Abstract
The chapter discusses the development of the parable in European-Christian traditions. It examines works published between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries, including Li dis dou vrai aniel, Gesta Romanorum, Il Novellino, Bosone da Gubbio’s L’avventuroso Ciciliano, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Jans der Enikel’s Weltchronik, Francesco dell Tuppo’s 1485 edition of Aesop’s Fables, Liber divinae revelationis, Robert Gobin’s Les loups ravissans, and the sixteenth-century version of Menocchio, based on Boccaccio’s Book of One-Hundred Novellas. By comparing these versions to one another, and to Étienne de Bourbon’s exemplum, this chapter demonstrates the development of intellectual attitudes in Western Christian society toward religious tolerance and religious skepticism.
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Notes
- 1.
Adolf Tobler, ed., Li dis dou vrai aniel. Die Parabel von dem Ächten Ringe, französische Dichtung des dreizehnten Jahrhunnderts, Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1912. The only translation into a modern language is the German translation, which appears in Peter Demetz, Nathan der Weise, Berlin and Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1967, pp. 202–211.
- 2.
A discussion of the question of the date and provenance of the work appears in Adolf Tobler’s introduction to The Story of the True Ring, in Tobler, Li dis dou vrai aniel, pp. xiii–xxii.
- 3.
Ibid., 359–363, p. 15 “On doit mout coser le pape et les grans segneurs.”
- 4.
Ibid., pp. 4–11.
- 5.
Ibid., 45–55, pp. 4–5.
- 6.
Ibid., pp. xxii–xxxvii.
- 7.
Ibid., 67–68, 71–7, 285–287, 300–301, pp. 5, 132–13.
- 8.
Saladin’s appearance in the Rings Parable is discussed below.
- 9.
“Acre estoit li vraie piere,” ibid., 351, p. 15.
- 10.
On the literature of the period written for the sake of saving the Holy Land, see Iris Shagrir, The Crusades: History and Historiography, Ra’anana: The Open University, 2014, pp. 336–343 (in Hebrew); and Lee Manion, Narrating the Crusades: Loss and Recovery in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
- 11.
The basic critical research on this collection was carried out by Hermann Oesterley, Gesta Romanorum, Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1872, which includes a critical edition based on the printed Latin editions of the collection. Oesterley’s research was summarized, with the addition of conclusions derived from other studies, in Sidney J. H. Herrtage, The Early English Versions of the Gesta Romanorum, London: N. Trübner, 1879 [rep. 1898], Introduction, pp. vii–xxxi. For a more recent translation, see: Gesta Romanorum, trans. Christopher Stace, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016.
- 12.
Oesterley, Gesta Romanorum, pp. 416–417; Gesta Romanorum, trans. Stace, p. 229.
- 13.
Herrtage, The Early English Versions, p. xiii.
- 14.
This version of the story is closely related to a similar one originally told in Hebrew in the Talmudic tractate Baba Batra III:58. The Hebrew source tells of a father of ten sons who overhears his wife confessing to her daughter that only one of the ten is his true son. The others, he overhears, were born in adultery. When the husband dies, his inheritance must go to his true son. Rabbi Bnaha gave advice to the sons. They were to go to the father’s tomb, knock on it, and ask him for the rightful son. Nine of the sons followed this advice; only one did not dare to disturb the father’s peace. The rabbi then recognized him as the true son entitled to the inheritance. In the Christian literature of the Middle Ages, the story developed and changed. The number of sons was reduced, and they were asked not to knock on the father’s grave, but to shoot at the father’s corpse. Finally the rabbi was replaced by a judge or even King Solomon himself. See Wolfgang Stechow, “Shooting at Father’s Corpse,” Art Bulletin 24:3 (1942), pp. 213–225. On the medieval Hebrew retelling of the Talmudic tale, see Rella Kushelevsky, “Family Images and Identities in a Medieval Jewish Version of Shooting at Father’s Corpse (Tubach 1272). A Comparative Study,” Fabula 52 (2011), pp. 228–240, and Rella Kushelevsky, Tales in Context: Sefer ha-ma’asim in Medieval Northern France, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017. The story is nicely depicted on a medieval choir stall in the Cologne Cathedral; see Ulrike Brinkmann and Rolf Lauer, “Judendarstellungen im Kölner Dom,” in: Bernd Wacker and Rolf Lauer, eds., Kölner Domblatt: Der Kölner Dom und die Juden, vol. 73, Köln 2008, pp. 13–58. I am grateful to Dr. Christiane Twiehaus, Head of Department for Jewish History and Culture in Cologne, for introducing me to this artwork.
- 15.
Translated from the Old English in Herrtage, The Early English Versions, pp. 167–170; (ms.Harl.7333).
- 16.
The third branch version of the Gesta Romanorum—represented (as previously noted) by the Augsburg edition of 1489—appears (in German) in: Demetz, Nathan der Weise, p. 212, with the same details as in Oesterley’s version. In another manuscript, written in Innsbruck in 1342, the story De tribus annuli (“About the Three Rings”) appears as follows:
There was one knight who had three sons. When he was about to die, he gave his estate to his eldest, his treasury to the second, and to his third, real son, he gave a precious ring that was more valuable than what the others had received. To the two first sons he gave two rings, but not precious ones. All the rings looked alike in appearance, but their qualities were different. After the father died, the first son said: “I have my father’s precious ring”; the second said: “So do I.” The third replied: “It would not be just for the ring to be in your possession—for the first received the inheritance, the second received the treasury, and I conclude therefore that I am the owner of the true ring.” The story, couched here in relatively spare language, bears no allegorical message or lesson that might give it meaning, beyond a description of the division of the inheritance among the sons. The storyteller may have supplied the allegorical explication in oral form, or perhaps the story appears here to serve no other purpose than to tell an entertaining tale.
- 17.
The Italian Novella: A Book of Essays, ed. Gloria Allaire, New York and London: Routledge, 2003, pp. 1–3.
- 18.
Translated from: Alberto Conte, ed., Il Novellino, Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2001, pp. 123–124.
- 19.
Raffaelli Bosone da Gubbio, Fortunatus Siculus o sia L’avventuroso Ciciliano, Romanzo Storico, ed. Giorgio Federico Nott, Milan: Giovanni Silvestri, 1833, pp. 455–456. For a discussion of this text and of the life and work of Bosone, see, ibid., pp. 2–7, 5–30. A new edition (which I have been unable to examine) is Bosone da Gubbio, L’avventuroso siciliano, ed. Roberto Gigliucci, Rome: Bulzoni, 1989.
- 20.
Bossolo (a small wooden container for cosmetics, or for use as an alms box).
- 21.
Translated from Fortunatus Siculus, ed. Nott, pp. 455–456.
- 22.
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, Day 1, Third Story, trans. Wayne. A. Rebhorn, New York and London, W. W. Norton and Co., 2013, pp. 43–45.
- 23.
Ibid., p. 45.
- 24.
Alessandro d’Ancona, “Le fonti del Novellino,” Studi di critica e storia letteraria, part 2, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1912, pp. 129–130; Penna, La parabola, pp. 73–77. More recently, see Fabian Alfie, “Immanuel of Rome, Alias Manoello Giudeo: The Poetics of Jewish Identity in Fourteenth Century Italy,” Italica 75 (1998), pp. 307–329; especially pp. 320–323, for the discussion of Immanuel’s familiarity with the Parable, revealed when he describes himself deliberating between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and ultimately not disclosing in the sonnet which religion he prefers.
- 25.
See reference in: d’Ancona, “Le Fonti,” p. 130.
- 26.
Conte, Il Novellino, p. 69.
- 27.
For a critique of the “enlightened” image of Frederick II, see David Abulafia, Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1988). For a thorough discussion of Frederick’s scholarly and popular portrayal, see Dorothea Weltecke, “Emperor Frederick II, ‘Sultan of Lucera,’ ‘Friend of the Muslims,’ ‘Promoter of Cultural Transfer’: Controversies and Suggestions,” in: Cultural Transfers in Dispute: Representations in Asia, Europe and the Arab World since the Middle Ages, eds. Jörg Feuchter, Friedhelm Hoffmann, and Bee Yun, Frankfurt: Campus-Verlag, 2011, pp. 85–106.
- 28.
Francesco Gabrieli, “The Transmission of Learning and Literary Influences to Western Europe: The Middle Ages,” in The Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 2 ed. P.M. Holt et al., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970, pp. 877–878; Enrico Cerulli, Il Libro della Scala e la questione delle fonti arabo-spagnole della Divina Comedia, Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1949; Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, “Translations and Translators,” in Renaissance and Renewal in the 12th Century, ed. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 458–459.
- 29.
Luard, Matthaei Parisiensis Chronica Majora, 3, pp. 520–521.
- 30.
Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, London: Paladin, 1970, pp. 64–68, 104–105; Franz Rosenthal, “Literature,” in The Legacy of Islam, ed. Joseph Schacht and C.E. Bosworth, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974, pp. 343–345; Thomas W. Arnold and Alfred Guillaume, ed., The Legacy of Islam, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931, pp. 153–154, 169, 174–176.
- 31.
Ora Limor, “Missionary merchants: Three Medieval anti-Jewish Works from Genoa,” Journal of Medieval History 17 (1991), pp. 35–51; Benjamin Z. Kedar, Merchants in Crisis, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976, pp. 21–41.
- 32.
Cf. John V. Tolan, “Mirror of Chivalry: Salah-al-Din in the Medieval European Imagination,” in Images of the Other: Europe and the Muslim World Before 1700, ed. David R. Blanks, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2006, pp. 7–38.
- 33.
Or at least until General Edmund Allenby’s entry into the city in 1917.
- 34.
William J. Purkis, “Crusading and Crusade Memory in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus miraculorum,” The Journal of Medieval History 39 (2013), p. 100.
- 35.
Bosone da Gubbio, Fortunatus, p. 261
- 36.
Dante Alighieri, Il Convivio, part 2, ed. Franca Brambilla Ageno, Florence: La Lettere, 1995, IV, pp. ix, 14; Jan M. Ziolkowski, ed. Dante and Islam, New York: Fordham University Press, 2015, p. 24.
- 37.
Boccaccio, The Decameron, Day 10, Ninth Story, pp. 571–584.
- 38.
For a discussion of ideas that Islam had many shared values with Christianity, see Irven Resnick, “Conversion from the Worst to the Best: The relationship between medieval Judaism, Islam, and Christianity,” in Contesting inter-religious conversion in the medieval world, eds. Yaniv Fox and Yosi Yisraeli, London: Routledge, 2017, pp. 197–209.
- 39.
Gaston Paris, La Leggenda di Saladino, ed. Michele Gialdroni, [1896], Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1999.
- 40.
See Margaret A. Jubb, ed., Estoires d’Outremer et de la naissance de Salehadin, Turnhout: Brepols, 1996, p. 235:
[…] et anschois ke Salehadins morust, manda il le califfe de Baudas et le patriarche de Jherusalem et des plus sages Juis c’on pot trouver en toute la tiere de Jherusalem, car il voloit savoir pour voir laquele loys estoit la meillours. Assés desputerent ensamble, et soustenoit cascuns la soie loy pour la meillour. Li Juis disoient que il ne pooit estre ke Diex nasquist sans conception de pere et de mere, ne sans engenrement, et tout autretel dist li calliffes. Encontre tout çou fu li patriarches et mout moustra de biaus examples et de bieles predications. Quant Salehadins ot oïes les paroles de cascun, il dist k’il ne savoit a laquele tenir. Dont fist trois parties de l’avoir k’il avoit conquesté. Si douna as crestiens la meillor, et l’autre as Sarrazins et la tierche as Juis et si delivra tous chiaus ke il avoit en ses prisons.
- 41.
Gaston Paris, La Leggenda di Saladino, pp. 44–46.
- 42.
Jansen Enikel, Weltchronik, ed. Ph. Strauch, MGH SS, Leipzig: Hahn, 1900, pp. 518–521. New edition and English translation: Raymond Graeme Dunphy, History as Literature: German World Chronicles of the Thirteenth Century in Verse, Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Medieval Institute Publications, 2003, pp. 17ff. See further: Albrecht Classen, “Toleranz im späten 13. Jahrhundert, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von Jans von Wien und Ramon Llull,” Mediaevistik 17 (2004), pp. 25–55.
- 43.
Enikel, Weltchronik, p. 520.
- 44.
The most significant difference between this story and the other legends about Saladin is that he is unable to choose between the religions. Similar stories had already appeared before the version discussed here, such as the story presented by Lecoy de la Marche, Étienne de Bourbon, p. 64; Stephanus de Borbone, Tractatus de diversis materiis predicabilibus (Liber secundus: De dono pietatis), ed. S. J. Berlioz, D. Ogilvie-David and C. Ribaucourt, CCCM 124A, Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. For another story in which Saladin, before dying, gathers three sages representing the three religions, asks them which is the best religion, and is ultimately baptized as Christian (as in the other stories), see Gaston Paris, La Leggenda di Saladino, pp. 44–47.
- 45.
Penna, La parabola, p. 83.
- 46.
See: Palmer A. Throop, Criticism of the Crusade: A Study of Public Opinion and Crusade Propaganda, Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1975, pp. 105–114. In 1291, the Dominican missionary Riccoldo de Monte Croce wrote a letter to God where he protests: “If it is seemly in your eyes that Muhammad has dominion, tell us and we shall worship him.” See Iris Shagrir, “The Fall of Acre as a Spiritual Crisis: The Letters of Ricoldo of Monte Croce,” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’ Histoire, 90 (2012), pp. 1107–1121.
- 47.
Umberto Eco, “Towards a new Middle Ages,” in On Signs, ed. Marshall Blonsky, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985, pp. 488–504, esp. p. 499.
- 48.
See Richard H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism [1926], Brunswick: Hesperides Press, 2008, p. 20; Diana Webb, “Domestic Religion,” in Medieval Christianity, ed. Daniel E. Bornstein, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009, pp. 303–328.
- 49.
Alfredo Mauro, Francesco del Tuppo e il suo ‘Esopo,’ Citta del Castello: Il Solco, 1925, pp. 180–184. Cf. d’Ancona, “Le fonti,” pp. 129–130.
- 50.
“Tale, illustrissimo mio signore, e delle fide, che sta in pendent da dechiararese, quando se dechiarera la questione dello anello,” Mauro, Francesco del Tuppo, p. 184
- 51.
On the diffusion of Aesop’s Fables in Francesco del Tuppo’s recension, see: ibid., pp. 201–208.
- 52.
See: Maria Picchio-Simonelli, “Prima diffusione e tradizione manoscritta del Decameron,” in Boccaccio: Secoli di vita. Atti del Congresso internazionale Boccaccio 1975, Università di California, Los Angeles, 17–19 ottobre 1975, ed. Marga Cottino-Jones and Edward F. Tuttle, Ravenna: Longo, 1977, pp. 125–142.
- 53.
Emil Ettlinger, “Eine Parallele zur Parabel von den drei Ringen,” Euphorion 19 (1912), pp. 107–110.
- 54.
Ibid., p. 108.
- 55.
The parable is quoted in: Victor Chauvin, “Documents pour la parabole des trois anneaux,” Wallonia 11 (1900), pp. 197–200, p. 199. Les loups ravissans has not yet been printed in a modern edition. I have consulted the copy of the British Library. The satirical context of the Parable therefore is still deserving of study. On the work as a whole, see Mary Beth Winn, “Beastly Power, Holy Justice in Late Medieval France: From Robert Gobin’s Loups ravissans to Books of Hours,” in Rosalind Brown-Grant, Anne D. Hedeman and Bernard Ribémont (eds.), Textual and Visual Representations of Power and Justice in Medieval France, Farnham: Ashgate, 2015, pp. 191–216.
- 56.
“Signor mio, la quistione, la qual voi mi fate e bella. E a volervene dire cio, che io ne sento, mi vi convien dire una novelletta, qual voi udirete. Se io non erro, io mi ricordo haver molte udito dire. Il Saladino conobbe, costui ottiamente essere saputo uscire del laccio, il quale davanti a piedi teso gli haveva,” from: Il Decameron di Messer Giovanni Boccacci, cittadin Fiorentino, di nuovo ristampato nella stamperia de’ Giunti, quarta editione, Florence, 1587, pp. 24–25.
- 57.
Il decamerone do Messer Giovanni Boccaccio Cittadin Fiorentino, di nuovo riformato da M. Luigi Groto, Cieco d’Adria con permissione dei superiori, Venice, 1588, pp. 30–32. See also Tim Carter, Music, Patronage and Printing in Late Renaissance Florence, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, pp. 13–18, and Brian Richardson, Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text, 1470–1600, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 143–144.
- 58.
See Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 333–358.
- 59.
Pier Mattia Tommasino, The Venetian Qur’an: A Renaissance Companion to Islam, trans. Sylvia Notini, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018, p.178.
- 60.
Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, p. 49.
- 61.
Ibid., p. 50
- 62.
Ibid., p. 49
- 63.
Ibid., p. 50.
- 64.
Ibid., pp. 41–49.
- 65.
For a comprehensive introduction and updated English translation, see John Mandeville, The Book of Marvels and Travels, trans. Anthony Bale, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. The quotation is on p. 117. Cf. Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, p. 111.
- 66.
See Ginzburg’s discussion in The Cheese and the Worms, pp. xiii–xxvi. The quote is on page xix.
- 67.
Erich Trapp, ed., Manuel II Palaiologos: Dialoge mit einem ‘Perser’, Vienna: Hermann Böhlaus, 1966, pp. 102: 42 –104: 10.
- 68.
A golden column appears in Renaissance literature as a symbol of faith. See, e.g., Matteo Maria Boiardo, Orlando Innamorato Di Bojardo: Orlando Furioso Di Ariosto, vol. 1, London: William Pickering, 1830, p. 227.
- 69.
David Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014, pp. 194–199.
- 70.
John A. Demetracopoulos, “Pope Benedict XVI’s Use of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos in Dialogue with a Muslim Muterizes: The Scholarly Background,” Archiv für mittelalterliche Philosophie und Kultur 14 (2008), pp. 298–299.
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Shagrir, I. (2019). The Evolution of the Parable between the Thirteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. In: The Parable of the Three Rings and the Idea of Religious Toleration in European Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29695-7_4
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