William Chester Jordan - The Apple of His Eye: Converts from Islam in the Reign of Louis IX

Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the
Ancient to the Modern World

EDITED BY MICHAEL COOK, WILLIAM
CHESTER JORDAN, AND PETER SCHFER

A list of titles in this series appears at the back of the book.

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON & OXFORD

Copyright 2019 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press

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Library of Congress Control Number 2018949930

ISBN 978-0-691-19011-2

eISBN 978-0-691-19263-5 (ebook)

Version 1.0

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

Editorial: Brigitta van Rheinberg and Amanda Peery

Production Editorial: Jill Harris

Jacket Design: Layla Mac Rory

Jacket Credit: Muslims expressing a (false) desire to convert in the crusader camp before Tunis, August 1270. From Angers: Archives dpartementales, Maine-et-Loire, MS 3 F 6 / 5, Jean de Vignay, Histoire de s. Louis et de Philippe le Hardi (fragment from chap. 3234), fol. 2 v.

Production: Erin Suydam

Publicity: Jodi Price and Julia Hall

Copyeditor: Katherine Harper

To

Leila Grace Gorman (aged 4) and
Oliver Parker Gorman (2)

and

Ruth (Mays) Apilado (110)

CONTENTS

ix

xi

xiii

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures

Maps

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I AM PLEASED to thank a number of people who listened to my thoughts about the matters addressed in this book and reacted with suggestions and criticisms or helped or offered to help in other ways. These conversations and email exchanges were sometimes brief but always enormously enlightening. My inter-locutors, in alphabetical order, included Peter Brown, Zo Buonaiuto, Andrew Collings, Angela Creager, Merle Eisenberg, Eileen Gardiner, Dov Grohsgal, John Haldon, Anne Hedeman, Christine Jordan, Lorna Jordan, Victoria Jordan, Robert Leonard, Erika Milam, Ron Musto, Laurie Nussdorfer, Randall Pippenger, Jennifer Rampling, and Troy Tice. Unbeknownst to him, Menachem Butler also had a role to play. The attachments to his emails often brought valuable relevant studies to my attention, studies which I would otherwise never have known about.

I had opportunities to present the argument and some of the evidence to two audiences. The first was at the American Academy in Rome, where I was the Lester K. Little Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Residence in October and September 2017. Those who heard the talk I gave included a few classicists, medievalists, and scholars of more recent periods but mostly artists, composers, musicians, architects, and writers. Their positive feedback convinced me that the topic had a certain general appeal. I wish to thank the Academy, its former director, Kim Bowes, who arranged my appointment, and the current director, John Ochsendorf, who was my host while I was there.

I had promised to do a second presentation as a plenary lecture at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo) in May 2018. Before that could take place, I finished a more or less complete draft of the book and submitted the manuscript to Princeton University Press. My editor, Brigitta van Rheinberg, and her assistant, Associate Editor Amanda Peery, were enthusiastic (my thanks to them both) and quickly sent the manuscript out to referees. These anonymous referees provided me with a number of suggestions, which turned out to be very valuable and for which I am grateful. Moreover, their reports persuaded the Presss Editorial Board to authorize publication of the book. By the time the International Congress came around, less than a month after this approval, I was able to summarize before a large group of specialists what I thought was a finished manuscript. Public discussion does not follow plenary lectures at the International Congress, but the feedback I received in the long aftermath of my presentation also turned out to be a great motivator for a final rereading and revision before publication.

TECHNICAL MATTERS

IN THIS BOOK , I have followed the usual scholarly conventions: (1) I typically provide the original forms of personal names in Medieval Latin or Old French in the translations of direct quotations from those languages, but elsewhere I have translated them into English, where such equivalents exist, or into Modern French. Where no equivalent exists in English or Modern French, I have retained the original in italics. (2) Citations of primary sources ordinarily precede those of secondary sources. (3) I refer to French currency and monies of account in Medieval Latin libre, solidi, and denarii, or in Old French livres, sous or sols, and deniers, and use the abbreviations l., s., and d. Money of Tours, tournois (t.), and of Paris, parisis (p.) correlated at the time at a rate of five to four: 5 l. t. = 4 l. p.

INTRODUCTION

Converting the World

SINCE THE ANTIQUARIANS of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries established the scholarly rules and conventions that govern the professional study of the past, historians have put an enormous amount of effort into investigating the Crusades. Many aspects of the Crusade experience, however, remain underexplored. Despite a few valuable studies, conversion is one of the more neglected topics. Interested, as I have long been, in the Crusades of the French king Louis IX, who reigned from 1226 to 1270, I have returned frequently to the relevant sources in order to see what more can be learned about his two exceedingly well-planned and yet, from the point of view of his Christian contemporaries, disappointing expeditions of 12481254 and 1270. The specific aspect scrutinized in this book is the kings program for the conversion of Muslims, which incorporated, because of circumstances, a small number of pagan refugees as well. This was part of a complex of conversionary impulses long associated with Louis IX. There are notable differences among his various efforts, but there are also remarkable parallels and similarities. I shall first be summarizing for the reader these other, better-investigated endeavors, as well as some related developments in the thirteenth century, in order to set the scene for the kings attempts to bring Muslims and pagans to the Catholic faith.

Before doing so, I want to acknowledge that in order to fill in gaps in the story of the kings project, I have sometimes had to press the evidence hard. However, I do acknowledge explicitly which assertions are only possibilities or plausibilities, and I have tried to avoid introducing statements as potentially true and then presuming them to be true thereafter. Rather, I have hypothesized in the manner, if this is the case, then such-and-such should follow. Often enough, hypotheses without direct proof have generated conclusions for which I believe the evidence is compelling. In any case, I hope this explanation of my approach encourages an open-minded reading of the reconstruction of events presented in this book.