A Christian Pilgrim in Medieval Iraq: Riccoldo Da Montecroce's Encounter with Islam

268 Pages·2013·1.288 MB·English

by  Rita George-Tvrtkovic

A Christian Pilgrim
in Medieval Iraq
MEDIEVAL VOYAGING
General Editors
Margaret Clunies-Ross, University of Sydney
Geraldine Barnes, University of Sydney
Editorial Board
Alfred Hiatt, Department of English, Queen Mary College, University of London
Kim Phillips, Department of History, University of Auckland
Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto
John Tolan, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Ange Guépin, Université de Nantes
Volume 1
A Christian Pilgrim
in Medieval Iraq
Riccoldo da Montecroce’s
Encounter with Islam
by
Rita George-Tvrtković
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
George Tvrtkovic, Rita author.
A Christian pilgrim in medieval Iraq : Riccoldo da Montecroce's encounter with Islam.
-- (Medieval voyaging ; 1)
1. Ricoldo, da Montecroce, 1242 or 3-1320. Liber peregrinationis.
2. Ricoldo, da Montecroce, 1242 or 3-1320. Epistolae ad ecclesiam triumphantem.
3. Ricoldo, da Montecroce, 1242 or 3-1320--Knowledge--Islam.
4. Ricoldo, da Montecroce, 1242 or 3-1320--Knowledge--Koran.
5. Christianity and other religions--Islam--Early works to 1800.
6. Koran--Christian interpretations--Early works to 1800.
I. Title II. Series
261.2'7'09022-dc23

ISBN-13: 9782503532370
© 2012, 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/2012/0095/223
ISBN: 978-2-503-53237-0
Printed on acid-free paper
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction ix
Chapter 1. Riccoldo in situ 1
Chapter 2. Beyond Polemic: Genres and Context of Medieval ‘Dialogue’ 17
Chapter 3. Muslim Works of Perfection 43
Chapter 4. ‘I Read It in Arabic!’ 73
Chapter 5. Questioning Salvation History 89
Chapter 6. Wonder, Doubt, and Dissonance: Riccoldo’s Theology of Islam 107
Epilogue 135
Appendix A. Five Letters on the Fall of Acre (1291) 137
Appendix B. The Book of Pilgrimage 175
Select Bibliography 229
Indexes 241

Acknowledgements
Iw ould like to express heartfelt gratitude to the mentors whose advice and
support sustained me throughout my graduate studies at the University of
Notre Dame and who encouraged me in the initial stages of the Riccoldo
project: David Burrell, Bradley Malkovsky, Thomas Prügl, Rabbi Michael Signer
(of blessed memory), and most especially my dissertation director, Joseph
Wawrykow. Transforming my dissertation into a book was the next step, and I
would like to thank John Tolan for connecting me with the Medieval Voyaging se-
ries of Brepols Publishers. The following scholars read portions of the manuscript
and offered critical feedback: David Burr, Don Duclow, Jean-Marie Kauth, Jean-
Marie Mérigoux op, Bradley Malkovsky, Stephen Mossman, Devorah Schoenfeld,
Philip Timko osb, and Anne Marie Wolf. I presented various chapters at confer-
ences including the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, the Catholic
Theological Society of America Annual Conference, and Ritus Infidelium at the
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and I am grateful for the comments and
suggestions of colleagues present there. I would also like to thank Benedictine
University — especially my departmental colleagues and my very supportive
dean, María de la Cámara — for their encouragement. I am also grateful to the
University of Notre Dame for its Zahm Travel Grant, which enabled manuscript
study at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale
di Firenze. Garrett Smith offered valuable suggestions on the Latin translations,
Tania Colwell and Mary-Jo Arn provided astute editorial advice, and Bruce
Verhaaren deftly created the map. And I must acknowledge Anthony and Arlene
George and Izeta Tvrtković; your generosity enabled innumerable hours of writ-
ing. I am truly grateful for the assistance of each and every person named here, but
as is always the case with books, I alone bear responsibility for any errors or defi-
ciencies. Last on this list but first in my heart are my two children, Luka and Anya
Lucia, who have grown along with this volume, and my incomparable husband,
Zoran. This book is dedicated to you, ljubavi.
Rita George-Tvrtković
Eve of All Saints, 2012
692nd Anniversary of Riccoldo’s death
Chicago, Illinois

Introduction
Soon after the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks,
Nicholas of Cusa penned his critique of the Qur’an, Cribratio alkorani.
In the prologue he lists his sources by name, including Robert of Ketton’s
twelfth-century translation of the Qur’an, Thomas Aquinas’s thirteenth-century
De rationibus fidei, and Riccoldo da Montecroce’s fourteenth-century Contra
legem Sarracenorum. Of them all, Cusa says that Contra legem was the most
pleasing. Riccoldo’s book evidently pleased others as well, for it influenced the
likes of Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who consulted a Greek
translation in 1385; King Ferdinand of Spain, who commissioned its retranslation
back into Latin from the Greek in 1502; and Martin Luther, who rendered it
into German in 1542. The number of extant Latin manuscripts (twenty-eight),
not to mention several medieval translations into the vernacular, attests to the
book’s widespread and enduring popularity.
This present study will not, however, centre on Contra legem, for the anti-
Islamic polemic it epitomizes is relatively well known.1 Rather, my book will
focus on two other texts by the Dominican missionary Riccoldo da Montecroce
(c. 1243–1320) which likewise treat of Islam but are of different genres. These
two texts, one a pilgrim’s itinerary and the other a set of letters, were never as
popular as the more useful Contra legem, despite the fact that both contain
commentary on Islam which is similar in both length and substance to that found
in more traditional polemics.
In the past, research into medieval interreligious relations focused on polemi-
cal texts like Contra legem. But more recently, scholars have noted the inadequacy
1 Representative works outlining the medieval Latin argument against Islam include Daniel,
Islam and the West; Peter the Venerable and Islam, ed. by Kritzeck; Kedar, Crusade and Mission;
and Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination.
x Introduction
of the polemical literature to represent the full spectrum of medieval Christian
views of the other. Some have underscored the ‘limitations of the polemic sources
and the narrow view of the human personality they engender’ while others have
stressed the false distinction made between polemical and non-polemical texts.2
For example, Deborah Goodwin questions the sharp boundaries traditionally
made between medieval biblical exegesis and polemics.3 Given these concerns,
an examination of the account of Islam found in Riccoldo’s other, non-polemical
writings seems appropriate.
The first text to be analysed here is Liber peregrinationis, an itinerary in which
Riccoldo describes his mission-pilgrimage to the Middle East. The second is
Epistolae ad ecclesiam triumphantem, five letters to the heavenly court which
he writes in anguish after the 1291 fall of Acre. These two texts are noteworthy
because they include not only the standard arguments against Islam but also
significant ambivalence. In both, Riccoldo lauds Muslim praxis yet condemns
Islam as perfidious. He boasts about his Qur’anic knowledge and praises the
beauty of its Arabic, yet criticizes the very same book for being violent and
mendacious. He entertains the possibility that Muslim eschatological claims are
true, even as he affirms Christianity’s superiority over Islam. What is especially
interesting is the fact that Riccoldo himself seems aware of these inconsistencies,
for he regularly admits to bewilderment. His ambivalent feelings, his candor
about them, and the fact that he does not edit them out of his writings, is striking
for someone living at a time when personal experience was rarely considered
important, and even more rarely cited as an authoritative source for theology.
These two remarkable texts will serve as the focus of this book. While noting
elements of Riccoldo’s account of Islam which are consonant with mainstream
medieval views, I will concentrate on those aspects which reveal both originality
and ambivalence, to wit: his descriptions of Muslim praxis; his approach to
the Qur’an; his questioning of Christian salvation history; and his frequent
and explicit references both to his personal experiences of Muslims and to the
feelings of wonder and doubt such experiences elicited. These tensions and
inconsistencies should not be viewed as defects. Rather, their presence illuminates
the complexities inherent in interreligious encounter itself. While many scholars
today would argue for the overwhelmingly positive effect such encounters have
2 Burman, Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, p. 5.
3 Goodwin, ‘Take Hold of the Robe of a Jew’, pp. 95–99. While Goodwin is referring to
twelfth-century Christians and Jews, her comments can also be applied to the literature sur-
rounding Christian-Muslim relations of the same era.