Heroes and Saracens: A New Look at Chansons de Geste PDF
Preview Heroes and Saracens: A New Look at Chansons de Geste
HEROES AND SARACENS In Memoriam Ruth who had so large a part in everything I ever wrote with warm interest and cool judgement who died before this book was finished but was interested to the last its faults are not hers dying and in pain she said come and kiss me now and let's be laughing this was the spirit that the singers created for the paladins of Charlemagne and the Saracens of Babylon Morte est Guibors, ma cortoise molliers Et mes lignages, dont jou sui moût iriés. Or ai por Dieu tout mon pais laissié. Moniage Guillaume (2) 2275-7 HEROES AND SARACENS An Interpretation of the Chansons de Geste NORMAN DANIEL Edinburgh University Press © Norman Daniel 1984 Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square, Edinburgh Set in Monotype Barbou, 178 series by Speedspools, Edinburgh and printed in Great Britain by Redwood Bum Limited, Trowbridge British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Daniel, Norman Heroes and saracens: an interpretation of the Chansons de geste i. Chansons de geste—History and criticism 1. Tide 84I.O3 PQ20I ISBN O 85224 43O 4 C O N TEN TS Acknowledgements vii Chapter One. Introductory i Part O ne. The People Chapter Two. Chivalry 23 Chapter Three. Courtly Pastimes 47 Chapter Four. The Family, Women and the Sexes 69 Chapter Five. Violence: Hatred, Suffering and War 94 Part Two. The Gods Chapter Six. W fy the Gods ? Introductory 121 Chapter Seven. Who are the Gods ? 133 Chapter Eight. The Cult of the Gods 15 5 Chapter Nine. Conversion 179 Chapter Ten. Christianity 213 PartThree Chapter Eleven. Corroboration 241 Chapter Twelve. Conclusions 263 Notes 280 Bibliography of Sources Used 320 Plot Summaries 328 Index 340 A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S My first thanks are to my wife, for her criticism, interest and encour agement, and her example (which the dedication may help to explain); and also to Mademoiselle Marie-Thérèse d’Alvemy and Sir Richard Southern, for encouraging me to go ahead, and to Mr A. R. Turnbull, Secretary to the Press, who is a stimulating as well as inventive publisher. Academic acknowledgements relating to particular issues are made in the course of the notes. I am most grateful to Dr Michael Rogers, Monsieur and Madame Jean-Yves Tadié, and Mr and Mrs J.R. Young, all of whom helped me in a number of ways, and in particular to get material at times when it was inaccessible to me, sometimes at considerable inconvenience to themselves; and to Mr Robert Anderson and Mr Peter Mackenzie Smith, who also helped me materially at moments of need. I am under a great debt to the Abbot and Community of St Benoit de Port Valais, and to the Sisters of Ste Marthe, for their hospitality, and in particular to the Prior, Père Michel de Ribeaupierre, for making me comfortable in his ‘scriptorium', and to the Librarian, Père François Huot, for all the attentions that a librarian can give. I am similarly obliged to the Prior and Community of the Institut dominicain d’études orientales, Abbasiah, Cairo, in whose grounds I live for most of my time, and in particular to the Director of Studies, Père G.GAnawati, for making all their facilities always available. I am indebted for the quiet efficiency of the Students Room at the British Library, for the determination of the staff of the Reading Room to overcome their many difficulties, and for the efficiency and courtesy of the staff of Bodley. I am also greatly obliged to Madame J.le Monnier, conservateur en chef du service photographique de la bibliothèque nationale in Paris, for making photographs of a manu script quickly available in special circumstances, and to the staff of the bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, who make it so easy and pleasant for a stranger to consult their manuscripts. I am most grateful to Dr Carole Hillenbrand, whose understanding of a tangled script made the preparation of the text possible. INTRODUCTORY A good deal of attention has been paid to what we might call the official Christian attitude to Islam in the Middle Ages; I am myself one of those who have done so. Much less has been said about ordinary and unofficial attitudes, and most of it relates to the origins of the idols imputed to the Saracens. Official attitudes were expressed by theologians whose function was to speak for the Christian Church of the West. Apart from its material privilege, the Church was privileged to speak for Christian society in a period when all overt opposition was successfully suppressed. The existence of official spokesmen and the absence of open opposition do not, of course, eliminate unofficial attitudes and ideas, and these are not necessarily part of a hidden opposition. Hypothetical secret organisations of opposition need to be fully substantiated to be plausible, and they rarely or never are. I am thinking more of instances of divergent thought or sentiment which were not meant to compete with, let alone harm or destroy, the official view. People may accept an established authority quite willingly, and still live their own lives and think their own thoughts. This book is about unofficial attitudes to Islam and the Arabs. Exhaustive or even adequate source material is much harder to come by than is the case with expressions of theologically acceptable opinion, because unofficial attitudes were not encouraged, and received little explicit and formal expression; if they had done, they would no longer have been entirely unofficial. What material there is is much harder to interpret, because we often cannot take it at its face value. It is a question 1 2 Heroes and Saracens of making the least improbable guess, when refusing to guess at all is to fall back on some uncalculated assumption without conscious reflection. Where conclusive proof is impossible, we naturally look for the explanation that best fits the known facts and, so far as we can manage, is least anachronistic. It is probably safe to assume that, in any age, in the Middle Ages as now, most Europeans have had very litde idea of Islam and very litde interest in it. We cannot study here the ideas of the mass of the common people, who may or may not have heard about Saracens, and may or may not have believed what they heard. We shall never know the thoughts of those people who had no technique with which to express them selves, because they could neither write nor command an amanuensis, and because they did not have skills of oral composition and memorial retention. The subject is too flimsy to pursue ; but there were people whose ideas bear upon Islam ; who composed without needing to write ; who were not spokes men for the Church, though they did have to satisfy an audi ence; who were not philosophers, not theologians, not even propagandists - or, if propagandists, not necessarily propa gandists for what ostensibly they supported. They made propaganda rather for the chivaliy that often paid them and that provided their subject matter, than for the endless religious war in which they set their stories. Indeed, it is already to beg the question to speak of a religious war, before we have estab lished that that is what it was. We should more safely say, war against people of another religion. If we are looking for an unofficial view, it is natural to turn to the poets of the chansons de geste and of the later romances that developed out of them, because these were not theologians. They composed for the benefit of laymen, primarily soldiers, but at all social levels of society interested to hear about courdy adventures. The chansons de geste, historical fictions mosdy set in the tíme of Charlemagne or his son Louis, appear several generations earlier than that other courtly literature that is concerned with the dalliance of lovers. Their lovers have little time to dally. The chansons appear in the twelfth century in manuscript, in
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