Christendom and Islam in the Middle Ages: New Light on “Grail Stone” and “Hidden Host”

• Published in: Speculum 1957-01, Vol.32 (1), p.103-115
• Main Author: Adolf, Helen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Christianity; Consuls; Islam; Judaism; Koran; Legends; Muslims; Religious poetry; Stone; Tungsten
• ISSN: 0038-7134; 2040-8072
• DOI: 10.2307/2849251

Geopolitical reasons have caused our attention to be focussed on Turkey, Pakistan, and the Arab states. Envoys from the East teach us to understand their present condition in the light of the past; scholars meet to re-assess Near Eastern culture and society; thinkers like Toynbee and Northrop are evaluating Islam and its possible role in world unification. We disclaim any such ambition: it is a wholly “disinterested” interest that makes us revert to the past and evoke the dream of a dream: the earthly paradise made of fragrance, sounds, and running waters which the Sons of the Desert created in Al-Andalus. This conjuring up of the past started some hundred years ago, with scholars like Dozy, Hammer-Purgstall, and Schack exploring and interpreting Arabic history and literature, but it is still going on; new texts and new anthologies have appeared in translations. Moreover, the philological exploitation of these literary mines has yielded recently some amazing results. We now know, for instance, that the Basques attacked Charlemagne's rear guard because two Saracen brothers wanted to liberate their father, carried off as a captive to France. The discovery of the thirteenth-century French and Latin translations of a Castilian version of Mohammed's Ascent to Heaven (Mi ‘rāj), seems to support Asín Palacios' theory as to oriental sources of Dante's eschatology.