physician Menahem Bezalel) have stylistic similarities to Christian manuscripts illuminated by Arnau and Ferrer Bassa. Alcoy i Pedrós, Rosa, ‘Las ilustraciones de la Haggadah de Poblet’, in Haggadah de Poblet, ed. by Jordi Casanovas Miró (Barcelona: Riopiedras-Abadia de Poblet, 1993), pp. 1–100 (pp. 33–40, pp. 65–72). King Peter IV the Ceremonious employed Jewish doctors and counsellors at his court and Jews asked Ferrer Bassa to depict frescoes in the royal palace in Barcelona. Cf. Katrin Kogman-Appel, ‘The Sephardic Picture Cycles and the Rabbinic Tradition: Continuity and Innovation in Jewish Iconography’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 60 (1997), 451–81. 37 Anibal Ruiz Moreno, La medicina en la legislación medioeval española (Madrid: El Ateneo, 1946), p. 19; Alcoy i Pedrós, ‘Aspectos formales en la marginalia’, p. 60. 38 Claude-Gilbert Dubois, ‘L’invention du mythe des “anges rebelles”’, Imaginaire & Inconscient, 19 (2007), 31–50.

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Figure 15.4 Scenes from the Genesis after the Expulsion from the Paradise: God with Adam and Eve Wearing Fig Leaves; God with Adam and Eve (naked); The Expulsion from the Paradise; Eve and Adam Working; Cain Killing Abel; Cain Hiding Abel’s body; God Rebuking Cain, 1388, Toledo, Cathedral, Choir Screen. Photo © Urs Portmann.

secondary literature and Christian exegesis. The composition of the creation of the angels and the frontal depiction of God mark a problem in the narration. Either they were misplaced when the entrance to the choir was built, or the sense of lecture had been deliberately reversed (as is the case for an anti-Jewish legend on panel paintings).39 Then, God creates Adam who does not have any belly button. According to Mata, this indicates that Bishop Tenorio, or at least the sculptors, were knowledgeable about Jewish exegesis.40 Either this detail was intentionally included for Jews, or there is a trace of Sephardic culture in a Christian image as a result of the intellectual and artistic exchanges they had had in Toledo and Aragon.41 The next scene is missing; after the sixteenth-century sculptures, the story continues. God is shown asking Adam and Eve about the tree. Both scenes go against chronological order, because in the first scene, they are hiding their nudity with fig

39 Nickson, ‘Reframing the Bible’, p. 86, note 34; Maria Portmann, ‘Jewish Writings and Holy Scripture in Christian Paintings in Spain during the Late Medieval Period’, in Clothing Sacred Scriptures: Book Art and Book Religion in Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Cultures, ed. by David Ganz and Barbara Schellewald (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), p. 166. 40 Mata, ‘Relaciones artísticas’, p. 119. 41 Thomas W. Barton, Contested Treasure: Jews and Authority in the Crown of Aragon (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015).

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leaves (Genesis 3. 17) (Fig. 15.4), and in the second scene, they are nude and God is speaking to them without hiding their nudity (Genesis 3. 1). This misplacement implies the same hypothesis as for the creation of the angels and their fall. Then, the angel is shown expelling Adam and Eve from Paradise (Genesis 3. 24). After this, Adam is depicted working in the field, and Eve is nursing a baby. Unlike the scenes in the Garden of Eden, their dresses are similar to the clothes worn by Jews such as contemporary Jews depicted in the scene of ‘Seder’ in the Haggadot.42 This detail was obviously included to catch the viewers’ attention about the human fall and errors. In the next scene, Cain is shown killing his brother Abel. Cain is biting Abel’s neck in accord with Sephardic sources. This composition was painted in the Alba Bible as well as on the choir screen in Burgos.43 Cain is depicted as a Jewish man, wears a short robe, and has curly hair. His violent gesture was considered morally unacceptable and as an attack against human dignity. Therefore, Cain hides Abel’s corpse and God rebukes him (Genesis 4. 10–11). According to St Augustine, Adam in the Garden of Paradise and Abel prefigure Jesus, because they are part of the spirit and of the revelation.44 Their distinctive signs imply images of Jews who should open their souls and minds to the only right belief (in the eyes of Christians). But Adam after the fall and Esau are shown as ‘the other’, i.e. the ‘Jew’, because of their bad moral behaviour. Moreover, the depiction of blood during the martyrdom of Abel can be related to some Ashkenazic themes that focus on the depiction of blood as a sign of vengeance against Edom, i.e. Esau.45 One Midrash completely reverses the significance of the sacrifice, identifying it with Edom. The biblical verse ‘Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire — with the head, legs and internal organs’ (Exodus 12. 9) is interpreted as referring to Esau and his punishment at the End of Days. The negative Jewish identification of the Paschal sacrifice with Esau parallels the positive Christian identification of that same sacrifice with Jesus.46 Therefore, according to Jewish interpretations (Maimonides and Nahmanides), as well as to St Augustine’s depiction of the Jews, we can assume that the conversion, but not the destruction of the gentiles is shown: for them, the ‘other’, i.e. Esau, is not associated with Rome but with the Christians, which might be related to the ‘conversos’ (converted Jews) in the cathedral of Toledo.47 Hebrew figures from the Old Testament were ambivalent: although their distinctive signs and, more extensively, their negative moral behaviour associated them with contemporary Jews, they were depicted as prophets who prefigured Jesus.

42 We will explain this point later on in the interpretation of the clothes worn by Abraham and the Hebrew during the meal on the eve of the Exodus, which are related to scenes of the eve of Pessah in the Haggadot. 43 Nickson, ‘Reframing the Bible’, p. 72; Nordström, The Duke of Alba’s Castilian Bible, p. 155; Fellous, Histoire de la Bible, p. 329; Mata, ‘Relaciones artísticas’, p. 122. 44 Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews, pp. 58–60, 75, 175 and 254. 45 Israel J. Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), p. 270. 46 Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, p. 59. 47 Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, p. 112.

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Figure 15.5 Scenes from the Genesis: Abraham with the Three Angels at Mamre; Sacrifice of Isaac; Sacrifice of the Ram, 1388, Toledo, Cathedral, Choir Screen. Photo © Urs Portmann.

The Patriarchs On the following panels, the scenes depict the story of Seth, Isaac, and Noah. In The Burial of Adam, women are depicted weeping and wearing long headdresses as in funerary rituals. Then, the Flood, Noah’s Drunkenness, Sacrifice of Isaac, and Sacrifice of the Ram (Genesis 22. 1–14) are represented (Fig. 15.5). In The Sacrifice of Isaac and The Sacrifice of the Ram, an angel appears to Abraham and shows him the ram in the tree. The first-born child is lying in the foreground and his father is turned towards the angel as in the Golden Haggadah.48 The composition of The Sacrifice of the Ram quotes scenes from Jewish rites: it is similar to the preparation of the lamb during the eve of Passover, as in the Rylands Haggadah and in the Brother Haggadah.49 On the choir screen, Abraham is depicted as a patriarch and model for Jesus, when he receives the three angels, but in The Sacrifice of the Ram, he is shown wearing the same robe and his gestures are similar to those of Jewish servant killing the lamb on the eve of Passover in both miniatures (Haggadah of Rylands and Brother Haggadah). Converted Jews would identify themselves with such figures, 48 British Library, Add MS 27210, Golden Haggadah, c. 1320–1330, prov. of Aragon, fol. 4v. 49 Manchester, Rylands Library, Hebrew MS 6, Rylands Haggadah shel Pesaḥ, fol. 19v ; British Library, Oriental 1404, Brother Haggadah, fol. 7v .

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recognizing the Jewish rituals and learning the meaning the Church gave to Abraham’s life in order to be converted to the Christian faith. Moreover, according to Christian exegesis, the sacrifice of the ram might be interpreted as an image of the salvation of the Christian soul thanks to the sacrifice of the lamb (associated with Jesus on the cross and to the Redemption).50 In the next scene, Rebecca is shown counselling Joseph; Isaac is blessing his second-born son; Esau is coming back to Isaac and learning how he had been outwitted; Joseph is sleeping (Genesis 28. 10–22). Joseph’s gesture alludes to Jews who are ‘asleep’ in their faith. According to the Church, Jews refused to believe in Jesus as the Saviour and as the Son of God. This negative moral behaviour was referred to as ‘acedia’ (laziness: the deadly sin of sloth).51 According to Pauline theology (1 John 3. 11–21), Cain and Esau as well as blind Jews are interpreted as part of the flesh as opposed to the soul. On the choir screen, negative moral behaviour is alluded to in the depiction of ‘acedia’, in the murder of Abel by Cain and in the figure of Esau, because Cain, Esau, and sleeping figures are associated with murder and laziness.

The Figure of Moses Meal of the Hebrews

Then, the story focuses on Moses, because he had been considered as a guide and as a good example of moral behaviour for Jews as well as for Christians and as the first prophets. The story of Moses begins with the plagues and continues with the Marking of the Houses with a T and the Meal of the Hebrews (Fig. 15.6). With regard to the architectural elements, both miniatures in the Haggadot and sculptures on the choir screen have been divided by pillars pierced with Gothic windows and doors. The scene is associated with the Passover meal, because it is depicted within a house whose architectural style is ‘múdejar’. In the Golden Haggadah,52 in the Castilian Hispano-Mauresque Haggadah53 and in the Brother Haggadah, the meal of Passover takes place in a house with poly-lobed arches. They bear similarities to the sculpture on the choir screen. This could suggest architectural elements from a mosque54 which had been situated in the place occupied by the cathedral, as has been suggested for the poly-lobed arch depicted by Spanish artists (who were in contact

50 Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, p. 57. 51 Lucrèce Luciani-Zidane, L’acédie: Le vice de forme du Christianisme. De saint Paul à Lacan (Paris: Cerf, 2009), pp. 73–83. 52 The Crossing of the Red Sea in British Library, Add. MS 27210, Golden Haggadah, fol. 15r. 53 The Israelites Crossing the Red Sea in British Library, Oriental 2737, The Haggadah for Passover (the ‘Hispano-Moresque Haggadah’), from Castile, last quarter of the thirteenth century or first quarter of the fourteenth century, fol. 86r, Full-page miniature. 54 Amalia Yuste Galán and Jean Passini, ‘El inicio de la construcción del claustro gótico de la catedral de Toledo’, in Actas del Séptimo Congreso Nacional de Historia de la Construcción, Santiago 26–29 octubre 2011, ed. by Santiago Huerta Fernández et al., 2 (Madrid: Instituto Juan de Herrera, 2011), pp. 1477–88.

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with Starnina’s workshop, such as Ferrand González, whose name has been found in papers) in the background of the Annunciation in the St Blaise Chapel (1399) in the cathedral of Toledo (Fig. 15.7).55 The Christian building was built on the site of a former mosque: architectural elements had been reused, e.g. the columns of the choir enclosure. Therefore, we can consider that these details of the architecture are part of a visual construction of ‘otherness’ within the architecture. The Jewish and Muslim ‘damnatio memoriae’ is obvious: in the Christian Church, the culture of the ‘other’ is employing architectural remains of former buildings, not only in a practical way. Although Christians are building their power on the remains of the culture of the ‘other’, they do not neglect the former architecture reusing columns where they needed them. The choir screen, seen as the main place of the power of preaching is built with columns, symbolizing both the political and the religious power of Christians over ‘the others’, for their conversion. In the Haggadot, The Meal of the Hebrews on the Eve of the Exodus was not depicted. Instead, the ‘Seder’ (meal of the Jews on the Eve of ‘Pessah’: Exodus 10–12) is shown as a contemporary ritual meal. On the choir screen, the Hebrew people are gathered around Moses who is holding a plate on which there is a lamb. One man is cutting the animal; another one is shown eating. Regarding distinctive signs, in the scene of The Meal of the Hebrews on the eve of the Exodus, people are wearing similar headdresses as in The ‘Seder’ in the Golden Haggadah: the woman is wearing a round gold ‘tocado’ (distinctive sign for Jewish women), and the man a round blue headdress. The shape of each headdress is similar to the one worn by Sephardi in ‘The Seder’ in the Sarajevo Haggadah. The Sarajevo Haggadah and the Rylands Haggadah very probably had a common visual source that has been translated into sculpture. According to Mata, these sculpted scenes and the ones in the Sarajevo Haggadah show similarities. According to Katrin Kogman-Appel, such miniatures were placed in parallel, but not strictly linked to the biblical texts read during the rituals of the Jewish feast of ‘Pessah’ (Easter), in a private family circle.56 Similarities regarding clothes can be underlined between the sculptures and the miniatures. Hebrew people are wearing a small cap or a long headdress like those in the Brother Haggadah and the Haggadah of Rylands. On the one hand, the Hebrew people and their ritual have been depicted like contemporary Jews during the ritual meal of ‘Pessah’. But on the other hand, the meaning of the meal on the eve of the Exodus is no longer that of the Jewish community, but that of the Church interpreting it as the prefiguration of the Last Supper.57 Moreover, the ritual sacrifice of the lamb and the unleavened bread are present in both the Christian (host during the mass) and Jewish ritual meal (‘afikomane’) at Easter, and both have the signification of sacrifice, because the meal is divided among the 55 José Méndez and Diane Cole Ahl, ‘Toledo’s Gothic Treasure. An extraordinary mural cycle is revealed after a year long restoration’, ICON world monuments, 1 (2005), 10–25 (pp. 21–22): (accessed 27 December 2019). 56 Katrin Kogman-Appel and Shulamit Laderman, ‘The “Sarajevo Haggadah”. The Concept of “Creatio ex nihilo” and the Hermeneutical School behind it’, Studies in Iconography, 25 (2004), 89–127. 57 Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, pp. 72 and 141.

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Figure 15.6 Scenes from the Exodus: The Meal of the Hebrews, the Plague of the First Born; The Crossing of the Red Sea; The Drowning of Pharaoh and his Soldiers in the Red Sea; The Producing of Water by Striking the Rock, 1388, Toledo, Cathedral, Choir Screen. Photo © Urs Portmann.

Figure 15.7 Italian and Spanish painters from Starnina’s Workshop, Detail of The Annunciation c. 1395–1404, Toledo, Cathedral, St Blaise Chapel. Photo © Urs Portmann.

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participants.58 During the ritual meal at Easter Jews ate a flat bread, called ‘matzah’. The lack of leaven in the bread had a moral significance: for Jews as for Christians, this symbolized the defeat of the enemy.59 Crossing of the Red Sea

In the Crossing of the Red Sea, Moses is shown guiding the Hebrews (Fig. 15.8). Although he is turned towards them, he is going straight forward through the sea, holding out his rod. In the background, a Jewish man is represented wearing a long headdress, which is similar to a prayer shawl and which is also depicted in Adam’s Funeral and in the Meal of the Hebrew. The woman’s short headdress is similar to the distinctive signs in Jewish manuscripts and anti-Jewish legislation.60 According to Yuval, the Crossing of the Red Sea in the Haggadot has been depicted as an image of salvation and of mercy towards the Hebrews.61 In the Sarajevo Haggadah and in the Brother Haggadah, the Crossing of the Red Sea is part of a full-page miniature. But in contrast to the Sarajevo Haggadah, in both Haggadot and on the choir screen, water has not been depicted in the same manner. In the Golden Haggadah, there is more perspective, and the architecture is more real than in the earlier examples. Regarding the frame of each scene on the choir screen, it has been influenced by Gothic architecture. In the Haggadot, each scene is divided by a rectangular frame, the ornament of which differs from the Gothic screen. In Christian exegesis, according to Tertullian (De Baptismo 9) and St Ambrose (De Mysteriis 6. 20–22), The Crossing of the Red Sea was used as a prefiguration of Baptism and Crucifixion.62 The Baptism of Christ (Matthew 1. 9–11) — depicted on the main altarpiece by Esteve Rovira from Cyprus — was also commissioned by Bishop Tenorio.63 The Crossing of the Red Sea was related to moments of penance, attrition, and contrition, according to contemporary Dominican friars (Francesc Eiximenis and Vincent Ferrer) who, among others, preached to convert the Jews in 1411 in Toledo and in 1413 in Valencia.64 According to Eiximenis, Jews could

58 Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, p. 242. 59 Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, pp. 206–07. 60 Alfonso el Sabio, Las ‘Siete Partidas’, Partida 7. 61 Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, p. 86. 62 Tertullianus, De Baptismo (On Baptism), in Documenta catholica omnia: ANF03. Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, ed. by Allan Menzies (1845–1916) and Philipp Schaff (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2011), p. 1170.; St Ambrose, ‘On the Mysteries’ and the Treatise ‘On the Sacraments’ by an Unknown Author, ed. by T. Thomson and trans. by J. H. Srawley (New York: Macmillan, 1919), p. 83. Craig A. Satterlee, Ambrose of Milan’s Method of Mystagogical Preaching (Collegeville: Minnesota Liturgical Press, 2002), p. 198. 63 D. L. Jeffrey, A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), p. 259; Matilde Miquel Juan, ‘Starnina e altri pittori toscani nella Valencia medievale’, in Intorno a Lorenzo Monaco, ed. by Daniela Parenti and Angelo Tartuferi (Livorno: Sillabe, 2007), p. 32. 64 Vicent Ferrer, Sermons, ed. by Gret Schib (Barcelona: Barcino, 1984); José M. M. Antón, ‘Algunas consideraciones sobre el ideario antijudío contenido en el Liber III del Fortalitium fidei de Alonso de Espina’, Aragón en la Edad Media, 14–15, 2 (1999), 1061–88.

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be redeemed by conversion, as Moses had redeemed the Hebrews in the desert. Eiximenis underlined Origen’s interpretation of Moses, whom the former considered a prefiguration of bishops, since he produced water from a rock to save his thirsty people. This is related to Jesus’s words in the New Testament and was used as an example to convert the Jews.65 The Crossing of the Red Sea and the Crucifixion both symbolize a transition to a better place and were part of a visual construction of conversion at that time. Twenty years later, St Vincent Ferrer preached in front of the choir screen. He encouraged Jews and Muslims to convert spiritually, recognizing Jesus as their unique spiritual guide.66 He underlined the importance of God as our Creator and of prophets like Moses, who preached to Israel to announce the coming of Jesus and His Incarnation.67 Those who recognized Jesus’s divinity would be saved by Baptism. According to St Vincent Ferrer, holy water was also intended to erase earlier sins committed by Jews and therefore, this scene could have had a certain importance in the process of conversion.68 The Drowning of Pharaoh and his Soldiers in the Red Sea

On the choir screen in Toledo, after the Crossing of the Red Sea, Pharaoh’s soldiers are shown drowning in the Red Sea — only their heads can be seen. They are shown wearing different kinds of headdresses. The horizontal division of the scenes is similar to that in the miniature of the Brother Haggadah (fol. 7v). The headdresses are clear distinctive signs, which had been used on the choir screen and in the Haggadah to depict Otherness as people ‘being different’ from Christians. Water at Elim and the Manna

After Pharaoh is drowned in the sea, water is represented pouring from a rock in the desert at Elim (Exodus 15). Moses is depicted in the middle of the Hebrews. His finger points to the water. The Jews drink water from cups, and a young woman fills a cup. Her body is curved and her head is turned towards the people. Behind Moses is Aaron, who is wearing a pointed hat, which would later be worn as a distinctive sign by the high priest. On the left side men and women are shown wearing small headdresses that are distinctive Jewish signs similar to those worn in the former scene. Then, the Israelites are depicted tempting God, and finally, Moses is shown asking God to give them bread. Manna is given to the Jews at Horeb (Exodus 16). God descends onto Mount Sinai. God has been depicted as an old man with a large beard. Women are shown wearing distinctive headdress. Some Jews are also pictured wearing a pointed hat or a short headdress. Their hats are similar to those that were worn by Jews in the Brother Haggadah.

65 D. Donadieu-Rigaut, Penser en images les ordres religieux: XIIe–XVe siècles (Paris: Arguments, 2005), p. 46. 66 Ferrer, Sermons, p. 4. 67 Ferrer, Sermons, p. 56. 68 Nickson, ‘Reframing the Bible’, p. 76.

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Golden Calf

Then on the choir screen the Jews are depicted melting their metallic objects, such as cups, rings, and earrings in order to create a golden calf (Exodus 32).69 Biblical verses link metal objects with the creation and worship of idols (Genesis 35. 4).70 Therefore, we are now faced with a negative distinctive sign, focusing on the infamy of the Jews71 who use metallic cups and wear metallic earrings. The creation of an idol and its worship were considered as negative moral behaviour.72 Like the idols in Genesis or the Golden Calf in Exodus, here there is criticism of material and carnal objects that should not be venerated. In Toledo, the sculptures on the choir screen were made by an artist who was in contact with the Kingdom of Aragon and with Sephardi culture. Therefore, we can assume that the sculptor had been influenced by Jewish miniatures and Sephardi traditions, or at least that he knew some visual examples of Haggadot. Moses Presenting the Tablets of the Laws

Moses has been pictured presenting the Tablet of the Laws to the Hebrews. However, they are neither looking at them, nor worshipping them. Then they are depicted making weapons with metal, and subsequently they kill each other. Finally, Moses and Aaron are shown bringing the Torah to the Hebrews, in order for them to worship it (Fig. 15.8). The Hebrews’ headdresses are similar to the ‘capa juhega’ (Jewish headdress) known also as ‘capa redonda’ (round headdress) worn by Jews in the Sarajevo Haggadah, in the miniature quoting the Adoration of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness (fol. 30r).73 In Toledo, Moses is depicted without horns or rays of lights on his head as in the Sephardi miniatures of the Sarajevo Haggadah.74 The visual content of Genesis and Exodus was partly influenced by Byzantine art and partly by Western miniatures, also including ‘the Talmud’. The Jewish man in the background is wearing a ‘capa 69 Lazarus Goldschmidt, Der Babylonische Talmud: Nach der ersten zensurfreien Ausgabe unter Berücksichtigung der neueren Ausagen und handschriftlichen Materials ins Deutsche übersetzt von Lazarus Goldschmidt. Band 1 (Frankfurt-am-Main: Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag, 1996), Sabath VI, i, fol. 59b–6a, p. 610. 70 During the Middle Ages, Jewish women were forbidden from wearing earrings. The wearing of metal earrings with a coral pendant is forbidden in the Talmud. Diane Owen Hughes, ‘Distinguishing Signs. Ear-Rings, Jews and Franciscan Rhetoric in the Italian Renaissance City’, Past and Present, 112 (1986), 3–59. 71 Giacomo Todeschini, Au pays des sans-nom: Gens de mauvaise vie, personnes suspectes ou ordinaires du Moyen Âge à l’époque moderne, trans. by Nathalie Gailius, preface by Patrick Boucheron (Lagrasse [Aude]: Verdier, 2015), pp. 189–239. 72 Nickson, ‘The First Murder’, p. 53. 73 Joseph Pérez and Lysa Hochroth, History of a Tragedy: The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), pp. 27–30. The Crossing of the Red Sea and the Dance of Myriam in Sarajevo, National Museum, Sarajevo Haggadah, c. 1350, prov. Barcelona, fol. 28r. 74 Ruth Mellinkoff, The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), p. 66.

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Figure 15.8 Scenes from the Exodus: Killing of the Idolaters; Moses holding the Tablets of the Law; Adoration of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, 1388, Toledo, Cathedral, Choir Screen. Photo © Urs Portmann.

juhega’ (distinctive Jewish clothes) as in the Brother Haggadah, in the Crossing of the Red Sea (fol. 7r).75 Moses holding the Tablets of the Law is also depicted in the Haggadah of Sarajevo and on Ferrer Bassa’s altarpiece (which is now preserved in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Fig. 15.9). Moses’s clothes are adorned with letters similar to Hebrew — which might be explained as an ignorance of Hebrew by Christians. But according to Nickson, such ornaments were used on the Jews’ clothes as magic elements, giving them an apotropaic power.76 The rays of light emerging from both sides of Moses’s head refers to the radiance his face obtained when he received the Tablets of the Law (Exodus 34. 1–29).77 In Jewish and Christian exegesis, the radiance

75 British Library, Oriental 1404, Brother Haggadah, fol. 7r. 76 Tom Nickson, Toledo Cathedral: Building Histories in Medieval Castile (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015), p. 32; Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews, p. 22. 77 About Adam and Moses’ radiances in the Targums and in Makarius’ exegesis see Andrei A. Orlov, From Apocalypticism to Merkabah Mysticism: Studies in the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 329; about Moses’ radiance and horns see Mellinkoff, The Horned Moses, pp. 86–90; about the prefiguration of the Transfiguration see Simon S. Lee, Jesus’ Transfiguration and the Believers’ Transformation: A Study of the Transfiguration and Its Development in Early Christian Writings (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), p. 95; Moshe Idel, ‘The Changing Faces of God and Human Dignity in Judaism’, in Moshe Idel, Representing God, ed. by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes (Leiden: Brill, 2014), p. 106.

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Figure 15.9 Ferrer Bassa’s workshop, Detail of the Prophets with Moses holding the Tablets of the Law from the panel of All the Saints Adoring the Trinity, c. 1420, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, prov. Monastery of Valldecrist. Photo © Maria Portmann.

of Moses’s face has to be related to Adam’s ‘(“tselem”) the luminous image of God’s glory. Some scholars argue that the likeness that Adam and God shared was not physicality — in the usual sense of having a body — but rather luminescence’.78 In Makarius’s homilies both Adam’s and Moses’s brightness is regarded as a prefiguration of Jesus in the Transfiguration (Matthew 17. 1–9; Mark 9. 1–8; Luke 9. 28–36) on Mount Tabor, but only Jesus could save the humans’ souls.79 Therefore, this scene could also have been used as an image to be used to promote the conversion of Jews and the salvation of their soul. Adoration of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness

On the choir screen, in the Adoration of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness (Fig. 15.8), the attitude of the Hebrew people is different to that in the Jewish miniatures in the Sarajevo Haggadah, since they worship God’s words that are represented without any visible lettering on the Tablets of the Law. On the choir screen, the Jews are depicted kneeling in front of the Tablets of the Law (as a sign of adoration, which differs from

78 Orlov, From Apocalypticism to Merkabah Mysticism, p. 329. 79 Orlov, From Apocalypticism to Merkabah Mysticism, pp. 338–39.

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Figure 15.10 Moses assembles the Hebrew and Moses receives the Torah (Exodus 24 and 34), 1388, Valencia, Cathedral, Porch of the Charity. Photo © Maria Portmann.

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Jewish practices in the Haggadah). This detail underlines a different meaning (and very probably another use) of such scenes in the Toledan Cathedral while preaching for ‘conversos’ and Christians. It is referring to Christian practices, kneeling during the mass and prayers and to the use of clear distinctive signs marking Jewish ‘otherness’. In fact, such ‘round headdresses’ and ‘tocado’ were also used on the southern porch of Toledo’s Cathedral and for the sculptures of the Puerta del Almoina (Porch of the Charity) at Valencia Cathedral in order to denote the presence of Jews in the scenes of the Life of Jesus (Figs 15.2 and 15.10).80 For example, the attire of Hebrews depicted attending the teachings of Moses incorporate distinctive signs resembling those at Toledo Cathedral (Fig. 15.8). What we can thus assume is that similar visual sources had been used both in Toledo and Valencia. Furthermore, it was part of a real historic practice that Jews of Castile and Aragon had to wear round headdress and large cloaks so that they would be easily recognized as ‘others’ by their Christian contemporaries. Although Jews, in the minds of Christians, did no less respond to God’s Word and no less supported His coming revelation, they would be portrayed as people who refused to recognize the signs of God’s revelation (the words of the Ten Commandments written in the stone and the Incarnation). This ambiguity is also depicted in the depiction of God’s Word itself. The absence of lettering on the Tablets of the Law is interesting, because it reveals the importance of God’s words on Mount Sinai, which were materialized on stone in Hebrew letters, but which could hardly have been read by Christians. For ‘conversos’, the importance of the content of the Torah is underlined by the golden lines on the frame of the stones. The absence of the materialization of God’s words must be understand as a spiritual matter and as part of the revelation. On the contrary, Hebrew letters could have been interpreted as a depiction of the flesh according to Pauline theology. Therefore, this scene was carved not only for converted Jews but also for Christians, for whom it was merely a prefiguration of their faith and of the worship of God during Mass. Prefigurations of Jesus and Conversion of Jews

Although in the Haggadah, in order to enhance the importance of God in the story, Moses is mentioned on only one occasion, he is depicted in every scene like on the

80 On the cathedral of Valencia, see Vicente Blasco Garcia, ‘La construccion de la ‘obra nova’ de la Catedral de Valencia: Un ejercicio de impostación y transformaciones renacentistas en torno a la girola gótica’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Universitat Politècnica: Escola tècnica superior d’arquitectura, 2016), p. 138; José Sanchis Sivera, ‘Arquitectos y escultores de la Catedral de Valencia’, Archivo de Arte Valenciano, 19 (1933), 3–24 (p. 10); Néstor Cordero Carmona, Técnicas de Musealización Virtual aplicadas a la divulgación del patrimonio arquitectónico: La portada románica de la Catedral de Valencia (unpublished academic work, Grado en Fundamentos de la Arquitectura – E.T.S. de Arquitectura, Universitat Politècnica de València, 2018), p. 11 and pp. 13–14; Carlos Cid Priego, ‘La “Porta del Palau” de la catedral de Valencia’, Saitabi: revista de la Facultat de Geografia i Història, 9 (1952–1953), 73–120 (pp. 98–99).

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choir screen.81 Moses is shown as a prefiguration of Jesus. The depiction of prophets near Jesus shows the authority of the former in the achievement of creating bonds between God and human beings.82 According to Soifer Irish and Yuval, the spread of Franciscans in northern Castile and the spread of Ashkenazic tradition in Toledo implied changes in the ‘halakah’ (oral tradition).83 In Franciscan exegesis ( Joachim de Flore) and in Maimonides’s texts, history is divided into three parts: it begins with the creation, continues with Moses, and ends with both revelation and messianism. For Christians this division was related to Moses, Jesus, and the Messiah, as well as to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.84 This tripartite division of history can also be read on the choir screen: it begins with the creation, continues with the Patriarchs, and ends with Moses showing the Torah to the Hebrews. This cycle is linked to creation, revelation, and the conversion of the Jews. If we consider the sculptures where clear distinctive signs are depicted, we can relate them to conversion, because they are prophesying Jesus’s life as we have seen with The Crossing of the Red Sea or they are criticizing the Jews’ sins and moneylending as it is the fact for the idol made of metallic objects.

Conclusion The above results of a detailed analysis of the Toledo choir scenes in comparison with related sources with regard to the presentation of Jews may not be surprising, but concerning the outer appearance of Jews as being distinct from Christians they are nevertheless significant. On the one hand, they confirm what is known from normative sources. On the other hand, the artwork of the sculptures displays a programmatic, coherent concept that is similar to other pictorial representations and therefore characteristic of the epoch. The depiction of Jewish ‘otherness’, in the cathedral of Toledo, as opposed to, but still being part of Christian identity, was influenced by a rich and complex history that involved the three religions of the book.85 Although the depiction here was intended to define a proper Christian identity as opposed to Jews and moneylenders seen as ‘others’ and enemies, we can observe an important distinction: patriarchs and prophets were considered to be positive moral models of faith. Therefore, their distinctive signs are not as evident as are those of bad Jews, who wear a headdress or a round badge. It seems that Bishop Tenorio played a main role in the iconographic programme, that was influenced by both Talmudic and contemporary literature. The depiction of distinctive signs is similar to those depicted in Sephardic miniatures, showing headdresses and wide robes. They underlined the need for Christians to mark their 81 Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, p. 79. 82 Óscar Calvé Mascarell, ‘El uso de la imagen del profeta en la cultura valenciana bajomedieval’, Ars longa cuadernos de arte, 20 (2011), 49–68. 83 Soifer Irish, Jews and Christians, p. 151; Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, p. 114. 84 Soifer Irish, Jews and Christians, pp. 156–66; Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, pp. 291–92. 85 Nickson, Toledo Cathedral.

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difference from Jews and Muslims at that time. Jews were not only obliged to wear clear distinctive signs, but also to attend sermons in order to be converted. The content of each scene is emphasized by Gothic architectural frames. Although the choir screen was placed in the middle of the nave, the placement of the scenes in the upper part of the choir-screen enhances the difficulty of reading it or seeing the details. However, the most interesting part is the fact that Hebrew figures have been depicted with contemporary distinctive signs. Although the sculptures were not painted in colour, the shape of the headdresses is clearly visible. This underlines their importance in the cycle referring to people who could be converted to the Christian faith. These details express the will to integrate contemporary details into the biblical scenes and also a special interest for the culture of ‘the other’. Thus it confirms what, in a very different context, has been concluded by Lieselotte Saurma-Jeltsch in concise words: The understanding that the Other is in some way related to the Self — whether as the mirror-image of the Self or as the total Other; as the moral, economic or however constituted improvement on the Self; as something worth striving for; or, in contrast, the complete Other — seems to be part of the experiences that belong to the process of self-perception. Jacques Lacan described this irresolvable interplay between mirroring oneself in the Other, the experience of difference, and the longing for fusion as both a necessary process of identity construction and an experience inherent in any speech act. In this context, the Other, as Julia Kristeva emphasizes, is everywhere. The Other is within us, and — as Kristeva argues based on Paul’s letters in the New Testament — within this Other there is always an inner disruption that attempts to overcome itself by means of merging (here with Christ).86

Works Cited Manuscript and Archival Sources Copenhagen, Royal Library, Moshe b. M. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed: Cod. Heb. 37, 1348 Geneva, Fondation Bodmer, CB 80, Canones Concili Lateranensis, 1215 London, British Library, Oriental 1404, Brother Haggadah ———, Oriental 2737, Haggadah for Passover (the ‘Hispano-Moresque Haggadah’) ———, Add MS 27210, Golden Haggadah, c. 1320–1330 Madrid, Bibl. Nat. MS 3995, 1391, Castigos y documentos del rey don Sancho IV

86 Lieselotte Saurma-Jeltsch, ‘Introduction: Facets of Otherness and Affirmation of the Self ’, p. 9, where she is citing Julia Kristeva, Fremde sind wir uns selbst. Übersetzt von Xenia Rajewsky (Frankfurt-amMain: Suhrkamp, 1990), and Jacques Lacan, Ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966), p. 546.

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Manchester, Rylands Library, Hebrew MS 6, Rylands Haggadah Sarajevo, Zemaljski Museum, Sarajevo Haggadah, c. 1350 Primary Sources AA. VV., Documentos de Enrique III: Fondo Mercedes Gaibrois de Ballesteros (Madrid: Real Academia de Historia, 2016) Ambrose, ‘On the Mysteries’ and the Treatise ‘On the Sacraments’ by an Unknown Author, ed. by T. Thomson and trans. by J. H. Srawley (New York: Macmillan, 1919) Ferrer, Vicent, Sermons, ed. by Gret Schib (Barcelona: Barcino, 1984) Constitutiones quarti Lateranensis una cum Commentariis glossatorum, ed. by Antonio García García, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, 2 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1981) Sherwood, Jessie, and Laurence Foschia (trans), Notice n°30326: Concilium Lateranense IV, canon 68, 1st edn (Orléans: Edition électronique Telma, IRHT, Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes, 2013) Tertullianus, De Baptismo (On Baptism), in Documenta catholica omnia: ANF03. Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, ed. by Allan Manzies (1845–1916) and Philipp Schaff (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2011), pp. 1162–83 Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica: translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York, 1947) Secondary Works Alcoy i Pedrós, Rosa, ‘Aspectos formales en la marginalia del Maimónides de Copenhague’, Espacio Tiempo y Forma. Serie VII, Historia del Arte, 6 (1993), 37–64 ———, ‘Las ilustraciones de la Haggadah de Poblet’, in Haggadah de Poblet, ed. by Jordi Casanovas Miró (Barcelona: Riopiedras-Abadia de Poblet, 1993), pp. 1–100 Alfonso el Sabio, Las ‘Siete Partidas’ del Rey Don Alfonso el Sabio cotejadas con varios codices antiguos por la Real Academia de la Historia, 1252–1284 (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1972) Ansbacher, B. M., ‘Jewish Badge’, Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. xi (Detroit: Macmillan, 2007)

Antón, José M. M., ‘Algunas consideraciones sobre el ideario antijudío contenido en el Liber III del Fortalitium fidei de Alonso de Espina’, Aragón en la Edad Media, 14–15 (1999), 1061–88 Baer, Fritz, Die Juden im christlichen Spanien (London: Gregg, 1970) Bale, Anthony, Feeling Persecuted: Christians, Jews and Images of Violence in the Middle Ages (London: Reaktion, 2000) ———, ‘The Jew in Profile’, in New Medieval Literatures, ed. by Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 125–51 Barton, Thomas W., Contested Treasure: Jews and Authority in the Crown of Aragon (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015)

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Ben-Aryeh Debby, Nirit, ‘Jews and Judaism in the Rhetoric of Popular Preachers. The Florentine Sermons of Giovanni Dominici (1356–1419) and Bernardino da Siena (1380–1444)’, Jewish History, 14 (2000), 175–200 Bizzarri, Hugo O., Castigos del rey don Sancho IV (Madrid: Vervuert, 2001) Blasco Garcia, Vicente, ‘La construccion de la ‘obra nova’ de la Catedral de Valencia: Un ejercicio de impostación y transformaciones renacentistas en torno a la girola gótica’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Universitat Politècnica: Escola tècnica superior d’arquitectura, 2016) Calvé Mascarell, Óscar, ‘El uso de la imagen del profeta en la cultura valenciana bajomedieval’, Ars longa cuadernos de arte, 20 (2011), 49–68 Caputo, Nina, Nahmanides in Medieval Catalonia. History, Community & Messianism (Notre-Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007) Cassandro, Michele, Intolleranza e accettazione. Gli ebrei in Italia nei secoli XIV–XVIII. Lineamenti di una storia economica e sociale (Torino: Giappichelli, 1996) Cid Priego, Carlos, ‘La “Porta del Palau” de la catedral de Valencia’, Saitabi: revista de la Facultat de Geografia i Història, 9 (1952–1953), 73–120 Constable, Olivia R., and Damian Zurro, Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) Cordero Carmona, Néstor, Técnicas de Musealización Virtual aplicadas a la divulgación del patrimonio arquitectónico: La portada románica de la Catedral de Valencia (unpublished academic work, Grado en Fundamentos de la Arquitectura – E.T.S. de Arquitectura, Universitat Politècnica de València, 2018) Derbes, Anne, Picturing the Passion in Late Medieval Italy: Narrative Painting, Franciscan Ideologies, and the Levant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) Di Giacomo, Mario, ‘Maimónides y Tomás: El triunfo de la negación’, Apuntes Filosóficos, 35 (2009), 109–26 Donadieu-Rigaut, D., Penser en images les ordres religieux: XIIe–XVe siècles (Paris: Arguments, 2005) Dubois, Claude-Gilbert, ‘L’invention du mythe des “anges rebelles”’, Imaginaire & Inconscient, 19 (2007), 31–50 Faulhaber, Charles B., Libros y bibliotecas en la España medieval: Una bibliografía de fuentes impresas (London: Grant and Cutler, 1987) Fellous, Sonia, Histoire de la Bible de Moïse Arragel. Quand un rabbin interprète la Bible pour les Chrétiens (Paris: Somogy, 2001) Fierro, Marina, ‘Red and Yellow: Colours and the Quest for Political Legitimacy in the Islamic West’, in And Diverse are their Hues. Color in Islamic Art and Culture, ed. by Jonathan M. Bloom and Sheila S. Blair (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), pp. 79–97 Foster, Michael, ed., Spiritual Temporalities in Late-Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2010) Fredriksen, Paula, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York: Doubleday, 2008) Füllenbach, Elias H., Dominikaner und Juden: Personen, Konflikte und Perspektiven vom 13. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert = Dominicans and Jews Personalities, Conflicts, and Perspectives from the 13th to the 20th Century (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015)

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Goldschmidt, Lazarus, Der Babylonische Talmud: Nach der ersten zensurfreien Ausgabe unter Berücksichtigung der neueren Ausagen und handschriftlichen Materials ins Deutsche übersetzt von Lazarus Goldschmidt, vol. i (Frankfurt-am-Main: Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag, 1996) Idel, Moshe, ‘The Changing Faces of God and Human Dignity in Judaism’, in Moshe Idel: Representing God, ed. by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 103–23 ———, ‘Jewish Kabbalah and Platonism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance’, in Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, ed. by Lenn E. Goodman (New York: State University of New York Press, 1992), pp. 319–53 Jacobs, Joseph, An Inquiry into the Sources of the History of the Jews in Spain (London: David Nutt, 1894) Jacobs, Joseph, Wilhelm Bacher, and Isaac Broydé, ‘Moses Ben Nahman Gerondi. (RaMBaN; known also as Naḥmanides and Bonastruc da Porta)’, in The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. by JewishEncyclopedia.com (2002–2011), pp. 88–92 Jeffrey, D. L., A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992) Jung, Jacqueline E., The Gothic Screen: Space, Sculpture, and Community in the Cathedrals of France and Germany, ca. 1200–1400 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) Kasl, Ronda, The Making of Hispano-Flemish Style: Art, Commerce, and Politics in FifteenthCentury Castile (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014) Kogman-Appel, Katrin, and Shulamit Laderman, ‘The “Sarajevo Haggadah”. The Concept of “Creatio ex nihilo” and the Hermeneutical School behind it’, Studies in Iconography, 25 (2004), 89–127 Kogman-Appel, Katrin, ‘The Sephardic Picture Cycles and the Rabbinic Tradition. Continuity and Innovation in Jewish Iconography’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 60 (1997), 451–81 Kristeva, Julia, Fremde sind wir uns selbst: übersetzt von Xenia Rajewsky (Frankfurt-amMain: Suhrkamp, 1990) Lacan, Jacques, Ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966) Lee, Simon S., Jesus’s Transfiguration and the Believers’ Transformation: A Study of the Transfiguration and Its Development in Early Christian Writings (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009) Lipton, Sara, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible moralisée (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) Lop Otín, María J., ‘Los “espacios” de la catedral de Toledo y su funcionalidad durante la Edad Media’, in Sacra loca toletana: Los espacios sagrados en Toledo, ed. by J. C. Vizuete Mendoza and Julio Martín Sánchez (Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de CastillaLa Mancha, 2008), pp. 223–62 Luciani-Zidane, Lucrèce, L’acédie: Le vice de forme du Christianisme. De saint Paul à Lacan (Paris: Cerf, 2009) Mann, Vivian B., ed., Jewish Texts on the Visual Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) ———, Uneasy Communion: Jews, Christians, and the Altarpieces of Medieval Spain, exh. cat. (Museum of Biblical Art, New York 2010) (London: Giles, 2010)

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Mata, María Ángela Franco, ‘Relaciones artísticas entre la Haggadah de Sarajevo y la cerca exterior del coro de la catedral de Toledo’, Espacio Tiempo y Forma. Serie VII, Historia del Arte, 6 (1993), 65–80 Meiss, Millard, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death: The Arts, Religion, and Society in the Mid-Fourteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964) Mellinkoff, Ruth, The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970) Méndez, José, and Diane Cole Ahl, ‘Toledo’s Gothic Treasure: An Extraordinary Mural Cycle Is Revealed After a Year Long Restoration’, ICON world monuments, 1 (2005), 10–25 Miquel Juan, Matilde, ‘Starnina e altri pittori toscani nella Valencia medievale’, in Intorno a Lorenzo Monaco, ed. by Daniela Parenti and Angelo Tartuferi (Livorno: Sillabe, 2007), pp. 32–43 Nickson, Tom, ‘The First Murder: Picturing Polemic c. 1391’, in Hebrew Bible in FifteenthCentury Spain, ed. by Jonathan Decter and Arturo Prats (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 41–60 ———, ‘Reframing the Bible: Genesis and Exodus on Toledo Cathedral’s FourteenthCentury Choir Screen’, Gesta, 50 (2011), 71–89 ———, Toledo Cathedral: Building Histories in Medieval Castile (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015) Nirenberg, David, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: Norton, 2014) ———, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015) ———, ‘Conversion, Sex and Segregation: Jews and Christians in Medieval Spain’, American Historical Review, 107 (2002), 1065–93 ———, ‘Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities. Jews and Christians in FifteenthCentury Spain’, Past and Present, 174 (2002), 3–41 Nordström, Carl-Otto, The Duke of Alba’s Castilian Bible: A Study of the Rabbinical Features of the Miniatures (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksells, 1967) Olivares Martínez, Diana, ‘Albornoz, Tenorio y Rojas. Las empresas artísticas de tres arzobispos de Toledo en la baja Edad Media. Estado de la cuestión’, Estudios Medievales Hispánicos, 2 (2013), 129–74 Orlov, Andrei A., From Apocalypticism to Merkabah Mysticism: Studies in the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha (Leiden: Brill, 2007) Owen Hughes, Diane, ‘Distinguishing Signs: Ear-Rings, Jews and Franciscan Rhetoric in the Italian Renaissance City’, Past and Present, 112 (1986), 3–59 Patton, Pamela A., Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012) Pérez, Joseph, and Lysa Hochroth, History of a Tragedy: The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007) Portmann, Maria, ‘The Depiction of Jews on Spanish Altarpieces during the Early Modern Period’, in Identidades cuestionadas. Coexistencia y conflictos interreligiosos en el mediterráneo (ss. XIV–XVIII), ed. by Borja Franco Llopis, Bruno Pomara Saverino, Manuel Lomas Cortés, and Barbara Ruiz Bejarano (Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, 2016), pp. 321–37

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———, ‘Jewish Writings and Holy Scripture in Christian Paintings in Spain during the Late Medieval Period’, in Clothing Sacred Scriptures: Book Art and Book Religion in Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Cultures, ed. by David Ganz and Barbara Schellewand (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), pp. 159–70 Ray, Jonathan, ed., The Jew in Medieval Iberia: 1100–1500, Jews in Space and Time (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012) Resnick, Irven M., Marks of Distinction: Christian Perceptions of Jews in the High Middle Ages (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012) Roth, Norman, ‘Badge, Jewish’, in Medieval Jewish Civilization: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Norman Roth (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 67–69 ———, Jews, Visigoths and Muslims in Medieval Spain: Cooperation and Conflict (Leiden: Brill, 1994) Ruiz Moreno, Anibal, La medicina en la legislación medioeval española (Madrid: El Ateneo, 1946) Sabar, Shalom, ed., The Sarajevo Haggadah: History and Art (Sarajevo: The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2018) Sanchis Sivera, José, ‘Arquitectos y escultores de la Catedral de Valencia’, Archivo de Arte Valenciano, 19 (1933), 3­–24. Satterlee, Craig A., Ambrose of Milan’s Method of Mystagogical Preaching (Collegeville: Minnesota Liturgical Press, 2002) Saurma-Jeltsch, Lieselotte, ‘Introduction: Facets of Otherness and Affirmation of the Self ’, in Images of Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern Times: Exclusion, Inclusion and Assimilation, ed. by Anja Eisenbeiss and Lieselotte Saurma-Jeltsch (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2012), pp. 1–15 Schreckenberg, Heinz, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld (13. – 20. Jh.) (Frankfurt-am-Main: Lang, 1994) Schroeder, Hans J., Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation and Commentary (St Louis: Herder, 1937) Shalev-Eyni, Sarit, Jews among Christians: A Hebrew School of Illumination (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010) Simonsohn, Shlomo, ed., The Apostolic See and the Jews (Roma: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988) Soifer Irish, Maya, Jews and Christians in Medieval Castile: Tradition, Coexistence, and Change (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016) Steinsaltz, Adin, and Frank Lalou, La Hagadah: La Pâque juive expliquée à tous (Paris: Michel, 2013) Toaff, Ariel, Blood Passover: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murder, trans. by Gian M. Lucchese and Pietro Gianetti, (n.p.: Lulu.com, 2007, revised 2014); Todeschini, Giacomo, Au pays des sans-nom: Gens de mauvaise vie, personnes suspectes ou ordinaires du Moyen Âge à l’époque moderne, trans. by Nathalie Gailius, preface by Patrick Boucheron (Lagrasse [Aude]: Verdier, 2015) Vose, Robin, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)

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Yuste Galán, Amalia, and Jean Passini, ‘El inicio de la construcción del claustro gótico de la catedral de Toledo’, in Actas del Séptimo Congreso Nacional de Historia de la Construcción, Santiago 26–29 octubre 2011, ed. by Santiago Huerta Fernández, Bruno Pomara Saverino, Manuel Lomas Cortés, and Barbara Ruiz Bejarano, vol. ii (Madrid: Instituto Juan de Herrera, 2011), pp. 1477–88 Yuval, Israel J., Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008)

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Roland Scheel

‘It Was the Law Back Then’ The Viking Age as the Other in Medieval Scandinavian Legal Thought

‘Þat váru lǫg í þann tíma’ (It was the law back then). This and similar phrases are found several times in Icelandic Family Sagas from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In the example chosen here, Eyrbyggja saga informs us that during a protracted conflict, a slave is sent to attempt an assassination, and is captured and subsequently killed. In order to explain the killers’ next actions, the narrator acquaints his public with historical law from the saga’s world shortly before the turn of the millennium and before the official conversion to Christendom: if someone killed a slave, he could avert a legal process (‘sókn’) by paying the ‘þrælsgjǫld’, a special wergild of 12 ‘aurar’ (1.5 ‘mǫrk’) silver in the course of three days.1 This detail is quite essential to the narrative because it serves to explain the behaviour of the characters, which otherwise might have appeared nonsensical to the thirteenth-century listener or reader. If one presumes that this intended public possessed some knowledge of the law, the common expectation would not have been that the killers seek out the owner immediately afterwards. In the Icelandic lawbook known as Grágás, whose oldest surviving manuscript was written at the same time as Eyrbyggja saga in the middle of the thirteenth century, killing a slave (‘hývíg’) entailed the same procedure as any other slaying (‘víg’).2 The deed had to be publicly

1 Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 43, in Eyrbyggja saga: Brands þáttr ǫrva. Eiríks saga rauða. Grœnlendinga saga. Grœnlendinga þáttr, ed. by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, Íslenzk fornrit, 4 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornrítafélag, 1935), pp. 1–184 (p. 118): ‘Þat váru lǫg í þann tíma, ef maðr drap þræl fyrir manni, at sá maðr skyldi fœra heim þrælsgjǫld ok hefja ferð sína fyrir ina þriðju sól eptir víg þrælsins; þat skyldu vera tólf aurar silfrs. Ok er þrælsgjǫld váru at lǫgum fœrð, þá var eigi sókn til um víg þrælsins’ (It was the law back then that if a man killed another man’s slave, that the former should bring the slave-wergild home and start his journey before the third sunrise after the killing; that should be twelve ‘aurar’ silver. And when the slave-wergild was delivered according to the law, then there was no legal process regarding the killing of the slave, translation R.S.). 2 Grágás: Islændernes Lovbog i Fristatens Tid. Förste Del. Text I, ch. 111, ed. by Vilhjálmur Finsen (København: Berlings, 1852), pp. 190–91 (‘hývíg’) and ch. 87–88, pp. 150–57 (usual procedure). The Codex regius of Grágás (Gks 1157 fol.) was written between 1250 and 1260. Roland Scheel  •  is Junior professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Göttingen, Germany. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 371–394 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123599

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declared — otherwise it was treated as murder (‘morð’) — and the principal in the case had to prosecute the perpetrator. There is a clear intention behind the regulations to avoid a direct meeting and thus an escalation of violence between the two parties, as the slayer was not required to publish his deed at a place where his life would be in danger, obviously through vengeance.3 As a consequence, the first meeting between the two parties would take place when the prosecutor summoned the accused to the ‘þing’ at his home, or through the intervention of arbitrators frequently encountered in the sagas.4 This serves to underline the function of our introductory example for the narrative: having killed the slave, the responsible persons ride to his home, which only appears reasonable given the historical state of the law. Otherwise, a direct encounter of the two parties so shortly after a killing would have appeared foolish. In this case, however, the characters, led by a certain Steinþórr from Eyrr, explicitly trust that the leader of their opponents, the famous Snorri goði, will respect the law (or, more precisely, legal procedure), which he intends to do, as is expressed in form of direct speech.5 It comes as no great surprise that the subsequent presence of the enemies is such a provocation that one of the bystanders attacks Steinþórr. As a consequence of the resulting skirmish, the conflict between the two parties and thus the story is taken one step further. Since the roughly forty Family Sagas focus on memorable and thus larger conflicts between the Icelandic magnates in the ‘Saga Age’ (‘söguöld’, c. ad 870–1030),6 it appears that legal history as presented in this example actually functions as a key element in the perception of the past — and thus of one fundamental foundation of common identity — as sometimes essentially different from the present. In a number of cases, entire plots would be impossible without evoking and explaining the seemingly counter-intuitive nature of historical ‘lǫg ok siðr’ (law and custom).7 These essential differences transcend mere historicity of legal detail: they form part of a societal matrix which, according to a distant heroic age, makes possible and demands a behaviour in the characters that is at least partly alien to the present 3 Grágás, ch. 87, ed. by Vilhjálmur Finsen (1852), p. 153. 4 Grágás, ch. 104, ed. by Vilhjálmur Finsen (1852), pp. 179–80. Cf. Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, ‘The Role of Arbitration in the Settlement of Disputes in Iceland c. 1000–1300’, in Law and Disputing in the Middle Ages: Proceedings of the 9th Carlsberg Academy Conference on Medieval Legal History, ed. by Per Andersen, Kirsi Salonen, Helle I. Møller Sigh, and Helle Vogt (København: DJØF, 2013), pp. 123–35. 5 Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 43–44, ed. by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, pp. 119–20. 6 Cf. Jesse L. Byock, Feud in the Icelandic Saga (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 24–46, 191–204; Santiago Barreiro, ‘Feud’, in The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas, ed. by Ármann Jakobsson and Sverrir Jakobsson (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 292–304. 7 Another important example is Gísla saga Súrssonar, where Gísli’s role as a hero is only explicable through the introduction of the otherwise unattested historical offence ‘launvíg’ (secret manslaughter) committed by Gísli. Without it, Gísli would have been an ignoble murderer and could not have been presented as a tragic hero. On the word pair, which also alludes to belief, and its use cf. Klaus von See, Altnordische Rechtswörter: Philologische Studien zur Rechtsauffassung und Rechtsgesinnung der Germanen, Hermaea. Germanistische Forschungen. N.F., 16 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1964), pp. 92–96, who underlines that law in the Scandinavian perspective apart from passages influenced by Canon Law is never identical with custom (‘siðvenja’).

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audience. Therefore, it appears sensible to address these cultural, religious and legal differences in representations of local history as a specific form of diachronic ‘otherness’. It is all the more vital that this otherness is ascribed an epoch due to its peculiarly pronounced characteristics. In both modern research and its portrayal in popular culture, this epoch is commonly referred to as the ‘Viking Age’, which is burdened with modern stereotypes based upon medieval conceptions of the past in narrative texts like the sagas.8 Eyrbyggja saga was perhaps written by Sturla Þórðarson (1214–1284),9 which contributes to the impression that a historicizing perspective on the law served certain ends: Sturla was one of the main figures of the Sturlung Age, a period dominated by the struggle for control over the island among a few family collectives. He was the author of a chronicle of Iceland in the thirteenth century (Íslendinga saga), and of the biographies of the Kings Hákon Hákonarson (1217–1263) and Magnús lagabœtir (1263–1280). Furthermore, Sturla was also an expert in the law, who contributed decisively to the revision of the Icelandic laws (called ‘Járnsíða’) after Iceland’s integration into the Norwegian realm in 1262/1264.10 Legal expertise, active participation in contemporary legal discourse, and the evocation of the other in history are in any case intimately connected. In the following, this article shall attempt to explain the intricate relationship between a community’s ‘own’ past and the historical self as a necessary ‘other’ in Scandinavian, first and foremost in Old Norse literature.11

The ‘Viking’ as the Other Self It is no surprise that Scandinavian historiography presents us with strong continuities between the era of transition from pagan to Christian belief and the high Middle Ages. The fact that the conversion happened at a later period, in comparison to the Western parts of Europe, during a phase of violent expansion and the well-known 8 For the conceptual relevance of the term, cf. the book title Vésteinn Ólason, Dialogues with the Viking Age: Narration and Representation in the Sagas of Icelanders (Reykjavík: Heimskringla, 1998) (Icelandic title: Samræður við sögöld); John H. Lind, ‘“Vikinger”, vikingetid og vikingeromantik’, KUML (2012), 151–70; Roland Scheel, ‘“Wikinger” und “Wikingerzeit” – der vormittelalterliche Norden als Gegenstand europäischer Erinnerung?’, in Europäische Erinnerung als verflochtene Erinnerung: Vielstimmige und vielschichtige Vergangenheitsdeutungen jenseits der Nation, ed. by Gregor Feindt, Félix Krawatzek, Daniela Mehler, Friedemann Pestel, and Rieke Trimçev, Formen der Erinnerung, 55 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), pp. 65–92. 9 Peter Hallberg, ‘Eyrbyggja sagas ålder – än en gång’, Acta Philologica Scandinavica, 32 (1979), 196–219 argues first and foremost on the ground of identical words and phrases with Íslendinga saga and Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar which were authored by Sturla. 10 Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir, ‘Sturla Þórðarson’, in Sturlustefna: Ráðstefna haldin á sjö alda ártið Sturlu Þórðarsonar sagnaritara 1984, ed. by Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi. Rit, 32 (Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1988), pp. 9–36 (pp. 24–36). 11 For a similar point of view also referring to constructions of the cultural ‘self ’ within a European, Christian frame, cf. Torfi H. Tulinius, ‘The Self as Other: Iceland and Christian Europe in the Middle Ages’, in Nordic Civilization in the Medieval World, ed. by Vésteinn Ólason, Gripla, 20 (Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 2009), pp. 199–216 (pp. 200, 209–13).

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escalation of plunder economy is firmly imbedded into cultural memory; it was one of the decisive factors in shaping a Scandinavian self-consciousness in a European context. This perception of the past was further cemented by the knowledge of Western, Latin perceptions of Scandinavians in the early Middle Ages. These sources as well as the status of pagans as archetypal ‘others’ from a Christian perspective in these texts in turn influenced heavily the way medieval writers in the North memorialized this epoch.12 Consequently, as is the case for Norway and Denmark, the discovery and settlement of Iceland, the Orkneys, Greenland, and ‘Vínland’ all share a similar characteristic in regard to their establishment as realms or colonies during a period prior to the Christian era. In other words, the political entities which constitute the frames of memory and historiography possess purely (or nearly purely) pagan roots. Genealogies directly link heathen founders like Haraldr inn hárfagri, the mythical first sole ruler of Norway,13 with the kings of the present. The same applies to Denmark under Gorm and Harald Blåtand and, mutatis mutandis, to Iceland. The pagan era could therefore not be segregated from linear, recent history, such as heroic legend before a sort of ‘floating gap’,14 but rather it is loaded with events and deeds that are crucial for the state of the polities in the authors’ present. On the other hand, the conversion and the establishment of Christian structures were also an indispensable part of the past. Therefore, continuities of lineages and structures across the epochs were just one aspect of the solution to this Scandinavian peculiarity of a late conversion. Medieval historiographers had a vast array of tools at their disposal for addressing this problem from the very beginning. This is also due to the so-called ‘Twelfth Century Renaissance’ and its effects on historiography,15 which coincided temporally with the establishment of local literatures in the North, and to the integration of the early

12 Cf. Richard Broome, ‘Pagans, Rebels and Merovingians: Otherness in the Early Carolingian World’, in The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Clemens Gantner, Rosamond McKitterick, and Sven Meeser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 155–71 (p. 157) and the introduction to this volume, p. 15; Niels Lukman, ‘Sagnhistorien hos Saxo: Det 12. århundredes normannerromantik i Saxos udformning’, in Saxostudier: Saxokollokvierne ved Københavns Universitet, ed. by Ivan Boserup, Opuscula Graecolatina, 2 (København: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1975), pp. 117–27; Lars Boje Mortensen, ‘The Anchin Manuscript of Passio Olavi (Douai 295), William of Jumièges, and Theodoricus Monachus: New Evidence for Intellectual Relations between Norway and France in the 12th Century’, Symbolae Osloenses, 75 (2000), 165–89. The effect is most explicit in the Historia de profectione Danorum in Hiersoslymam, ch. 5, in Scriptores minores historiae Danicae medii ævi 2, ed. by Martin C. Gertz (København: Gad, 1918–1922), pp. 457–92 (pp. 465–67), a NorwegianDanish chronicle on the Third Crusade. Here, the exhortation speech from 1187 by a Danish magnate evokes the ‘terror gentis nostrae’ in former times and the duty to defend fame and honour in the service of Christ. 13 Sverrir Jakobsson, ‘“Erindringen om en mægtig personlighed”: Den norsk-islandske historiske tradisjon om Harald Hårfagre i et kildekritisk perspektiv’, Historisk tidsskrift [N], 81 (2002), 213–30 (pp. 228–30). 14 Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, 5th edn (München: Beck, 2005), pp. 48–56. 15 Cf. Hans-Werner Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewußtsein im hohen Mittelalter, Orbis mediaevalis, 1 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999), pp. 49–97.

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centres of literary production into educated networks of the time.16 A few examples may serve to underline this, thereby signifying the crucial role of legal history in this context. Texts which cover a larger timespan, in particular, demonstrate that the implicit rules for religious conduct were changing over time. Landnámabók, a register of Icelandic settlers with short notes on their memorable deeds, whose oldest preserved redaction goes back to the thirteenth century, presents adherence to a pagan cult as being one of the keys to the success attributed to the first generation of settlers, whereas their equally successful descendants, just before the advent of Christendom, become areligious, and heathen worshippers are then viewed negatively.17 The implicit concept is mirrored in the readiness to include supernatural phenomena and otherworldly creatures into the narrative of the Family Sagas which are based upon memory represented in the Landnámabók. Also the Kings’ Sagas encapsulate this pattern, as shown through the lives of the missionary kings Óláfr Tryggvason (995–1000) and St Óláfr Haraldsson (1015–1030), who spend their youths as heathen pirates before they convert and become God’s servants and martyrs.18 In early chronicles of the Norwegians kings, Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri (934–961), who had been raised in Britain and was a Christian, is viewed as an ideal king, although he partakes in pagan sacrifices at the behest of his people. Although technically an apostate, his willingness to compromise and his eventual burial in the pagan tradition are lauded as a proof of his humility.19 In the case of Óláfr Tryggvason, however, the opposite, i.e. the use of violence against stubborn worshippers avoided by Hákon

16 Cf. Mia Münster-Swendsen, ‘Skandinaviens placering i det europæiske lærde netværk: En tentativ undersøgelse af de anglo-danske forbindelser c. 1000–1150’, in Vänner, patroner og klienter i Norden 900–1800: Rapport till 26:e Nordiska historikermötet i Reykjavík den 8–12 augusti 2007, ed. by Lars Hermanson, Thomas Småberg, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, and Jakob Danneskjold-Samsøe, Ritsafn Sagnfræðistofnunar, 39 (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 2007), pp. 37–56; Peter Foote, ‘Aachen, Lund, Hólar’, in Les relations littéraires Franco-Scandinaves au Moyen Age: Actes du Colloque de Liège (avril 1972), Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université de Liège, 208 (Paris: Les belles lettres, 1975), pp. 53–76; Pernille Hermann, ‘Den norrøne renæssance og dens forudsætninger’, in Den norröna renässansen: Reykholt, Norden och Europa 1150–1300, ed. by Karl G. Johansson, Snorrastofa. Rit, 4 (Reykholt: Snorrastofa, 2007), pp. 41–61. 17 Cf. Laura S. Wamhoff, Isländische Erinnerungskultur 1100–1300: Altnordische Historiographie und kulturelles Gedächtnis, Beiträge zur nordischen Philologie, 57 (Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempo, 2016), pp. 48–70; Gerd W. Weber, ‘Intellegere historiam: Typological Perspectives of Nordic Prehistory (in Snorri, Saxo, Widukind and others)’, in Tradition og historieskrivning: Kilderne til Nordens ældste historie, ed. by Kirsten Hastrup and Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, Acta Jutlandica. Humanistisk serie, 61 (Aarhus: Universitetsforlag, 1987), pp. 95–141 (pp. 110–15). 18 In the case of Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, the Latin original written as a part of a planned canonization is lost; in the case of St Óláfr, there exist a Passio et miracula as well as different vernacular versions. For the significance of the saintly king as a connection between salvific and local history, see Lars Boje Mortensen, ‘Sanctified Beginnings and Mythopoietic Moments: The First Wave of Writing on the Past in Norway, Denmark, and Hungary, c. 1000–1230’, in The Making of Christian Myths in the Periphery of Latin Christendom (c. 1000–1300), ed. by Lars Boje Mortensen (København: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006), pp. 247–73. 19 Ágrip af Nóregskonunga sǫgum, ch. 5, in Ágrip af Nóregskonunga sǫgum. Fagrskinna – Nóregs konunga tal, ed. by Bjarni Einarsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 29 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1985), pp. 1–54 (pp. 8–9); ch. 6, p. 11.

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is justified.20 These narratives imply that there exists a connection between salvific history and local history. Progression in the ‘philosophia moralis’, the ‘philosophia rationalis’ and the ‘philosopha naturalis’ is the explanation for the development hinted at above, from worshippers over ‘noble heathens’ to Christians.21 The fact that Snorri Sturluson in his Heimskringla begins to play with this principle by changing Óláfr Tryggvason from a harsh but just missionary in the early biographies to that of a part-time sadist, thereby downplaying the political significance of the conversion,22 merely underlines the validity of the concept. In saga literature, a considerable variety of answers to the question regarding how to integrate the pagan past into a historiographical concept can be found. A keen awareness of transformation and change in the community’s own history is the decisive precondition. Thus, the typical ambivalence of high medieval historiography between historicity and timelessness23 takes on a special form. It is here that we return to legal history. To this day, though subject to criticism and modification, Fritz Kern’s hypothesis stating that from a medieval point of view, the law had to be ‘old’ in order to be ‘good’ proves influential.24 As has already been hinted, the Scandinavian sources, both law books and sagas, present us with a radically different picture. While legal custom and ‘old’ customary rights, which are corroborated and/or renewed, dominate the discourse on royal charters, as is the case for the Empire and also the lawbooks such as the Sachsenspiegel,25 Scandinavian lawbooks and secular narrations on the law — produced by the same milieu — are obviously influenced by Church reform and the Decretum Gratiani which states that ‘veritas’ and ‘ratio’ should dominate over ‘consuetudo’.26 This is 20 Cf. for instance Oddr Snorrason, Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, ch. A56, in Færeyinga saga. Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar eptir Odd munk Snorrason, ed. by Ólafur Halldórsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 25 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2006), pp. 123–380 (pp. 276–81). 21 Augustinus, De civitate Dei libri XXII, ch. VIII.4, ed. by Bernard Dombart and Alphons Kalb, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 14. 1–2, 2 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), p. 220 and XI. 25, p. 344; cf. Lars Lönnroth, ‘The Noble Heathen: A Theme in the Sagas’, Scandinavian Studies, 41 (1969), 1–29; Gerd W. Weber, ‘Siðaskipti. Das religionsgeschichtliche Modell Snorri Sturlusons in Edda und Heimskringla’, in Sagnaskemmtun: Studies in Honour of Hermann Pálsson on his 65th Birthday 26th May 1986, ed. by Rudolf Simek, Philologica Germanica, 8 (Wien: Böhlau, 1986), pp. 309–29. 22 Cf. Klaus von See, ‘Heidentum und Christentum in Snorris Heimskringla’, in Klaus von See, Europa und der Norden im Mittelalter (Heidelberg: Winter, 1999), pp. 311–44, and his critique of Weber, ‘Siðaskipti’. 23 Cf. Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 208–16. 24 Fritz Kern, ‘Recht und Verfassung im Mittelalter’, Historische Zeitschrift, 120 (1919), 1–79 (pp. 3–26); Aron Y. Gurevich, Das Weltbild des mittelalterlichen Menschen (Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1978), pp. 199–201. Cf. Simon Teuscher, Erzähltes Recht: Lokale Herrschaft, Verschriftlichung und Traditionsbildung im Spätmittelalter (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2007), pp. 305–17, who stresses that such old traditions were often invented in the process of writing. 25 Gerhard Dilcher, ‘Zeitbewußtsein im Bereich hochmittelalterlicher Rechtsgewohnheit’, in Hochmittelalterliches Geschichtsbewußtsein im Spiegel nichthistoriographischer Quellen, ed. by HansWerner Goetz (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998), pp. 31–54 (pp. 40–52). 26 Corpus iuris canonici: Pars prior. Decretum magistri Gratiani, p. i. dist. viii. c. 4, ed. by Emil Friedberg (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1879), col. 14: ‘Veritati et rationi consuetudo est postponenda’. Cf. Dilcher, ‘Zeitbewußtsein’, p. 53; von See, Altnordische Rechtswörter, pp. 100–02.

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clearly documented by the latent opposition between man-made law and the ‘truth’ which the law should help to find.27 Indeed, if the age of legal prescriptions is turned into an argument by saga characters, it usually means personal rights in accordance with the perspective of Canon Law.28 When the inhabitants of Trøndelag do not want to accept the harsh treatment by King Magnús inn góði (1035–1047) in the narration of the oldest Kings’ Saga compendium on Norway, the argument against such treatment is stipulated upon the notion that the laws were issued by his father St Óláfr, and not that they have always been like this.29 Custom is not mentioned, in contrast to conversion narratives focusing on ‘siðr’.30 It is tempting to draw a connection between the time when written culture had been established in the North and this perspective on the law: just as the prose form of the saga develops in remarkable synchrony with the rise of Latin prose,31 both the lawbooks, which we possess in their current form, as well as the sagas were written following the rise of law schools in Italy. As a result, local legal history written by medieval authors repeatedly presents us with aspects where the distant past is not just viewed as different, but serves the purpose of establishing the ‘other’ through a process of defining one’s own cultural self in distinction to that of another, just as the perception of strangers or other social groups does in other narrative constellations.32 This ‘othering’ of a community’s own past naturally entails narratives of change and of progress which is supposed to have happened exactly in the time of transition between paganism and Christendom. It forms one key element of the ‘saga world’ and thus the ‘Viking Age’ as far as the literary sources are concerned. Nevertheless, the picture is far from uniform. While virtually all the Family Sagas contain legal detail, their strategies of historicizing the past differ markedly, and the characters’ handling of the law provides one promising way of analysing the motives behind the polyphony of Old Norse historical narrations.

27 See for instance the oath in Grágás, ed. by Vilhjálmur Finsen (1852), p. 46: ‘sannast ok réttast ok helzt at lǫgum’ (most true and just and in accordance with the law) and Danmarks gamle Landskabslove med Kirkelovene 2: Jyske Lov. Text 1: NkS 295 8°, ed. by Peter Skautrup (København: Gyldendal, 1933), p. 4. 28 Von See, Altnordische Rechtswörter, pp. 92–96. 29 Morkinskinna, ch. 4, ed. by Ármann Jakobsson and Þórður Ingi Guðjónsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 23–24, 2 vols (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2011), i, 30–36. Morkinskinna was finished between 1217 and 1222. Óláf ’s good and Magnús’ bad ‘lǫg’ are also mentioned in a number of partly paraenetic Skaldic stanzas (‘Bersǫglisvísur’) from Magnús’ own time quoted in this chapter (see st. 9 and 12). 30 Cf. Oddr Snorrason, Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, ch. A24, ed. by Ólafur Halldórsson, pp. 206–07; ch. A27, p. 212, ch. S28, pp. 223–24. 31 Cf. Klaus von See, ‘Altnordische Literatur’, in Klaus von See, Edda, Saga, Skaldendichtung: Aufsätze zur skandinavischen Literatur des Mittelalters, Skandinavistische Arbeiten, 6 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1981), pp. 15–23 (pp. 21–22). 32 Lieselotte E. Saurma-Jeltsch, ‘Introduction: Facets of Otherness and Affirmation of the Self ’, in Images of Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern Times: Exclusion, Inclusion and Assimilation, ed. by Anja Eisenbeiß and Lieselotte E. Saurma-Jeltsch (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2012), pp. 9–14; Broome, ‘Pagans’, pp. 170–71.

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Icelandic Perspectives on the Historicity of the Past The phenomenon is already visible and basically fully developed in Ari Þorgilsson’s Íslendingabók, the oldest surviving narrative text in Old Norse prose. This short history of Iceland was written between 1122 and 1133 and is the work of a well-educated pioneer who adapted Latin historiography to the peculiarities of Icelandic cultural memory.33 Ari is the first one to tell local history through a framework connected to the common era by providing dates after the birth of Christ for the year Norwegians discovered Iceland, and the year the Icelanders accepted Christianity as well as other decisive events such as the establishment of the episcopal sees. The conversion forms the centre of the narration and also dominates the text with regard to length, before the focus shifts to the early bishops.34 Nevertheless, about a third of the text deals with the pagan era, and if one looks at the events related to this time frame, it becomes clear that the political and thus the legal development form the backbone of the narration, which stretches across the boundary constituted by the conversion and actually includes it. This essentially turns the history of Iceland into a story of law amendments. If we look at it chronologically, we come across the peculiar notion that the law was first brought to Iceland from Western Norway by a man named Ulfljótr, once the process of settlement was completed around ad 930. It allegedly resembled the Norwegian law in the form of the Gulaþingslǫg, the provincial law of the West.35 This law book, which most probably existed in written form by Ari’s time, has very little in common with the Icelandic law we know, and which was first written down in 1117/1118. This was certainly something Ari and his audience were aware of — again we find the adverb ‘þá’ (then).36 What follows in chapter three is something which turns out to be typical of saga narrative for centuries and is already developed in Íslendingabók. We encounter a brief story of a murderer who forfeits his land; the ‘Alþingi’, the central assembly, is then set on this ownerless land according to Ulfljót’s decision.37 A specific conflict or crime is linked to a stage in the development of the law. This pattern is continued in chapter five,38 which deals with a legal conflict that threatens the peace in the late tenth century, as it involves powerful families from two regions in the west of the country, from the Breiðafjörður and the Borgarfjörður. It results from the burning of a farm with 33 Cf. Pernille Hermann, ‘Íslendingabók and History’, in Reflections on Old Norse Myths: Studies in Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, ed. by Judy Quinn, Stefan Brink, and John Hines (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 17–32. 34 Ólafia Einarsdóttir, Studier i kronologisk metode i tidlig islandsk historieskrivning, Bibliotheca historica Lundensis, 13 (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1964), pp. 13–90; Else Mundal, ‘Íslendingabók vurdert som bispestolskrønike’, alvíssmál, 3 (1994), 63–72. 35 Ari Þorgilsson, Íslendingabók [in the following Íb.], ch. 2, in Íslendingabók. Landnámabók, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 1. 1–2, 2 vols (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1968), i, 1–28 (p. 7). 36 On the dating of the Gulaþingslǫg, cf. Knut Helle, Gulatinget og Gulatingslova (Leikanger: Skald, 2001), pp. 20–23. The writing down of the Icelandic laws is mentioned in Íb. ch. 10, p. 23. 37 Íb., pp. 8–9. 38 Íb., pp. 11–13.

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its people inside (‘brenna’), a hideous crime. The problem, Ari tells us, is that up to this time, the plaintiff had to take action at the local ‘þing’ responsible for the place where the crime was committed: ‘Þat váru þá lǫg’ (It was the law then39). The outcome is logical enough. As the plaintiffs are outsiders, they meet with considerable aggression, resulting in the breakdown of the peace and further casualties. The same is repeated at the ‘Alþingi’. In the end, the plaintiff in this process calls for a change of the laws at the assembly. As a result, the island is divided into quarters and new lawcourts are established, which are responsible for one quarter each. That is basically the state of things in Ari’s own time and also resembles the situation in the thirteenth-century Grágás.40 Basically, we see the legal system emerge in Íslendingabók, along with its most important changes, the adoption of the Christian faith in ad 1000,41 the establishment of a court of appeal (‘fimmtardómr’),42 and the introduction of the tithe,43 which are viewed as improvements to the law. Even the argument for the adoption of Christendom provided by the ‘lǫgsǫgumaðr’, the law speaker, the most important figure and only office holder of the so-called Icelandic free state, a heathen at the time, is a juridical one. He stresses at the ‘Alþingi’ the necessity of having one law and one belief.44 His argument seems to be a vernacularized version of an Augustinian argument given to his voice by that of Ari, but it fits perfectly into the focus on the law.45

Iceland and Continental Scandinavia Of course, law-giving and the handling of legal matters are also important with regard to early Latin historiography from Denmark and Norway. This is self-evident in so far as these traditions take their departure from the saintly kings. Especially in Ælnoth’s life of King St Knud, it is stressed that an ideal king like Knud has to make and enforce just laws, for instance concerning deserters, which ultimately leads to an insurrection and to his being martyred. The barbarian lust for freedom from rules and government is viewed as essentially heathen.46 Here, the making of good, new laws is linked to a Christian ideal and viewed as a part 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Íb., p. 12. Grágás, ch. 20, ed. by Vilhjálmur Finsen (1852), p. 38; ch. 43–44, pp. 77–78. Íb. ch. 7, pp. 14–18. Íb. ch. 8, p. 19. Íb. ch. 10, p. 22 f. Íb., ch. 7, p. 17. Weber, ‘Intellegere historiam’, pp. 120–22; Harald Gustafsson, ‘Islands kristnande – en kritisk undersökning’, Scandia, 77 (2011), 18–37 (pp. 21–27); Roland Scheel, Lateineuropa und der Norden: Die Geschichtsschreibung des 12. Jahrhunderts in Dänemark, Island und Norwegen, Frankfurter Kulturwissenschaftliche Beiträge, 6 (Berlin: trafo, 2012), pp. 136–39. 46 Ælnoth, Gesta Swenomagni regis et filiorum eivs et Passio gloriosissimi Canvti regis et martyris, ch. 8, in Vitæ sanctorum Danorum, ed. by Martin C. Gertz (København: Gad, 1908–1912), pp. 77–136 (pp. 93–95); ch. 14–16, pp. 101–04; ch. 29, pp. 121–24.

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of the process of conversion, in that it signifies a necessary break with the past representing disorder. The later chronicle of Norway by Theodoricus monachus views St Óláfr similarly.47 Nevertheless, although the law of course is also important to the political discourse on saintly kings, Íslendingabók contains in a nutshell something which seems to be specifically Icelandic. The beginning of the settlement was not lost in a grey prehistory but could be dated with the help of parallel historical events in England. There is no real ‘forn öld’ (Old Age) in Icelandic history, but the Saga Age forms the key period for medieval identity. These aspects of a rather late colonialization seem to result in very precise genealogical knowledge and a very clear-cut concept of change48 — which is first and foremost change through conflicts, that is, legal dealings — and of the alteration and improvement of the laws. This is something which Íslendingabók and the much younger and longer Family Sagas from the thirteenth century with their unique style have in common, although they represent fundamentally different approaches to telling history at the text surface.49 Curiously enough, legal change serves as a sort of bracket connecting past and present in both contexts. This aspect of othering the past, therefore, at the same time serves as the basis for the leitmotif, which re-establishes a continuum50 because of historical figures found therein, and the actions they provide in giving rise to the motives for the said actions and subsequent reactions they elicit. The notion of a recurrent theme is further reinforced through genealogical connections to the historical figures. This applies already to the Íslendingabók. On the one hand, the ‘siðaskipti’, the change of religion, is the central aspect of Icelandic history; on the other hand, it is just the biggest step in a logical chain of legal development. This good development is essentially guaranteed by the same small group of related people, who have been enabled to rule before Christianity, and thus were indispensable in bringing it about, and who then provided the bishops.51 As a result, the assumption that medieval writers especially in the vernacular were incapable of conceptualizing change as the result of historical development should be refuted with regard to Old Norse literature.52 Neither does Fritz Kern’s thesis apply here.

47 Theodoricus monachus, Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium, ch. 16, in Monumenta historica Norvegiæ: Latinske Kildeskrifter til Norges Historie i Middelalderen, ed. by Gustav Storm (Oslo: Brøgger, 1880), pp. 3–68 (pp. 28–29). 48 Cf. Kurt Schier, ‘Iceland and the Rise of Literature in “terra nova”: Some Comparative Reflections’, Gripla, 1 (1975), 168–81. 49 Cf. Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, Fortælling og ære: Studier i islændingesagaerne (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1993), pp. 33–51, 62–78; Pernille Hermann, ‘Hungrvaka og islændingesagaer: Traditionalitet og konventionalitet’, Maal og Minne (2004), 21–40 (pp. 32–38). 50 Hermann, ‘Íslendingabók and History’, p. 26. 51 Scheel, Lateineuropa, pp. 140–44, 209–12. 52 Gurevich, Weltbild, pp. 156–61, 340–45; Aron Y. Gurevich, ‘Space and Time in the Weltmodell of the Old Scandinavian Peoples’, Mediaeval Scandinavia, 2 (1969), 42–53.

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However, not all Sagas display this attitude from the beginning. One group of Family Sagas, widely considered as particularly early texts from the time before c. 1240, presents quite a high portion of legal detail.53 Their narrative focuses differ, as they deal with regional history or with problematic protagonists such as Skalds. Despite this diversity, especially the sagas from the north-east show a sequential narration and prefer to view the main figures in series of disconnected disputes instead of one single feud as one knows it from ‘classical sagas’. The result is a frequent repetition of emerging conflicts and settlements, where the law is frequently applied by arbitrators, though moderated by the principle of equity.54 It is reasonable to assume that this narrative structure in sequences, which produces a focus on the process of arbitration rather than the heroic deeds of a single hero or the tragic entanglements leading to an inescapable feud, is the result of cautious planning on part of the authors. Obviously, this structure coincides with a perspective on history which is comparatively flat. While historical law is also represented here, the legal procedure applied in most of the texts in this group is more or less identical with Grágás, which is then projected upon the distant past.

Stable Law: Víga-Glúms saga A good example of such a flat perspective is Víga-Glúms saga, one of the oldest Family Sagas, probably written in the monastery at Munkaþverá in north-eastern Iceland around 1220.55 It tells the story of Glúmr, who is the grandson of a famous settler in the Eyjafjörður, and of a Norwegian magnate. After the early death of his father and his older brother, he and his mother Ástríðr inherit half of the estate in Iceland, whereas his sister-in-law Hallfriðr and her father Þorkell inn hávi inherit the other half.56 The problem is that Þorkell and his son Sigmundr try to deprive 53 These are Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, Heiðarvíga saga, Fóstbrœðra saga (though dating is debated here), Bjarnar saga hítdœlakappa and Kormáks saga from western Iceland, Víga-Glúms saga, Reykdœla saga ok Víga-Skútu and Ljósvetninga saga from the north-east. On the problems involved with dating, cf. Else Mundal, ‘The Dating of the Oldest Sagas About Early Icelanders’, in Dating the Sagas: Reviews and Revisions, ed. by Else Mundal (København: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013), pp. 31–54; Theodore M. Andersson, ‘Víga-Glúms saga and the Birth of Saga Writing’, Scripta Islandica, 57 (2006), 5–39. Alan J. Berger, ‘Lawyers in the Old Icelandic Family Sagas: Heroes, Villains and Authors’, SagaBook of the Viking Society, 20 (1978–1981), 70–79 (pp. 78–79) lists the last three among ‘lawyer sagas’. 54 Cf. John McKinnell, ‘Man’s Law and God’s Justice in Icelandic Literature, ca. 1130–ca. 1300’, in Le droit et sa perception dans la littérature et les mentalités médiévales, ed. by Danielle Buschinger, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 551 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1993), pp. 117–32. 55 Andersson, ‘Víga-Glúms saga’. 56 Víga-Glúms saga [in the following VGs], ch. 5, in Eyfirðinga sǫgur: Víga-Glúms saga. Ögmundar þáttr dytts. Þorvalds þáttr tasalda. Svarfdœla saga. Þorleifs þáttr jarlsskálds. Valla-Ljóts saga. Sneglu-Halla þáttr. Þorgríms þáttr Hallasonar, ed. by Jónas Kristjánsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 9 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1956), pp. 1–98, pp. 14–16. Alan J. Berger, ‘Did Haukr Erlendsson Write Víga-Glúms saga?’ Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 95 (1980), 113–15 notes that this division is not in accordance with Grágás, especially as Þorkell and Hallfriðr claim the half with the farm buildings. This is an illegal injustice hinting at the following story.

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Ástríðr and Glúmr of their share of the property. In order to achieve that, they abuse the law: they make a false claim against Ástríð’s thralls for theft, and since she cannot afford to lose them, she has to compensate for this by transferring land, especially a very good field, which has so far been farmed in turn by both parties. They also repeatedly move the fences between the properties. Þorkell and his son Sigmundr feel safe, as Glúmr appears to be a lazy weakling, and proceed to take action while he is abroad in Norway, visiting his grandfather.57 In Norway, however, he suddenly develops the valour which was so characteristic of his father and both his grandfathers. He slays a berserk with his bare hands, and he also inherits his grandfather’s cloak, spear, and sword, the insignia of his ‘hamingja’, his good fate.58 On his return to Iceland, he is not taken seriously, and although the ‘illmæli’, the defamation of Ástríð’s slaves is proven, Þorkell and Sigmundr refuse to give back the field they appropriated illegally and even mock Glúmr, bringing him into ‘víghugr’ (killing mood).59 In the same year, he slays Sigmundr while he is harvesting hay on the field he and his father had appropriated through abuse of the law. This killing of a thief in action — the hay Sigmundr was harvesting was actually Glúm’s and his mother’s — was fully legal, as we are subsequently informed. After a long search, Sigmundr’s father finds some relatives who are ready to support him in his prosecution at the ‘þing’ after long discussions. However, it all comes to nothing, as Glúmr is able to make the case that Sigmundr was ‘óhelgi fallinn’ — that he had forfeited his ‘mannhelgi’, his right to be unharmed.60 The whole explanation is perfectly clear. All the terms, alleged ‘þjófnaðr’ (theft) by the thralls, ‘illmæli’ (defamation) and the right to avert injustice by force, that is revenge, under certain circumstances, resulting in someone being declared as ‘óhelgi fallinn’ by the jury at the assembly, are legal terms.61 One can read and understand the whole part of the text with the Grágás law as a parallel. In this passage, the pagan tenth century adheres to exactly the same material and procedural law which was valid when the text was written some 150 years later. That applies to the following story too: Glúmr is a tough and violent man, but he displays a sense of proportion and equity, and he is also capable of correcting his mistakes. This is shown through a sequence of disconnected conflicts.62 The opponents are ultimately always the same, but it is made very clear that this is

57 58 59 60 61

VGs, ch. 5–6, pp. 15–19. VGs, ch. 6, p. 19. His ‘hamingja’ is explicitly mentioned in ch. 9, p. 31. VGs, pp. 20–26, ch. 7. VGs, ch. 8–9, pp. 26–33, the defence pp. 32–33. Grágás efter det Arnamagnæanske Haandskrift Nr. 334 fol., Staðarhólsbók, ed. by Vilhjálmur Finsen (København: Gyldendal, 1879), pp. 384–85; Grágás, ch. 89, ed. by Vilhjálmur Finsen (1852), pp. 162–63, on theft; ch. 227, pp. 162–63, ch. 238, pp. 183–84, on ‘illmæli’; ch. 107, pp. 181–82, on ‘óhelgi’. 62 Cf. VGs, ch. 17–18, pp. 56–63. Here, Glúmr is talked into suppressing a just process against a thief who is his son’s friend. This leads to a revenge killing after a repeated theft. Glúmr is given ‘eindœmi’ (single judgement) in the aftermath, and he himself then pays compensation for the stolen cattle.

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the result of coincidence. In the later part of the saga, however, Glúmr makes an essential mistake. After a skirmish where he slays an important adversary, he puts the blame on a rather insignificant man in his household,63 but the basis of the resulting settlement is questioned later on. This results in perjury and subsequently in Glúm’s downfall. He has to sell the land he so justly appropriated in the beginning and has to move to another district. All in all, we are confronted with the picture of a society ultimately structured and dominated by the law. Violence within its borders may be a solution, but justice and truth cannot be escaped. As a result of the repetitive structure with many different disputes, the focus is clearly on legal dealings and legal detail rather than on one feud, and as was mentioned, virtually no notion of legal development is found. Although some historical laws are mentioned,64 the historical perspective is rather flat as far as the law is concerned. On the other hand, the saga makes a good deal of pagan folklore. One comes across both implicit and explicit allusions to the cult of Freyr. There are sacrifices made by Þorkell, who asks him to deprive Glúmr of his land one day.65 Glúmr is visited by the ‘hamingja’, the ‘good fate’ of his Norwegian grandfather, in his dream, and he is lucky as long he possesses his cloak, spear, and sword. As soon as he gives those to other people, his downfall begins, and after he commits perjury he dreams of Freyr’s wrath.66 Scholars have therefore viewed this as a witness of old pagan beliefs, and it is undeniable that the saga displays a great deal of historical depth with regard to the representation of religion.67 In the end, Glúmr dies as a Christian, and he is remembered as the best of all manslayers (‘vígamenn’) in Iceland’s history.68 If one takes a closer look, however, it becomes more than clear that this ‘othering’ of the past and the allusions to a belief in fate are a red herring which ultimately serves to stress the significance of the law and the principle of free will: Glúmr decides to slay a berserk, and as a result he receives the alleged insignia of his good fate. He decides to kill Sigmundr, and as result of him putting an end to injustice, he dreams of his ‘hamingja’. He decides to lie about his role in a skirmish, and his

63 VGs, ch. 22–23, pp. 72–81. 64 Cf. the ‘þrælsgjǫld’ also found in Eyrbyggja saga (see above) mentioned in VGs, ch. 4, pp. 12–13, albeit with a different amount, and the idea that after a fight the dead on both sides were set off against each other (VGs, ch. 23, p. 80, with the formula ‘þat váru lǫg þar’). Berger, ‘Víga-Glúms saga’, p. 114. 65 VGs, ch. 9, pp. 34. 66 VGs, ch. 25–26, pp. 85–91. 67 Cf. Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, ‘Freyr in den Isländersagas’, in Germanische Religionsgeschichte: Quellen und Quellenprobleme, ed. by Heinrich Beck, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 5 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1992), pp. 720–35; Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, ‘Myth and Ritual in Glúma and Hrafnkatla’, in Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, A Piece of Horse Liver: Myth, Ritual and Folklore in Old Icelandic Sources (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 1998), pp. 107–28 (pp. 107–16). 68 VGs, ch. 28, p. 98.

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son states that this is an excellent way to deprive oneself of his own property.69 Nevertheless, he sticks to his lie. He decides to give the insignia of his luck to the oath helpers in his perjury, then swears a perjury, and then he dreams of Freyr’s wrath. ‘Fate’ always follows actions which result from free decisions. Glúm’s downfall is marked by a fatal mistake, and what constitutes a mistake is clearly defined by law. As a result, the past is the typological other when it comes to belief, but the law is stable and essentially the same. Thus, also a pagan past may serve as a paraenetic exemplum. In that respect, Víga-Glúms saga is historiography in the classical sense. Other early sagas from the north-east and also from the north-west like Heiðarvíga saga display a similar attitude, with regard to both changing beliefs and habits and timeless or at least partially timeless law in the centre of a rather sequential narrative.70

From Legal Other to Legal Self: Western Icelandic Perspectives This is not the case with Íslendingasögur from the West. They seem to follow Ari’s example from Íslendingabók in so far as they explicitly connect certain events to the development of the Grágás as it was in the thirteenth century when the texts were written. Two typical examples would be Skald Sagas, like Bjarnar saga hítdœlakappa and Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu. These are biographies of problematic heroes which contain numerous stanzas by the protagonists, who thus possess a poetic voice within the texts: skilled poets that they are, the literary characters (and quite probably the historical persons behind them) compose highly artistic court poetry and comment upon situations in their lives with loose stanzas but are also extremely sharp-tongued and have issues controlling their temper. Their sagas contain a typical love triangle: the gifted poet falls in love with a woman whom he could marry but decides to go abroad and earn fame and honour first. Through the deceit of another man, the woman is made to marry the latter, usually a treacherous friend of the Skald.71 The central conflict is therefore personal and tends to be more coherent than in regional chronicles. In these two texts and also other examples from western Iceland, law in the Saga Age is represented as

69 VGs, ch. 23, p. 79. 70 A good example is the verbatim quotation of the Griðamál at the end of the text and as the precondition of the final settlement: Heiðarvíga saga, ch. 33, in Borgfirðinga sǫgur: Hœnsa-Þóris saga. Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu. Bjarnar saga hítdœlakappa. Heiðarvíga saga. Gísls þáttr Illugasonar, ed. by Sigurður Nordal, Íslenzk fornrit, 3 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornrítafélag, 1938), pp. 213–328, (pp. 312–13). It is found again in as Tryggðamál in Grágás, ed. by Vilhjálmur Finsen, ch. 115, pp. 205–06. 71 Cf. Margaret Clunies Ross, ‘The Skald Sagas as a Genre: Definitions and Typical Features’, in Skaldsagas: Text, Vocation, and Desire in the Icelandic Sagas, ed. by Russell Poole, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 27 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001), pp. 25–49; Theodore M. Andersson, ‘Skald Sagas in their Literary Context 3: The Love Triangle Theme’, in Skaldsagas, ed. by Poole, pp. 272–84.

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different from the one the audience knows. In particular the ‘hólmgangr’ still exists, a lawful life-or-death-fight between two opponents in the context of the Thing assembly. Many blank spaces in the law contribute further to the otherness of the Saga Age. As a result, examples of law amendments are to be found either as a form of intervention in a conflict by wise peacemakers or as a strategy in a conflict employed by the more intelligent party: in Bjarnar saga, for instance, Bjǫrn successfully has the ‘lǫgrétta’, the lawcourt at the ‘Alþingi’ which makes and ‘rectifies’ law, declare that henceforward the one who composes and recites slanderous verses about the other within hearing distance will be ‘óheilagr’ (without the right to be unharmed), which suggests an alteration.72 This implies that Bjǫrn is then allowed to slay his cowardly opponent’s supporters, which he eventually does without damaging his adherence to the law.73 The latter is stressed throughout the narrative. Law and equity are approximated, in the hope that everything will remain ‘tranquil’ (kyrrt), a word reminiscent of an Augustinian concept of peace.74 In Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu, we are presented with the historical background to the abolition of the ‘hólmgangr’ shortly after the turn of the first millennium. In the course of the conflict between the protagonist Gunnlaugr and his opponent Hrafn, Gunnlaugr challenges him to the ‘hólmgangr’ at the ‘Alþingi’ for being dealt with unfairly (‘vanhluti’), a legal term known from other contexts in the Grágás.75 That seems to constitute a case, as we are told again: ‘Váru þat lǫg í þann tíma’ (It was the law at this time).76 Fortunately, Hrafn’s sword is broken in the first fight, so it has to be repeated. Before this happens, however, the fathers of the two opponents alter the law, as they are at the ‘Alþingi’. On the following day, it is made law (‘var þat í lǫg sett’) that the ‘hólmgangr’ is prohibited ‘with the counsel of the wisest men’ (at ráði allra vitrustu manna).77 The memorable occasion is even dated.78 As a result, the hotheads agree to meet in Norway for a duel, but at least in Iceland and within their reach, the peace is kept due to the intervention of wise lawmakers.

72 Bjarnar saga hítdœlakappa, ch. 16, in Borgfirðinga sǫgur, ed. by Sigurður Nordal, pp. 109–211 (p. 154). Before this, friends convinced Bjǫrn to accept a settlement after such a stanza had been composed by his enemy. As Grágás, ch. 238, ed. by Vilhjálmur Finsen (1852), p. 183, stipulates full outlawry (‘skóggangr’), the decision of the ‘lǫgrétta’ here indicates that the law is thought to have been different in Bjǫrn’s time and to have offered no effective protection against humiliations of that sort. 73 Grágás, ch. 20, pp. 169–71. 74 Bjarnar saga hítdœlakappa, ch. 16, ed. by Sigurður Nordal, p. 154 (uttered by wise men after the ‘þing’). Cf. Augustinus, De civitate Dei IX. 13, ed. by Dombart and Kalb, p. 679: ‘Pax omnium rerum est tranquillitas ordinis’. 75 Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu, ch. 11, in Borgfirðinga sǫgur, ed. by Sigurður Nordal, pp. 51–107 (p. 93. Cf. Grágás, ch. 80, ed. by Vilhjálmur Finsen (1879), pp. 352–53; ed. by Vilhjálmur Finsen (1852), p. 135. 76 Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu, ch. 11, p. 93. 77 Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu, ch. 11. p. 95. 78 This is a rather rare phenomenon in the Family Sagas and underlines that this alteration of the law was a special event. If the relative dating is correct, this would have happened in the year 1008.

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What one sees here is the interlocking between narration and the emergence of law already recognized in Ari’s Íslendingabók. This does not exclusively apply to biographies, however. Eyrbyggja saga, the introductory example, a chronicle dealing with the history of Snæfellsnes and the Breiðafjörður, is perhaps the most extreme saga when it comes to the otherness of Saga Age law: we are confronted with many differences in procedural law, in religious provisions before Christianity, in maritime law and more. Even revenants are exorcized from a farm by a formal legal process.79 This depth of historical perspective is mirrored in statements about the otherness of clothing and buildings. Eyrbyggja draws the picture of a remote past which is also permeated by the supernatural and pagan folklore. These examples may suffice to underline that the roughly forty Íslendingasögur present us with a very diverse picture. The time when the texts were written seems to be important — Eyrbyggja saga and Gunnlaugs saga are younger than the other examples80 — and the region they cover is even more significant. This also implies some serious repercussions for legal anthropology: the fact that saga figures frequently ignore written law81 does not mean that the single anonymous authors were not in full control of legal detail — and legal history, for that matter. The sagas do not mirror things as they were but are highly manipulative and literary texts also on this conceptual level.

Legal History as Cultural Capital The main question is why such differences in the historicity of the past exist between, for instance, Víga-Glúms saga and Eyrbyggja saga within a genre which is very uniform at the text surface. The hypothesis put forward here is that an explanation is to be found in thirteenth-century history. The main source of information for this time are the Contemporary Sagas (Samtíðarsögur), and they essentially relate the story of an enormous concentration of power in the hands of a few magnates, among them the family of the Sturlungar, after which the epoch is also called the Sturlungaöld (c. 1220–1264).82

79 Cf. Klaus Böldl, Eigi einhamr: Beiträge zum Weltbild der Eyrbyggja und anderer Isländersagas, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 48 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005), pp. 86–133, 255–63; Torfi H. Tulinius, ‘Political Echoes: Reading Eyrbyggja saga in Light of Contemporary Conflicts’, in Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross, ed. by Judy Quinn, Kate Heslop, and Tarrin Wills, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 18 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 49–62. 80 Eyrbyggja saga was most probably written after Laxdœla saga and thus between c. 1250 and 1264 (cf. note 9), for Gunnlaugs saga cf. Sigurður Nordal, ‘Sagalitteraturen’, in Nordisk Kultur VIII: B: Litteraturhistorie. Norge og Island, ed. by Sigurður Nordal (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1953), pp. 180–273 (pp. 255, 261–62). 81 Cf. William I. Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law and Society in Saga Iceland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 189–220, 236–40. 82 Cf. Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth (Odense: Odense University Press, 1999), pp. 39–83.

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Map 16.1 Territorial dominions (‘ríki’, marked in grey) in Iceland around ad 1200 and localities of Family Sagas most likely written before 1262/1264; Axel Kristinsson, ‘Lords and Literature’, p. 5. © 2003 The Historical Societies of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, reprinted by permission of Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group, www.tandfonline.com on behalf of The Historical Societies of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

The map shows that ‘ríki’, territorial dominions, had developed and were still developing when local magnates gathered all the local chieftaincies together. It has been demonstrated that the Family Sagas also serve the formation of local identities and traditions in these new dominions, as the new lords were descendants of the main figures.83 There is a genealogical red thread in texts like Eyrbyggja saga, resembling the one in Íslendingabók from the settlers to the bishops. The result is a peculiar, yet characteristic paradox. The otherness of the past serves as a means of stabilizing the local polity in times of rapid political and structural change, which gained momentum between the writing of the earliest and the later sagas. The element of stability is provided by the kin group of those who managed and are currently managing this change and thus are enabled to rule. It is no coincidence that the Sturlungar and the connected collectives also repeatedly provided

83 Axel Kristinsson, ‘Lords and Literature: The Icelandic Sagas as Political and Social Instruments’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 28 (2003), 1–17.

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the ‘lǫgsǫgumaðr’, the law speaker and thus the highest ‘official’ in Iceland.84 Legal expertise is thus something which has to permeate their historiography as a form of meta-communication. The precondition for such historical depth seems to be the conscience that the future might be or will be other to the present situation and its inheritance, which it actually turned out to be after Iceland’s integration into the Norwegian realm.85 But also the perspective without historical depth in legal history in sagas from the north, especially the north-east, may be explained through the Contemporary Sagas: When the early sagas were written, the ‘ríki’ in the north-east was still developing. Sighvatr Sturluson, the brother of the famous Snorri, had bought land at the Eyjafjörður in 1215. Although we do not know any other Chieftains in this region except him after 1211, he and his sons were ‘strangers’ and disliked by the local magnates, and the monastery of Munkaþverá, the centre of literary production, was still under control of the local families.86 The quest for power was not ended yet, and it is reasonable to view the texts form the north-east with their sequenced narrative and their resulting paraenetic message as a reaction to that situation. We find role-models among arbitrators and exempla for the necessity of temperance; society is viewed as robust through the rule of law. In order to achieve that, however, law has to be presented as timeless, and conflicts may not take the form of a single continuing feud. That is the case: conflicts tend to appear more cynical in sagas from the west, and they interlock for instance in Eyrbyggja saga, while one neatly follows another for instance in Reykdœla saga ok Víga-Skútu and Víga-Glúms saga. What I would like to suggest is that this diversity in the representation of legal history as either the same or the other is the result of the socio-political challenges in the respective region. Both phenomena mirror the striving for cultural capital in the different situations of the local elites. Either law itself was a resource that ought to be protected, which is viewed through its defence and appropriate use in ‘other’, historicized settings, or the ancestors’ ability and competence to improve the ‘other’ law of ancient times is converted into cultural capital. This intricate connection between past and present is underlined by the peculiar view in the neighbouring genre of the Kings’ Sagas (Konungasögur), which were written a little earlier or at the same time in the same regions of Iceland. In recent history, the kings’ relationship to the law is in accordance with what we find in the

84 Among the law speakers were Snorri Sturluson (1215–1218, 1222–1231), Óláfr hvítaskáld Þórðarson (1248–1250, 1252) and Sturla Þórðarson (1251) from the Sturlungar Family. 85 Gunnar Karlsson, Iceland’s 1100 Years: The History of a Marginal Society (London: Hurst, 2000), pp. 73–99. 86 Íslendinga saga, ch. 18, in Sturlunga saga, ed. by Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason, and Kristján Eldjárn, 2 vols (Reykjavík: Sturlungaútgáfan, 1946), I, pp. 229–534 (p. 243), ch. 32, p. 260. As a ‘ríki’ depended not only on the chieftaincies, but first and foremost on the support the magnates could muster ( Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Chieftains and Power, pp. 210–14), one may speak of a ‘ríki’ in the making until the 1230s (cf. Axel Kristinsson, ‘Chieftains’, pp. 12–13), although the passages from Íslendinga saga above do not name any other magnates in possession of chieftaincies ( Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Chieftains and Power, pp. 66–67).

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Norwegian provincial laws.87 In the earlier times, the tenth and eleventh centuries, however, the kings are viewed as the highest judges who possess absolute judicial power — which they would eventually gain in the future.88 Here, too, the distant past serves as a sort of testing ground for legal thought prepared by the evocation of the other, and thus far one may read the sagas as political treatises. Be that as it may: it is undeniable that there were different strategies at hand for ‘othering’ the past. This otherness could be demonstrated through the state of the law, through pre-Christian religion and practices or through the kings’ role. All these options represent a common and very conscious way of making sense of history, that is, legal history in certain political situations. This thirteenth-century perspective on the Saga Age and its relevance for defining the cultural self through the historical self as the other is one factor among many contributing to the invention of a liminal epoch. Due to its narrated diachronic otherness, the time before and around the conversion lent itself readily to the modern invention of a pre-medieval Scandinavian epoch called the ‘Viking Age’, including the marked deviation of associated stereotypes from those ascribed the ‘Middle Ages’. Medieval legal thought has its share in lending this epoch sharper contours than it actually had, abetting the emergence of a modern myth.

Works Cited Primary Sources Ælnoth, Gesta Swenomagni regis et filiorum eivs et Passio gloriosissimi Canvti regis et martyris, in Vitæ sanctorum Danorum, ed. by Martin C. Gertz (København: Gad, 1908–1912), pp. 77–136 Ágrip af Nóregskonunga sǫgum, in Ágrip af Nóregskonunga sǫgum. Fagrskinna – Nóregs konunga tal, ed. by Bjarni Einarsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 29 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1985), pp. 1–54 Íb. Ari Þorgilsson, Íslendingabók, in Íslendingabók. Landnámabók, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 1. 1–2, 2 vols (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1968), i, 1–28

87 Cf. for instance Þinga saga in Morkinskinna, ch. 77, ed. by Ármann Jakobsson and Þórður Ingi Guðjónsson, II, pp. 114–31, about a conflict between King Sigurðr Jórsalafari and his brother King Eysteinn (c. ad 1111–1115) fought out at different assemblies and its equivalence to the Gulaþingslǫg. The same applies to the treatment of theft in Gull-Ásu-Þórðar þáttr located in the same time frame (ch. 75, pp. 108–13). 88 See Odds þáttr Ófeigssonar and the king’s competence to raise a ‘banasǫk’ (deadly case) for theft, implying the existence of a death penalty and royal judicial power in Morkinskinna ch. 52, ed. by Ármann Jakobsson and Þórður Ingi Guðjónsson, I, pp. 293–99. Both are first found in the Norwegian Landslǫg (ch. 1.11), issued in 1274–1276, half a decade after Morkinskinna was written: Den nyere Lands-Lov: Udgiven af Kong Magnus Haakonssön, in Norges gamle Love indtil 1387 2: Lovgivningen under Kong Magnus Haakonssöns Regjeringstid fra 1263 til 1280, tilligemed et Supplement til förste Bind, ed. by R. Keyser and P. A. Munch (Oslo: Gröndahl, 1848), pp. 1–178 (pp. 20–21): king as highest judge; ch. 4.17, p. 63: corporal punishment.

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Augustinus, De civitate Dei libri XXII, ed. by Bernard Dombart and Alphons Kalb, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 14. 1–2, 2 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955) Bjarnar saga hítdœlakappa, in Borgfirðinga sǫgur: Hœnsa-Þóris saga. Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu. Bjarnar saga hítdœlakappa. Heiðarvíga saga. Gísls þáttr Illugasonar, ed. by Sigurður Nordal, Íslenzk fornrit, 3 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornrítafélag, 1938), pp. 109–211 Corpus iuris canonici: Pars prior. Decretum magistri Gratiani, ed. by Emil Friedberg (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1879) Danmarks gamle Landskabslove med Kirkelovene 2: Jyske Lov. Text 1: NkS 295 8°, ed. by Peter Skautrup (København: Gyldendal, 1933) Den nyere Lands-Lov: Udgiven af Kong Magnus Haakonssön, in Norges gamle Love indtil 1387 2: Lovgivningen under Kong Magnus Haakonssöns Regjeringstid fra 1263 til 1280, tilligemed et Supplement til förste Bind, ed. by R. Keyser and P. A. Munch (Oslo: Gröndahl, 1848), pp. 1–178 Eyrbyggja saga, in Eyrbyggja saga: Brands þáttr ǫrva. Eiríks saga rauða. Grœnlendinga saga. Grœnlendinga þáttr, ed. by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, Íslenzk fornrit, 4 (Reykjavík, 1935), pp. 1–184 Grágás: Islændernes Lovbog i Fristatens Tid. Förste Del. Text I, ed. by Vilhjálmur Finsen (København: Berlings, 1852) Grágás: Islændernes Lovbog i Fristatens Tid. Anden Del. Text 2, ed. by Vilhjálmur Finsen (København: Berlings, 1852) Grágás efter det Arnamagnæanske Haandskrift Nr. 334 fol., Staðarhólsbók, ed. by Vilhjálmur Finsen (København: Gyldendal, 1879) Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu, in Borgfirðinga sǫgur: Hœnsa-Þóris saga. Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu. Bjarnar saga hítdœlakappa. Heiðarvíga saga. Gísls þáttr Illugasonar, ed. by Sigurður Nordal, Íslenzk fornrit, 3 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornrítafélag, 1938), pp. 51–107 Heiðarvíga saga, in Borgfirðinga sǫgur: Hœnsa-Þóris saga. Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu. Bjarnar saga hítdœlakappa. Heiðarvíga saga. Gísls þáttr Illugasonar, ed. by Sigurður Nordal, Íslenzk fornrit, 3 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornrítafélag, 1938), pp. 213–328 Historia de profectione Danorum in Hiersoslymam, in Scriptores minores historiae Danicae medii ævi 2, ed. by Martin C. Gertz (København: Gad, 1918–1922), pp. 457–92 Íslendinga saga, in Sturlunga saga, ed. by Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason, and Kristján Eldjárn, 2 vols (Reykjavík: Sturlungaútgáfan, 1946), i, 229–534 Morkinskinna, ed. by Ármann Jakobsson and Þórður Ingi Guðjónsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 23–24, 2 vols (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2011) Oddr Snorrason, Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, in Færeyinga saga. Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar eptir Odd munk Snorrason, ed. by Ólafur Halldórsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 25 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2006), pp. 123–380 Theodoricus monachus, Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium, in Monumenta historica Norvegiæ: Latinske Kildeskrifter til Norges Historie i Middelalderen, ed. by Gustav Storm (Oslo: Brøgger, 1880), pp. 3–68 VGs Víga-Glúms saga, in Eyfirðinga sǫgur: Víga-Glúms saga. Ögmundar þáttr dytts. Þorvalds þáttr tasalda. Svarfdœla saga. Þorleifs þáttr jarlsskálds. Valla-Ljóts saga. Sneglu-Halla þáttr. Þorgríms þáttr Hallasonar, ed. by Jónas Kristjánsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 9 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1956), pp. 1–98

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Secondary Works Andersson, Theodore M., ‘Skald Sagas in their Literary Context 3: The Love Triangle Theme’, in Skaldsagas: Text, Vocation, and Desire in the Icelandic Sagas, ed. by Russel Poole, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 27 (Berlin: De Gruyter), pp. 272–84 ———, ‘Víga-Glúms saga and the Birth of Saga Writing’, Scripta Islandica, 57 (2006), 5–39 Assmann, Jan, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, 5th edn (München: Beck, 2005) Axel Kristinsson, ‘Lords and Literature: The Icelandic Sagas as Political and Social Instruments’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 28 (2003), 1–17 Barreiro, Santiago, ‘Feud’, in The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas, ed. by Ármann Jakobsson and Sverrir Jakobsson (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 292–304 Berger, Alan J., ‘Did Haukr Erlendsson Write Víga-Glúms saga?’ Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 95 (1980), 113–15 ———, ‘Lawyers in the Old Icelandic Family Sagas: Heroes, Villains and Authors’, SagaBook of the Viking Society, 20 (1978–1981), 70–79 Böldl, Klaus, Eigi einhamr: Beiträge zum Weltbild der Eyrbyggja und anderer Isländersagas, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 48 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005) Broome, Richard, ‘Pagans, Rebels and Merovingians: Otherness in the Early Carolingian World’, in The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Clemens Gantner, Rosamond McKitterick, and Sven Meeser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 155–71 Byock, Jesse L., Feud in the Icelandic Saga (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982) Clunies Ross, Margaret, ‘The Skald Sagas as a Genre: Definitions and Typical Features’, in Skaldsagas: Text, Vocation, and Desire in the Icelandic Sagas, ed. by Russell Poole, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 27 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001), pp. 25–49 Dilcher, Gerhard, ‘Zeitbewußstsein im Bereich hochmittelalterlicher Rechtsgewohnheit’, in Hochmittelalterliches Geschichtsbewußtsein im Spiegel nichthistoriographischer Quellen, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998), pp. 31–54 Foote, Peter, ‘Aachen, Lund, Hólar’, in Les relations littéraires Franco-Scandinaves au Moyen Age: Actes du Colloque de Liège (avril 1972), Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université de Liège, 208 (Paris: Les belles lettres, 1975), pp. 53–76 Goetz, Hans-Werner, Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewußtsein im hohen Mittelalter, Orbis mediaevalis, 1 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999) Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir, ‘Sturla Þórðarson’, in Sturlustefna: Ráðstefna haldin á sjö alda ártið Sturlu Þórðarsonar sagnaritara 1984, ed. by Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi. Rit, 32 (Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1988), pp. 9–36 Gunnar Karlsson, Iceland’s 1100 Years: The History of a Marginal Society (London: Hurst, 2000) Gurevich, Aron Y., ‘Space and Time in the Weltmodell of the Old Scandinavian Peoples’, Mediaeval Scandinavia, 2 (1969), 42–53

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———, Das Weltbild des mittelalterlichen Menschen (Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1978) Gustafsson, Harald, ‘Islands kristnande – en kritisk undersökning’, Scandia, 77 (2011), 18–37 Hallberg, Peter, ‘Eyrbyggja sagas ålder – än en gång’, Acta Philologica Scandinavica, 32 (1979), 196–219 Helle, Knut, Gulatinget og Gulatingslova (Leikanger: Skald, 2001) Hermann, Pernille, ‘Hungrvaka og islændingesagaer: Traditionalitet og konventionalitet’, Maal og Minne (2004), 21–40 ———, ‘Íslendingabók and History’, in Reflections on Old Norse Myths: Studies in Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, ed. by Judy Quinn, Stefan Brink, and John Hines (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 17–32 ———, ‘Den norrøne renæssance og dens forudsætninger’, in Den norröna renässansen: Reykholt, Norden och Europa 1150–1300, ed. by Karl G. Johansson, Snorrastofa. Rit, 4 (Reykholt: Snorrrastofa, 2007), pp. 41–61 Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, ‘Myth and Ritual in Glúma and Hrafnkatla’, in Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, A Piece of Horse Liver: Myth, Ritual and Folklore in Old Icelandic Sources (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 1998), pp. 107–28 Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth (Odense: Odense University Press, 1999) ———, ‘The Role of Arbitration in the Settlement of Disputes in Iceland c. 1000–1300’, in Law and Disputing in the Middle Ages: Proceedings of the 9th Carlsberg Academy Conference on Medieval Legal History, ed. by Per Andersen, Kirsi Salonen, Helle I. Møller Sigh, and Helle Vogt (København: DJØF, 2013), pp. 123–35 Kern, Fritz, ‘Recht und Verfassung im Mittelalter’, Historische Zeitschrift, 120 (1919), 1–79 Lind, John H., ‘“Vikinger”, vikingetid og vikingeromantik’, KUML (2012), 151–70 Lönnroth, Lars, ‘The Noble Heathen: A Theme in the Sagas’, Scandinavian Studies, 41 (1969), 1–29 Lukman, Niels, ‘Sagnhistorien hos Saxo: Det 12. århundredes normannerromantik i Saxos udformning’, in Saxostudier: Saxokollokvierne ved Copenhagens Universitet, ed. by Ivan Boserup, Opuscula Graecolatina, 2 (København: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1975), pp. 117–27 McKinnell, John, ‘Man’s Law and God’s Justice in Icelandic Literature, ca. 1130–ca. 1300’, in Le droit et sa perception dans la littérature et les mentalités médiévales, ed. by Danielle Buschinger, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 551 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1993), pp. 117–32 Miller, William I., Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law and Society in Saga Iceland (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990) Mortensen, Lars Boje, ‘The Anchin Manuscript of Passio Olavi (Douai 295), William of Jumièges, and Theodoricus Monachus: New Evidence for Intellectual Relations between Norway and France in the 12th Century’, Symbolae Osloenses, 75 (2000), 165–89 ———, ‘Sanctified Beginnings and Mythopoietic Moments: The First Wave of Writing on the Past in Norway, Denmark, and Hungary, c. 1000–1230’, in The Making of Christian Myths in the Periphery of Latin Christendom (c. 1000–1300), ed. by Lars Boje Mortensen (København: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006), pp. 247–73

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Mundal, Else, ‘The Dating of the Oldest Sagas About Early Icelanders’, in Dating the Sagas: Reviews and Revisions, ed. by Else Mundal (København: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013), pp. 31–54 ———, ‘Íslendingabók vurdert som bispestolskrønike’, alvíssmál, 3 (1994), 63–72 Münster-Swendsen, Mia, ‘Skandinaviens placering i det europæiske lærde netværk: En tentativ undersøgelse af de anglo-danske forbindelser c. 1000–1150’, in Vänner, patroner og klienter i Norden 900–1800: Rapport till 26:e Nordiska historikermötet i Reykjavík den 8–12 augusti 2007, ed. by Lars Hermanson, Thomas Småberg, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, and Jakob Danneskjold-Samsøe, Ritsafn Sagnfræðistofnunar, 39 (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 2007), pp. 37–56 Nordal, Sigurður, ‘Sagalitteraturen’, in Nordisk Kultur VIII: B: Litteraturhistorie. Norge og Island, ed. by Sigurður Nordal (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1953), pp. 180–273 Ólafia Einarsdóttir, Studier i kronologisk metode i tidlig islandsk historieskrivning, Bibliotheca historica Lundensis, 13 (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1964) Saurma-Jeltsch, Lieselotte E., ‘Introduction: Facets of Otherness and Affirmation of the Self ’, in Images of Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern Times: Exclusion, Inclusion and Assimilation, ed. by Anja Eisenbeiß and Lieselotte E. Saurma-Jeltsch (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2012), pp. 9–14 Scheel, Roland, Lateineuropa und der Norden: Die Geschichtsschreibung des 12. Jahrhunderts in Dänemark, Island und Norwegen, Frankfurter Kulturwissenschaftliche Beiträge, 6 (Berlin: trafo, 2012) ———, ‘“Wikinger” und “Wikingerzeit” – der vormittelalterliche Norden als Gegenstand europäischer Erinnerung?’, in Europäische Erinnerung als verflochtene Erinnerung: Vielstimmige und vielschichtige Vergangenheitsdeutungen jenseits der Nation, ed. by Gregor Feindt, Félix Krawatzek, Daniela Mehler, Friedemann Pestel, and Rieke Trimçev, Formen der Erinnerung, 55 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), pp. 65–92 Schier, Kurt, ‘Iceland and the Rise of Literature in “terra nova”: Some Comparative Reflections’, Gripla, 1 (1975), 168–81 Sørensen, Preben Meulengracht, Fortælling og ære: Studier i islændingesagaerne (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1993) ———, ‘Freyr in den Isländersagas’, in Germanische Religionsgeschichte: Quellen und Quellenprobleme, ed. by Heinrich Beck, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 5 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1992), pp. 720–35 Sverrir Jakobsson, ‘“Erindringen om en mægtig personlighed”: Den norsk-islandske historiske tradisjon om Harald Hårfagre i et kildekritisk perspektiv’, Historisk tidsskrift [N], 81 (2002), 213–30 Teuscher, Simon, Erzähltes Recht: Lokale Herrschaft, Verschriftlichung und Traditionsbildung im Spätmittelalter (Frankfurt-am-Main: Campus, 2007) Torfi H. Tulinius, ‘Political Echoes: Reading Eyrbyggja saga in Light of Contemporary Conflicts’, in Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross, ed. by Judy Quinn, Kate Heslop, and Tarrin Wills, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 18 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 49–62 ———, ‘The Self as Other: Iceland and Christian Europe in the Middle Ages’, in Nordic Civilization in the Medieval World, ed. by Vésteinn Ólason, Gripla, 20 (Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 2009), pp. 199–216

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Vésteinn Ólason, Dialogues with the Viking Age: Narration and Representation in the Sagas of Icelanders (Reykjavík: Heimskringla, 1998) Von See, Klaus, ‘Altnordische Literatur’, in Klaus von See, Edda, Saga, Skaldendichtung: Aufsätze zur skandinavischen Literatur des Mittelalters, Skandinavistische Arbeiten, 6 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1981), pp. 15–23 ———, Altnordische Rechtswörter: Philologische Studien zur Rechtsauffassung und Rechtsgesinnung der Germanen, Hermaea Germanistische Forschungen. N.F., 16 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1964) ———, ‘Heidentum und Christentum in Snorris Heimskringla’, in Klaus von See, Europa und der Norden im Mittelalter (Heidelberg: Winter, 1999), pp. 311–44 Wamhoff, Laura S., Isländische Erinnerungskultur 1100–1300: Altnordische Historiographie und kulturelles Gedächtnis, Beiträge zur nordischen Philologie, 57 (Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempo, 2016) Weber, Gerd W., ‘Intellegere historiam: Typological Perspectives of Nordic Prehistory (in Snorri, Saxo, Widukind and others)’, in Tradition og historieskrivning: Kilderne til Nordens ældste historie, ed. by Kirsten Hastrup and Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, Acta Jutlandica. Humanistisk serie, 61 (Århus: Universitetsvorlag, 1987), pp. 95–141 ———, ‘Siðaskipti. Das religionsgeschichtliche Modell Snorri Sturlusons in Edda und Heimskringla’, in Sagnaskemmtun: Studies in Honour of Hermann Pálsson on his 65th Birthday 26th May 1986, ed. by Rudolf Simek, Philologica Germanica, 8 (Wien: Böhlau, 1986), pp. 309–29

Felicitas S chmieder

The Other Part of the World for Late Medieval Latin Christendom

Verum est quod quando primo sunt de montibus egressi omnes bestias comedebant, sed modo nonnisi bonas et sanas, quia in multis correxerunt mores suos, quos in montibus habuerant turpes, et sunt modo homines communes. (It is true that they — when they first came out of the mountains — ate all sorts of animals. But soon they only ate good and pure ones because in many ways they corrected their ugly manners according to which they had lived in the mountains, and they are now just ordinary human beings).1 ‘They’ are the Mongols, whose evolution is described by the Italian chronicler Jacopo d’Acqui at about 1330: a people that have changed from total outsider to insider. The Mongols had been total outsiders, especially when considering that ‘living behind the mountains’ at least hinted at an association with the peoples of endtime: Gog and Magog.2 The chronicle was written roughly two to three generations after the Mongols had actually appeared on the horizon of the Latin Christians. When the Mongols first appeared in the 1230s and 1240s, they were seen as an innumerable, terror-infusing, Christian-army-defeating, people-slaughtering opponent at least from hell. The (much later) chronicle looked back over a long time of violent encounters,



1 Before 1330: Jacopo d’Acqui OP, ‘Chronica ymaginis mundi, ab OC-1290’, ed. by Gustavo Avogadro, Monumenta Historiae Patriae V = Scriptores III (Torino: Regio Typograph., 1840), cols 1357–1626, here 1558 (emphasis F.S.). 2 The biblical peoples of Gog and Magog — were believed to be beyond religious borders between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as internal borders within Christianity. They had enclosed behind mountains by Alexander the Great and would come out at the end of times as helpers of the Antichrist, cf. Wolfram Brandes, Felicitas Schmieder, and Rebekka Voß, eds, Peoples of the Apocalypse: Eschatological Beliefs and Political Scenarios (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016). Felicitas Schmieder  •  has been professor of ‘history and presence of premodern Europe’ at FernUniversität in Hagen since 2004. Her Ph.D. thesis was on the late medieval European image of the Mongols, and her Habilitation studied the medieval urban history of Frankfurt. Her research interests are medieval cross-cultural contacts and perceptions, prophecy as political language, European cultural memory, medieval German urban history, and premodern cartography. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 395–414 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123600

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but also on growing knowledge Latin Christians and Mongols had gained of each other, hoping for help from a powerful potential ally (possibly a baptized one) against the Muslims as arch­enemies of Christianity. Jacopo, moreover, wrote after a long period of realization that Mongol power was diminishing, that the Mongols were mostly becoming Muslim themselves, and, all in all, had been reduced to ‘ordinary human beings’.3 The chronicle remembers, however, that they had been foreigners totally different from ‘us’, and now they cannot even be described as the other, having become — at least on the basis of humanity — common with ‘us’. This brings me to a short and necessary definition of what I mean when I speak about foreigners or the Other.4 While ‘other’ basically means different, ‘the’ Other is one of two and has quite a dichotomic, even antagonistic meaning. ‘Foreign’ as the opposite of ‘own’ can be similar, but is much more qualitative; it can also mean completely different from anything familiar. Thus, ‘the other’ is part of my world, the foreigner is outside of it.5 Not the least, ‘we and the other’, with its strong tendency towards dichotomy, is one possible and clearly a basic system of world order. ‘World’ can mean the physical earth — which was complicated enough in the Middle Ages — but also includes many additional levels of meaning. Why is this so interesting? Why is the inquiry about ‘the Other’ so central in Medieval Studies that it was chosen as a special thematic strand at the IMC? This framing question of how we remember the Middle Ages has come to the forefront of the attention of medievalists in recent times and we now acknowledge that it drives what we do. It can help us to understand why we address certain issues at all and how we do it as well as perhaps helping us to adjust our own approaches and for all those reasons it has to be one of the framing considerations of this article.







3 For the image, see Felicitas Schmieder, Europa und die Fremden. Die Mongolen im Urteil des Abendlandes vom 13. bis in das 15. Jahrhundert (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1994); Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West 1221–1410 (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2005); Juliane Schiel, Mongolensturm und Fall Konstantinopels. Dominikanische Erzählungen im diachronen Vergleich (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011); Katharina Schmidt, Trauma und Erinnerung. Die Historisierung der Mongoleninvasion im mittelalterlichen Polen und Ungarn (Heidelberg: Winter, 2013); Denise Aigle, Mongol Empire Between Myth and Reality: Studies in Anthropological History (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 4 It is practically impossible to gain, let alone give an overview over the many different approaches, theories, terminologies tried and discussed over time and not the least recently. The following list — to be understood as a collection of more recent works supplementing the list in fn. 7 — is, therefore, not even trying to be thorough but wants to list a few titles, pursuing very different angles, that I very personally think are worth exploring when one is looking to understand what is going on in scholarship, and that at the same time touch at least some of the many different terms discussed: Jürgen Osterhammel, ‘Vom Umgang mit dem “Anderen”. Zivilisierungsmissionen – in Europa und darüber hinaus’, in Das Zeitalter des Kolonialismus, ed. by Boris Barth (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007), pp. 45–54; Daniel G. Williams, Ethnicity and Cultural Authority from Matthew Arnold to W. E. B. Du Bois (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005); Anil Bhatti and Dorothee Kimmich, eds, Similarities: A Paradigm for Culture Theory (New Delhi: Tulika, 2018); Doris Feldmann and Ina Habermann, eds, Theorising Cultural Difference and Transdifference (Tübingen: Narr, 2006). 5 Semantic considerations can be tricky if you do them in a language not your own. So what I am saying now may be disputable even on the purely linguistic level, but it will be my approach in this article.

th e othe r pa rt o f t h e wo r l d fo r l at e m e d i e val lat i n chri st e nd o m

Thus, if we look around our world, we can easily say that dichotomy is back (if it was ever really gone), replacing or at least challenging multiculturalism and social tolerance by striving for clear definitions of black or white, right or wrong, in or out, us or the other. Today, we look back at three to four decades of increasing interest in ‘the Other’ in the Middle Ages6 — inspired by very different non-medievalist approaches to other cultures and cultural difference (and not the least the Western role in perceiving cultural differences) like Edward Said‘s Orientalism 1978 or Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations 1996, both underlining antagonism, or, with quite a different emphasis, Clifford Geertz’s ideas on thick description (1973).7 Fascinatingly, this interest has grown with how much we can trace the consequences of globalization in our own societies, but even more with the decreasing importance the ‘West’, and not the least Europe, has in the world. Particularly in Europe there has begun a tendency to close the borders, to define what we are in an increasingly rigorous way by excluding what we find is different, what has nothing in common with us (or at least nothing that really counts), and what, consequently, can never





6 It is obviously impossible to give a near to full or even representative bibliography here, so I am going to quote just a few of the earlier works. ‘Cultural otherness’ has been discussed in many ways, not the least it has been broken down to inter-social confrontations, to foreigners, difference, otherness within Latin European societies. In the context of this paper and thus in the sense of cultural difference in a very wide, even global sense ‘the image of the other’ has very often been studied in the context of travel reports of any sort and in literary sources using otherness. Among early examples — beyond the classical study by W. R. Jones, ‘The Image of the Barbarian in Medieval Europe’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 13 (1971), 376–407 — could be mentioned works that set or picked up a trend like Johannes Fried, ‘Auf der Suche nach der Wirklichkeit. Die Mongolen und die abendländische Erfahrungswissenschaft im 13. Jahrhundert’, Historische Zeitschrift, 243 (1986), 287–332; Ilana Zinguer, ed., Miroirs de l’altérité et voyages au proche-orient (Genève: Edition Slatkine, 1991); Laurent Mayali and Maria M. Mart, eds, Of Strangers and Foreigners (Late Antiquity – Middle Ages), (Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley, 1993); Albrecht Classen, ed., Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2002); Anja Eisenbeiß and Lieselotte Saurma-Jeltsch, eds, Images of Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern Times: Exclusion, Inclusion and Assimilation (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2012). 7 Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Concepts of the Orient (London: Routledge, 1978); Samuel P. Huntington, Clash of Civilizations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996); Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic, 1973). Influential have also been works on early modern phenomena by Urs Bitterli, Die ‘Wilden’ und die ‘Zivilisierten’: Grundzüge einer Geistes- und Kulturgeschichte der europäisch-überseeischen Begegnung (München: Beck, 1976), or Stuart B. Schwartz, ed., Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting in the Encounters between Europeans and Other People’s in the Early Modern Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), or of sociologists like Tzvetan Todorov, La conquête de l’Amérique: la question de l’autre (Paris: Seuil, 1982) — besides older works (re)discovered in the context like Bronisław Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (London: Routledge, 1922) — in this context cf. not the least the influential article by Hans Medick, ‘“Missionare im Ruderboot”? Ethnologische Erkenntnisweisen als Herausforderung an die Sozialgeschichte’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 10.3, (1984), 295–319. Marcel Mauss, ‘Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques’, L’Année Sociologique, 1 (1923/1924), 30–186; Claude Levi Strauss, La pensée sauvage (Paris: Plon, 1962); Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge, 1966).

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ever be included. I will come back to these framing considerations, but since there is a certain tendency not only to apply modern questions to the Middle Ages, but also to find in the Middle Ages the roots of present entities, mentalities, ideas, let us see what medieval sources have to say. In the following, I will pick two main examples from two relevant genres of sources and look into them for the kind of systematic classifica­tion ‘We and the Other’ can provide. Before doing that let me briefly review the historical context of late medieval Latin Christians’ world view. Latin European material as well as mental expansion far beyond the European continent had started with the Crusades and then gone much further beyond the inherited spheres of the Roman Empire as well as the Hellenistic memory of when Latin Christians had seized the opportunity given them by the building of the Mongol Empire. Starting from mid-thirteenth century, they reached places in Asia as far as Beijing, the China Sea, and Indonesia. One of the basic problems that confronted them quickly became clear: ‘I also saw there [at the Great Khan’s court] the envoys of a Sultan of India […] When I enquired in what direction India lay from that spot, they indicated to me that it was to the West. These envoys accompanied me on the return journey for almost three weeks, always heading westwards’.8 The Franciscan traveller William of Rubruk contemplated this experience from his visit to Mongolia in the 1250s — he basically claims that the residence of the great khan of the Mongols lay beyond the end of the world (because India had been considered the easternmost end of the earth). To put it in another kind of contemporary classification framework: ‘This country was never reached by an apostle or the pupil of an apostle’.9 Around 1300, the Franciscan missionary and first Catholic archbishop of Beijing, John of Monte Corvino, also reflected his impression that he had reached beyond the known world because it was common knowledge that the apostles had been sent out by Christ to all nations and had reached basically the whole inhabited earth. Jacopo d’Acqui — quoted in the beginning of this article — had a similar starting point. There are places on earth that cannot be reached but are decisively important for mankind in general and Christianity’s future in particular: the Terrestrial Paradise and the Caspian Mountains behind which Alexander the Great as an instrument of God’s plan had enclosed the peoples of Gog and Magog, future helpers of the Antichrist.10 These places cannot be visited — they are part of the Earth but not of 8 William of Rubruk XXXVI, 3, ed. by P. Anastasius van den Wyngaert OFM, Sinica Franciscana I: Itinera et Relationes Fratrum Minorum saeculi XIII et XIV (Quaracchi: Collegio San Bonaventura, 1929), p. 306; translation: The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Möngke 1253–1255, trans. and notes by Peter Jackson and David Morgan, Hakluyt Society Ser. 2, 173 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1990), p. 247. 9 John of Monte Corvino, ‘Letters II’, 1, ed. by P. Anastasius van den Wyngaert OFM, Sinica Franciscana I: Itinera et Relationes Fratrum Minorum saeculi XIII et XIV (Quaracchi: Collegio San Bonaventura, 1929), p. 347. 10 There is a vast literature on Gog and Magog, interpreting these peoples in all sorts of directions. In the context of this article, the relevant context is the one of the Alexander theme, its inclusion into the literary traditions of several religions and their different confessions, and more specifically its inclusion into biblical commentaries mostly by and since Peter Comestor. The classic study on that

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the human world. For Jacopo d’Acqui, however, the Mongols, as has been seen in the beginning, had surmounted the enclosure and come into the human world where common people live (it turned out, he explains, that they were not Gog and Magog after all, who are enclosed more securely and will really have to wait until the end of the world to come out). Even the land that John of Monte Corvino considered, around 1300, somehow outside of apostolic reach was included in the apostolic world in the fifteenth century by Jean Germain, a thinker close to the Burgundian court of Philip ‘the Good’, who was planning the final crusade and for this endeavour let the people of his think-tank collect all the information they deemed necessary. Because this final crusade was deeply interconnected with the Christian task to convert the entire world before the Second Coming of Christ, Jean Germain took stock of the status of the whole world in terms of the progress of Christianization: what is Christian or what at least was once Christian. He actually ‘mapped’ (in a very modern sense of the word) all he could learn about it in his ‘Mappemonde spirituelle’, in which he collected information about all the apostolic missionary work that had been done since the time of the first twelve apostles and arranged it in geographical order: who went where first and at least tried to convert the heathens he found? Jean Germain called John of Monte Corvino the apostle of China.11 Whether the ‘Mappemonde spirituelle’ contained a sketched ‘Mappa Mundi’12 remains unclear (although the book is symbolized by one in the dedication image of one of the manuscripts). In the fifteenth century, however, ‘Mappae Mundi’ were deemed useful for the purpose of arranging the collected information into a meaningful order and making it visible, not least because the question of foreign or

is Andrew Runni Anderson, Alexander’s Gate, Gog and Magog, and the Inclosed Nations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932). Relatively recently myself and two colleagues have brought together a range of scholars of different cultural expertise for a comparing conference that dealt with all the several traditions — the publication is quoted in fn. 2 (for Gog and Magog in the context of Latin Christian maps see in there Felicitas Schmieder, ‘Gogs und Magogs “natürliche Milde”? Die Mongolen als Endzeitvölker im Wandel von Wissen und Wünschen’, in Peoples of the Apocalypse. Eschatological Beliefs and Political Scenarios, ed. by. Wolfram Brandes, Felicitas Schmieder, and Rebekka Voß, Millenium Studien, 63 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 111–25). As for Alexander in the very diverse cultural contexts, see now Markus Stock, ed., Alexander the Great in the Middle Ages: Transcultural Perspectives (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016). 11 Jean Germain, ‘Mappemonde spirituelle’, used in MS BN Paris fr. 13235; cf. Felicitas Schmieder, ‘Travelling in the Orbis Christianus and Beyond (Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries): What makes the difference?’ in Identities on the Move, ed. by Flocel Sabaté Curull (Bern: Lang, 2014), pp. 57–67 — On the author, his work and the contextualization there of cf. David J. Wrisley, ‘Situating Islamdom in Jean Germain’s Mappemonde spirituelle (1449)’, Medieval Encounters, 13 (2007), 326–46; Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘The Medieval Texts of the 1486 Ptolemy Edition by Johann Reger of Ulm’, Imago Mundi, 54 (2002), 7–18; Nicole Bériou, ‘Représentation du monde et actualité de la croisade au XV siècle: la “Mappemonde spirituelle” de Jean Germain (1449)’, L’ Eglise et la vie religieuse, des pays bourguignons à l’ ancien royaume d’ Arles = Publications du Centre Européen d’Études Bourguignonnes, 50 (2010), 129–43. 12 The dedication miniature in MS Lyon BM MS Palais des Arts 32, fol. 1r shows Jean, offering a ‘Mappa Mundi’ to his duke: ed. by Patrick Gautier Dalché in Das leuchtende Mittelalter, ed. by Jacques Dalarun (Darmstadt: Primus, 2005; French orig. 2002), p. 45.

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other parts of the world clearly has a strong geographical aspect. Moreover, what can only be discussed at length in a text can be grasped from a map at one glance. The best example is a map in the Apocalypse commentary by Beatus of Liébana that has been preserved in several manuscripts, best known in the so-called Osma-version of 1086.13 It shows twelve heads of apostles (mostly reliquiaries, in two cases enclosed in sanctuaries) distributed over the whole inhabited earth and thus makes it clear that the apostles had actually reached all parts of the world because they are buried there. ‘Mappae Mundi’ are one of two types of sources I want to present here — the other will be prophecy — not least because I consider them two of the most important (and most overlooked) source genres medieval authors used to clarify the order of their world for themselves, with a strong emphasis on how they wanted and needed this order to be and to change. On both genres of sources I have myself been working quite a bit lately, and I am using the results of my research, picking only a few examples that could and should, of course, be multiplied, for the specific context of this article. Medieval world maps, ‘Mappae Mundi’,14 represent the complete space and time of the earth on several levels of meaning: they read God’s creation in a literal as well as allegorical, moral, and eschatological sense, thus using the four ‘sensus scripturae’ which medieval hermeneutics had developed. They are meaningfully ordered representations of God’s creation — Geographies of Salvation15 — with features

13 The map is frequently reproduced in printed as well as digital versions, cf. the blog publication Susanna Tavera, ‘The Osma Beatus Map: A Medieval and Christian View of the World (1086)’ = [accessed Aug. 2018], or in Wikimedia, [accessed August 2018]. This map, the other similar and the different ones are all reproduced and thoroughly researched now by Sandra Sáenz-López Pérez, The Beatus Maps. The Revelation of the World in the Middle Ages (Burgos: Siloé, 2014), figure 4, p. 30/31 (Beatus of El Burgo de Osma, Cathedral Library Cod. 1, fol. 34v–35r). On the specific reading of the function of the Osma version Sandra Sáenz-López Pérez, ‘“Peregrinatio in stabilitate”. La transformación de un mapa de los Beato enherramienta de peregrinación espiritual’, in Alfonso VI y el arte de su época, ed. by Javier Martínez de Aguirre and Marta Poza (= Anales de Historia del Arte, 2011, volumen extra ordinario 2), pp. 317–34: [accessed August 2018], and Felicitas Schmieder, ‘“Here many Saracen pilgrims wander to Mecca” – on the Role of Pilgrimage, Shrines and Worshipping on Latin European Medieval World Maps (“mappae mundi”)’ in Unterwegs im Namen der Religion II / On the Road in the Name of Religion II. Wege und Ziele in vergleichender Perspektive – das mittelalterliche Europa und Asien / Ways and Destinations in Comparative Perspective – Medieval Europe and Asia, ed. by Klaus Herbers and Hans-Christian Lehner (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2016), pp. 13–27. 14 HOC: The History of Cartography, vol. 1, ed. by John B. Harley and David Woodward, and vol. 3, ed. by David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987/2007) www.press.uchicago.edu/books/ HOC/index.html [last accessed August 2018]; Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, ‘“… ut describeretur universus orbis”. Zur Universalkartographie des Mittelalters’, in Methoden in Wissenschaft und Kunst des Mittelalters, ed. by Albert Zimmermann (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1970), 249–78; Peter Barber, ‘Medieval Maps of the World’, in The Hereford Map: Medieval World Maps and Their Context, ed. by Paul Harvey (London: The British Library, 2006), pp. 1–44; Evelyn Edson, The World Map, 1300–1492: The Persistence of Tradition and Transformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). 15 Felicitas Schmieder, ‘Geographies of Salvation: How to Read Medieval Mappae Mundi’, Peregrinations. Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture, 6. 3 (2018), ed. by Dan Terkla and Asa Mittman, 21–42 = digital.kenyon.edu/perejournal/vol6/iss3/2/ [accessed Aug. 2018].

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chosen by their authors according to the more individual statements these authors wanted to make on the specific map at hand. They have to be read accordingly, not the least on the moral level that frames actions that have to be taken. Basically, they show the physical earth and its history from creation to endtime. They can, as the Beatus map does, emphasize a hopeful image of a world where the corners have all been reached by Christ, and although there will be work to do, in the end it will be Christian again (which shows, to a certain and eschatological degree, the result of Christianity successfully fulfilling its main and final task). But at the same time the positive, optimistic world view shown on this map from 1086 started to be challenged rhetorically at the latest in the context of triggering the first crusade, when the world appeared more and more partitioned, at least for the time being. Pope Urban II allegedly argued, in his speech at the 1095 council of Clermont, that there had been a time when the Christians owned nearly the whole earth, but today they have not only lost Asia and Africa to the infidels, but even parts of Europe16 — and he was probably not the first to consider this. The message was clear: we had so much, but we lost most of it and now we are about to lose even more; the other part of the world is growing, and fast — turn the tide! This rhetoric was again strengthened when Latin Christians travelled deep into Asia and found many Christians (schismatic ones, so not completely satisfactory),17 but ruled by Muslims and other non-Christians.18 And this sceptical state of Christianity in the world — part of the much wider and very diverse image Latin Christians developed, during the Middle Ages, of the Muslims as the main Other in the world19 — also appeared frequently on ‘Mappae Mundi’.

16 Urban II at Clermont according to William of Malmesbury; on the reports on the speech Dana C. Munro, ‘The Speech of Pope Urban II at Clermont’, American Historical Review, 11 (1906), 231–42. 17 Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, Die ‘Nationes Christianorum Orientalium’ im Verständnis der lateinischen Historiographie von der Mitte des 12. bis in die 2. Hälfte des 14. Jahrhunderts (Köln: Böhlau, 1973); Amanda Power, Roger Bacon and the Defence of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Camille Rouxpetel, ‘Riccoldo da Monte Croce’s Mission towards the Nestorians and the Jacobites (1288–c. 1300): Defining Heresy and Inventing the Relationship with the Other. From Theory to Missionary Experience’, Medieval Encounters, 21 (2015), 250–68; Camille Rouxpetel., L’Occident au miroir de l’Orient chrétien: Cilicie, Syrie, Palestine et Égypte (XIIe–XIVe s.) (Roma: École française de Rome, 2015). 18 Some of the relevant quotations have been put together in Schmieder, ‘Travelling in the Orbis Christianus’. 19 The relations between Latin Chistians and Muslims in the Middle Ages have been, again, so widely discussed that even the attempt to create a representative bibliography goes far beyond the scope of this article. So a few crucially relevant and quite recent works that go beyond the detailed studies of specific texts, peoples, forms of contact, or regions, should suffice: The medieval texts created by the communities about each other have been put together in the huge series of Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History, vol. i, ed. by David Thomas and Barbara Roggema; vol. ii–v, ed. by David Thomas and Alexander Mallett (Leiden: Brill, 2009–2013). The attempt to write a concise history of Christian-Muslim relations has been made lately by one of the best experts in them: John Tolan, Europe and the Islamic World: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). With a more explicit reference to the long history of a Eurocentric discourse a comparable attempt has been made by Jerold C. Frakes, Contextualizing the Muslim Other in Medieval Christian Discourse (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

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The so-called Catalan World Map from the Biblioteca Estense at Modena,20 for example, created in the mid-fifteenth century, pictures the queen of Sheba on the lower part of the Arabian Peninsula. Typologically she was an Old Testament figure referring to missions among heathens because she was believed to have been converted by Solomon, and was thus a witness of world missions even before Christ.21 The caption on the map close to the image makes it clear: ‘Where earlier the Queen of Sheba ruled now are the Saracen Arabs’ — and the main Muslim pilgrimage place, Mecca, is shown close to it.22 This is clearly a memory of world mission combined with an explicit memory of loss, the replacement of one of the earliest successes by a foreign, maybe one could say, ‘the Other’s’, core sanctuary. A whole range of similar features can be found on my main example, a ‘Mappa Mundi’ closely related to the Modena Map. I will elaborate a bit on this map to present to the readers how a carefully arranged selection of ‘we and the other’ and diverse foreign entities could determine a complex late medieval world order. The so-called Velletri or Borgia Map23 is unusual materially and relatively unusual

20 The very good reproduction in four quarter tables that George H. T. Kimble published for the Royal Geographical Society (The Catalan world map of the R. Biblioteca Estense at Modena [London: Royal Geographical Society, 1934]) is online on an Australian gov. page: [accessed August 2018]. A thoroughly transcribed printed facsimile version: Il Mappamondo Catalano Estense (Die Katalanische Estense Weltkarte), ed. by Ernesto Milano and Annalisa Battini (Zürich: Dietikon, 1995). 21 The passage in the Old Testament (1 Kings 10. 1–13) in which the queen praised the God of the Israelites over the moon could be interpreted as a conversion experience — and the queen could be seen as the typology of the Church of a people that had turned away from paganism, not the least because she was closely connected to Solomon as ‘typus Christi’ (Luke 11. 31); cf., e.g., Hanns Peter Neuheuser, Zugänge zur Sakralkunst. Narratio und institutio des mittelalterlichen Christgeburtsbildes (Köln: Böhlau, 2001), esp. p. 724. As a visitor of Solomon she can also be seen as a precursor of the three Magi (who also appear on some ‘mappae mundi’ and could be read in the pilgrim context as well), and she is also embedded in the legend of the wood of the Holy Cross whose history was traced back to Adam, cf. Legenda aurea on the festivity of Finding of the Cross (3 May). A good collection of passages see in Franz Kampers, Mittelalterliche Sagen vom Paradiese und vom Holze des Kreuzes Christi in ihren vornehmsten Quellen und ihren hervorstechendsten Typen (Köln: Bachem, 1897). For the queen on maps cf. Josep Lluís Cebrián i Molina, ‘La reina de Sabà i El Preste Joan en les cartes portolanes medievals’, Cuaderno de Geografía, 86 (2009), 183–94. 22 ‘[P]rovincia laquall tania lareyna sabba ara es de sarains alarps aquesta es lareyna quj vench a veura lorey salamo laquall li adux de grans dons aquest fonch la pioura (?) laqual se volch lansar alriu apassar e reba salamo dient queno hera digna de pasar p(er)lopont p(er)tant com lotanidor orambador del pont aquell deuja server p(er)lagreu de jhu xst’ (Milano and Battini, cf. N. 20, E p. 184). 23 [accessed August 2018]. The map has been transfered into a black-and-white print that is relatively easy to read, with visible details: Facsimile-Atlas to the Early History of Cartography, ed. by Baron Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld (Stockholm: Norstedt & Söner, 1889). For an analysis of the map, see Felicitas Schmieder, ‘Anspruch auf christliche Weltherrschaft. Die Velletri/Borgia-Karte (15. Jahrhundert) in ihrem ideengeschichtlichen und politischen Kontext’, in Herrschaft verorten. Politische Kartographie im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Ingrid Baumgärtner and Martina Stercken (Zürich: Chronos, 2012), 253–71. Transcription: Baron Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, ‘Om ett aftryck från XV: de seklet af den i metall graverade världskarta, som förvarats i kardinal Stephan Borgias Museum i Velletri’, Ymer, 11 (1891), 83–92.

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Map 17.1 Velletri or Borgia map, anon. 1402–1453, old print from Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Borgia XV (south is on top): In the upper left, in Minor Asia, besides the city of Troy there is the inscription concerning the Trojan war. Perpendicular to it, there is a note about the battle of Ankara 1402. Lower right: Close to the mouth of the Danube the battle of Nikopolis is remembered (1395!).

linguistically; it is engraved on two halves of a metal disc and written in Latin while most mapmakers of the fifteenth century used the vernacular and the maps are drawn on parchment. But otherwise it can easily be explained in a certain tradition (the Catalan one) and put in a series of several highly differen­tiated world maps of the time that used similar features organized or arranged in a particular order so as to make an individual statement. The Velletri map was made after 1402 and probably before 1453 and is often put in the context of the Council of Konstanz (1414–1418). The map’s thematic framework is based on a dichotomic view (Map 1): it starts with the Trojan war — Troy being depicted close to the centre of the map — where ‘[Hic] greci cum potentia unius partis mundi per annos X proeliaverunt contra troianos

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Map 17.2 Velletri or Borgia map, anon. 1402–1453, old print from Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Borgia XV (south is on top): in the left part we find mecha; in the middle, to the right of St Catherine’s monastery, the passage of Israel through the Red Sea; in the right part, there is an inscription about Muslim pilgrims.

et aliam partem mundi’ (the Greeks with the power of one part of the world fought for ten years the Trojans and the other part of the world). Battles, in many different ways world-shaking, are omnipresent on the map. Arranged around Troy are the four World Empires according to the biblical prophet Daniel’s interpretation of a dream of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. The empires are identified according to Orosius as the empires of the Persians, Greeks, Carthaginians, and Romans, who are all noted on the map as having fought in order to replace each other (the map is especially interested in the battles between Alexander the Great and Persia and between the Carthaginians and the Romans). And what happens when we move towards the present of the map-maker? One of the most recent battles shown on the map is the battle of Nikopolis in 1396,24 when an Ottoman army crushingly beat an army of high-ranking knights from many Latin European nations near the mouth of the Danube into the Black Sea (Map 1): ‘Grecia in qua basac debellavit christianos mccclxxxxv’ (sic!). This opposition between Muslims and Christians, at least at first glance at several of the records on the map, seems to be what determined the lives, and more specifically the decisive battles, of the peoples of the world in the fifteenth century (Map 2). Not only is Mecca depicted prominently on the map close to ‘Mons sinay in quo data est lex moysi’ (Mount Sinai where the law was given to Moses), but the

24 David Nicolle, Nicopolis 1396: The Last Crusade (London: Osprey, 1999).

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route Muslim pilgrims take from North Africa to Mecca25 seems to correlate with the ‘transitus filii Israel’ from Egypt to the Holy Land, again a kind of replacement of biblical memories by Muslim ones. In Africa, we find an interesting antagonism of Christian and Muslim peoples: ‘Nubia sarracenorum’ is marked besides ‘Nubia christianorum’ — ruled by the famous Christian Prester John — and in Ethiopia rules ‘Abinichibel rex [est] sarracenus ethiopicus cum populo suo habens faciem caninam’ (King ‘Abinichibel’ an Ethiopian Sarracen with his people that have dog faces) close to the place where ‘the very poor Ethiopian Christians’ live.26 The Muslim-Christian antagonism in a world that had been polarized between two camps, between us and the Other since the Trojan war, is certainly one clear message the map-maker has laid out.27 But that is Africa and the Middle East — Asia gives a different impression. Especially when we look at what is marked as the border region between Europe and Asia, there are, again, battles. One of the most prominent depictions on the map shows the ‘constant battle’ in Prussia: ‘Hic sunt confinia paganorum et christianorum qui in prusia ad invicem continuo bellant’ (Here are the borders between Pagans and Christians who in Prussia permanently fight each other). In general, the border region between Europe and Asia is clearly marked as one between pagans and Christians, thus as a religious border, but, virtually explicitly, not as one between Christians and Muslims. Deeper in Asia, pagan practices can be found merely at the rim — the space of the ‘Mappae Mundi’ where monstrous races are usually depicted, and thus the real foreigners.28 Christian memories are not visibly overlaid with more recent Muslim (or other) achievements and rituals. Two prominent tombs of the apostles Thomas and Matthew are shown (Map 3), in India and Central Asia respectively, as well as the Three Magi, another usual personification of pagan kings who were early converts, and in this case by Christ himself. Fighting is present, symbolized by the Amazons, who are characterized as having helped the Trojan part of the world in that first worldwide battle. In this other part of the world the Mongols are much more prominent, but not at all in a bellicose way (Map 3). Based on information from merchants dealing with

25 ‘Hic venerant plures sarraceni peregrini de partibus occidentis ad mecham propter Mechametum eorum prophetam’ (Many Saracen pilgrims come this way from the West to Mecca because of Mohammed their prophet). Cf. Schmieder, ‘“Here many Saracen pilgrims”’. 26 ‘Hic incipiunt christiani ethiopes pauperrimi apparere’. 27 There are maps in the fifteenth/sixteenth century that emphasize, colour-coded or with specified signatures, the difference between ‘us’ and all the others — but also Christian–Muslim in a more explicit and polarized way than the Velletri map (the map by Andreas Walsperger and also the famous world map by Martin Waldseemüller, today in the Library of Congress). 28 A classic study is John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Chapel Hill: Syracuse University Press, 2000). More recently cf. Asa S. Mittman, Maps and Monsters in Medieval England (Abindon: Routledge, 2016); Chet van Duzer, Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps (London: The British Library, 2013); Chet van Duzer, ‘Bring on the Monsters and Marvels: Non-Ptolemaic Legends on Manuscript Maps of Ptolemy’s Geography’, Viator, 45 (2014), 303–34.

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Map 17.3 Velletri or Borgia map, anon. 1402–1453, old print from Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Borgia XV (south is on top), eastern part of the map: On top the tomb of St Thomas, in the centre, near lake Ysicol, the tomb of St Matthew. In the lower middle the wandering city of the Mongols; in the lower right the poor Mongols. On the upper left, Paradise (locus deliciarum), on the lower left, in two separate places surrounded by mountains Gog and Magog; in-between the two the caravan in India superior.

Italian colonies in the Black Sea region, the ‘wandering cities’ of the nomadic Mongols were frequently described by travellers29 and the Mongols as so poor that they had to sell their children into slavery (‘Hic habitant […] tartari pauperes filios et filias et parentum inopia venderunt’). Both images are shown prominently on the map 29 References in Felicitas Schmieder, ‘Nomaden in Europa und Europäer unter Nomaden. Lateinischmittelalterliche Verarbeitungen einer fremdartigen Lebensform’, in Der imaginierte Nomade. Formel und Realitätsbezug bei antiken, mittelalterlichen und arabischen Autoren, ed. by Alexander Weiß (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2007), pp. 137–54.

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and they are as dominant in Asia as they are peaceful. The fact that many of these Mongols had long become Muslim is not mentioned. The Mongol wandering city may have stopped quite close to the mountains of Gog and Magog, inaccessible to humans like Terrestrial Paradise. But between these two places the merchant caravans of ‘India superior’ moved close to the coast of the Eastern Ocean (Map 3), a too well-travelled place for Latin Christians of the fifteenth century (the place Columbus wanted to reach only shortly afterwards) to be any kind of dangerous rim of the world any longer. All in all, Asia seems relatively friendly, not visibly Muslim, well-known. While in Africa one of the Muslim peoples have dog faces and are certainly not ‘ordinary human beings’, to borrow again the words of Jacopo d’Acqui, Asia seems to provide hope for a balanced world with deep Christian roots still thriving, though not yet completely Christian. Moreover, the map may even bear the memory of Mongol power able to defeat the ‘Saracens’. The description of the most recent battle that appears on the map mentions the battle of Ankara in 1402 (Map 1),30 ‘in qua tamburlan devicit basac’ (in which Tamerlane defeated Basac) — the Turko-Mongol ruler Timur or Timur-lenk defeated the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid. At first glance, these are two Muslim rulers fighting each other. Although their religion is not explicitly marked, we can probably assume that they were well enough known because the events were discussed quite intensively in Latin Europe.31 This certainly breaks the clear proposition of two antagonistic forces. And it may also have been well enough known to the map-maker and his audience that the battle of Ankara had brought a third power into the game — the Mongols again — because Timur not only considered himself a Mongol, but so did the Latin West. This could mean that the map-maker wanted his audience to remember the Mongol power, which had raised more hope two hundred years earlier than was normally connected to it in the fifteenth century. A short glance at my last source, from a slightly different genre, offers a clearer image of this latter option. 200 years earlier, in the mid-thirteenth century, the Mongols were not yet peaceful and friendly, but they were already enemies of the ‘Saracens’ in the Middle East, a fact that especially Christians living there knew. These Christians tried to bring this message to the Latin Europeans in order to convince them to work together with the Mongols against the Muslims. One possible means of propaganda (for the Middle Ages in general) was eschatological prophecy: authorized by prophetic inspiration and by the urgency of the upcoming endtime, prophetic authors could lay out programmes of action to be taken immediately. Since they were dealing with the future, they could also promise

30 Klaus-Peter Matschke, Die Schlacht bei Ankara und das Schicksal von Byzanz. Studien zur spätbyzantinischen Geschichte zwischen 1402 und 1422 (Weimar: Böhlau, 1981). 31 Felicitas Schmieder, ‘Timur der Schreckliche’, in Mythen Europas. Schlüsselfiguren der Imagination, vol. 3: Zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit, ed. by Michael Neumann (Regensburg: Pustet, 2005), 30–45; Adam Knobler, ‘Timur the (terrible/Tartar) Trope: A Case of Repositioning in Popular Literature and History’, Medieval Encounters, 7 (2001), 101–12; Adam Knobler, ‘The Rise of Timur and Western Diplomatic Response, 1390–1405’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3. ser. 5 (1995), 341–49; Tilman Nagel, Timur der Eroberer und die islamische Welt des späten Mittelalters (München: Beck, 1993).

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the hoped-for outcome. Prophetic texts are one important place to look for political and social propaganda in the later Middle Ages. Around 1260, the ‘Livre de la fontaine de toutes sciences’ was created,32 presumably written in the Latin East and originally in French. It presents a wise man, Sidrac, living long before Christ’s birth, who was asked a long series of questions by a pagan king, including some about the future history of mankind. Creating an ‘ex eventu prophecy’ in which the questioning allegedly took place long before enables Sidrac to prophesy correctly all that had actually happened until the date of the book’s real composition. All the names of places and peoples could easily be recognized by Sidrac’s thirteenth-century audience (although many are mysteriously encoded, such as ‘ceuls de Ponnant’ [those from the West] for the Latin Christians or ‘la cite du Fils de Dieu’ [the city of the son of God] for Jerusalem). Yet Sidrac is not only telling, he is giving meaning to all that has happened, he is interpreting history according to God’s plan. And he does this with the full knowledge not only of Western, but also of Oriental events, geography, and peoples. For about a thousand years, according to him, history will be determined by Christian-Islamic dualism.33 Sometime after the first coming of Christ, a man will be born who will be poor and like a shepherd of camels (‘pasteur de chameaux’; Muhammad as ‘pastor camelorum’ in contrast to Christ as a shepherd of sheep and lambs). He will be chosen by the devil, who makes him his prophet, allows him to attract many followers, and seduces him to give them a devilish law code. They will conquer most of the Eastern part of the world. Then the Latin Christians will successfully rise against them but will soon be beaten again by a victorious king from the East named ‘Salehadin’. After some time, ‘unne orde gent d’entre deus montaignes’ will come, a wild people from between two mountains (at the time an easily comprehensible de­scription of the Mongols), who will take the whole East from the ‘Saracens’ and kill their head (the caliph) — which actually happened when Baghdad was conquered in 1258. 32 On this now Petra Waffner, Der Livre de Sidrac – die Quelle allen Wissens. Aspekte zur Tradition und Rezeption eines altfranzösischen Textes (Roma: Vita e pensiero, 2019). The latest attempt at an edition of Sidrac’s Fontaine des toutes sciences is based on a restriction to three manuscripts of the book (Sydrac le philosophe: le livre de la fontaine de toutes sciences. Edition des enzyklopädischen Lehrdialogs aus dem XIII. Jahrhundert, ed. by Ernstpeter Ruhe (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2000). For the events in and after 1260, cf. questions no. 1145–54, pp. 404–09. Unfortunately, the tradition of Sidrac is so multiple that it is still necessary to turn to the manuscripts themselves (such as the much shorter and older manuscript at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France MS franc. 1160, fol. 108v), none of which has the same number of questions, especially not in the historical part. On questions of the original language, etc. see Beate Wins, ‘“Le Livre de Sidrac” – Stand der Forschung und neue Ergebnisse’, in Wissensliteratur im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit. Bedingungen, Typen, Publikum, Sprache, ed. by Horst Brunner and Norbert Richard Wolf (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1993), pp. 36–52. 33 The faithful of all three monotheistic ‘Abrahamitic’ religions put each other in different roles of their endtime scenarios. For a comparative approach see the results of three international and multilingual conferences that brought together scholars on the eschatology of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Wolfram Brandes and Felicitas Schmieder, eds, Endzeiten. Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008); Wolfram Brandes und Felicitas Schmieder, eds, Antichrist – Konstruktionen von Feindbildern (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010), and Brandes, Schmieder, and Voß, eds, Peoples of the Apocalypse.

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Shortly after that, the confidence-building ‘ex-eventu prophecy’ stops. At the same time, the history of Islamic-Christian dualism as the dominating factor in world history has nearly come to an end as well. Now the actual prediction of future events starts, telling the story of a Mongol-Christian dualism as the dominating force. Soon, a Christian crusade will finally bring Islam (decisively weakened by the Mongols) to an end. In the following period, the fighting will shift here and there between Christians and Mongols, who will, in the toughest battle of all times, be beaten and driven away to the Arid Tree, and finally, the Latins (who will have ended their internal wars) will govern the entire land. And all over the world there will be peace under Latin rule until the final emergence of the Antichrist.34 Could the author of the Velletri/Borgia world map have had something like this in mind? There were all sorts of hope-filled statements in all sorts of literary genres in the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century and Timur’s victory in 1402 triggered some of it again, albeit more hesitantly since he was reputed to be a cruel and fanatic Muslim. But sub specie aeternitatis — the Velletri map, as we have seen, displays it all in a clearly eschatological framework — Timur could be considered more Mongol than Muslim and therefore a welcome help to get rid of the usual ‘other’, the ‘Saracens’, first before being defeated himself, very much along the lines Sidrac had pointed out about 200 years before. The third power that had come into the world with the Mongols was still there, and even more, it was, all in all, no longer that dangerous. Tamerlane could defeat Bayezid, but otherwise the Mongols were poor and peaceful. To conclude, in principle the Velletri map as well as the Sidrac are both marked by antagonistic displays of world order. They are certainly not alone, although I have selected sources that make it easy to point out the dualistic approach Latin Christianity preferred. In the thirteenth as well as in the fifteenth century ‘the other’ obviously were the Muslims who occupied the other part of the world in an eschatological as well as a moral sense. But the argument, blunt as it could be, could and would be differentiated more often than not in terms of the way to deal with the antagonism that had, eschatologically speaking, to be overcome — and more importantly, that was promised to be overcome in the end. Whether the battle of Ankara was actually considered exactly along the same lines as Sidrac’s final battles or not, the Velletri map shows a world that is full of foreigners, but also full of common people. The other part of the world that fought against the Greeks at Troy is still present in Asia, but the antagonistic other has shifted to Africa and the Middle East. The other part of the world exists, but it is framed not only by eschatological promise but also by many positive factors over large regions of the earth, like an ongoing battle that is going well.

34 For a classification of these events and the work in the second half of the thirteenth century see also Felicitas Schmieder, ‘Der mongolische Augenblick in der Weltgeschichte oder: Als Europa aus der Wiege wuchs’, in Produktive Kulturkonflikte, ed. by Felicitas Schmieder (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2005), pp. 63–73; unpublished English version available on my university homepage .

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When we shift again to the modern framework of the questions we address to the Middle Ages and the related answers we get, then a dichotomic world view can be found that has ‘always been there’, at least since the Middle Ages, when Muslim and Christian eschatological claims to conquer the whole world clashed permanently. But the borders — which are, in the Middle Ages, drawn in other places than today — seem less closed, less insurmountable than some seem to need them to be today. They can be shifted, have been shifted, have not always been in a certain place without a chance of finding new ones elsewhere. Familiarities could appear in a vast continent full of ‘others’, distinguished by many different traits into a multifaceted world. Of course, my emphasis on crossable borders is a wish driven by present experience — but at least it shows that we can find different answers in historical memory … and if the argument is about historical roots, traditions, and legitimizations we do not need to leave the field to ‘the other’.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Burgo de Osma, Cathedral Library, Beatus of El Burgo de Osma, Cod. 1, fols 34v–35r Lyon, Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, MS. Palais des Arts 32, Jean Germain Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS fr. 13235, Jean Germain, ‘Mappemonde spirituelle’ ———, MS franc. 1160, Livre de Sidrac Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Borg. XV, Velletri-/Borgia map Primary Sources Facsimile-Atlas to the Early History of Cartography, ed. by Baron Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld (Stockholm: Norstedt & Söner, 1889) Jacopo d’Acqui OP, ‘Chronica ymaginis mundi, ab OC-1290’, ed. by Gustavo Avogadro, Monumenta Historiae Patriae V = Scriptores III, (Torino: Regio Typograph., 1840) John of Monte Corvino, ‘Letters II’, 1, ed. by P. Anastasius van den Wyngaert OFM, Sinica Franciscana I: Itinera et Relationes Fratrum Minorum saeculi XIII et XIV (Quaracchi: Collegio San Bonaventura, 1929) Il Mappamondo Catalano Estense (Die Katalanische Estense Weltkarte), ed. by Ernesto Milano and Annalisa Battini (Zürich: Dietikon, 1995) William of Rubruk, ed. by P. Anastasius van den Wyngaert OFM, Sinica Franciscana I: Itinera et Relationes Fratrum Minorum saeculi XIII et XIV (Quaracchi: Collegio San Bonaventura, 1929) William of Rubruk, The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Möngke 1253–1255, trans. and notes by Peter Jackson and David Morgan, Hakluyt Society Ser. 2, 173 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1990)

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Tiago João Queimada e Silva

The Muslim Archother and the Royal Other Aristocratic Notions of Otherness in Fourteenth-Century Portugal

Introduction The concept of otherness has been the object of increasing attention in contemporary historiography, with the fields of medieval and early modern studies being no exception.1 In medieval Iberia, Muslim otherness was fundamental for legitimizing



1 See for example John Tolan, ‘The “Other” in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: The Crusaders and their Varying Images of the Muslims in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin’, in The Mediterranean Other – The Other Mediterranean, ed. by Medardus Brehl, Kristin Platt, and Andreas Eckl (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2017), pp. 1–10; James Palmer, ‘The Otherness of Non-Christians in the Early Middle Ages’, Studies in Church History, 51 (2015), 33–52; Sirpa Aalto, ‘Categorizing Otherness in the Kings’ Sagas’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Eastern Finland, 2010); Michael Uebel, Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of Alterity in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Philippe Josserand, ‘En péninsule Ibérique et par-delà: les ordres militaires face à l’Autre à la lumière de quelques contacts réputés pacifiques’, in Cristãos contra Muçulmanos na Idade Média Peninsular: Bases Ideológicas e Doutrinais de um Confronto (Séculos X–XIV), ed. by Carlos de Ayala Martínez and Isabel Fernandes (Lisboa: Edições Colibri, 2015), pp. 231–46; Francisco García Fitz, ‘La confrontación ideológica con el adversario musulman a través de las biografias nobiliarias del siglo XV: la percepción del “otro”’, in Cristãos Contra Muçulmanos, ed. by Martínez and Fernandes, pp. 271–94; Enrique Rodríguez-Picavea, ‘La visión del Otro: la imagen del musulmán en el Poema de Alfonso XI’, in Cristãos Contra Muçulmanos, ed. by Martínez and Fernandes, pp. 369–95; Luigi de Anna, ‘The Peoples of Finland and Early Medieval Sources: The Characterization of “Alienness”’, in Suomen varhaishistoria, ed. by Kyösti Julku (Rovaniemi: Pohjois-Suomen historiallinen yhdistys, 1992), pp. 11–22; Raingard Esser, ‘Cultures in Contact: The Representation of “the Other” in Early Modern German Travel Narratives’, in Racial Discrimination and Ethnicity in European History, ed. by Guðmundur Hálfdanarson (Pisa: Edizioni Plus, 2003), pp. 33–47; Victor Malia-Milanes, ‘Images of the Other: Venice’s Perception of the Knights of Malta’, in Racial Discrimination and Ethnicity in European History, ed. by Guðmundur Hálfdanarson (Pisa: Edizioni Plus, 2003), pp. 63–76. See also the introduction to this volume, where the editors discuss the concept of otherness in medieval studies and provide an ample bibliography on this multifaceted and often problematic subject. Tiago João Queimada e Silva, • M.A. ([email protected], University of Coimbra, Portugal), PhD student (aristocratic historiographical depictions of the encounter with Islam in late medieval Portugal) at the Department of European and World History, School of History, Culture and Arts Studies, Faculty of Humanities of the University of Turku, Finland ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 415–435 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123601

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royal and aristocratic power, and reinforcing the ideological hegemony of the ruling classes. The otherness of Islam was of crucial importance for the justification of the very existence of royalty and the aristocracy as distinguished social groups, since war (or the prospect of war) against Muslim enemies provided these groups with a social function that was the basis of their ‘raison d’être’. Previous inquiries into notions of otherness in the medieval Iberian Peninsula mainly focus on Castile. While ethno-religious otherness has been considered, socioeconomic and political otherness are often overlooked.2 This article examines aristocratic notions of otherness in fourteenth-century Portugal. I build upon previous research into Muslim ethno-religious otherness in medieval Iberia, framing it among other forms of otherness, such as political otherness. Instead of approaching otherness as a static phenomenon restricted to Muslim otherness, I explore this particular form of otherness among other forms of the phenomenon. I also consider different degrees of otherness, as well as how these disparate forms and degrees interrelate.3 My main argument is that otherness in the eyes of the fourteenth-century Portuguese aristocracy was primarily defined by political enmity or rivalry. I stress that, despite being ethno-religious in origin, Muslim otherness is so conspicuous in fourteenth-century aristocratic historiographical discourse because of Islam’s political status, and not simply due to religious antagonism. I approach narrative segments from three Portuguese genealogical compilations produced in aristocratic cultural centres between the late thirteenth and the late fourteenth century: the livros de linhagens (books of lineages). Three books of lineages from this period have survived: one from the late thirteenth century, the Livro Velho de Linhagens (Old Book of Lineages), compiled in monastic centres connected to the Riba de Vizela family between 1270–1290; and two from the mid-fourteenth century: the Livro de Linhagens do Deão (Dean’s Book of Lineages), commissioned by an unnamed dean, possibly from the archbishopric of Braga, around 1337–1340; and the Livro de Linhagens do Conde D. Pedro (Count Pedro’s Book of Lineages), compiled by Count Pedro of Barcelos in the 1340s.4





2 Besides the works referenced above, see Carolina Ferreira de Figueiredo, ‘Definindo alteridade: Um estudo sobre as noções de raça e etnia nas Siete Partidas e na Primera Crónica General de España de Alfonso X’, Faces da História, 2.2 (2015), 83–99; Kellen Jacobsen Follador, ‘O discurso que não foi esquecido e permaneceu na memória. O preconceito antijudaico e a elaboração da alteridade conversa’, Revista Grafia, 11 (2014), 112–26. 3 See the introduction to this volume for a discussion on different forms and degrees of otherness. 4 Both the Old Book (hereafter LV) and the Dean’s Book (hereafter LD) have been studied and critically edited by Joseph Piel and José Mattoso, Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, Nova Série, vol. i: Livros Velhos de Linhagens (Lisboa: Academia das Ciências, 1980). The Count’s Book (hereafter LL) has been studied and critically edited by José Mattoso, Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, Nova Série, 2 vols, vol. ii: Livro de Linhagens do Conde D. Pedro. For the origin and chronology of the Old Book, see José Mattoso, ‘A transmissão textual dos livros de linhagens’, in Naquele Tempo. Ensaios de História Medieval (Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 2011), pp. 267–83, and José Carlos Miranda, ‘Do Liber Regum ao Livro Velho de Linhagens’, in Estudios sobre la Edad Media, el Renacimiento y la temprana modernidad, ed. by Jimena Gamba Corradine and Francisco Bautista Pérez (La Rioja: CILENGUA – Centro Internacional de Investigación de la Lengua Española, 2010), pp. 301–10.

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These sources consist of extensive lists of members of aristocratic families and were compiled at times of tension between the aristocracy and royal power in Portugal. Animosity between these social groups arose particularly from the process of monarchical centralization occurring during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when competing narratives on the Iberian and Portuguese past emerged in aristocratic and royal cultural centres. In this article, I focus exclusively on aristocratic historiographical production. Thus, I examine only one side of the symbolic struggle occurring at the time between royalty and the aristocracy.5 Only a fragment of the Old Book has survived, and the Dean’s Book is much poorer than Count Pedro’s in terms of narrative segments. Most of the narratives analysed here come from Count Pedro’s Book, undoubtedly the most relevant of the livros de linhagens since it was widely copied and used by historiographers and genealogists throughout the late Middle Ages and the modern era.6 The book begins with a prologue, followed by a universal genealogy from Adam and Eve until the most powerful Iberian families of Count Pedro’s time. It has a little over fifty short narrative segments interspersed among the genealogical lists. These texts were influenced by other genres like chronicles or epic material, which furnished narrative elements that complemented the genealogical lists. The contents of the Count’s Book were reformulated twice, first in 1360–1365 and subsequently in 1380–1383. Both of these reformulations were undertaken by scribes connected to the Pereira family and the Knights Hospitallers, whose Portuguese branch was headed from c. 1336 until c. 1380 by Álvaro Gonçalves Pereira.7 The Count’s Book has survived only through this reformulated version, since no manuscript of the original compilation has been preserved. While both the Old Book and the Dean’s Book are restricted to Portuguese families, the Count’s Book has a pan-Iberian scope. The concept of otherness in this article refers to a notion of difference, rivalry, or enmity, in historical contexts where relations of power among the depicted social agents are relatively balanced. It, thus, differs from the idea of the othering of subaltern social groups by dominant groups, a privileged theme in postcolonial studies.8 Otherness in the present article is related to identity and social practices or





5 The aristocracy was much more active than royalty in historiographical production during this chronology. There is only one short royal chronicle from the late-thirteenth century, whose royal provenance is even uncertain. See Filipe Alves Moreira, Afonso Henriques e a Primeira Crónica Portuguesa (Porto: Estratégias Criativas, 2008). Royal historiography developed considerably in the fifteenth century. I will approach depictions of the encounter with Islam in late medieval Portuguese royal historiography in a separate study. 6 Mattoso lists a total of 60 manuscripts preserved in several European countries. Mattoso, ed., Portugaliae, vol. ii: Livro de Linhagens, i, 9–30. 7 Paula Pinto Costa, ‘Álvaro Gonçalves Pereira: um homem entre a oração e a construção patrimonial como estratégia de consolidação familiar’, População e Sociedade, 23 (2015), 45–71. 8 Robert J. C. Young, ‘Postcolonial Remains’, New Literary History, 43 (2012), 36–39. On the other hand, despite being of relevance to any study on the othering of Islamic cultures, it would be anachronistic to apply to this context the Saidian concept of ‘orientalism’. Cf. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979). In the introduction to this volume, Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood problematize the application of modern theories, such as the postcolonial theory, to medieval societies.

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ideologies concerning identity building, preservation, or transformation. As Eriksen puts it, ‘identity means being the same as oneself as well as being different’.9 It is through this dialectic of sameness/difference that I interpret otherness, as a multidimensional notion of difference that is central to the definition of sameness.10 Otherness in the books of lineages is mostly embodied by an enemy, adversary, or rival, who usually appears as a military opponent. Centuries of coexistence with Islamic societies contributed deeply to the development of the socio-political identity of medieval Christian Iberian ruling groups. Military activity against Muslims was the main argument to legitimize aristocratic and monarchical social supremacy. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Portugal were also marked by the growing antagonism between the aristocracy and royalty; tensions that were fuelled by the monarchy’s centralizing impetus. Therefore, the monarchy and the groups on which it relied often embodied otherness from the aristocratic viewpoint. It is, however, a form of otherness qualitatively different from the one represented by Muslims, who appear as a sort of ‘Archother’, the Other par excellence, common to all ruling strata of Iberian Christian societies.11 Based on a critical reading of narratives depicting deeds of several Iberian aristocrats, I examine how otherness in the medieval Portuguese aristocratic world-view was defined according to political criteria. The position of neighbouring Islamic powers as the Other upon which the identity of the Iberian Christian ruling classes was built and justified meant that the Muslim was the primary Other. However, since the political reality was dynamic and often contradictory, depictions of otherness were just as multidimensional. Degrees of otherness and borders between different forms of otherness often overlapped and were dialectically interrelated. My analysis focuses on the relation between Islam’s ‘archotherness’ (a form of ethno-religious otherness) and strictly political notions of otherness such as the one impersonated by royal power. After a short overview of the role of genealogy and historical culture in the ‘battle for legitimacy’ that was taking place between the aristocracy and royalty in fourteenth-century Portugal, I proceed to analyse notions of Muslim otherness, followed by a survey on notions of royal otherness.

Genealogy and the Battle for Legitimacy The late Middle Ages were an epoch of turmoil in Portugal. From the early thirteenth century until the late fifteenth, the Portuguese monarchy implemented a programme

9 Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives, 3rd edn (New York: Pluto, 2010), p. 71. Eriksen deals with ethnic identities, but his approach is useful for the study of other forms of identity. 10 Young, ‘Postcolonial Remains’, 38–39. Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood discuss the relational nature of otherness in the introduction to this volume. 11 The notion of Muslim otherness as being common to all Christian social groups is present in the sources, as we shall see below, but the term ‘Archother’ does not come from the medieval texts. I used the expression in this paper to refer to that notion.

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of political centralization that profoundly affected the traditional upper nobility. While at first the royalty relied mostly on bureaucratic or administrative means to advance its political centralization programme, the upper nobility attempted to use cultural resources to enhance its position and resist the royalist offensive — clearly manifested by the fact that the Portuguese upper aristocracy sponsored the compilation of books of lineages in order to strengthen its symbolic power. These books recounted the origins of the primordial aristocratic Portuguese families, their development, interrelations, and subdivisions, throughout the succession of generations. I construe historiographical production in late medieval Portugal in terms of what Pierre Bourdieu named ‘symbolic struggles at the subjective level’. This refers to how contending groups attempt to define categories of perception and evaluation of the social world, conditioning cognitive and evaluative structures.12 Bourdieu’s overriding argument is that ‘[d]omination, even when based on naked force, […] always has a symbolic dimension’.13 Direct socioeconomic and political domination lacks legitimation that works through the imposition of classifications and perceptions of social reality. Cultural means — historiography included — are quite useful tools to reproduce or transform a social order through manipulation of the structures of perception of reality, of the way we conceptualize the social world.14 The establishment of what Bourdieu termed a ‘doxic’ adherence to the social order — a political belief in the social order as something ‘natural’, ‘common sense’, and ahistorical — is the fruit of social confrontation and competing visions.15 Symbolic power, thus, is constitutive of identities and realities; it is a performative and stratifying power; and it also is a contested power, since, as Swartz put it, it is ‘a tool of struggle among social groups and their representatives either to enhance their social visibility or to change the perception and evaluation of themselves and others’.16 A central design guided the domestic policy of the Portuguese royal court at the time the books of lineages were compiled: to reinforce the attributes and field of action of royal power, on the one hand; and on the other, to restrict the prerogatives of lay and ecclesiastic seigniorial elites.17 While during Afonso III’s reign (1248–1279) inner tensions were mainly between the clergy and the royal court, during his son’s and grandson’s rule social conflicts were mostly between the lay aristocracy and royal power. These tensions ultimately culminated in a civil war during 1319–1324. Social

12 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power’, in Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, trans. by Matthew Adamson (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 134; David L. Swartz, Symbolic Power, Politics and Intellectuals: The Political Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), pp. 87–88. 13 Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, trans. by Richard Nice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 172; Swartz, Symbolic Power, p. 81. 14 Swartz, Symbolic Power, p. 92. 15 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field’, Sociological Theory, 12.1 (1994), 1–18 (p. 15). 16 Swartz, Symbolic Power, p. 106. 17 José Pizarro, D. Dinis, 2nd edn (Lisboa: Temas e Debates, 2012), p. 166.

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unease also underlined struggles internal to the aristocratic group, usually between pro-monarchic and pro-seigniorial factions. The royal court relied mostly on administrative, fiscal, and bureaucratic means for the affirmation of its power. This process of centralization started very early, already during the reign of Afonso II (1211–1223), but it was further strengthened under Afonso III, Dinis (1279–1325), and Afonso IV (1325–1357).18 The monarchy combined different tactics to ascertain its supremacy over opposing groups: through physical and military means, the consolidation of the financial basis of the monarchy, the efficient management of royal landed property, the improvement of the efficacy of the administrative and fiscal structure of the monarchy, the carrying out of detailed surveys upon landed property in the kingdom, the systematic registry of the royal chancellery, and consistent efforts towards juridical codification. The consolidation of a bureaucratic caste under the crown’s direct orders was also decisive, restricting the delegation of power to representatives of the upper nobility. The aristocracy, on the other hand, invested in cultural production with a much more pronounced relevance to political legitimation, relying heavily on cultural forms of resources to counter the royalist advances. One could say that, while the monarchy based its political and symbolic power in objective structures — i.e., in organizational structures —, the aristocracy relied more on subjective structures — i.e., in mental structures and categories of perception transmitted through cultural means.19 While also trying to defeat the monarchy on the battlefield, the upper aristocracy strove to overcome the crown in the field of historical culture, manipulating the past to assert its historical rights to socio-political supremacy. Alongside a physical form of violence, the aristocracy attempted to inflict upon rival social groups what Bourdieu conceptualized as ‘symbolic violence’.20 The aristocracy expected historiographical production to be a source of symbolic capital, thus attempting to articulate ‘coercion’ (military might) with ‘consensus’ (cultural/ideological hegemony).21

The Muslim ‘Archother’ There is a permanent notion of Muslim otherness in the books of lineages, which is taken for granted and lacks any need for explanation. Islam appears as the ‘Archother’,

18 Hermínia Vilar, D. Afonso II (Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 2005); Leontina Ventura, D. Afonso III (Lisboa: Temas e Debates, 2006); Pizarro, D. Dinis; Bernardo Vasconcelos e Sousa, D. Afonso IV (Lisboa: Temas e Debates, 2009); José Mattoso, ‘Dois séculos de vicissitudes políticas’, in História de Portugal, vol. ii: A Monarquia Feudal, ed. by José Mattoso (Lisboa: Editorial Estampa, 1997), pp. 25–140; Mattoso, ‘O triunfo da monarquia portuguesa: 1258–1264. Ensaio de história política’, in Mattoso, Naquele Tempo, pp. 515–45. 19 Bourdieu, ‘Rethinking the State’, pp. 3–4. 20 Swartz, Symbolic Power, pp. 83–84, 98–101; Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: Polity, 1992), pp. 167–68. 21 On the idea of cultural/ideological hegemony, see Carlos Nelson Coutinho, Gramsci’s Political Thought (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

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the common Other for both the aristocracy and royalty, which is always somehow present but not necessarily as a direct intervenient in the narratives. The ‘archotherness’ of Islam could be understood as what Eriksen called ‘digital difference’, i.e., ‘[w] hen […] systems of classification operate on an unambiguous inclusion/exclusion basis, where boundaries are fixed and all outsiders of certain kinds are regarded as “more or less the same”’.22 This underlying omnipresence of Islam justifies the very existence of the Portuguese aristocracy. This is demonstrated in the prologue of the Old Book, where the author declares his purpose of dealing with ‘os linhagens dos bons homens filhos d’algo do reino de Portugal […] que andaram a la guerra a filhar o reino de Portugal’ (the lineages of the good noblemen of the kingdom of Portugal […] who made war to conquer the kingdom of Portugal).23 The prologues of the books of lineages are quite important since this is where the authors state their intentions. The quotation above points to how the main axis of the legitimation discourse in the Old Book lies in past military endeavours against Muslims. Aristocratic prerogatives were derived from the assumption that the families included in the genealogies conquered Portuguese lands from the Muslims at the time of the kingdom’s foundation. The veracity of the claim is questionable, since the principal agents of Portuguese expansion during the foundational period of the monarchy were mostly royalty, lower tiers of the aristocracy, municipal militias, and military orders.24 The compiler, nevertheless, chose this argumentative line, thus making war against Islam the main source of historical legitimacy for the upper aristocracy. Despite the centrality of Muslim otherness, the most common theme of the narratives is conflicts among Christian aristocrats and monarchs. For example, while the Castilian aristocrat Pêro Fernandes de Castro is admonished in Count Pedro’s Book for siding with the Muslims in the Battle of Alarcos (1195) and otherwise participating in ‘Moorish vices’ such as bathing, the main focus of the narrative is the disagreements between Pêro Fernandes and Alfonso VIII of Castile.25 In the case of Rodrigo Afonso de Leão, an illegitimate son of Alfonso IX of Leon (1188–1230), while it is mentioned that Rodrigo Afonso was sent by his father to guard the frontier and that he conquered a number of castles from the Muslims, the main focus of

22 Eriksen, Ethnicity, p. 79. 23 LV, Pr.11–3. The system of references in the footnotes refers to the internal division of the texts in the critical editions referenced above in note 4: the initials LV (Old Book), LD (Dean’s Book), and LL (Count Pedro’s Book) indicate the genealogical compilation, followed by chapter number (each chapter lists the descent of a particular individual), capital letter indicating a subdivision of the chapter (where each separate branch of that descent is listed), another number for each successive generation, and sentence number in superscript. See Piel and Mattoso, Portugaliae, Vol. i: Livros Velhos, pp. 18–19. All translations from Galician-Portuguese are my own. 24 José Mattoso, ‘A nobreza medieval portuguesa (séculos X a XIV)’, in Mattoso, Naquele Tempo, pp. 287–310 (p. 293). 25 LL11C8; Tiago João Queimada e Silva, ‘Mixed Marriages, Moorish Vices and Military Betrayals: Christian-Islamic Confluence in “Count Pedro’s Book of Lineages”’, in Conflict and Collaboration in Medieval Iberia, ed. by Kurt Villads Jensen, Anthony John Lappin, and Kim Bergqvist (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2020), pp. 241–66.

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this narrative lies in Rodrigo’s conflicts with another Christian aristocrat, Andreu Fernandes de Castro.26 The Castilian King Pedro I (1350–1369) is also implicitly condemned for his use of Muslim armies in the struggle against his half-brother Henrique de Trastâmara, when contending for the throne.27 The main objective of the narrative of Pedro I’s deposition is, however, the construction of a negative model of royal governance. Pedro I’s siding with Muslim allies is merely a minor element in the construction of that image. In this process, the author stresses mainly Pedro I’s tyrannical domestic policies, such as killing ‘many and good [men] of high lineage’,28 including three of his own brothers.29 Muslim ‘archotherness’ is based on ethno-religious difference, but its prominence in the sources stems from political opposition, as Jewish absence in the narratives indicates. Muslim otherness is practically the only form of ethno-religious otherness in the books of lineages, since Jews are almost absent. The only exception is Rui Capão, a Jew who came to Portugal with Queen Urraca, wife of Afonso II. Rui Capão converted to Christianity and was knighted by Afonso II.30 Despite incarnating a form of religious otherness that apparently could be neutralized by conversion to Christianity, as also happened with Muslims,31 Jews were considered no political threat: they ruled no rival polity in Iberia, neither had they any territories to conquer. However, Jewish absence reminds us that politics is the main conditioning factor in the definition of otherness and its degrees, even when the constitutive features of that otherness stem originally from ethnicity or religion. Although originating from a conception of ethno-religious otherness, thus appearing as the common Other for both Christian ruling groups, the religious element goes unstressed when portraying Muslim enmity. Nevertheless, the image of the Muslim as a primarily political enemy only applies to the aristocratic genealogical discourse until the late fourteenth century, when the Count’s Book was reformulated by someone connected to the Pereira family and the Order of the Knights Hospitaller. This reformulation, carried out around 1380–1383, infused a religious tone into the text, imbuing it with martyrological and crusading ideals. The emphasis on religious enmity is most likely due to the reformulator’s social background, linked to a religious military order devoted to fight the Muslims in the Holy Land. The mindset of an author affiliated with a religious military order brought the Muslim ‘Archother’ to the fore of the narratives, while it had previously mostly lurked passively in the background. The Muslim appears in the reformulated narratives as an almost supernatural enemy within a sacralized universal conflict between Christianity and Islam. Take for instance the narrative of Gonçalo Mendes da Maia, who headed one of the most 26 LL58E6. 27 LL21A1527. 28 ‘matou muitos e boos d’alto linhagem’. LL21A155. 29 LL21A154–6. Cf. Silva, ‘Mixed Marriages’. 30 LV2N91–2; LL42X72–8. 31 Silva, ‘Mixed Marriages’.

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powerful families in eleventh- and twelfth-century Portugal, the Maia family.32 It is possible that the tale is a prosification of a chanson de geste and it is difficult to establish whether it existed in this form when Count Pedro compiled the book. The narrative’s characteristics (universalization of the Christian-Islamic conflict; divine intervention on the battlefield; epic overtone, etc.) point towards the 1380–1383 reformulator’s authorship.33 It is quite possible that the tale was already extant in some form in the original version of Count Pedro’s Book, perhaps in a configuration closer to that of the tale in the Dean’s Book.34 It was in the Count’s interest to exalt the memory of the Maia family: the previous holder of the County of Barcelos was Martim Gil de Riba de Vizela, last representative of the Riba de Vizela family’s main branch and a descendant of the ancient Maia family, which was already extinct by the late-thirteenth century.35 Through the transmission of the County of Barcelos in 1314, Count Pedro became heir of part of the patrimony of the Riba de Vizela family, who, in their turn, were inheritors of the patrimony and symbolic capital of the Maia family. Thus, Count Pedro could see himself as heir to the symbolic capital of the Maia family.36 According to the tale, Gonçalo Mendes served King Afonso Henriques (1128–1185) in the Portuguese southern frontier.37 He led a small group of Portuguese knights in two consecutive battles against the ‘Moors’.38 The Portuguese knights committed acts of prodigious valour and superhuman strength, ultimately defeating their enemies. Gonçalo Mendes himself died in combat. It is a narrative ridden with epic sentiment, in which the Muslim enemies are also invested with superhuman traits, even if only to aggrandize the Christian knights who defeat them. They are rabid, animalistic warriors, whose purpose in the plot is to highlight the valour of the Portuguese chivalry. The Muslim ‘Archother’ had become a religious enemy, part of a radical confrontation between two uncompromising religions with universal aspirations. This transformation is further illustrated by two narratives whose authorship clearly belongs to the 1380–1383 reformulator: the narratives of the (mainly fictional) Galician

32 LL21G6. 33 José Mattoso, ‘As fontes do nobiliário do Conde D. Pedro’, in Mattoso, A Nobreza Medieval Portuguesa: A Família e o Poder, 4th edn (Lisboa: Editorial Estampa, 1994), pp. 57–100 (pp. 87–88); José Mattoso, ed., Narrativas dos Livros de Linhagens (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1983), p. 29. 34 LD7A1. 35 José Pizarro, ‘D. Dinis e a nobreza dos finais do século XIII’, Revista da Faculdade de Letras, 10 (1993), pp. 91–101 (p. 99). 36 Luis Krus, A Concepção Nobiliárquica do Espaço Ibérico. (1280–1380) (Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1994), pp. 309–10. 37 The story is obviously anachronistic, since Gonçalo Mendes da Maia (1068–1110) died many years before Afonso Henriques took power and extended the Portuguese kingdom’s territory beyond the Tagus River. Cf. José Mattoso, ‘A nobreza rural portuense nos séculos XI e XII’, in Mattoso, Nobreza Medieval Portuguesa, pp. 161–253 (p. 213). 38 ‘Moors’ (port. ‘Mouros’) is the most common designation for Iberian and Northern African Muslims in medieval Iberian Christian historiography.

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aristocrat Rodrigo Froiaz de Trastâmara during the conquest of Seville (1248) and of Álvaro Gonçalves Pereira in the Battle of Tarifa (1340).39 The 1380–1383 reformulation emphasizes the prestige of the Pereira family, extolling its reputed ancestors, the old Counts of Trastâmara. The Pereiras were a secondary branch of the old Trava-Trastâmara family and attempted to appropriate the family’s symbolic capital after its main branch became extinct in the mid-thirteenth century. It is known that the last representative of the main branch of the House of Trava-Trastâmara, Rodrigo Gomes de Trava, participated in the siege of Seville and had several troubadours in his service. It is possible that they created a number of tales about his deeds during the conquest. These tales were perhaps subsequently appropriated by the Pereira family, who put their supposed ancestor Rodrigo Froiaz in Rodrigo Gomes’ stead. Mattoso surmises that the stories were probably already conveyed in Count Pedro’s version of the book, with Rodrigo Gomes de Trava as the protagonist, and were subsequently altered by the 1380–1383 author, who created the character of Rodrigo Froiaz for this purpose.40 The source implies that Castilian expansion in al-Andalus under the rule of Fernando III (1217–1252) succeeded thanks to the ‘counsel’ of Rodrigo Froiaz.41 It suggests that royalty could only take the expansionist process forward if benefiting from the support of the nobility. Christian expansion in al-Andalus depended on good relations between the crown and the aristocracy; the former should respect the privileges of the latter and only in this case should the latter recognize the former’s pre-eminence. From this equilibrium derived success against the common enemy. The war against Islam thus emerges as an element propitiating social harmony.42 Rodrigo Froiaz is the protagonist of two stories occurring during the siege of Seville in Count Pedro’s Book: first, the source tells us how Rodrigo Froiaz and a few Hospitaller knights defeated a band of Muslims who had stolen some cows.43 The fray gains a religious dimension when Rodrigo Froiaz reminds the Hospitallers that their Order was established ‘for the exaltation of Christianity and the abatement of Mahomet’s law’.44 We thus encounter a holy war, for which the Hospitaller Order was created. This narrative furthermore establishes historical antecedents for the connections between the Pereiras and the Hospitaller Order in the fourteenth century.45 The second of Rodrigo Froiaz’s stories during the siege of Seville recounts how the powerful Muslim Acaçaf vowed to convert to Christianity and surrender three of the city’s towers to the Castilian heir to the throne, ‘Infante’ Alfonso. Rodrigo Froiaz advises the king and the ‘Infante’ to avoid such danger, as he and the Portuguese

39 LL21G9 and LL21G15. 40 José Mattoso, ‘Sobre as fontes’; Krus, A Concepção, p. 223 n. 533. 41 ‘Este dom Rodrigo Froiaz fez muitos serviços a el rei dom Fernando, o que tomou Sevilha […] e por seu conselho filhou muitos logares a Mouros’: LL21G91–2. 42 Krus, A Concepção, pp. 228–29. 43 LL21G918–44. 44 ‘pera esto foi estabelicida a vossa Ordem de cavalaria, por eixalçamento de cristiindade e por abaixamento da lei de Mafamede’: LL21G934. 45 Krus, A Concepção, p. 225 n. 540.

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knights would take the perilous task into their hands. Acaçaf ’s promise turns out to be an ambush but Rodrigo Froiaz and the Portuguese knights defeat the ambushers and return to the besiegers’ camp with Acaçaf ’s head as a token of their bravery.46 Acaçaf ’s portrait is monstrous: gigantic and black, fruit of an incestuous relationship, breastfed by a she-camel, and raised by a hermit in the mountains of Tunisia. The author draws inspiration from medieval French epics such as the Chanson de Roland and chivalric romances like the Amadís de Gaula to delineate this fiendish portrait.47 The conquest of Seville is an aristocratic endeavour in these two tales, since royal leadership of the enterprise is almost completely effaced and Fernando III is practically a passive character with no real control over the course of events. Rodrigo Froiaz is exalted as the leader of the Portuguese aristocracy, while the latter is represented as the vanguard of Iberian nobility, since the deeds of the Portuguese ‘fidalgos’ surpass even those of the mighty Castilian aristocracy.48 The religious characterization of the war is particularly conspicuous in the account of the Battle of Tarifa.49 The narrative deals with the Christian victory against the Marinid invasion of the Peninsula in 1340. The triumph is due to the intervention of the Portuguese knights and more specifically of the Hospitallers led by Álvaro Gonçalves Pereira, prior of the Hospitaller Order in Portugal and custodian of a relic of the True Cross. The fray is depicted as a sacralized universal conflict between Christianity and Islam. It seems that the term ‘Moor’ in this narrative lacks any ethnic or geographical connotation, since it is applied to all Muslims of the known world. The Portuguese chivalry faces the Muslim army comprised of ‘reis e infantes e outros altos homees’ (kings and princes and other high men),50 a specification that functions as a eulogy for the Portuguese knights who will vanquish such highly reputed adversaries. The source claims that what is at stake for the Portuguese knights in this battle is their chivalric honour, the salvation of their souls and those of their families and descendants, and the challenge to meet the valour of their ‘avoos, que gaanharom a Espanha’ (grandparents, who won Spain).51 The martyrological discourse reaches its apogee when an analogy is made between Christ, who ‘recebeu morte por nos salvar. Esto devemos nós fazer por el todos, prender morte hoje dia, por salvar a sa fe. E os que morrêremos hoje seeremos com el no seu reino celestial’ (‘received death to save us’, and the Portuguese knights, who ‘should all do [the same] for him, to receive death on this day, to save his faith’, and who ‘will join him in the celestial kingdom’).52 The salvation of Christendom lies in the hands of the Portuguese aristocracy. It is no coincidence that royalty is absent from this panegyric.

46 LL21G945–83. 47 Mattoso, ed., Narrativas, p. 100; Mattoso, ‘As fontes do nobiliário’, pp. 92–93; Krus, A Concepção, p. 227 n. 544. 48 Krus, A Concepção, p. 228 n. 546. 49 LL21G15. 50 LL21G1598. 51 LL21G15106. 52 LL21G15120–22.

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One of the more fascinating characteristics of this narrative is the depiction of Muslims as characters actively intervening in the plot, as opposed to other narratives where they are reduced to passive enemies of Christians. Here, we encounter more complex characters and they inclusively benefit from a somewhat positive image, as courageous, valiant, honoured combatants. Although this may have been a subterfuge to indirectly extoll the valour of the Christians, if the author’s sole objective was to simply praise the Christians, such a multidimensional depiction of the Muslim characters would be superfluous. I think that there is a genuine preoccupation with the plausibility and aesthetic outlook of the narrative.53 The author had no need to demonize the Muslims — as was done in the narrative of the conquest of Seville — to sacralize the conflict. Concluding the narrative of the Battle of Tarifa, the historical role of Álvaro Gonçalves Pereira is assessed. His memory is commemorated as custodian of a relic of the True Cross and saviour ‘da fe de Jesu Christo e de toda a Cristĩidade’ (of the faith of Jesus Christ and of all Christendom).54 It is quite a strong encomium for an aristocrat from a small peripheral kingdom of Medieval Latin Christendom. The 1380–1383 reformulator of the Count’s Book saw the war against the Muslims as the main resource to honour the lineage for which he worked, imbued with a crusading ideal consistent with the mindset of a member of a religious military order. For a writer from this social background, the Muslim ‘Archother’ was the perfect literary resource to build a discourse of political legitimation.

The Royal Other Notions of Muslim otherness in the books of lineages, however, have to be understood within the context of the political relations within the Christian kingdoms, particularly the relations between royalty and the aristocracy. When one of these groups fails to fulfil its social role, the equilibrium between Christian Self and Islamic Other is disrupted. The most common topic is that the royalty ceases to fulfil its social role — to arbitrate intra-aristocratic conflicts, receive military service from its vassals and reward them with wealth — and thus justifies a more pragmatic or ambiguous attitude of Christian aristocratic groups towards Muslim powers. Islam’s digital difference is conditioned by constantly evolving political relations among the Christian ruling groups. Disagreements with the royal power occasionally justify agreements with Muslims, while harmony between the aristocracy and royalty assures order and allows for a Christian military impetus directed towards the Islamic ‘Archother’.

53 Teresa Amado, ‘A cada um a sua Batalha de Tarifa’, in Literatura Medieval, vol. iv: Actas do IV Congresso da Associação Hispânica de Literatura Medieval (Lisboa, 1–5 Outubro 1991), ed. by Aires A. Nascimento and Cristina A. Ribeiro (Lisboa: Edições Cosmos, 1993), pp. 303–07 (p. 307), considered that the relevance given to Muslim characters in this narrative stems from the use of Arabic sources. 54 LL21G15312.

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The narrative of Nuno Gonçalves de Lara’s exile in Granada may serve as an example: this high-ranking Castilian aristocrat found refuge in the Muslim city after quarrelling with Alfonso X of Castile-Leon (1252–1284), accompanied by representatives of the most powerful Castilian families (besides the Laras, there were also the Haros and the Castros), and even a legitimate younger brother of Alfonso X.55 Later on, after the disagreements with the royal power were settled, Nuno Gonçalves ended his life in a battle near Écija (1275), defending Christian Iberia from an invasion of the Marinids.56 Aristocratic notions of otherness appear in a seemingly contradictory way due to the social agents’ constantly changing political positioning. The unstable political reality and its complex web of relations determine who is the Other and who is the Self at a given time. Even though Islam is the common Other for royalty and the aristocracy, unity among Christian ruling groups is usually just a chimera. In addition to their aristocratic audience, these texts were also directed at the royal court. The books of lineages were a reminder of how the upper nobility had (allegedly) conquered the kingdom from the Muslims, thus highlighting the royalty’s historical debt to the aristocracy. By writing tales of resistance against abuses of royal power, the aristocracy established exempla for the members of the class. It also reminded royalty that noblemen had successfully resisted monarchic power in the past and they would do so again if necessary. In these tales of resistance, the king, as representative of royal power, naturally embodies otherness. Animosity towards royalty is expressed in different types of narratives. We have, for example, tales occurring in ‘domestic’ situations. Both the Old Book and the Count’s Book include the story of how Gonçalo de Sousa punished his wife and stood up to King Afonso Henriques, who had made sexual advances towards Gonçalo’s wife in his own house.57 The Dean’s Book and Count Pedro’s Book also include another interesting story concerning an aristocratic Portuguese lineage and Afonso Henriques.58 According to this tale, Fernão Mendes de Bragança was mocked during a meal by the monarch, Sancho Nunes de Barbosa and Gonçalo de Sousa. Fernão Mendes’ anger at their scorn was such that he forced the king to grant him not only the land of Gonçalo de Sousa but also the king’s own daughter in marriage, who was already married to Sancho Nunes. These tales have the clear purpose of conveying exemplary narratives of aristocrats defending their honour against the king, as well as against rival families. Submissiveness and weakness, especially in military matters, are some of the traits usually attached to kinghood. For example, Count Pedro’s Book relates the deeds of

55 LL10E119–14. 56 LL10E1115–19. Cf. Krus, A Concepção, pp. 214–16; Silva, ‘Mixed Marriages’. Count Pedro omits the intervention of the Castilian royal armies in the battle. Thus, the honour of the victory is reserved for the Castilian aristocracy, while royalty is excluded from the picture (Krus, A Concepção, p. 216 n. 514); Simon R. Doubleday, Los Lara: Nobleza y monarquía en la España medieval (Madrid: Turner, 2004), pp. 91–93. 57 LV1M7; LL22A5. 58 LD12A43–4; LL37B2.

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Rodrigo Froiaz de Trastâmara and his Portuguese knights during the war between King Garcia of Galicia-Portugal (1065–1071) and Sancho II of Castile (1065–1072).59 The characters of Rodrigo Froiaz and Garcia, respectively, epitomize images of aristocracy and royalty. Rodrigo Froiaz is utterly loyal to his sovereign and appears as a model of feudo-vassalic ethics. He is aware of the kingdom’s higher interests and appears as the main guarantee for the kingdom’s stability. King Garcia, on the other hand, is pictured as an unsteady ruler whose politico-military ineptitude leads to the loss of the kingdom. In the beginning of the narrative, Garcia is manipulated by an anonymous favourite and alienates the upper aristocracy from the governance of the kingdom. When the protests of the aristocrats prove unsuccessful, Rodrigo Froiaz kills the king’s favourite. As a result, he faces the king’s wrath and goes into exile. The king, however, has to summon Rodrigo Froiaz back to defend the realm from the invasion of Sancho II’s forces.60 The message is clear: no king should alienate the upper strata of the aristocracy from political power. There is no prosperous kingdom without the nobility to defend it. In the series of battles that ensue, only Rodrigo Froiaz and the Portuguese nobility are exalted. The king is either absent from battle or, when he does take part in the fighting, he is completely incompetent. Count Pedro’s Book tells us, for instance, how Rodrigo Froiaz captured Sancho II in the first of two battles in Santarém, but the Castilian monarch was able to escape after Rodrigo put him under Garcia’s guard. Garcia’s army is usually led by Rodrigo Froiaz, while the only instance where Garcia is described as leader of the army is in the second battle of Santarém, when Garcia is finally defeated and captured by Sancho II, who takes the Kingdom of GaliciaPortugal for himself.61 The only instance where Garcia leads the army is when the army is defeated and the kingdom lost. Garcia’s ineptitude is not only military but also political. For example, depicting a meeting of Garcia’s royal council at Santarém,

59 LL21G7. Rodrigo Froiaz I was, according to the Count’s Book, the grandfather of Rodrigo Froiaz II, who took part in the siege of Seville. We have already seen that Rodrigo Froiaz II was, at least for the most part, a fictitious character. This seems also to be the case with his grandfather, since it is anachronistic to place the historical Rodrigo Froiaz, who is documented between 1091 and 1133, in a war that took place in 1071. Cf. José Luis López Sangil, ‘La nobleza altomedieval gallega. La familia Froilaz-Traba. Sus fundaciones monacales en Galicia en los siglos XI, XII y XIII’, Nalgures, 4 (2007), 241–331. According to Mattoso, this narrative is an adaptation of the Canção do cerco de Zamora taken from the summarized prose version in Alfonso X’s Primera Crónica General. Mattoso considers that this narrative was also reformulated in 1380–1383, to praise another alleged ancestor of the Pereira family. Cf. Mattoso, ed., Narrativas, p. 28; Mattoso, ‘As fontes do nobiliário’, pp. 86–87; Mattoso, ‘Sobre as fontes’, p. 262. Despite the Galician origin of the Trava-Trastâmaras, the source treats Rodrigo Froiaz as Portuguese and Garcia’s army as exclusively Portuguese. This demonstrates how the Count’s Book is informed by a sense of regional identity that places the Portuguese aristocracy on a higher level than other regional aristocracies of the Iberian Peninsula. 60 LL21G716–30. 61 LL21G731–94.

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the Count’s Book describes how, in face of the king’s wavering attitude, the aristocracy decisively took the initiative.62 It is the aristocracy that governs the kingdom de facto. Although Sancho II appears as the victor, the source heaps no praise on him. All the encomia go to Rui Diaz ‘Cide’ — the famous ‘El Cid’ — vassal of the Castilian monarch and supreme model of aristocratic virtue in medieval Iberian historiography. Neither is Sancho II’s military prowess emphasized, since he owes his final victory to Rui Diaz, who came to the aid of the Castilian king in the final battle of Santarém.63 If a parallel is established between Rodrigo Froiaz and King Garcia, the same applies to ‘Cide’ and Sancho II. This parallel can be systematized as follows: ARISTOCRACY

ROYALTY

Just; fair Courageous Loyal Resolved; powerful Materially disinterested Active Militarily fit Exercises de facto power

Tyrannical Cowardly False; perfidious Impotent; irresponsible; submissive; feeble; wavering Greedy; lustful Passive Militarily unfit; absent from battle Exercises power through the ‘counsel’ of aristocrats; nominal power Unable to guarantee social stability; easily manipulated

Guarantees social stability

A similar pattern is found in the narrative of the abduction of Queen Mécia, wife of Sancho II of Portugal (1223–1248), by his vassal Raimundo Viegas de Portocarreiro.64 The tale is set during the 1245–1248 civil war in Portugal, when Sancho II was deposed by his brother who rose to the throne as Afonso III. It recounts how Raimundo Viegas led the host of another high-ranking aristocrat, Martim Gil de Soverosa, to abduct the Queen from the king’s bed. The queen was taken from the royal residence in Coimbra to the castle of Ourém; Sancho II failed to rescue her, as he was attacked by the aristocrats’ armies and forced to retreat. Although the narrative deals with a blatant breach of feudo-vassalic social relations (Raimundo Viegas was a vassal of Sancho II), the emphasis lies on Sancho II’s incompetence — he allowed his wife to be kidnapped from his own bed — and military powerlessness. While Muslim otherness is essentially ethno-religious — although decisively conditioned by political factors —, royal otherness is purely political. Royal otherness usually depends on the king’s attitude towards the aristocracy. One could say that royal otherness is based on what Eriksen defined as ‘analogue difference’, i.e., ‘[w]hen […] principles of exclusion and inclusion allow for differences of degree’ and ‘do not encourage the formation of unambiguous, clear-cut boundaries’.65 According to the 62 LL21G748–56. 63 LL21G781–94. 64 LL43F5. 65 Eriksen, Ethnicity, p. 79.

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aristocratic ideal, the king is merely the most prominent aristocrat, a ‘primus inter pares’, who exercises supreme justice and distributes wealth in exchange for service. When the king fails to fulfil this role — which happens frequently — he becomes the Other. The fulfilment of the ruling groups’ mutual duties safeguards the maintenance of social harmony within the Christian kingdoms. Count Pedro’s Book gives us some examples of monarchs failing to fulfil their responsibilities, thus losing the nobility’s support and letting the kingdom fall into chaos. The narrative of João Nunes de Lara II is a good example of this phenomenon.66 After the death of Sancho IV of Castile-Leon (1284–1295), the regency of the kingdom fell upon ‘Infante’ Henrique, tutor of the infant monarch Fernando IV (1295–1312). The regent ceased to fulfil the obligations of material reward that Sancho IV had established with João Nunes and thus the relationship between the family of Lara and the crown went sour. As soon as the Lara family, represented by João Nunes, left the crown’s side, chaos arose in the kingdom, with an ensuing civil war between the crown and two contenders for the throne: Fernando IV’s uncle, ‘Infante’ João, and cousin, Afonso de Lacerda.67 The narrative demonstrates that the lack of support from the most powerful Castilian family, the Lara family, meant the rupture of the prevailing social harmony. João Nunes is then involved in a series of conflicts with royal power, but ends up negotiating peace and getting an even bigger material reward than the one he was entitled to in the beginning. The Count’s Book again emphasizes the debility of royal power when facing the upper aristocracy. As soon as João Nunes negotiated peace with Fernando IV’s court, one of the contenders for the throne abandoned the kingdom and the other dropped his claims to kinghood.68 During his conflicts with the Castilian royalty, João Nunes de Lara swore allegiance to King Dinis of Portugal.69 Feudo-vassalic alliances with foreign royal powers were thus acceptable if one’s own sovereign embarked on policies contrary to the upper aristocracy’s interests. João Nunes represents the ideal exemplum for his descendants, as a head of lineage always triumphant against his enemies, which are mostly the royal power and sectors of the nobility allied with it.

Conclusions We have two different forms of otherness in the sources: first, a notion of Muslim otherness, which is ethno-religious and permanent; and second, a notion of royal otherness that is purely political and circumstantial. I referred to the former as ‘archotherness’ on account of Islam’s status as the Other per se, common to all Christian ruling groups. The circumstantial otherness of royalty or, using Eriksen’s

66 LL10E13. 67 LL10E1316–19. 68 LL10E1320–52. 69 LL10E1351–52.

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terminology, its ‘analogue difference’, contrasts with the implicit and all-pervading notion of otherness typified by the Muslim, which in Eriksen’s terms could be considered ‘digital difference’. Islam’s digital otherness relates to the generalization or categorization of a whole ethno-religious group, while the royalty’s analogue otherness relates to a single individual and his entourage. Aristocratic notions of otherness in fourteenth-century Portugal were decisively conditioned by political criteria. Despite being ethno-religious in origin, Muslim otherness is conspicuous in the sources due to Islam’s political status; because, throughout the Middle Ages, Islam ruled part of the Iberian Peninsula. In other words, the Islamic Other simultaneously consisted of a political menace as well as an object of further military expansion for the northern Iberian Christian polities. It is this particular politico-historical reality that made Muslims omnipresent in the sources, not simply their ethno-religious difference. Both the royal Other and the Muslim ‘Archother’ were essential to the aristocratic historical-ideological discourse due to their status as holders of politico-military power and as enemies or rivals of the aristocracy, notwithstanding the fact that Islam’s ‘archotherness’ derived from an ethno-religious difference that distinguished it from both Christian ruling groups. Islam’s position throughout the centuries as a politico-military enemy justified the aristocracy’s very existence as a privileged social group. In the mid-fourteenth century, Iberian Islam was far from the borders of the Portuguese kingdom and confined to the enclave of Granada. Since the Portuguese aristocracy based its very ‘raison d’être’ on the war against the Muslims, this may have created a sort of existential dilemma for this social group, hence the necessity of investing resources in historiographical production that emphasized the warrior aristocracy’s importance during the kingdom’s foundational period. The Battle of Tarifa, which was a recent event at the time Count Pedro was compiling his book, could equally serve as a reminder that Islam was still a menace, thus Christian societies still needed the services of the warrior aristocracy. On the other hand, the fact that the most common adversary of the aristocracy in these sources is the royalty can be explained by the historical context surrounding the compilation of these narratives — times of confrontation between the upper layers of the aristocracy and the royal power, which pursued a programme of political centralization. In the aristocratic world-view, political stability and social harmony depended on aristocratic support for the monarchy. Without it, royal power became either impotent or tyrannical. The legitimacy of royal power relied on the assent of the aristocracy. War against the Muslim ‘Archother’ functioned simultaneously as cause and consequence of the union between royalty and aristocracy. The dissolution of that union, usually due to the misconduct of royalty, often led to the establishment of alliances with Muslims. War against Islam appears in the sources as the key element for a harmonious relation among Christian ruling classes: the aristocracy fulfils its military duties against the ‘Moors’, while royalty rewards those services with material wealth. Royalty may appear as part of the Self when it fulfils these social functions, but it always assumes a secondary role. Muslims frequently have a residual presence in the narratives, yet they are the main source of legitimacy. Their digital difference makes them the main element in the

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discourse of political legitimation, although quantitatively less present in the narratives. Military success over Islam — or rather, the remembrance of past victories against Islam — furnishes the aristocracy with symbolic means of legitimation. War against Islam is a source of symbolic power for this social group. The confrontation with Islam, even in texts where the topic is merely secondary, is the main justification for aristocratic social prominence; the very social function of this group is defined by Islamic otherness. The otherness of royal power and of Islam is conditioned by the relative positioning of the social agents in the political field. On the one hand, Muslims were the politico-military enemy per se for the Portuguese aristocracy, due to the very historical circumstances surrounding the origin and development of the Iberian Christian kingdoms. On the other hand, political confrontation between the aristocracy and royal power was topical at the time these genealogical works were compiled. Although Muslim ‘archotherness’ derived from ethno-religious difference, it is Islam’s status as a political enemy that brings it to the fore. Religious antagonism is seldom noted in the narratives and Muslim otherness could apparently be neutralized by conversion to Christianity. Islam’s digital difference is thus conditional, and there was plenty of room for pragmatism and negotiation. The religious dimension of the confrontation only came to be emphasized in narratives reformulated in 1380–1383, eliminating any space for compromise. The sociological and cultural background of the author of the 1380–1383 reformulation of the Count’s Book, affiliated with a religious military order, may well explain why he chose not only to focus on tales of war against Islam, but inclusively to sacralize the war and thus extoll the valour of the Portuguese aristocracy, particularly of the Pereira family. Only the Muslim ‘Archother’ would permit the sacralization of the military prowess of the aristocracy so effectively.

Works Cited Primary Sources Mattoso, José, ed., Narrativas dos Livros de Linhagens (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1983) ———, ed., Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, Nova Série, 2 vols, vol. ii: Livro de Linhagens do Conde D. Pedro (Lisboa: Academia das Ciências, 1980) Piel, Joseph, and José Mattoso, eds, Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, Nova Série, vol. i: Livros Velhos de Linhagens (Lisboa: Academia das Ciências, 1980) Secondary Works Aalto, Sirpa, ‘Categorizing Otherness in the Kings’ Sagas’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Eastern Finland, 2010) Amado, Teresa, ‘A cada um a sua Batalha de Tarifa’, in Literatura Medieval, vol. iv: Actas do IV Congresso da Associação Hispânica de Literatura Medieval (Lisboa, 1–5 Outubro 1991), ed. by Aires Augusto Nascimento and Cristina Almeida Ribeiro (Lisboa: Edições Cosmos, 1993), pp. 303–07

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Anna, Luigi de, ‘The Peoples of Finland and Early Medieval Sources: The Characterization of “Alienness”’, in Suomen varhaishistoria, ed. by Kyösti Julku (Rovaniemi: PohjoisSuomen historiallinen yhdistys, 1992), pp. 11–22 Bourdieu, Pierre, Pascalian Meditations, trans. by Richard Nice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000) ———, ‘Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field’, Sociological Theory, 12.1 (1994), 1–18 ———, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power’, in Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, trans. by Matthew Adamson (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), pp. 123–39 Bourdieu, Pierre, and Wacquant, Loïc, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: Polity, 1992) Costa, Paula Pinto, ‘Álvaro Gonçalves Pereira: um homem entre a oração e a construção patrimonial como estratégia de consolidação familiar’, População e Sociedade, 23 (2015), 45–71 Coutinho, Carlos Nelson, Gramsci’s Political Thought (Leiden: Brill, 2012) Doubleday, Simon, Los Lara: Nobleza y monarquía en la España medieval (Madrid: Turner, 2004) Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives, 3rd edn (New York: Pluto, 2010) Esser, Raingard, ‘Cultures in Contact: The Representation of “the Other” in Early Modern German Travel Narratives’, in Racial Discrimination and Ethnicity in European History, ed. by Guðmundur Hálfdanarson (Pisa: Edizioni Plus, 2003), pp. 33–47 Figueiredo, Carolina Ferreira de, ‘Definindo alteridade: Um estudo sobre as noções de raça e etnia nas “Siete Partidas” e na “Primera Crónica General de España de Alfonso X”’, Faces da História, 2.2 (2015), 83–99 Follador, Kellen Jacobsen, ‘O discurso que não foi esquecido e permaneceu na memória. O preconceito antijudaico e a elaboração da alteridade conversa’, Revista Grafia, 11 (2014), 112–26 García Fitz, Francisco, ‘La confrontación ideológica con el adversario musulman a través de las biografias nobiliarias del siglo XV: la percepción del “otro”’, in Cristãos contra Muçulmanos na Idade Média Peninsular: Bases Ideológicas e Doutrinais de um Confronto (Séculos X–XIV), ed. by Carlos de Ayala Martínez and Isabel Fernandes (Lisboa: Edições Colibri, 2015), pp. 271–94 Josserand, Philippe, ‘En péninsule Ibérique et par-delà: les ordres militaires face à l’Autre à la lumière de quelques contacts réputés pacifiques’, in Cristãos contra Muçulmanos na Idade Média Peninsular: Bases Ideológicas e Doutrinais de um Confronto (Séculos X–XIV), ed. by Carlos de Ayala Martínez and Isabel Fernandes (Lisboa: Edições Colibri, 2015), pp. 231–46 Krus, Luis, A Concepção Nobiliárquica do Espaço Ibérico (1280–1380) (Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1994) López Sangil, José Luis, ‘La nobleza altomedieval gallega. La familia Froilaz-Traba. Sus fundaciones monacales en Galicia en los siglos XI, XII y XIII’, Nalgures, 4 (2007), 241–331

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Malia-Milanes, Victor, ‘Images of the Other: Venice’s Perception of the Knights of Malta’, in Racial Discrimination and Ethnicity in European History, ed. by Guðmundur Hálfdanarson (Pisa: Edizioni Plus, 2003), pp. 63–76 Mattoso, José, ‘As fontes do nobiliário do Conde D. Pedro’, in José Mattoso, A Nobreza Medieval Portuguesa: A Família e o Poder, 4th edn (Lisboa: Editorial Estampa, 1994), pp. 57–100 ———, ‘Dois séculos de vicissitudes políticas’, in História de Portugal, vol. ii A Monarquia Feudal, ed. by José Mattoso (Lisboa: Editorial Estampa, 1997), pp. 25–140 ———, ‘A nobreza rural portuense nos séculos XI e XII’, in A Nobreza Medieval Portuguesa: A Família e o Poder, 4th edn (Lisboa: Editorial Estampa, 1994), pp. 161–253 Mattoso, José, Naquele Tempo. Ensaios de História Medieval (Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 2011) ———, ‘A nobreza medieval portuguesa (séculos X a XIV)’, in José Mattoso, Naquele Tempo. Ensaios de História Medieval (Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 2011), pp. 287–310 ———, ‘Sobre as fontes do conde de Barcelos’, in José Mattoso, Naquele Tempo. Ensaios de História Medieval (Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 2011), pp. 259–65 ———, ‘A transmissão textual dos livros de linhagens’, in José Mattoso, Naquele Tempo. Ensaios de História Medieval (Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 2011), pp. 267–83 ———, ‘O triunfo da monarquia portuguesa: 1258–1264. Ensaio de história política’, in José Mattoso, Naquele Tempo. Ensaios de História Medieval (Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 2011), pp. 515–45 Miranda, José Carlos, ‘Do “Liber Regum” ao “Livro Velho de Linhagens”’, in Estudios sobre la Edad Media, el Renacimiento y la temprana modernidad, ed. by Jimena Gamba Corradine and Francisco Bautista Pérez (La Rioja: CILENGUA – Centro Internacional de Investigación de la Lengua Española, 2010), pp. 301–10 Moreira, Filipe Alves, Afonso Henriques e a Primeira Crónica Portuguesa (Porto: Estratégias Criativas, 2008) Palmer, James, ‘The Otherness of Non-Christians in the Early Middle Ages’, Studies in Church History, 51 (2015), 33–52 Pizarro, José, ‘D. Dinis e a nobreza dos finais do século XIII’, Revista da Faculdade de Letras, 10 (1993), 91–101 ———, D. Dinis, 2nd edn (Lisboa: Temas e Debates, 2012) Rodríguez-Picavea, Enrique, ‘La visión del Otro: la imagen del musulmán en el Poema de Alfonso XI’, in Cristãos contra Muçulmanos na Idade Média Peninsular: Bases Ideológicas e Doutrinais de um Confronto (Séculos X–XIV), ed. by Carlos de Ayala Martínez and Isabel Fernandes (Lisboa: Edições Colibri, 2015), pp. 369–95 Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979) Silva, Tiago João Queimada e, ‘Mixed Marriages, Moorish Vices and Military Betrayals: Christian-Islamic Confluence in “Count Pedro’s Book of Lineages”’, in Conflict and Collaboration in Medieval Iberia, ed. by Kurt Villads Jensen, Anthony John Lappin, and Kim Bergqvist (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, forthcoming) Sousa, Bernardo Vasconcelos e, D. Afonso IV (Lisboa: Temas e Debates, 2009) Swartz, David, Symbolic Power, Politics and Intellectuals: The Political Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013)

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Tolan, John, ‘The “Other” in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: The Crusaders and their Varying Images of the Muslims in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin’, in The Mediterranean Other – The Other Mediterranean, ed. by Medardus Brehl, Andreas Eckl, and Kristin Platt (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2019), pp. 105–14 Uebel, Michael, Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of Alterity in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) Ventura, Leontina, D. Afonso III (Lisboa: Temas e Debates, 2006) Vilar, Hermínia, D. Afonso II (Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 2005) Young, Robert J. C., ‘Postcolonial Remains’, New Literary History, 43 (2012), 36–39

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‘Otherness’ Within? The Sámi in Medieval Scandinavian Law

The creation of identity in written law has long been emphasized in historiography, particularly in secular medieval royal legislation. However, how these laws simultaneously created otherness has thus far received minimal scholarly attention. The nomadic and pagan ethnic groups of the ‘Sámi’ are nearly invisible as a category in Scandinavian medieval written law. Scandinavian legal development reached its zenith in the twelfth and thirteenth century, alongside state consolidation and northward expansion of royal power. Given the existence of diverse ethnic groups in the territory into which the Scandinavian kingdoms expanded, the absence of these groups in the legal material of the same period is striking, particularly when compared with the early modern regulations.1 This paper examines how the Sámi were depicted in Norse legislation from Sweden and Norway, and discusses to what degree this minority constituted an ‘inner other’ in these sources. However, such clear categories and distinctions risk fostering misguided understandings of ethnicity as linked to constant cultural differences. ‘Ethnicity’ has long been understood in relational terms, and ethnic identity has been perceived as appearing in communication with the ‘other’;2 this ‘othering’ is interpreted as being a part of inner consolidation. The Sámi culture, or cultures (as there are several), are currently primarily associated with the far north, although the cultural domain of the various Sámi populations and modern ‘Sápmi’, both historically and presently, extends south to the middle regions of Norway and Sweden.3 The Sámi were regularly mentioned in other Norse sources, and they are usually denominated with the exonym ‘fiðr’ or



1 Lars Ivar Hansen and Bjørnar Olsen, Hunters in Transition: An Outline of Early Sámi History (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 302–25. 2 Harald Eidheim, ‘When Ethnic Identity is a Social Stigma’, in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference, ed. by Fredrik Barth (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969; repr.: Long Grove: Waveland Press, 1998), pp. 39–58 (pp. 39–41). 3 Today, there are five major categories of Sámi in Fennoscandia: Northern-, Skolt-, Enare-, Lule-, Piteand South Sámi, in addition to a category based on livelihood, the Sea Sámi. Miriam Tveit  •  is Associate professor of medieval history at Nord University, Bodø Norway. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, IMR 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 437–455 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.123602

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‘finnr’ (pl. ‘finni/-a’) in western Nordic sources and with ‘lappir’ in eastern ones;4 famous examples originate from Snorri’s Heimskringla and Historia Norvegiae.5 There exist no Sámi sources from the Middle Ages that could provide a complexity to the Scandinavian history. Both Sámi and Norse populations were negotiable categories, and interactions between the two groups in the form of marriage and shared living was not uncommon; additionally, taxation of the Sámi was significant, and trade was appealing. The author of the twelfth-century Historia Norvegiae, for instance, offered a more detailed and nuanced account of the Sámi relative to the other pagan peoples inhabiting the region.6 The historian Lars Ivar Hansen has asserted that this reception was the result of the Norse population’s familiarity with the Sámi relative to neighbouring peoples, such as Biarmians, Chûds, and Kvens.7 These neighbours do not appear to have been clearly defined from the Norse perspective, and are also not clearly distinguished categories among modern scholars. The Sámi were depicted as recognizable in many ways, as the ‘familiar stranger’, or as the ‘other within’. Nevertheless, among the Norse population, the ‘otherness’ of the Sámi was salient; they were represented as heathens in an ever-expanding sea of Christianity. Many were nomadic and used different languages and cultural expressions; they were also depicted as practicing different commercial activities and as specializing in providing furs and inland resources for the Scandinavian treasuries. One would therefore expect legislators to comment on the heathen practices of the Sámi, which was otherwise a pivotal topic both among the Church and the developing royal authorities; one would also expect legislators to comment on sorcery, which the Sami were infamous for mastering and which was a recurrent topic in descriptions of the Scandinavian peninsula by authors such as Adam of Bremen and the anonymous writers of Ágrip and Historia Norvegiae.8

4 Else Mundal, ‘The Perception of the Samis and their Religion in Old Norse Sources’, Shamanism and Northern Ecology, 36 (1996), 97–116 (p. 98); Bjørg Evjen and Lars Ivar Hansen, ‘One people–Many Names: On Different Designations for the Sami Population in the Norwegian County of Nordland through the Centuries’, Continuity and Change, 24 (2009), 211–43 (pp. 214–15). 5 Snorra Sturlusonar, ‘Haralds saga hins hárfagra’, nos 25 and 26, in Heimskringla, ed. by Nils Linder and K. A. Haggson, vol. 1 (Uppsala: Schultz, 1870), pp. 50–84 (pp. 68–70); Historia Norvegiæ, in Monumenta historia Norvegiæ. Latinske kildeskrifter til Norges historie i middelalderen, ed. by Gustav Storm (Kristiania: Brøgger, 1880), pp. 69–124 (p. 78: ‘finni’). For a summary of the discussion of dating this source, see Carl Phelpstead, ‘Introduction’, in A History of Norway and the Passion and Miracles of the Blessed Óláfr, ed. by Carl Phelpstead (London: University College of London, 2001), pp. xvi–xvii. 6 Historia Norvegiæ, ed. by Storm, pp. 82–87. 7 Lars Ivar Hansen, ‘Om synet på de “andre” – ute og hjemme. Geografi og folkeslag på Nordkalotten ifølge Historia Norwegiae’, in Olavslegenden og den latinske historieskrivning i 1100-tallets Norge, ed. by Inger Ekrem, Lars Boje Mortensen, and Karen Skovgaard-Petersen (København: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000), pp. 54–87. 8 Adam Bremensis, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum 4, 32, ed. by Bernhard Schmeidler, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 83 vols (Hannover: Hahn, 1871–), 2 (1917), p. 265; Ágrip no. 2 and 3, in Ágrip af Noregskonungasögum: A twelfth-century synoptic history of the kings of Norway, ed. by Matthew James Driscoll (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1995), pp. 4–6. Historia Norvegiæ, ed. by Storm, pp. 85–87.

‘ot he rne ss’ w i t hi n?

Otherness in Law What elements of ‘otherness’ influence perceptions of the Sámi in Scandinavian law? Legal otherness can apply to minority out-groups within the society or general strangers outside of the society. Various forms of minority groups in medieval societies would potentially constitute minorities in medieval written law; ethnicities, like the Sámi, are merely one form of minority group. Modern historical perspectives persuade scholars to examine hidden social categories in historical sources. Basic groups can often be identified through simple negations of the established majority. For instance, groups such as ‘non-men’ (women and children), or non- (catholic) Christians (e.g., Jews, Muslims, orthodox), could be perceived as ‘the Other’ in law. Legal historians agree that premodern written law was often wielded as a tool by and for the elite; this inherently rendered normal people of less standing, which comprised the largest portion of the population in medieval society, an out-group. Furthermore, some were excluded from the status hierarchy because of taboos connected with their inferior status, their lack of legal rights (such as the unfree), their trade (e.g., undertakers, moneylenders, prostitutes), their outlaw status, or those guilty of ‘níðingsverc’, heinous crimes.9 Moreover, the category of the general stranger encompasses the foreign. In a medieval context, this may refer to the external world or to foreigners living within the community to which the law is applied. Consequently, to define the ‘other’ in law, it is necessary to define the subjects of law, the ‘self’. However, the legal subject of written law is not always explicit or declared. Early medieval law typically adheres to one of two categories, either territorial law or law of a ‘gens’, also referred to as personal applications of the law.10 Examples from the early medieval Leges encapsulate these categories. For instance, the seventh-century Lombard Edict applied to Lombards and other non-Romans under the Lombard king in Italy, while Romans were required to consult Roman law, even if the effect of this division in practice is widely discussed.11 Scholars also continue to debate the nature of other early medieval laws and whether laws exerted jurisdiction in the territory or exclusively in relation to one people; for instance, the Visigothic Codex Euricianus



9 ‘Níðingsverc’ could be secret murder, housebreaking or treason. See, for instance, Anne Irene Riisøy, ‘Deviant Burials: Societal Exclusion of Dead Outlaws in Medieval Norway’, in Cultures of Death and Dying in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by Mia Korpiola and Anu Lahtinen (Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, 2015), pp. 49–81 (pp. 54–55); Norges gamle Love indtil 1387, ed. by Ebbe Hertzberg, vol. 5 (Kristiania [Oslo]: Grøndahl, 1895), p. 472. 10 Roger Collins, Visigothic Spain, 409–711 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), p. 225. 11 Brigitte Pohl-Resl, ‘Legal Practice and Ethnic Identity in Lombard Italy’, in Strategies of Distinction: The Constructions of Ethnic Communities 300–800, ed. by Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz, Transformation of the Roman World, 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 205–19 (pp. 209–10); Miriam Tveit, ‘In Search of Legal Transmission, Inheritance and Compensation for Homicide in Medieval Secular Law’ (PhD thesis, University of Tromsø, 2016), p. 36 [Accessed 15 January 2019].

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has been the subject of such debates.12 The first Anglo-Saxon laws, the seventh- and eighth-century laws of Kent, seemingly exerted jurisdiction within the kingdom; these do not appear to contain a primary ethnic quality and are therefore territorial laws enforced over the kingdom.13 Medieval legislators rarely deemed it necessary to explicitly specify the legal subjects or boundaries of the territory. Additionally, since the royal power in early medieval kingdoms could be capricious, the jurisdiction of law in practice was as well. However, even for ‘personal’ laws, defining the subject of law is ambiguous and complex. The groups were significantly more diverse and perceived as more diverse than modern constructed population categories, such as Sámi and Norse.14 Scandinavian law originated among the Norse population in Sweden and Norway, but it is unclear whether the written Scandinavian medieval laws constitute purely territorial law for the Norse population, or whether they include an ethnic element. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Scandinavian law did not consist of one law for each kingdom, but instead consisted of provincial laws which encompassed a large and defined province. In 1274, Norway was subjected to a National Code, and Sweden developed its own national code in the mid-fourteenth century. The province encompassed a particular region with a shared legal culture.15 The written laws of these provinces date to periods after the Norwegian kingdom emerged in the tenth century, and most likely occurred simultaneously with the origin of a Swedish kingdom in the thirteenth century. In the case of Norwegian laws, the sources and contents of the laws themselves suggest that some of the rules originated, before the state-formation process. The provincial laws continued to be applied after the state emerged; each belonged to particular landscapes with main provincial assemblies, or ‘lǫgþing’, and they continued to exist as provincial legal entities when the overarching Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish kingdoms were established. Later, the revision and formal approval of the laws became the obligation and right of royal authority, although scholars disagree about the power structure involved in this process and the king’s role in shaping the law and determining the contents.16 The agent behind the legislation is therefore sometimes obscure. In examinations of perceived otherness in written law, it is the perceived otherness of the legislator that can be identified. Such an analysis must adopt the legislator’s perspective and seek to expose the motives of

12 Dietrich Claude, ‘Remarks about Relations Between Visigoths and Hispano-Romans in the Seventh Century’, in Strategies of Distinction, ed. by Pohl and Reimitz, pp. 117–30 (pp. 122–23); Collins, Visigothic Spain, pp. 225–27, summarises this debate. 13 Tveit, ‘In Search of Legal Transmission’, p. 42. 14 Hansen and Olsen, Hunters in Transition, pp. 9–34. 15 In addition, the few towns had their own assemblies that were independent of the county. The town laws of Niðaróss (modern Trondheim) were called ‘Bærkoyar rettr’. Apparently, more general versions of the ‘Bærkoyar rettr’ were applied in other towns, commercial centres, or markets. See Jan Ragnar Hagland and Jørn Sandnes, Bjarkøyretten – Nidaros eldste bylov (Gjøvik: Samlaget, 1997), pp. xx–xxxxviii. 16 Helle Vogt, The Function of Kinship in Medieval Nordic Legislation (Leiden: Brill, 2010), p. 47. Vogt assumes royal involvement in the process.

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the legal authority and the influences and pressures to which they were subjected in the lawmaking process.17 Norway applied four known provincial laws, and Sweden developed c. ten before 1350. These were each organized into thematic subsections, called ‘bálkr’, according to their juridical field. The Scandinavian provincial laws represent the existence of a regional legal identity, but in vast and expanding regions which encompassed several regional markers. This particularly applied to Norway, where the four known provincial laws encompassed larger, politically created provinces. In these cases, the jurisdiction created the ‘self ’ rather than a predetermined identity. These did not equate with ethnic distinctions or regional identity but rather a stronger aspect of territorial law. The shared experience and a conception of a common cultural identity potentially created a legal cultural identity. Conversely, some Swedish provincial laws proclaimed the subjects as members of a ‘gens’. West-Gothic law was applied to the West Goths, and the law of Gotland was applied to Gotlanders. Other Swedish provincial laws do not state this as prominently, for example the Law of Östgötaland opens with a reference to the landscape and not the ‘gens’: ‘Hær byrias östgöta laghbok’ (Here begins the Östgöta lawbook).18 In these cases, the law appears territorial and renders all people within the province its legal subjects. Issues arise from the treatment of the Swedish provinces as a congruent political unity, which they were not;19 consolidation of the Swedish state in the thirteenth century was a protracted process. Additionally, the landscapes that formed the Swedish kingdom were comprised of regions with separate identities.20 The use of othering in the legal texts may have contributed to the ongoing process of internal consolidation and external demarcation. Norse perceptions of the Sámi within written law provide insights into perceptions of ‘ethnicity’ and ‘othering’ as being a part of inner consolidation. Written law was instrumental in the process of the consolidation of power within the Norwegian and Swedish kingdoms in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and may have served as a tool to consolidate an identity of the majority within the kingdoms by identifying the ‘other’. However, the territorial boundaries between the developing kingdoms were not fixed in the north until the nineteenth century.21 Additionally, the

17 Tveit, ‘In Search of Legal Transmission’, pp. 21–23. 18 The Law of Östgötaland, intro, in Östgöta-Lagen, ed. by Carl Johan Schlyter and Hans Samuel Collin, Corpus iuris Sueo-Gotorum antiqui: Samling af Sweriges gamla Lagar, vol. ii (Lund: Berlingska Boktryckeriet, 1862), p. 1. 19 See, for instance, Thomas Lindkvist, Plundring, skatter och den feodala statens framväxt, Organisatoriska tendenser i Sverige under övergången från vikingatid till medeltid, Opuscula Historica Upsaliensia, 1 (Uppsala: University of Uppsala, 1988); Phillip Line, Kingship and State Formation in Sweden, 1130–1290 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 69–149. 20 Götaland and Svealand. See, for instance, Line, Kingship and State Formation, p. 35. 21 Lars Ivar Hansen, ‘The Russian-Norwegian Border in Medieval and Early Modern Times’, in Hybrid spaces: Medieval Finnmark and the Archaeology of Multi-Room Houses, ed. by Bjørnar Olsen, Przemyslaw Urbanczyk, and Colin Amundsen (Oslo: Novus, 2011), pp. 355–67; John Lind, ‘The Russian-Swedish Border According to the Peace Treaty of Nöteborg (Orekhovets-Pähkinälinna) and the Political Status of the Northern Part of Fennoscandia’, Mediaeval Scandinavia, 13 (2000), 100–17.

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drifting Sámi nevertheless crossed these territories regardless of any boundaries, and therefore entered in and out of jurisdictions. These regionally-defined law regions could indicate that the provincial laws were territorial, meaning that the laws applied to Sámi people living within the territory; invoking the Sámi specifically therefore may not have been essential. The provincial Law of Frostaþing encompassed the central parts of the Norwegian kingdom and the ever-expanding North.22 These areas comprised substantial territory inhabited by the Sámi, but this law includes no direct references to the Sámi people, culture, or religion. Some provincial laws named the population based on the name of the province. The thirteenth-century Swedish Law of Västgötaland, for instance, clearly distinguished between the rights of the West Goths and those of non-West Goths, but within the boundaries of the law.23 There are otherwise minimal references to foreigners in the Scandinavian legal texts, Danish, Swedish, or Norwegian, but foreign habitants generally enjoyed the king’s peace and the rule of law. Some characterizations of others concerned making them subjects of law in the interest of expanding legal influence. Fewer ethnonyms are contained in the Norwegian laws, which do not invoke the ‘self ’ or the ‘other(s)’. However, recurrent regulations controlled legal subjects who sailed abroad and particularly targeted those returning with hostile purposes.24 These procedures must be interpreted as security measures to protect the kingdom rather than reflecting xenophobia in the legislating authority.25 In the Law of Gulaþing, travelling abroad for over three years rendered property inheritable by the closest heir; travelling to the Byzantine empire, ‘Grikland’, was addressed particularly.26 Norwegian warriors in the service of the Byzantine military or other foreign powers could constitute a threat to the established authorities.27 The Norwegian National Code from the late thirteenth century stated that the ‘austmenn’ (eastmen) would

22 Miriam Tveit, ‘The Introduction of a Law of the Realm in Northern Norway’, in Legislation and State Formation – Norway and Its Neighbours in the Middle Ages, ed. by Steinar Imsen (Trondheim: Akademika, 2013), pp. 41–54 (pp. 45–46). 23 The legal rights of those from outside the province: The Older Law of Västgötaland, Þiuvæ bollkær nos 12–13, in Westgötalagen, ed. by Schlyter and Collin, Corpus iuris Sueo-Gotorum antiqui, 1 (Lund: Berlingska Boktryckeriet, 1827), pp. 57–58, and Af Mandrapi, no. 5.4–5, p. 13; The Younger Law of Västgötaland, Þiuvæ bollkær no. 44, in Westgötalagen, ed. by Schlyter and Collin, Corpus iuris SueoGotorum antiqui, 1, p. 172, and kirkiu balkær no. 72.3, p. 108. 24 The Law of Frostaþing, no. VII.25, in: Norges gamle love indtil 1387, vol. 1 [hereafter NgL 1], ed. by Rudolf Keyser and Peter A. Munch (Kristiania [Oslo]: Gröndahl, 1846), pp. 203–04, and no. VII.27, p. 204. A particular set of legislation, including regulations for those returning from abroad, can be found in The Law of Frostaþing, no. XVI.1–4, in NgL 1, pp. 257–58, The Law of Gulaþing no. 148, in NgL 1, pp. 58–59, and Ágrip, nos 28–29, p. 40. 25 See Miriam Tveit, ‘Lawmaking and Consolidation of Power – Cnut’s Laws and the Developing Norwegian Kingdom’, in Nordens plass i middelalderens nye Europa, Samfunnsomdanning, sentralmakt og periferier, ed. by Lars Ivar Hansen, Richard Holt, and Steinar Imsen, Speculum Boreale, 16 (Stamsund: Orkana Akademisk, 2011), pp. 55–66 (pp. 59 and 64). 26 The Law of Gulaþing, no. 47, in NgL 1, p. 26. 27 Sverrir Jakobsson, ‘The Varangian Legend: Testimony from the Old Norse Sources’, in Byzantium and the Viking World, ed. by Fedir Androsjtsjuk, Jonathan Shepard, and Monica White (Uppsala: University of Uppsala, 2016), pp. 345–62.

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be punished in the same manner as the Norwegians if they poached within the kingdom of Norway.28 The same paragraph regulates gaming and particularly the moose. Probably it indicates that ‘easterners’ should refer to primarily Swedes in the province of Jemtland. It nevertheless strengthens the presentation of the National code as a territorial law.

The Sámi in Written Laws Scandinavian provincial laws targeted the various groups of ‘inner others’ in terms of the legal status of these ‘socially inferior’ groups, such as freedmen, slaves, and outlaws. The laws do not mention many other ethnic groups who coexisted on the Scandinavian peninsula, or in adjacent eastern regions, such as Biarmian, Ĉhud, Karelian, and Russian populations. However, these were perceived as external ‘others’. Regarding internal ‘others’ the legislators may have deemed it unnecessary to resort to exoticism in the laws. Perhaps the Sámi simply were subjected to the same laws. The Sámi are undisputedly mentioned in two cases in written Scandinavian laws. Both instances are found within the eastern Norwegian provincial laws of Eidsivaþing and Borgarþing, and both originate from the ‘Christian law-section’ of the laws, which are the only surviving parts of these provincial laws. The Law of Eidsivaþing, stated the following: (E)Ngi maðr a at trua. a finna. eða fordæðor. eða a vit. eða blot. eða rot. eða þat. er til hæiðins siðar høyrir. eða læita ser þar bota.29 (No man should believe in the ‘finna’ [f. Sámi] or sorceresses, or in fortune readings, or in sacrifices or in intoxication, or what is to do with heathendom, or seek help in such.)30 The Christian Law of Borgarþing simply states the following: ‘Þet er vbota værk. er madr fær a Fin markr at spyria spadom’ (It is outlawry to visit the Finn’s land for prophecies).31 These two short references do not exclude the concept that the Sámi were subjects of the law. However, they equate otherness with the cultural

28 The Norwegian National Code, no. VII.60, in Norges gamle love indtil 1387, vol. 2 [hereafter Ngl 2], ed. by Rudolf Keyser and Peter A. Munch (Kristiania [Oslo]: Gröndahl, 1848), p. 144. 29 The Law of Eidsivaþing, 45.1, ‘Eidsivatings eldre kristenrett’, in De østerlandske kristenrettene, ed. by Eyvind Fjeld Halvorsen and Magnus Rindal (Oslo: Riksarkivet, 2008), pp. 1–117 (p. 48). The Law of Östgötaland includes to call a woman ‘fordæþu’: bygda balkær no. 38, in Östgöta-Lagen, ed. by Schlyter and Collin, Corpus iuris Sueo-Gotorum antiqui, vol. ii, p. 225. Also found in the Swedish old town law, the Biärköä Rättär no. 21, Helsingelagen, Kristnu-balken af Smålandslagen. Bjarköaretten, ed. by Carl Johan Schlyter, Corpus iuris Sueo-Gotorum antiqui, 6 (Lund: Berlingska Boktryckeriet, 1844), p. 127; and in the Norwegian National Code, no. IV.26, NgL 2, p. 70. 30 My translation. 31 The Law of Borgarþing, no. 16, ‘Borgartings eldre kristenrett’, in De østerlandske kristenrettene, ed. by Halvorsen and Rindal, pp. 119–224 (p. 213), see also pp. 154–55, ‘gæra finfarar’.

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trait of offering prophecies and with sorcerers and soothsayers, who were also out-groups in the eyes of the law.32 The two prohibitions nevertheless make clear that the lawmakers anticipated that people from the majority group, the Norse population, would contact Sámi people in search of their skills. In this context, the entire tradition of prophecy was intolerable from the perspective of the Church, and the cultural trait ascribed to the Sámi was therefore part of an evil that ought to be eradicated. Additionally, the Icelandic law of Grágás makes one reference to the Sámi, in an amendment called the Trygðamál which was added on the basis of a lost component of the western Norwegian Law of Gulaþing.33 In this poetically phrased text, it was stated that those who sought further vengeance after receiving compensation would be outlawed: Þa scal hann sva viða, vargr rækr oc rekin sem menn vidazt varga reka. cristnir menn kirkior søkia. heidnir menn hof blóta. elldr upp brenr iorð grør. mögr moðor callar. oc moþir mög föðir. alldir ellda kynda. scip scriðr. scilðir blícia. sol scin snæ legr. fiðr scríðr fura vex. valr flygr várlangan dag. stendr honom byr bein vndir báða vængi. Himin huerfr heimr er bygðr. vindr þytr. vötn til sævar falla. karlar korne sá. (Then he will be like wolf hunt and be hunted, just as sure as men hunt wolves, Christian men seek churches, heathens make sacrifices, fire burns, soil grows, the boy calls his mother and the mother feeds the boy, people lit fire, ships sail, shields twinkle, sun shines, snow falls, Finns [Sámi] ski, pine grow, falcon flies the long spring day with steady winds under both wings, heaven circles, the home is built, the wind howls, water run towards the sea, men sow corn. [my translation])34 The inclusion of natural images to reinforce the outlawing suggests that the Sámi were defined as a separate group with different behaviour. Knut Robberstad interpreted the literary motif as part of Icelandic imagery.35 Else Mundal argues that the section must be a pre-Christian text and that the text demonstrates familiarity with the Sámi in Norse societies.36 Regardless of this expressed level of familiarity with the Sámi, the group was associated with its othered exonym and a cultural trait, the activity of skiing.

32 In Swedish laws, we find a prohibition to leave the body and roam around, in Bengt Ankarloo ‘Häxorna mitt i byn. De svenska trolldomsprocessernas sociala dynamik’, in Tänka, tycka, tro. Svensk historia underifrån, ed. by Gunnar Broberg, Ulla Wikander, and Klas Åmark (Stockholm: Ordfronts, 1993), pp. 55–60. 33 The Law of Gulaþing, no. 320, in NgL 1, p. 110. 34 Gragas Ia, no. 115, Grågås Konungsbok. Genoptrykt efter Vilhjålmur Finsens udgave 1852 (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1974), p. 206. 35 Knut Robberstad, Gulatingslovi (Oslo: Norske samlaget, 1981 [1969]), pp. 402–03. 36 Mundal, ‘The Perception of the Saamis’, p. 103.

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The first genuine legal references to regulating the Sámi population were contained in the amendment from the Norwegian king Hákon Magnusson in 1313. It states the following: En om nauð finnana. er ver hafom understað oc mykin fattigðom bæðe at vinnum. Sua oc oðrum þeim lutom sem þeir þurfa til viðerlifs at hafua. hafuom ver giort þa vegð oc þa miskun agiort. at xx vettra fra þui at þeir verða christnir gorver. skulo þeir eigi meiri luka. Huart sem þeir verða sakaðir viðr konongðomenom eðr christenrætten oc herra erchibiscops. En þriðiumg af sekt þeira sem boken vattar. i huerio grein se huer verðir sakaðir. En a þessom xx vettrom allom liðnum skulu þeir suara fulri sekt sem aðrir bumen. (And with concerns for the distress of the Finns [Sámi], of which we have heard have great poverty both in work and in other things they need for a subsistence, we have given the relief and mercy that 20 winters from when they are Christianised, they shall not pay more — whether they are charged by the kingdom or the Christian laws and the master archbishop — than one third of that fine stated by the book, no matter what section they are charged with. And when these 20 winters are over, they will pay full fine as other settled men. [my translation])37 Substantial insights can be deduced from this: the sentence which states that they should not pay more ‘no matter what section they are charged with’ elucidates the perception of otherness in these laws. This demonstrates that the administration of King Hákon presumed the Sámi to be fineable according to law and he therefore regarded them as part of the Norwegian legal system. The amendment also refers to being charged according to ‘the book’ (i.e., the law book), which must allude to the promulgation of the National Code in 1274. This may be an indication that the Sami were also legal subjects in the Norwegian legal system in the earlier provincial laws. However, a more plausible explanation holds that the attempt to create a national code for the entire kingdom also allowed the king’s representatives to more closely monitor those groups who had previously been regarded as outside the legal system, such as the Sámi. They enjoyed this privilege of paying merely one-third for twenty years, but thereafter, they paid the same compensation ‘as other settled men’. This dichotomy between the settled and non-settled served as a common means of portraying the population in medieval Norway.38 Generally, the Norse population was regarded as settled, and the Sámi were deemed non-settled. Therefore, the word for settled

37 ‘Um sokner i skreidfiskiet om tiund oc om Finner’, in Norges gamle Love, vol. 3 [hereafter Ngl 3], ed. by Rudolf Keyser and Peter A. Munch (Kristiania [Oslo]: Gröndahl, 1849), pp. 106–07. See also Regesta Norvegica, ed. by Sverre Bagge and Arnved Nedkvitne, vol. iii (Oslo: Kjeldeskriftsfondet, 1983), no. 874, pp. 269–70. 38 The fifteenth-century Flateyarbok, in its version of the saga of Haraldr Hárfagri, makes one reference to ‘búfinnar’, which is thought to represent the settled Sámi. Guðbrandur Vigfússon and Carl Rikard Unger, Flateyjarbok: En samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om

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(‘bumenn’) had become synonymous with the Norse population; this equated with ascribing otherness to oneself. Based on the Flateyarbok, the same king Hákon V Magnusson had met that summer with the Marteinn in Bergen, who was referred to as the ‘king of Finns’.39 The attributed royal status indicates that he held a leading position among the Sámi, who were otherwise not known to support any such hierarchy of leadership.40 The subsequent legal amendment may have resulted from this meeting, where the Marteinn explained the hardships of the Sámi to the king, and the king promised relief from the legal fines in return for their conversion to Christianity. If the promulgation of the National Law meant that the Sami now experienced unprecedented pressure from a consolidating state, this may have sparked complaints of hardship. Conversely, the king clearly regarded it as beneficial to grant the Sámi legal and economic privileges. He would thereby both eradicate paganism and secure the loyalty of the Sámi population, who were providers of important resources. A similar tactic was applied by the administration of Magnus Eriksson IV/VII, king of Sweden and Norway in 1340: from 1319, Sweden and Norway entered a personal union, and in 1340, the inhabitants of the newly annexed northern province of ‘Laepmarch’ were offered the privileges of Swedish law, under the condition that they adhere to Christianity.41 Everyone of Christian faith or who converted could appropriate land in the region and pay taxes to the king and be subjected to ‘de helsingelandz lag och sedwengio’ (the law and customs of Hälsingeland), Hälsingeland being the adjacent province to the south.42 The etymology of ‘Laepmarch’ corresponds with the Old Norse ‘Finnmǫrk’, meaning ‘Sámi land’. The Swedish letter of privileges to the inhabitants of the North nevertheless appears to be directed at those migrating to and colonizing new land rather than targeting to the Sámi population who already inhabited the region. However, through the king’s inclusion of all those who ‘till Christna tro sig omwenda wele’ (will convert to the Christian faith),43 he unmistakably targeted the pagan Sámi. When the privileges were confirmed in 1358 by his son king Erik Magnusson, the king also claimed that his father’s gift to the inhabitants of the North was ‘the increase of the Swedish kingdom and the Christian faith’.44 Based on these actions, it appears that the legal expansion also led to the colonized people becoming legal

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begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler, vol. iii (Christiania [Oslo]: Malling, 1868), p. 422. This term is not found in other medieval sources, but reappear in the 1740s by border commissioner Peter Schnitler. See Evjen and Hansen, ‘One People–Many Names’, p. 217. Þetta sumar kom Marteinn Finna konunger til Hakonar konungs in Vigfússon and Unger, Flateyjarbok, p. 551. Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde, Speculum legale – rettsspegeln (Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2005), p. 136. Diplomatarium Suecanum, ed. by Bror E. Hildebrandt, vol. v (Stockholm: 1853–1856), no. 3473, pp. 700–01. Also printed in ‘K. Magnus Erikssons frihetsbref för dem, som nedsätta sig i Lappmarken, dat. Telge d. 16 Mars 1340’, in Handlingar rörande Skandinaviens historia, vol. 29 (Stockholm: Hörbergska boktrykkeriet, 1848), pp. 16–18. Diplomatarium Suecanum, ed. by Hildebrandt, v, no. 3473, p. 701. Diplomatarium Suecanum, ed. by Hildebrandt, v, no. 3473, p. 701. Diplomatarium Fennicum, ed. by Reinhardt Hausen, vol. i, Finlands medeltidsurkunder. Samlade och i tryck utgifna af Finlands Statsarkiv (Helsinki: Finlands Statsarkiv, 1910), no. 675, pp. 280–81.

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subjects under Swedish laws. The examples from both Norway and Sweden suggests that the Sámi inhabiting the areas already under the Norwegian and Swedish crown were considered legal subjects alongside the Norse population. The political situation in the Scandinavian-Russian border region further spurred the legalization for the Sámi through normative treaties, including the peace treaty between Sweden and Novgorod in 1323, the peace treaty between Norway and Novgorod in 1326, and a border treaty with an estimated date of 1330.45 The bilateral interests in these treaties involved securing income from the lucrative northern trade networks and also stimulating trade between ethnic groups. The treaties defined the borders between the states, but the states also acknowledged a double set of borders in the North, which Carsten Pape has interpreted as consisting of an outer and inner border line.46 The intermediate space contained a large common area between the states. In overlapping regions, this meant that two or all three states could extract revenue and taxes.47 The Border treaty, similarly, formulated highly specific group liabilities by stating that the Norwegian king has the right to tax the ‘halfkarelar æða halffinnær’ (half-Karelians or half-Finns) on the Kola peninsula. Further, in Norway the increasingly lucrative fish trade involved Sámi groups, who were both involved in the fisheries and supplied the industry with vital equipment, including boats.48

The Wergild of ‘the Other’ Territorial or not, the European written codes from the early medieval leges to the high medieval Scandinavian secular law established a differentiation between the in-group status of legal subjects and the ‘others’, who were foreigners or regional and ethnic populations who lived within or adjacent to the main group. Most directly, such differentiations were expressed in the wergild regulations, which was a portion of the law which delineated differences in status. The worth of men, and sometimes women, was represented as wergild (Gmc: ‘wer’ + ‘gilda’ = man + price), typically with a particular sum which corresponded with the person’s age, sex, and status.49

45 ‘Peace treaty of Nöteborg’ (1323), Diplomatarium Fennicum, ed. by Hausen, i, no. 313, pp. 121–25; ‘Peace treaty’, (1326). Novgorod, in NgL 3, no. 65 a, pp. 151–52; ‘Border treaty’ (c. 1330), in NgL 3, no. 65 b, pp. 152–53. 46 Carsten Pape, ‘Rethinking the Medieval Russian-Norwegian Border’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 2, (2004), 161–87 (pp. 178–80). 47 Jarl Gallén and John Lind, Nöteborgsfreden och Finlands medeltida östgräns, vol. ii (Helsinki: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1991); Lars Ivar Hansen, ‘Fra Nöteborgsfreden til Lappekodisillen, ca. 1300–1751. Folkegrupper og statsdannelse på Nordkalotten med utgangspunkt i Finnmark’, in Grenser og grannelag i Nordens historie, ed. by Steinar Imsen (Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk, 2005), pp. 362–86, (pp. 368–74). 48 Lars Ivar Hansen, ‘Sami Fisheries in the Pre-Modern Era: Household Sustenance and Market Relations’, Acta Borealia, 23 (2006), 56–80 (pp. 66–67); Alf Ragnar Nielssen, ‘Norwegian Fisheries, c. 1100–1850’, in A History of the North Atlantic Fisheries, ed. by David Starkey, Jón Th. Thor, and Ingo Heidbrink (Bremen: Hauschild, 2009), pp. 83–122, (p. 84). 49 Tveit, ‘In Search of Legal Transmission’, pp. 193–97.

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This sum was suggested as a foundation when compensations were paid, such as in the case of violence or when values or status were regarded as significant for rights and privileges. Those ‘others’ were classified as regionally, nationally, or ethnically different from the majority of the subjects of any given law. They often held a lesser value, sometimes merely half, relative to the main subjects: in the sixth-century Frankish law, the Lex Salica, the Romans were the group of non-Franks who explicitly held merely half the value of Franks.50 In the early eighth-century laws of King Ine in Wessex, the Welsh inhabitants held the status of an out-group, with a lesser value than that of the English.51 The lesser status of the ‘other’ could also be represented in marriage legislation or in regulations of property.52 No specific regulations of marriage in Scandinavian legislation impede (ethnic) mixed marriages. This absence could be interpreted as evidence that legislators recognized marriage unions between the Sámi and the Norse. There was also no clear demarcation of land ownership or status categories in the written law, beyond what was described in the aforementioned fourteenth-century amendments. However, laws defined the ‘other’ in terms of foreign traders and inhabitants and regulated their status within established jurisdictions. The Law of Västgötaland differentiated those who were West Goths from the rest of Sweden. It decreed that those who were from Sweden, but were not under the Law of Västgötaland, held merely two-thirds of the wergild of a ‘væstgöskan’.53 Killing those who hailed from outside Sweden did not render one an outlaw as would killing an inlander.54 As in other European secular law, these outsiders held lower wergilds; according to the Younger Law of Västgötaland from the late thirteenth century, a man from Norway, Denmark, and England, or ‘suþerman’ (a southerner) possessed a wergild of twofifths of the a West Goth.55 Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians, however, were entitled to the same compensation as male West Goths, while the English and southerners

50 Pactus Legis Salicae no. 41.8–10, ed. by Karl August Eckhart, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Leges nationum Germanicarum, 7 vols (Hannover: Hahn, 1888–) 4.1 (1962), pp. 156–57, and no. 42, pp. 162–64. 51 The Laws of Ine no. 23.3–24 and 32–33, ‘Das Gesetzbuch der Könige Alfred–Ine’, in Felix Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, vol. i (Halle an der Saale: Niemeyer, 1903), pp. 15–123 (pp. 100–02). 52 See, for instance, Miriam Tveit, Non enim coitus matrimonium facit, sed maritalis affectio, Ekteskapslovgivningen i sen romersk og tidlig germansk rett (Tromsø: University of Tromsø, 2007), pp. 39–71. 53 The Older Law of Västgötaland, Af mandrapi no. 5, in Westgötalagen ed. by Schlyter and Collin, Corpus iuris Sueo-Gotorum antiqui, 1, p. 13; The Younger Law of Västgötaland, Dræpare bolkær no. 10, in Westgötalagen, ed. by Schlyter and Collin, Corpus iuris Sueo-Gotorum antiqui, 1, p. 126. 54 ‘Utländskan man’: in The Older Law of Västgötaland, Mandrapi section no. 5.3–6, in Westgötalagen, ed. by Schlyter and Collin, Corpus iuris Sueo-Gotorum antiqui, 1, p. 13; The Younger Law of Västgötaland, Dræpare bolkær no. 12, in Westgötalagen, ed. by Schlyter and Collin, Corpus iuris Sueo-Gotorum antiqui, 1, p. 126. 55 Although those with the status of priests held the same wergild as Västgöta men, even if they were foreign. The Younger Law of Västgötaland, Dræpare bolkær no. 13–15, in Westgötalagen, ed. by Schlyter and Collin, Corpus iuris Sueo-Gotorum antiqui, 1, p. 126.

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only would receive the compensation of a freedman.56 These hierarchies of wergild demonstrate a system of othering that pervaded the perceptions of law-writers and were applied in the written laws. The hierarchy was structured in terms of the distance of the origin of the other person; therefore, alienation arguably increased along with perceived ‘otherness’. It is not clear how the Sámi fit into such a system, but the lack of wergild ascribed to this group must be interpreted within the context of the boundaries of law, in which the Sámi were regarded as either subjects of law or as outsiders. One status category relates to a more controversial point. In the Law of Frostaþing of middle and northern Norway, historians and philologists struggle to explain one mysterious social class. In six of the sections in the Law of Frostaþing, which listed the compensation for varying violence and damages, there is a category of ‘recsþegn’ between the freedmen (‘leysingi’) and the free men.57 The same term can also be found in old Norwegian town law for Niðaróss, the ‘Bærkoyar rettr’ from the twelfth century.58 Niðaróss was a royal town and the episcopal seat within the province of Frostaþing.59 The few examples of the term thus come from the same region of the Norwegian realm. The term ‘recsþegn’ or similar does not appear in the Swedish provincial laws and does not reappear in the Norwegian National Code from 1274. Some have suggested that these ‘recsþegni’ were free men without property, and others have suggested that they were descendants of freedmen, while Konrad Maurer interpreted this category as signifying a free warrior.60 Others, such as Ebbe Hertzberg and Ole Benedictow, have suggested that they were a category of the Sámi. The argument holds that ‘reksþegn’ etymologically stems from the verb ‘reka’, meaning ‘to drift’, and ‘þegn’, which originally meant ‘free man’ in Old Norse.61 Another definition proposed by Hertzberg maintains that it is a deviation from ‘rekstr’, which means ‘chasing’ or ‘tracking’.62 Either way, the ‘rékandi þegn’ would have contrasted with the Old Norse ‘búandi þegn’ or ‘búþegn’, which was applied to the sedentary man. This enforced the same dichotomy between stationary and 56 The Younger Law of Västgötaland, Friþ balkær, no. 2, in Westgötalagen, ed. by Schlyter and Collin, Corpus iuris Sueo-Gotorum antiqui, 1, p. 115. 57 The Law of Frostaþing, no. IV.49, in NgL 1, p. 172; IV.53, in NgL 1, p. 173; X.35, in NgL 1, p. 172; X.35, in NgL 1, p. 225; X.41, in NgL 1, p. 227, X.46, in NgL 1, p. 228; XIII.15, in NgL 1, p. 244. 58 Bjarköret, no. 162, in NgL 1, pp. 312–13. 59 See further Narve Bjørgo, ‘Vågastemna i mellomalderen’, in Hamarspor–Eit festskrift til Lars Hamre 1912–1982, ed. by Steinar Imsen and Gudmund Sandvik (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1982), pp. 48–60 (p. 50); Hagland and Sandnes, Bjarkøyretten, pp. xx–xxxxviii. For the Swedish town laws, see Göran Dahlbäck, ‘Svensk stadslagstiftning under medeltiden’, in Nordiske middelalderlover: tekst og kontekst: rapport fra seminar ved Senter for middelalderstudier, 29.–30. nov. 1996, ed. by Audun Dybdahl and Jørn Sandnes (Trondheim: Tapir, 1997), pp. 103–15 (pp. 109–11). 60 Konrad Maurer, ‘Reksþegn’, Arkiv for Nordisk Philologi, 2 (1890), 272–80 (p. 278). 61 Ebbe Hertzberg, ‘Efterskrift ang. tvivlsomme ord i Norges gamle love’, Arkiv for Nordisk Philologi, 2 (1890), 262–71 (p. 270); Halvard Bjørkvik, ‘Rekstegn’, in Kulturhistorisk Leksikon for Nordisk Middelalder, vol. xiv (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1982), p. 36; Ole Jørgen Benedictow, Kulturhistorisk Leksikon for Nordisk Middelalder, vol. xvii (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1972), p. 391. 62 Hertzberg, ‘Efterskrift’, p. 270. See, for instance The Norwegian National Code, no. VII.43: ‘rekstrar’ (cattle track), in NgL 2, p. 131.

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nomadic as was present in the 1313 amendment. A similar dichotomy can be found in the Swedish Law of Hälsingeland, stating that only peasants and sedentary men could be trusted with keeping watch, and not ‘löskæ mæn’, meaning a vagrant or someone without property, and further that a ‘löskæ man’ must be immediately arrested for his crime, while the settled man would have the dignity of waiting for the next assembly.63 If the ‘recsþegn’ contrasted with the ‘búþegn’, the ‘recsþegn’ was a drifting freeman who adopted the Sámi seminomadic lifestyle of the high Middle Ages. The term appears only in the provincial Law of Frostaþing, which encompassed the provinces traditionally inhabited by Sámi groups. The six sections of the law delineate a constant system of compensation based on status. Four classes of status are described: the highest class with the highest compensation consisted of free, self-owning men, the ‘hauld’. The second included freeborn men, who were worth two-thirds of the ‘hauld’. The third encompassed the ‘recsþegn’, who were worth half of the ‘hauld’ and two-thirds of the freeborn man. Finally, the ‘leysing’, the freedman, was worth one-third of the ‘hauld’, half of the free man, and two-thirds of the ‘recsþegn’. The ‘recsþegn’s’ lower value relative to free landholding peasants (the Norse population) also speaks to the Norse perception of the Sámi as ‘the other’ and therefore as inferior in status, but nonetheless as part of the status hierarchy within society. It is tempting to interpret both the attributes of drifting and the low status of the ‘recsþegn’ as characteristics of ‘Sáminess’. Nevertheless, such an understanding would be an assumption based on modern ideas of the medieval Sámi and would not explain the complete absence of this name in other contexts. However, this does not explain the use of the strange name of ‘free drifters’ rather than the commonly used exonym of ‘finni’. The Norse philologist Else Mundal proposes that this may be a denomination of what is today referred to as the Southern Sámi, since they historically pursued a different way of life than the northern and coastal Sámi groups.64 She also notes that the group of freedmen must have comprised a substantial portion of the general population and that the ‘recsþegn’ were valued above this group. This is found in the Frostaþing law, covering Sámi territory, which Mundal interprets as an indication that the authorities considered the conditions of the Sami carefully here, due to the outcomes in valuable fur and taxes that they produced.65 If this conclusion is taken one step further, a sensible interpretation of the term holds that it encompassed a heterogenic group of ‘loose’ people who collectively,

63 The Law of Hälsingeland, Konungx balker no. 9, in Helsingelagen, Kristnu-balken af Smålandslagen. Bjarköaretten, ed. by Carl Johan Schlyter, Corpus iuris Sueo-Gotorum antiqui, 6 (Lund: Berlingska Boktryckeriet, 1844), p. 24, and Manhæliæs balk no. 17, p. 51. The term is also found in The Law of Uppland, in Upplandslagen, ed. by Carl Johan Schlyter, Corpus iuris Sueo-Gotorum antiqui, 3 (Lund: Berlingska Boktryckeriet, 1834), p. 28. 64 Else Mundal, ‘Kva fortel dei norrøne skriftlege kjeldene om historia til sørsamene’, Foredrag på seminar om sørsamisk historie (2003), pp. 1–21, [accessed 20 June 2021], pp. 2–3. 65 Mundal, ‘Kva fortel dei norrøne skriftlege kjeldene’, pp. 11–12.

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had no permanent settlement. It could be a general term of ‘free drifters’ which did not account for ethnicity. In this way, the ‘recsþegn’ demonstrated the elevated status of landowning and permanent settlement in the Province of Frostaþing rather than the subordination of the Sámi in particular.

Conclusion This examination of the limited glimpses of Sámi in the law primarily confirm interpretations from other sources of the Sámi as the ‘other’ within, both familiar and alien. The Sámi were ‘othered’ by the legislation and perceived as the ‘other’ in so far as that they were specifically invoked by way of attributed skills connected with sorcery and mastery of nature. The ambiguous terminology found in Norwegian provincial laws, in the way that the system of compensation encompassed them, as free men, but at the same time singling them out as a particular group of lower status than free Norse men, suggests that the Sámi may have been both partly integrated in society and partly alienated from it. The nature of the Scandinavian laws as primarily territorial suggests that the legislators aspired to encompass all people within the boundaries of the law, including the various groups of the Sámi, although it remains uncertain whether they were indeed regarded de facto as legal subjects. The evidence from Swedish and Norwegian sources illustrates that the Sámi within the boundaries had become legal subjects from the late thirteenth century, most likely as a result of the introduction of a national code. However, at this point the Sámi population appear to have been seen by the legislating authority as a desirable group to include among their legal subjects. They were attractive both as trade partners and as successful examples of religious converts for the royal authority, although they nevertheless occupied the status of the ‘other within’ where particular cultural traits were ascribed to them. Norwegian laws rarely mention any ethnic groups, so it is hardly to be expected that they would mention the Sámi. On the contrary, the Swedish laws referred to several ethnic groups, but not the Sámi. It remains unclear why law writers do not address the ‘inner other’ among them, but as is demonstrated in this paper, the legislators were still conscious about the Sámi as a group within the boundaries of law.

Works Cited Primary Sources ‘Historia Norvegiæ’, in Monumenta historia Norvegiæ. Latinske kildeskrifter til Norges historie i middelalderen, ed. by Gustav Storm (Kristiania [Oslo]: Brøgger, 1880), pp. 69–124 ‘K. Magnus Erikssons frihetsbref för dem, som nedsätta sig i Lappmarken, dat. Telge d. 16 Mars 1340’, in Handlingar rörande Skandinaviens historia, vol. 29 (Stockholm: Hörbergska boktrykkeriet, 1848), pp. 16–18

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Secondary Works Ankarloo, Bengt, ‘Häxorna mitt i byn. De svenska trolldomsprocessernas sociala dynamik’, in Tänka, tycka, tro. Svensk historia underifrån, ed. by Gunnar Broberg, Ulla Wikander, and Klas Åmark (Stockholm: Ordfronts, 1993), pp. 55–60 Benedictow, Ole Jørgen, ‘Stænder- Norge 1’, in Kulturhistorisk Leksikon for Nordisk Middelalder, ed. By Finn Hødnebø, vol. xvii (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1972), pp. 391–96 Bjørgo, Narve ‘Vågastemna i mellomalderen’, in Hamarspor–Eit festskrift til Lars Hamre 1912–1982, ed. by Steinar Imsen and Gudmund Sandvik (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1982), pp. 45–60 Bjørkvik, Halvard, ‘Rekstegn’, in Kulturhistorisk Leksikon for Nordisk Middelalder, vol. xiv (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1982), p. 36 Claude, Dietrich, ‘Remarks about Relations Between Visigoths and Hispano-Romans in the Seventh Century’, in Strategies of Distinction: The Constructions of Ethnic Communities 300–800, ed. by Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz, Transformation of the Roman World, 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 117–30 Collins, Roger, Visigothic Spain, 409–711 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) Dahlbäck, Göran, ‘Svensk stadslagstiftning under medeltiden’, in Nordiske middelalderlover: tekst og kontekst: rapport fra seminar ved Senter for middelalderstudier, 29.–30. nov. 1996, ed. by Audun Dybdahl and Jørn Sandnes (Trondheim: Tapir, 1997), pp. 103–15 Eidheim, Harald, ‘When Ethnic Identity is a Social Stigma’, in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference, ed. by Fredrik Barth (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969; repr.: Long Grove: Waveland Press, 1998), pp. 39–58 Evjen, Bjørg, and Lars Ivar Hansen, ‘One People–Many Names: On Different Designations for the Sami Population in the Norwegian County of Nordland through the Centuries’, Continuity and Change, 24 (2009), 211–43 Gallén, Jarl, and John Lind, Nöteborgsfreden och Finlands medeltida östgräns, vol. ii (Helsinki: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1991) Hagland, Jan Ragnar, and Jørn Sandnes, Bjarkøyretten – Nidaros eldste bylov (Gjøvik: Samlaget, 1997) Hansen, Lars Ivar, and Bjørnar Olsen, Hunters in Transition: An Outline of Early Sámi History (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 302–25 Hansen, Lars Ivar, ‘Fra Nöteborgsfreden til Lappekodisillen, ca. 1300–1751. Folkegrupper og statsdannelse på Nordkalotten med utgangspunkt i Finnmark’, in Grenser og grannelag i Nordens historie, ed. by Steinar Imsen (Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk, 2005), pp. 362–86 ———, ‘Om synet på de “andre” – ute og hjemme. Geografi og folkeslag på Nordkalotten ifølge Historia Norwegiae’, in Olavslegenden og den latinske historieskrivning i 1100-tallets Norge, ed. by Inger Ekrem, Lars Boje Mortensen, and Karen Skovgaard-Petersen (København: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000), pp. 54–87 ———, ‘The Russian-Norwegian Border in Medieval and Early Modern Times’, in Hybrid Spaces: Medieval Finnmark and the Archaeology of Multi-Room Houses, ed. by Bjørnar Olsen, Przemyslaw Urbanczyk, and Colin Amundsen (Oslo: Novus, 2011), pp. 355–67 ———, ‘Sami Fisheries in the Pre-Modern Era. Household Sustenance and Market Relations’, Acta Borealia, 23 (2006), 56–80

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Hertzberg, Ebbe, ‘Efterskrift ang. tvivlsomme ord i Norges gamle love’, Arkiv for Nordisk Philologi, 2 (1890), 262–71 ———, ‘Níðingsverk’, in Norges gamle Love indtil 1387, vol. v, ed. by Gustav Storm and Ebbe Hertzberg (Kristiania [Oslo]: Grøndahl og Søn, 1895), p. 472 Lind, John, ‘The Russian-Swedish Border According to the Peace Treaty of Nöteborg (Orekhovets-Pähkinälinna) and the Political Status of the Northern Part of Fennoscandia’, Mediaeval Scandinavia, 13 (2000), 100–17 Lindkvist, Thomas, Plundring, skatter och den feodala statens framväxt, Organisatoriska tendenser i Sverige under övergången från vikingatid till medeltid, Opuscula Historica Upsaliensia, 1 (Uppsala: University of Uppsala, 1988) Line, Phillip, Kingship and State Formation in Sweden, 1130–1290 (Leiden: Brill, 2007) Maurer, Konrad, ‘Reksþegn’, Arkiv for Nordisk Philologi, 2 (1890), 272–80 Mundal, Else, ‘Kva fortel dei norrøne skriftlege kjeldene om historia til sørsamene’, Foredrag på seminar om sørsamisk historie (2003), pp. 1–21 ———, ‘The Perception of the Saamis and their Religion in Old Norse Sources’, Shamanism and Northern Ecology, 36 (1996), 97–116 Nielssen, Alf Ragnar, ‘Norwegian Fisheries, c. 1100–1850’, in A History of the North Atlantic Fisheries, ed. by David Starkey, Jón Th. Thor, and Ingo Heidbrink (Bremen: Hauschild, 2009), pp. 83–122 Pape, Carsten, ‘Rethinking the Medieval Russian-Norwegian Border’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 2 (2004), 161–87 Phelpstead, Carl, ‘Introduction’, in A History of Norway and the Passion and Miracles of the Blessed Óláfr, ed. by Carl Phelpstead (London: University College of London, 2001), pp. xvi–xvii Pohl-Resl, Brigitte, ‘Legal Practice and Ethnic Identity in Lombard Italy’, in Strategies of Distinction: The Constructions of Ethnic Communities 300–800, ed. by Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz, Transformation of the Roman World, 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 205–19 Riisøy, Anne Irene, ‘Deviant Burials: Societal Exclusion of Dead Outlaws in Medieval Norway’, in Cultures of Death and Dying in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by Mia Korpiola and Anu Lahtinen (Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, 2015), pp. 49–81 Robberstad, Knut, Gulatingslovi (Oslo: Norske samlaget, 1981 [1969]) Sunde, Jørn Øyrehagen, Speculum legale – rettsspegeln (Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2005) Sverrir Jakobsson, ‘The Varangian Legend: Testimony from the Old Norse Sources’, in Byzantium and the Viking World, ed. by Fedir Androsjtsjuk, Jonathan Shepard, and Monica White (Uppsala: University of Uppsala, 2016), pp. 345–62 Tveit, Miriam, ‘In Search of Legal Transmission, Inheritance and Compensation for Homicide in Medieval Secular Law’ (PhD thesis, University of Tromsø, 2016);

———, ‘The Introduction of a Law of the Realm in Northern Norway’, in Legislation and State Formation: Norway and Its Neighbours in the Middle Ages, ed. by Steinar Imsen (Trondheim: Akademika, 2013), pp. 41–54

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———, ‘Lawmaking and Consolidation of Power – Cnut’s Laws and the Developing Norwegian Kingdom’, in Nordens plass i middelalderens nye Europa, Samfunnsomdanning, sentralmakt og periferier, ed. by Lars Ivar Hansen, Richard Holt, and Steinar Imsen, Speculum Boreale, 16 (Stamsund: Orkana Akademisk, 2011), pp. 55–66 ———, Non enim coitus matrimonium facit, sed maritalis affectio, Ekteskapslovgivningen i sen romersk og tidlig germansk rett (Tromsø: University of Tromsø, 2007) Vogt, Helle, The Function of Kinship in Medieval Nordic Legislation (Leiden: Brill, 2010)

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General Index

(crossreferences: semicolon refers to a different entry, comma to a sub-entry) Ababdella (Muhammad ibn Lope) 263 Abbasids 99 ‘Abd Allāh b. ‘Abd al-Ḥakam, chronicler 237 ‘Abd al- Malik, caliph  238 ‘Abd al-‘Azīz b. Mūsà, governor  238 Abd ar-Rahman I, emir of Córdoba 254 Abelard, Peter  166, 168, 169, 171–75, 176, 178–79, 327–28, 333 Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian  169, 171–75 Theologia scholarium 328 Abraham  258, 258 n. 20, 259, 261, 270 Abraham ibn Adret  343 Abū Mūsà al-Hawwārī, mālikite scholar 244 Acaçaf 424–25 acedia (deadly sin of sloth)  339, 352 Achilles (mythological figure)  158–60 activities, literary  278 Adam 417 Adam of Bremen  24 n. 50, 438 Adelchis, princeps of Benevento  100, 103, 105 Adonis (mythological figure)  153–56, 157–58 Adrianople, Battle of  282 Adriatic Sea, coast  200, 216–18 Aegidius, master of soldiers  282 Ælnoth of Canterbury, Danish historiographer 379 Afonso I (A. Henriques), king of Portugal  423, 427 Afonso II, king of Portugal  420, 422

Afonso III, king of Portugal  419, 420, 429 Afonso IV, king of Portugal  420 Afonso de Lacerda  430 Africa, Africans  19, 30, 52, 98, 108, 126 n. 31, 132 n. 54, 133 n. 60, 256, 401, 405, 407, 409 Agarenes  see Hagarenes agency 173–74 Aghlabids 98 agriculture  216–17, 222–24, 227–28, 230 agricultural working contracts  222–23 cultivation  216–17, 222, 224, 227 organisation of agricultural land 222–23 Ágrip 438 Ainos 202 Alamanni, Alamannia  277, 279 Alans 281 Alarcos, battle of  421 Alaric, barbarian general  282 Albania 217 Alexander IV, pope  341 Alexander the Great  320–24, 325–29, 330–32, 333, 334, 395, 404 Alexandria  197, 236, 243 Alfonso III, king of Asturias  254, 266, 267 Alfonso VIII, king of Castile  421 Alfonso IX, king of León  421 Alfonso X, king of Castile  424 (as ‘Infante’ Alfonso), 341, 427 Fuero Real 341 Primera Crónica General  428 n. 59 Siete Partidas 341 Alfonso de la Cerda  430

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ge n e r a l in d e x

al-Ḥakam  see under H II, caliph  245 allegiance  120–21, 123, 126–28, 134 allegory  141–42, 145, 155–59, 161 Alps  48, 99 Alqamah, military leader  269 alþingi (Central Assembly, Iceland)  378, 379, 385 al-‘Utbī  see under U Álvaro Gonçalves Pereira  417, 424, 425, 426 Alvarus of Cordoba  245 Alvise Barbarigo, Venetian governor of Korčula 228 De animalibus non tenendis prope casalia 228 Amadís de Gaula 425 Amalfi  97, 98 Ambrose, St  355 Ammianus Marcellinus, author  276 Amorion, Amorian dynasty in Byzantium 98–99 amulet rings  308, 309 al-Andalus  see under A(nd) Anastasia/Anastasios, nun  196–97 ancestors  295–96, 302, 304, 307–08, 310, 314 al-Andalus  243, 424 al-Ṣumayl  see under S Andreu Fernandes de Castro  422 Andronikos, byzantine monk  196, 196 n. 45, n. 46 Andronikos Doukas, byzantine general   204 n. 74 Angilberga, empress  107 animals  57, 215–30 animal husbandry  216, 221–28, 230. See also herders livestock branding  216, 224–25 tally stick (tessera)  223, 225 Ankara  403, 407, 409 anthropocene 57 anti-Judaism  see Otherness, antiJudaism Antioch  194, 205 Antiquity 14

Anthonius Dobrichievich, herder  224 Antonine Constitution  277 Antonius Ghagletich, herder  215 Antonius Misigovich, herder  215 anusim see Otherness, Jews, anusim apocalypse 400 Apulia  103, 217 Arabs, Arabia, Arabian Peninsula  192, 192 n. 33, 200–02, 253, 264, 264 n. 38, 265, 265 n. 40, 265 n. 41, 266, 267, 269, 270, 271, 402. See also Otherness, Saracens Arias de Encinas  342 Arichis II, princeps of Benevento  98, 101, 119 n. 7, 123, 128 Ari Þorgilsson, Icelandic historiographer  378–79, 384, 386 Íslendingabók  378–79, 380, 384, 386, 387 aristocrats  see nobility Arnold of Lübeck  24 n. 50 Arrian  321, 323 n. 16, 331 n. 50 Anabasis  323 n. 16, 331 n. 50 Indica  321 n. 9 Asia, Asians  188, 320, 323, 398, 401, 403, 405, 407, 409 Asia Minor  184, 200, 202, 203 Aska 311, 313 Asturias, Asturian kingdom  254, 255, 262, 271 Athanasia, nun  196 Athanasius I, bishop of Naples  106 Athos, Athonite  205 Attila, king of Huns  281 Augustine of Hippo, St  325, 329, 333, 339, 350 The City of God (De civitate Dei) 325 Auxentius, monk  188–89 auxiliaries, barbarian  281, 282 Badija, Franciscan monastery  227 Baghdad 205–06 Barcelona  50, 51, 343, 347, 348, 355, 357 Bari  98, 100, 108, 109 emirate of B.  97, 98, 100, 103

ge ne ral i nd e x

Basil I, emperor  93, 100, 107–11 Basil the Younger, St  200, 203, 203 n. 73, 204, 204 n. 75 Bayezid I., Ottoman Sultan  407, 409 Beatus of Liebana  400 Beijing 398 Benedict XVI, pope  179 Benevento  99–101, 103–04, 105, 107 Beneventan Lombards  121, 123, 127–28, 130 civil war in B.  98–100 divisio of 848  119 n. 8, 123 n. 24, 124, 130, 131 duchy/principate of B.  97–101, 102, 106, 108, 119–24, 127–28, 129, 131 Berbers, 98, 265 n. 40. See also ‘Moors’ Bernard of Clairvaux  166, 168–72, 174, 175, 176 Letter 363 168–71 Biarmians  438, 443 Bible  191, 191 n. 26, 342, 343 Bible moralisée of Saint Louis 347 Birka  297, 300, 301 Bithynia (Byzantine province)  190 Bjarnar saga hítdœlakappa  381 n. 53, 384–85 Black Death (1348)  341, 347 Black Sea  404, 406 Blato (village on Korčula)  215, 217, 224, 228–29 Blood Libel  171 Bogdan Tulia, herder  224 Boniface, count  282 Books of Lineages  see Livros de Linhagens borders 53 Borre 299 boundaries  294–96, 315 Brahmans 319–35 burghers 50 Burgundians 281 burials  277, 294, 297, 302 boat 300 cremation  302, 304, 313 depositions, secondary  298, 307

deviant 305, 306 inhumation  302, 304 lack of b.  302 practices, funerary/mortuary  289, 293, 294–95, 298, 302, 305, 307 post-burial p.  307–14 rituals, funerary  289, 294–96, 302, 305–10, 311, 313 reuse 298 violence, funerary  305 Butrint, town at the Adriatic coast  200 Byblis (mythological figure)  141–42 Byzantium, Byzantines, Byzantine Empire  19, 93, 98–101, 107–11, 183, 185, 188, 200, 205, 206, 255 hagiography, B.  196. See also hagiography life, B.  191 literature, B.  191, 205 population, B.  206 society, B.  186 soldiers, B.  201 studies, B.  183 texts, B.  186 Cain  346, 349, 350, 352 cairns 302, 309 Calabria  201, 203 Calanus 323 Canção do cerco de Zamora  428 n. 59 Candia  see Crete Canon Law  377 Cap Bon, Battle of  281 capital, cultural  387–88 capitularies  99, 103 Capsali, Elijah  86 Capsali, Jeremiah  85–86 Capua, Capuans  97, 102, 103, 106, 119, 124, 126–28, 130, 133 Carmel, mount  187 Carolingians 93–111 Caspian Mountains  398 Cassius Dio, author  276 Castile, kingdom of  416 Catalonia, Catalan  51

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ge n e r a l in d e x

catastrophe model  280 Celloricum, Cellorigo, battle of C.  263, 264 cemeteries  see grave-fields Chaldeans  262, 263, 264, 264 n. 37, 265, 268, 270. See also Otherness, ‘Saracens’ Chanson de Roland 425 Charlemagne, emperor, king of the Franks  98, 99, 101, 102 China Sea  398 chivalric societies  see confraternities Chosen People  257, 260, 261, 262, 263, 265, 266, 268, 270 Christine de Pizan Cité des dames 159–60 Epistre Othea  146–49, 150–56, 157–59 Mutacion de Fortune 145–56 Chronica Adephonsi III, Chronicle of Alfonso III  255, 257 n. 17, 264, 268, 268 n. 50, 268 n. 51, 268 n. 52, 269, 269 n. 53, 269 n. 55 Chronica Albeldensis, Chronicle of Albelda  254 n. 7, 255, 255 n. 7, 256, 256 n. 10, 256 n. 11, 256 n. 12, 256 n. 14, 256 n. 15, 257, 257 n. 16, 257 n. 18, 258, 258 n. 19, 259, 262, 262 n. 28, 264, 264 n. 35, 265, 265 n. 39, 265 n. 40, 266, 266 n. 44, 268 Chronica anni 741 vel Chronica Byzantina Arabica, The Byzantine-Arab Chronicle  254 n. 5, 264 n. 37 Chronica anni 754 vel Chronica Muzarabica  254 n. 5 Chronica Prophetica, Prophetic Chronicle  254, 254 n. 7, 255, 255 n. 7, 256 n. 12, 257, 258 n. 19, 259, 260, 260 n. 23, 260 n. 25, 261, 261 n. 26, 261 n. 27, 263 n. 32, 267, 267 n. 48, 268 Chronicle of Salerno  100, 107–08, 110–11 Ĉhuds  438, 443 Cicero 247 circumpolar cultures  289, 296

citations, material  302, 310 citizenship  277, 279 civilisation  45, 280 clerics 50 code, national  440, 442, 443, 445, 449, 451 Coimbra 429 ‘collective memory’  125, 133 colonialism 45 commemoration  302, 307, 310, 311, 312, 313 communities  188, 190, 292, 295–96, 305, 308, 315 commune of Korčula  see Korčula, communitas local c.  186 monastic c.  188, 189, 194, 195, 196,197, 199, 206 own c.  190 sworn c.  50 confessions, religious  46 conflicts  118, 119, 120, 120 n.13, 121, 124, 130, 132, 183, 200 confraternities  50, 51, 52 connectivity, maritime  40, 57 Constantine V, Byzantine emperor  185, 198 Constantinople  109, 185, 187, 196, 198, 205 Continuatio Codicis Vaticani 108 Copts 245 Córdoba, Cordobans  257, 262, 263 emirate of C.  254, 255, 262, 263, 265 martyrs of C.  255 Corfu  75, 88–91, 202–03 corporality  293, 311–14 Corpus iuris civilis  78 n. 8 Correspondence of Alexander and Dindimus  326–27, 333 Cortes of Palencia  341 cosmology  295–96, 300 council  see synod Covadonga, battle of C.  269, 270 Crete, Candia  83–87, 205 Crusade, Second  169, 172

ge ne ral i nd e x

cult places  307–08, 309 culture, composite  282 Curzola  see Korčula Cynics 327 Cyprus 205 Cyril of Skythopolis, author  189, 189 n. 18, 191, 191 n. 27 Life of Euthymius 189, 191, 191 n. 27 Dalmatia  219, 221–22 Damascus 205 Dandamis (Dindimus)  323, 326–29 Danes, Denmark  303, 304, 306, 307, 374, 379, 440, 442, 448 Daniel, hegoumenos (abbot)  196 Daniel Stylites, St  194 dār al-Islām  43, 50 Dark Ages  280 ‘Dark Ages’ paradigm  165–66 dead people, ‘the dead’  289, 290, 291, 295–97, 299–302, 304–08, 310, 313–15 Dean’s Book of Lineages  see Livro de Linhagens do Deão decency 196 Decretum Gratiani 376 Dekapolis (region in the Byzantine province of Isauria in Asia Minor) 202 Denmark  see Danes determinism, geographic  52–53 Dinis, king of Portugal  420, 430 discourse, political  127 diseases 57 diversity 46 Divisio ducatus Beneventani 100 dolmens 298 draugr 289 Dunash ben Labrat, scholar  246 Ecdicius, patrician  282 Écija 427 ecology 58 Egypt, Egyptians  87, 183, 191 n. 28, 196, 205, 243, 269, 269 n. 55, 270 ‘El Cid’  see Rui Diaz ‘Cide’

Elias the Younger, St  200, 202–03, 203 n. 68 and 70–71 Elias, monk  187, 187 n. 13 and 14, 187 Eloy, St  56 Elvira, council of  240 embodiment  see corporality Emesa, town in Syria 195 emotions 289, 290, 301, 305, 310–14 enclosures 297 ritual e.  308, 309, 313 Enna, town in Sicily  203 Erchempert of Montecassino, chronicler  101–11, 117–34 Historia (Historiola) Langobardorum Beneventanorum  101–11, 117–34 Esau  350, 352 Eschéz d’amours  140, 149–50 Ethiopians 196 ethnicity 276 ethnogenesis 275 ethos 183–207 Europe  46, 50, 330 Europe, Southeast  216 Euthymius the Younger, St  190, 190 n. 23 Euthymius, abbot in Palestine  188, 189 n. 19 Evagrius 194 Ecclesiastical History  194 n. 37 Eve 417 Evrart de Conty  139–40, 150, 157 Le Livre des Eschez amoureux moralisés 140 exploratores 204 Eyrbyggja saga  386, 387, 388 Ezekiel, prophet  257, 260, 260 n. 24, 260 n. 25, 261, 266, 268, 270 family Sagas  see Íslendingasögur Fasulae, Battle of  281 Fernando III, king of Castile  424, 425 Fernando IV, king of Castile  430 Fernão Mendes de Bragança  427 Fez  81, 83–84, 86 fibulae 278

461

462

ge n e r a l in d e x

Finland, Finni  301, 307, 437–38, 444, 445, 445 n. 38, 446, 447, 450 Finnmǫrk 446 Finno-Ugric peoples  310, 311 Fiðr see Finni Francesc Eiximenis  355 Francesco Foscari, Doge of Venice  227 Franciscans  see Badija Franks, Frankish empire  93, 98–107, 110–11, 119 n. 7, 124, 276, 281, 282 citizen of F.  282 freedom 45 frontier 277 Frostaþing  449, 451 funerals, funerary practices  see burials Gaeta 97 Gaffar ibn Mohammed  203 Gaideris (Guaifer), princeps of Benevento 109 Galicia-Portugal, kingdom of  428 Gamla Uppsala  313 Gamle Lejre  298 Garcia, king of Galicia-Portugal  428, 429 genealogy 304 Geniza 55 George, St, St George’s Day (23 April) 226 George Synkletous  198–99 German, Germany  50, 51 Getules  265 n. 40. See also ‘Moors’ ghosts  289, 305, 307, 315 Gibbon, Edward, historian  280 Gibraltar, Straits of  243 Gideon 269 gift-giving 308, 309, 310 Gijón 257 Giovanni de’ Marignolli  332, 334 globalisation 37 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang  53 Gog  260, 260 n. 25, 261, 268, 270 Gonçalo de Sousa  427 Gonçalo Mendes da Maia  422, 423 Goths, Gothic people  256, 260 n. 25, 265, 276. See also ‘Visigoths’

governance  see Venetia, Venitian g. Grágás, Icelandic Lawbook  385, 371–72, 377 n. 27, 379, 381, 382, 384 Granada  427, 431 grave-fields  297–99, 302, 304, 307, 308, 309, 310 graves  294, 296–98, 301, 304–05, 307 chamber 300, 304 on islands  299 re-opening  311, 313, 314 Greeks  20, 25, 30 Gregory Dekapolites, St  200–01, 200 n. 60, 201, 201 n. 63, 202, 202 n. 66 and 67, 206 Grimoald III, princeps of Benevento  98, 101, 119 n. 7 Grimoald IV, princeps of Benevento  98 Grottaferrata, monastery near Rome  201 Guadalete, battle of  238 Guidones, Frankish family  99, 107 Guillaume de Lorris  140, 148, 149, 160 n. 32 Roman de la Rose  140, 148, 152, 154, 160 Gulaþingslǫg, Norwegian lawbook  378, 389 n. 87 Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu  384, 385, 386 Guy I, duke of Spoleto  99, 105–06 Gymnosophists  see Brahmans Habakkuk, prophet  263, 263 n. 34, 266, 270 Hälsingeland 446 Hagar (wife of Abraham)  258, 258 n. 20, 259, 270 Hagarenes, Agarenes  see Otherness, Hagarenes; see also Otherness, ‘Saracens’; ‘Ishmaelites’ Haggadah  343, 347, 361 Brother H.  351, 352, 353, 355, 356, 358 Golden H.  351, 352, 353, 355 Hispano-Mauresque H. 352 Rylands H.  351, 353 Sarajevo H.  347, 353, 355, 357, 358, 359 Haggadot  350, 352, 353, 355, 357

ge ne ral i nd e x

hagiography, hagiographical  186, 190, 191, 193, 196, 199, 200 al-Ḥakam II, caliph  245 Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri, king of Norway 375 Hákon Hákonarson, king of Norway 373 Hákon V Magnusson, king of Norway 445–46 halakha see Otherness, Jews, halakha Harald Blåtand, King of Denmark  374 Haraldr inn hárfagri, King of Norway 374 Hariulfus, Burgundian  282 Harun-al-Rashīd, king of Persia  20 hauld 450 Hayyim, rabbi  347 Heimskringla  see Snorri Sturluson heirlooms  see inheritance Heiðarvíga saga  381 n. 53, 384 Hel 300, 30 Helmold of Bosau  24 n. 50 Henrique II, king of Castile  422 Henrique, ‘Infante’  430 herders, shepherds  124 n. 26, 125–26, 131 as others  see Otherness, herders. See also animal husbandry chief herder (celnich)  224, 226 herding laws  216, 221–27, 229–30 herding society (societas animalium)  222–24, 226, 229 livestock branding  216, 224–25 livestock owner  222–25 relation with communal officials  215, 226–28 relation with farmers  217, 223, 227–28 relation with livestock owners  222–25 relation with urban elite  226–27 remuneration of herders  224–25 subcontracted herder (socius) 224, 226 winter pastures (simiaca) 226 written herding contract  223–25, 229–30. See also herding society

Hermaphroditus (mythological figure) 149–51 Hesychasts  183, 205 hesychia  see tranquillity Hieronymus Münzer  50 Hincmar, archbishop of Reims  104 n. 58 Hispania  256, 256 n. 12, 257, 258, 264, 265, 266, 270 Historia Norwegiae 438 historicity, imagined  372, 376, 386 history, salvific  376 Holy Land  see Palestine holiness  191–96, 202, 206–07. See also Otherness, holiness Honorius III, pope  341 Horace 247 Huns  276, 281 Hyacinthus (mythological figure, conflated with Ganymede)  151–53 Iberia, Iberian Peninsula  242, 253, 254, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 416, 428 n. 59, 431 Ibn Ṣā‘id al-Andalusī  247 Iceland, Icelanders  24 n. 52, 373, 374, 378–86, 388 Iconoclasm, Iconoclasts  183, 187, 187 n.12, 198–99, 202 Iconophiles, iconophile beliefs  185, 186, 187, 199, 202 Ifrīqiya 243 Ignatios the Deacon, author  202 Life of Gregory Dekapolites 202 Ioannikios, abbot  190 Imperialism 45 India  30, 398, 405, 406, 407. See also Otherness, India Indonesia 398 inheritance  294, 310–11, 312, 313 Innocent III, pope  341 Iphis (mythological figure)  142–46, 161 Isaac  258, 259, 270 Ishmael  258, 258 n. 20, 259, 260, 260 n. 25, 261, 268, 270

463

464

ge n e r a l in d e x

Ishmaelites  257, 258, 258 n. 20, 259, 260, 260 n. 25, 261, 262, 264, 265, 268, 270. See also Otherness, ‘Saracens’ Isidore, bishop of Seville  258, 258 n. 20, 260 n. 25 Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri xx, Etymologies  258, 258 n. 20 Islam  see Otherness, Islam, Saracens Íslendingasögur  371–72, 375, 377, 380–86 Israel (land)  87 Italy  48, 200–02 central I.  94 southern  93, 97–111, 200, 201 n. 62 and 65 Jacopo d‘ Acqui  395, 396, 398, 399, 407 Jacques de Vitry  329, 333 James I, king of Aragón  341 Járnsíða, Icelandic Lawbook  373 Jean de Meun  148 n. 20, 149, 160 n. 32 Roman de la Rose  149, 160 Jean Germain  399 Jelling 307 Jerusalem  205, 408 Jesus Christ  339, 341–42, 346, 350–52, 356, 359, 361–62, 425, 426 Jew, Wandering 166 Jews  see Otherness, Jews Jillīqiya 247 João, ‘Infante’  430 João Nunes de Lara II  430 John VIII, pope  110, 122, 124, 126 John II, king of Castile  342 John Chrysostom  240 John the Grammarian, patriarch of Constantinople  204 n. 76, 206 John of Monte Corvino, archbishop of Beijing  398, 399 John, deacon form Naples, 102, 106–07 Gesta of the bishops  102, 106–07 Juan de Valencia  345 Judas 339

Junius, archdeacon  224 jurisdiction communal jurisdiction on Korčula 225–28 Venetian jurisdiction on Korčula  216–18, 225–28, 230 Justinian, Byzantine emperor  196 Kabbalah 344 kahal  see Otherness, Jews, communal autonomy Kali, Jewish maiden from Candia  85– 86 Kingsʼ Sagas  375, 388 kinship  295, 310 Knud (Canute) IV, St, King of Denmark 379 Korčula communal officials, administration of K.  216–18, 226–28 communal statutes  see Law, statutory law; Statuta et leges civitatis et insulae Curzulae communitas 218 Grand Council of K.  221–22, 227 island 215–34 town  217, 227 Venetian governor of K.  215, 218, 226, 228–29 Kvens 438 laity  186, 190 Lambert I, duke of Spoleto  106 Landnámabók 375 Landolf/Landulf II, Bishop and count of Capua  106, 119, 126, 128, 130–31 landscapes  297, 299 cognitive 300–01 monumental 297–98 language Slavic vernacular  217 Venetian dialect  217 Laodicea, council of   240 Late Antiquity  277, 279, 283

ge ne ral i nd e x

Lavra, type of monastery  188–89 law civil l.  277 customary l. of Korčula  218, 222, 226, 228–29 Icelandic l.  see Grágás; Járnsíða statutory l. of Korčula  216–30 Law of Borgarþing 443 Law of Eidsivaþing 443 Law of Frostaþing  442, 449–50 Law of Gulaþing  442, 444 Law of Östgötaland 441 Law of Västgötaland  441–42, 448 Leo(n) I, Roman/Byzantine emperor 194 Leo(n) III, Byzantine emperor  255, 256 Leo(n) VI, Byzantine emperor  203, 204 Leontios of Neapolis, author  195 Life of Symeon Salos 195 Lesbos 192 Levi bar Isaac  348 Libellus de imperatorial potestate in urbe Roma  104 n. 58 Liébana 257 Life (Tale) of Andronikos and Athanasia 196 Life of St Basil the Younger (by his disciple Gregory)  200, 203–04 Life of Euthymius the Younger 190 Life of St Mary/Marinos  197, 197 n. 49 and 50 Life of Symeon Stylites the Elder (by the monk Antonios) 193 Life of Daniel Stylites (by a disciple) 194 literacy  223–25, 229–30 literature, literary sources  55, 289 Byzantine l.  see Byzantium, literature Kalevala l.  301 Old Icelandic l.  289, 300, 310 sagas 371–89 Litorius, Roman general  281

Livros de Linhagens  416, 418, 419, 420, 421, 422, 426, 427 Livro Velho de Linhagens  416, 417, 421, 427 Livro de Linhagens do Deão  416, 417, 421 n. 23, 423, 427 Livro de Linhagens do Conde D. Pedro  416, 417, 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 430, 432 Lombards, Longobardia  97–111, 117–33 L. principalities  125, 128 Lothar I, emperor  99, 102, 107 Louis I, the Pious, emperor  102 Louis II, emperor  93, 99–100, 102–07, 110–11, 119, 124, 126, 134 Louis IX, king of France  177 Mälar valley  307 Maghreb 81–82 Magistrianoi 204 Magnus Eriksson IV/VII, king of Sweden and Norway  446 Magnús Hákonarson lagabœtir, king of Norway 373 Magnús inn góði, King of Norway  377 Mahomet  see Muḥammad Maimonides  344, 348 Mālik b. Anas, scholar  238 Mandeville’s Travels  321 n. 12, 329 n. 43, 330–33, 334 manslaughter (víg)  371, 372 n. 7 mappa mundi  399, 402 Manuel, Byzantine general  205, 205 n. 78, 206 Marco Polo  321 n. 12, 333 n. 60 Margaret, duchess of Brabant  175 Margaret II, countess of Flanders  175 Mari  311 Marinids  425, 427 maritimization 54 Mark, monk  189–90 marriages, ban on  281 Marteinn, ‘king of finns’  446 Martim Gil de Riba de Vizela  423

465

466

ge n e r a l in d e x

Martim Gil de Soverosa  429 Martin, St  261 Mary, St, feast 15 August  225–26 Mary/Marinos, St  197, 197 n. 50 Mary of Egypt, St  191–92, 192 n. 30–33, 193, 195, 206 material ‘turn’  52 materiality  293, 304 Matthew, apostle  405, 406 Mauriac Plain, Battle of  281 Maximus the Confessor  237 Mecca  402, 404, 405 Mécia, queen of Portugal  429 Mediterranean  36‒58, 93–111, 217 memorialization  see commemoration Menahem Bezalel  347 merchants 50 Merobaudes, master of soldiers  278 Michael III, Byzantine emperor  100, 109 Michael Psellos, Byzantine statesman and author  187–88 Micula Mratinovich of Smokvica, herder 229 Middle East  405, 407, 409 Midian, kingdom of  269 migration 277 Mihovil Marcovich of Žrnovo, villager 222 Milat, herder  224–25 military contractors, independent  282 miracles  see Otherness, miracles Mixa de Piero, livestock owner  225 mobility 199. See also travellers Mohammad  see Muḥammad Moisés Arragel of Guadalajara, rabbi of Maqueda 342 Bible of Alba  342, 350 monachos  183, 191 monasticism, monks  183–207. See also Otherness, monastic O. coenobitic  183–84, 190 spirituality  189, 200 stability 199 virtues  184, 189, 202 moneylending  339, 341, 343, 344, 362

Mongols  395, 396, 398, 399, 405, 406, 407, 408, 409 Montecassino, monastery  100, 107, 111, 117–34 destruction of M. (883)  118 n. 5, 133–34 monuments  297, 298, 300, 302, 303, 304 Moors  265 n. 40. See also Berbers; Otherness, Saracens morlachs (transhumant pastoralists) 221 Morocco  81–83, 90 Moses  343, 345, 352, 353, 356, 357, 358, 359, 361, 362, 404 Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides)  343, 344 mounds 289, 299, 306, 309, 310 Bronze Age  298 Iron Age  313, 299 304, 307 Mount Athos  see Athos Mount Sinai  404 Mozarabs 255 Muḥammad, prophet  49, 237, 238, 240, 256, 424 Muhammad I, emir of Córdoba  262 Munuza, military leader  257 Mūsà b. Nuṣayr, governor  238 Muslims  see Otherness, Muslims/ Saracens Myrrha (mythological figure)  140–42 myths 304 Naples, Neapolitans  97, 98, 106, 124, 127–28 Narcissus (mythological figure)  146– 51, 157 nationalism, nationality  38, 58, 186 Nazarenes 53 Nebuchadnezzar 404 Neilos of Sinai, St  200 Neilos the Younger, abbot of Grottaferrata, St  201–02, 201 n. 64 and 65 Nicholas I, pope  104

ge ne ral i nd e x

Nicholas I, patriarch of Constantinople  204 n. 74 Nicholas of Bari, St  56 Nicholas of Tolentino, St  56 Nicolaus of Cues  42 Nikephoros I, patriarch of Constantinople, author  187, 187 n. 12 Antirrheticus III Niketas Magistros, byzantine official and author  192–93 Life of Theoctiste of lesbos Niðaróss  440 n. 15, 449 nobility 50 normalcy  190, 192, 194, 198 Norway, Norwegians  299, 310, 374, 377, 378, 379, 380, 382, 385, 437–51 Notker of St Gallen  19–20 Gesta Karoli Magni imperatoris 19–20 Novgorod 447 Nuno Gonçalves de Lara  427 oaths  see communities, sworn Odovacar, master of soldiers  282 offerings  see gift-giving Óláfr Haraldsson, St, king of Norway  375, 377, 380 Óláfr Tryggvason, St, king of Norway  375, 376 Old Book of Lineages  see Livro Velho de Linhagens ontology  295–96, 304, 315 relational o.  293–94, 296, 307, 325 shifts in o.  295, 305 Oppa, (Asturian) bishop  257, 269 orality 223 Ordoño II, king of León  263 Oria 109 Origen 195 Orosius 404 Orpheus (mythological figure)  156, 161 Oseberg 313, 314 Otranto  200–02, 206 Ourém, castle of  429 Ovide moralisé  140–45, 148–49, 150–51, 156–57, 161

Oviedo 269 Oxford, synod of  178 Pablo Christiani  343 Pactum Sicardi 98 Palestine 184, 188, 188 n. 17, 196, 199, 422 Palladius of Galatia  327 n. 34 On the Brahmans  327 n. 34 Paros 192 parrhesia 188 Parvosius, herder  223 pastor  see herders pastoralism  see animal husbandry; herders pastoral power, p. authority  125–34 p. concept:121 p. rhetoric  125–28, 133 p. voice  128, 131 Regula Pastoralis 125 Paul, St Letter to the Galatians  259, 259 n. 22, 270 Letter to the Hebrews [authorship debated]  266, 267, 267 n. 46, 267 n. 47 Paulus Letilovich, herder  224 Pedro I, king of Castile  422 Pedro, count of Barcelos  416, 417, 423, 431 Count Pedro’s Book of Lineages  see Livro de Linhagens do Conde D. Pedro Pedro Tenorio, bishop of Toledo  342, 345, 349, 355 Pelayo, king of Asturias  242, 257, 258, 269 Pêro Fernandes de Castro  421 Persia 404 personhood  292, 295, 302, 304, 307, 313–15. See also Otherness, identity Peter Abelard  see Abelard Peter the Venerable  165 Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews 165 Petrus Simchovich, priest  215–16

467

468

ge n e r a l in d e x

Philip the Good  399 Philotheos Kokkinos, patriarch of Constantinople, author  205 n. 80 Life of Sabas  205 n. 80, 206 n. 81 Photius, patriarch of Constantinople 189 Pippin, king of Italy  99, 101 plants 57 pleasures   187 Pliny the Elder  324, 333 Natural History (Naturalis historia) 324 Plutarch  322–23, 326, 333 Parallel Lives (Vitae Parallelae) 322–23 Pollentia, Battle of  281 Portugal, kingdom of  421, 422, 423, 425, 429, 431 practices, social  293 Prester John  405 Prester John’s Letter  328–29, 334 Promised Land  257, 260, 263, 267, 268 prophecy  400, 407, 408, 409 provincials 279 Prussia 405 Qayrawān 243 Radagaisus, barbarian invader  281 Radelchis, princeps of Benevento  98, 100 Raimundo Viegas de Portocarreiro 429 Ramiro I, king of Asturias  266, 267 rationality, irrationality  46 Raymond Marti  343 reconquista 343 recsþegn 449–51 Red Sea  269 Regula Benedicti  122 n. 20, 125 n. 29 Reihengräberfelder 277 relations  289, 293, 295, 302, 307, 314 communal  295–96, 301, 313, 315 familial  297, 310, 312, 313 material  294, 296, 302, 308, 314 power  292, 307, 313

societal  294, 310, 307, 313 spatial 296–301 religion  see Otherness, religion indigenous r.  289, 301, 310 Old Norse r., pre-Christian Nordic r.  289, 296–98, 301, 305, 310, 314 renaissance, twelfth-century  374 Rhine, river  277, 281 Rhineland 79 Ricimer, master of soldiers  279 rituals  see burials, ritual Roderic(us), Visigothic king  238, 253, 256, 256 n. 12, 257, 266, 267, 269 Rodrigo Afonso de Leão  421–22 Rodrigo Froiaz de Trastâmara I  428–29 Rodrigo Froiaz de Trastâmara II  424–25 Rodrigo Gomes de Trava  424 Roman de la Rose  see Guillaume de Lorris; Jean de Meun Roman Empire  281 Western E.  280, 283 end of R.E.  279, 282 Rome, Romans  96, 255, 275, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283 Carolingian siege of R.  104 sack of R. (410)  281 sack of R. (455)  281 Saracen raid of R.  99, 102 Romulus 255 Rui Capão  422 Rui Diaz ‘Cide’  429 rune-stones 310, 312 Russia, Russian  443, 447 Sabas the Younger, St  205, 205 n. 80 sacrifices 302, 304 sagas  see literature, Old Icelandic contemporary s.  see Samtíðarsögur Saladin (Salehadin)  408 Salerno 103 principate of S.  97–100 Salmacis (mythological figure)  149–51 Salvian of Marseille, author  280 Sámi  296, 310, 437–51

ge ne ral i nd e x

Samonas, Byzantine statesman  204, 204 n. 74 Samtíðarsögur  386, 388 Sancho II, king of Castile  428–29 Sancho II, king of Portugal  429 Sancho IV, king of Castile  341, 430 Castigos 341 Sancho Nunes de Barbosa  427 Sant‘Agata, church of (in Rome)  279 Santarém  428, 429 San Vincenzo al Volturno, monastery 100 Sápmi 437 Sara (wife of Abraham)  258, 259, 270 Saracens  see Otherness, Saracens savagery  191, n. 28 Sawdan, amir of Bari  103, 104 Scandinavia 437–51 scholasticism  176–77, 179 Schwabenspiegel 167 Scimonetus Vidoscy, rural patrician and livestock owner  215–16 servi camerae see Otherness, Jews, servi camerae Seville, siege of  424–25, 426 shepherds  see herders ship settings  298, 302, 303, 307 Sicard, princeps of Benevento  98, 99, 119, 128–30 Sicily, Sicilian  103, 189, 200, 202–03 Sico, princeps of Benevento  98, 119, 128–29 Siconulf, princeps of Benevento/ Salerno  98, 99 Sisebut, king of the Visigoths  256 slaves  see thralls Småland 310 Smokvica, village on Korčula  229 Snorri goði, Icelandic magnate  372 Snorri Sturluson, Icelandic magnate and author  376, 388 Heimskringla  376, 438 Sophronios, patriarch of Jerusalem, author 191 Life of Mary of Egypt 191–92

soudarion 200 space, cultural, interstitial  46 space, intermediate  57 space, maritime  52, 53, 54 Sparta 202 spatial ‘turn’  52 spies  see Otherness, spies spirituality  see monasticism, spirituality Spoleto, duchy of  99, 105–06, 110 statehood, Venetian  216–18 Stato da mar  see Venice, Overseas Territories Statuta et leges civitatis et insulae Curzulae  see Law, statutory law of Korčula Stephen the Deacon, author  198 Life of Stephen the Younger   198 n. 52 and 53, 199 Stephen the Younger, St  198–99, 198 n. 52–55 Stoudios, monastery in Constantinople 183 Strabo  323, 324, 333 Geography (Geographica) 323 studies, subaltern  44, 57 Sturla Þórðarson, Icelandic magnate and author  373, 388 n. 84 Sturlung Age  373 Suevi 281 al-Ṣumayl 241 Swedes, Sweden, Swedish  297, 298, 300, 303, 304, 306, 307–11, 313, 437–51 Symeon, hermit  192–93 Symeon Salos, St  195–96, 195 n. 40–43 Symeon Stylites the Elder, St  193–94, 193 n. 36 Synaxarium Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae 196 synod Fourth Lateran Council (1215)  177, 340–41 Canon 68 177 Syracuse  200, 203, 203 n. 69 Syria  184, 195

469

47 0

ge n e r a l in d e x

Tacitus 247 takkanot ha-kahal  see Otherness, Jews, communal autonomy Takkanot Kandiyah  83–85, 87 Talmud  342, 343, 344, 347 Taranto  97, 98, 100, 103 Tarifa, battle of  424, 425–26, 431 Telanissa, locality near Antioch in Syria 194 Tertullian  49, 355 Testament, Old  see Bible Theoctiste of Lesbos, St  192–93, 193 n. 34 and 35 Theoderic the Great, king of Ostrogoths 282 Theodora, Byzantine empress  196 Theodore Studite, abbot, St  183, 185 n. 6 Theodoricus monachus, Norwegian historiographer 380 Theophanes, chronicler  185, 185 n. 10 Chronographia (chronicle)  185 n. 10 Continuatio 204 Theophilos, Byzantine emperor  204 Thessalonica 201 Thomas, apostle  405, 406 Thomas Aquinas  166, 175–79 On the Government of the Jews 175– 78 Thomas of Cantimpré  329, 333 Thrace  202, 205 Thrakesion (Byzantine administrative and military unit in Asia Minor)  187 thralls 302, 304 Timur, Tamerlan, Timur-lenk  407, 409 Titus, mercenary commander  194, 194 n. 38 Tofer, Abraham  85–87, 90 Toledo  339, 341, 344–62 Torah 343 trade  216, 217, 221, 230 long-distance t.  216–17 slave t.  221 trans-Adriatic t.  216–17

Traditionskern 276 tranquillity  183, 188, 189, 205 transformation model  280 Tunisia 425 Typika  188 ‘Umar I, caliph  238 ‘Umar II caliph  237, 240 undead  see ghosts Urraca, queen of Portugal  422 usury  177, 339, 343 al-‘Utbī, mālikite scholar  238 Vicus Helena, Battle of  281 Valencia  342, 345, 355, 360–62 Valhalla 300 Vandals  276, 281, 282 Vatopedi, monastery on Mount Athos 205 Velletri/Borgia world map  402, 403, 404, 405, 406, 409 Vendel  289, 308, 309, 313 Venice 217–18 Doge of V.  218, 227 jurisdiction  see jurisdiction, Venetian overseas territories  216–17 republic of V.  75, 83, 88–89, 216–18 See also Statehood, Venetian Venetian governance  215–18, 226–30 Venetian government of Corfu  89 Venetian governor of Candia  84 Venetian governor of Korčula  see Korčula, Venetian governor Vienna School  276 Víga-Glúms saga  381–84, 386, 388 Vikings  19, 289–315 Vincent Ferrer  355 Virgin Mary  56 Visigoths, Visigothic, Visigothic kingdom  235, 238, 253, 255, 256, 256 n. 12, 257, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 281, 282 Vita Athanasii (of Naples)  106 Vlachs, transhumant pastoralists  221

ge ne ral i nd e x

Wandering Jew  see Jew, Wandering 166 war, warfare  45, 46, 55 civil w.  282 wergild 447–49 William of Rubruk, Franciscan traveller 398 William of Tyre  16 William Shakespeare  172 The Merchant of Venice  172 Wittiza, Visigothic king  256

Xifcus, shoe seller  229 Xivoe Tonixich, herder  223, 226 Yaḥyà b. Yaḥyà b. Kathir b. Wislas, mālikite scholar  244 Yusif [Yusuf ibn Abd ar-Rahman alFihri], governor of Córdoba  257, 257 n. 18 zones, transitory  57 Zosimas, monk  192 Žrnovo, village on Korčula  222 Zuane de Piero, livestock owner  225

471

Index of Names and Subjects Related to Otherness

abnormal, abnormality  12, 186 accomodation  45, 46 acculturation, assimilation  30, 277, 280. See also O., integration admiration  23, 25, 30 advena 27. See also O., strangers adversarialness  280, 283 Africa, Africans  19, 30, 52, 98 Agarenes  see Hagarenes; see also O., Saracens alienus 27. See also strangers allofylos  see O., race; terminology of O. (in Greek Texts) allogenes  see O., terminology of O. (in Greek Texts) alteritas 27 alterity  11, 21, 24 n. 51, 95, 198, 220, 289, 319–20 alterity studies  38, 40 ambiguity, ambivalence  22, 121, 128, 186, 195, 196 n. 44, 296, 300, 315 anchorites  see O., hermits animals  140, 141, 142–43, 161 animosities 22 anti-Judaism, anti-Jewish treatises  14, 23, 30, 76 n. 4, 78, 86, 166–67, 178–79, 344, 349, 355 anti-Semitism 166 appearance  21, 25, 183–84, 186, 194, 204, 205, 240, 259, 263, 323. See also O., clothes, headdress, signs ‘archaeology of O’  291–94 ‘archotherness’, the ‘Archother’  418, 420–26, 430, 431, 432 ascription of O.  12, 21, 24, 26 Asia 30

assessment  23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 134 assimilated Others  243–46 assimilation  see acculturation attitudes of/towards ‘Others’  22, 23, 24, 25, 102–11, 322, 329, 330 n. 46 acceptance  187 n. 12, 190, 194 admiration 194 affection 187 condemnation, contempt, disdain  23, 25, 187 curiosity  12, 23 deception 206 disguise  186, 196–98, 205, 206 distrust  206, 215–16, 230 reverence  190, 192 suspicion  200, 204 wonderment 194 barbarians  28, 30, 39, 48, 237, 247–48, 275–83, 321 barbarian conquest  280, 281 barbarian invasions  281, 282 barbarian kingdoms  283 barbarian O.  275, 276, 279, 280, 283 behaviour of/towards ‘Others’, behavioural patterns, misbehaviour  12, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 41, 43, 131, 132, 133, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 194, 204, 206, 322, 323–25, 328, 331–32, 334–35. See also O., character cooperation 45 eccentricity 194 encompassment, encompassing the ‘Other’  47, 48, 55, 57 provocation 195 rejection  12, 24, 187 n. 12, 189

i n d e x o f n am e s an d s u b j ect s re lat e d to ot he rne ss

violence 228–30 belonging  41, 47, 50 burials, deviant  305, 306 Byzantium, Byzantines  19, 93, 98–101, 107–11, 118 n. 5, 119 n. 7, 120 n. 12, 241–47. See also Byzantium caricatures 166 character  184, 186, 189, 199, 206. See also O., behaviour Christians, Christianity (general or Latin)  41, 42, 43, 39, 41, 42, 46, 49, 55, 121, 123, 124, 129–34, 395, 396, 401, 407, 408 Ch. argumentation, rhetoric  125 Ch. authority  131–32, 134 Ch. behaviour  127 Ch. community  125, 129 Ch. culture  133 Ch. discourse  122–23, 133 Ch. flock  125 Ch. heresies Arianism 278 Ch. heresies Homoian 278 Ch. identity  125. See also O., identity Ch. life  279 Ch. morality  125, 131 Nicene Ch.  278 Christianity (Greek, ‘Orthodox’)  46, 219 ‘clash of civilizations’  17 clothes, clothing, garments, habit  27, 30, 167, 176–78, 184, 197, 203, 205, 247, 321 n. 12, 332, 386. See also O., monastic O., habit cross-dressing 158–60. See also O., transvestites coexistence  22, 97–111, 320 n. 3 cohabitation  45, 46 conduct towards, dealings with the ‘other’  see O., behaviour conflicts  22, 97–111 construction of O.  23, 25, 40, 41, 122 contempt  see attitudes, condemnation/contempt cooperation  see behaviour

‘Critical Race Theory’  17–18 cross-dressing  see O., clothes, crossdressing cross-pollination 40 cultural O.  20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 28, 93–97, 108, 247, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271 cultures, remote  13–14, 16, 21, 22, 25, 26, 28, 30, 323 curiosity  see attitudes, curiosity customs  20, 21, 186, 189, 321, 324, 325 dangers, threats  54, 55, 56 dār al-islām  238, 242, 246, 247, 249 dār al-ḥarb 247 degrees of O.  see O., grades of O. demarcation, delimitation  12, 13, 23, 25, 27, 28, 30, 44, 45, 46, 335. See also O., exclusion; segregation democracy 45 deviators 12 devil 56 dhimma-status 43 difference  see distinctions disdain  see attitudes, condemnation disputes  see Jews, disputes distance, spatial; remoteness  22, 320, 324, 334, 335 distinction(s), difference  96–97, 417–18, 421, 426, 429, 431, 432 strategies of d.  124 divinity 141–42 dominated Others  236–43 dynamics  22, 95–97, 118, 120, 134 encompassment  see O., behaviour, encompassment encounter  250, 255, 269 enemies, enmity, foes  12, 48, 111, 121, 130, 131, 133, 170–71, 176, 202, 206, 416, 417–18, 422, 431 epochs  21, 25, 373–77, 388–89 espionage  See O., spies ethnic O., ethno-religious O.  15, 9, 20, 21, 22, 28, 30, 47, 50, 96–97, 280, 283, 319, 321,

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321 n. 12, 322, 324, 333, 416, 418, 422, 429, 430, 431–32, 437–51. See also O., race eunuchs 197 exclusion, inclusion; outside one’s own society  12, 17, 27, 48, 102, 111, 119 n. 7, 120–24, 125, 126, 128–34, 183, 188, 319 n. 1, 321, 329, 339 exotic O.  319, 322, 334 expatriates, expatriation  52 experience  22, 26, 319, 333 n. 60 external Others  246–49 extraneus 27

heathens  see O., pagans herders  216, 219–20, 230 heresy, heretics  19, 20, 22, 25, 39, 49. See also O., Christians, Ch. heresies hermits  184, 191, 193, 203, 205 heroic Age  372, 374. See also O., saga age; Vikings hierarchy 174 holiness, sanctity  190, 191–96, 202, 206–07. See also holiness holy men, holy women  see O., saints hostility  22, 23

faith  see religious O. familiar, familiarity  250, 250 n. 2, 255, 259, 265, 266, 269, 270, 271 ‘familiar stranger’  250 fools, holy  188, 191, 193, 194–96, 205, 205, n. 79 foreign, foreigners  12, 13, 15, 20, 22, 26, 27, 121, 129, 199, 202, 206, 219–20, 253 n. 2, 266, 319 n. 2, 334. See also O., strangers f. rule, f. rulers  255, 257, 260, 261, 262, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271 Franks  30, 93, 98–107, 110–11 Fremdheit  13, 15. See also O., strangers frontier 255

Iconophiles  see O., religious O., Iconophiles identity  17, 24, 25, 30, 41, 47, 93–97, 123, 125, 131, 134, 197, 204, 279, 289, 315, 334 n. 62, 417–18, 419, 428 n. 59 archaeology of i.  291–94 Christian i., see O., Christianity construction of i.  123, 293–94 ethnic i.  291–92, 295. See also O., ethnic O. experience of i.  293 304 group i.  219, 291–96 i. of texts  124 individual i.  292, 295, 302, 304 intersectional i.  292 Lombard i.  125 monastic i.  123 plural i.  292 relational i.  293, 295 social i.  292, 294–95, 302, 313 illegitimacy 178 image of the O.  see O., perception inclusion  see O., exclusion India, Indians  30, 248, 319–35. See also India infamy 357 infidels, infideles  14, 28. See also O., religious O. ‘in-groups’, ‘out-groups’  see O., exclusion, inclusion inhumanity/humanity  see nonhumans

garments  see O., clothes gender, transgender  12, 19, 20, 21, 30, 53, 143–51, 155, 159–61 genealogy  266, 268, 270 God as O.  21 ‘grades’/‘degrees’/‘scale’/layers of O.  23, 26, 29, 96–97, 105, 107, 110–11, 122, 183, 186, 190, 192, 195,197, 202, 206 Greeks  20, 25, 30, 93, 98–101, 107–11, 248 habit  see O., clothes Hagarenes, Agarenes  203, 257, 258, 258 n. 19, 258 n. 20, 259, 270. See also O., Saracens; Ishmaelites headdress (soudarion)  200, 201–02

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integration  22, 21, 27, 30, 248, 279, 280, 327–32, 335, See also O., acculturation inter-minority relations  44 internal O., inside one’s own community  12, 19, , 21, 27, 29, 30, 219–20, 230, 437–51 Jews  75–76, 82, 88–89 intolerance 23 Islam  39, 41, 42, 44, 46, 47, 49, 52 Islamophobia  166, 170–71

“lachrymose” conception of their history 76 marriage in Judaism  82–84, 86 rabbinic responsa 87 relations with Christians  76–78 Romaniots  75, 84, 88–89 Sephardim in Candia  84–86, 91 in Morocco  81–83, 90 servi camerae 78

Jews, Judaism  14, 15, 18, 19, 22, 25, 29, 30, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 52, 76–78, 90– 91, 165–79, 219, 239–41, 243, 245–46, 249, 328 n. 38, 339–63. See also O., anti-Judaism; internal O., Jews anusim  86–87, 90 Ashkenazi  76, 84 bad moral behaviour of Jews  341, 350 communal autonomy  78–81, 90–91 kahal 79 takkanot ha-kahal  75–76, 78–79, 82, 90 universitas Iudaeorum  78, esp. n. 8 community of Candia  83–88 its leaders  84 community of Corfu  75–76, 88–89 its internal decrees  75, 88–89 conversion of J.  344, 345, 350, 353, 356, 359, 361, 362 disputes between J. and Christians 343 distinctive signs  340–42, 343, 345, 347, 350, 353, 355, 356–58, 361–63 capa juhega 341 earrings 357 red 341 tocado 341 yellow s.  341 excommunication 87–90 expulsions from the Iberian Peninsula 81 halakha  79, 82 J. as murderers  349, 341, 342

language  20, 21, 25, 27, 96, 108, 173, 178, 186, 188, 199, 202 alloglossos [ἀλλόγλωσσος] of different language 186 Arab 244–46 Greek (dialectal)  202 layers of O.  see O., grades of O. legal O.  27, 29, 30, 219, 371–89 madness  194, 195 magic worlds  15 marginalization  17, 28, 168–69, 190 medieval studies (O. as object of m. st.)  see O., research on O. men, wild  191–92 methodology  12, 16–20, 20–26, 93–97 migrants, migration  20, 25, 53, 255, 319 minorities  12, 20, 25, 96 miracles, miraculous  186, 193, 195, 206 modern meanings of O.  12–13, 93–97 monastic O.  22, 25, 30, 97, 183–207. See also O., behaviour, clothes; holiness abstinence  185, 187 n.12, 188, 189, 197 acceptance  190, 194 agoraoi [ἀγοραῖοι], of the market place 200 anchorites  184, 192 angelic 191 ascetics, asceticism  191, 193, 193 n. 36, 197 Dendrites 193 ethos 183–207 gyrabagoi [γυραβαγοὶ], wanderers 200

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habit  184, 186, 198, 200, 202, 205, 206 hermits  184, 191, 191 n. 28, 193 mobility 199–200 parrhesia 188 pillar saints/pillar ascetics  see O., stylites schema 183–207 sex  186, 197, 198 solitaries  184–85, 191, 193 travellers, travelling  199–200, 202–04 wanderers, wandering beggars  199– 200, 205 monsters, monstrous races  12, 15, 18, 19, 22, 39, 319, 324, 335 moria [μωρία]  see O., madness Muslims  see O., Islam; ‘Saracens’ nationality 186 newcomers  12, 22 non-conformity  186, 189, 191, 193, 197, 199, 206 non-humans  25, 247–48 ‘normal’ O.  183–207 objectification 171–72 ontological O  295–96, 315 ‘Orientalism’, Orientalising othering  17, 47, 49, 55, 93–94 origin, provenance  21, 25, 96–97, 186, 189, 199, 202, 203, 204, 206. See also O., allogenes ‘Other Middle Ages’  11, 93–94 ‘Othering’  17, 23, 29, 30, 93–97, 101–11, 219–20, 225, 227–30, 292–93, 295–96, 302, 305, 315. See also O., Sameing strategies of ‘O.’, process of ‘O.’  77, 121–26, 130–34 ‘Otherworld’  21, 23, 30, 289–315 outside one’s own community  see O., exclusion pagans, pagan  14 n. 15, 15, 24 n. 52, 25, 29, 39, 373–76, 324, 327–28, 329, 330–31, 330 n. 46, 332–34, 379, 382–84, 437–38, 443–44, 446

paradoxon [παράδοξον], paradoxos [παράδοξος]  186, 192, 193, 194, 206 particular, specific O.  183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 193, 195, 199, 206 past (as O.)  24 n. 52, 29, 30, 293, 295, 304, 315, 371–89 peoples  see O., ethnic O. peoples, uncivilized  19 perceptions  12, 14, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 40, 93–97, 103, 105, 108, 190, 206, 335. See also O., representation peregrinus 27. See also O., foreigners, strangers persecution  12, 19 n. 35, 22, 23, 25 Persians  20, 238, 248 pictorial sources  16 pilgrims  22, 27, 55, 219 piracy, pirates  55, 219 polemics, religious  39 political O.  20, 21, 22, 30, 93–97, 98, 108, 416, 418, 429–30 postcolonial studies  17, 37, 93–97 provenance  see O., origin race  186, 188, 189, 199, 202, 321, 321 n. 9, 333. See also O., allofylos; ethnic O. rags  see O., clothes refugees  20, 53, 58, 255, 271 ‘relational’ O.  24 religious O., ethno-religious O.  12, 14, 15–16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 28, 30, 39, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 97–100, 102–11, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 324–25, 329, 416, 418, 422, 429, 430, 431–32 blasphemy, blasphemous words  195 controversies, religious  183 Christological c.  183 Iconoclasm:183, 198, 200, 202 Iconophiles, iconophily belief  185, 187, 199, 202 religious fundamentalism  47, 58 religious wars 45 representations  22, 30, 320, 321, 329, 332, 333

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research on O.  13–16, 93–97 residents (habitatores) 219 revenants 21 rivalry  416, 417, 418 royal O. (the king as ‘Other’)  418, 426–30, 432 saga age  385, 386, 387, 389. See also O., heroic age; Vikings saints 56 salience of O.  96–97 salos, saloi  194, 195, 195 n. 39 and 41, 196. See also O., fools, holy sameness, sameing  30, 41, 50, 93–97, 102–11. See also O., Othering sanctity  see holiness; O., holiness ‘Saracens’  14, 16, 19, 20, 25, 29, 30, 39, 41, 42, 46, 49, 52, 97–100, 102–11, 120–21, 121 n. 17, 123–26, 131–33, 133 n. 60, 201, 201 n. 62, 239–41, 244–48, 253, 255, 255, 256, 257, 258, 258 n. 20, 259, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 267, 268, 269, 270, 402, 405, 407, 408, 409, 415–16, 418, 420–26, 427, 430, 431–32. See also O., Hagarenes; Arabs; Ishmaelites savagery  191 n. 28 schema  see monastic O. segmentary O., segmentation  30, 47, 48, 49, 50, 55 segregation  22, 24, 46, 277, see also delimitation; exclusion ‘Self ’ and O.  24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 47, 48, 50, 120, 121, 123, 124–25, 127, 127 n. 35, 128, 131, 189, 220, 291–94, 296, 319–21, 322–24, 325, 329–32, 333–35, 373–77, 384, 389 sexual O.  12, 17, 19, 20, 30, 53, 197–98. See also O., gender homoeroticism  142–44, 148–53, 156, 160–61 incest 140–42 signs  184, 186, 188, 190, 192, 193, 194, 197, 198, 202, 206 slaves  276, 302

social O., socio-economic O.  12, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 28, 30, 47, 90, 292–95, 302, 305, 314, 416 beggars 199–200 saloi 194–96. See also O., holy fools stylites 193–95, 206 socio-professional O.  219–20 soudarion  see O., headdress spies  196, 199, 203, 204, 205 stereotypes 22. See also O., perception about barbarians  278 stigma 76 strange, stranger  13, 15, 19, 22, 26, 27, 28, 186, 191, 191 n. 28, 193, 200, 203, 255, 271. See also O., advena; alienus; foreigners; paradoxos/paradoxon; peregrinus; xenos stylites  193–95, 206 subjectivity  12, 21–22 superiority, moral  127–28, 133 tamed O.  319, 321, 329, 330, 333, 335 theories, modern  17–18, 19, 93–97 temporary O.  22 terminology of O. medieval Greek allos [ἄλλος] (other)  186 allotrios [ἀλλότριος] (different) 186 allogenes [ἀλλογενὴς] 186 alloglossos [ἀλλόγλωσσος] 186 allofylos [ἀλλόφυλος] 186 paradoxos/paradoxon [παράδοξος/ παράδοξον]  186, 193, 194 thaumasios [θαυμάσιος] (miraculous) 186 xenos [ξένος], xenon [ξένον]  186, 193, 194, 203. See also O., strangers medieval Latin  26–28, 319–20 modern 13–14 Toledo, Toletana  264, 265 toleration  12, 19 n. 35, 331 n. 54 transcultural, transculturality, transcultural exchange  46, 257

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transvestites  See O., clothes, crossdressing nuns  196, 197 n. 48, 198 travels, travellers  12, 22, 24 n. 51, 27, 331–34 Umayyad  253, 254, 262, 264, 269, 271 unbelievers  see O., infideles unfamiliarity  21, 22, 23, 27, 320 n. 3 Ur  264, 264 n. 37 ‘Us’  see O., Self

Vikings  19, 289–315, 373f., 389. See also O., saga age; heroic age virtuous O.  30, 319–35 ‘We’  see O., Self wild men  see men, wild wild women  see women, wild women, wild  191, 192 xenology  37, 38, 39, 40, 50, 53, 58 xenophobia  28, 165, 319 n. 2 xenos  see O., terminology of O.; strangers

International Medieval Research

All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field.

Titles in Series Across the Mediterranean Frontiers: Trade, Politics, and Religion, 650–1450, ed. by Dionisius A. Agius and Ian Richard Netton (1997) Dictionaries of Medieval Germanic Languages: A Survey of Current Lexicographical Projects, ed. by K. Van Dalen-Oskam, K. Depuydt, W. J. J. Pijnenburg, and T. H. Schoonheim (1997) From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and Crusader Societies 1095–1500, ed. by Alan V. Murray (1998) The Community, the Family and the Saint: Patterns of Power in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Joyce Hill and Mary Swan (1998) The Vocation of Service to God and Neighbour: Essays on the Interests, Involvements and Problems of Religious Communities and their Members in Medieval Society, ed. by Joan Greatrex (1998) Negotiating Secular and Ecclesiastical Power: Western Europe in the Central Middle Ages, ed. by Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, Henk Teunis, and Andrew Wareham (1999) Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals, ed. by Guyda Armstrong and Ian N. Wood (2000) Decorations for the Holy Dead: Visual Embellishments on Tombs and Shrines of Saints, ed. by Stephen Lamia and Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo (2002) Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse, ed. by Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson Moreno-Riaño (2003) The White Mantle of Churches: Architecture, Liturgy, and Art around the Millennium, ed. by Nigel Hiscock (2003) Love, Marriage, and Family Ties in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by Isabel Davis, Miriam Müller, and Sarah Rees Jones (2003) The Medieval Household in Christian Europe, c. 850–c. 1550: Managing Power, Wealth, and the Body, ed. by Cordelia Beattie, Anna Maslakovic, and Sarah Rees Jones (2003)

Exile in the Middle Ages: Selected Proceedings from the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 8–11 July 2002, ed. by Laura Napran and Elisabeth van Houts (2004) Representations of Power in Medieval Germany, 800–1500, ed. by Björn Weiler and Simon MacLean (2006) Aspects of Power and Authority in the Middle Ages, ed. by Brenda Bolton and Christine Meek (2008) Behaving like Fools: Voice, Gesture, and Laughter in Texts, Manuscripts, and Early Books, ed. by Lucy Perry and Alexander Schwarz (2011) Languages of Love and Hate: Conflict, Communication, and Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. by Sarah Lambert and Helen Nicholson (2012) Medieval Life Cycles: Continuity and Change, ed. by Isabelle Cochelin and Karen Smyth (2013) Problems and Possibilities of Early Medieval Charters, ed. by Jonathan A. Jarrett and Alan Scott McKinley (2013) The Tree: Symbol, Allegory, and Mnemonic Device in Medieval Art and Thought, ed. by Pippa Salonius and Andrea Worm (2014) Travels and Mobilities in the Middle Ages: From the Atlantic to the Black Sea, ed. by Marianne O’Doherty and Felicitas Schmieder (2015) Approaches to Poverty in Medieval Europe: Complexities, Contradictions, Transformations, c. 1100–1500, ed. by Sharon Farmer (2016) Miracles in Medieval Canonization Processes: Structures, Functions, and Methodologies, ed. by Christian Krötzl and Sari Katajala-Peltomaa (2018) Pleasure in the Middle Ages, ed. by Naama Cohen-Hanegbi and Piroska Nagy (2018)

In Preparation Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300, ed. by Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis