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An abbot between two cultures: Maiolus of Cluny considers the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet

Majolus of Cluny An abbot between two cultures: Maiolus of Cluny considers the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet

Scott G. Bruce

Early Medieval Europe: 2007 15 (4) 426–440

Abstract

In July 972, Muslim raiders from the citadel of Fraxinetum (modern La Garde-Freinet) abducted Abbot Maiolus of Cluny and his entourage as they crossed the Great Saint Bernard Pass ( Mons Iovis ) in the western Alps. This article analyses a little-known letter that Maiolus sent to his Cluniac brethren to secure payment for his release. Interwoven with biblical passages drawn from the Book of Samuel and the Psalter, the abbot’s ransom letter provides the rare opportunity to examine how one of the most influential Christian leaders of the tenth century perceived his Muslim captors and their religion.

Most studies of religious encounters between adherents to Islam and Christianity in the premodern era have focused on the period between the formulation of Abbot Peter the Venerable of Cluny’s enterprise to translate the Qur’an into Latin in the 1140s and the military successes of Sultan Mehmed II that propelled the Turks across the Bosporus in the middle of the fifteenth century. In specialized studies, however scholars have also begun to chart the lesser-known waters of early medieval contact between the religious cultures of Christian Europe and the Muslim Mediterranean from the rise of Islam in the early seventh century and the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 by participants in the First Crusade. 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 an unprecedented tenth-century episode involving a fateful encounter between a Cluniac abbot and a band of Muslim warriors.

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