Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages

4. Peter of Cluny on the “Diabolical Heresy of the Saracens”

 4  Peterof Clunyonthe “DiabolicalHeresyof theSaracens” Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, traveled to Spain in 1142–43. There he assembled a team of translators whom he enticed to produce a full, annotated Latin version of the Qur’ân, along with translations of other Muslim texts and of an Arab-Christian polemical work, the Risâlat al-Kindî. Using this collection of texts, Peter himself composed two anti-Islamic tracts: the first, his Summa totius haeresis Saracenorum, describes and vilifies Islam to a Christian readership, and the second, the Contra sectam siue haeresim Saracenorum, attempts to refute Islam on its own terms and enjoins its Muslim readers to convert to Christianity.1 Why did Peter of Cluny undertake, at great cost and considerable effort, this ambitious venture? James Kritzeck rightly emphasizes the uniqueness of this endeavor and the zeal with which Peter and his associates brought it to completion. Yet if Kritzeck characterizes it as a “project to study, comprehensively and from original sources, the religion of Islam,”2 these are not the terms that Peter of Cluny himself employs. For Peter, the point is not to “study” a “religion” but to refute a particularly vile form of heresy. Previous scholars have shown that Kritzeck’s vision of Peter as a tolerant, irenic student of Islam is wide of the mark; yet these same scholars, seeming to accept Peter’s own claim that no one before him had refuted the “heretic” Muhammad, ignore Peter’s use of earlier anti-Muslim polemic.3 This chapter is an attempt to rectify this picture, to place Peter of Cluny’s important initiative in context, or rather in two contexts: first, Peter’s selec- Peter the Venerable on the “Diabolical Heresy of the Saracens” / 47 tive use of an earlier Christian Arabic tradition of anti-Muslim polemic and, second, Peter’s own very particular concerns and outlook, which shape his views of Islam. Peter (like other twelfth-century authors on Islam) understood and portrayed this “Saracen heresy” according to the fears and hopes of twelfth-century Europe. Peter uses previous polemical works: the Risâlat al-Kindî (by a ninth- or tenth-century Arab Christian author) and the Dialogi contra Iudeos of Andalusian Petrus Alfonsi. He nevertheless portrays Islam in a very different light, reflecting the preoccupation with heretics close to home, the ambivalence toward philosophical and scientific study, and a need to intellectually justify Christianity in the face of a wave of texts and ideas flowing in from the Arab world. He strove to explain Islam in ways that would account for the erudition and opulence of its adherents while reassuring the Christian reader that he was right to remain true to his ancestral faith. Peter of Cluny was poised at the confluence of various tides of change surging across Europe: monastic reform, new heretical movements, new applications of logic to theology (including attempts to prove the fundamental doctrines of Christianity by rational arguments). Peter wrote to condemn the heretic Peter of Bruys, he mediated between Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux, welcoming Abelard as one of his monks, he read Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogi contra Iudeos, reusing its anti-Talmudic arguments in his own Adversus Iudeorum inveteratam duritiem, and he traveled to Spain where he hired translators—taking them away from their study of philosophy and astronomy—to translate the series of texts on Islam often (and rather misleadingly ) called the Collectio Toletana, despite the fact that nothing links them with Toledo. Throughout Peter’s polemics, we see hopes and worries of the abbot, fighter of heresies, and interested spectator of the new developments in knowledge. What intellectual baggage did Peter bring along on his encounter with Islam? He did not confront it tabula rasa. How then did his previous experiences and ideas affect the way he read and reacted to the Qur’ân and the other works that had been translated? My aim is not to narrate Peter’s biography ; that has been amply done.4 Rather, I want to highlight the elements in his life that will shape his understanding of Islam, the intellectual frame of reference that was constructed before he confronted the law of Muhammad and through which he read the Qur’ân and other texts on Islam. The first and broadest influence is his monastic education and his experience as a monk and abbot. As a child oblate virtually weaned on the 48 / Sons of Ishmael Bible...