Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval and Early Modern European Literature
Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval and Early Modern European Literature aims to examine and unearth the critical investigations of toleration and tolerance presented in literary texts of the Middle Ages and the early modern age. In contrast to previous approaches, this volume identifies new methods of interpreting conventional classifications of toleration and tolerance through the emergence of multilevel voices in literary, religious, and philosophical discourses of authorities in medieval and early modern literature. Accordingly, this volume identifies two separate definitions of toleration and tolerance; the former as a representative of a majority group accepts a member of the minority group but still holds firmly to the believe that s/he is right and the other entirely wrong, and tolerance meaning that all faiths, convictions, and ideologies are treated equally, and the majority speaker is ready to accept that potentially his/her position is wrong. Applying these distinct differences in the critical investigation of interaction and representation in context, this book offers new insight into the tolerant attitudes portrayed in medieval literature of which regularly appealed, influenced, and shaped popular opinions of the period.
Albrecht Classen is University Distinguished Professor of German Studies at the University of Arizona where he teaches and researches medieval and early modern German and European literature and culture. In his—by now ninetyfour—scholarly books, he has examined many different aspects, most recently magic (2017), water (2017); the forest (2016); death (2016); multilingualism (2016); love, marriage, and sexuality (in several books over the last two decades); and friendship, urban and rural space, crime and punishment, women’s voices, etc. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1986. He has received major grants and awards for teaching, research, and service and received the title of Grand Knight Commander of the Most Noble Order of the Three Lions in 2017.
Routledge Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture
1 Biblical Paradigms in Medieval English Literature
From Cædmon to Malory
Lawrence Besserman
2 Sin and Filth in Medieval Culture
The Devil in the Latrine
Martha Bayless
3 Cultural Difference and Material Culture in Middle English Romance
Normans and Saxons
Dominique Battles
4 Mary Magdalene in Medieval Culture
Conflicted Roles
Edited by Peter V. Loewen and Robin Waugh
5 The Signifying Power of Pearl
Medieval Literacy and Cultural Contexts for the Transformation of Genre
Jane Beal
6 Language and Community in Early England
Imagining Distance in Medieval Literature
Emily Butler
7 Storytelling as Plague Prevention in Medieval and Early Modern Italy
The Decameron Tradition
Martin Marafioti
8 Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval and Early Modern European Literature
Albrecht Classen
Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval and Early Modern European Literature
Albrecht Classen
First published 2018
by Routledge
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Contents
Acknowledgments
1 Toleration and Tolerance: An Introduction: Historical, Religious, and Literary Reflections
2 History and Theory of Toleration and Tolerance: Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Early Modern Ages: Early Voices, Quiet, and Yet of Great Strength
3 Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Encounters with the ‘Others’: Emergence of Toleration and Tolerance in the Early Thirteenth Century?
4 A Brief Moment of Truce and Welcome: Friendship between the Muslim and the Christian in Rudolf von Ems’s Der guote Gêrhart
5 Reaching Out to the Other Side in Fourteenth-Century Italian Literature: Literary Efforts to Establish Friendship and Tolerant Relationships in Boccaccio’s Decameron
6 The Foreign World and the Foreign Religion in Medieval Literature: Experiments in and Strategies with Toleration: A Pan-European Perspective on the ‘Good Heathen’
7 Philosophical and Religious Outreaches to the Other Faiths from the High to the Late Middle Ages: Peter Abelard, Ramon Llull, and Nicholas of Cusa
8 Tolerance in the Age of the Protestant Reformation: The Quest for Spiritual Truth beyond the Church: Sebastian Franck and Valentin Weigel
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
It is my pleasant task to acknowledge many colleagues, friends, and libraries that supported me in my research, allowed me to present early versions of the central theses at their universities, and facilitated my visit of specialized research libraries between 2017 and 2018. Michelle Salyga from Routledge originally invited me to write this book for their publishing house, and my proposal was then vetted by several anonymous readers, for which I am very grateful. The Charles Koch Foundation for the Humanities supported me with a very generous summer research grant, which made my visit to European archives and libraries possible in the first place, which I would like to acknowledge most thankfully. Matthias Roick facilitated a short-term research fellowship at the famous Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel through his “Freigeist Project ‘The Ways of Virtue. The Ethica-Section in Wolfenbüttel and the History of Ethics in Early Modern Europe’,” located at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. Both in Göttingen and in Wolfenbüttel I was able to write most of the chapter on toleration and tolerance in the age of the Protestant Reformation. My colleagues Ingrid Bennewitz (Otto-Friedrich Universität Bamberg), Reinhold Glei (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), and Hans-Joachim Solms (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg) invited me to give lectures corresponding to my central investigations, and these opportunities also allowed me to sharpen my arguments and to continue with my research at their respective libraries.
I was also able to work at the Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt a. M., which was facilitated by my dear colleague Sieglinde Hartmann’s hospitality. Moreover, I briefly enjoyed the great research opportunities at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, which was made possible through the generous hospitality of my friend Reinhold Münster and his wife Elke, who provided me with much intellectual stimulus. I also consulted the library holdings at the universities of Heidelberg, Leipzig, Dresden, Göttin
gen, and Berlin (HU and FU), and I am most grateful to Dieter Burdorf, Gert Melville, Bernd Schneidmüller, Cornelia Schlarb, and Björn Reich for their invitations to give lectures at their respective institutions. The intellectual exchanges with my friend and colleague Peter Dinzelbacher (Werfen near Salzburg) were particularly fruitful. Again, I am also very thankful for his and his wife Angelika’s hospitality. Moreover, it is my joy to mention my highly learned friends and colleagues Jerzy Strzelczyk and his wife Dorota, who housed me for some days at their tranquil country home in Potrzanowo (near Poznań, Poland), which allowed me to complete most of my chapter on Boccaccio and to flesh out other chapters as a result of our conversations about historical conditions in the Middle Ages that might lend themselves for the identification of elements of tolerance or toleration. Last but not least, the main library at the University of Arizona also deserves much credit for its outstanding collections and untiring support of research, either by adding new items when they become available or by securing a copy of important material through their interlibrary loan service.
I also want to express my gratitude to very good colleagues and friends both at my home university and globally who read the individual chapters for me and pointed out infelicities, typos, errors, and made some valuable suggestions: Fabian Alfie (University of Arizona), Christopher R. Clason (Oakland University, Rochester, MI), Steven D. Martinson (University of Arizona), Constant Mews (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia), Marilyn Sandidge (Westfield State University, MA), Anne M. Scott (Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff), Thomas Willard (University of Arizona), and Elizabeth Chesney Zegura (University of Arizona).
It is my great pleasure to dedicate this book to a good friend of mine, the profoundly learned scholar, passionate teacher, and wonderful colleague Heiko Hartmann (Berlin/Leipzig), a true humanist.
1 Toleration and Tolerance: An Introduction
Historical, Religious, and Literary Reflections
A Scene from the Crusading History in the Middle Ages
On July 4, 1187, the Muslim forces under the leadership of the Ayyubid Sultan Salah ad-Din, known in the West as Saladin, decisively defeated their Christian opponents in the Battle of Hattin. Subsequently, Jerusalem, like many other cities in the Holy Land, fell back into Arabic hands, and the Christian cause was severely damaged and even threatened. This led to the Third Crusade in 1189, but Saladin’s position and subsequent mythical status as a major figure were not threatened thereby.1 Already in May of that year, Gerard de Ridefort and the Templars had engaged al-Afdal, Saladin’s son, in the Battle of the Springs of Cresson, where they were badly beaten. The Templars lost around 150 knights and 300 foot soldiers, who had made up a great part of the military of Jerusalem. The Christian case was doomed, it seemed, although they later amassed a huge army against Saladin, who proved to be strategically superior to them and was thus able to decide the battle in his favor.2
Even though Saladin treated his conquered opponents with astounding generosity and kindness, the Third Crusade (1189–92) soon followed suit, but it ended with a truce between the English King Richard I—known as Lionheart—son of Henry II, and Saladin. Neither side had achieved a decisive breakthrough: The Christians could not achieve their ultimate goals, and Saladin had failed to retake Jaffa. The Crusaders could consolidate their control of the coastal area, but Jerusalem remained in Muslim possession, although Saladin granted unarmed Christian pilgrims and merchants the privilege to enter the city for peaceful purposes. The famous Muslim ruler died already on March 4, 1193, but his memory as a glorious leader has lived on until the present day, especially in the Arabic world.3
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Nathan der Weise
This is, in rough brush strokes, the historical background for one of the most impressive and significant eighteenth-century plays written by the German Enlightenment author Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, his Nathan der Weise (1779; Nathan the Wise). The playwright situated his drama precisely between the date of the truce on September 2, 1192 and Saladin’s death.4 While the historical framework was based on chronicle reports, which Lessing had studied very thoroughly in preparation of his play, drawing from the Bibliothèque Orientale (1732), a description of the Orient by Olfert Dapper (1712), Voltaire’s history of the crusades (1753), and other sources,5 the core theme centers on the exchanges between the Muslim Sultan, the Jewish merchant, and the Templar as a representative of Christianity. Here, Lessing drew from medieval sources, especially the Gesta Romanorum (no. 89) and Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (Day 1, no. 3).6 This central message about the constructive relationship among the world religions represents a universal issue that deserves to be addressed in the beginning of a book on toleration and tolerance in pre-modern literature and culture. As we will observe, discussing Nathan the Wise as our starting point will allow us to establish, even though somewhat anachronistically in terms of the pre-modern world, a major reference point, or a benchmark by which we will later be able to compare antecedents and precursors in this discourse, which can be traced much farther back than modern readers might commonly imagine.
There is basically universal consensus that the idea of tolerance emerged and widely spread in the age of Enlightenment, which laid the foundation for the American and then the French constitution.7 But, to use a little more poetic language, there are many larger and smaller roots supporting this phenomenon extending to the Middle Ages; often rather tenuous, but meaningful after all. This book does not have the ambition to portray the entire proverbial tree, and not even major parts of it, such as the trunk or the branches, but its intention is to analyze a significant section of the root matter from which, ultimately, the leaves on the highest point of the panoply draw their water. Lessing’s Nathan the Wise is a crucial stepping-stone in the long-term discourse on tolerance, but it is necessary to understand the broad spectrum of relevant voices long before him who addressed the issue of how to deal with people of different faiths. In a way, we always have to be on the lookout for modern myths about the past, since it is more a matter of convenience to paint a very dark, even black, picture of the pre-modern world, especially with the emergence of the Spanish Inquisition (established in 1478 by Catholic monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile with the goal of maintaining the orthodoxy of the Christian faith), instead of grasping the complexity of such institutions or organizations.8
The Idea of Tolerance in Nathan der Weise
The goal cannot be here to examine Lessing’s play in all detail since it falls outside of our historical framework, but it certainly constitutes a major literary endeavor to come to terms with the interaction of and relationship between the three world religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—here disregarding Hinduism and Buddhism for pragmatic reasons—and to outline strategies for people to accept them all as equals as long as there is mutual respect and a deep foundation in human values. As Peter Sloterdijk recently formulated regarding Lessing’s play,
[es] fällt aus heutiger Sicht seine vollendete Postmodernität auf. Es vereinigt in sich den primären Pluralismus… die praktische Suspension der Wahrheitsfrage, die zivilisierende Skepsis, die Umstellung von Gründen auf Wirkung und den Vorrang des externen Beifalls vor den internen Ansprüchen.9
[we notice, from the modern perspective, its complete post-modernity. It combines in it the primary pluralism… the practical suspension of the question regarding truth, the civilizing scepticism, the switch from [searching for] causes to [searing for] effects, and the priority of the external approval over the internal claims.]
Lessing conveyed tremendous optimism in his play and projected practical steps on how the enmity among these three religious could be overcome by means of a rational discourse and high ethical standards shared by all. Of course, there are enough cynical critics even today who dismiss Nathan the Wise as a failed theater play determined by a false sense of tolerance that has never been fully implemented and cannot even be dreamed about because of the inherent aporias of all mono
theistic religions, all claiming their own as the full and absolute truth.10 According to that opinion, even Lessing’s efforts to project the idea of a tolerant society on the stage would have to be dismissed as excessively optimistic and unrealistic. Nevertheless, as a literary dream—almost a utopia—Nathan the Wise has had a huge impact ever since its first production and publication, and as such deserves close attention even at the risk of becoming a victim of idealistic illusions.
The critical analysis of Lessing’s highly challenging motif of the three rings will subsequently allow us to gain a good footing in the examination of the meaning of toleration and/or tolerance, even in earlier times. These two terms will require extensive discussion since they constitute two distinct phenomena, one building on the other. But first, let us follow Lessing’s play and understand the central message about tolerance contained in it.
The setting is interesting enough, with the rich merchant Nathan having returned home to Jerusalem from a very successful business trip to Babylon. Major events have happened in the city; first, the execution of a band of captured Templars, one of whom the Sultan Saladin has strangely spared—allegedly because he felt pity once he had observed familiar features in the Christian’s face resembling those of his long-deceased brother. The latter, free to roam the city, had then come across Nathan’s house being engulfed by flames and had courageously rescued his daughter Recha from the fire. But he does not want any rewards for his deed and tries to shake off all attempts by Daja, a Christian woman serving as a companion for Recha, to invite him in to see Nathan’s young daughter, who is by now deeply in love with him.
Nathan eventually succeeds in engaging the Templar in a conversation, which at first proves to be difficult because of the latter’s blatant anti-Semitic feelings, not to mention his hatred of Islam, which he had been commissioned to fight with all his military might. However, Nathan knows how to appeal to the Templar’s inner feelings of honor and virtues, which allows them to turn their discussion to the topic of what constitutes a ‘good’ person, irrespective of his/her religion. Nathan emphasizes the key principle that all people deserve a place to live, while the Templar remarks that he has contempt for those religious people who regard their own god as the only true one and use an imperialist approach, as we would call it today, or an extremely dogmatic strategy to impose their own faith on all other people. For him, the very situation in the Holy Land, where many people of different religious creed vie for the acceptance of their own faith, confirms that such a dogmatic religious ideology would lead to a crazy mindset and should be condemned (Act II, Scene 5).
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