Murder and Morality in Salman und Morolf

There is an ethical dilemma in Salman und Morolf. This dilemma is not only medieval but also one of modern interpretation. Since the work was first analyzed by great scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this particular event has been referred to as the “pilgrim scene.”¹ Furthermore, this episode is shared in another epic, Morant und Galie. Here, too, critics have downplayed its significance by calling it an “epische Unterbrechung” (epic break) and “spielmännisch” (conceived by a minstrel), interpreting it as another instance of cunning and disguise.² These scenes are pivotal in furthering the plot in both narratives, but underlying them, in the case of Salman und Morolf, is the unaccountable difficulty of religious identity formation and violence against a religious minority.

In Salman und Morolf, Morolf, the main protagonist of the story, murders an old Jewish man, Berman. He is not a pilgrim, is not even Christian, and as a member of a minority religion, extremely vulnerable. Furthermore, his murder is explicit, and the aftermath of skinning and curing the old man’s skin graphic. However, the inclusion of flaying the old man and using him as a disguise is not necessary. There are a multitude of other scenes in the story where Morolf chooses different disguises that are not as violent as the first. Morolf, however, uses Berman’s skin to disguise himself and is called by the narrator “pilgrim” on the way to Fore’s court. This problematic episode is at the center of the current investigation. A close reading and analysis will lead to a deeper understanding of the ethical problems that the scene poses for modern scholarship. Furthermore, by delving into a search for sources of the motif, a more differentiated picture of Morolf and his actions appears.

Catherine Brown states in her article “In the Middle” that “to make texts familiar is to have it in your veins, to belong to and with it, to make it yours and vice versa. The most vivid figures at a medieval or a modern hand for such intimate mixing and exchange come from the alimentary and the erotic.”³ While those two topics provide vivid examples, as she proves with medieval metaphors of consumption and reading, I venture toward a third figure—transgression—an act of violence in the case of this essay. The “pilgrim scene” shows metaphors of consumption, cannibalism, and transformation in a similar way Brown describes in her text and reading metaphors. Only here, knowledge is not acquired through reading, but through consumption and owning the body of another through violence. If we are to engage with the narrative in a meaningful way, it is time to claim responsibility for this scene and its ethical repercussions.⁴

Looking at Brown’s conceptualization of past and present—same and other—makes the “pilgrim scene” stand out in stark relief to the rest of the narrative. If we think of the medieval past, as Brown stated, as the “colonized, foreign country” and our own entanglement with it as a binary between same and other, the past becomes a place where “they do things differently.”⁵ In this sense, interpreters and readers of texts disavow a certain responsibility they have to the historical context and modern implications.

This unaccountability is twofold: First is the idea that what happened in the past (especially if it is an act of transgression) was different from ours and, therefore, less sophisticated and enlightened. This approach leads to a dismissive attitude. Second, with this dismissiveness come the double fallacies of whimsy and condescension. Idealizing and romanticizing the medieval period is not only a modern phenomenon. The very word “romantic” points to the nineteenth century, when medieval works were revived and interpreted.⁶ However, with interest and admiration for the medieval period came an attitude of historical superiority. This attitude colonizes the medieval period with moral expectations and normative societal behaviors of a different period.

Condescension, on the other hand, occurs for moments in literature that are deemed low-brow and uncultured. As a matter of fact, Salman und Morolf was placed into a...