International Medieval Society, Paris
Société Internationale des Médiévistes, Paris

Symposium 2006 Abstracts

Although it had begun only eighty years prior, by the early 8th century the expansion of Islam had reached the borders of what is now France.  Contemporary sources were well aware of the political situation, and yet there seems to have been surprisingly little interest about this ‘Other’ religion.  Those short references that do survive prior to 750 often depend on Patristic or Biblical information about the ‘Ismaelites’ (as Muslims came to be known), and though mildly derisory, are surprising for their ‘lack of rancour’.  One text that breaks this pattern is the Latin version of Pseudo-Methodius’ Revelationes, translated from Greek in a Frankish monastery by one Petrus Monachus.  The Revelationes purports to be written by the 4th century St. Methodius, and tells the history of the world, while ‘prophesising’ the coming of the Ismaelites in terms that makes their identification with Muslims obvious.  The portrayal, unfortunately, is needlessly brutal and vitriolic.  Hence, although the work originated in 7th century Syria, Petrus’ choice to translate it, and to make his own subtle additions, reveals attitudes to Islam that are violently negative.  The goal of this paper is to show that rather than challenging our view of Frankish perceptions of Islam, Petrus is ‘the exception who proves the rule’.  The reception of the Revelationes, e.g. in the Cosmographia of Aethicus Ister, as well as clues provided by the translator himself, hints that Petrus’ attitudes were odd, which merely adds to a list of ‘odd’ qualities about Petrus: a Greek literate Merovingian, working in an unimportant monastery, with an strange view of Islam.