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Reviewed by:
  • In Light of Another’s Word: European Ethnography in the Middle Ages by Shirin A. Khanmohamadi, and: Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245–1510 by Kim M. Phillips
  • Anthony Bale
In Light of Anothers Word: European Ethnography in the Middle Ages. By Shirin A. Khanmohamadi. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Pp. 202, 1 b/w illustration. $47.50.
Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245–1510. By Kim M. Phillips. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Pp. x + 314, 6 b/w illustrations. $79.95.

In the early summer of 1414, the English pilgrim and visionary Margery Kempe (ca. 1373–ca. 1439) struggled up what she called “Mownt Qwarentyne”—that is, Mount Quarantine (Jabal al-Qarantal)—near the city of Jericho, about 50km to the northeast of Jerusalem. Kempe, who recorded the trip in The Book of Margery Kempe (1436–38), was at the mountain to see the site of Christ’s temptation, where he had spent forty days and nights (the quarantaine that gives the mountain its name) in the “wilderness” (Mt. 4). According to Kempe’s account,

… ther sche preyd hir felawshep to helpyn hir up onto the Mownt. And thei seyd nay, for thei cowd not wel helpyn hemself. Than had sche mekyl sorwe for sche myth not comyn on the hille. And anon happyd a Sarazyn, a welfaryng man, to comyn by hir, and sche put a grote in hys hand, makyng to hym a token for to bryng hir onto the Mownt. And as swythe the Sarazyn toke hir undyr hys arme and led hir up onto the hey Mownt wher owyr Lord fastyd fowrty days. Than was sche sor athryste and had no comfort of hir felashyp.

The Holy Land at this point was under Mameluke control, and Kempe visited as part of a Franciscan-led pilgrimage group. The pilgrims would have been licensed only to travel where the Islamic rulers of the region allowed. It is not clear from Kempe’s account whereabouts on the mountain she was trying to get to; in the [End Page 230] early fifteenth century, there were the vestiges, possibly abandoned, of a Greek or Georgian monastery. Certainly, there was no formal Latin Christian church or altar there in 1414, but Kempe might have found a popular pilgrimage site with visitors from various denominations and backgrounds.

One of the striking details of Kempe’s account is her mention of the “welfaryng”—handsome, good-looking—“Saracen.” Kempe’s personal via dolorosa included a range of unhappy interactions with her fellow Christians on the route from England to the Holy Land. And once again, at Quarantine, the “felawship” is conspicuous in its lack of fellowship, whereas an outsider, the handsome local man, comes to Kempe’s aid. This is, clearly, a relationship of mutual power, encapsulated not only in the “grote” that Kempe puts into the man’s hand but in the capacity of the “Saracen” to help the thirsty, lonely Kempe. The encounter might be read as a fleeting record of protocolonial desire, as Kempe’s wandering eyes alight on the exotic native, understood through the catch-all term of alterity, the “Sarazyn.” In Kempe’s Middle English, this might have indicated a heathen, a pagan, a non-Christian, or a foreigner: in other words, an undefined person of difference. Historically, the pilgrims’ guides might have been Arabic-speaking Greek Christians, Palestinian Jews, or Muslims. In Kempe’s term “Sarazyn” we might discern a misrecognition of other differences, as the local population is homogenized in its difference from her.

I invoke this brief moment from Kempe’s Book principally in order to raise questions about how people in the European Middle Ages might have understood “other people.” Might Kempe’s “good” relationship with the “Sarazyn,” and her concomitantly poor relationship with her companions, suggest that medieval texts can stage a world less xenophobic, less divided, less judgmental, than the early modern world that followed? Might we look to medieval texts not for...

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