Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter
Language: English
Pages: 416
ISBN: 019923972X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In September, 1219, as the armies of the Fifth Crusade besieged the Egyptian city of Damietta, Francis of Assisi went to Egypt to preach to Sultan al-Malik al-Kâmil.
Although we in fact know very little about this event, this has not prevented artists and writers from the thirteenth century to the twentieth, unencumbered by mere facts, from portraying Francis alternatively as a new apostle preaching to the infidels, a scholastic theologian proving the truth of Christianity, a champion of the crusading ideal, a naive and quixotic wanderer, a crazed religious fanatic, or a medieval Gandhi preaching peace, love, and understanding. Al-Kâmil, on the other hand, is variously presented as an enlightened pagan monarch hungry for evangelical teaching, a cruel oriental despot, or a worldly libertine.
Saint Francis and the Sultan takes a detailed look at these richly varied artistic responses to this brief but highly symbolic meeting. Throwing into relief the changing fears and hopes that Muslim-Christian encounters have inspired in European artists and writers in the centuries since, it gives a uniquely broad but precise vision of the evolution of Western attitudes towards Islam and the Arab world over the last eight hundred years.
William’s chronicle was translated into French in the first quarter of the thirteenth century; this translation adds to William’s text a number of other elements, which show that the translator and compiler probably belonged to the lay nobility of the kingdom. The French text is often called the Eracle, since this name (i.e. the emperor Heraclius) is mentioned in the first paragraph H al-k aˆ mil, worthy adversary of crusaders 43 of the text. Other anonymous writers subsequently add other
indicates the existence of two harshly opposed camps at the time of Francis’s canonization. Division and discord indeed existed in the order at this time, as they had during Francis’s life. The saint himself was divided between, on the one hand, the desire to promote his order, to assure that it obtained papal approval, to give it a rule, and, on the other hand, the longing to abandon this world of rules and institutions to follow the call of poverty and simplicity. It was clear, during Francis’s
worldly riches’. The sultan, just like his soldiers who beat the friars, plays the traditional hagiographical role of Satan’s agent: he is the tempter who tries to lure the potential martyr with promises of earthly delights. And Francis rejects these gifts velut stercora, ‘like dung’, says Thomas, expressing the disgust that money and worldly riches inspire in the saint. It is only at this point that the sultan ‘was overflowing with admiration and recognized him as a man unlike any other’. For the
those in the crusader camp. But Francis apparently arrived safely before the sultan and, a few days later, returned unharmed to the crusader camp. Such are the probable facts that we find in the thirteenth-century sources: crusade chroniclers and hagiographical narratives. No contemporary Arab author mentions this encounter. That should come as no surprise: the chroniclers in the sultan’s entourage probably did not imagine that the arrival in the Egyptian camp of a barefoot Italian ascetic, a sort
servant? The 130 thirteenth to fourteenth centuries one we find in the Gospel of Matthew (24: 45, the text that serves as the protheme for this sermon, i.e. a Gospel passage which provides the subject of the sermon): ‘Who, do you think, is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time?’ This servant is Christ, Bonaventure declares, following the traditional exegesis of these passages. He is sent by his master, God the