Download PDF | John V. Tolan Saint Francis And The Sultan The Curious History Of A Christian Muslim Encounter ( 2009).

Download PDF | John V. Tolan Saint Francis And The Sultan The Curious History Of A Christian Muslim Encounter ( 2009)

399 Pages

Acknowledgements

 It would have been impossible for me to complete this book without the help of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which accorded me a fellowship in 2005. Much of the book was written at the Center for the Humanities at Oregon State University, where I was a visiting research fellow from January to June, 2005; my thanks to the staff and members of the Center for their interest and support of my work, and for creating an atmosphere propitious for reflection and research. Particular thanks to the director of the Center, David Robinson. My thanks also to the personnel of the various libraries I used while researching this book: the Bibliotheque ` Nationale de France, the Vatican Libary, the Biblioteca Nazionale of Rome, the Biblioteca Communale of Assisi, the libraries of the American Academy of Rome and the Ecole Franc¸aise de Rome, and those of Oregon State University and the Universite de Nantes. ´ Various parts of this book have been presented at conferences and seminars: to the conference ‘Between Empires: Orientalism before 1600’, at Trinity College, Cambridge; to the Dublin Medieval Society; to the Seminaire Commun des M ´ edi ´ evistes de l’Universit ´ e Lyon II; to the ´ medieval seminar of the University of California-Riverside; to the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Ange Guepin in Nantes; to the Medieval ´ Studies Workshop of the University of California-Santa Cruz; to the History Seminar of Santa Clara University; to Brown University’s Medieval Workshop. My thanks to all those who invited me to these events and who shared their comments and suggestions, in particular to Alfred Hiatt, Ananya Kabir, Nicole Beriou, Jacques Berlioz, Piotr Gorecki, Sharon ´ Kinoshita, Fabio Lopez Lazaro, and Amy Remensnyder. ´ For information concerning paintings by Paolo Gaidano at the Holy Saviour Convent in Jerusalem, my thanks to Brother Peter Vasko of the Terra Sancta College in Jerusalem and to Brother Michele Piccirillo of the Studium Biblicum Francescanum of Jerusalem. 

I received helpful advice from David Burr, Andrew Jotischky, Samantha Kelly, and Steven McMichael. During research trips to Italy, I was welcomed and assisted by Brother Pasquale Magro, director of the Communal Library of Assisi. And I had the good fortune to have the hospitality and advice of Rand Burkert and Manuela Ciri in Spello. Special thanks to Paraska Tolan for tracking down some of the quotations in Boston area libraries. Special thanks also to Nicholas Drocourt for tracking down the mysterious ‘Place St. Joseph’ in a Cairene taxi and for taking photos of Arnoldo Zocchi’s sculptures. Illustration 24 was taken from Andreas de Puttis, S. Francisci historia cum iconibus in aere excusis ad Illm. et Rm. D. Dominum Constantium S.R.E. Presb. Cardin. Sarnanum (Rome, 1594). Permission for the use of illustrations was granted by the following: The Bridgeman Art Library (images 1, 7), Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique ( ` 2), AKG Images (3, 4, 5, 6, 21), Artothek (8, 9), Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale (10), Rome, Museo dei Cappuccini (11, 12, 13), Niedersachsischen Landesmuseum Hanover ( ¨ 14), London, National Gallery (15), Szech ´ enyi National Libary, Budapest ( ´ 16), Scala Archives (17, 19, 20, 23), Ludwig Reichert Verlag (18, 25, 28), Diocese di Bergamo (22), Istituto Bancario San Paolo di Torino (26, 27), Studium Biblicum Franciscanum (29), Nicolas Drocourt (30, 31), Amsterdam City Archives (32), Robert Lentz Courtesy of Trinity Stores, www.trinitystores.com (33). Anne-Marie Edde and Gerhardt Stenger read and corrected chapters ´ of this book. Finally, I especially thank those who have read the entire manuscript and have offered me their corrections and suggestions: Jacques Dalarun, Isabelle Heullant-Donat, Jean-Claude Schmitt, and Michelle Szkilnik.

Introduction

 A Moorish palace that looks like the Alhambra, its walls carved in geometric relief and arabesques. A reception hall where, on a divan draped in rich cloth, the sultan is enthroned, richly dressed, head wrapped in a turban, a golden ring in his ear. Before the sultan stands Francis of Assisi: standing straight, he holds his left hand over his heart and points with his right hand towards heaven. He speaks to the sultan and looks him squarely in the face. Behind Francis, two turbaned men whisper to each other as they look in from the doorway. The sultan, swarthy, bearded, turns his head towards Francis, but his gaze is lowered: instead of looking the saint in the face, he seems to look blankly and distractedly, without giving the slightest sign of interest or emotion. Francis dominates the solitary sultan, who, seated on a cushioned divan and gazing blankly, incarnates passivity rather than power. The saint of Assisi embodies the virtues of Europe: confidence, eloquence, authority, even audacity—audacity which drove him to this foreign land to preach the Gospel to the most powerful leader of the infidels. 

These are the qualities that Gustave Dore emphasizes ´ in this etching which dramatizes the encounter. He does not suggest the ascetic rigours of the saint, who here seems well nourished and whose clean bare feet do not seem to have walked far. The saint, in a white habit, bathed in light, bears the brilliance of the true religion back to its cradle, where the shadows of infidelity have reigned for centuries, where doubt and passivity lurk. Such is the portrait that Gustave Dore sketches of this strange encounter ´ between Francis of Assisi and the sultan of Egypt, Malik al-Kamil, a meeting ˆ which took place, most probably, in September 1219 (Fig. 1). This etching is one of a hundred illustrations that Dore drew for the deluxe edition of the rumour of the crusade and by the hope of making a spectacular conversion.’¹ Francis did not succeed in bending the hard heart of the sultan, which proves to the French historian the necessity of waging military crusades against the Muslims. 

These crusades, though at times marred by excessive violence, sought to bear the fruits of European civilization to the Orient, just like the French conquests in Algeria in Michaud’s own day. Francis’s voyage was not in vain, for Michaud; it inaugurated Franciscan mission to ‘savage peoples’, a heroic and colossal effort to deliver these people from their ignorance and misery. For Michaud, Dore, and other Europeans of the nineteenth and early ´ twentieth centuries, Francis of Assisi’s mission to the sultan of Egypt was an act of na¨ıve audacity, yet a noble and admirable act which exemplified Europeans’ good intentions towards the Muslims, who needed evangelizing and civilizing. Military crusade and preaching missions, far from being antithetical, were complementary: without European armies, the preachers could never bring their load of light and civilization to these hordes cringing in the shadows. At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twentyfirst, this encounter takes on a quite different hue. One no longer celebrates the crusades; one denounces them as nefarious manifestations of violence, rapacity, and fanaticism. As a result, one cannot imagine that Francis of Assisi, the gentle saint who spoke with birds and who tamed the wolf of Gubbio, could have approved of these wars. 

On the contrary, it is supposed that he must have been opposed to them and, if one cannot find any textual basis for this anti-war sentiment, one can always affirm that the saint’s contemporaries, blinded by the spirit of the crusades, refused to admit that the saint opposed them. Some authors even imagined that Francis went to Egypt in order to attempt to put an end to the bloodshed, to negotiate peace, or even to initiate himself to Sufism! If the crusades lend themselves to the paradigm of the ‘clash of civilizations’, the peaceful encounter of Francis and al-Kamil offers, on the contrary, a gleam of hope. ˆ Even in the Middle Ages, an age of crusade and jihad, some had cool heads and large hearts and were ready to engage in dialogue instead of war. This is how, for example, Italian journalist Tiziano Terzani presents the encounter, shortly after 11 September 2001, as a model of peaceful dialogue in the midst of war, in opposition to those (from Osama bin Laden to Orianna Falacci) who preach hatred. This singular encounter also has become a model of ecumenical dialogue for various Christian authors,

especially Franciscans. In January 2002, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, future pope Benedict XVI, affirmed that Francis had understood that the crusades were not the solution to the differences between Islam and Christianity and that he convinced the sultan of this. This peaceful dialogue is a model for today’s church: ‘let us walk down the path towards peace, following the example of Saint Francis’, exhorts Ratzinger.² On Christmas day 2006, in the New York Times, writer Thomas Cahill lauds Francis as a ‘peaceful crusader’ who sought to initiate a dialogue which should be a model for us today, to avoid a clash of civilizations.³ This unique meeting of two men, in a tent in an armed camp on the banks of the Nile, during a truce in the midst of a bloody war, has fascinated and surprised writers and artists for almost eight centuries. What provoked Francis to cross the sea to Egypt to join the crusader camp, then to cross the enemy lines? If, as seems probable, he indeed met al-Kamil, nephew of ˆ Saladin and sultan of Egypt, what did the two men say to each other? What were the consequences of their discussion, for each of them? How did this encounter influence the lives of these two men? How did it influence the crusade? What impact did it have on the ways European Christians perceived Islam, on Franciscan mission? These questions are difficult or impossible to answer, since the sources, from thirteenth century onwards, are both incomplete and partisan. What do we actually know about this encounter? It was probably in September 1219 that Francis of Assisi, 37-year-old founder of the Friars Minor, left the crusader camp to meet the sultan of Egypt, al-Malik alKamil. ˆ ⁴ The troops of the fifth crusade had already been camped for over a year in the sand between the Mediterranean and a branch of the Nile delta, before the city of Damietta. The crusaders had been able neither to capture the city nor to rout al-Kamil and his army, who had come to ˆ protect the city. Francis probably arrived in the crusader camp in August 1219, at a time when discouragement and despair were rife on both sides. On 29 August, the crusaders launched a major attack against al-Kamil’s ˆ camp. The Egyptians feigned retreat and then cut off a large contingent of crusaders from the rest of their army. The result was a major defeat for the crusaders, which reinforced the morosity in their camp. According to Francis’s hagiographer Thomas of Celano, in his Vita secunda (1246–7), Francis had predicted this defeat.⁵ After this victory, al-Kamil sent back a ˆ prisoner to the crusader camp with a proposal to negotiate peace. The sultan offered to give the crusaders Jerusalem, along with money to reconstruct it and a series of castles in the vicinity; in exchange, the crusaders would leave Egypt. The Holy City was not actually in al-Kamil’s hands, but in those ˆ of his brother, al-Mu‘azzam, who was undoubtedly party in this proposal. Al-Mu‘azzam had recently razed Jerusalem’s defensive walls, perhaps in preparation for this proposal. The offer provoked discord in the crusader camp. According to chronicler Oliver of Paderborn, John of Brienne (titular king of Jerusalem), the barons of the kingdom of Jerusalem, and the German crusaders wanted to accept the sultan’s offer. But others were opposed, wanting rather to complete the conquest of Egypt: the Italians (for whom Damietta was economically more attractive than Jerusalem), the pontifical legate Pelagius, most of the clergy, the Templars, and the Hospitallers.⁶ It was probably during this period of truce and peace negotiations that Francis of Assisi crossed over the enemy lines and spoke with the sultan: an act of daring or folly which would cost him his life— so thought a number of 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 of Christian Sufi who sought an audience with the sultan, could be worthy of mention in their chronicles. Christian religions were of course nothing new to them: there was a large and thriving Christian community in Egypt. Christians and Jews there, as elsewhere in the Muslim world, were considered dhimmi, ‘protected’. They had to pay specific taxes, the jizya (poll tax) and the kharaj (land tax), but were otherwise free to practise their religion, to use their synagogues, churches, and monasteries. It was prohibited, however, for them to proselytize Muslims, and certain public displays of a religious nature (putting crosses on the outside of their churches, for example) were forbidden. Each community was granted a fairly large autonomy.⁷ There were in fact two major Christian communities: the Monophysites (often called ‘Copts’) were more numerous; the Melkites (who subscribed to the duophysite Chalcedonian doctrine) were closer to the Byzantine church. Monophysite and Melkite chronicles more often speak about the rivalries between these two communities or within each of them than about their relations with the Muslim majority.

Al-Kamil was not opposed to religious debate: he apparently presided ˆ over a debate between Muslims and Christians in which both Christian patriarchs of Egypt, the Monophysite Cyril III (also known as Ibn Laqlaq) and the Melkite Nicholas, took part; it is unclear whether this was before or after his meeting with Francis.⁸ After the crusade, two Christian authors wrote to al-Kamil to invite him to convert to Christianity: Theodore ˆ I Lascaris, emperor of Nicaea, and Oliver of Paderborn, crusader and chronicler who had been taken prisoner at the end of the crusade and who praised the sultan who, he said, proved himself to be more a benefactor than a jailer.⁹ It should come as no surprise, then, that al-Kamil received ˆ Francis politely and respectfully, as most of the sources affirm. Francis probably thought of his mission as part of his quest to live the vita apostolica, the life of the Apostles. Son of a rich cloth merchant of Assisi, Francis had renounced his riches and his heritage to pursue a life of poverty and preaching modelled on that of the Apostles. He had inspired the conversion of other citizens of Assisi who had joined him in the small fraternity which (according to his hagiographers) was approved by Pope Innocent III in 1209 or 1210. The Friars, like the Apostles, lived in poverty and travelled the world two by two to preach the Gospel. This desire to preach the Gospel to the world brought Francis to Egypt. Mission to Muslims was important to Francis and his friars. On 16 January 1220, while Francis was probably still in the East, five friars minor were put to death in Marrakech by the Almohad caliph. The story of these first Franciscan martyrs is related (and no doubt embellished) in a number of Franciscan chronicles and hagiographic texts from the fourteenth century.¹⁰ The five friars went first to Almohad Seville, where they preached the Gospel and said ‘many bad things about Muhammad and his damnable law’. The friars were imprisoned, then sent to Marrakech, the capital of the Almohad caliph Abu Ya‘qub Y ˆ usuf al-Mustansir ( ˆ 1213–24). The caliph attempted to send them back to Europe, but the friars, not easily dissuaded, returned to Marrakech, where they began to preach anew. Finally the caliph had them arrested and brought before him. As they persisted in insulting Muhammad, he had them submitted to a series of tortures that the hagiographical sources describe in macabre detail. He offered them the standard enticements (women, money, and worldly honours), if they would convert to Islam; when they refused, he beheaded them with his own sword. The king’s arm shrivelled to a gnarled stump. The saints’ bodies were taken to Portugal, where they duly performed miracles.

These texts reproduce the standard topoi of hagiography: the choice between worldly wealth and honours and the much more valuable crown of martyrdom, the blindness and cruelty of the ‘infidel’ persecutor (who is duly punished by God), the patience and serenity with which the saints undergo torture and execution, the miracles, etc. Yet whilst making allowances for hagiographical excess, there is no reason to doubt the veracity of the narrative. The five friars, close associates of Francis, wished to lead their apostolic life to its logical, glorious conclusion: martyrdom at the hands of the infidel. It took them quite an effort to obtain it: despite repeated affronts to Muslim law (entering a mosque, preaching apostasy, insulting the prophet and the Qur’an), the Almohad authorities ˆ of Seville and Marrakech respond mildly: imprisonment, banishment. Only after repeated and deliberate provocation does the caliph finally give them what they are looking for, the crown of martyrdom. This indeed corresponds to hagiography’s need to flesh out the legend of the saints tribulations, prolonging the tortures and showing the friars’ determination. The five brothers, through their determination, succeeded in obtaining the martyr’s palm that had escaped Francis. According to the fourteenthcentury Chronica XXIV Generalium, when Francis received the news that the five friars had been martyred in Marrakech, he responded, ‘Now I can truly say that I have five brothers!’¹¹ But Giordano di Giano, a Franciscan contemporary of Francis, affirms that when the story of the passion of the five martyrs was read to the assembled friars, Francis, ‘who had a great disdain for praise and who disdained glory, pushed away the Legend and prohibited that it be read, saying: ‘‘let everyone be glorified by his own martyrdom and not by that of others!’’ ’¹² As this text and others show, the martyrs inspired mixed or ambivalent feelings in the order: some look askance at this active embrace of death, yet others (including Anthony of Padua and Claire of Assisi, apparently) profess a great admiration for this active quest of martyrdom.¹³ The following year, 1221, the order approved the Regula non bullata (so called because it was never ratified by a papal bull), the first extant Franciscan rule. The rule establishes the basis of the friars’ communal life. Mission to the infidels is an integral part of this life: the sixteenth chapter in the rule is devoted to ‘those going among the Saracens and other nonbelievers’: The Lord says: ‘Behold, I am sending you as lambs in the midst of wolves. Therefore, be prudent as serpents and simple as doves’ [Matt. 10: 16]. Let any brother, then, who desires by divine inspiration to go among the Saracens and other nonbelievers, go with the permission of his minister and servant. If he sees they are fit to be sent, the minister may give them permission and not oppose them, for he will be bound to render an accounting to the Lord if he has proceeded without discernment in this and other matters. As for the brothers who go, they can live spiritually among the Saracens and other believers in two ways. One way is not to engage in arguments or disputes but to be subject to every human being for God’s sake and to acknowledge that they are Christians. The other way is to announce the Word of God, when they see it pleases the Lord, in order that [unbelievers] may believe in almighty God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Creator of all, the Son, the Redeemer and Savior, and be baptized and become Christians because no one can enter the kingdom of God without being reborn of water and the Holy Spirit. They can say to them and the others these and other things which please God because the Lord says in the Gospel: ‘Whoever acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father’ [Matt. 10: 32]. ‘Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father’ [Luke 9: 26]. Wherever they may be, let all my brothers remember that they have given themselves and abandoned their bodies to the Lord Jesus Christ. For love of Him, they must make themselves vulnerable to their enemies, both visible and invisible, because the Lord says: ‘Whoever loses his life because of me will save it in eternal life’ [Luke 9: 24]. ‘Blessed are they who suffer persecution for the sake of justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ [Matt. 5: 10]. ‘If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you’ [John 15: 20]. ‘If they persecute you in one town, flee to another’ [cf. Matt. 10: 23]. ‘Blessed are you when people hate you, speak evil of you, persecute, expel and abuse you, denounce your name as evil and utter every kind of slander against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad on that day because your reward is great in heaven.’ I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of them and do not fear those who kill the body and afterwards have nothing more to do. See that you are not alarmed. For by your patience, you will possess your souls: whoever perseveres to the end will be saved.¹⁴ Francis sends his brothers to the Saracens as lambs among wolves, just as Jesus had sent his Apostles among the nations. The friars who hear the call to mission should ask permission from their superiors who, in turn, should not refuse them unless they judge them unprepared. The rule specifies that there are two ways to live among the Saracens: humbly, avoiding dispute and simply professing that one is Christian; or, on the contrary, boldly preaching the Word in hopes to convert the Muslims. For the latter, the rule enjoins courage and forbearance: a string of Gospel citations reminds them not to fear martyrdom. This chapter of the rule shows how Francis and his brothers perceived mission to infidels two years after the meeting with al-Kamil and one year ˆ after the martyrs of Marrakech.¹⁵ The chapter is interwoven with Gospel exhortations: the friars are asked to take the Apostles as models, to go into infidel lands to preach the Word of God to them. The Apostles, of course, were martyred, put to death by the pagan Roman state. Elsewhere in the rule, Francis exhorts his brothers to hate their bodies, to joyously accept the sufferings inflicted by illness and ascetic rigours, as well as those inflicted on them by others. Here he reminds the friars ‘that they have given themselves and abandoned their bodies to the Lord Jesus Christ’. The lines that follow, a patchwork of Gospel citations, encourage the friars along the path of martyrdom, supreme act of denial of their bodies, and of imitation of the Apostles. The Regula non bullata was approved at the order’s General Chapter meeting of 1221. But it caused discord within the order and it was never approved by the pope. After two years of negotiations, a simplified and modified version of the rule was ratified by a bull from Pope Honorius III (Innocent III’s successor): the Regula bullata, rule of the order of friars minor still in use today. It has often been said that the first rule embodied Francis’s own vision of the order and that the rule of 1223 was a compromise more or less imposed on the order by the pope and by Ugolino, cardinal protector of the order, with the connivance of some friars. Yet Francis always speaks in the first person in the Regula bullata, and he affirms his authorship of the rule elsewhere, until the Testament which he wrote at the end of his life. The new rule (eight pages in the English translation) is much shorter than the first (thirty-six). The tone has changed: the Regula non bullata exhorts the friars, in lyrical passages peppered with Gospel citations, to the perfection of apostolic life; the Regula bullata, in its language and in its form, is a legal text. Most of the biblical passages have disappeared. While the Regula bullata is more succinct than the Regula non bullata, it is often more precise, anticipating practical problems where the first rule merely reiterated admonitions found in the Gospel.

Concerning preaching to the Saracens, the chapter which I cited above is reduced to the following lines: Let those brothers who with by divine inspiration to go among the Saracens or other non-believers ask permission to go from their provincial ministers. The ministers, however, may not grant permission except to those whom they see fit to be sent.¹⁶ The bare bones are preserved, but all the biblical citations have disappeared, and with them the exhortations to martyrdom. No doubt Ugolino and Honorius thought that the Franciscan missionaries could be more usefully employed in serving the Church than in engaging in pious suicide. Martyrdom remained a goal for some Franciscans: six friars were martyred in Ceuta in 1227, five in Marrakech in 1232; ten Franciscans were martyred in the Near East between 1265 and 1269; seven in Tripoli in 1289. These martyrs no doubt inspired ambivalence: the 1220 martyrs were not canonized until 1481, when they became useful for crusade propaganda against the Turks. Yet not all Franciscans who went to Muslim lands were in search of the martyrs’ palm. The Regula non bullata, as we have seen, distinguished between two authorized ways of living among infidels: either humbly, avoiding dispute and confessing to be Christians or boldly preaching the Word. In 1225, with the bull Vinee Domini custodes, Honorius III authorized the Franciscan and Dominican missions in the Almohad caliphate. 

The pope instructed the missionaries to convert the infidels, to bring errant Christians back to the Church, and to fortify the weak.¹⁷ On 17 March 1226, Honorius III issued another bull, Ex parte vestra, which sheds light on those Franciscans who wished to live ‘humbly, avoiding dispute’.¹⁸ He asks the friars to think not only of the conversion of the infidels, but also of the needs of the Christians living in Morocco. In order better to satisfy the needs of these local Christians, the friars should be discreet, avoid provoking the Muslims; they could abandon their habits and let their beards and hair grow, the better to go about their business without being noticed, in order to minister to the Christians of Morocco. The friars could even accept monetary donations (something normally prohibited to the friars, according to the Regula bullata) if circumstances did not permit them to beg for food. A few years later, the Franciscan minister and Dominican prior in Tunis wrote to Ugolino, who was now Pope Gregory IX, to ask him a series of specific questions concerning penitential practice for the Christians of Tunis. In 1234, the pope had Raymond de Penyafort respond to them in a long, detailed missive. The pope himself had in 1233 sent letters to three Muslim princes, urging them to convert. According to chronicler Matthew Paris, missionary friars had sent letters to the pope explaining the ‘false doctrine’ of Muhammad to the Christian world. The Franciscans and Dominicans were a discreet presence in the cities of North Africa and the Near East; they catered to the spiritual needs of European Christian merchants, mercenaries, adventurers, and captives. The dramatic provocation made by a handful of friars in quest of martyrdom could only make their work more difficult.¹⁹ Francis’s mission to Egypt is thus neither an aberration nor a simple footnote to the history of the fifth crusade. It is a key moment in his life, essential for those who wish to understand Francis and the attitude of his new mendicant order towards Islam. This is one of the reasons why it is interesting to examine closely the texts of the first authors who speak of his Egyptian mission, chroniclers of the crusade and Franciscan hagiographers. Yet these early texts, just like those of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are partisan. Some chroniclers, wishing to legitimate and glorify the crusades, present Francis’s mission as an audacious and even admirable, but in the end futile enterprise; his failure to convert the sultan through preaching confirms the necessity of military crusades. Franciscan hagiographers had a very distinct perspective. For them, Francis, founder of an order destined to a tremendous success, canonized just two years after his death, is a new model of sanctity. His intrepid voyage to the sultan’s camp shows his ‘great thirst for martyrdom’, brilliant proof of his sanctity. Francis preached the apostolic life, and he went to Egypt to live this life to its logical end: like the Apostles, he wanted to preach Christ to the infidels and be killed by them. The order that Francis founded soon was riven by conflict and discord, and his heirs disputed his heritage, each party claiming that their vision of Franciscan life was the true vision espoused by their saintly founder. For some of these authors, Francis had succeeded in proving, by logical argumentation, the truth of Christianity to the ‘Saracen’ doctors of the sultan’s court. For others, the saint walked through fire to offer miraculous proof of the truth of Christianity. In the modern period, the encounter between Francis and al-Kamil ˆ continues to interest a variety of authors and artists. In the sixteenth century, as Ottoman armies conquer large swathes of Europe, Francis figures as a quixotic Christian hero confronting the overwhelming power of a Muslim enemy. Protestant polemicists mock his Egyptian mission, which for them is simply further proof of the folly of the founder of the friars minor. Franciscans and Jesuits, on the contrary, see Francis as a model for mission to the infidels. In the nineteenth century, as we have seen, some authors and artists make the saint into a European civilizer of barbarous Arabs, precursor to the European colonizers of modern times. Subsequently, starting in the mid-twentieth century, Francis becomes a man of peace who sought a peaceful alternative to the crusades and who initiated an ecumenical dialogue with the sultan. Over the centuries, then, this encounter between the foremost saint of medieval Europe and a Muslim prince known for his erudition and justice has fascinated many. Each interpreter reads into encounter his or her own preoccupations. Hence rather than try to establish the historical truth of what happened in the meeting between these two men in September 1219, I propose in this book to examine how the changing portrayals of this event show the evolving fears and hopes inspired by the encounter between Christian Europe and the Muslim East. In Part I, I will examine the principal texts and images of this encounter during roughly the century that followed it: from 1220 to 1337. 

In each of the nine chapters of this part, I present first the text describing the encounter (or a reproduction of a painting) and then attempt to explain this particular vision of the encounter, placing it in its historical context. The first chapter is devoted to Jacques de Vitry, bishop of Acre, who participated in the Egyptian crusade and who twice described Francis’s mission to the sultan: the first time (in a letter dated 1220), the bishop was rather sceptical about the utility of Francis’s endeavour; the second time, in his Historia occidentalis (1225), on the contrary, he presented this intrepid mission as a model for the evangelical life destined to renew the Church. In the second chapter, I examine the narrative of an anonymous chronicler who was also present in the crusader camp and who uses the mission of ‘two clerks’ (whom he does not name) to the Egyptian camp to emphasize the sagacity and justice of the sultan al-Kamil, worthy adversary of the crusaders. ˆ 

The following chapters are devoted to the image of this encounter in Franciscan hagiography. Thomas of Celano (Chapter 3), author of the official vita of the saint commissioned by Pope Gregory IX at Francis’s canonization in 1228, insists on the ‘great thirst for martyrdom’ that propelled the saint to ‘Syria’ to find the sultan. The sultan, impressed by the saint’s courage and eloquence, received him courteously and listened with interest, but did not convert. Henry of Avranches (subject of Chapter 4), poet at Pope Gregory IX’s court, presents in his Versified Life of Saint Francis (1232) an epic Francis, hero of a sacred adventure, who courageously confronts the enemy and who preaches brilliantly, like a professor of theology. His preaching was well received by the ‘king of the Persians’ and his courtiers, but he did not have enough manpower to pursue his mission and he had to return to Italy without having converted the ‘Persians’. Devotional paintings offer different versions of the encounter. In the fifth chapter I examine the ‘Bardi altarpiece’, painted probably about 1240, which shows the saint preaching, gospel in hand, to the sultan and to an attentive crowd of subjects. 

The altarpiece was probably painted for a Franciscan convent and its artist sought to present Francis as a model of the apostolic life that the friars should lead; preaching the Gospels to the infidels is an integral part of this life. In the sixth chapter I examine the works of Bonaventure, general minister of the Franciscans (1257–74), in particular his Legenda major (c.1260) which became the new official version of the life of the founder of the order. Bonaventure places Francis’s mission to Egypt under the rubric of his burning love for God, a love which compels him to seek martyrdom. Beaten by the Egyptian soldiers, then courteously welcomed by the sultan, Francis preached eloquently and impressed the sultan and his courtiers. In order to prove the truth of Christianity, Francis proposed to enter a fire along with the ‘Saracen priests’, who refused. The saint then proposed to confront the flames alone, which the sultan also refused. In this way, Bonaventure concludes, Francis showed that reason alone is not sufficient to prove the truth of Christianity, that miracles are sometimes necessary to incline the hearts of infidels to the True Religion. 

Bonaventure’s vision was translated into images by the painter of the series of twenty-eight frescos in the upper basilica of Assisi at the end of the thirteenth century (as we will see in Chapter 7). The eleventh fresco presents a confrontation between Francis and the Saracen ‘priests’. Taking inspiration from the fire which (according to Bonaventure) Francis asked the sultan to light, the artists places the saint at the centre of the composition, before a fire which separates him from the Saracen ‘priests’, from which they flee in fear. Francis looks behind him, towards the sultan, enthroned and surrounded by his men. The sultan gestures towards the fire and looks in the direction of his fleeing priests. Francis’s mission to Egypt has become a dramatic confrontation, a trial by fire of which we do not see the final outcome, but which succeeded in humiliating the priests of the rival religion, showing the superiority of Christianity and the courage of the saint. The two final chapters of Part I are devoted to authors from the ‘spiritual’ branch of the Franciscans in the fourteenth century. 

The order, which had suffered from conflict and division even during Francis’s life, was rent by a veritable schism in the first third of the fourteenth century, between the ‘conventuals’ on one hand, obedient to the order’s hierarchy, and the ‘spirituals’, condemned as heretics. Chapter 8 examines the work of one of the most fervent partisans of the spirituals, Angelo Clareno, for whom Francis’s voyage to the East permitted the Devil to infiltrate the Franciscan order. Indeed, the ‘rapacious wolf’ took advantage of the saint’s absence to sow chaos in the order and to encourage the weaker friars to disguise their laziness as wisdom and moderation. This opened a rift between, on the one hand, the worldly friars, who would rather follow their own desires and ambitions than the life and rule that Francis gave them and, on the other hand, the small band of brothers who remained faithful to their founder’s teachings, who lived in absolute poverty and humility. 

Francis could have converted the sultan, who received him hospitably and who was receptive to his evangelical message, but the saint’s stay in Egypt was cut short by the crisis in the order. About 1330 Franciscan Ugolino da Montegiorgio compiled his Deeds of Blessed Francis and his Companions, a text which became something of a best-seller, particularly in its Italian translation, I Fioretti. The rendering of the mission to ‘pagan lands’ is much more elaborate and dramatized than in the earlier texts. Francis travels with twelve companions; their fervour for martyrdom compels them to seek out the sultan. Ugolino describes the admiration that Francis inspires in the sultan, who grants the friars the right to preach anywhere in his kingdom. Not wishing to let his hero leave without converting the sultan, Ugolino relates that the sultan promised to convert and that Francis promised for his part to send friars to baptize him in extremis—which he subsequently did, miraculously, after his own death. 

There is no longer any shadow or any suggestion that the mission was anything other than a tremendous success: the friars preach to the infidels, convert many of them, and even succeed in converting the sultan. The nine chapters in Part I examine in detail each of the major representations of the encounter between Francis and al-Kamil. In the following centuries, numerous authors and artists describe the meeting between the two men, presenting it, often, as an emblematic encounter between the Muslim East and the Christian West, as we will see in Part II. 

Chapter 10 traces the iconography of the encounter from Giotto at the beginning of the fourteenth century to the first printed editions of Bonaventure’s Legenda maior in the sixteenth: the trial by fire, following the model established by the fresco of Assisi, dominates this iconography. But where the artist of Assisi, whose frescos served as model, depicted Francis before he had placed his foot in the flames, some fifteenth-century artists place the saint firmly in the midst of the fire, emphasizing the brilliant miracle performed by the saint before the Muslim king. Chapter 11 shows how different authors and artists, beginning in the fifteenth century, emphasize the violence and power of the sultan and his lackeys. Various artists depict the saint being beaten, his hands tied, or being dragged brutally into the presence of a sultan who seems little inclined to listen to him—a sultan who now appears more Turkish than Arab. In the context of the rise of Ottoman power, the saint appears audacious but his endeavour ultimately futile: if St Francis himself was unable to soften the hard hearts of the Muslims, they must be impermeable to the Christian message. 

This justifies the fight against infidels, Moors or Turks, but also Protestant ‘heretics’. The situation changes after the failure of the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683; now the declining power of the Turk no longer seems a threat to Europe. Chapter 12 examines portraits of Francis sketched in the eighteenth century. The philosophes criticized the religious orders, in particular the Jesuits and Franciscans, which they considered a dead weight on society, so many indolent layabouts who did not work and did not reproduce. In order to attack these orders, one attacked their founders, especially Francis. 

Thus Voltaire presents Francis as a fanatical madman and the sultan as a wise and tolerant ruler; Voltaire emphasized the demential desire for martyrdom which pushed Francis and his followers first to Egypt, then to Morocco. For Jean Henri Maubert de Gouvest, Francis’s mission was an attempt by Elias of Cortona, true leader of the Franciscans, to get rid of the saint by sending him to his death. Against these critics, other writers and authors defended the traditional Catholic vision of the saint. Chapter 13 shows how different authors used the story of the encounter to justify the Franciscan presence in the Holy Land, which in fact was the fruit of privileges granted to the order by Mamluk sultans in the fourteenth century. For some Franciscan authors, Francis’s mission to the East becomes the founding and legitimating act for the Franciscan custody of the holy places. 

They affirm that the saint came and visited the Holy Sepulchre, the Cenacle, and the other holy places; he predicted that these places would be granted to his order. Some even claim that al-Kamil himself ˆ gave the holy places to Francis. Starting in the sixteenth century, when the privileged role of the Franciscans is threatened by Greek and Western rivals, the friars defend their privileges by invoking this now-mythical past. Other European writers, beginning in the nineteenth century, celebrate the heroic renunciation of these friars and decry the persecutions that they suffered at the hands of the Ottomans, all in order to call for new crusades to take back the Holy Land. For some of them, such as Michaud and Dore, Francis’s voyage east becomes a civilizing mission amongst barbarous ´ Orientals, precursor to the colonial movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the final chapter of Part II, we will see how various authors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries transformed Francis into an ‘Apostle of Peace’, strident opponent to the crusades, who went to Damietta in search of ecumenical dialogue. 

This vision, the polar opposite of those of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is equally dependent on a voluntary deformation of the medieval sources, which, we are told, did not comprehend the radically new nature of Francis, enemy of the crusades, admirer of Islam, even (for some) a budding Sufi. This vision of a pacifist saint continues to provoke debate in the Catholic Church: we have seen that Cardinal Ratzinger in 2002 (three years before his election as Pope Benedict XVI) affirms that Francis was opposed to the crusades and that his voyage to the sultan’s court shows us ‘the path towards peace’ that we must follow. As with any ‘lieu de memoire’, the encounter between Francis and al- ´ Kamil constantly changes in meaning. One tacks onto it the preoccupations ˆ of one’s day, whether they involve the role of religious orders in eighteenthcentury France, the colonization of Muslim lands in the nineteenth century, or the violence in the Near East in the twenty-first. But before examining this encounter through the prism of modernity, let us examine it through the sources of the thirteenth century, starting with two works by a man who knew Francis, Jacques de Vitry.

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