Scott G. Bruce - Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet: Hagiography and the Problem of Islam in Medieval Europe

I first encountered the story of the kidnapping of Abbot Maiolus of Cluny more than a decade ago, when as a graduate student I read through the corpus of Cluniac hagiography in search of raw material for my dissertation. It captured my imagination then, as it once captivated the monks of Cluny, and has never let go. But the idea for the book grew slowly and I did not begin writing in earnest until 2010, when a sabbatical leave coupled with a semester-long College Scholar Award from the University of Colorado gave me many months of unencumbered time to put these thoughts to paper. Even so, I would not have finished the book in a timely manner were it not for a semester of parental leave afforded by the birth of our second daughter, Vivienne. This allowed me to complete the first draft of the manuscript at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in the spring and summer of 2012. There is simply no better place in the world to be a medievalist at work. I am deeply grateful to the intellectual virtuosity of my wife, Anne E. Lester, whose fellowship at IAS gave us the opportunity to return to our old home, and to the generosity of the faculty and fellows whose company we shared that semester: Emmanuel Bermon, Paschale Bermon, Glen Bowersock, Jeremy Cohen, Paul Hayward, Samantha Herrick, Christopher P. Jones, Heinrich von Staden, Chris Stray, Jorie Woods, and especially Giles Constable and Patrick Geary.

Many listeners, readers, and institutions had a hand in shaping this book. Those who attended conference sessions and public lectures at which I shared this material were always generous with questions and comments, many of which helped me to improve the arguments presented here. I am grateful to hosts and audiences at Harvard University, Mount Holyoke College, Plymouth State University, Universit Lilles (France), Universiteit Gent (Belgium), the University of Auckland (New Zealand), the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, Universit Laval (Quebec, Canada), the University of Leeds (United Kingdom), the University of Pennsylvania, the University of TennesseeKnoxville, and Western Michigan University. A Solmsen Fellowship from the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of WisconsinMadison fostered my first thoughts about this project in 20012. My thanks as well to the editors and external readers who improved the articles related to this book that have already appeared in print: An Abbot between Two Cultures: Maiolus of Cluny Considers the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet, Early Medieval Europe 15 (2007): 42640; and Local Sanctity and Civic Typology in Early Medieval Pavia: The Example of the Cult of Abbot Maiolus of Cluny, in Cities, Texts and Social Networks, 4001500: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Spaces, edited by Caroline Goodson, Anne E. Lester, and Carol Symes (Aldershot, England, 2010), 17791.

The book took its final form with the help of several acute readers who offered incisive comments. Thanks to Giles Constable, Brianna Gustafson, William Chester Jordan, Anne E. Lester, Constant Mews, Jonathan Shepard, and the anonymous readers for Cornell University Press. Drew Jones lent his expertise with the poem that appears in the appendix, and for this I am most grateful. Many thanks also to Tom Burman for sharing with me his microfilm copy of Paris, Bibliothque nationale, MS Latin 3669. And I am especially grateful to Peter Potter and the staff at Cornell University Press for shepherding this project from manuscript to published book with tantamount professionalism.

Many friendships abide in these pages. While I wrote this book, Paul Cobb, Ryan Flahive, Drew Jones, Jessica Leigh, Myles Osborne, Denise Powell, and Suman Seth shared with me their wisdom, laughter, and insights at our table or theirs, in warm embrace or far away. They are scholars, teachers, parents of extraordinary children, and exceptional human beings; I am profoundly fortunate to call them my friends. The love of my family sustains me in this and all other pursuits. I am grateful for the support of Bev Bruce, Steve Bruce, Lynn and Paul Dickinson, Eric and Audrey Lester, Bob and Matthew Lester, and Lucille Lester. My wife and two children remind me always that life is bigger than the books we write and the work we do. Anne inspires me with her energy, her integrity, and the scope of her ambition. Mira, our eldest, always lives up to her name; she is a marvel, full of mirth and mischief. Vivienne is the youngest of our brood of dragons, endowed with a fierce beauty. I dedicate this book to her.