Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet: Hagiography and the Problem of Islam in Medieval Europe by Scott G. Bruce (review)

In a compact investigation into southern Europe's relationship with Islam, ScottG. Bruce's Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet: Hagiography and the Problem of Islam in Medieval Europe explains the devotional context of the first known written conversion invitation, Summa totius haeresis Sarracenorum (Summary of the Entire Heresy of the Saracens), to a Muslim audience. The author of this invitation is Peter the Venerable (d. 1156), the prolific abbot of Cluny in the twelfth century who is probably most famous for commissioning the first Latin translation of the Qur'an. Through a long and winding method of process of elimination, Bruce advances the suggestion that Peter's treatise was influenced most significantly not by the surrounding discourse of anti-heretical reasoning but by the hagiographic accounts of Maiolus, who, like Peter, once led the same monastic powerhouse. Maiolus was captured by Muslims in 972 while crossing the Alps, a scene that haunts the entire book and several generations of abbots. In increasingly suspect, conflicting, and elaborate hagiographical accounts of this ordeal, Maiolus proves himself to be a capable preacher and a performer of miracles. According to Bruce, both of these qualities—persuasive eloquence and supernatural intercession—unveil themselves in Peter's deathbed attempt to address the threat of Islam in Europe in that he feels confident that words alone will incite conversion.

Bruce's book begins with a well-researched record of the environment of travel across the Alps in the early Middle Ages. Close readings of travel prayers and accounts suggests that beasts, climate, and mountain pirates were the main culprits of trans-Alpine casualties. Maiolus, far from the only victim of such exploits, was—unfortunately for the Muslim brigands—the most high-profile and dear amongst local, armed Christian polities. Once captured, Maiolus pens his own ransom note, which survives in a few cross-referencing manuscripts. Unlike the accounts that follow in the hagiographical tradition, the note does not bespeak his conditions but economically echoes well-known passages from II Samuel and Psalms that would hasten his subordinates to his aid. A pre-Crusade era allegorical connection between the Muslim captors and Belial negatively characterize his aggressors for what appears to be centuries.

Of the hagiographies under consideration, early in the book Bruce examines the anonymous volume by Pavian monk (BHL 5180), Syrus' Vita, Olido's Vita, and Glaber's Historiarum Libri Quinque; later, in the last twenty pages of the book, he introduces Nalgod's retelling of Maiolus' life, as commissioned by Peter the Venerable himself, to adduce Peter's ambitious desire to distill Cluny's saintly legacy. In recounting the hagiographies composed in memory of Maiolus' life, Bruce highlights certain peculiarities that may have inadvertently influenced his legacy in relation to Muslims in the Cluniac community. First, the abduction episodes, which hardly feature as a defining moment in Maiolus' existence, tend to reflect, among other things, territorial wars between monasteries. Second, especially in Glaber's account, some Muslims demonstrate Christlike compassion toward the imprisoned abbot. In a similar vein, different accounts illustrate heterogenous fates of the captors: some embrace baptism in narratives that do not end in complete Muslim annihilation. These hagiographies offer a bundle of lenses through which to view not only the strengths of Maiolus' character and saintedness but also the disposition and faculties of those who took Muhammad to be the greatest and final prophet.

Bruce's rhetorical efforts to erode a dichotomous Muslim-Christian tone (sometimes present in scholarship that is becoming outmoded) are noticeable. Namely, he uses words like "adventurers" (1) or "entrepreneurial" (7, 26) to describe the abduction activities at La Garde-Freinet, stressing repeatedly that kidnapping for ransom and slave-trading were imperative to the survival of Alpine Muslims, who were, as he demonstrates, most likely isolated from any recognized Islamic polity. Similarly, Maiolus is "waylaid" (1) rather than kidnapped...