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Research note: 18.xii.00
Filed c:\tarjuman\RicoldusNote1.rtf
Caveat lector: The following is a set of rough working notes, placed on this site to stir the debate. Some references may be inaccurate.
RICCOLDO OF MONTE CROCE: WORKING NOTES
Anderson [Note 1] points to the "resemblances between themes and images of the Sufi writers and those of the Florentine poets" (p. 85). He wonders whether the link between Florence and the mystic East might have been the Templars, who "were soaked in the culture of the East and some may well have come into contact with Sufi schools and have learned the doctrines of the Perennial Philosophy underlying the symbolism". He also wonders about the possibility that Italian merchants might have been the channel of communication, or the court of Frederick II in Sicily.
I would suggest that there is another possible line of communication between Islam and Florence. Namely the missionary activity of the Dominicans in Palestine and the Middle East.
Anderson points to the two intellectual centres in Florence: the Franciscan convent of Santa Croce, and the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella. It has already been argued [Note 2] that Dante has thematic similarities with the views expressed by a preacher of that convent, Remigio de' Girolami. Therefore a connection between Dante and Santa Maria Novella is surmised.
We need to examine the fact that one of the most prominent Arabists and Islamists of the age operated out of Santa Maria Novella from 1267 to his death in 1320 - a period of 43 years.
This was Riccoldo of Monte Croce (1242-1320).
He entered the convent of Santa Maria Novella in 1267. In 1286-7 he set off for Acre, in Palestine, with a papal commission to preach. In 1288-9 he began writing about his experiences. He spent time traversing the whole of Palestine (Acre, Galilee, Jerusalem etc). He then moved on through Asia Minor - Erzerum, Ararat and Tabriz. He preached in and near Tabriz for several months, after which he went on to Baghdad, via Mosul and Tekrit.
The deaths of fellow Dominicans in the fall of Acre (the final collapse of the Crusader effort - 18.v.1291) plunged him into a deep crisis, which he resolved by reading religious writings on Job.
He was in Baghdad when the news of Acre reached the city. The news was accompanied by the arrival of a great number of Christian captives who were to be sold on the slave market in Baghdad. Later Riccoldo had to flee the city and travelled around disguised as a Muslim camel driver. This might have happened in or after 1294 when the Mongol ruler Ghazan khan converted to Islam and began persecuting Christians. [Note 4]
However it apears that he had stayed in Baghdad for several years, studying the Quran and other works of Islamic theology, for polemical purposes.
We do not have a precise calendar of his movements, nor do we know when he returned to Italy. We do not know whether he maintained a correspondence with Santa Maria Novella, although that would seem plausible.
However in 1301 Riccoldo is recorded as having been back in Florence. With the experience of 15 years of travelling >>and preaching<< in the Middle East, from Turkey to Baghdad. By this time he must have built himself an impressive knowledge of local languages. He had taught himself Arabic (having self-confessedly made the mistake of going to preach in Asia Minor without first learning the language… he points out that preaching via interpreters does not have the required effect). We think he knew some Hebrew. And he would have studied the Quran in the greatest of detail. He also read >>other<< works of Islamic theology.
He had written a refutation of the Quran - his "Confutatio Alcorani", completed c. 1300 - which he intended to submit to the Pope, but did not.
This is not some minor undertaking. It is major. Sufficiently serious for his book to be used by the Byzantines emperors John VI Cantacuzenos (1347-54) and Manuel II Palaiologos (1391-1425) in their dealings with Islam. Also sufficiently serious for it to be translated into German by Martin Luther. The "Verlegung des Alcoran Bruder Richardi, Prediger Ordens, Anno 1300. Verdeutscht durch D. Martin Luther, Wittemberg 1542" [British Library 3905.f.63]. [There is a question as to how much of his material is original, and how much derived from earlier Spanish texts.]
Riccoldo was finally appointed prior of Santa Maria Novella, in 1315. In other words, he was a leading figure in one of the two leading intellectual centres of Florence.
It is said that "in spite of strong prejudice, he showed remarkable breadth of view and appreciation of merit in systems the most hostile to his own." [EB 1926]
He also wrote a "Libellus contra Nationes Orientales" and a "Contra errores Judaeorum", which have not (so far as I know) been translated out of Latin.
There is also an "Itinerario ai paesi orientali di Fra Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, Domenicano, scritto del XIII secolo dato ora in luce da Fra V. Fineschi, Firenze 1793" (British Library 10076.c.4), which would be worth looking at. Riccoldo's history is summed up in "Peregrinatores medii aevi", ed. J.C.M Laurent, pub. 1864 [BL 10027.h.7]
[I should say immediately (having myself been led up this blind alley) that there is confusion in library cataloguing between >>this<< Riccoldus of Monte Croce, and another, identically named, who was taken prisoner by the Turks and wrote a "Libellus contra sectam Muhumeticam", published in Paris in 1511. I need to get clear on this.]
There is obviously an issue of dating here. Riccoldus is recorded as being present in Florence on 21.iii.1301. Dante is sentenced to exile on 27.i.1302. This is precisely the period of Dante's highest political activity in Florence. So I imagine that it is inappropriate to surmise Dante contacting with Islamic ideas in this period.
But the missionary activity of Santa Maria Novella in Palestine dates from at least 1287; and Riccoldo could well have returned to Florence before the date of 21.iii.1301; and there may have been other friars who were travelling to and fro to Palestine.
Obviously a reading of Riccoldo is required here, and I shall undertake that shortly.
However, for the moment two things should be said:
1. There is much debate about whether the "Liber Scalae Mahometi" might have been known to Dante. Saccone offers a tantalising note: "[Riccoldus] il quale inserisce un lungo brano della leggenda in una sua opera polemica >>Contra legem Sarracenorum<<. Ma varie divergenze inducono a ritenere che Ricoldo avesse ricavato il brano non dal >>Libro della Scala<<, ma da altre fonti a noi sconosciute".
This is tantalising because it suggests that Riccoldo may have had other sources for the legend of the "ascent". We can reasonably ask what those sources might have been.
2. I regard it as impossible that Riccoldo would not have known about, or heard of, the work of Ibn Arabi.
Eighty years before Riccoldo arrived in the Middle East, Ibn Arabi was travelling to many of the places which Riccoldo subsequently visited. In Mecca (1203) Ibn Arabi had begun his great treatise "Al-Futuhat al-Makkiya" ("The Mecca Spiritual Conquests"). [Finished in c. 1230, this was to contain, among other things, an extensive Treatise on Love, both spiritual and physical, and his "Alchemy of Happiness", which was arguably a model for the "Divine Comedy".] The next year (1204) Ibn Arabi leaves Mecca and travels to Mosul and Mossud. There he writes his great treatise "Revelations of Mosul: al-Tanazzunat al-Mawsiliyya". He remains in Anatolia until 1206.[Note 5]
Thus Ibn Arabi is intellectually active in Mosul in 1204. The Arabist and Islamist Riccoldo is in Mosul, actively addressing problems of Arab Islamic thought, in c.1290. How could he not have connected with the thought of Ibn Arabi?
Therefore, broadly speaking, I suggest that there exists a possible trajectory for the ideas of Ibn Arabi to reach the very heart of Florentine society in the period of Dante's early manhood.
NOTES
1. William Anderson, "Dante the Maker", Hutchinson, London, 1983.
2. Ibid., p. 85.
3. Carlo Saccone, Postface to "Il Libro della Scala di Maometto", Oscar Mondadori, 1999, p. 191.
4. Kurt Jensen has reproduced Riccoldo's missionary preaching manual Libellus ad nationes orientales at http://www.ou.dk/hum/kvj/riccoldo/Index.html. He also provides a brief introduction to, and biography of, Riccoldo.
5. Ibn 'Arabi, "Traite' de l'amour", trans. and ed. Maurice Gloton, Albin Michel, Paris, 1986.
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS
Riccoldo of Monte Croce (bis)
NOTES AND QUESTIONS
1. Riccoldus had noted qualities as a preacher: "Era considerato per uno dei più ferventi declamatori del suo tempo, ond' è che il popolo in gran folla correva ad udirlo". [Note 1]
2. Riccoldus was by no means the first Florentine monk to travel and preach in the Holy Land. "Non era cosa nuova che I Religiosi là si portassero, perchè de' nostri Fiorentini ve n'andarono molti, ed alcune ve ne fu, che sofferse per la fede il martirio. [2]
3. The text of Riccoldo's Refutation of the Quran has an extraordinary history which testifies to the circulation of ideas in the Mediterranean basin in that time. For a start, in some sections of his writing there is no pretence at originality. His consideration of the Jews (Contra errores Iudeorum) is taken wholesale from Thomas Aquinas. His work on the Quran itself draws heavily on a preceding Spanish text, which itself draws on an earlier Christian text. Riccoldo's own text was translated into Greek by D. Cydonius, and some of the editions which we have are actually translations back into Latin from the Greek [Confutatio Alcorani seu legis Saracenorum ex Graeco nuper in latinum traducta, translated by Bartholomaeus Pincernus, pub. (?) 1520 [BL 483.a.30]]. We know that the text was available in Byzantium, and that it was rendered into German by Martin Luther – published, with Luther's Introduction, in Wittenberg in 1542 [Verlegung des Alcoran Bruder Richardi, Prediger Ordens, Anno 1300. Verdeutscht durch D. Martin Luther [BL 3905.f.63].]
4. It is attested that Riccoldo grew a long beard. Fineschi tells us that he wanted to: "ritornare nelle parti oltre mare, conservando a questo fine lunga la barba".
5. Riccoldo, in his own account, went to Baghdad [check], taught himself Arabic, and disputed with Muslim theologians.
For the pure pleasure of it, I reproduce Luther's translation. All thunderous prose, and simple black Gothic print:
"Darumb ich Richard der geringst prediger Ordens mich bedacht und meinem gang nach Gottes gebot gerichte habe. Denn nach dem ich uber viel Meer und durch viel wüsten gereiset bin ich auch gen Babylon die herrliche Stad der Sarracener komen da sie denn ire hohe Schulen haben die seer gros sind. Daselbs lernet ich die Arabischen Schrift un Sprache und disputirte on unterlas und auss aller vleissigst mir iren Doctorn und Gelerten. Befand aber je mehr und mehr wie gar ein Schendlich Gesetz der genante Alcoran ist. Sieng auch an dasselb in Latinische sprache zu verdolmetschen… etc" [check]
6. The manuscript of Riccoldo's Contra errores Iudeorum was, in Fineschi's time, preserved in the library of Santa Maria Novella, the convent of which Riccoldo was prior. [3] This is important. It means that Santa Maria Novella had a library.
QUESTION: Is it the case that the Dominican missionaries, as part of their work, sent back Arabic theological texts to Florence? It seems very natural to assume that they did. If so, where are those manuscripts now? Do we know anything at all about them? What happened to the mss. in the S. Maria Novella library?
QUESTION: It is attested that Riccoldo wrote letters back to Italy from Arabia: "scrisse […] alcune lettere alla Chiesa trionfante". It is likely that he also wrote letters to his fellow Dominicans in Florence. Are these letters to be found anywhere?
7. A detailed treatment of Riccoldo, his life and times, is contained in Monneret de Villard's account. [Monneret de Villard, Il Libro della peregrinazione nelle parti d' Oriente di frate Ricolda da Montecroce (ie the Itinerario), in Institutum Historicum FF. Praedicatorum. Dissertationes historicae. [BL Ac.2002.g/2].]
NOTES
1. Fineschi, Fra Vincenzio, Itinerario ai paesi orientali di Fra Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, Domenicano, scritto del XIII secolo dato ora in luce da Fra V. Fineschi, Florence, 1793, p. 10 [BL 10076.c.4]. This slim volume is Riccoldus's own account of his travels in the Middle East. A large part consists of his descriptions of the Holy Places in Palestine; there are also descriptions of other parts of Asia Minor. Among other things he has a note on the Assassins. As Brother Fineschi observes, the Itinerario "ha il merito di essere una della più antiche prose in cui […] si gusta la premiera naturalezza […] della nostra Toscana favella" [p. 16]
2. Fineschi, op. cit., p. 10 n. 1.
Ed Emery
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