In the previous chapter, I discussed how the Middle English Charlemagne romances articulate anxieties related to the crusades through such culturally resonant characters as the inward-looking king, the blasphemous bishop, and the worthy sultan. Here, I turn to another central figure of this corpus: the heroic convert. Of the nine verse Charlemagne romances to have reached us, six feature a Muslim warrior who, after demanding the surrender of Christian lands and challenging the most valorous Frankish knights to meet him in combat, converts to Christianity and fights for his new religion.¹ These texts fall into two traditions, those of Fierabras and Otinel, named after the chansons de geste they freely adapt.² My concerns in this chapter are with the three romances of the Otinel tradition: Otuel (before 1330; the Auchinleck version), Otuel and Roland (c. 1330; the Fillingham version), and Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain (c. 1400; the Thornton version).³ I explore how these romances, building on the potential of their French sources, use the figure of the Muslim challenger-turned-convert to grapple with and invite their audiences’ reflections on post-1291 concerns about Christendom’s beleaguered state, the power of non-Christian empires, the human ability to enact divine will, and the reckless behavior of crusaders.

Like the author of The Sultan of Babylon, the authors of the Otuel romances reworked their sources to engage with broader traditions of crusade writing and drew extensively on the repertoire of emotions. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, fear pervaded the rhetoric of many responses to the rise of the Mongol Empire, the Mamlūk campaigns culminating in the fall of Acre, and Ottoman advances into Byzantine Anatolia and southeastern Europe. Yet these territorial (re)conquests also raised hopes that a prominent non-Christian leader would, through religious conversion, infuse the Christian community with much-needed strength. This dialectic of fear and hope captured the imagination of the writers to whom we owe the Middle English Otuel romances. The alterations they made to the chanson de geste of Otinel have two principal effects: (1) a heightened sense of Christian apprehension, powerlessness, and inadequacy in response to the threat posed by the eponymous character, which gives way to newfound confidence when he converts; and (2) the amplification of his chivalric and moral qualities, first as a Muslim and then as a Christian. After he embraces Christianity, in scenes unparalleled in the French tradition, Otuel is made to embody values of fellowship and mutual solidarity sorely lacking in Charlemagne’s closest peers (Roland, Oliver, and Ogier), whose pride, envy, and excessive competitiveness he condemns.

I elucidate these postconversion scenes in light of a representational mode that is thinly documented in modern scholarship but was immensely popular in late medieval crusade culture: “reverse Orientalism,” in which Muslim figures, typically portrayed as wise and righteous, look down on and offer damning critiques of Christians.⁴ This mode was widely invoked following the Mamlūk siege of Acre and the Ottoman victory at Nicopolis (1396) – events that, in the eyes of contemporaries, signaled divine dissatisfaction with the Christian community and the urgency of moral reform. While most of the righteous, admonitory Muslims of crusade writing are nonconverts, Otuel’s position as a convert and bearer of Christian victory makes his rebukes all the more fraught: could Christians change their ways without the intervention of a strong, morally principled ally?

Fear and Hope in Europe’s Dream of Conversion

Benjamin Kedar has shown that religious conversion was not an avowed goal of the First Crusade.⁵ Yet pleas to convert non-Christians became increasingly common as Christian defeats and territorial losses in the Levant multiplied. The perception that crusading should be accompanied by efforts to evangelize prominent Muslim leaders emerged most powerfully during the Fifth Crusade, with Oliver of Paderborn and Francis of Assisi’s notorious failed attempts to convert Sultan al-Kāmil of Egypt.⁶ It is also during this expedition that reports of the inroads of the Mongols (commonly called Tartars) surfaced in the form of prophecies predicting that aid to Christendom would come from a mysterious “King David,” whose reported conquests mixed components of the legendary Prester John with the actual campaigns of Chinggis Khān, the founder of the Mongol Empire. These accounts, initially propagated by Oliver of Paderborn and Jacques de Vitry, sparked long-standing hopes for a Christian–Mongol alliance against a common enemy, first the Ayyūbids and then the Mamlūks in the Holy Land. The Mongols’ ostensibly enthusiastic subscription to this collaboration prompted years of diplomatic correspondence and negotiations, often involving appeals for the īlkhāns to embrace Christianity. For over a century, rumors circulated that a high-ranking Mongol leader would join the religious and political community of Latin Christendom.⁷ Yet during these years the Mongols’ open claims to world domination also materialized in dramatic encroachments into Europe, starting with attacks on Poland, Hungary, eastern Germany, and the Austrian border in the 1240s.⁸ The rhetoric of destruction and terror is ubiquitous in contemporary responses to these advances. Matthew Paris characterizes the Mongols as “feralis” (brutal) warriors, who struck “timorem et horrorem” (fear and terror) throughout Europe. Frederick II evokes the “timor ac tremor” (fear and trembling) roused by their “furore” (fury) and desire to ruin Christendom. And the canons of the First Council of Lyons elaborate on the “crudelitate horribili” (dreadful barbarity) with which they “devastarit” (ravaged) Christian territories.⁹ Reports such as these were integral to the formation of Latin Christendom’s “dream of conversion” (a phrase I borrow from Robert I. Burns): that a fearsome, menacing non-Christian opponent would be baptized and help redress the crusaders’ fate in the Levant.¹⁰

The fall of crusader Acre lent renewed urgency to this cooperative agenda, promoted by figures such as James II of Aragon, Edward I of England, and Pope Clement V even after the formerly shamanistic īlkhāns adopted Islam at the accession of Ghāzān Khān in 1295.¹¹ As put by Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, “Tartari facti sunt Sarraceni” (The Tartars became Saracens).¹² Ghāzān’s change of faith did not, however, curb his enmity against the Mamlūks, and his invasion of Syria and capture of Damascus in 1300 marked the apotheosis of Christendom’s aspirations for assisted reconquest of the Holy Land.¹³ But these hopes were dashed when, a few months later, the Mongols were forced to withdraw. Despite the subsequent defeat of Ghāzān’s army by the Mamlūks at Marj al-Șufr in 1303, the project of a Christian–Mongol coalition persisted in later years, featuring in various early fourteenth-century treatises that offered advice on how to reconquer the Holy Land. Hayton of Korykos emphasized the Mongols’ credentials as possible converts in his Flos historiarium, which espoused the idea of a military alliance between the two powers.¹⁴ Marino Sanudo’s Liber secretorum fidelium crucis (1307) placed hope in collaborative action, as did William of Adam’s Tractatus quomodo Sarraceni sunt expugnanti (c. 1317). The resilience of the idea was such that, even after the Mongols and Mamlūks signed a peace treaty in 1323, it reemerged in the writings of two later propagandists: Garcia d’Ayerve, the bishop of Leon, and the anonymous author of the Directorium ad passagium (c. 1332).¹⁵

The rhetoric of peril and ruin, so pervasive in responses to the rise of the Mongols, also permeates writings on the Mamlūk countercrusading campaigns that culminated in the siege of Acre. The decrees of the Second Council of Lyons portrayed the Holy Land as fearlessly laid to waste (intrepide devastatur), while Rutebeuf’s Lament (c. 1266) described it as burned and destroyed from all sides.¹⁶ “Que nuyl temps la Cristiandat no fo en maior peril que en est temps era” (Never before has Christianity been in such peril than it is at this time), declared the General Cortes of Aragon in 1291.¹⁷ This sense of a hard-pressed, beleaguered Christendom prompted crusaders and their apologists increasingly to integrate the conversion of high-ranking Mamlūks, as well as Mongols, into their agendas. Of particular interest for our purposes are attempts to convert Muslim princes and military leaders, either to neutralize the threat they posed, appropriate their military strength, or ensure lasting possession of freshly conquered territories. In his Liber de fine (1305), a treatise advocating recovery of the Holy Land, Ramon Llull argued that preachers should be dispatched to Muslim rulers alongside crusade armies with offers of castles and territories if they accepted Christianity.¹⁸ The French propagandist Pierre Dubois proffered an original alternative to material incentives. His De recuperatione Terra Sanctae (c. 1307), addressed to Edward I, proposed that European women undergo instruction in Arabic and be offered in marriage to Muslim men of status so that they might eventually convince the latter to convert.¹⁹ While Lull and Dubois differed in their approaches, they shared the conviction that, in view of Christendom’s past failures in the East, conversion was an indispensable complement to traditional warfare.

A similar dual perception of non-Christians as both a fearsome military threat and potential ally emerged in response to the Ottoman conquests of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, although at first, the element of peril seems to have markedly taken precedence over that of cooperation.²⁰ In the 1330s and 1340s, Ottoman piracy in the Aegean gave rise to a series of relatively small-scale crusade operations, but only the capture of Smyrna in 1344, by an army of Italian, English, and French knights, led to the enduring occupation of an important strategic location.²¹ In the 1360s, Ottoman forces took possession of Thrace, escalating the threat to Europe. After invading Bulgaria and Serbian Macedonia, the Ottomans expanded into the Balkans after the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, and defeated an international army of crusaders at Nicopolis in 1396.²² The Ottoman threat was couched in similar emotional terms as the Mongol conquests in the previous century. Pope Clement VI, in decreeing crusade measures in 1343, depicted the Ottomans as “attrociter sevientes” (raging atrociously) against Christian populations, “dampnificantes et depopulantes” (despoiling and depopulating) settlements in their raids. Appealing for the defense of Smyrna in 1389, the Avignon antipope Clement VII lamented the fall of Christian lands to “Turchorum potencie et furori” (the strength and fury of the Turks).²³ The Middle English sermon “De Sancta Maria,” dated circa 1380, eloquently speaks to contemporary perceptions of Christian–Muslim power dynamics: “þe lordeshippes of hethen men groweþ vpward and in-creseþ; for seuerly oure Cristen prynces with-in þis xl ȝere and lasse haþ lost more þan þe þirde parte of Cristendom.”²⁴

But distress at Ottoman military successes was accompanied by collaborative aspirations, just as with the Mongols and Mamlūks. In his Songe du vieil pelerin, Philippe de Mézières invoked beliefs in the common Trojan ancestry of the French and Ottomans to urge Charles VI to seek the amour and amitie of “tous les princes et seigneurs des Sarrazins et Crestiens” (all the Saracen and Christian princes and lords), relations that he posits as prerequisites for launching a saint passage to recover the Holy Land.²⁵ Ottoman–Christian collaboration was not just encouraged but was actively sought out by crusaders. The anonymous Livre des fais reports that Jean II le Maingre, Marshal Boucicaut (to whom I return in Chapter 3) traveled to Adrianople to fight alongside Sultan Murad I against the Mamlūks.²⁶ The Frenchman Jacques de Helly is also said to have served under the Ottoman sultan against the Mamlūks.²⁷ These cases testify to the enduring potency of beliefs that joining forces with powerful non-Christians could help remedy Christendom’s misfortunes in the Levant. The inclusion of religious conversion in agendas touting political collaboration resurfaced in the aftermath of the siege of Constantinople by Mehmed II in 1453, the effects of which reverberated across Europe. The attitude of Pope Pius II toward the Ottoman Sultan captures the emotional rhetoric under consideration: Mehmed, initially painted as a fearsome agent of destruction, is wishfully reimagined by Pius II as a new Constantine or Clovis, whose defection from Islam would bring the Ottomans into the Church’s embrace. Pius’s delusion was shared by several contemporaries, and rumors surrounding Mehmed’s conversion were rife.²⁸ The “dream of conversion” had taken more time to crystallize than it had with the Mongols, but its ideological basis was consistent: Christendom was, more than ever, in danger and in dire need of an ally.

During the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, there emerged a substantial body of chansons de geste and romances featuring Muslim warriors who convert to Christianity. In the Chrétienté Corbaran, grafted to the Old French epic cycle of the First Crusade near the end of the thirteenth century, the Muslim king of Oliferne, Corbaran, transitions from the status of foe to friend after his overlord, Soudan, is defeated by Godfrey of Bouillon. Upon embracing Christianity and returning to Oliferne, Corbaran has his subjects choose between conversion and death before engaging in battle with Soudan, whom he ultimately defeats in concerted action with Godfrey.²⁹ In the Fierabras story, Otinel’s counterpart in the Charlemagne tradition, conversion is also the result of Christian victory in combat. Reworking its French sources, the Middle English Sir Ferumbras repeatedly stresses the eponymous character’s vast political power, fearlessness, and chivalric fame, which are assimilated to the Christian cause after his defeat by Oliver and embrace of Christianity: “Y schal scaþye hem niȝt & day þat bileueþ on Mahounde; / Cristendom by me schal encressed be.”³⁰ An alternative to conversion through force of arms is envisioned in what Dorothee Metlitzki calls the “marriage theme,” popularized in England by The King of Tars and the tale of Constance, told by Trivet, Gower, and Chaucer. The King of Tars finds a historical basis in the Mongol leader Ghāzān Khān’s aforementioned victories in Syria in 1299 and 1300, which English chroniclers attributed to the miraculous conversion of the īlkhān’s brother.³¹ In this romance, the sultan of Damas (the brother’s counterpart) comes to accept Christianity after he marries the King of Tars’s daughter, and their child, born a lifeless lump of flesh, is miraculously healed by God. Like Corbaran, the sultan forces his barons to opt for conversion or death, and unites with the Christians to wage war against a coalition of resisting Muslim kings. The tale of Constance, finally, dissociates conversion from crusade, upholding aspirations for peaceful assimilation even as it signals the unlikeliness of their realization: Constance’s union with the sultan of Syria was to bring about the “destruccioun of mawmettrie” and the “encrees of Cristes lawe” without any recourse to violence, but is rapidly thwarted by the latter’s mother.³² Offering variations on the modalities of Christian–Muslim union, these stories converge in presenting a view of religious conversion as indispensable to Christendom’s ability to compete with powerful Muslim empires.

Converting Fear and Shame into Self-Assurance

The chanson de geste of Otinel provided the authors or adaptors of the Middle English Otuel romances with a propitious framework in which to explore the anxieties and tensions in late medieval Europe’s “dream of conversion.” In the initial scenes, the Auchinleck and Thornton versions in particular substantially depart from the Old French and Anglo-Norman Otinel, supplementing the emotional repertoire of their sources to describe the alarm and disarray caused by Otuel’s presence at Charlemagne’s court. The Auchinleck prefaces Otuel’s arrival with five stanzas of mostly new, interpolated material, presenting his lord and emperor, Garcy, at the head of a force of “heþene kinges” whose sole desire is “al cristendom … to maken heþennesse” (41–42).³³ Portrayed as “a sarazin ful of rage” (71), “of no man a-fered he nas” (76), following his introduction into the romance, Otuel expresses and provokes anger, couched in terms of threats, violence, and injury (149, 163, 277, 282–83), so that a tone of antagonism and peril is set from the start. At this point, however, the Christians’ wrath is infused with other emotions: fear and shame. Despite Charlemagne’s orders that Otuel be granted the protection befitting a royal envoy (reiterated in this version, see 141–43, 193–96, 205–8, and 329–32), his knights are unable to suppress their anger – “þe kinges kniȝtes hadden tene, / Of otuwel wordes kene” (149–50) – and after one attacks the Muslim warrior from behind and is promptly killed, their reaction mingles wrath and shame:

The emotions roused by Otuel’s threatening presence, unspecified in the French texts,³⁴ highlight the lack of self-control and disruption of unity inherent in the man’s unsanctioned assault, and the ensuing humiliation caused by the Muslim knight’s ability to slay him in Charlemagne’s royal hall. In the parallel episode of the Thornton manuscript, reprehensible chivalric behavior is similarly defined when Otuel’s assailant bluntly disregards Roland’s warning to keep his emotions in check: “For-thi, gud sir, par charyte, / thyn hert þat þou wolde stere” (161–62).³⁵ When Charlemagne then reiterates his command that Otuel be left alone, his men’s response, as rendered in the Auchinleck version, conveys fear-induced relief:

This sense of Christian frailty is reinforced through an emphasis on Otuel’s insults of weakness and old age leveled at Charlemagne, generative yet again of reactions of wrath and shame in the Auchinleck (277–78), and marked by “ferde” – signifying “fear” but also the state of being in “danger”³⁶ – in the Thornton: “Cherlles, with thi longe berde, / þat Emperoure [Garcy] schall make þe full ferde / With his stronge powere” (277–79). Charlemagne’s advanced years are called upon to suggest Christian inadequacy in face of Muslim power. Emotional rhetoric in these initial scenes thus participates in a double, mutually enforcing rationale: it heightens the threat posed by Otuel, while foregrounding the Christians’ inability to respond.

In all three Middle English versions, an atmosphere of imminent peril is maintained throughout the episode of combat between Roland and Otuel. A representative passage that exploits emotional language in the Auchinleck describes Charlemagne’s distress when Roland accepts the Muslim knight’s challenge:

No mention is made in the French texts of the king’s insomnia and feelings of apprehension.³⁷ Subsequent passages confirm that this use of the semantic field of fear was part of a deliberate authorial design:

In the Thornton version, the king’s pleas to God for help during the duel, while present in the French texts, are tweaked for a sense of greater urgency with the interpolation of the emotion of shame: “Fro schame ȝe Rowlande schelde!” (492, 510). The Fillingham manuscript, moreover, has Roland admitting that he was “neuer so sore a-schamed, / by-fore in no batayle” (486–87). The possibility of Roland prevailing diminishes as the duel progresses. The notion of divine endorsement through victory – a cornerstone of crusade ideology – does not materialize, and it is only after a communal appeal for God’s help that Otuel, clearly presented as having the upper hand, is struck by an epiphany and surrenders, accepting Roland’s offer to convert to Christianity, become his companion in arms, and marry Charlemagne’s daughter Belisent. While this episode sees God showing his support through direct intervention, the necessity of this intervention highlights the failure of Christian knights to act as divine agents on earth. Overall, it appears quite clearly, particularly in the Auchinleck and Thornton versions, that the Middle English adaptors invoked the language of fear and shame to imbue the narrative with a heightened sense of Christian unease and ineptitude in relation to Otuel’s hostile presence and the threat he embodies.

A purposeful emotional rhetoric is then mobilized, as Otuel’s incorporation endows the Christian army with the qualities required for a successful offensive against the Muslim forces of Garcy. The Fillingham text stages a courtly dialogue between Otuel and Belisent to expose the new dynamics established through the former’s inclusion as one of them:

Implicit in Belisent’s statement, unique to the Fillingham version, is that Otuel is much more able to offer protection against Garcy than are other Christians who, lacking their new ally, would indeed have reason to fear. In the Auchinleck manuscript, after Roland and Otuel make peace, Charlemagne’s repeatedly emphasized fear gives way to newfound confidence. His transition from the status of fearful to fear-inspiring king is marked by a boast: “In all þe world in lenkþe & brede, / þer nis king þat nolde me drede” (627–28). Otuel’s conversion, brought about not by Roland’s prowess but by direly needed divine intervention, thus enables the Christians to convert fear and shame into self-assurance – and military success.

The reconfigured emotional rhetoric of these narratives in episodes surrounding Otuel’s conversion is an eloquent testimony to the imaginative force inherent in the absorption of a powerful oppressor, transformed into a defender of Christendom. In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, this search for allies was grounded in realistic knowledge of the strength of the Mamlūk Empire and the vastness of its army.³⁹ The loss of the last crusader territories in the Levant led contemporaries to ponder in practical terms over the reasons for Christian military failure. The inapposite response of Charlemagne’s men to Otuel’s presence, and the urgency of appropriating his titanic strength, dramatically enact the conclusions of crusade apologists such as Fidenzio of Padua and Thadeo of Naples, who emphasize the Mamlūks’ military muscle and discipline, which they contrast with the weakness and imprudence of Christians.⁴⁰ Similarly, the English Hospitaller Roger Stanegrave’s crusade treatise Li charboclois elaborates on the qualities and size of the Mamlūk army, and then expresses preoccupation with Christian frailty and the prospect of dishonor in battles to come.⁴¹ This view finds further confirmation in Marino Sanudo’s Liber secretorum fidelium crucis, which pinpoints military ineffectiveness and lack of caution when faced with more experienced and stronger enemies as a principal reason for the collapse of previous Levantine expeditions.⁴² According to Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, the military failures of the past inspired fear (timor) in Christians and weakened their faith.⁴³ In the Otuel romances, if the Christians’ trust in God does not seem to be questioned in the lead-up to Otuel’s conversion, the threat of Muslim military superiority, and the fear it entails, are afforded special treatment.

Shame is an emotion that also permeates responses to the Mamlūk reconquests and, subsequently, to the rise of the Ottomans. In a report prepared for the Second Council of Lyons in 1274, Gilbert de Tournai describes how the shame of past endeavors extends into the present, begging for rectification:

References to the shamefulness of Christendom’s fate punctuate Riccoldo da Monte di Croce’s letters responding to the fall of Acre, as well as Ramon Llull’s aforementioned crusade treatise, the Liber de fine.⁴⁵ Roger Stanegrave declares that Christians are “saunz vergoine” (without shame) because they delay to reconquer the lands of which they were “hounteusement desheritez” (shamefully disinherited).⁴⁶ In the late fourteenth century, Christendom’s “vergoingne magnifeste et honteuse” (blatant and humiliating shame) continued to be decried, with regard to both the Mamlūk occupation of the Holy Land and Ottoman successes, as attested by Philippe de Mezières’s Epistre au roi Richart (1395), his Epistre lamentable et consolatoire (1397) on the Battle of Nicopolis, and Honorat Bovet’s Apparicion maistre Jehan de Meun (1398), which responds to the same event.⁴⁷

In Empire of Magic, Geraldine Heng argues for an understanding of romance as a genre that transforms historical humiliations and crises into success, celebration, and triumphalism.⁴⁸ The Otuel romances (which Heng does not discuss) complicate this claim: Christian shame and fear are certainly redressed, but in a way that is deeply critical of crusaders, rather than celebratory. Their deficiencies in matters of discipline and internal cooperation are thrown into relief. And, as evinced by Roland’s limitations when faced with his superior Muslim opponent, the solution transcends human agency, which proves inadequate to the situation, and is contingent on God’s will to substantiate his support through direct, unmediated intervention. This concern with the blunders and limitations of crusaders will be further developed in postconversion scenes that contrast Otuel’s exemplary chivalric and religious ethics – not “new” to his Christian life but carried over from his “old” Muslim life – with the disruptive actions of Charlemagne’s closest peers, driven by pride and envy.

Envy, Pride, and Rash Crusader Conduct

In high and late medieval Europe, a vastly influential pastoral tradition disseminated views of pride (superbia) and envy (invidia) as prejudicial to the order and proper functioning of society. Variously described as a disordered desire (desiderium) for excellence, or a lust to dominate (libido dominandi), pride was, according to the English Cistercian Aelred of Rielvaux, the worst passion (pessima passio) of all.⁴⁹ Like other emotions, it was commonly portrayed in Middle English literature as “rootyd in” and effecting “sterynges of” the “herte.”⁵⁰ Pride, moreover, could take various forms.⁵¹ Of interest for our purposes is the branch of “presumpcion,” which, as Chaucer’s Parson explains, “is whan a man vnder-taketh an Emprise þat hym oghte nat do, or elles þat he may nat do; and this is called surquidrie” – or, as defined by the Middle English translator of Frère Laurent’s influential Somme le roi, “arrogaunce” or “ouerboldenesse.”⁵² The “proude and þe surquidous man” imperils himself and others by striving at all cost to “be of more myȝt or be worþier than oþere.”⁵³ Due to its array of manifestations and prejudicial effects, pride was widely considered the most displeasing of all sins to God. In Richard Lavynham’s A Litil Tretys on the Seven Deadly Sins, one of the most popular vernacular manuals in circulation in late medieval England, it is characterized as “a synne þat distroyth alle vertewis & most greuyth god of alle oþer vicys.”⁵⁴

Only envy rivaled pride in this regard, being likewise regarded by some as “contrarye to all vertuys & to alle goodnessis,” but most commonly opposed to the highest theological virtue of caritas – the love of one’s neighbor in the name of God (which will be discussed in Chapter 3).⁵⁵ Envy, often described as an agitation of the soul (animus),⁵⁶ was considered a “public” emotion, produced by feelings of competition that precluded social collaboration and undermined communal solidarity.⁵⁷ According to Thomas Aquinas, envy was a response to the possibility or fact that one was not the favorite, the most esteemed, the most loved.⁵⁸ Middle English authors, following Augustine, commonly elucidated “enuye in herte” as a deviation of sorrow: a form of sorrow in another person’s success, wellness, or “goodness.”⁵⁹ In Gower’s Confessio Amantis, Amans details envy’s physiological effects: “Envie makth myn herte change, / That I am sorghfully bestad / Of that I se another glad.”⁶⁰ Mireille Vincent-Cassy argues that the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries witnessed an increase in references to envy as an explanation for conflicts in Europe, a rise she traces to the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which imposed annual confession on the laity and enjoined the faithful to put aside any “rancore ac livore a se penitus relegatis, ut sic spiritualibus et materialibus armis muniti, adversus hostes fidei securius praelientur” (bitterness or envy, so that thus armed with spiritual and material weapons they may the more fearlessly fight against the enemies of the faith).⁶¹ Like wrathful quarrels, chivalric actions spurred by pride and envy were viewed as provoking misfortune in war, for, as Gower reminds us, “Moribus arma vigent, aliter fortuna recedit” (Feats of arms thrive upon good morals; otherwise, good fortune vanishes).⁶² With the succession of Muslim victories leading to the fall of Acre, and against a backdrop of frustrated Christian recovery efforts and disappointing expeditions, it comes as no surprise to witness the proliferation of accusations of envy and pride in contemporary crusade documents.

In the Otuel romances, Charlemagne’s ability to assume the role of successful crusader-king upon Otuel’s conversion is contingent on the latter’s military and moral merits. These, already on display during his duel with Roland, are what made his assimilation desirable in the first place. The Thornton version, for example, departs from its sources in having Charlemagne extol the Muslim knight’s qualities in a divinely addressed appeal:

Otuel, a Muslim, embodies knightly ideals to which Roland can only aspire. Indeed, when Otuel consents to become Christian after a dove settles on his helmet, in a statement that finds no counterpart in the French texts, Roland admits to having “foghten with þe beste knyghte, / In alle this werlde es none so wighte” (595–96). Otuel’s conversion to Christianity has no influence on his knightly merits and religious devotion, which were already portrayed in exemplary terms. Adjectives such as “douȝti,” “noble,” and “wighte” characterize Otuel before he embraces Christianity and after; his love for Garcy and dedication to the Muslim fellowship shift to Charlemagne and the Christian army; and his unwavering devotion to “Mahoun,” foregrounded in the lead-up to his change in faith, is transferred unto God.⁶³ Thus, Charlemagne appropriates the martial energy of a Muslim knight with already unimpeachable ethics. Following his conversion, Otuel replaces Roland in the role of primary defender of Christendom and agent of God. He enables the Christians to multiply their victories and challenges Clarel, Garcy’s new champion, to a final duel, the outcome of which is set to determine, to quote from the Auchinleck manuscript, “wheþer is more of miȝt, / Ih’u, þat is louerd min, / Or mahoun & apolyn” (1266–68). In contrast to Roland, who, despite proclaiming Jesus’s “miȝt,” is unable to back his religion with victory in combat, Otuel expeditiously defeats Clarel, unassisted by divine supernatural interference, proving Christ’s superior “miȝt” through force of arms alone. Overall, Otuel is portrayed as championing Christianity on the battlefield far more effectively than Roland and other Christians, and as the narrative makes clear, his chivalric merits, moral values, and spiritual devotion are what tip divine providence in the crusaders’ favor.

If Otuel is presented as embodying the ideals of chivalry, the same cannot be said of the most valorous warriors of the Charlemagne tradition. Spurning the very principles of fellowship and community that he had advocated in his attempt to persuade Otuel to convert,⁶⁴ Roland sneaks away from camp “full preualy” accompanied only by Oliver and Ogier in search of “awnters” to reassert his wounded chivalric honor.⁶⁵ This escapade, driven by competitive concerns of chivalric standing, sees Ogier injured and held captive, while Roland and Oliver are forced to flee for their lives, pursued by Muslim forces. The French narratives only allude in passing to the implications of this venture when Otinel, preoccupied by the insult of having been excluded from this opportunity for chivalric prowess, raises the question of who will take the blame if the three peers come to harm. But this thought is promptly dismissed in favor of anticipatory pronouncements of enthusiasm at the pleasures of battle to come.⁶⁶ The Middle English versions, on the other hand, adopt a far more judgmental outlook, denouncing the peers’ transgressions of the values of community and service to one’s king.⁶⁷ Again, this evaluative dimension is assimilated through the interpolation of emotional representations, in this case involving envy and pride. The Otuel of the Auchinleck, upon learning of the peers’ absence, rebukes them for their envious response to his recent chivalric successes: “Beþ went for envie of me, / To loke wher þei miȝten spede, / To don any douȝti deede” (1020–22). Otuel then provides a clear counterexample to their selfish behavior, as he dismisses their affront and conforms to the very standards they fail to live up to:

He acts out of “loue” for Charlemagne and God (1071), upholding values of collective effort and mutual solidarity, and upon finding Roland and Oliver, laments Ogier’s capture: “‘Allas! allas!’ quaþ otuwel, / ‘þis tiding likeþ me nout wel’” (1067–68). The Fillingham manuscript has Otuel scold (“he gan to Chyde” [1055]) Roland for succumbing to pride, rather than envy:

Collective action is promoted as vital to successful holy warfare, whereas pride leads to defeat and death. The Thornton version elaborates along similar lines, with Otuel “þat was so wighte” (1009), upon seeing the peers “alle blodye / With woundes Many one” (1046–47), reproving them “with steryn chere” (1042) and “full velanslye” (1045) for their presumption and folly (“ȝoure boste and ȝoure folye” [1049]). The rashness of the operation is underscored as Otuel, through his unimpeachable stance, is enabled to speak for Charlemagne and the whole group in asserting that the king will condemn their enterprise as overambitious (1051–52). These rebukes assume their full significance when considered in relation to the corresponding passages of the French texts, which instead see Otinel humorously voicing dismay at having nearly missed out on such a feast of Muslims.⁶⁸

The Middle English narratives are thus distinctive in contrasting the dangers of individual chivalric action, prompted by selfish, competitive passions, with the importance of remaining “al in fer,” sustaining a unified Christian body buttressed by ties of “loue.” Emotions are in this way drawn upon by the adaptors of the Middle English versions to define the standards held up for emulation – sorely lacking in Otuel’s absence – and to highlight antithetical, disruptive chivalric conduct. It is significant – and must be stressed – that this subversive behavior is assigned to medieval Europe’s paragons of chivalry, Roland and Oliver, and that it devolves to the figure of the religious convert, fantasized as an agent of Christian regeneration, to remedy the peers’ shortcomings. Otuel’s praiseworthiness is set forth as a catalyst to critical self-analysis, as the quintessential Christian knights’ conduct falls short of the exemplary crusading values he personifies.

Sinful Christians and Righteous Muslims

Matthew Paris’s Chronica majora offers an interesting parallel to the Otuel romances in also contrasting the values of unity and collective solidarity with the passions of pride and envy to dispense blame in its account of the debacle of the Seventh Crusade under the command of Louis IX of France. Narrating the later stages of the expedition, the English chronicler chastises the French crusaders for their innata superbia and for the invidia they harbor toward their English coreligionists on account of the latter’s success in capturing an important strategic tower.⁶⁹ These passions or sins are the grounds for Christian failure; as asserted by Saint Louis, who is irreproachable in the eyes of the author: “Formido vehementer, ne nos nostra confundat cum aliis peccatis superbia” (I greatly fear that pride, with other sins, will cause our downfall).⁷⁰ Responsibility for the failure of the expedition is ultimately ascribed to the French king’s brother, Robert of Artois, who, in a decision much like that of Roland discussed above, is portrayed as covertly launching an assault, driven by pride, arrogance, and a selfish desire to receive sole credit for the victory:

Warned by the Master of the Templars to act out of “modestiam” (moderation) and “prudentiam” (good sense), and to retreat so that “uniti” (united) with the army of the king they may pursue the attack in full strength, the count of Artois, “superbia turgidus et inflatus” (excited and flushed with pride), declines with a stream of invective.⁷² Moderation and good sense are instead the prerogative of the Ayyūbid sultan al-Mu’aẓẓam Tūrān Shāh, whom Matthew Paris has declare, in anticipation of final victory: “Divisi sunt Christiani, nec frater fratri jam adhaeret … Dati sunt nobis in praedam et direptionem” (The Christians are divided so that one brother no longer supports another … They are ours for booty and plunder).⁷³ Of course, the Otuel romances’ renderings of cognate scenarios redress disunity and human sinfulness, reversing the situation into Christian military victory. But this is only achieved through the ambivalent persona and exemplarity of the recently assimilated convert.

Like Matthew Paris’s Chronica majora, Jean de Joinville’s Vie de Saint Louis (completed in 1309) enlists the opinion of a Muslim figure to criticize Christian rivalry, also identified as the cause of crusading failures and articulated through the medium of emotions and sin. This figure is an old man in the market of Damascus:

The progressive loss of Christian-held territories in the Levant was a powerful catalyst to criticism. Gilbert of Tournai’s Collectio de scandalis ecclesiae (1274) assigns contemporary crusading defeats to the Military Orders’ pride and envy, sins that John Bromyard’s later Summa praedicantium (c. 1330–48) ascribes to the Christian community at large to explain the loss of the Holy Land.⁷⁵ In Roger Stanegrave’s aforementioned recovery treatise, it is again through the voice of a Muslim agent – a “sage amerail” (wise emir), “lequel estoit plus noble et soveraigne de tout Paynime après le soudan” (who was the most noble and powerful of the infidels after the sultan) – that the author denounces the “defautz saunz nombre et les cruels peschietz” (innumerable faults and cruel sins) that caused the Christians’ eviction from the Holy Land. For Stanegrave, true chivalry was all but lost, replaced by a generation of prideful and boastful knights, lacking any emotional restraint.⁷⁶ In his immensely popular travel book, John Mandeville reached a similar verdict, also expressed by means of a discerning Muslim man (the sultan of Egypt) in an alleged conversation with the author: the Christians had been expelled through sin – notably the sin of pride – and there was no chance of recovery at present since “God wole noght help hem.”⁷⁷

The idea that crusading defeats were manifestations of divine anger against Christian pride, envy, and other transgressions – the concept of peccatis exigentibus hominum – has a long history in crusade culture, going back at least to the Second Crusade (1145–49).⁷⁸ In the lead-up to and aftermath of the Mamlūk reconquest of Acre, however, it became increasingly common to attribute such critiques to Muslim figures. Why did authors do so? One reason is that in the eyes of many Christians, the military successes of Muslims endowed them with a form of moral authority. In his widely disseminated Summa praedicantium, John Bromyard presents the occupation of the Holy Land as a divine verdict on the relative merits of Christian and Muslim believers: if the former were allowed to occupy it when they were virtuous and faithful to God, the latter now possess it because they are less evil (minus malis).⁷⁹ This providential logic underpins the author’s analogical approach to Islam. He focuses on moral codes and religious practices that he sees uniting, rather than separating, Islam and Christianity – being charitable to the poor, assisting one’s neighbors, refraining from blasphemous language, avoiding adultery – and admonishes Christians for failing to live up to the good works (bona opera) of Muslims, to whom he ascribes pointed critiques of the former.⁸⁰ Indeed, his handbook features several episodes where Christians are criticized by an imagined Muslim speaker or the Muslim community as a whole.⁸¹

A similar connection between Muslim victories, discipline in following rules of conduct that bridge Christianity and Islam, and admonitory authority is on display in the oeuvre of Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, which illustrates the complex interplay between providential beliefs and firsthand experience that underpins so many accounts of European travelers. In his divinely addressed letters, discussed in Chapter 1, Riccoldo blames heaven for the Mamlūk victory at Acre; yet he also assigns responsibility to Christians, who have the law of God but “sine perfectione operis,” (“without the perfection of works”).⁸² His choice of words is revealing, for in the Liber peregrinationis, a travel account produced around the same time as his letters, he asserts that while adhering to a “lege mendacissima” (false law), Muslims are the ones who possess the “opera perfectionis”: studiousness, devotion in prayer, mercy toward the poor, reverence for the name of God, dignified behavior (grauitas in moribus), friendliness to foreigners, and mutual love.⁸³ He extols these opera perfectionis, dwelling at length on their “concordia et amor ad suos” (concord and love of theirs), to which he ascribes their military successes, concluding: “Ipsi Sarraceni dicere Christianis: ‘erubesce’” (The Saracens are entitled to tell the Christians: blush for shame).⁸⁴

The moral and providential rationale underlying the motif of the righteous Muslim critic of Christians is further elucidated by the early fifteenth-century Reisebuch of the German Johann Schiltberger, who remained in servitude under Ottoman and Turko-Mongol rulers for over three decades after his capture at the Crusade of Nicopolis. In this travel book, Schiltberger writes that Muslims are taught that when they are obedient to their superiors and charitable to each other, “so git in der allmächtig got crafft und macht gegen iren vinden” (then God Almighty gives them strength and might against their enemies).⁸⁵ He then asserts that Muslims say of Christians that they have lost wars and territories because they fail to uphold the doctrine of the Messiah (Messias), treat one another with injustice and vileness (ungerechtigkeit und widerwärtigkeit), and live a generally disordered life (unordenlichem leben).⁸⁶ The internal logic of Schiltberger’s Reisebuch is consistent with that of Bromyard’s Summa praedicantium and Riccoldo’s Liber peregrinationis: it is the Muslims’ status as victors in wars whose outcomes are morally and providentially determined that grants them the right to rebuke Christians for their failures and that makes their opinions worthy of attention. As these authors knew, Muslim figures, through their accomplishments and criticisms (whether truthful or imagined), could so effectively elicit feelings of shame and humility in European audiences because they were successful in holy war where Christians were not. In the Otuel romances, the eponymous hero’s conversion permits an assimilation of his virtues. Yet the implications are all the more shameful: had Christendom reached a state where hopes for external help trumped beliefs in its ability to implement internal moral reform?

By the time the Thornton version was composed (c. 1400) and circulated, Roland, Oliver, and Ogier’s dismissal of collective action in favor of individual prowess had a striking counterpart in contemporary crusade events. The outcome of the Battle of Nicopolis against the forces of the Ottoman sultan Bāyazīd I in 1396 was, according to the well-informed chronicler of Saint-Denis, Michel Pintoin, decided by the pride, presumption, and recklessness of the French knights, who, “cor facile sequebantur” (heedlessly following their hearts), are reported to have deliberately spurned King Sigismund of Hungary’s warnings that they stay united and “non dirigantur impetus” (resist the impulses of passion).⁸⁷ The Nicopolis expedition offered fertile ground for the flowering of the motif of the wise, admonitory Muslim. Pintoin presents Bāyazīd as a “vir providus et discretus” (prudent and wise man), righteously chastising the Christians for their moral corruption.⁸⁸ Similarly, though more wide-ranging in scope, the French lawyer Honorat Bovet’s reformist poem the Apparicion maistre Jehan de Meun meditates on the divinely permitted “avancement” (progress) of the “annemis de nostre foy” (enemies of our faith) through the voice of one of Bāyazīd’s courtiers. This “hardy et sage parlier” (brave and wise orator), praised by the narrator for his intellect and moral discernment, ascribes the Ottomans’ triumph at Nicopolis to the “charité” (charity) that unites them, saying of the French: “Pour dessourdre et par orgueil / Sont souvent venus a leur dueil” (Through disorder and pride / Many have come to grief).⁸⁹

Nicopolis, one of the most important crusading defeats since the fall of Acre, yet again disproved Christendom’s ability to cooperate militarily against Muslim forces. Though the original crusade plan for joint Anglo-French leadership was compromised by political complications in England and Gascony, the presence of English crusaders is attested by several sources.⁹⁰ Significantly, the crusaders’ much-decried rashness came to be viewed by contemporaries in correlation with Roland’s legendary démezure. Jean Froissart imputes Bāyazīd’s victory to the “fole oultre-cuidance et orgueil” (mad audacity and pride) of the “françois, anglois et allemans” (French, English, and Germans): “Et le dommage que ils recheuprent, si grant que depuis la bataille de Ronchevauls où les douze pers de France furent mors et desconfis, ne receuprent si grant dommage” (And the damages they incurred were so significant that not since the battle of Ronçevaux, which saw the defeat and death of the twelve peers of France, were such damages incurred).⁹¹ This identification is corroborated by Philippe de Mézières, whose Epistre lamentable et consolatoire invokes Roland and his peers as negative models of pride and audacity:

The conflation of the Nicopolis crusaders’ behavior with that of the peers is an eloquent testimony to the degree to which the Charlemagne material informed – and was informed by – contemporary crusading events. The Otuel romances were reworked by adaptors to address the concerns that contemporary crusading activity had brought to light; and they were interpreted accordingly by audiences.

This chapter has explored the ways in which the Otuel romances bring together, dramatize, and adapt diverse elements of contemporary political discourse: fears about Christendom’s beleaguered state and non-Christian territorial (re)conquests, hopes of conversion, critiques of Christian pride and envy, and what I have called “reverse Orientalism,” a mode in which Muslims occupy the moral high ground vis-à-vis Christians, whose transgressions they righteously condemn. Deeply implicated in the political events and cultural currents of their time, these romances uphold ideals of crusading while expressing anxieties about the power of the Islamic world, the vulnerability and divisions of the Christian community, and the intemperance and individualism of knights, who, time and again, proved incapable of serving as divine providential agents. These texts offer a solution to Christendom’s predicaments, but an uncomfortable one: the infusion of Muslim strength and moral discipline. Contemporary readers and audiences would have had much to reflect upon, discuss, and debate.