“Saracen Prince” in Les Grandes Chroniques De France (Royal Ms 16 G Vi)

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WHITE SARACENS, BLACK MUSLIMS, AND BROWN HAFSIDS: IMAGINATIONS OF THE “SARACEN PRINCE” IN LES GRANDES CHRONIQUES DE FRANCE (ROYAL MS 16 G VI)

A Thesis

Presented

to the Faculty of

California State University, Chico

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

Art

Spring 2019 WHITE SARACENS, BLACK MUSLIMS, AND BROWN HAFSIDS:

IMAGINATIONS OF THE “SARACEN PRINCE” IN

LES GRANDES CHRONIQUES DE FRANCE

(ROYAL MS 16 G VI)

A Thesis

Tirumular Chandrasekaran Narayanan

Spring 2019

APPROVED BY THE INTERIM DEAN OF GRADUATE STUDIES:

Sharon Barrios, Ph.D.

APPROVED BY THE GRADUATE ADVISORY COMMITTEE:

Cameron Crawford, M.F.A. Asa Simon Mittman, Ph.D., Chair Graduate Coordinator

Matthew Looper, Ph.D. PUBLICATION RIGHTS

No portion of this thesis may be reprinted or reproduced in any manner unacceptable to the usual copyright restrictions without the written permission of the author.

iii DEDICATION

To Puchins, Toad, and Kesley: without whom life would be but a carnival without funnel cake.

iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank Professor Asa Simon Mittman and Professor Matthew Looper

for their patience and attention throughout this process. Professor Corey Sparks in

English has also been unsparing with his time. Rebecca Feldstein of the Visual Resources

Library has been encouraging over the course of my Master’s Program. Professor Anne

Hedeman at Kansas University has also been an invaluable resource. I also appreciate

Professor Afrodesia McCannon and Professor Geraldine Heng as well as the

MERACSTAPA board for taking me under their wing.

I thank my Mother and Father for being financial and emotional pillars. I would be remiss if I did not include Carol and Mark Seagren who have served as second parents and watched me grow. Chris and Dan Dimmick have also been generous in their financial support of my goals.

I am eternally indebted to my brothers, Om Narayanan and Todd Seagren, for being the most loving and caring men. Finally, I thank my fiancée Kelsey Dimmick who backs whatever bizarre new venture I have set my mind on.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

Publication Rights ...... iii

Dedication ...... iv

Acknowledgments...... v

List of Figures ...... viii

Abstract ...... x

CHAPTER

I. Introduction ...... 1

II. Historiography of Les Grandes Chroniques de France ...... 8

III. Convertibility: Saracen Defecation, ‘Conversion’ and French Christendom ...... 17

Destruction and Defecation ...... 20 Polemics and Excrement: Medieval Islamophobia ...... 22 Making a Mosque ...... 24 The White “Conversion Experience” of al-Mansur ...... 26

vi CHAPTER PAGE

IV. Black Mirrors, White Combatants and Royal Impersonators: Subverting Black-As-Evil, White-As-Good in Saracen Imagery ...... 30

Blackness as Mirror ...... 32 Whiteness in Combat ...... 37 Battle of Poitiers ...... 38 Charlemagne battles the Saracen ...... 39 Roland versus King Marsile ...... 41 Mimicry and Imposter-ism: The Metaphor of Polycephaly in Marsile-Baligant…………………………………………. 47

V. Shoeless and Treacherous Saracens: Performance and Real Politics ...... 55

No Shoes, no Civility: Shoeless Alterity and Memory of Crusade …………………………………….. 58 Saracen Otherness and Royal Legitimacy ...... 61 A True Prince: Jean le Bon’s Artistic Performance as Crusader ...... 63

Bibliography ...... 71

Figures……………………………………………………………………………...... 76

vii LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE PAGE

1. Raid of the Mansur of Cordova; Mansur plundering St James; punishment of the Saracens. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 185v...... 76

2. Mahun defecating on altar. Hereford Map (detail). Lincoln, 1290s. Hereford Cathedral...... 76

3. Richard the Lionheart versus Saladin. Luttrell Psalter. Diocese of Lincoln, c. 1325-1335. British Library, London; Add. MS 42130, fol. 82 (detail)...... 77

4. Agolant and his Moors attack a castle. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 167r...... 77

5. Charlemagne besieging Agolant in Agen. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 170r……...... 78

6. Charles defeating the Saracens at the battle of Poitiers. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 117v…………………… 78

7. Battle scene (Charlemagne slays Saracen Prince). Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 171r…………………... . 79

8. Battle scene. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 171v……………………………………………. 79

9. Roland binding his prisoner; a battle. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; 178v… ...... 80

10. Roland fighting Marsile. Charlemagne Window (detail). Chartres, 1225. Chartres Cathedral……………………………………. 80

viii FIGURE PAGE

11. Battle; Charlemagne taking the standard. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 174v…………………………………………… 81

12. Charlemagne receiving an envoy from Amor of Saragossa; parley; voyage of Pepin. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Roya 16 G VI fol. 147r…………………… .. 81

13. Saracens sacking Jerusalem; the patriarch before Constantine; Constantine sending envoys to Charlemagne. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 155r ...... 82

14. Battle of Roncevaux. Grandes Chroniques de France. Paris, 1370s. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; MS fr. 2813, fol. 121 (detail)……………………………………………. 82

15. Ganelon before Marsile and Baligans; Ganelon before Charlemagne. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London, Royal 16 G VI; fol.177r………………………………… ...... 83

16. Charlemagne sending Ganelon to the Saragossan Kings, Marsile and Baligant. Chroniques de Saint-Denis, France, c.1275. Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, Paris; MS 782………………………. 83

17. Saracens frightening the French knights’ horses. Grandes Chroniques de France. Paris, 1370s.Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; MS fr. 2813, fol. 119 (detail)………………………….. 84

18. Treacherous attack by Saracens. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 442r………. 84

19. Roberto d’Oderisio, Malchus of Maronia attacked by Saracens. Vitae patrum, Naples, ca. 1350-1375. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; MS M. 626, fol. 30r………………………………………………… ... 85

20. Louis IX in prison. Vie et miracles de Sainte Louis, Paris, ca. 1330-1340. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; MS. fr. 5716 fol. 92r……… 85

ix ABSTRACT

WHITE SARACENS, BLACK MUSLIMS, AND BROWN HAFSIDS:

IMAGINATIONS OF THE “SARACEN PRINCE” IN

LES GRANDES CHRONIQUES DE FRANCE

(ROYAL MS 16 G VI)

Master of Arts in Art

California State University, Chico

Summer 2019

This project seeks to examine the various depictions of so called “Saracens” in London,

British Library MS Royal 16 G VI (1332-1350), made for the future French king, Jean II “le Bon.”

The political moment, including the Hundred Years War, which surrounded the production of this

Grandes Chroniques de France, only highlights the text’s purpose as a symbol of royal legitimacy.

Following the death of Louis IX during the eighth crusade and the lukewarm success of the ninth, the crusades came to a lull. Nonetheless, crusade remained an important part of French cultural history, quickly turning into legend, as evinced by the manuscript itself. The manuscript repeatedly

depicts “crusade narratives” presenting “Saracens” in various, dynamic, and conflicting ways; they

exhibit a plethora of skin colors, hair, costume, weaponry, and even behaviors. The soldiers of Al-

Mansur appear white and in Christian armor but defile Santiago de Compostela via defecation, the

Tunisian Saracens alone appear shoeless, Agolant the Moor appears black while Marsile and

Baligant, representatives of Baghdad present as white. How can contemporary scholars account

x for the degrees of difference between these depictions within one text? This thesis will explore

possible explanations through visual, textual, ethnographic, and socio-political analysis. To this extent, the thesis will give special attention to “Saracen” kings, lords, and knights as the representatives of their people juxtaposed against the Princes of Christendom.

xi 1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Whenever he hears the Christian religion abused, [he] should not attempt to defend its tenets except with his sword, and that he should thrust into the scoundrel’s belly, and as far as it will enter.1

Such “noble” words supposedly recorded by Jean, Lord of Joinville, Seneschal of

Champagne and chronicler of King Louis IX, evoke the heart of crusader propaganda during the

Middle Ages. As Joinville completes his introduction to the Life of St. Louis, he reminds his

reader of the martial, militant, and violent responsibilities of Christendom when facing its main

adversary, “the Saracen.”2 Christendom here is the geo-political construction that supposedly

united Christian polities. However, the homogeneity of these regions, as well as the purported

enmity with Islamic regions, were not at all indelible and frequently shifted throughout the

Middle Ages. In other words, the secular and ecclesiastical rulers of Christian polities

constructed Islam as an enemy.

1 Joinville and Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. M. R. B. Shaw (London: Penguin Books, 1963), 175. 2 The parable which King Louis IX relates here is about a Christian knight killing a Jewish rabbi. Nonetheless, it seems clear that Joinville’s intentionality is to prelude Louis’s crusading. There is also a historical Latin Christian conflation of Jews/Muslims as a generalized enemy of Christendom. Debra Strickland explains that Christians saw Islam as a heresy “carrying a ‘taint’ of Judaism.” Thus the use of Jews here serves as a foreshadowing tool. See: Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracen, Demons & Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2003), 165. 2

It is necessary, to some degree to separate “The Crusades” themselves from the

“Crusading Ethos.” The former were a series of military campaigns on the part of Latin

Christians to purportedly “reclaim” the “Holy Land” from Islamic polities. The most famous of

these attempts took place between the late eleventh century and the late thirteenth, though

smaller ones as well as the so-called Reconquista of Spain would continue until the fifteenth

century. The later, though informed by the historical campaigns, is the social construct that

enveloped Latin Christian literary and visual narratives from the eleventh through the fifteenth

century and has had larger, trans temporal implications. Indeed, this phenomenon has had a

significant effect on the ways European countries and even the United States have constructed

ideas of “the West” and “the East.” The memory of crusade is imbricated with the colonization

of the New World, the imperialism of the nineteenth century, and even the justification of white

nationalist movements we see today.3

The study of crusade, as Nicholas Paul and Suzanne Yeager have previously noted, is

one of cultural memory. By this, they simply mean that individual memory, being the function of

how we remember places, circumstances, instances and people, plays an important role in

forming our mythologies, our cultural memories.4 Similarly, the memories created and developed by the types of propaganda espoused by Joinville (along with his predecessors and successors) construct not only the mythologies French Christians made for themselves but the

3 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 62. 4 Nicholas Paul and Suzanne Yeager, “Introduction: Crusading and the Work of Memory, Past and Present,” in Remembering the Crusades: Myth, Image and Identity, ed. Nicholas Paul and Suzanne Yeager (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 6-9. My verbiage here directly borrows from the framing principles regarding memory & crusade outlined by Paul and Yeager. Using Maurice Halbwachs as well as Chris Wickman’s and James Fentresses’ rethinkings, the authors attempt to “study crusade [through] commemoration and representation” (2012: 10). 3

designations they created for Muslims. The intersection of these narratives is fertile ground in

understanding the presentations of “Saracens” in medieval art. I use the term “Saracen” here as a

way of noting the pernicious construction and not historical Muslim people. As Geraldine Heng

explains in The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, the term “Saracen” was

originally used by the Romans to describe pre-Islamic Persians. The word was then appropriated

by Latin Christians claiming that “Saracen” is a Muslim attempt to claim their lineage from Sara,

the wife of Abraham, instead of the slave Hagar.5 When using the term, scholars must remind ourselves that it is not a neutral one, and I use it here to convey the prejudices of medieval Latin

Christians.

In this discussion of French cultural memory, Les Grandes Chroniques de France, the first of which was made under the reign of Louis IX,6 play no small part in the formulation of

myth. These royal chronicles “record,” in the most biased of ways, the histories, events,

victories, and virtues of French kings. They are a codification and physical manifestation of

medieval French self-perception, formed at the crossroads of text and image: the manuscript. As

medieval French society functioned as a top-down socio-political structure on its most macro

scale — power ostensibly coming from Christ consecrating (and legitimizing) kingly rule

through holy oil, and the Holy Mother Church, thereby creating a “divine right”7 — the king

becomes the representative for his people not only politically but morally. Thus, Charlemagne is

wise and powerful, Philip Augustus is politically shrewd, and St. Louis is rex christianissimus

5 Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 111-112. 6 Anne D. Hedeman, The Royal Image: Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France 1274-1422 (Berkeley: University of California Press), 1. 7 Ibid., 68. 4

“the most Christian king.”8 Thus, the virtues of French kings in these chronicles are extended to

not only the French people but, more importantly, to the kings who had these works

commissioned and to their successors. In addition to creating a cultural history, the

characterizations of their predecessors must have had significant meanings for the royal

commissioners of such manuscripts and served as sources of political legitimacy and power.

These constructions of French kingship do not exist in isolation but are juxtaposed in relation to,

and therefore defined by, representations of Saracen kings.9

If these chronicles recount the virtuous character of French kings, they also,

especially given the crusade context of their formulation, make declarations about Saracens

kings and by extension, Dar al-Islam. There has been a wide ranging conversation in scholarship

on the depictions, both textual and visual, of Muslims by Latin Christians. This is perhaps not

too surprising as many different variations of Muslims appear in medieval Latin Christian

narratives. Saracens are depicted with highly varied skin color, hair, weaponry, accoutrements,

clothing, behaviors, physiognomic features, and “monstrous” characteristics.10 Previous

scholarship has explained these differences through the Latin attempts to not only convey the

heterogeneous nature of Muslim skin tones but to denote positive or negative types of

Saracens.11 These modulations are contingent upon the convertibility of the Saracen, the Latin

Christian admiration (a byproduct of Latin self-aggrandizement) of the Saracen, or even to use

8 Ibid., 2, 64. 9 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay of Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 1-22. 10 Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 189. 11 Ibid. 5

the Saracen as a scourge to demonstrate Christian impiety.12 In its most extreme cases, the

unredeemable Saracen would appear dark-skinned, fanged, brandishing a scimitar, whereas a

“noble” or “convertible” Saracen might appear more normative in the Latin context,

indistinguishable from a Christian knight. Furthermore, scholars have analyzed the constructions

of Saracen hybridity, and the meta-spaces they occupy within medieval narratives.13 Yet much is left to be done regarding the more peculiar examples. How do medieval scholars account for white-skinned treacherous or blasphemous Saracens, black-skinned Muslims who appear noble, even chivalrous and brown-skinned monstrosities, especially when all these characterizations occur within a single text? Perhaps a more useful way to determine these differences is to study the function of the Saracen rather than the appearance.

As Les Grandes Chroniques de France serve as a physical manifestation of a mythologized memory of the French historical past, it also recounts a propagandized version of

Franco-Islamic interaction. The play between text and image makes statements on the nature (or rather various natures) of Saracens, utilizing narratives about Muslim kings, just as statements of the pure and virtuous nature of the French are made through their own kings. Thus, the presentation of Saracens shifts because different Saracen characterizations (appearances) serve different functions for their Latin Christian creators: the representation, which in reality is a construction, changes.

This thesis seeks to understand the various depictions of Saracens in Les Grandes

Chroniques de France by using British Library Royal MS 16 G VI (1332-1350 C.E.), made for

12 See Heng, The Invention of Race, 142-144 and Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracen, Demons & Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 165-173, 188. 13 Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100-1450 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009) 189-199. 6

the future French king (then Duke of Normandy), Jean II “le Bon” (John II “the Good”). The

manuscript is an ideal case study because of its dynamic, conflicting, and oftentimes

idiosyncratic method of depicting Saracens. Furthermore, the political moment that surrounded

the production of this manuscript only highlights the text’s purpose as a symbol of royal

legitimacy.14

Of the four hundred images in this manuscript, I will focus on seven illuminations of

Saracen political leaders.15 In examining this primary source, I will work through some of the

more distinct Saracen functions within the text, utilizing a post-colonial methodology.16 In this

fluid modulation, the “Saracen Prince” can represent:

1. The convertibility of the Saracen and the “whiteness” associated with conversion. 2. A subversion of expected medieval polemics regarding color vis a vis morality. Indeed not every vilified Saracen appears as black (and vice versa). 3. A “monsterized” political enemy of the French crown, presented as such in response to a past political event and as a source of legitimacy for the patron.

These modulations will be explored throughout this work in various chapters. I will begin with a brief historiography that explores the scholarly study of Les Grandes Chroniques de

France and situates my work within this larger discourse. The third chapter “Convertibility:

Saracen Defecation, ‘Conversion’ and French Christendom” seeks to develop existing understandings of Saracen whiteness and conversion, demonstrating how the visual imagery and

14 Anne D. Hedeman, “Constructing Saint Louis in John the Good’s Grandes Chroniques de France (Royal MS. 16 G. VI), Electronic British Library Journal 10 (2014): 1. 15 I use the term “political leaders” to account for the variety of titles held (in the text) by Saracen heads of state. Indeed, not each of these characters are identified as “roi” in the Old French. In an attempt not to flatten the distinctions between these characters using European terminology (such as king), I use “political leader” to refer to a number of emirs, princes, client kings serving a sultan, or sheikhs. 16 See: Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: An Introduction, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 1993), and Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994). 7

representation can pre-suppose the textual conversion, as evinced by Al-Mansur’s normative

appearance while defecating in Santiago de Compostela. The fourth chapter “Black Mirrors,

White Combatants, and Royal Impersonators: Subverting Black-as-Evil, White-as-Good in

Saracen Imagery” pushes against conventional ideas about blackness and whiteness. Here, some

Saracen leaders are presented as “black” and chivalric while others are presented as “white” yet

treacherous. Furthermore, this section will investigate the ways that more normative-seeming

Saracen princes, particularly in combat, are still “othered” in both text and image. The fifth

chapter, “Shoeless and Treacherous Saracens: Performance and Real Politics,” addresses the

specific geo-political moment of this manuscript. The particular monsterization of the Tunisian

Hafsids who bookend the manuscript frames them as the most egregious enemies of France,

largely due to their interactions with Louis IX in the Eighth Crusade. Moreover, the manuscript

utilizes this scene to bolster the political standing of its patron, Jean le Bon.

It must also be stressed that the Saracen constructions created within Les Grandes

Chroniques, while certainly utilizing religious, racial, geographic, and teratological methods, have more to say about French Latin Christian identity than Muslim polities and peoples. Each of the listed categories emphasizes a social or political aspect for the active party. The “Saracen

Prince’s” conversion is the evidence of French power in Christendom, his color is a reflection or

juxtaposition of a constructed French morality and his monstrosity provides a French king

political legitimacy. 8

CHAPTER II

HISTORIOGRAPHY OF LES

GRANDES CHRONIQUES

DE FRANCE

Scholarly interest in Les Grandes Chroniques de France (GCF) began in early-

nineteenth-century France. Paulin Paris is among the first scholars to translate the GCF in his

work, Les grandes chroniques de France selon que elles sont conservées en l'Église de Saint-

Denis, largely relying upon MS BnF. Fr. 2813 at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.

Comprising six volumes published between 1836-1838, Paris’ translation begins with an

introduction attesting to the French cultural value of these chronicles. Paris acknowledges the

ahistorical elements within the text but defends GCF as historical nonetheless. In fact, he

believes that the chronicles have more value than Greek myths because of their historical

context, whereas he states Agamemnon and the like are only preserved through epic poetry.17 He

attributes the more legendary aspects of the text to a mixing of genres (vulgar stories and

histories). Purportedly, this was accomplished by “jugglers” (storytellers, minstrels) who

attributed their stories to the Latin chronicles as a way to legitimize their tales.18 He goes on to

explain that this issue was exacerbated because the first chronicle to be translated into the

vernacular (the Pseudo-Turpin) was an inaccurate version of these events.19

17 Paulin Paris, Les grandes chroniques de France selon que elles sont conservées en l’Eglise de Saint-Denis, vol. 1 (Paris, 1837), x. 18 Ibid., xi-xii. 19 Ibid., xv. 9

Furthermore, this tradition of vernacular histories would continue, as evinced by the translations of the minstrel named Nicholas, who wrote a history of King Louis IV.20 Due to the complicated compilation of GCF, Paris disagrees with another scholar, M. de Foncemange, who published in Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions in the eighteenth century. While

Foncemange believed that the The Chronicles of St. Denis was synonymous with the text that

Paris translates, Paris notes that those chronicles were all in Latin.21 He concludes by not only lauding the Chronicles but also admonishing its (unnamed) contemporary critics, calling for a return to seeing the text as the French Herodotus (and the like).22 Indeed, this point well reflects

Paris’ intentions in his introduction: that this text is one to be celebrated, second only to the

Bible.23

In 1865, a momentous discovery was made regarding the GCF. Paul Meyer, a philologist, found evidence of the original translator (from Latin into French) for the Chronicles of St. Denis. Meyer found connections to a version found at the abbey at St. Genevieve which suggested that “Primat” was not a “simple copyist” but wrote under the reign of Louis IX.24 This revelation is very important as it not only identifies the first compiler of the GCF but also it contextualizes the historical patronage of the chronicle, something very important to future scholarship.

20 Ibid., xvi. 21 Ibid., xiii 22 Ibid., xxvii. 23 Ibid., xxiv. 24 Joseph-Noël de Wailly, “La découverte récente par M. Paul Meyer de la traduction française d'une chronique inédite de saint Louis, rédigée par un auteur nommé Primat,” in Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1865), 315. 10

The historian Léopold Delisle continues these early investigations into the GCF. He

seems to echo Paulin Paris when he states that the works that were produced in the medieval

abbey of St. Denis (including the Grandes Chroniques) were meant to evoke ideas of “national

and patriotic character.”25 In addition to publishing “Extrait d’une chronique française des rois

de France par un Anonyme de Béthune,” accounting the battle of Bouvines in 1214 C.E., Delisle

was very concerned with the production, revisions, and annotations in GCF. Take for example

his analysis of the Royal MS 16 G VI, the manuscript of John II. Delisle first states that he

agrees with Meyer’s assessment that the St. Genevieve manuscript is the closest to that of

Primat’s, and then goes on to say John’s manuscript is also a faithful copy as it does not extend

past the life of St. Louis.26 Delisle states that Royal MS 16 G VI also includes a French version

by Guillaume de Nangis for the Life of St. Louis, though a different version than other French

manuscripts.27 Furthermore, in going through the manuscript, Delisle comments on the

redactions and more frequently, the prominent additions in the margins. Here, Delisle claims that

an editor has used the same Latin manuscripts to revise the text that Primat translated into French

to make Les Grandes Chroniques. Delisle believes that, given this reality, the revisions to Royal

MS 16 G VI were commissioned by the Chancellor of Charles V (successor to John II) as a

precursor to the new king’s own GCF.28 Delisle is very much a part of his scholarly moment of

reanalyzing this work and understanding its origins. Like Paris and Meyer before him, he

explains the compiling of Les Grandes Chroniques, but is perhaps more interested than his

25 Léopold Delisle, “Notice sur un livre de peinture exécuté en 1250 dans L'Abbaye de Saint-Denis,” Bibliothèque de L'Ecole des Chartres 38 (1877): 444. 26 Léopold Delisle, “Notes sur quelques manuscrits du Musée Britannique,” Mémoires de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Ile-de-France IV (1877): 13. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., 25-31.

predecessors in comparing versions of GCF across time. He, as with Paris, is also keen on

connecting GCF to a larger French nationalistic construct.

In the early twentieth century, Jules Viard, another historian, produced a new ten volume

translation of the GCF responding to the scholarship of the previous sixty years. While paying

homage to Delisle and Meyer, Viard questions Paris’ decision to use of MS BnF. Fr. 2812 in his

1837 translation. Viard notes that the manuscript in question was from the reign of Charles V.29

In fact, Viard questions Paris’ reasons for calling the text the best version when even he takes

liberties with its translation. Finally, Viard explains that his translation is more in the line with

the St. Genevieve manuscript (Bnf MS 782).30 In this way, Viard responds to the more recent

scholarship that had linked MS 782 to the chronicler Primat, thus attempting to present a more

“original” version of GCF.

Viard’s text is heavily footnoted throughout. Frequently, the author will provide other

versions of the chronicle’s events, consulting other Latin texts that had been used to compile the

GCF, as well as make historical corrections. For example, in one case Viard tells his reader that

in Sigebert of Gembloux’s text, Duke Eudo of the Aquitaine had been killed by Charles Martel.

He goes on to state that this part of the chronicle is incorrect as Martel did not visit Aquitaine

until after Eudo had died.31 Viard’s translation has far-reaching significance as scholars who

work with Les Grandes Chroniques still consult these volumes today.

In the 1970s, Francois Avril, an art historian, approached the GCF in a profoundly

different way; he considered the images in the manuscript. However, Avril’s purview was not the

29 Jules Marie Édouard Viard, Les Grandes Chroniques de France, vol. 1 (Paris: Société de l'histoire de France, 1920-1953), xxiv. 30 Ibid., xxviii. 31 Ibid., vol. 2, 226. 12

GCF itself, but rather manuscript painting in fourteenth-century France. Considering books of

hours, bibles, and breviaries, he naturally includes the patronage of Charles V who had

commissioned a version of the GCF for his reign.32 Avril is somewhat in dialogue with his

nineteenth-century predecessors, in that his work does seem to celebrate a French tradition.

Nonetheless, while scholars like Paris, Delisle, and Viard studied the text over the image, Avril

goes the opposite direction. Indeed, Avril tends to interpret the image through a formalist lens,

giving only enough context to understand what the image depicts. Take for example his

description of The Reception for Charles IV, where he states “the seductive color scheme of the

entire scene does not conceal the artist’s lack of coherent spatial concept.”33 In this way, Avril

appears less concerned with how the text functioned within its own historical moment than how

it affects the viewer. Despite its limitations, Avril’s contribution is an innovative method for

engaging with GCF.

Gabrielle Spiegel, a historian focusing on historiographies, approaches Les Grandes

Chroniques from a post-modern perspective. In her books Romancing the Past and The Past as

Text, she frames the chronicles as part of a tradition of vernacular (Old French) historiography.34

Using Derrida’s concepts of textuality and deconstruction, Spiegel proposes to understand the

“social logic of the text.”35 While she states that she does not completely immerse herself in a

Derridean theory, she also attempts to negotiate ideas of “empirical truth which had constituted

32 Francois Avril, Manuscript Painting at the Court of France: The Fourteenth Century (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1978), 25-29. 33 Ibid., 107. 34 Gabrielle M. Spiegel, Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993), 2-10. 35 Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), xviii, 3-28. 13

the governing paradigm of ‘scientific’ historiography since the nineteenth century.”36 Spiegel

explains that the historiographical tradition of the GCF begins with the French (specifically

Flemish) aristocracy who were trying to assert their legitimacy when confronted with growing

royal power. The author marks the important shift from chansons de geste to prose histories as a

way to bolster the authority of the text, leading to works such as the Pseudo-Turpin.37 This tradition became an important part of royal legitimacy in the thirteenth century after Philp

Augustus consolidated his power.38

Spiegel very clearly states that she positions herself in opposition to nineteenth- century French nationalistic constructions, while still agreeing that the text is a royal one. This is perhaps not too surprising given the academic postmodern moment of her scholarship. However, she goes a step further than her predecessors in laying out how the manuscript tradition produced the GCF over time. Spiegel’s translations are still fairly beholden to Viard’s, which she relies on frequently. The primary differences between her and scholars such as Viard or Paris is that while they were attempting to understand the formulations of GCF, she attempts to explain the evolution of how they came to be, what she calls the “social logic of the text,” or the political contexts of the written narrative.

Following Spiegel’s framework, Anne Hedeman, another art historian, begins to look at the GCF under contextualization of the text, context, and imagery. As Hedeman explains in

Royal Image: Illustrations of Les Grandes Chroniques de France 1274-1422, the chronicles

36 Ibid., xvii. 37 Spiegel, Romancing the Past, 67. 38 Ibid., 269-272.

differ from previous histories by being a “quintessentially royalist text.”39 As they were created

during the reign of Louis IX and constructed as a symbol of French Christianness, Hedeman

demonstrates how the “political ideology”40 of Louis IX plays an important role in interpreting

the text. Moreover, Louis’ canonization had important implications as “the presence of a royal

saint allowed subsequent rulers [to promote] the cult of their forbearer.”41 Indeed, Hedeman’s

research heavily revolves around the inferred royal intentionality behind the GCF. In other words

she discusses the various manuscripts as embodiments motivated by the specific political needs

of their patrons.

Hedeman’s scholarship is a continuation of Spiegel’s idea of social logic, though it is

more focused on GCF than the French manuscript tradition as a whole. Like Spiegel, she

continues to rely on Viard and does note the early translations (such as Paris) but critiques the

tendency to use newer translations for the Life of Louis rather than older ones. Hedeman also is at odds with Delisle’s statement regarding the annotations in Royal MS 16 G VI as being “a prelude to the production of Charles V’s magnificent manuscript.”42 Hedeman disagrees with

this assessment, arguing that John directed this text to be edited during his reign as king,

highlighting its importance to his royal legitimacy. Furthermore, Hedeman believes that the

manuscript was commissioned by John himself.43 Overall, Hedeman’s contribution to this field

is in demonstrating the ways French kings produced physical histories (manuscripts) that

bolstered their legitimacy.

39 Anne D. Hedeman, The Royal Image: Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France 1274-1422 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), 2. 40 Ibid., 1. 41 Ibid., 10. 42 Ibid. 52. 43 Ibid., 54.

It is important to include Robert Levine’s English translation of Viard here, if for no

other reason than to note contemporary scholars’ reliance on the nineteenth-century translation.

Levine published only two volumes in France Before Charlemagne: A Translation from the

Grandes Chroniques and A Thirteenth-Century Life of Charlemagne. Thus, he does not translate

any of the lives of Capetian kings nor the life of St. Louis. Levine comments that Royal MS 16 G

VI, in addition to the St. Genevieve manuscript, was one of the texts that Viard utilized when

creating his translation.44 Levine’s (unfinished) translation only demonstrates the scholarly

necessity to translate the versions of the GCF into English.

Other art historians, such as Christina Normore, discuss the GCF in the context of cultural memory. Normore’s chapter “Depicting Defeat in the Grandes Chroniques de France” in Representing War and Violence 1250-1600 discusses two very different presentations of the

French defeat at Courtrai in 1302. Working with two GCF copies (the manuscripts made for

Charles V and VI), Normore considers the textual history behind two visually different scenes.

As Normore explains, one attempts to valorize the French defeat while the other appears to show the slaughter.45 Upon investigating the text, she suggests that the language within the GCF

allows for both interpretations and that the different manuscripts present the same scenario in

opposing ways.46 Most notably, Normore discusses the GCF in the context of military history, something that had not been done in earnest by her predecessors.47 Normore is certainly in

dialogue with Spiegel and especially Hedeman’s groundwork in The Royal Image. The author

44 Robert Levine, France Before Charlemagne: A Translation from the Grandes Chroniques (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 1. 45 Christina Normore, “Depicting Defeat in the Grandes Chroniques de France, in Representing War and Violence: 1250-1600, ed. Joanna Bellis and Laura Slater (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2016): 39-40. 46 Ibid., 58-59. 47 Ibid., 41-43. 16

relies somewhat more on Paris’ translations but this may be due to her use of Charles V and VI’s

translations instead of Philippe III’s or John II’s.

Finally, Bernard Bertrand, an undergraduate at University of New Hampshire, recently completed an honors thesis entitled “‘Monstrous Muslims’: Depicting Muslims in

French Illuminated Manuscripts from 1250-1500.” Here, Bertrand covers the various depictions of Saracens from numerous French manuscripts (including Royal MS 16 G VI).48 While

Bertrand does good work in cataloguing the visual elements, there is little consideration of text-

image relation.

In sum, the major scholarship regarding Les Grandes Chroniques has focused on the

chronicles as arguments for royal legitimacy and French identity. However, the crusade

narratives have mainly been discussed by Hedeman, as we will later see. Furthermore, Debra

Strickland and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen have also written on images of Saracens from Les Grandes

Chroniques de France.49 Still, the specific research on “Saracen Princes” within Les Grandes

Chroniques de France and their relationship to French kings remains relatively untouched. The

work of this project is to begin to investigate more deeply a single manuscript and its

constructions of the “Saracen Prince,” and the idiosyncrasies therein.

48 Benjamin Anthony Bertrand, “Monstrous Muslims? Depicting Muslims in French Illuminated Manuscripts from 1200-1420,” Honors Thesis (University of New Hampshire, 2015). 49 Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracen, Demons & Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2003) & Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “On Saracen Enjoyment: Some Fantasies of Race in Late Medieval France and England,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 (2001). As will be discussed in Chapter IV, Strickland does discuss King Marsile (though briefly). Chapter V will discuss Cohen’s analysis of Saracens in GCF. 17

CHAPTER III

CONVERTIBILITY: SARACEN

DEFECATION, ‘CONVERSION’

AND FRENCH CHRISTENDOM

In the eyes of medieval Latin Christians, Saracen conversion was, in addition to the

annihilation of those who kept their Islamic faith, one the goals of the crusade. As Debra

Strickland remarks, “the age of crusades saw papal mandates to accelerate missionary efforts

[providing another reason for] crusaders to confront the ‘pagans’: to deliver the message of

Christ.”50 After all, the more converts to Christianity, the further the colonial construct of

Christendom could spread its reach.51 Given the interest in Islamic conversion coming from the

papacy, it is not too surprising that literary traditions contain similar messages. One of the most

prominent examples can be found in the fourteenth-century Middle English text King of Tars. In

the narrative, the black skin of a Saracen king, the eponymous King of Tars, transfigures to white

upon his baptism, like that of his white Christian queen. Suzanne Conklin Akbari states in Idols

in the East: European Representation of Islam and the Orient, 1100-1450 that the “bodily

50 Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracen, Demons & Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2003), 158 51 Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, 125. Heng discusses the use of Christendom as both a religious and economic. She points to Guibert de Nogent, Abbot of Nogent-sur-Coucy’s comment about Jerusalem as ‘novae coloniae’ (new colony). Moreover, Heng addresses Venetian appropriation of Tyrian glass via crusade, an economic development with long term implications. 18 diversity seamlessly reflects religious orientation,” as well as ideas about Christianity-as-purity and Islam-as-corruption.52

However, conversion is not always so diametric, nor does conversion always occur, even if it is an expressed desire on the part of the Latin Christian. Akbari notes that in Chanson de Roland, “at the sight of the fair skin and white [...] hair [of the Saracen emir Baligant], the [...] narrator [...] exclaims ‘God, what a baron, if only he were made a Christian.’”53 As Akbari explains, both Baligant and the King of Tars represent a “wished-for assimilation and integration of the Islamic world by Christendom,”54 echoing Strickland’s remarks on the geopolitical spread of Christendom.55 Sharon Kinoshita pushes this reading further by stating that, as the King of

Tars’s appearance changes as a response to his conversion, Baligant’s appearance is utilized to pre-suppose his potentiality for conversion.56 In other words, the Saracen leader (and therefore

Islam) is convertible.

52 Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100-1450 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009) 190-191. See also: Cord J. Whitaker “Black Metaphors in the King of Tars,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 112 no. 2 (2013): 169-193 & Siobhain Bly Calkin, “Marking Religion on the Body: Saracens, Categorization, and ‘The King of Tars,’”The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 104 no. 2 (2005): 219-238. 53 Ibid., 156. 54 Ibid. 55 It is worth considering momentarily the anxiety Latin Christians may have had regarding conversion, as the process can (and did) go the other direction. In the twelfth century, Robert of St. Albans converted to Islam serving as a commander under Salah-al-din. Such realities, even if they were atypical, clearly remained in the minds of the the Latin Christians as evinced by the travel journals of Sir John Mandeville. After speaking with a sultan, the author explains that some Christians have in fact become Saracens, legitimizing the statement by providing the Christian declarations of the shahada as evidence. Such anxieties are in a crucial facet of crusade ideology, that if Christendom did not expand, Islam would. See: John France “Holy War and holy men: Erdmann and the lives of the saints,” in Experience of Crusading Volume 1: Western Approaches, edited by Marcus Bull and Norman Housley, 193-208 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 195 & John Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, trans. C.W.R.D Moseley (New York: Penguin Books Ltd., 1983), 110. 56 Sharon Kinoshita, “Pagans are wrong and Christian are Right: Alterity, Gender and Nation in the Chanson de Roland,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 no.1, 79-111 (2001): 85. 19

Concepts of Saracen convertibility are evidently untidy. This is to say, they exist

between a space of absolute conversion (baptism) and the potentiality for it. Perhaps European

ecclesiastical and secular literary traditions left this construction purposefully open-ended as it creates space to elevate the importance of Latin Christian power and authority within the Saracen conversion process. Such is the case in Royal MS 16 G VI, which uses al-Mansur’s historical sacking of Santiago de Compostela and the conquest of Galicia57 as a chance to highlight French

importance within Christendom (Figure 1). Les Grandes Chroniques claims that, not only did

parts of Spain belong to Charlemagne, but that the emperor also built the church at Santiago de

Compostela.58 This characterizes al-Mansur’s attack on Spain as an invasion into French land

and patronage. Interestingly, the image presents al-Mansur’s (in the text called “the emir of

Cordoba”59) soldiers as light skinned, devoid of any clear mark of otherness, despite their

stealing liturgical items and defecating in the church, a deeply sacrilegious act with even more

egregious implications. Similar to Baligant, the physical “European” normativity of al-Mansur’s

forces pre-supposes al-Mansur’s own conversion experience in the text, an act that only comes about through divine intervention. Image and text use Saracen convertibility as a tool to demonstrate the divine protection of French lands and thereby reinforce the legitimacy of French royalty.

57 The memory of al-Mansur undoubtedly left a lasting impression upon the minds of the Latin Christians. During his life he led some fifty attacks which include sacking Barcelona (985 C.E.) and Santiago de Compostela (997 C.E). During the latter, al-Mansur did remove bells from the church, thus giving some credence to the ransacking occurring in the scene. Simultaneously, the text conveniently removes the more positive political relationships between al-Mansur and his Christian Spanish neighbors as evinced by his marriage to a Princess of Navarre. See: Hugh Kennedy, Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus (London: Routledge, 1996), 119-120. 58 Robert Levine, A Thirteenth-Century Life, 138, 95. 59 Robert Levine, A Thirteenth-Century Life of Charlemagne (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1991), 138. 20

Destruction and Defecation

Figure 1 presents a synoptic narrative in three parts, first depicting al-Mansur’s soldiers slaughtering the Christian force, whose severed heads lay bloody upon the floor. One

Christian appears to hold the decapitated head of his comrade, seemingly in mourning, while being stabbed in the back by a Saracen. Indeed, this moment reinforces the humanity of the

Christians and frames the Saracens as dastardly and without honor. The kneeling figure, whose skull is cloven by a sword, appears unarmed, suggesting this may be a prelate. The death of an unarmed priest is an intentional visual choice on the part of the illuminator to evoke the barbarity of the occupying force.

The next scene visualizes the robbery of church instruments, including a chalice, a codex, a cross, and a censor. The text expands upon this scene, providing the detail of the value of these items including “books bound in gold and silver salvers.”60 Note that the Saracens here not only commit theft but engage in a willful act of removing elements from a church that are needed in church services. In other words, they attempt to strip the building of its Christian function in preparation for repurposing this space.

The final scene illustrates two of the Saracens defecating at the altar.61 Behind them, their compatriots have been struck blind by Christ as one of the punishments for their heretical acts,62 their eyes obscured, bloodied red, whereas all other figures have visible black pupils. The

act of defecation is not only depicted as an insult to Christians but is in dialogue with the theft

60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. “using the main altar as a latrine.” Viard translates “et fesoient lor ordure delez maistre autel de leanz” as “and here they made [their] excrement next to the main altar.” (my translation) See: Viard, Les Grandes Chroniques, vol. 3, 300. 62 Ibid.

occurring in the previous scene: the Saracens intend not only to defile this sacred space, but to

transform it.

The visual representation of Saracens in Figure 1 does not denote a certain individual

as al-Mansur through a crown or other specific iconographic marker. Due to hieratic scale and positional placement, it may be argued that the murderous figure with red helmet on the left, the chalice holding figure with red helmet to the right, and the gold helmeted figure in the interior scene on the right are all intended to be al-Mansur, though variation makes confirmation problematic. Nonetheless, the presence of al-Mansur in the text confirms that these warriors function as visual extensions of their political leader.

As previously stated, the Saracen warriors appear visually indistinguishable from the

Christian warriors they face. Both sides share many markers, such as skin tones, types of armor,

and weaponry, so much so that it is text rather than imagery, that denotes a difference between

these groups. Debra Strickland has previously demonstrated how iconographic tools, including

dark skin, scimitars and tortils, are used to visually identify Muslim warriors.63 At the same time,

she acknowledges the presence of Saracens who appear normative as a symbol of their “virtuous

nature” in Christian imagery. She explains that such modulations occur to show equitability

between Christian and Muslim combatants and as a celebration of Muslim chivalry, a narrative

that would grow following Latin Christian interactions with Salah-al-Din.64 Yet, neither of

Strickland’s scenarios apply to the scene: this is not equitable combat but slaughter, not a

celebration of Muslim nobility but the violent, disgusting, filthy desecration of a pilgrimage site.

Moreover, the illuminator frames the actions of the Saracens here as a willful attempt to

63 Strickland, Saracens, Demons & Jews, 181. 64 Ibid., 188-189. 22

transform the church into a non-Christian space, threatening Santiago de Compostela’s special

status and important position (the burial place of an apostle, and the most prominent pilgrimage

site) within Christendom.

Polemics and Excrement: Medieval Islamophobia

In order to understand what the illuminator is suggesting that the Saracens are attempting to do to the church, it is first necessary to review how Christians in the fourteenth

century viewed Islam. As John Tolan lays out in Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European

Imagination, Islam is viewed as a heresy, complete with its own series of “perverted” rites and

idol worship.65 The Prophet Muhammad is framed as a false one, in the ranks of other key

heretics such as Arius and the Anti-Christ.66 Furthermore, Islam is considered the culmination of

all previous heresies. As expressed by Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, a Dominican friar, in

dialogue with earlier anti-Muslim theologians like Peter the Venerable and Ramon Marti, Islam

was the “excrement of all the ancient heresies which the Devil had sparsely sprinkled into each,

[and that] Muhammad revommited it all together.”67 The friar’s words reflect not only the

Christian association of Islam with heresy but with defecation and fecal matter, an enduring

pejorative.

Islam and Muhammad are frequently associated with filth in Christian polemical

texts. As seen from the accounts of theologians like Peter and Marti, Islam was seen as a literally

65 John Victor Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the European Imagination (New York: University of Columbia Press, 2002), 7, 155. 66 Ibid., 158. 67 Ibid., 251. 23

“dirty” religion. Christian writers would frequently connect Muslims with a range of filth types from sexual, to pollution, to physical or religious contact with feces.68 A clear example of this construction can be found in the Hereford Map, with a statue of “Mahun” (a modification of

Mohammed) (Figure 2) “a demonic idol squatting on an altar [...] defecating coins” who is worshipped by a group of Jews.69 This conflation of Jews and Muslims may seem odd within contemporary understandings of religion but to the medieval Latin Christian, this combination was common practice. Purportedly Islam “contained the ‘taint’ of Judaism.”70 Thus, Judaism

(and therefore the Jews) become associated with the long list of Christian heresies that supposedly make up Islam. In the case of the Hereford Map, this narrative is visually perpetuated through the use of the Golden Calf-as-Mahun, an allusion to a Christian idea of Jewish culpability in an original heresy: the idol worship that occurred at the foot of Mount Sinai while

Moses received the commandments.71 Either way, the worshippers of Mahun are heretics, ones who follow a religion that celebrates gold and feces. As Asa Simon Mittman so eloquently puts it, the image presents the idol as being “full of shit—along with those who worship it, and the religions they follow.”72

68 Ibid., 238, 120, 143: In these polemics Muhammad is considered a deviant because of the sexualized accounts of his death, dying upon his wife’s breasts. Islam is also considered a pollution especially in crusader narratives that call for the cleansing of Jerusalem of the “filth of Muhammad.” Finally, some narratives deride Muhammad insisting upon the filthiness of his death as he is purportedly eaten by pigs. This last narrative adds another dimension of filth along with the inherent connection between pigs and excrement. 69 Debra Higgs Strickland, “Meanings of Muhammad in Later Medieval Art, in The Image of the Prophet between Ideal and Ideology: A Scholarly Investigation, ed. Christiane J. Gruber and Avinoam Shalem, 147-164 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 151. 70 Strickland, Saracen, Demons & Jews, 165. 71 Christine Shepardson, “Defining the Boundaries of Orthodoxy: Eunomius in the Anti-Jewish Polemic of His Cappadocian Opponents,” Church History 76 no. 4 (2007): 718. Apparently some early Christian scholars used the golden calf narrative to other the Arian Christian “heresy,” thereby connecting them with Jews. This suggests a long-term construction of Jews as heretical specifically through idolatry. 72 Asa Simon Mittman, “Demon on the Altar,” unpublished chapter on file with the author, 46. 24

In keeping with this narrative of heresy, Mahun’s defecation upon the altar is a

perversion of divine posture. Unlike the medieval archetypal Christ who reveals his spear wound

or stigmata, signs of mortal sacrifice, Mahun shits. The act of defecation serves as evidence of

Mahun’s life73 much as Christ’s wounds reflects his own. Thus, the image perpetuates the concept that Mahun (Mohammed) is a disturbing inversion of Christ, a false Christ, an

imposter.74 More importantly, the image intentionally corrupts Christian ideas of the altar space.

In Christianity, the altar is a place for the sacrament of the Eucharist, a moment of consecration

considered, as of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, a literal miracle.75 In sharp contrast, in

Christian-imagined Islam, the altar becomes a site of defecation, corruption, a space where a sort of unholy consecration occurs. With the connections between excrement at the altar as an unholy act we can better understand the image of al-Mansur’s soldiers at Santiago de Compostela.

Making a Mosque

The defecation that occurs in the church functions as a loaded metaphor of the

Saracen transformation of the pilgrimage site into a mosque. As Mahun shits on his altar in the

Hereford Map, so too do Saracens in Royal MS 16 G VI defecate at the altar, signifying its shift

from a Christian space to an Islamic one. The imagery here again attempts to frame Islam as a

filthy inversion of Christianity. While Christians reenact the Last Supper at the altar through

consumption, Saracens purportedly reenact the filth associated with Mohammed through

73 Asa Simon Mittman, “Demon on the Altar,” 45. 74 Said, Orientalism, 60. When analyzing the medieval Christian construction of Islam, Said states that the Latin Christians viewed Mohammed as an equivalent of Christ and thus, an “imposter.” 75 H. J. Schroeder, Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Texts, Translation and Commentary (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1937), 238. 25

defecation at the altar. This narrative is only furthered by the Saracens’ initial stripping of the

church, removing the elements needed inside a church in preparation for this space becoming a

mosque. Furthermore, the Saracen theft of gold and silver items again speaks to the construction

established in Hereford that the followers of Mohammed are greedy and worship gold, gold that

is the excrement of their god.76 Finally, the text itself establishes al-Mansur’s intentions of re-

Islamification of Spain saying he “boasted that he would conquer the land of Spain and Galicia

[...] and would restore it to pagan law.”77 While the text does not explicitly state that al-Mansur

sought to transform churches into mosques, the reestablishment of Islam certainly implies the

appropriation of Christian spaces.

To some extent, Les Grandes Chroniques de France respond to a historical, if not

actually frequent, reality of churches being turned into mosques as demonstrated by Salah-al-

din’s 1192 C.E. conversion of the Church of St. Anne in Egypt.78 Despite the relative

infrequency of such actions on the part of Islamic polities, Latin Christians had a prolific anxiety

of such transformations. Nonetheless, perhaps the metaphor for the church’s transformation can

be found in the political and historical reality of al-Mansur’s raid. After sacking the church, al-

Mansur had the bells of the church removed and brought back and installed into the Great

Mosque of Cordoba. The implications of al-Mansur’s appropriation had long term implications

especially in light of the Reconquista. When King Fernando III of Castille retook Cordoba in

1236 C.E., he returned the bells to their place of origin, thus “undoing the ‘oppropbrium’

76 Strickland, “Meanings of Muhammad in Later Medieval Art,” 151. 77 Robert Levine, A Thirteenth-Century Life, 138. 78 Mattia Guidetti, In the Shadow of the Church: The Building of Mosques in Early Medieval Syria (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 164-165. Still, it would be incorrect to say that this practice did not go the other way. See also: Julie A. Harris, “Mosque to Church Conversions in the Spanish Reconquest,” Medieval Encounters 3 issue 2 (1997): 158- 172. 26 committed by al-Mansur, cleansing Spain of the ‘filth of Muhammad.’”79 Even though the cathedral was not transformed into a mosque, important elements that were part of the church were removed and incorporated into a mosque. These historical events again give more meaning to the imagery when addressing the removal of the liturgical instruments, hinting at Latin anxieties of Saracen appropriation of their holy sites and their holy items. If the textual, visual, and historical narratives are not identical, they are certainly analogous, all speaking to the Latin

Christian horror at the prospect of Islamic control.

Thus, the sin of the Saracens in the narrative is not only disrespecting the pilgrimage site of an important apostle but also their audacity to make this space into a mosque. This is not only framed as sacrilegious but as a political attempt to remove a part of French Christendom.

Again, we must divorce ourselves from the idea that these narratives have anything to do with historical Spain. Rather, because the lands in the texts are lands conquered by Charlemagne, and because the manuscript was written for French kings, these regions are implicitly, in this moment, extensions of France. Yet if Les Grandes Chroniques presents an Islamic attack upon

French Christendom, why do the Saracen warriors appear so normative, so “European,” so

“white,” especially when the manuscript contains more racialized versions of Muslims?

The White “Conversion Experience” of al-Mansur

The depiction of white Saracens in the imagery of Royal 16 G VI is a reflection of al-

Mansur’s partial conversion in the text. The manuscript paints a picture of Christ striking against

79 Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the European Imagination, 184-186.

Saracen colonization, refusing to let French lands fall into the hands of the Muslims. In the text, al-Mansur is among those who is stricken blind as punishment for their desecration of the church. Subsequently, the emir states “God of all Christians, if you give me back my sight I shall denounce Mahomet.” Upon the restoration of his sight, the emir “acknowledged and professed that the God of the Christians was powerful.”80 The narrative recalls something of the narrative of Paul the Apostle who is struck blind on the Road to Damascus and ultimately converts and has his eyesight restored to him. Thus, the imagery pre-supposes al-Mansur’s conversion experience, his contact with the divine. The whiteness in the imagery cannot be written off as an accident as, by the fourteenth century, European “whiteness” had gained a synonomity with purity, sanctity, and virtue that was distinct from other colors.81 Madeline Caviness explains this phenomenon using the artistic iconographic shifts in royal French commissions as examples. While the Psalter of Louis IX’s grandfather features “flesh in tones of pink and brown,” the Psalters belonging to

Louis and his wife Blanche contain characters with whiter skin.82 As Caviness goes on to say

“such monotonous white figures could be contrasted with grimacing darker-skinned people, with large noses or flaring nostrils.”83 The same monotony that Caviness describes appears again in

Figure 1, however, here, it is applied to both Christians and Muslims alike. The use that she describes of dark-skinned characters, while certainly an artistic choice that was available to the illuminators given the nature of the scene and the presence of dark-skinned characters elsewhere in the manuscript, is absent. Hence the whiteness here is intentional and, I would argue,

80 Robert Levine, A Thirteenth-Century Life, 138. 81 Madeline Caviness, “From the Self-Invention of the Whiteman in the Thirteenth Century to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives in Medieval Art 1 (2008): 18. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid. 28

functions as a way to illustrate al-Mansur’s disavowal of Islam, thereby reflecting Latin Christian

ideas about themselves and the virtue indicated by their own white skin.

The whiteness of the emir’s soldiers in the text may be similar to the King of Tars’s

own transformation, but this is not the only comparison between these narratives. Saracen

conversion is not a celebration of the Muslim character(s) himself but the power and correctness

of Christendom. Al-Mansur’s conversion is seen as a sign of God’s direct intercession on behalf

of France. As the Saracen leader attempts to convert a church into a mosque, he himself has a

conversion experience forced upon him by God. In other words, God makes al-Mansur “see the

light,” ironically by plunging him into darkness, as a form of punishment, to preserve French

Christendom. The evidence for this reading can be found within the image itself. Earlier, I had

stated that one of God’s punishments for the Muslims is blinding. The other is making them ill in

their “bowels and guts”: God gives the Saracens (and their leader) diarrhea.84 Given their

proximity to the blind Saracens, the defecating figures are meant to be read doubly, both

willfully defecating in an act of desecration, and also suffering the fitting punishment for their

actions. Both sin and punishment are depicted simultaneously. The whiteness of the Saracen

warriors not only represents al-Mansur’s conversion experience, but is an example of God’s

power, that caused the conversion in the first place. God’s divine intervention (the whiteness that

comes with purity, virtue, and sanctity as Caviness has addressed) becomes, at least visually,

grafted itself onto the bodies of the enemy.85

84 Robert Levine, A Thirteenth-Century Life, 138. 85 John Victor Tolan, Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages (Tallahassee: University of Florida Press, 2008), 157. In Spanish texts such as Historia Compostellana, Christ just kills al-Mansur “who gives his soul to Mohammed.” Hence, this version does not allow for a conversion but stops the emir by simply destroying him. It is difficult to determine the precise reasons for the variations for this narrative though most likely they have something to do with the level of direct cultural impact it had on the respective areas. As Tolan explains 29

I have throughout this chapter referred to al-Mansur’s conversion as an “experience” or as a “partial conversion.” This has been for two reasons: firstly, the emir does not become baptized in this scene, but rather, only denounces Mohammad and prays to God; secondly, al-

Mansur does not quite learn his lesson after leaving Santiago de Compostela. The text relates that, after leaving, the emir goes on to another church and sacks it. There, he is punished (though somewhat less directly) by God and resolves to leave Spain before anything worse happens.86

Thus, al-Mansur’s conversion is neither complete nor lasting.87 Still, the whiteness of Saracen skins insists upon the notion that al-Mansur was unable to convert the church into a mosque, that

God intervened even in the absence of a temporal defender of the realm,88 and that French

Christendom was preserved. As the section ends, the last section in the Life of Charlemagne, as a result of the emir’s failures “for a long time afterward, no one was so foolhardy as to dare invade the country.”89 The divine favor of France is embodied in God’s power to, at least momentarily, convert the Saracen.

Historia Compostellana (HC) attempts to “minimize the shame of the raid.” Perhaps the French did not feel as strongly about this attack (given the geopolitical distance from this situation despite their attempt to conflate Charlemagne’s Spain with their own land). Thus, the GCF version may be trying to celebrate French Christendom’s ability to expand through conversion, whereas HC emphasizes divine vengeance against Muslim attacks. 86 Robert Levine, A Thirteenth-Century Life, 139. When al-Mansur leaves, he goes on to sack a church of St. Romanus. There, one of his soldiers is turned into stone. While the emir asks for the return of his man, his prayers fall on deaf ears and so he quits Spanish lands. 87 Much earlier in the text, Charlemagne engages in combat with the King of Seville and al-Mansur, Emir of Cordoba. Upon the death of the King of Seville, the emir escapes but is later baptized as a condition of his surrender (“li aumaçors eschapa, qui puis fu baptiziez” in the rubric) This does seem to be the same emir whose soldiers defecate in Santiago de Compostela. Thus, al-Mansur has a tendency within the text to convert and then revert back to his “Saracen” ways. Nonetheless the conversion experience at the end of the narrative seems to have more gravitas as it is a moment with the divine rather than a political arrangement. See: Viard, Les Grandes Chroniques vol. 3., 250-252 & Levine, A Thirteenth-Century Life, 116. 88 Ibid., 138. 89 Ibid., 139.

CHAPTER IV

BLACK MIRRORS, WHITE COMBATANTS,

AND ROYAL IMPERSONATORS:

SUBVERTING BLACK-AS-

EVIL, WHITE-AS-GOOD

IN SARACEN IMAGREY

So far I have discussed the appearance of whiteness in relation to conversion but there remain many Saracens in medieval literature who appear normative in accordance with European

Christian standards while maintaining their faith. Geraldine Heng discusses this phenomenon occurring in Roman de Saladin where the Muslim king “passes easily for a European knight when he makes a prolonged visit to France.”90 Nonetheless, in other situations Saladin appears as blue and tusked (Figure 3).91 Thus, Saracens are constructed in a range of colors that varies as much as their convertibility.92 As previously mentioned, some of this may have to do with admiring certain Saracens or presenting them as capable of equitable combat when they appear

90 Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 189. 91 Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracen, Demons & Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2003), 178-179. Strickland identifies this image as in dialogue with Richard Coer de Lion (RCL) noting that the English king only ever fought Saladin in literature. Interestingly, Heng mentions that Saladin’s men (author’s emphasis) in RCL are black, implying that Saladin is perhaps somewhat more normative, and that whiteness correlated with class. The connection between the Luttrell Psalter image and RCL is a curious one as this would mean that Saladin is presented as normative in the text and more monstrous in the imagery. Perhaps the image of Saladin is meant to represent Dar-al-Islam when placed against Richard, the sword of Christendom. We will see the reversal of this phenomenon later in this chapter in a case where image and text are more directly in contact in “King Marsile versus Roland.” See Heng, The Invention of Race, 189. 92 Heng, The Invention of Race, 189.

31 white.93 Furthermore, Strickland also notes that crusaders “distinguished between white and black Muslims,” seemingly speaking to the “epidermal”94 differences between Islamic polities, something that will be considered later in this chapter. In this vein of color being a reflection of region, Suzanne Conklin Akbari addresses the medieval notion that of color reflects climate.95

Still, both Strickland and Jean Devisse discuss blackness as reflective of morality or as theological. Strickland notes the flaw in calling the depictions of dark-skinned Muslims

Saracen/Ethiopian hybrids, a construction that would imply ethnicity. To say this, one would have to argue that dark skinned Jews or Mongols were also “Ethiopian” hybrids as well. Instead she concludes that the “common pejorative visual vocabulary (dark skin) is applied [to] demons,

Jews, Ethiopians, Saracens and other negative figures.”96 Devisse on the other hand argues that black skin color “blazoned to all Christendom the innate sinfulness [of Ethiopians],” due to earlier theological constructions of black-as-sin.97

Yet in some scenarios in Royal MS 16 G VI, the blackness and whiteness of the

Saracen does not necessarily correlate to the morality of the Saracen. King Agolant of Africa is depicted as arguably the darkest-skinned person in any of the illuminations, yet his blackness is

93 In the case of Royal MS 16 G VI, the latter is more present than the former largely due to the nature of the text (a royal manuscript and not a celebration of chivalry). Nonetheless an argument could be made in regards to Ferregut, the Goliath-like champion of Baghdad who faces Roland in single combat. See Benjamin Anthony Bertrand, “Monstrous Muslims? Depicting Muslims in French Illuminated Manuscripts from 1200-1420,” Honors Thesis (University of New Hampshire, 2015), 60. See also: Siobhain Bly Calkin, Saracens and the Making of English Identity: The Auchinleck Manuscript (New York: Routledge, 2005), 178, for discussion of Ferragut as honorable. 94 Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, 181-184. 95 Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100-1450 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009) 161. Akbari uses Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ De proprietatibus rerum to discuss the ways the skin color was considered in relation to climate especially the notion that heat made people choleric (referring to the four humors), which could manifest as physical blackness. 96 Strickland, Saracens, Demons & Jews, 173. 97 Jean Devisse, The Image of the Black in Western Art: From the Early Christian Era to the “Age of Discovery,” trans.William G. Ryan Vol 2. Pt. 1: From the Demonic Threat to the incarnation of Sainthood (New York: William Morrow, 1979), 59-61. 32 not only a reflection of his own sin but the failure of Charlemagne. Furthermore, throughout the manuscript, Christian kings and knights face many white-skinned Saracen leaders. While I agree with Strickland’s assessment that this is an iconographic method of presenting equitable combat,

I would also say that the play between imagery and text are utilized to “other” these Saracens despite their normative appearance. Finally, whiteness can be used to frame the Saracen king as an imposter, perpetuating Latin Christian concepts of Muhammad as a false Christ. The various ways Saracen skin colors are used in the narrative are attempts convey the wisdom, purity, chivalry, and genuineness of both French royalty and Christendom.

Blackness as Mirror

One would be hard pressed to find a darker skinned king in Royal MS 16 G VI than

Agolant, King of Africa (Figure 4). He and his soldiers appear with a smokey black color that appears on no other folio in a manuscript with over four hundred images. Indeed, the purpose of this coloration is to demonstrate individuality of Agolant’s domain. In the scene, Agolant invades France, riding towards Agen, a castle owned by Charlemagne. Agolant himself is dressed splendidly, as a chivalrous knight with rich red and gold trappings, a matching pennon upon his spear, and sitting astride a snow-white steed. His soldiers are dressed in less fantastic outfits. One warrior carries a scimitar and a shield with a dragon, potentially as symbol of their barbarity.98 Another appears with a tortil and brownish hair, both of which match the king’s own. Upon the king’s head sits a large crown of gold. In short, Agolant is depicted as an othered though otherwise knightly figure. In some ways, the visual iconography works against previous

98 Strickland, Saracens, Demons & Jews, 181. 33

statements made about the wickedness of morality. However, to understand the image in the

context of the manuscript, we must also consult the image of Charlemagne arriving to retake his

castle (Figure 5). He and his soldiers are presented in the same construction as Agolant and his

men, with Charlemagne now in the lead, dressed as a Prince of Christendom, drenched in royal

blue and gold. As Benjamin Bertrand has noted, Agolant is presented as a “mirror” to

Charlemagne, potentially to “show the superiority of the Christian people.”99 Bertrand is correct

on two counts: first that the two images serve as echoes of each other. With not even a folio

between them, the similarity in scheme invites the viewer to flip back and forth between the

images, echoing the relationship. Secondly, Agolant is understood to be the “other,” the sin of

his “paganness” made manifest in his color.100 Furthermore, perhaps Agolant’s blackness is a reference to “epidermal” understandings of people from Africa101 or even a visualization of the multicultural nature of his armies. Noticeably missing from this reading, however, is the way that

Agolant serves as another type of mirror, one far more important to the narrative of the manuscript. Agolant’s black skin reflects Charlemagne’s failure to do good works and convert the Saracen king.

99 Bertrand, “Monstrous Muslims? Depicting Muslims in French Illuminated Manuscripts,” 57-59. I use his term “mirror” here as well though these are not exactly reflections but rather subverted ones. Still, the concept is useful for framing the Saracen king against the Christian one. 100 Hedeman has seemingly identified the window figure in Figure 5 as Agolant, though I am somewhat suspicious of this reading due to the lack of iconographical mimesis (crown) and darker skin. Then again, the window figure does seem to be commanding the Saracen forces. If this character is in fact Agolant, it perpetuates the otherness of the Saracen king. That is to say, Agolant becomes darker, losing his crown, his fantastic surcoat, and is microscopic when placed in the same context of Charlemagne. This would reinforce traditional readings of black-as-evil and white-as-good. Nonetheless, the dialogue between Figure 4 and Figure 5 remain echoes of each other within the context of the manuscript. See Anne D. Hedeman, The Royal Image: Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France 1274-1422 (Berkeley: University of California Press), 215. 101 I find Heng’s use of this term for skin tone incredibly useful and accurate. Heng, The Invention of Race, 181-184. 34

To understand the visual narrative of Charlemagne’s failure, we must first consult the text. The manuscript relates a series of battles between the Christian and Saracen armies. After some time, a truce is reached wherein both Charlemagne and Agolant agree that whomever’s

army is defeated on the field of battle would convert to the other’s religion. Charlemagne wins

this battle and Agolant agrees to convert. On the day of his conversion, Agolant comes to the

French king’s court, where he sees paupers “who ate on the ground, without a table and without

a tablecloth and who had little to eat and to drink.”102 Disturbed at the treatment of the poor,

Agolant leaves, refusing baptism. When Charlemagne realizes his mistake, he attempts to rectify

it, but it is too late. The Saracen king remains a Saracen. Previously, Marianne Ailes has

addressed this exact scenario, calling it an example of the “honorable Saracen being used to

underline the unacceptable behavior of Christians.”103 Yet in the visual iconography of the

manuscript, Agolant becomes not only a tool to emphasize but also a manifestation of

Charlemagne’s double failure.

Indeed, Charlemagne fails not only as a leader in providing properly for his people

but also as a Prince of Christendom in failing to insure the baptism of a potential convert and

thereby expand Christendom. As Agolant is described as King of Africa, had its king converted,

Africa would have become part of Christendom. Charlemagne’s mistake is imbued onto Agolant

because the Saracen king’s blackness is a symbol of his unconverted status. Such visual

constructions are useful ways to convey textual concepts. The illuminator could not very well

102 Ibid., 105. Apparently, the point of eating without table and tablecloth was especially important as an editor has gone back and included this correction in the margin of the manuscript. This correction may illustrate the importance of the disgraceful state in which Charlemagne has treated his poor. See Royal MS 16 G VI folio 171 recto. 103 Marianne Ailes, “The Chanson de Geste,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Crusades, ed. Anthony Bale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 31.

depict Charlemagne as anyway “corrupted” as the French king is a source of legitimacy for the

patron of this work, and so the illuminator presents the object of the king’s failure as such. The

ordering of the manuscript also seems to convey this message as both Figure 4 and Figure 5

appear in the chapter preceding the narrative. Between these images, Charlemagne and Agolant

are at war with one another. This gives the reader time to understand the visual dichotomy of

Agolant-as-Saracen and Charlemagne-as-Christian before inviting them to consider the reasons

for Agolant’s continued status as an unconverted (though clearly noble) Saracen by the end of

the chapter. Again, this encourages the reader to turn the folios, engaging with the images and

text, meditating on the manuscript both forwards and backwards.104 Reading Saracens as a

reflection of Christians is a long-standing narrative in medieval literature. John Victor Tolan

notes the ways that Saladin, in addition to being portrayed as a chivalrous knight and valiant

warrior, was also a divine scourge sent to punish the sins of Christians.105 Similarly, Agolant

functions as a “scourge” (I use this term loosely) in that he highlights Charlemagne’s sins for the

text to teach a lesson, potentially for the benefit of the reader, on Christian royal sin.

If Charlemagne could not be depicted negatively in the imagery, why include the

narrative at all? We must remember that one of the primary functions of a copy of Les Grandes

Chroniques de France is to serve as a “model for kingship.” Anne Hedeman explains that these

texts were meant to impart noble virtues to future kings.106 Thus the ownership of this text is

104 Robert Levine, A Thirteenth-Century Life of Charlemagne (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1991), 99. Agolant’s forces are quite multicultural including “Moors, Moabithiens, Ethiopians, Sairans, Turks, Africans and Persians.” 105 John Victor Tolan, Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages (Tallahassee: University of Florida Press, 2008), 82-85. 106 Anne D. Hedeman, The Royal Image: Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France 1274-1422 (Berkeley: University of California Press), 11-17. Here, Hedeman discusses the subject in the context of Philip III’s copy, but this concept can be applied to the GCF for any ruler. 36

something of a performance. Jean II’s possession implies that he has read the manuscript and

therefore will not make the same mistakes as Charlemagne: to be forewarned is to be forearmed.

Potentially, this would suggest not merely Jean’s equivalency to Charlemagne but his

superiority. In other words, Jean, having learned from the text, would presumably treat his

paupers well and perform his duties correctly as a Prince of Christendom.107 The specificity of

Agolant’s black skin juxtaposed against Charlemagne’s more regal costume functions as a

reminder for maintaining princely behavior.

Whiteness in Combat

A surprising number of “European” looking Saracen warriors appear in combat with

Christian forces throughout the manuscript.108 Like the soldiers in al-Mansur’s cohort, Saracen

kings are presented in costumes similar to those of their Christian counterparts.109 Indeed,

images of victory over these armies would do little for French Christendom if their enemies were

not worthy and “worthiness had to be translated into some conventionally recognizable form.”110

At the same time, these are images of Saracens, so illuminators must have had to walk the line

between similarity and alterity. In many scenes in Les Grandes Chroniques, Saracen leaders in

combat superficially appear indistinguishable in combat while markers, both textual and visual,

107 Jean II may have had particular reasons for communicating of himself as Prince of Christendom. See Chapter V. 108 Earlier, Bertrand stated “despite the prevalence of dark-skinned depictions of Muslims in the Grandes Chroniques de France, it should be observed that there were exceptions.” However, I would say that in Royal MS 16 G VI, normative-looking Saracens are hardly an exception. Then again, Bertrand’s work covers a wider breadth of manuscripts. See Bertrand, “Monstrous Muslims?,” 50. 109 Despite the visual similarities between these Saracen types the context is very different. The presentation of the Saracens that follow differ from those as Santiago de Compostela, namely that they function as peers in combat instead of a sacrilegious threat. 110 Strickland, Saracens, Demons & Jews, 181. 37 indicate their alterity in a variety of methods. Here, I will briefly investigate three Christian-

Saracen combat scenes (Figure 6: Battle of Poitiers; Figure 7/8; Charlemagne battles Saracens;

Figure 9: Roland slays King Marsile). These scenes are similar in composition but include visual and textual accents to call the reader’s attention to the otherness of the Saracen figures. Finally, one motif binds these battle scene types together: in each one, the Saracen leader is ceremoniously stabbed (or about to be) through the mouth.

Battle of Poitiers

The first appearance of Saracens in the manuscript is in the Battle of Poitiers scene

(Figure 6), which depicts Charles Martel slaying “Abdirames” (Abd al-Rahman).111 The

Hammer is clearly marked by his prominent gold crown along with the fleur de lis imprinted onto his blue surcoat. He drives his blade into the mouth of the gold helmeted, bearded figure who keels over his horse. This is indeed a death blow. All the warriors, Christian and Saracen,

111 The British Library website gives somewhat confused accounts of the identity of the slayed character. The description in the “Digitized Manuscripts” catalog calls this scene “Charles defeating the Saracens at the battle of Poitiers.” However, the entry in the “Catalogue for Illuminated Manuscripts” reads “Charles Martel defeating Eudo and the Saracens,” seemingly referring to Duke Eudo of Aquitaine’s alliance with Abdirames in the text that immediately follows this image. I believe this description has mis-identified this individual as Eudo instead of Abdirames in the “Catalogue for Illuminated Manuscripts.” Firstly, the rubric immediately preceding the image clearly notes the importance of Charles defeating the 385,000 Saracens and includes Abdirames among these ranks in the main text (Viard vol. 2, 1920: 223-225). Furthermore, while Eudo does die in this chapter, it is only after he “brought about a reconciliation with prince Charles Martel, and later killed whatever Saracens he could find who had escaped from this battle [Poitiers.]” (Levine, 1991: 272) Thus, given that this scene is most likely the battle of Poitiers (Hedeman, 1991: 214), that Abdirames dies at Poitiers, and that Eudo dies afterwards, as the text explains, “in the next year” (Levine, 1991: 273), I find it difficult to believe that it is Eudo, not Abdirames who is being stabbed to death in the mouth. I suspect this mis-identification has to do with the fact the text following this image discusses the alliance between Eudo and the Saracens and that the rubric describing the chapter is on the opposite side of this folio. See Jules Marie Édouard Viard, Les Grandes Chroniques de France, vol. 2 (Paris: Société de l'histoire de France, 1920-1953), 223-225. Robert Levine, France Before Charlemagne: A Translation from the Grandes Chroniques (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 273-275. Anne D. Hedeman, The Royal Image: Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France 1274-1422 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991). “Detailed record for Royal 16 G VI,” British Library: Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts . Accessed February 27, 2019. “Royal MS 16 G VI,” British Library: Manuscripts . Accessed February 27, 2019. 38 living and dead, appear again indistinguishable except for the decapitated head of one brown warrior (complete with black beard and tortil), which lays idiosyncratically upon the battlefield.

Previously, Bertrand noted that the presence of this head is to “identify the entire group as a foreign army.”112 I believe this argument is somewhat overly emphasized. If the illuminator wanted to other the enemy force, why not simply present the entire army as dark-skinned, as had been done with Agolant? Instead, the illuminator is introducing the range of Saracen types as well as marking the first appearance of Saracens through this decapitated head, visually celebrating France’s defeat of an equal, if outsider and colonizing, army.113

There could be another consideration for the inclusion of this “othered” head. The text this scene corresponds with is in the midst of Charles Martel’s consolidation of France

(acquiring the Aquitaine shortly after his defeat of Abdirames), promulgating the Carolingian line, and even wearing the fleur de lis, a historical anachronism, symbolizing a more solidified fourteenth-century France.114 This being said, the inclusion of the “Saracen” head could be a sign of a lack of Islamic homogeneity or impurity when presented against France. Thus the Muslim forces are twice threatening both as invader and as a colonizer, ready to disrupt the French

Christendom with the threat of hybridity so clearly demonstrated in the imagery. Indeed, this narrative of Islamic multiculturalism is part of the historical reality at Poitiers, as Abd al-

Rahman’s forces were a combination of Arabs and Berbers. Contemporary historians have noted

112 Bertrand, “Monstrous Muslims,” 49. 113 Levine, France Before Charlemagne, 273-275. The text here discusses that “Abdirames [and his Saracens] with all their women and children, and with all their possessions [...] brought with them all their equipment [...] as though they were going to remain forever in France.” Thus, in the French imagination, this is not only conquest but a settlement. Furthermore, the implication of bringing women and children implies procreation and posterity, the expansion of Islam in France purely by population. Finally, this suggestion subtlety implies the realities for Christian women if such a conquest were to take place. 114 Ibid., 274-277. 39

that one of the potential reasons for the Islamic loss at Poitiers could have been the ethnic

infighting.115 It is unclear whether fourteenth-century French chroniclers were familiar with this political reality, and it certainly does not appear in the text, though they clearly did understand

Islamic multiculturalism.116 If they did view Islamic hybridity as a source of failure, this would

be a powerful argument for the unity of the French against a supposed “weakness” in an

otherwise worthy combatant.

Charlemagne battles the Saracen

The composition of Figure 7 does not greatly differ from the composition of Figure 6,

other than the fact that the combat is spread between two scenes within the single frame. The left

side shows band of warriors led by a knight with red crosses on his shield and the right side

depicts a king in combat. Here, it is Charlemagne, clearly identified as such with the helmet-

crown (though no longer sporting the blue and gold costume of his earlier appearance) stabbing

another white, and this time properly crowned, Saracen king, though the identity of this character

is a mystery, making the discussion of Saracen depiction even more complex. Figure 7 is

preceded by a combat miniature (Figure 8) on the opposite side of the folio that follows a rubric

explaining the chapter. The rubric notes how Charlemagne and Agolant go to battle (after the

African king refuses to be baptized), how Agolant is killed, and how Charlemagne goes on to

fight another Saracen prince named Furre of Navarre.117 Potentially, the stabbed character here is

supposed to be Furre, as we had already seen Agolant as black-skinned in previous images.

However, the placement of the image in relation to the rubric and the way it precedes the text

115 Philip Khuri Hitti, The Arabs: A Short History, intro. Philip S. Khoury (Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing Inc., 1996), 92. 116 See “Black Mirror Section” 117 Viard, Les Grandes Chroniques de France, vol 2., 236. 40 that discusses the death of both Agolant and Furre makes these lines unclear. The text adds to this lack of clarity as it says both that Humbert of Beauland and Charlemagne slayed the African king. This second usage is more metaphorical as the text suggests “Charlemagne killed Agolant because he fought him in defense of the Christian faith.”118 Furthermore, Humbert, as a vassal of

Charlemagne, could be read as an extension of the king’s sword (much like Charlemagne’s more famous champion Roland, who also appears in this scene). The text does not explicitly state that

Charlemagne slays Furre, only that the prince is killed.119 As if these images were not sufficiently complex, one must also wrestle with the question of whether the miniature (Figure 8) was a depiction of the battles in the previous chapter or the battle with Agolant in the following, therefore making Figure 7 a depiction of Charlemagne’s battle with Furre.120 Still, the location of

Figure 7 in relationship to the text makes identifying the exact scene (and Saracen prince) challenging, creating a sense of ambiguity for the reader.

The ambiguity is deliberate. Charlemagne is not fighting Agolant or Furre. Rather, he is in combat with “Saracen Prince” in the abstract. In other words, this is a “Saracen” type, which would in part explain the shared composition between Figure 6 and Figure 7. These conflations are nothing new, even to French medieval art. Clark Maines has previously discussed the ways that Roland is depicted as simultaneously fighting both Ferrucutus the giant and King Marsile

118 Robert Levine, A Thirteenth-Century Life of Charlemagne (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1991), 107. 119 Ibid., 106-108. 120 The closest evidence that this battle depicts the one between Charlemagne and Furre can be found in text. Before Charlemagne goes to fight the Saracen prince, God marks the ones who will die with red crosses. In an effort to save them Charlemagne locks them in a chapel only find them dead after claiming victory over Furre. The text celebrates their death as the intervention of God allowing them to achieve “the victory of martyrdom,” even though they did not die at enemy hands. Thus, the knight with the red cross could be a visual metaphor of this martyrdom even though these knights did not die on the battlefield. Still, this reading is an extensive departure from the text and makes reading the narrative all the more difficult. See Levine, Life of Charlemagne, 108. 41

(Figure 10) in a window at Chartres cathedral.121 Similarly, Figure 7 articulates both King

Agolant and Prince Furre. Such constructions are present in medieval Christian narratives and

vaguely reminiscent of typological cycles. While medieval typologies are typically used to

compare Old Testament types to New Testament ones (as analogues, justifications, prophetic

fulfilments, or improvements),122 the ones regarding Ferrucutus/Marsile and to a greater extent

Agolant/Furre are closer in time and space (at least textually, as all of these characters appear

mythological) and are used to identify the Saracen as a repeatedly-appearing “other.”123 The

Saracen in combat has a specific function to demonstrate the ability of the Christian side.

Therefore, the Saracen must appear white for the purposes of combat. The ambiguity of the

scene is critical as it visually mutes the conversation of Saracen alterity and focuses on the

Saracen as a worthy opponent.

Roland versus King Marsile

It would be worth mentioning one key point regarding the whiteness of Saracens that

I have left relatively unmentioned thus far: the normativity could be an ethnic distinction.

Previous scholars have discussed the ways that certain Umayyad caliphs have been described as fair skinned and light haired, in part the result of Muslim-Christian alliance marriages in Spain.

121 Clark Maines, “The Charlemagne Window at Chartres Cathedral: New Considerations on Text and Image,” Speculum 52 no. 4 (1977): 815. 122 Elizabeth Sears, “Typological Cycles,” Oxford Art Online: Grove Art Online . Accessed March 3, 2019. 123 I should note here that I have, inadvertently, fallen into one of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s “Seven Theses,” namely “Thesis II: The Monster Always Escapes.” More will be discussed on monstrosity and Saracen political leaders in Chapter V. See Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 4-6. 42

This phenomenon does not end in Iberia as white slaves from Turkey and the Caucuses were imported into Egypt, resulting in the Mamluk armies that ultimately came to establish their own sultanate.124 Thus far, the Saracen leaders who have appeared normative in the manuscript have all been Islamic leaders from Spain.125 Could the depictions of these Saracens simply be attempts to communicate fair skin? While I initially thought this to be the case, I no longer find it convincing for two important reasons, the latter of which is directly associated with the battle between Roland and Marsile. Firstly, if the intention of this distinction was to represent ethnicity, why not provide them with archetypal Saracen costume (tortils and scimitars)126 that we have seen applied to their darker skinned comrades? Why make them visually identical to Christian warriors? Secondly, if the intention of the illuminator is to convey ethnicity, what is the exegesis for an image that describes a Saracen as “black as ink” in the text while depicting him as white in the imagery?

The combat image between Roland, the champion of Charlemagne, and King Marsile of Saragossa again shares a general semblance to previous Christian/Saracen combat scenes.

124 Heng, The Invention of Race, 141-147. Heng includes an extensive discussion into fair skinned Saracens including the infamous Baybars who is she describes as “exceptionally tall, fair-skinned, and bluish-eyed” (2018: 145.) 125 Al-Mansur of Cordoba, Marsile/Baligant of Saragossa, Furre of Naverre, Abdirames of Spain. The list can be extended when we include the King of Seville (Figure 11) who dies in a similar battle composition to Abdirames and Agolant/Furre though he is stabbed through the eyes not through the mouth. It is also difficult to identify if this is the king himself as the figure does not seem to have a crown or prominent helmet. Again, this could just be Charlemagne slaying a “Saracen” type and so regal iconography could be less important here. Furthermore, Amorez the provost of Saragossa and his messenger are both presented as normative (Figure 12). According to Roger Collins, “Amorez” or “Amrus” was a historical general named Amrus ibn Yusuf, a mullawad Basque (a mixed race person) who was attached to al-Hakam. This could be one possible reason for his light skin. However, it is difficult to know whether French illuminators of this period had that information. Still, in the image, Amorez is in the act of freely offering his land to Charlemagne, so this may be a positive presentation of a “noble Saracen” surrendering to a Christian king. See Roger Collins, Caliphs and Kings: Spain, 796-1031 (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 217. 126 There seems to be one exception of white Saracens depicted with scimitars can be found in the Saracen sack of Jerusalem (Figure 13). Other than their swords they appear rather similar to their Christian foes. See Bertrand, “Monstrous Muslims?” 50. 43

Marsile appears with a crown, and dressed in gold. Unlike in other images, the knight’s blade has

here not yet drawn blood, though Marsile does appear to be falling of his saddle. Either way,

death is imminent for the Saracen king. Strickland has commented on the same scene in a

different Les Grandes Chroniques manuscript, saying that “Roland is literally on the ‘side of the

right’ [as] suggested by his right profile position.”127 In fact, this observation can be applied to both previous combat scenes. Like that of Charlemagne and the “Saracen Prince” the image is split into two scenes, though this time the image depicts more narrative and less metaphorical constructions. The text explains that Roland, attempting to find King Marsile on the battlefield, captures a Saracen warrior who is “as black as ink”128 and ties him to a tree for interrogation.

The Saracen identifies Marsile as a warrior who rides a “red horse and [carries] a round shield.”129

When considering the textual evidence, Figure 9 becomes a bizarre curiosity, as the

Saracen described as “black as ink”130 has been painted white in the image. The illuminator did

not leave the Saracen’s skin tone blank, so as to reveal the velum, but made a choice to apply a

paint color similar to that used for the Christian warriors. This is all the more incredible as

Agolant, the darkest skinned character in the manuscript, is not even described as “black” in the

text. When discussing the reasons why something is not present in art we must inevitably

127 Strickland, Saracens, Demons & Jews, 180. 128 “Noir comme arrement.” See Viard, Les Grandes Chroniques de France, vol. 3, 266. 129 “Un cheval rouge et un escu roont” Ibid., 267. 130 Similar constructions of blackness appear in Chanson de Roland, which is worth mentioning as the Pseudo- Turpin cycle that central to GCF is derived in part from the chansons de geste, as mentioned earlier (See Historiography). In Chanson de Roland, a Saracen named Abisme is described “as black as molten pitch” (2007:97) and a group of Saracens are described as “blacker than ink” (2007:110). To a degree, the GCF is repeating something of a stock phrase to describe Muslim warriors. See Chanson de Roland, trans. Robert Harrison (New York: Penguin, 2007) and Michel-André Bossy, “Roland: From Anglo-Norman Epic to Royal Chronicle,” in Epic and History, ed. David Konstan and Kurt A. Raaflaub (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 293-309. 44 confront the “accident” argument, the case for human error. However, I find this argument an oversimplification for several reasons, especially in this case. Firstly, the text that describes the image appears a mere eight lines beneath the rubric that follows the illumination. Secondly, this was a text for the King of France, a work that took an incredible amount of time and coin.

Finally, even in the case of human error, the lack of mimesis between text and image would have had some kind of effect on the viewer, thus making the question of error immaterial.

So what are the reasons for difference of skin color between imagery and text? It should be noted that, like the soldiers of Al-Mansur, the Saracen functions as an extension of his king. Black skin is not unheard of in Les Grandes Chroniques imagery and, moreover, appears in this very scene (the battle of Roncevaux) in other manuscripts. In the GCF made sometime later for Charles V in 1370, Marsile and his soldiers appear with dark skin, though they continue to wear European costumes (Figure 14).131 We must also not neglect the difference between text and image in Marsile’s costume in Figure 9. The text says he has a red horse and round shield, though the imagery very clearly presents him on a brown horse with gold trappings and holding an escutcheon with a red bar across it. This is an important diversion from culturally understood iconography of King Marsile. Clark Maines demonstrates that the Marsile/Ferragut figure in the

Chartres Cathedral window rides a red horse and carries a round shield.132 Thus, even in images where the text does not appear, as in a stained-glass window, the iconography reflects the text.

Paradoxically, in the case of Royal MS 16 G VI, both skin color and costume, though clearly expressed in the text, do not appear in the image. So can we simply say that the illuminator has decided to change the Saracen’s skin color the same way he has changed Marsile’s costume?

131 Strickland, Saracens, Demons & Jews, 179-180. 132 Clark Maines, “The Charlemagne Window at Chartres Cathedral,” 815. 45

Maybe, but costume and skin color seem to possess significant socio-political charge in this manuscript as well as in other Les Grandes Chroniques copies. Rather, skin color and costume are altered for similar types of reasons, to preserve normativity, and therefore equitability, between combatants. To “other” the Saracen visually would be to change the focal point of the scene, a battle between Christianity and Islam.133 Emphasis is placed on Marsile’s status as an

Islamic ruler, as seen in his gold trappings, in contrast to Roland’s, which while not the royal arms of France do recall their color. Marsile even carries the same type of sword and shield as

Roland, and his Saracen warriors appear identical to the Frankish knights. The capture of the

Saracen knight is a foreshadowing moment, predicting the end of Marsile. This scene is a demonstration of Roland’s strength, he has single handedly bound a man to a tree. He captures the Saracen representative in preparation for the slaying of the Saracen king.134 Text and image attempt to convey Roland’s dominance, not once but twice over. Moreover, Roland asserts this power not over any enemy but one of equal standing. To darken the Saracen warrior is to diminish the capture that leads to Marsile’s demise. Thus the visual narrative depicts the notion that, though Islam may be a force of equal military might, French Christendom ultimately overpowers it. Perhaps in scenes like Figure 14 that depict a Christian army battling the Saracen

“horde,” it would be visually effective to clearly frame the Muslims as “other.” But in a scene that presents a synoptic narrative where a Christian knight begins by first defeating a Saracen in

133 This situation would be different than the one we have seen before at Poitiers. The Saracen at Roncevaux is tied to a tree and identifies his liege. He is a character who moves the narrative. He is very different from the anonymous decapitated head at Poitiers that indicates alterity or bodily-diversity in the Saracen. See “Battle of Poitiers” section. 134 Roland only gets to Marsile because the Saracen warrior identifies his master. Roland learning the identity of his enemy gives the champion not only a level of agency but dominion and potential advantage.

46 single combat and then defeating the enemy leader, the dynamic shifts dramatically. The focal points become the champions of the respective armies instead of armies themselves.

Roland’s sword nearly reaching Marsile’s mouth does more for the visual message than black skin ever could. Charlemagne’s champion defeats an enemy who is his peer, thus representing French, and therefore monarchical, chivalry. The Saracen’s blackness remains understood textually, as an acknowledgement of the indelible physical manifestation of Saracen heresy. The contrast between text and image reinforces the message that while the archetypal

Saracen Prince is a valiant enemy for the Princes of Christendom, he is nonetheless fundamentally flawed. The bound Saracen (and by association Marsile) remains “othered” while presented as the physical peers of French Christendom.

Evidently, whiteness in combat is an attempt to flatten identity to demonstrate prowess on both sides. Nonetheless it would be a mistake to say that the manuscripts do not provide sign posts or markers—a “Saracen” head, an ambiguous identification, or a line of text— to remind the viewer of Saracen alterity. Another method these images employ is clearly denoting a winner: it is the Christian side doing the slaying.135 Special attention is also paid to where the Christian blade enters the Saracen. In the case of Figures 7 and 8, the sword goes directly into the Saracen leaders’ mouths, whereas in Figure 9 it approaches Marsile’s mouth.

Previously, I have discussed how Christians viewed Islam as a heresy, which would make

Islamic political leaders heretical orators. At the crossroads between ideology and image, we find a French Prince of Christendom (or in the case of Roland, his representative) physically silencing

Islam, a metaphor for crusade. The Latin Christian preoccupation with Saracen heresy and, more

135 Strickland, Saracens, Demons & Jews, 180. 47

importantly, falseness, manifests itself not only by presenting the Saracen leader as an “other”

but as an imposter as well. To frame Islam as wrong would be to frame French Christendom as right.136

Mimicry and Imposter-ism: The Metaphor of Polycephaly in Marsile-Baligant

Understanding the normative “European” appearance of the Saracens in Royal MS 16

G VI is to understand a changing context. “Whiteness” is not only a method of expressing

Christian convertibility or equitability but can also be used to reinforce the narrative that the

Saracen leader is a false deceiver, an imposter. Latin Christians viewed Islam as a lie, and

Muhammad as a false prophet who attempts to appear legitimate. This narrative becomes extended to mythologized Saracen kings like Marsile and Baligant, brothers who wish to appear in the guise of Charlemagne but are unable to match him because of the innate falseness of their beliefs. Visually, this becomes manifested as attempting to mimic his physical appearance and costume.137 Furthermore, the dual system in which Marsile-Baligant are depicted suggests that

they are metaphorically a single entity and that, even combined, they are poor comparisons to

136 Sharon Kinoshita, “Pagans are wrong and Christian are Right: Alterity, Gender and Nation in the Chanson de Roland,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 no.1 (2001): 79-111. I am in dialogue here with Kinoshita’s construction and indeed the two texts (GCF & Roland) do have a great deal in common. Kinoshita frames the text in Frankish nationalistic terms, whereas the GCF is a celebration of French royalty, while both couch these concepts in the construction of Christendom. 137 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 122-129. Bhabha discusses his concept of mimicry where the colonized is “almost the same but not quite” (1994: 127). Indeed, this is a useful tool in reading Marsile-Baligant as attempting to be Charlemagne. More importantly it conveys the illuminator’s wish (Bhabha would use “desire”) to juxtapose these groups in this way in order to elevate the contemporary royalty.

Charlemagne. Such presentation of this Prince of Christendom functions to frame the lineage of

French royalty as legitimate, true and genuine.

When investigating the French Christian positioning of Marsile and Baligant as false

leaders, it is best to first begin with the textual narrative. The two Saracens are kings of Spain

who have been conquered by Charlemagne, though he is unwilling to keep Saracens as client

kings. He promises to let them retain their land if they become Christians and sends Ganelon as

his emissary to negotiate this deal. Marsile-Baligant come up with the scheme, buying Ganelon’s

loyalty, pretending to agree that they will convert and sending Charlemagne wine, women, and

gold as a symbol of their fealty. Thus Charlemagne, happy with this situation, departs, leaving

his rear guard in Spain. They are then attacked by Saracen forces, creating the mythologized

version of Battle of Roncevaux Pass that was depicted in Figure 9.138 From the narrative alone,

Marsile-Baligant function as liars, not once but several times. First, they promise to accept baptism with the intention of never doing so. Secondly, these Saracen kings infect the loyalty of

Christian knights, buying Ganelon’s loyalty and thereby turning him traitor.139 Finally, they have

a double intention when sending the wine and women to Charlemagne’s court. The first is to

appear as Charlemagne’s vassals but, as the text notes, it was to also “provoke [the Christians] to

sin in drunkenness and fornication, so that their God would become angry with them and would

let them be killed.”140 This act is therefore not only one of deception but an attempt to bring

138 Levine, Life of Charlemagne, 149-151. 139 In Chanson de Roland, the traitor Ganelon seems to be jealous of Roland, his rival in Charlemagne court. GCF has none of this nuance, relating only that Ganelon had been bought by Marsile-Baligant’s bribe. See T. Atkinson Jenkins, “Why did Ganelon Hate Roland?” PMLA Vol 36 no. 2 (1921): 132 & Levine, Life of Charlemagne, 120. 140 Levine, Life of Charlemagne, 120.

divine disfavor onto the French ranks. The text repeatedly highlights the duplicity of Marsile-

Baligant and it is this “falseness” that becomes manifested in imagery.

The image of Marsile and Baligant (Figure 15) reinforces the Islamic-Christian

binary, though not in stark visual differences. On the right side, Charlemagne stands with his

court, receiving Ganelon, who has returned with “gifts.” The court is a large one at that, as

suggested by the taller figures standing behind the courtiers in the foreground, suggesting depth.

The grey-haired emperor is the most prominent figure in the image, both in size and presence. He wears a toga-like robe draped over his shoulder, perhaps a reference to his role as Emperor of

Rome, and a crown upon his head. This is a visual distinction of status from other characters, such as the paladin dressed in red standing next to him, wearing a surcoat.

On the opposite side, Marsile and Baligant, painted with white skin, stand together, slightly overlapping each other. Both kings are dressed much the same way as Charlemagne while conspiring with Ganelon, the French traitor. Again, Marsile-Baligant have togas and

Ganelon wears a different type, one that is similar to the paladin standing in the foreground next to Charlemagne. In addition, both Saracen kings wear beards. This is particularly interesting as we have discussed Marsile in combat previously where he appears clean shaven. Perhaps combat images are of a different stock type but potentially the beard here is a visual cue, the illuminator’s attempt to convey that these kings attempt to mimic Charlemagne.141 One of the

Saracen kings even appears with similarly grey hair and an outer robe of the same color as

141 The battle at Roncevaux takes places later than this scene with Marsile-Baligant. Elsewhere, Debra Strickland has argued that armored figures may not appear “othered.” (she speaks directly on skin color) because the gear would obscure the warrior’s visage anyways. I reject this reading as clearly these manuscripts have very subtle articulations throughout, and to not include an element is a political choice. Thus, I conclude that the illuminator has decided to include the beards here as a visual attempt to frame the Saracens against Charlemagne. See Strickland, Saracens, Demons & Jews, 198.

Charlemagne’s. Perhaps this imagery is not in dialogue with the text of Les Grandes Chroniques

itself but with one of the manuscript’s poetic predecessors, Chanson de Roland, where Baligant appears with white hair similar to Charlemagne’s.142 Furthermore, not only are the Saracen kings

smaller in size than Charlemagne, but they have no courtiers, as well. While Charlemagne seems

to be surrounded by warriors and advisors, Marsile-Baligant have no one but each other. These

scenes attempt to frame the Saracen kings as visually similar, though wholly lesser than

Charlemagne.

The imagery can be interpreted as a symbolic representation of these kings pretending to be similar to Charlemagne, though as woeful imposters. Despite their adoption of his robes, his crown, and even his hair, they are clearly his inferiors. The hieratic scale most clearly reinforces these narratives: they are quite literally little kings when compared to the grand emperor. Moreover, the size of Charlemagne’s court and the absence of Marsile-Baligant’s speaks to the idea that they are playing at holding a court rather than truly holding it. This construction is echoed in the text as Charlemagne has already subjected these kings.143 Their

status as client kings make their courts extensions of Charlemagne’s own. Indeed the entirety of

the scene is a series of binaries: Christian/Saracen, duality/singularity, courtiers/lack of courtiers,

client kings/emperor.144 These differences are all visually separated by an act of treachery

(Ganelon’s gifts), an act that was born from Marsile-Baligant’s conspiracy to trick Charlemagne.

Still, if the Saracen kings are in an act of treachery, why are they presented as white? After all,

142 Chanson de Roland, trans. Robert Harrison, 140, 148. 143 “They [Marsile-Baligant] pretended to be the emperor's [Charlemagne] willing and obedient subjects, but this was a sham for they were afraid to resist him.” Levine, Life of Charlemagne, 119. 144 Kinoshita, “Pagans are wrong and Christian are Right,” 83, 98-99. Kinoshita here investigates similar narratives of binaries and dualism. 51 this is not a combat scene where showing equitability is important to maintain valor, nor is this a conversion one. The “whiteness” here is a part of the illuminator’s language to express Marsile-

Baligant’s attempt to appear as Charlemagne, as legitimate kings.

The narrative of the Saragossa kings mimicking Charlemagne is hardly particular to

Les Grandes Chroniques de France. In fact, this narrative originates in Chanson de Roland, as most clearly demonstrated in the characterization of Baligant. Throughout the text, Baligant serves as a reflection of Charlemagne, not only in appearance but in function as well. Baligant is portrayed “in equal and contrasting color: the Amiriel of Babylon”145 when compared with the

“Emperor of France.”146 Roland does frame Baligant as a mirror of Charlemagne and, as discussed previously, even admires Baligant147 because, as John Victor Tolan states, “the

[Saracen] cannot be made too other for it is not valorous to slaughter mere beasts.”148 Here Tolan echoes Strickland in describing Latin Christian reasonings for presenting Saracens as more normative, though Tolan is discussing texts rather than imagery. Thus, a potential reading of

Figure 15 would be that the whiteness of Marsile-Baligant is a holdover from the traditions of

Chanson de Roland. Afterall, I have already noted the similarities in hair color that appear in the chanson de geste. Indeed, Marsile-Baligant could, like Saladin and Agolant, be “scourges of

God” as they do serve as punishment for Christian sin (though it is a sin they precipitated).

145 John Victor Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the European Imagination (New York: University of Columbia Press, 2002), 125. 146 Chanson de Roland, trans. Harrison, 65. Charlemagne is called “Emperor of France” on one occasion and is referred to as emperor throughout. 147 Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the European Imagination, 126. Tolan points to the same phrase as Akbari: “God! What a knight, if only he were Christian!” See also: Akbari, Idols in the East, 190-191. 148 Ibid., 126. 52

Still, I find these arguments unconvincing given the textual evidence in Les Grandes

Chroniques de France. This admiration of the Saracen leader is never fleshed out in the text, where they are hardly described at all, let alone enough to valorize them. While the Saracen leaders do manage to get some Christians to sin, there is no lesson being taught, only the gift of martyrdom.149 At the end of the battle, Roland goes to heaven and Marsile is dragged to hell. In this scene, color is used very concretely to note the virtues of Muslims and Christian representatives:

A crowd of knights, all black looking as though they had come to ravage and carry off prey [who said] ‘we are carrying Marsilion and his men to hell, and Michael is carrying [the] trumpeter and many other up into heaven.’ They called Roland the trumpeter because he always carried his ivory horn into battle.150

The text plays with white and black as a way to connect Marsile and Roland to the theological values of these colors. Roland is associated with his white horn, something he used in his virtuous terrestrial life whereas Marsile is punished by the blackness that has consumed his

Saracen life. The text does not provide space for Marsile-Baligant to appear as worthy foes outside of combat. The Saracen kings, associated with hell and sin in the text, appear similar to

Charlemagne in order to serve as impostors, as pretenders.

The best evidence for Marsile-Baligant’s role as pretenders in the text can be found in their political status. Unlike the Saracen enemy of Chanson de Roland, Baligant is not the Sultan of Babylon. Rather, both Marsile and Baligant serve the “the sultan of Babylon [who] had sent them from Syria, together with a large army to defend Spain against Charlemagne.”151 Firstly, they have evidently failed their primary mandate as they are now in a position of paying

149 “Even though they had sinned, they were killed for him [God],” Levine, Life of Charlemagne, 121. 150 Ibid., 128, my emphasis on “black” and “ivory.” 151 Ibid., 119. 53

Charlemagne tribute. Secondly, Marsile and Baligant visually attempt to dress the part of

emperor, not only through their crowns but through their robes. Again, one must note the

differences of robes worn between the kings in the scene as opposed to the paladins or Ganelon.

As Marsile-Baligant are playing at holding court, so too are they playing at being emperors.

Ostensibly, Charlemagne’s imperial Islamic “equivalent,” the anonymous Sultan of Babylon, is

still in Babylon. In fact, earlier in the text, the sultan sent his own champion Fernaguz, who

fought Charlemagne’s champion Roland, again as part of a campaign against Spain.152 Thus, the

Saracen kings not only try to appear as Charlemagne, but also try to appear in a rank that is not

even their own, but belongs to their master. Thus, Islam is framed as a series of imposters, each

trying to impersonate Christians: Muhammad impersonates Christ; the Sultan of Babylon mimics

Charlemagne; Marsile-Baligant perform “emperor,” a status that is not their own, but one that

belongs to their own master and the Prince of Christendom.

I have attempted to flatten the identities of Marsile-Baligant because I believe that the

text and image attempt to do so as well. These characters only ever exist together. One cannot

survive without the other. Whereas in Chanson de Roland Baligant arrives for a final showdown

with Charlemagne, in GCF when Marsile dies, Baligant promptly runs away and is never

mentioned again.153 In this way, I believe, Marsile-Baligant serve as a symbol, an embodiment of

Christian ideas about Islamic insincerity, duplicity, and conspiracy.154 Indeed this is a potential

reason for the overlapping between Marsile-Baligant visually. They are united in conspiracy, a

metaphorical polycephaly, juxtaposed against the paragon of truth: Charlemagne. This reading is

152 Ibid., 108. 153 Ibid., 123. 154 Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the European Imagination, 10, 143-144. These concepts are once again connected with medieval Christian ideas regarding Muhammad as a false Christ and providing illegitimate miracles. 54 perhaps clearer when considering previous visual traditions such as those from the St. Genevieve

Chroniques de St. Denis from 1275 (Figure 16). Once again, Charlemagne is presented as the largest figure, this time directing Ganelon to go and speak to the Saracen kings. On the opposite side, Marsile-Baligant appear smaller, wearing tortils and not wearing shoes. Here, the costume attempts to clearly other Marsile and Baligant. Still, the kings are not merely overlapping each other as in Figure 15 but fully embraced, their hands and feet entwined. Their function as a single entity is emphasized by their containment within a very narrow, vertical space, delineated by the image frame and the pillar dividing them from the French emperor, thereby framing them against him. Thus, the image in Royal MS 16 G VI recalls the earlier iconographic traditions of two characters who merge into one political enemy.

Unlike Marsile-Baligant, Charlemagne’s validity as emperor is in his singularity, his position as Prince of Christendom, sanctified by God. The emphasis of Figure 15 on Saracen imposterism is only an articulation of French Christian legitimacy and genuineness. While all leaders seek to perform legitimacy, the context of this work may have certain implications. This manuscript was written in the context of the Hundred Years War, a moment when the legitimacy of the House of Valois was questioned by an English pretender.155 In discussing Figure 16, I noted the use of the “othering” imagery that does not appear as obvious in Royal MS 16 G VI.

Perhaps the normativity afforded to Marsile-Baligant in this image is an articulation of all pretenders and imposters, whether they be Saracen or otherwise. This would not only explain the shift in iconography over time but also function as a powerful piece of political propaganda. In

155 Hedeman, The Royal Image, 53. This narrative shall be explored in Chapter V. 55 the mind of Jean le Bon, those who question Valois legitimacy (and French Christendom) are little better than Saracens themselves. 56

CHAPTER V

SHOELESS AND TREACHEROUS SARACENS:

PERFORMANCE AND REAL POLITICS

I have thus far attempted to deconstruct the ways whiteness and blackness can be utilized within the GCF. Pigmentation and normative European costume are not at all fixed, nor are they always the strict markers of morality we may imagine. A Saracen may appear white in the midst of divine punishment, a black one may be the embodiment of both paganness and the failure of Christendom to convert the pagan. Even when Saracens appear white, the narrative may be subverted through text or image, or the placement of both. Despite these variations, we will inevitably reach the truly “othered” Saracen, a monster for the Christian prince to slay.

Indeed, such a depiction is perhaps the most expected one when considering medieval

Islamophobic propaganda. It would be difficult to categorize noble Agolant or the gold-dressed

Marsile in a similar way. Despite being enemies, these kings are afforded various levels of nobility that others (which we will soon see) are not. Indeed, the monsterization of Saracens is quite possibly some of the most obvious “othering” to identify. Previously, Debra Strickland and

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen have discussed the narratives revolving around the “Monstrous Saracen.”

Strickland has noted the polemical texts and images that have called and displayed Saracens as

“a race of dogs,” with particular connections to the cynocephali.156 Cohen has addressed a specific image from Les Grandes Chroniques de France (Figure 17) noting that the masks that

156 Debra Higgs Strickland, “Monstrosity and Race in the Late Middle Ages,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and The Monstrous, ed. Asa Simon Mittman with Peter J. Dendle (New York: Routledge, 2016), 374. 57 the Saracens wear in the text and their monstrous visages in the imagery demonstrate the connections between the Saracen’s performance and embodiment of their demonic nature.157

Such extreme levels of monstrosity do not appear in Royal MS 16 G VI. Rather, the most

“othered” Saracens appear in tunics, are ocher-skinned and, most importantly, without shoes as they attack the camp of Louis IX (Figure 18).158 The relationship of text and image here not only monsterize the Saracens for their imagined role in the death of Louis but double as Jean’s articulation of himself as Louis IX’s successor and also as a true crusader.159 In this narrative, the

“monster” that Jean does not himself fight is captured and defeated within the confines of the

Valois king’s Les Grandes Chroniques, a symbol of his legitimacy.

The scene in Figure 18 presents the royal guards being approached by three groups of

Saracens. The first group reaches out to the Christian soldiers in an embrace, the second lay down their arms. The last group follows these other two, brandishing weapons. Most of the warriors here are dressed in simple tunics, bear long black beards, and some possess haggard faces and tortils. The most individualized Saracen appears to be a leader; he wears a gold helmet, chainmail, and gold tunic. Furthermore, he carries a red shield with what appears to be golden heads of either pigs or dogs emblazoned upon it. Either way this is clearly a Latin Christian polemic framing Islam as “race of dogs” or a play on Islamic dietary restrictions. Both characterizations would again associate Islam with uncleanliness and filth. Behind this figure

157 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “On Saracen Enjoyment: Some Fantasies of Race in Late Medieval France and England,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 (2001): 113-146. 158 Note that the Saracens in Figure 18 are on 442r. The Saracens of Tunis first appear in Royal MS 16 G VI 440v, presented in the same ways as those in Figure 18 thereby establishing a particular visual narrative for the Saracens of this land. This visual marker demonstrates an iconographic continuity for a particular group of Saracens throughout the Life of St. Louis section. 159 Hedeman, “Constructing Saint Louis in John the Good’s Grandes Chroniques de France,” 19. 58 appears another Saracen with a large upturned nose and his scimitar held high. All Saracen warriors appear shoeless in this scene, even the gold-clad leader. Indeed, this is a specific characterization of the Saracens from Tunis. The barbarity and monstrosity constructed from these various forms of othering become connected together through their shared shoelessness.

Earlier in the text, the reader learns that Louis IX, having received correspondence from the King of Tunis, who is willing to convert to Christianity, goes on crusade to Tunis.160

Upon his arrival, the king reneges on this promise and imprisons the Christians in his kingdom.161 In the aftermath, Louis’ camp is approached by a group of Saracens (Group A) who wish to convert. Suddenly another group of Saracens (Group B) ambush the Christian army.162

The butler of France captures interrogates the commander of Group A and accuses him of treachery. The commander promises that he had no part of this attack and that it is the work of his political rival, the commander of Group B.163 Then commander A promises to bring back a ransom for his soldiers if he is released. The butler relates this to the king who does not believe commander A but releases him anyway. The commander of Group A leaves and though he does

160 Jules Marie Édouard Viard, Les Grandes Chroniques de France, vol. 10 (Paris: Société de l'histoire de France, 1920-1953), 170-172. I use the term Tunisian Saracens and Hafsid Saracens interchangeably as the Hafsid dynasty (lead by al-Mustansir) are the rulers of this land. Furthermore, the textual narrative reinforces a historical reality. Apparently, there was some historical potential that al-Mustansir wanted to convert for political reasons of fending off the Mamluks. See: Michael Lower, The Tunis Crusade of 1270: a Mediterranean History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 88-89. 161 Viard, Les Grandes Chroniques de France, vol. 10, 178. 162 I assume given the visual context that the commander of Group B is they heavily individualized Saracen with the gold helmet, tunic and shield emblazoned with pigs/dogs. Though I am not completely convinced, I do believe there is an interesting case for these heraldic animals to be dogs. In 1247, al-Mustansir, received a text called On Hunting, an embodiment of the caliph’s love for the hunt and the breeding of saluki dogs. I am curious, given the date of this text, whether a copy had come to France and whether the illuminators of the manuscript knew about the text. If so, al-Mustansir’s love of these dogs would have been another convenient way to “other” the “King of Tunis” in addition to the general framing of Muslims as a race of dogs. See: Al-Mansur’s Book “On Hunting,” intro., Sir Terence Clark and Muawiya Derhalli (Warminster: Liverpool University Press, 2001). 163 Viard, Les Grandes Chroniques de France, vol. 10, 178. The commander A explains that he and commander B are two commanders of large forces under the Sultan of Tunis, in this way they serve as his representatives. 59 keep his promise, still returns to the Saracen forces (hence not converting), suggesting that this attack had been a ploy all along. Louis then order his soldiers to dig a trench to prevent any more attacks from the Muslims, reinforcing this narrative.164

No Shoes, no Civility: Shoeless Alterity and Memory of Crusade Past

Previously, Jans T. Wollesen has argued this scene depicts “humble, bearded bare- footed, dark-skinned Muslims with headbands [in a scene that] excels by its attempt for truth and authenticity.”165 Wollesen’s reading here is not only misguided but deeply problematic. To name these clearly othered, Orientalized, and monsterized Saracens as “humble” would be to celebrate a colonialist narrative of the Christian civilizing the Saracen. More troubling is the assertion that this depiction is anything relating to crusade “reality” and choosing to ignore that the scene is one of political propaganda. The visual “othering” and shoelessness in particular contain politically charged meanings.

164 Ibid., 178-180. 165 Jens T. Wollesen, “East meets West and the Problem with those Pictures,” in East meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Transcultural Experiences in the Premodern World, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 346. Wollesen’s interpretation is perhaps a valuable lesson in engaging with text and image critically. While he does cite the rubric, which tells of the “butler of France is on the lookout for some Saracens” (Wollesen’s translation) he does not mention the rest of the section. In doing this Wollesen seems to fail to recognize that the “converting” Saracens are probably in league with the “attacking” ones. As I noted above, though more briefly, there are several reasons for this argument. One, Louis does not believe commander of Group A’s story. Ostensibly, the Prince of Christendom must be a good judge of character especially when dealing with a Saracen. Two, the Saracen lord goes back to the Saracen forces, suggesting he does not convert. Three, Louis is worried about future Saracen attacks and constructs defenses against such attacks. Considering the attacks began after a group of Saracens arrived at the camp seeking conversion, this is most likely a measure Louis is taking steps to prevent. 60

More generally, Strickland has argued that shoelessness writ large may not necessarily be a sign of alterity but a reflection of Islamic military practice.166 Yet I find this reading difficult to accept for several reasons. Firstly, as Asa Simon Mittman and Sherry C.M.

Lindquist have noted, nakedness is used as a way to Orientalize Saracen groups (Figure 19), though the scene they discuss is focused a little more on rear nakedness, and these figures do wear shoes.167 Nonetheless, the absence of clothing worn by the non-normative party (in this context Muslims) only seeks to make the other appear barbaric. Secondly, if Islamic shoelessness was a military practice, why are these Saracens the only ones in the entirety of the text to appear without shoes? Thus far, I have demonstrated that this particular manuscript illuminates numerous Saracen princes, each worth his salt, yet none of these are othered in this way.

Furthermore, there is evidence that this shoelessness is a sign of othering, though it exists in a different text. The Vie et miracles de Sainte Louis created for Charles V and illuminated by

Mahiet, the same illuminator who worked on Royal MS 16 G VI, contain such an example.168

The scene represents the capture of Louis IX during the Seventh crusade by the Sultan

Turanshah (Figure 20). During the scene, the Sultan’s bodyguards, a group of Mamluks, assassinate the Sultan and release King Louis. One shows respect by holding his sword by the blade.169 Despite being depicted in similar ways to their Hafsid brothers (tunics, dark hair, ocher skin), these Saracens wear shoes. Thus, we have two sets of Saracens depicted by the same

166 Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracen, Demons & Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 181. 167 Sherry C. M. Linquist, Asa Simon Mittman, Medieval Monsters: Terrors, Aliens, Wonders (New York: The Morgan Library & Museum, 2018), 99-100. 168 Elizabeth Morrison and Anne D. Hedeman, Imagining the Past in France: History in Manuscript Painting 1250- 1500 (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010), 161-162. 169 Ibid., 162. 61

illuminator, in largely the same fashion except for their shoes that are presented with

diametrically opposing moralities. We may only further infer that the absence of shoes is

intended to frame the Hafsid Saracens as completely barbaric. Considering the double narrative

of treachery, this “otherness” is couched in the imagined morality of the Hafsids.

The othering of the Hafsid Saracens as treacherous has two layers that are in dialogue

with each other. The Muslims here are presented as the most treacherous and duplicitous ones,

stemming from the King of Tunis’ reneging on his promise of converting to Christianity within

the text. This duplicity is allegorized through the text and the image in Figure 18: the figure of

the Saracen commander who pretends to convert as cover for another commander to attack.

Duplicity alone is not the sin of the Saracen in this context. We have seen Saracens in this

narrative behave treacherously (such as Marsile-Baligant) and not be presented in such

Orientalized fashion as the Hafsid warriors. The visual articulation of Hafsid monstrosity is

linked to a political reality. At the end of this section, St. Louis dies of dysentery, as the

historical one died on this crusade. Thus, there is an unspoken understanding that Louis would

not have died had he not gone on this crusade, one that he has only taken with the understanding

that the King of Tunis (al-Mustansir)170 would convert. The manuscript implicitly places blame

on the treacherousness of the King of Tunis, for the death of “rex christianissimus” the most

Christian king and a true representative of French Christendom.171 In the framework of the text, it is the treachery that caused the death of Louis that is the most sinful. To some extent the memory of Louis IX’s historical death on the Eighth Crusade must have been raw in the minds

170 Historically speaking al-Mustansir was not a “Sultan” but rather held the titles of “Caliph” and “Amir al-Mu’min in” (Commander of the Faithful) See Lower, The Tunis Crusade of 1270, 45. 171 Anne D. Hedeman, The Royal Image: Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France 1274-1422 (Berkeley: University of California Press), 1. 62

of French society. Furthermore, it had been at most fifty-three years since the canonization of

Louis and Jean II’s ascension to the throne.172 The relatively recent nature of this important

cultural moment may have informed the ways the Hafsid Saracens are presented in this

manuscript. Indeed, the Hafsids are visually singled out, through their “shoe-lessness,” as the

most monstrous and treacherous of all Saracens in the manuscript. That is to say, these specific

Saracens are presented as absolutely barbaric for their supposed culpability in the death of Louis

IX, an affront to the entire French royal line.

Saracen Otherness and Royal Legitimacy

Still, there is another, perhaps more political layer to this conversation, one that

becomes more associated with royal succession. Due to a lack of male heirs, the early fourteenth

century saw the end of the Capetian royal line and the crown shifted to their cousins, the House

of Valois. This messy dynastic shift would bring new claimants to the French throne, such as

Edward of England. Such challenges to France would ultimately culminate in the Hundred

Years’ War.173 While Philip of Valois (the first in this new line) did not experience much resistance to his claim, his successor, Jean le Bon, certainly did.174 During his reign, Edward III of England issued a proclamation which “celebrated his own descent from Saint Louis” and called for a crusade.175 Hedeman says this letter was an insult to the House of Valois, as both

172 This is the longest possible date. Louis was canonized in 1297 C.E. and Jean came to power in 1350. Still, this manuscript could have been made anytime between 1332-1350. 173 Ibid., 53. 174 Ibid., 51-52. 175 Anne D. Hedeman, The Royal Image: Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France 1274-1422 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), 63. 63

Philip and John II promised to go on crusade and reneged.176 Jean le Bon’s use of crusade narratives was evidently less a call for crusade and more of an iconographic connection to the crusader king Louis IX, an affectation John clearly wanted as he was coronated with the “crown of Saint Louis.”177 In fact, John le Bon was so preoccupied with presenting himself alongside

Louis IX that the life of Philip III, the sainted king’s son, was left included in Royal MS 16 G

VI. As Hedeman explains in her article “Constructing Saint Louis in John the Good’s Grandes

Chroniques de France,” Louis IX appears as “the culmination of the French royal line of succession”178 within John’s copy. Furthermore, the crusade images at the end of the text reinforce John’s connection to the saint.179 In this, she argues that the characterization of the manuscripts are linked with the imagined constructions of John le Bon’s reign.

Hedeman’s connection between Louis and Jean in the iconography serves as another possible explanation for the iconographic monsterization of the Hafsids in the manuscript. The imagery does not only depict Louis IX’s conflict with the Saracens but metaphorically presents

Jean fighting Saracens as well. Considering that Jean never himself went on crusade,180 it is all

176 Ibid., 63-64. 177 Ibid., 68. 178 Hedeman, “Constructing Saint Louis in John the Good’s Grandes Chroniques de France,” 19. 179 Anne D. Hedeman, The Royal Image: Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France 1274-1422 (Berkeley: University of California Press), 64. More recently Bertrand has discussed folio. 442r (in addition to other images from various Les Grandes Chroniques copies) stating “by representing the kings battling and defeating the Muslim threat they establish themselves as defenders of the faith” (2015: 54-57). Indeed, Bertrand argues this scene demonstrates the battle between “The ‘Most Christian Kings’ and their Muslim Foes” (2015: 53). However, Bertrand conflates Agolant and treachery of the Saracens at Tunis as similar types of scenes. I disagree, in part, with this characterization both for the reasons discussed in Chapter IV and for the Hafsid Saracen lack of shoes. As previously noted, the deletion of shoes from only these Saracens in the manuscript, singles them out as the most monstrous and treacherous of Muslims. Furthermore, in connecting folio. 442r with the narrative of Jean’s legitimacy he is in dialogue with Maureen Quigley as well as Hedeman. See Benjamin Anthony Bertrand, “Monstrous Muslims? Depicting Muslims in French Illuminated Manuscripts from 1200-1420,” Honors Thesis (University of New Hampshire, 2015) & Maureen Quigley, “Romantic Geography and the Crusades: British Library Royal ms. 19 D I,” Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture (2009): 56-57. 180 Ibid. 64

the more significant that the imagery provides the most terrifying, barbaric, treacherous

Saracens, a visual overcompensation for the Valois lackadaisical attitude towards crusade. While

it is true that neither Louis or Jean are presented as slaying the Saracen soldiers, we must

remember the “gracious” behavior of King Louis IX, who releases “Saracen Commander A”

though he does not believe the sincerity of the Saracen’s words. This narrative of Louis IX in the

face of his Saracen enemies does not appear only with Guillaume de Nangis’ version but also in

Jean de Joinville Life of St. Louis.181 Thus, the text and image relationship attempts to convey both the Capetian and Valois royal lines as honorable even when faced with a dishonorable

enemy. The construction makes for an excellent way to close a manuscript that has presented the

Saracen in so many different moral modulations. In the end, the morality of French Christendom

is elevated above that of Islam.

A True Prince: Jean le Bon’s Artistic Performance as Crusader

While Jean certainly wanted to be seen as both a Prince of Christendom and a

crusader like King Louis, he may have had more immediate political reasons to appear so, as

well. Towards the end of his father’s reign, Jean bought land known as the Dauphiny from

Humbert of Viennois,182 a true crusader prince who had staked a good amount of his own fortune

181 Of course such graciousness always is used to highlight Louis’ nobility. Joinville tells of how Louis “would never consent to lie to the Saracens with regard to any covenant he had made with them.” See: Joinville and Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. M. R. B. Shaw (London: Penguin Books, 1963), 167. 182 D'Arcy Jonathan Dacre Boulton, The Knights of the Crown: The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in Later Medieval Europe: 1325-1520 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1987), 177. 65 to the Symronite Crusade.183 Failed as his attempts had been,184 Humbert was still an important contributor. In fact, Humbert went on crusade to push back Umur Pascha, a Turkic economic thorn in the side of the Latin Christians.185 This is ironically a continuation of the same conflict for which Philip of Valois, the father of Jean le Bon, had collected tax money, though the funds intended for crusade were instead used in the Hundred Years War.186 The political realities of

Jean’s situation may have given rise to one of two possibilities:

1. The future king of France may have felt some anxiety about his father’s political

decision regarding crusade, especially in light of Jean’s own acquiring of land that

belonged to someone who went on crusade. If Jean was attempting to liken himself to

Louis IX, to a prince of Christendom, he would not appear as much of one when

juxtaposed against Humbert. Indeed, Humbert must have been something of a peer to the

duke of Normandy, as the former lord of Viennois would later become a founding member

of John’s monarchical chivalric order, the “Order of the Star.”187

2. Jean saw his acquirement of the Dauphiny as a way of expressing himself as a Prince of

Christendom. This is to say the properties of the land he has acquired, having once

belonged to a crusader, become associated with Jean le Bon.

183 Kenneth Meyer Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571: Vol 1. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1987), 196. 184 Ibid., 211. According to the medieval, Enverri, a Turkish chronicler Umur Pascha reduced Humbert to a “scarecrow.” More recently some scholars have noted that Humbert’s supposed failure during these crusades are largely exaggerated. See: Mike Carr, “Humbert of Viennois and the Crusade of Smyrna: A Reconsideration,” Crusades 13 no. 1 (2014): 237-251. 185 Ibid., 181. 186 Hedeman, The Royal Image: Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France, 64. 187 Boulton, The Knights of the Crown: The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood, 177. 66

Either scenario speaks the same message: Jean le Bon wanted to appear as a crusader

due to direct political associations, and may have directed the illuminators of his GCF to present

him in such a light. As Jean himself had not gone on crusade, the most monstrous Saracens are

imported into his text, demonstrating his imagined courage against them, while also connecting

himself to Louis IX. Potentially, the scene can be read as both as Hafsid Tunisians and the

Turkic forces of Umur Pascha, the enemy Jean had never faced. This is not to say that the image

directly depicts Jean battling the Turks as Humbert had done. Rather, it may have been

metaphorically read as an analogue of Humbert’s own crusade, much as Jean attempted to

visually associate himself with Louis IX. In the narrative construction of Royal MS 16 G VI, as

Humbert/Louis IX have lead crusades against Umur Pascha/Al-Mustansir, so too has Jean faced

“the Saracen Prince,” anonymous though he might be.

Admittedly, some of this reading is speculation, as Humbert only went on crusade in

1345 with preliminary dealings to sell the Dauphiny to Jean in 1344, which were not formalized

until 1349.188 As Jean’s GCF dates between 1332-50, this reading is a possibility, though the

timeline is a tight one. At the longest possible set of dates to fit the timeline, the illuminations of

the Hafsid Saracens would have had to have been made between 1345-50. Nonetheless, considering Jean’s clear emphasis in connecting himself with Louis IX, presenting himself as a crusader Prince would have been a high artistic priority. Acquiring the Dauphiny from a crusade captain would have certainly encouraged the future king to artistically perform this role, either out of fear of appearing lacking in piety or as an opportunity to bolster his own credentials — or

188 Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571, 211. Strictly speaking, when the Dauphiny formerly changed hands the lands went to Jean’s son Charles (the future Charles V). Still Charles would only have been eleven and Jean had been the one negotiating the acquisition on his behalf. Thus the Dauphiny, through his son, served as an extension of Jean’s dominion. 67 both. Perhaps it is appropriate that the manuscript ends as a clearly political body of royal legitimacy. It is a visual performance of its patron, in the guise of a Crusader Prince, facing bands of supposedly duplicitous and blood-thirsty Saracens, embodiments of a treacherous

Saracen king. Jean secures his legitimacy as a defender of French Christendom without ever raising his sword to slay a Saracen. 68

CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION: POSITIONING THE “SARACEN

PRINCE” IN MEDIEVAL AND

FUTURE IMAGINATIONS

The “Saracen Prince” evidently appears in a variety of forms within the medieval

French imagination. While he may appear monstrous in certain situations, this characterization is hardly ubiquitous. Even in polemical narratives where the Saracen Prince appears truly unredeemable in the eyes of Christians, he can look normative. When he appears othered, he may simultaneously be reflection of Christian failure. The Saracen can be presented as light skinned in the imagery and still be treacherous or otherwise vilified in the text. Indeed, the French construction of the Saracen Prince is not indelible: it is in a constant state of flux and repeatedly subverts expected characterizations to fit specific textual and political narratives.

The limitation of this project has been its focus upon one manuscript. At times, I have tried to push these boundaries to support and complicate my own arguments. As much as I have attempted to give a comprehensive understanding of the representation of Saracen princes in

Royal MS 16 G VI, there have been necessary omissions. Most notably, as I argued in Chapter

IV, I did not include Amorez, provost of Saragossa, who appears in an image I maintain is a rich reflection of Christian-Islamic interaction constructing a “noble Saracen.” Moreover, I did not have the opportunity to delve into iconographic absence of key characters such as the “Old Man of the Mountain” who, despite attempting to assassinate King Louis, never appears in the 69

imagery.189 These are just a few examples of possible avenues in which this project could still

expand. There are also limitations within the text of Royal MS 16 G VI as a case study for

Saracens in Les Grandes Chroniques de France. Absent from this particular manuscript is the

conquest of Acre by the “Sultan of Babylon,” an account of the historical Mamluk sack of the

city in 1291, which appears in the life of Philip IV.190 Given what is left to do both within the

text itself and its sister manuscripts, it is easy to imagine entire book-length projects revolving

around the depictions of Marsile and Baligant over time, or even the French reimaginings of the

Eighth Crusade. A more comprehensive body of work would surely consider such presentations

over time and space.

One aspect I have attempted to address is the manuscript’s internal structure, between

text and image, and image and image, as well as the placement of images. Perhaps one of the

most important elements that, to some degree, had been overlooked in studying these texts, is the

relationship between text and image. Indeed, much of this work has been an attempt to sift

through inconsistencies between descriptions and depictions of Muslim princes. The only

consistent conclusion I can reach between these various depictions is that textual and historical

contexts must be carefully considered when reading images. Indeed, these images cannot be

taken at “face value.”

The French depiction of Islamic political leaders is an important avenue of study

because it expresses notions of so-called medieval French Christendom. The “Saracen Prince” is

more than any individual Saracen foot soldier, and serves as a fictional embodiment of his

189 Jules Marie Édouard Viard, Les Grandes Chroniques de France, vol. 10 (Paris: Société de l'histoire de France, 1920-1953), 15-16. 190 Paulin Paris, Les grandes chroniques de France selon que elles sont conservées en l'Eglise de Saint-Denis, vol. 5 (Paris, 1837), 97. 70

people, much as the French king represents his own. Truly, the French Christians did not know

what to make of the Muslims. Like Saladin in Dante’s Divina Comedia, the “Saracen Prince” is

in Limbo.191 Royal MS 16 G VI consistently subverts expectations of blackness and whiteness as

moral framings. The only visually “monstrous” Saracens are those that appear at the end of the

text, who are remembered as specific enemies from a relatively recent past and as an entity to

heighten the legitimacy of the manuscript’s patron. In many ways, it seems that French noble and

ecclesiastical entities wrestled with their attitudes toward the other through the use of diverse

stereotypes and metaphors. The Saracens throughout are framed as disgusting, chivalric,

heretical, convert-able, treacherous, noble, monstrous, and normative. In their attempts to decide

how they saw Islamic polities, the royal traditions of French Latin Christians decided to frame

them in ambiguous terms: at times indistinguishable from Christians and at other times the bane

of Christendom.

This undecidedness and ambiguity in depictions of Saracen princes is important,

given our own contemporary political moment. The recent rise of white nationalism has once

again recalled the memory of crusade, “deus vult” serving as a rallying cry at Charlottesville.192

Many white nationalists see crusade as a historical symbol of an unending war against “the

East,” one they see continuing today. As such, crusader iconography, literature, and ideology

have been co-opted by these groups. Ironically enough, white nationalist ideas of crusade are

evidently less complex than heavily propagandized medieval ideas of anti-Islamic narratives. As

colonizing and marginalizing as medieval narratives can be, there is still some space, in both text

191 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Part I: Inferno, trans. Mark Musa (New York: Penguin Classics, 1997), 12. 192 Neda Ulaby, “Scholars Say White Supremacists Chanting ‘Deus Vult’ Got History Wrong,” National Public Radio . Accessed March 31, 2019. 71 and image, for the “Saracen Prince,” whereas none exists within modern white nationalist narratives. These xenophobic concepts did not grow in a vacuum and are partly linked to older, more problematic scholarship.193 Perhaps the study of “Saracens” in medieval “European” art can serve as a way to better understand the memory of crusade, both to better understand its effect on the Middle Ages and delegitimize its constructed memory in contemporary society.

193 As noted in the “Historiography,” Paris and Delisle both frame the GCF in nationalistic terms that would only reinforce the Islamophobic narratives of the text. Still, such narratives continue even in contemporary scholarship as evinced by Wollesen’s comment on “humble” Saracens addressed in Chapter V. See Paulin Paris, Les grandes chroniques de France selon que elles sont conservées en l'Eglise de Saint-Denis, vol. 1 (Paris, 1837), x, Léopold Delisle, “Notice sur un livre de peinture exécuté en 1250 dans L'Abbaye de Saint-Denis,” Bibliothèque de L'Ecole des Chartres 38 (1877): 444 & Jens T. Wollesen, “East meets West and the Problem with those Pictures,” in East meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Transcultural Experiences in the Premodern World, ed. Albrecht Classen, 341-388 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 346. 72

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FIGURES

Figure 1: Raid of the Mansur of Cordova; Mansur plundering St James; punishment of the Saracens. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 185v.

Figure 2: Mahun defecating on altar. Hereford Map (detail). Lincoln, 1290s. Hereford Cathedral. 78

Figure 3: Richard the Lionheart versus Saladin. Luttrell Psalter. Diocese of Lincoln, c. 1325-1335. British Library, London; Add. MS 42130, fol. 82 (detail).

Figure 4: Agolant and his Moors attack a castle. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 167r. 79

Figure 5: Charlemagne besieging Agolant in Agen. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 170r.

Figure 6: Charles defeating the Saracens at the battle of Poitiers. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332- 1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 117v. 80

Figure 7: Battle scene (Charlemagne slays Saracen Prince). Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 171r.

Figure 8: Battle scene. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 171v. 81

Figure 9: Roland binding his prisoner; a battle. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 178v.

Figure 10: Roland fighting Marsile. Charlemagne Window (detail). Chartres, 1225. Chartres Cathedral. 82

Figure 11: Battle; Charlemagne taking the standard. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 174v.

Figure 12: Charlemagne receiving an envoy from Amor of Saragossa; parley; voyage of Pepin. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 147r. 83

Figure 13: Saracens sacking Jerusalem; the patriarch before Constantine; Constantine sending envoys to Charlemagne. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 155r.

Figure 14: Battle of Roncevaux. Grandes Chroniques de France. Paris, 1370s. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; MS fr. 2813, fol. 121 (detail). 84

Figure 15: Ganelon before Marsile and Baligans; Ganelon before Charlemagne. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London, Royal 16 G VI; fol. 177r.

Figure 16: Charlemagne sending Ganelon to the Saragossan Kings, Marsile and Baligant. Chroniques de Saint-Denis, France, c.1275. Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, Paris; MS 782. 85

Figure 17: Saracens frightening the French knights’ horses. Grandes Chroniques de France. Paris, 1370s. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; MS fr. 2813, fol. 119 (detail).

Figure 18: Treacherous attack by Saracens. Grandes Chroniques de France, France, 1332-1350. British Library, London; Royal 16 G VI, fol. 442r. 86

Figure 19: Roberto d’Oderisio, Malchus of Maronia attacked by Saracens. Vitae patrum, Naples, ca. 1350-1375. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; MS M. 626, fol. 30r.

Figure 20: Louis IX in prison. Vie et miracles de Sainte Louis, Paris, ca. 1330-1340. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; MS. fr. 5716 fol. 92r.