Toleration and Tolerance in the Middle Ages—Medieval Perspectives for Our Future
Human existence depends fundamentally on peaceful cohabitation, as idealistic as this might sound in face of stark reality. Quite tragically, however, throughout time military violence, aggression, hostility, enmity, and hatred seem to have dominated nevertheless. The central message of the New Testament consists of teaching the principles of love, and yet, the most earnest encouragement by Christ addressing His various audiences to observe love for one another seems to have been ignored, or at least it was isolated from practice and reserved only for the sermon in church, here disregarding individual exceptions. Christ’s insistence on love might have been a demand that only few people could observe and realize to the full extent of the word―see, for instance, St. Francis of Assisi. After all, throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, wars in the name of the Christian God have been waged consistently, and the blood toll has been unimaginably horrendous. But the other religions do not have a much better historical record, if we disregard, perhaps, Buddhism. Within the specter of the monotheistic religions, by contrast, internecine strife has almost been the norm, although the representatives of the various religions commonly preached love, happiness, harmony, and salvation.1
Little wonder then that the European Middle Ages have regularly served as a convenient platform for modern projections about its own cultural identity, origin, and position within the global context. But “presentism” seems to trump “pastism” since the modern world appears for many as completely self-sufficient and devoid of any traditional foundations. The public media tend to ridicule the past as dark, unenlightened, primitive, brutal, bestial dirty, ignorant, and aggressive. It is very easy to use a specific self-serving lens and thus to confirm that medieval societies were completely under-developed compared to those in the modern West. Indeed, it is a very convenient strategy to belittle any past and to glorify one’s own present, since the future can only be conquered if we establish the new foundations today toward a brave new world when the horrors of the old days can be laid to rest, that is, simply be ignored. Ironically, however, it will take only a very short time for our own history to sink away into the past, making us seemingly as irrelevant as the medieval era, for instance.
The playful interest in the Middle Ages, on the other hand, which appears to reach unforeseen and breathtaking proportions in popular culture today, does not detract from this generally negative opinion, since so many myths about the medieval era dominate people’s minds.2 Even belittling the world of our grand-parents as having been out of touch, primitive, if not barbaric (since they did not know the i-phone or i-pad, etc.), seems to be fashionable today. Students and administrators at universities suggest that the Humanities ought to jettison even such literary giants as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, not to mention Chrétien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Straßburg, or Marie de France. The corporatization of the entire education system continues to follow ominous drummers, and I am afraid that politicians might embrace more the capitalistic model than the humanistic ideal of empowering young generations with a solid, wide-ranging, and in-depth education that is not limited by presentism, the catch-all concept of so-called ‘progressive’ pedagogical innovations.
Does such a one-sided modernist perspective even address or alleviate the problems we face today? Would it be appropriate to claim that the questions of the present world are exactly that, the result of modern concerns and conditions only, requiring, for their solution, an understanding of what is happening today only? Asking this rhetorical question is tantamount to denying it since human life continues to be rife with severe difficulties that do not differ fundamentally from those that certainly existed in the past and extend into the present. Virtually all issues that affect our modern lives prove to be surprisingly, if not shockingly, similar to those that had vexed people in the past, as if human beings are not fully capable of learning from previous experiences.
The framework of our modern existence has certainly changed, but the central challenges seem to be very much the same. Conflicts in love and marriage, for instance, were as much discussed then as well as today (at least since the twelfth century). Social tensions involving representatives of the aristocratic class and those of the peasant class might have shifted into different directions (workers versus employers), but the essential concerns continue to be of greatest concern for all people in this world. Much more poignant, however, prove to be issues that erupt today because of a variety of historical conditions that must not be ignored. We are individuals with roots in the past, and the metaphorical leaves of the future will come forth if water―our understanding of and experience with the past―can be pumped to the highest point of the panoply, that is, our tomorrow, when we need to draw from previous learning to handle the challenges of the future.
One of those issues concerns the question of toleration/tolerance, especially since we live in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual world in which people of many different religions and ideologies come together and recognize, hopefully, the utmost necessity—to find a form of constructive cohabitation within a social community. Since ancient times, with the rise of monotheistic religion, tensions among people have grown precipitously, and since the Muslim expansion in the seventh century and then since the time of the crusades (1096-1291), Islam and Christianity have been at war with each other, so to speak. European anti-Judaism and subsequent anti-Semitism followed suit and continues to be a horrible, but certainly still dangerous aspect in some quarters of our societies. But Christian religion, above all, is based on the ideal of love, which ultimately also entails tolerance, so we are required to listen to the ancient roots of our own civilization (and faith) if we are to prosper today and in the future. In fact, if we search carefully in the Qur’an, very similar statements can also be found as to peace, harmony, community, love, and faith, here disregarding many other statements to the opposite. The struggle concerning the establishment of a peaceful and harmonious form of human society is ongoing, and actually constitutes a fundamental aspect of all our existence.
The aggressive nature of human existence cannot be ignored, but it is not enough simply to reject it from an idealistic point of view and calling it “the evil.” We must understand it first, and this requires a realistic and pragmatic approach. This process entails that we comprehend the historical nature of our world and ourselves. Irrespective of many different revolutions and huge paradigm shifts since antiquity, the essence of our culture and identity continues to be deeply anchored in the past when the ideological and religious polarities were created and which exert such a strong influence on us today.
Significantly, the debate regarding toleration/tolerance knows of long historical roots. Some of those I would like to point out briefly, so as not to enter a lengthy discussion about individual literary texts and other documents, but to profile the growth trajectory from the Middle Ages to today by highlighting just a few cases involving the three monotheistic world religions. Already the highly reputed philosopher Peter Abelard (d. 1142), who exchanged the famous letters with his mistress and later wife, then abbess, Heloise, made a major contribution to the discourse on the question regarding the true faith by publishing the intriguing Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian between 1136 and 1139.3 Before him, Gilbert of Crispin had already written the Disputatio Judei et Christiani and the Disputatio cum gentili (ca. 1092-1093), while Abelard himself was followed by the Catalan theologian Ramon Llull with his Liber de gentili et tribus sapientibus (ca. 1275). After the fall of the Eastern Roman capital, Constantinople, to the Ottomans in 1453, the German Bishop and Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa produced another example of this tradition of Western attempts to deal with other religions with his De pace fidei.4 That military conquest by the Turks rocked all of Europe, and yet this was the very catalyst for Nicholas to write his dialogic treatise to find common ground for all religions.
One internal contradiction in all such Christian attempts at toleration and tolerance consists, at the end, in their effort to convince the representatives of Jews or Muslims that Christ is the true God and that they only need to acknowledge Him to be saved as well. In other words, the hypocrisy is never completely avoided though it was an integral aspect of monotheism. Nevertheless, the fact by itself that Abelard, like the one predecessor and the several successors, granted a Jew, for instance, full equality in the intellectual debate in which the foundation of the various religions is probed, deserves great attention. His decision to integrate a Jew in this exchange must be recognized as a major step forward toward toleration, even though probably not yet tolerance. The Jew is given much room to explain his faith and its philosophical grounding, especially pertaining to the Law, wherein the disagreement with the Philosopher, hence the Christian, rests. But at the end of that debate the final decision is withheld and the Judge insists on his need to learn more at first (89), which indicates the great respect he has for both positions.
Next, the Philosopher debates with the Christian, and they focus once again on the proper interpretation of Holy Scripture, which transforms their dialectic engagement into a philological effort to reach truth. Unfortunately, Abelard’s text then breaks off, and we do not know what the full outcome would have been, if he even could have foreseen one to solve the aporia. But both here and in the parallel texts mentioned above, these medieval writers clearly envisioned alternative voices to be heard and allowed Jews, Muslims, Turks, Chaldeans, and others to participate in the discourse on a virtually equal footing.
In Nicholas of Cusa’s De Pace Fidei, we observe a large number of individuals debating with The Word, or St. Peter, about the meaning of the one true God, faith, and the ultimate truth. As we are told from early on, people simply develop different opinions, rituals, habits, concepts, and ideas, and that out of a multitude of people there always rises a multitude of belief systems. Nevertheless, all those are nothing but diverse manifestations of one and the same truth, identifiable as wisdom, an ideal that should be shared by all people. Even though Nicholas at the end turns back to his own faith in the Christian God, he predicates the entire discussion on the concept that “there should be one religion and one veneration of worship.”5 Nicholas firmly believed in the ultimate power of rationality (and this in the late Middle Ages!), arguing “Since truth is one and since it is not possible that it not be understood by every free intellect, all diversity of religions will be led to one orthodox faith” (284).
At the foundation of the universe there was unity, or wisdom, and the emanation of all beings subsequently led to a myriad of manifestations, but this should not blind us to the basic truth that “before all plurality is unity” (284). That unity, grounded in wisdom, Nicholas equates with eternity, which then leads to God, the one behind all other perceived or projected gods (287)―very much in light of the teachings of the late-antique philosopher Boethius (De consolatione philosophiae, ca. 525). The bishop-writers goes so far as to have the Jew comment: “And what then is the Holy Spirit of God except the love which is God? For nothing is verified of the most simple God that he is not himself. If it is true that God has a Word, it is true that the Word is God; if it is true that God has a Spirit, it is true that the Spirit is God” (291). Even though it might seem doubtful that a devout Jew both then and today would agree with this interpretation placed into a Jew’s mouth―true religion being a form of love―the fundamental impetus by the author is to make it possible for rational intellectuals to agree on one faith after all. But we learn subsequently from the Scythian that “love joins. Hence love, or charity, which is God, can be called this spirit whose power is diffused throughout the universe” (292).
The European Middle Ages were not a monolith in religious terms, despite the supreme dominance of the Catholic Church. The presence of Jews throughout Europe was one aspect, but then there were contacts with Muslims both in the Iberian Peninsula and in Southern Italy. The Western Church had its strong nemesis in the Eastern, or Orthodox, Church, and within the West constantly heretical groups emerged or were identified, leading to a multitude of religious and military conflicts (e.g., with the Cathars, but also with the Beguines, not to mention the many mystics).6 Toleration and tolerance were already major issues in the premodern world, and even though they did not find good solutions, they were topics of discussions already then.
If we think about the history of love, for instance, as a parallel discourse, we can discover amazing historical sources, both in erotic and in religious terms, illustrating the puzzling diversity of opinions. By the same token, Wolfram von Eschenbach, for instance, projected stunning examples of intercultural and interreligious examples in his Parzival (ca. 1205) and, to some extent, in his Willehalm (ca. 1218). Of course, he could not develop concepts of tolerance as we understand it today in the post-Enlightenment age. Nevertheless, his attempts to reach out to other cultures and other religions within the framework of medieval Christendom were, to say the least, highly impressive and continue to amaze us until today.7
The most impressive case, however, illustrating how much some medieval writers were capable of embracing a concept of alterity (almost in a postmodern sense), might well be Giovanni Boccaccio with his Decameron, one of the best known and most admired literary masterpieces of fourteenth-century Italian literature. In the third story of the first day we hear of a Jew Melchisedech who is forced by the Muslim ruler Saladin to judge which one of the three monotheistic religions is the true one. He wisely relates a parable of a rich and wealthy man who has one son whom he loves deeply and to whom he grants a most valuable ring as a sign of his rank as the head of the family. That son follows this new tradition, and so it continues for generations until a father has three sons whom he loves equally. Not being able to decide on the one single heir, he has two other rings made that cannot be distinguished from the “authentic” one and passes them on to his sons. No one then knows, after the father’s death, who has the original and true ring, and that is the same situation with the three religions, or laws, as the Jew explains to Saladin.8 Most famously, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing then retold the same story in his play Nathan der Weise from 1779, but he then added that the true ring would shine forth when the owner of the original ring would demonstrate this by being loved by people. Religion thus transformed into a medium of bringing all individuals together in a harmonious community.
However, we do not need to linger on the age of Enlightenment and dismiss the earlier examples discussed above. Already the high Middle Ages brought forth numerous examples of various attempts by poets and philosophers to engage constructively and harmoniously with representatives of other religions. Tolerance might certainly be a concept that emerged only by the late eighteenth century in the course of modern philosophical concepts (Kant). But there is no doubt that toleration was already explored as a practical model much earlier. It thus makes very good sense to discuss these medieval examples in order to grasp issues of human interaction as they concern us today as well. The past world is not simply a dimension of antiquarian interest. Instead, a close examination of medieval literature, philosophy, religion, and art history, for instance, allows us to gain insight into significant models of human behavior, values, concepts, ideals, problems, and challenges that promise to help us today in many different fashions to cope with our own concerns and conflicts. We continue to grow (hopefully, forward), and this growth is predicated on the experiences with and understanding of the past. It is simply not true that medieval people were unaware of toleration/tolerance; instead, as we have seen, there were many attempts to come to terms with other religions, cultures, and languages. True and full tolerance might be an ideal that we are still striving for, so it would be inappropriate for us today to criticize our forerunners for shortcomings in that regard. Instead, we need to learn from past efforts to deal with the “others” beyond the religious and cultural divide.
Love is a very high and idealistic goal, and it cannot be achieved without us first having found ourselves. The common problem, both in the Middle Ages and today, consists of the danger that in that process we establish too firm and blinding perspectives and ignore the other side. Love, or tolerance, is not to take from the other, but to give to the other. Both Abelard and Boccaccio, and also Wolfram and Nicholas of Cusa seem to have understood that ideal and made worthwhile attempts to transgress their own cultural limits and to reach out to the others by paying them respect, first of all. Extending hands is a difficult, ultimately, however, wonderful process that makes us truly human. We can learn important lessons about these insights already from medieval writers and thinkers, especially since their ideas represent, so to speak, the water which is pumped from the roots to the leaves, that is, to us. After all, to return to the metaphor used above, no tree can survive without roots, so we as a society cannot survive without acknowledging our past. Toleration and tolerance are two very difficult aspects in human life, and both must be learned, as hard as that task might be altogether. The lessons from the past continue to impact us deeply, and studying aspects of the Middle Ages allows us to comprehend who we are, where we have come from, what alternatives there might be, and how we can proceed from here in light of the past.
Notes
1. I refrain here from extensive footnoting since I want to keep these reflections in the form of an essay.
2. Albrecht Classen, The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-Making Process. The New Middle Ages (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Misconceptions About the Middle Ages, ed. Stephen J. Harris and Bryon Lee Grigsby. Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture, 7 (New York: Routledge, 2008).
3. Peter Abelard, Ethical Writings: His Ethics or “Know Yourself” and his Dialogue Between a Philosopher, a Jew and a Christian, trans. Paul Vincent Spade, with an intro. by Marilyn McCord Adams (Indianapolis, IN, and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1995).
4. Cary J. Nederman, Worlds of Difference: European Discourses on Toleration c. 1100-c. 1550 (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000); see also Wege zur Toleranz: Geschichte einer europäischen Idee in Quellen, ed., intro., and explanations by Heinrich Schmidinger (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2002).
5. Here I quote from a selection that I have included in my text anthology, Medieval Answers to Modern Problems, ed. Albrecht Classen. 2nd rev. ed. (2012; San Diego: Cognella, University Readers, 2013), 283.
6. East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Transcultural Experiences in the Premodern World, ed. Albrecht Classen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 14 (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2013); Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, ed. James Muldoon (Gainesville, Tallahassee, et al.: University Press of Florida, 1997). This is a vibrant and expansive research area.
7. There are, of course, opposite opinions, such as by Jerold C. Frakes, Vernacular and Latin Literary Discourses of the Muslim Other in Medieval Germany. The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), but his negative position seems to be a too extreme reading from a postmodern perspective.
8. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. Richard Aldington (New York: Dell Publishing, 1930), 60-61. For more global perspectives, see Albrecht Classen, “Early Outreaches from Medieval Christendom to the Muslim East: Wolfram von Eschenbach, Ramon Llull and Nicholas of Cusa Explore Options to Communicate with Representatives of Arabic Islam: Tolerance already in the Middle Ages?” Studia Neophilologica 84.2 (2012): 1-15. Boccaccio’s story has already been discussed from many perspectives; see, for instance, Alan Mittleman, “Toleration, Liberty, and Truth: A Parable,” Harvard Theological Review 95.4 (2002): 353-72.
