Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet

Hagiography and the Problem of Islam in Medieval Europe

Scott G. Bruce

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781501700910
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

In the summer of 972 a group of Muslim brigands based in the south of France near La Garde-Freinet abducted the abbot of Cluny as he and his entourage crossed the Alps en route from Rome to Burgundy. Ultimately, the abbot was set free, but the audacity of this abduction outraged Christian leaders and galvanized the will of local lords. Shortly thereafter, Count William of Arles marshaled an army and succeeded in wiping out the Muslim stronghold.

The monks of Cluny kept this tale alive over the next century. Scott G. Bruce explores the telling and retelling of this story, focusing on the representation of Islam in each account and how that representation changed over time. The culminating figure in this study is Peter the Venerable, one of Europe's leading intellectuals and abbot of Cluny from 1122 to 1156, who commissioned Latin translations of Muslim texts such as the Qur'an. Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet provides us with an unparalleled opportunity to examine Christian perceptions of Islam in the Crusading era.

CHAPTER 1

News of a Kidnapping

In the middle of the night on 21–22 July 972, Muslim adventurers abducted Abbot Maiolus of Cluny and his entourage as they camped near the top of the Great Saint Bernard Pass in the western Alps while en route from the city of Rome to their monastery in Burgundy. Kidnapping by Islamic brigands was one of many dangers facing those who braved the precipitous Alpine passes in the tenth century. These Muslims arrived in Provence in the late ninth century and established a stronghold at Fraxinetum (present-day La Garde-Freinet, near Saint-Tropez). From there, they made frequent forays into the Provençal countryside, where they plundered local towns and religious communities and took many captives, whom they ransomed for cash or sold as slaves in Islamic principalities around the Mediterranean rim. In so doing they took advantage of political instability that was endemic in the region following the death of Charles III the Fat (d. 888), the last Carolingian emperor of western Europe. At the height of their activity, the Muslims of Provence cast a long and foreboding shadow from the Côte d’Azur across the Alps to the shores of Lake Constance.

The Islamic settlement at La Garde-Freinet thrived for many decades as an autonomous entrepôt for the export of European captives to the slave markets of the Muslim world. Although its inhabitants produced no documents of their own, they appeared frequently in contemporary Latin sources, as European chroniclers related with dismay stories of their fearful deeds even as they railed against the Christian lords who made alliances with them to the detriment of all. The Muslims of Fraxinetum were an ominous presence in tenth-century Provence, but they were in fact latecomers in a wave of Islamic military and entrepreneurial activity dating back to the early ninth century that disrupted Christian settlements along the northwestern Mediterranean shore. While they shared many of the same commercial priorities as their ninth-century predecessors, the inhabitants of La Garde-Freinet distinguished themselves in two important ways. First, they recognized that the merchant and pilgrim traffic crossing the highest passes of the Alps in the summer months could provide them with a steady supply of human chattel with little risk of retribution from Christian authorities, who in the tenth century were more concerned with advancing their own interests at the expense of their neighbors than policing the heights of local mountain ranges. As a result, the Muslims of Fraxinetum penetrated much farther north into Europe than any Islamic group since the Muslim expedition that fought Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732. Second, while the threat of Muslim slavers in the Alps haunted the minds of tenth-century travelers, the abduction of Maiolus of Cluny in the summer of 972 brought them an unparalleled notoriety throughout western Christendom. So great was the offense of the capture of this holy man that it galvanized the will of local Christian lords, who put aside their quarrels to launch a united campaign that led to the destruction of La Garde-Freinet and the elimination of the Muslim presence in the Alps.

Despite a burgeoning interest in evidence for cross-cultural commerce between Christians and Muslims in the Middle Ages, no study of this topic has given full attention to the abduction of Maiolus of Cluny. This chapter begins by reconstructing the context of his kidnapping. Many Christian travelers crossed the Alpine passes in the tenth century, merchants and pilgrims being the most frequent among them. These travelers were particularly vulnerable to robbery and kidnapping because merchants often carried considerable wealth with them in the form of goods for sale and most pilgrims were unable to afford the security of an armed escort. After establishing the motives for transalpine travel in the decades around 1000, I then examine the historical circumstances that brought Muslims to the shores of Provence and the political contingencies that allowed them to thrive commercially in the region for decades. I argue that the Muslim community of La Garde-Freinet was distinct from other Islamic settlements in Christian territory in this period not only in terms of its longevity but also with respect to the range of its influence in Provence, northern Italy, and throughout the Alpine passes. And finally, in the last portion of the chapter I treat the earliest textual evidence for the abbot’s abduction in July 972: a ransom letter sent by Maiolus to the monks of Cluny to inform them of his plight and to request payment for the release of him and his fellow captives. This letter is the only contemporary record of the kidnapping incident, a precious yet hitherto neglected witness to an encounter between a prominent Christian intellectual and his Muslim captors near the close of the first millennium.1 Although it is very brief, the document allows us to make some tantalizing inferences about the abbot of Cluny’s understanding of the religion of his Muslim captors.

The Perils and Promises of Transalpine Travel

The Great Saint Bernard Pass was one of the most heavily used arteries through the Alpine ranges in the early Middle Ages.2 Merchants were among the most common travelers over the pass in the tenth century. These individuals were much more than purveyors of goods; they also played important roles as information couriers, cultural ambassadors, and agents of the saints. Some of them traveled regularly between the palaces of northern Europe and the entrepôts of the eastern Mediterranean. Their business contacts, proficiency in languages, and experience with long-distance travel made them respected figures in the royal courts of the north. It is not surprising that in the year 949 Emperor Otto I chose as his ambassador to Constantinople a wealthy merchant from Mainz named Liutefred, whose commercial experience in the East provided him with the necessary credentials for this sensitive diplomatic position.3 Similarly, in 953, merchants from Verdun accompanied Abbot John of Gorze on his ill-fated embassy to the court of ’Abd al-Rahman III in Cordoba.4 Other early medieval merchants acted as brokers between the saints of Rome and the abbeys of northern Europe. Agents of these entrepreneurs haunted the Roman catacombs, where they obtained for eager monastic communities the most precious commodity of all: the relics of the martyrs. Einhard’s early ninth-century account of the translation of the relics of Saints Marcellinus and Peter from Rome to Germany for the dedication of his new church at Mulinheim (now Seligenstadt) provides the clearest testimony of a lucrative traffic in holy remains that thrived well into the tenth century.5

For medieval merchants, the promise of transalpine travel was profit; mundane commercial items crossed the mountain passes in great abundance. Around the year 960, Bishop Giso of Aosta issued a list of toll charges to merchant caravans that entered his town en route to the Great Saint Bernard Pass.6 This list shows that itinerant traders carted a diverse inventory of stock on pack animals and horseback to the fair towns and palaces of the north. Military equipment formed the bulk of trade moving over the Alps in this period: the bishop of Aosta claimed tolls in money or in kind on a large number of swords, spears, shields, and armor, as well as horses, spurs, and reins, made in Italy for the armies of the Ottonians. Common goods likewise flowed into Mediterranean markets from northern Europe. An early eleventh-century account of the duties of imperial officials at the Ottonian court in Pavia (the so-called Honorantiae Civitatis Papiae) painted a vivid portrait of a southbound artery of trade stretching from England to Venice, along which moved a slow and steady stream of service animals, slaves, cloth, precious metals, and weapons.7

Early medieval merchants also carried exotic wares from Africa and the East northward over the Great Saint Bernard Pass. Despite Muslim dominance in the Mediterranean Sea in this period, there is evidence of sustained trade between Italian cities and Constantinople. At the turn of the millennium, Venetian merchants were renowned as importers of Byzantine silks and spices.8 Their port city was ideally situated for the distribution of these goods over the Alpine passes. It was not unusual, for instance, for German and Frankish prelates to purchase silk vestments of Eastern origin from Italian merchants and then grant them as gifts to important northern monasteries.9 In the year 908, Bishop Adalbero of Augsburg presented the abbot of Saint Gall with splendid purple robes from Tyre.10 Great quantities of eastern spices also crossed the Alps. Tenth-century records show that the Abbey of Corbie, located near Amiens in northern France, purchased large amounts of pepper, cinnamon, ginger, myrrh, and other spices for culinary and medicinal use.11 Around 965 a diplomat from Muslim Spain named Ibrahim marveled to find pepper, ginger, cloves, and other exotic spices at the court of Emperor Otto I in Mainz: “An extraordinary thing is that, though this city is in the farthest West, they have spices there which are only to be obtained in the farthest East.”12 These goods were so precious to northern Europeans that Thietmar of Merseberg, an eleventh-century German chronicler, reported the shipwreck of four Venetian spice galleys among the most memorable events of the year 1017.13 Exotic animals were also profitable commodities in transalpine trade. In the tenth century, apes from Africa passed through the town of Aosta on their way over the Great Saint Bernard Pass. Bishop Giso noted with apparent disgust that, even though it was an absurd little animal (quamvis sit ridiculosum animal), the toll charge for an ape was three times that of a horse, undoubtedly because apes brought a much higher price for their importers in the elite markets of northern Europe.14

Merchant traffic shared the Great Saint Bernard Pass with pilgrim caravans en route to and from the city of Rome.15 In contrast to the worldly ambitions of commercial enterprise, pilgrimage was first and foremost a devotional act undertaken for the love of Christ (pro amore Christi), most often willingly, though sometimes as a penitential debt.16 In the tenth century, the Alpine passes provided the only route to those northern Europeans motivated by Christian piety to visit the tombs of the Roman saints because the Muslim presence in Provence all but eliminated river traffic in the Rhône valley and prevented pilgrims from sailing along the Mediterranean coast from Marseilles to Ostia. A few exceptional individuals, like the seventh-century Anglo-Saxon abbot Benedict Biscop, made multiple journeys to Rome in their lifetimes, but most early medieval pilgrims were not seasoned travelers and were therefore much more vulnerable to the hardships of the road.17 Some found themselves stranded in foreign lands without any money. Prelates feared especially for women who resorted to prostitution to survive in these circumstances. In 747 Boniface advised Archbishop Cuthbert of Canterbury to prohibit religious women (velatis ...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. News of a Kidnapping
• 2. Monks Tell Tales
• Interlude
• 3. Peter the Venerable, Butcher of God
• 4. Hagiography and the Muslim Policy of Peter the Venerable
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index