Noble Saracen or Muslim Enemy? The Changing Image of the Saracen in Late Medieval Italian Literature

Abstract

In a 1977 study, John Patrick Donnelly pointed out the “shapelessness of Moslem culture” portrayed in High Renaissance epic poems, and the apparent absence of “a sense of European racial superiority over Turks and Arabs.”1 In a more recent study, Antonio Franceschetti suggested that this “improvement in the attitude of Italian writers towards the ‘Saracens’” during the course of the fifteenth century was due in part to various changes initiated by the Florentine prose writer Andrea da Barberino (ca. 1371–ca. 1431).2 On the other hand, Peter Noble assures us that “[t]here was already a long tradition of respect for certain Saracens” in French epic poetry, evidence of which may be found in the figure of Margariz in the Chanson de Roland.3 Taking these varying opinions as a point of departure, this essay will attempt to fill the gaps left by the aforementioned studies by examining chivalric texts that they ignored. With the Chanson de Roland, the supreme paradigm of Old French epic, as one terminus, and the Italian Renaissance epic, representative of the genre’s fullest flowering, as the other, I will seek to determine if the image of the Saracen in late medieval Italian literature did indeed change with respect to its chanson de geste predecessors, and how later adaptations of this literary material reflected, or departed from, French models. Throughout this study, I use the term “Saracen” to differentiate the literary construct from its historical Muslim counterpart. I will focus on the Saracen warrior, although other marginalized figures such as Muslim women, “priests,” or merchants are also represented in these texts.