At the Gate of Christendom

Abstract

Modern life in increasingly heterogeneous societies has directed attention to patterns of interaction, often using a framework of persecution and tolerance. This study of the economic, social, legal and religious position of three minorities (Jews, Muslims and pagan Turkic nomads) argues that different degrees of exclusion and integration characterized medieval non-Christian status in the medieval Christian kingdom of Hungary between 1000 and 1300. A complex explanation of non-Christian status emerges from the analysis of their economic, social, legal and religious positions and roles. Existence on the frontier with the nomadic world led to the formulation of a frontier ideology, and to anxiety about Hungary's detachment from Christendom, which affected policies towards non-Christians. The study also succeeds in integrating central European history with the study of the medieval world, while challenging such current concepts in medieval studies as frontier societies, persecution and tolerance, ethnicity and 'the other'.

Verging on the polemical. Towards an interdisciplinary approach to medieval religious polemic

“…More recent studies have argued for a less essentialist approach, and scholars like Daniel König draw attention to the multiplicity of different observers within the Arabic-Islamic world, some of whom were highly interested in parts and aspects of Christianity. 147 We also have a number of excellent studies devoted to the culture of polemics developing in particular regions, first and foremost concerning Iberia, 148 but also other regions like Hungary 149 or Byzantium. 150 Other studies have drawn attention to different genres and their perception of religious others.…”

“…179 Berger,126. 180 Giraud,Discours magistral,parole d'autorité;cf. Destemberg,Espace public,Conversion and Narrative,[145][146][147][148][149][150][151][152][153][154] twentieth-century intellectual historians like Southern, who were happy to celebrate the apparently growing rationality of Christian inter-religious engagement during the twelfth century, and classed it as an instance of the modernity of the medieval West. Anna Sapir Abulafia and others, by contrast, showed how the heightened claims towards rationality uttered by medieval Christian authors also led them to the conclusion that Jews were irrational and, in fact, even obdurate, so that the use of intellectual engagement with them became doubtful.…”

Western Converts to Islam (Later Eleventh to Later Fifteenth Centuries)

“…68 The precise reasons for individual relapses of converted Muslims are not, of course, usually explained in the surviving sources: it is not COPYRIGHT 69 But reconversion to Islam was no doubt in some instances facilitated by continued contact of converts with members of their families or former friends: although hostility was commonly shown to converts, some obviously remained on friendly terms with their former colleagues. Converts, like other Christians, were of course expected to avoid contact with Muslims: in 1232, for example, the archbishop of Gran in Hungary ordered that converted Muslims should be separated from their former coreligionists, 70 and in 1274 the concejo of Seville decreed that new Christians should not live among, or have contact with, Muslims, 71 while a further general prohibition on contact was issued in Castile in 1412. 72 Yet total segregation was never achieved.…”

Défense de la Chrétienté et naissance d’une identité. Hongrie, Pologne et péninsule Ibérique au Moyen Âge

“…De même, Béla lui disait regretter le mariage dégradant mais nécessaire de son fils István ; cette alliance était en fait un moyen de renforcer son pouvoir en s'assurant du soutien des Coumans. À la cérémonie des épousailles, les chefs coumans prêtèrent serment de loyauté au roi 26 . Cette conjonction contradictoire de la politique et de l'identité chrétienne apparaît en Hongrie comme en Pologne : là, le recours aux Ruthènes et autres non-chrétiens par les ducs dans les guerres internes, les missions chez les païens en Prusse, l'installation des Tatars, qui devaient un service militaire, les relations paisibles et les alliances avec les païens lithuaniens n'empêchaient en rien que l'on réclamât de l'aide pour la défense contre les païens.…”