1187: Caesarius of Heisterbach and a Muslim’s French Critique of Christian Depravity in the Latin East

Abstract

The Dialogus miraculorum is a collection of stories that serve to teach novices the ideals of monastic life. In this work, the Cistercian monk, Caesarius of Heisterbach, recounts a curious story related to him by the former chamberlain of his monastery, a certain William. Arriving in Acre in 1187, when the city had just been taken by Saladin’s troops, William is said to have engaged with an Ayyūbid noble. Speaking French, this noble explained that the inhabitants of the Latin East owed their defeat to their growing decadence. In view of the story’s obvious moral, the article discusses to which extent the anecdote reproduces a literary paradigm known from earlier Christian reactions to defeat. It investigates whether the narrative concords with Caesarius’s attitude towards Muslims and crusading as depicted in the rest of the work. Last but not least, it uses the noble’s French language skills as an example to illustrate what this story can tell us about Christian–Muslim interaction and communication in a crusading context.