The Contest for Souls and Sacred Sites in the Travels of Sir John
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Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) January 2009 Mandeville's Intolerance: The onC test for Souls and Sacred Sites in The rT avels of Sir John Mandeville Robert Patterson Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd Recommended Citation Patterson, Robert, "Mandeville's Intolerance: The onC test for Souls and Sacred Sites in The rT avels of Sir John Mandeville" (2009). All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). 272. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd/272 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Department of English and American Literature Dissertation Examination Committee: David Lawton, Chair Frank Grady William McKelvy Jessica Rosenfeld Julie Singer Alicia Walker MANDEVILLE’S INTOLERANCE: THE CONTEST FOR SOULS AND SACRED SITES IN THE TRAVELS OF SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE By Robert Hakan Patterson A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2009 Saint Louis, Missouri copyright by Robert Hakan Patterson December 2009 Acknowledgements I have long awaited the opportunity to thank all those who have provided the financial, emotional, and academic support that has seen me through my graduate career and especially the completion of this dissertation. I am indebted to the Washington University Department of English and to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for much more than financial support, and I would particularly like to thank Dorothy Negri and Kathy Schneider for their encouragement and for being so dedicated to helping myself and my fellow graduate students succeed in our endeavors. They truly go above and beyond the call in their efforts, and they represent the heart and soul of the English Department. I am deeply grateful to David Lawton for his guidance and friendship over these many years. From the moment I was accepted to graduate school, he not only challenged me at critical moments in my career, but he also allowed me the freedom to explore and develop my interests even when they did not fit into the traditional purview of a student of English literature. Likewise, I am grateful to Jessica Rosenfeld for making me think about my work in a broader context and for helping me discover the kind of scholar I hope to be. Frank Grady also deserves my thanks for his candid but constructive criticism of my work (and all work on Mandeville). I would also like to thank Bill McKelvy, Julie Singer, and Alicia Walker for their time and generosity. My thanks goes to my fellow medievalist graduate students – Rick Godden, Elon Lang, Susan Lowther, Sarah Noonan, Jessica Rezunyk, and Victoria Thomas – for commiserating with me throughout this process and for listening to countless hours of Mandeville-talk. I am also grateful to participants of the Dissertation Workshop, ii including Bill McKelvy, who took the time to read drafts of every chapter of my dissertation. Rick Godden deserves special recognition for the time he has spent reading and talking about my work, as does Debie Lohe for her encouragement and for her confidence in me as a teacher. More than anything, I am grateful for my family’s support. My parents worked hard and sacrificed too much in order to provide me with an education, but even more importantly, they and my sister never stopped believing in me. As I complete my doctorate, I am in awe of their perseverance in the face of many obstacles as they worked to bring me to where I am today, for I am the grandson of a Turkish shepherd’s daughter – a woman who never had the opportunity to learn to read but pushed her children and grandchildren to study, study, study. I do not have adequate words to express my appreciation and love for my patient wife, Maya. Not only my supreme gratitude but most of the credit for the completion of this work goes to her. I am thankful for her love and support during the many days when I found myself staring at a blank screen and for pushing me when I needed it most. As I complete this dissertation on The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, I find myself grateful to have had her as a partner in our own travels from Constantinople to Inde. This work is dedicated to her and to our family. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ii Introduction: A Knight’s Tale .........................................................................................1 The Text and the Major Questions ...........................................................................3 Overview of the Chapters .......................................................................................8 The Many Travels ..................................................................................................12 Chapter 1: Intolerant Universalism and the Contest for Souls ..................................16 The Great Khan’s Tolerant Empire........................................................................23 Christ’s Universal Message ...................................................................................40 Salvation in the Fourteenth Century ......................................................................51 The Mandeville-author’s Solution: Universal Foreknowledge .............................57 Intolerant Universalism, Time, and Comfort ........................................................67 Chapter 2: Mandeville’s Jews and the Contest for Sacred Sites ................................71 Demonizing Jews ...................................................................................................77 Jews as Other .........................................................................................................91 Jews as Problematic Origin ....................................................................................99 Jews as Competitors: The Temple of Jerusalem .................................................110 Chapter 3: Land and the Two Parts of The Travels ..................................................131 The Christian Holy Land......................................................................................135 Christian Claims and the East ..............................................................................149 The Holy Land and the East .................................................................................159 The Un-Cursed East and the Un-Chosen Jews ....................................................168 iv The Blessings of a Reimagined East ....................................................................174 Coda: The Travels Continue .........................................................................................193 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................196 v Introduction: A Knight’s Tale A KNYGHT ther was, and that a worthy man, That fro the tyme that he first began To riden out, he loved chivalrie, Trouthe and honour, fredom and curtesie. Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre, And therto hadde he ridden, no man ferre, As wel in cristendom as in hethenesse.1 In the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer introduces the knight before any other pilgrim. This chivalrous warrior has traveled farther than any other man and has fought in every major crusade campaign in which the English were involved in the fourteenth century. In Egypt, Prussia, Lithuania, Russia, Spain, Morocco, and Turkey, he has valiantly championed Christian causes against Muslims and pagans alike, and his past adventures seem to promise an exciting tale of crusaders marching against Christ‟s enemies in strange and distant lands. When it comes time for this knight to tell the first tale of the pilgrimage, however, he chooses a story unrelated to his travels into “hethenesse.” Instead, the knight presents his fellow pilgrims with a romance in which two knights become prisoners of Theseus, duke of Athens, and fall in love with Emelye, Theseus‟ sister-in-law. The ensuing rivalry between the lovers has nothing to do with the crusades or with the foreign lands in which Chaucer‟s knight has campaigned, and none of Chaucer‟s surviving tales are about crusades of any kind.2 For a tale detailing the travels and adventures of an English knight who has seen the known world, medieval and modern readers alike must set aside Chaucer and turn to a text just as if not 1 Geoffrey Chaucer, “General Prologue,” The Canterbury Tales in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987). ll. 43-49. 2 At least three of Chaucer‟s tales do include at least some description of strange and distant lands: The Man of Law’s Tale briefly takes readers to Muslim Syria; The Squire’s Tale takes place in the Tartar court of the Great Khan; and The Prioress’s Tale takes place in a Jewish community in Asia. 1 more popular than The Canterbury Tales during and after the Middle Ages: The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Originally written in French sometime in the 1350s or 1360s, The Travels