Borges' Library

El Cid and Ein Karem (Week 7)

On the outskirts of Jerusalem (also known to some as the center of the world), there is a magical hotel where all the rooms are named after famous lovers. Like paradise, there a wonderfully fragrant garden with comfortable chairs for reading and napping; and if you climb up the stairs to the roof, the views stretch all the way across the valley to the golden onion domes of Gorny Convent, gleaming against a background of pine and cypress trees. And there, every night at precisely at 8pm, the guests find their way back inside the building. Made of cool Jerusalem stone, the walls are adorned with brightly-colored contemporary art. Entering the dining room, the guests all sit down to dinner together.

Ah, hotel Alegra. 

I had requested the Dante and Beatrice room--but was informed that that would cost more!!! So, we settled into el Cid and Jimena. Despite my definite preference for Dante and Beatrice, our room was absolutely unforgettable. And ever since, I've found myself quite interested in el Cid and his lady. Of course, if you watch the famous movie--and you should-- you would be made to think that el Cid was a great fighter of moors; an early hero of the reconquista in Spain. But that is simply not the case.

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Still reading everything I can get my hands on about Spain and al-Andalus, I just finished reading, The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture, by Jerrilynn D. Dodds, María Rosa Menocal, Abigail Krasner Balbale. I am a big fan of  María Rosa Menocal's work; and while this book is not as beautifully written as her others (writing is a bit dull), it is filled with the most gorgeous photographs of cathedrals and mosques and contains many wonderful poems. A celebration of al-Andalus in stories and pictures, the book has a jewel-like quality! And the way the authors re-tell the el Cid legend is just what the doctor ordered for clearing up all the misconceptions about this famous hero. For el Cid fought for whoever was paying. He fought for the Muslim emirs of al-Andalus but he also fought for the Christian kings of future Castille. I wouldn't say he was out for money alone, but he certainly was not moved by religion or ideology, as much as for land and friendship. His nickname itself is from Arabic. 

Before Isabella and Ferdinand, religion and language was much more porous for people in Spain. One of the first times Cervantes pulls the rug out from beneath his readers' feet was when he informs us that the manuscript of this true history of the Hidalgo Don Quxoite was written by a Moor named Cide Hamete Benengeli. As Professor Wey-Gomez explained, Benengeli, was nothing if not a "hybrid creature and product of the frontiers!" The "Arabic and Manchegan author" wrote in something we are told might be Arabic; for it then had to be translated by a morisco that the "narrator" happens to meet in the markets of Toledo (translation capital of the world at that time).

A translation!

A translation of a partially completed manuscript written in Arabic by a Moor. 

Cervantes himself lived captive as a slave kidnapped by Barbary pirates in a land ruled by the infamous Hayreddin Barbarossa. Barbarossa was a Greek-born Muslim convert who rose to rule over Algiers. The Ottoman empire is well-known for its incredible porosity. If a person converted and learned the language, they could rise to the very top. And this was so to a lesser extent in North Africa and in al-Andalus. People paid a tax and would be left to live how they saw fit. They could worship in churches and synagogues and were allowed to intermarry. Like in the Ottoman empire, Muslim-ruled Spain was surprisingly multi-cultural--and if one converted to Islam they could rise to the very top. 

Al-Andalus lasted for 700 years. If we can say anything, it is that the culture of Spain from 711- 1492 was much more open than what came before or after it. People did learn each other's languages and they converted to each other's religions. Cervantes book is filled with converts.

There has been some push-back against an overly idealized version of al-Andalus. But as Harold Bloom said in the introduction to María Rosa Menocal's other book, Ornament of the World, this is a necessary idealization; one from which we can learn a lot, I think.  

With that in mind that we have much to learn, I just finished another book about multi-cultural Islamic Spain, called A Vanished World, by Chris Lowney. Interesting on so many levels, the author was a one-time Jesuit seminarian who went on to work for JP Morgan as a managing director. He did the Compostela pilgrimage to raise money for Catholic charities and indeed is an active philanthropist. His treatment of the Saint James story was especially compelling, I thought (and as a pilgrim himself, he was very moving on the camino). As is well-known from the New Testament, Saint James was the first Christian martyr and died back in Jerusalem not all that long after Christ was crucified. So, how did he get to Spain? There is a myth that a shepherd was drawn by a field bathed in heavenly light (compostela means "field of stars") and discovers the tomb of the apostle James. Impossible and yet the pilgrims would come. For a story had been born that the body of Saint James, after martyrdom in Jerusalem, had been placed in a ship made of marble (!) and ended up in Spain, which was at the time considered to be the end of the world. (For Jesus told James: You shall be my witness to the end of the earth). 

The myth was forgotten but then resurrected when Charlemagne had a dream (like Constantine had a dream). Saint James appeared to him and instructed him to follow the milky way, where he would uncover-or deliver-- his grave. This legend would be more martial than the earlier story of the shepherd (whose story recalls the nativity); and would become the origin of the Saint James the Moor Slayer, screamed by knights on the battle field during the reconquista. Like Spain itself, the legend of Saint James went from a story of peace and harmony to a battle cry, and this also shares much with the legends about el Cid. The book started and ended with the 2004 bombings in Madrid since we are repeating the same things again and again.

 

Video from our stay in Ein Karen below. 

(Also we are going to have to immediately take a second trip to Spain, I see... )

 

A Poisoner Chalice (Last Read of the Year)

In September 1776, in the fairytale-like Swiss town of Zurich, a plot believed to be of a diabolical nature took place in the city's main church.

Someone, it seems, had put poison in the Communion wine.

That something like this could happen in a place as orderly as Zurich-- and that it would have occurred on one of the most important festival days of the German Protestant Church, the Day of Repentance and Prayer; but that this crime took place in the city's main church, the very place where the ruling elite routinely gathered to pray, quickly turned the case into a great late 18th century cause célèbre.

It was not by mere chance that I had picked up historian Jeffrey Freedman's wonderful book on the case, A Poisoned Chalice, on the day after Christmas. For I had myself come down on Christmas night with the worst case of the flu I have had in living memory. No one else was ill in the family, and I had spent the week preceding Christmas home alone sitting by the fire reading. How could I have gotten this sick and where could I have picked it up? Pondering things, a creeping doubt entered my head: Had I gotten sick from Christmas Eve service during Communion? I felt sheepish even considering this since, well, can one get sick from the wine made holy??? 

Pondering my situation, I remembered Freedman's book on the poisoned chalice. (I like to buy any book with the word chalice in the title and have had this one for quite some time).

What sounds like a TV detective novel is actually a wonderfully-written book of serious history. They call it micro-history, where a small event in time is analyzed in order illuminate larger themes and currents. Freedman is a dazzling writer and this book is a real page-turner!

First, I should assure you that no one actually died after drinking from the Cup-- but such was the fuss around the foul taste of the wine and other hints at intrigue that an inquiry was undertaken. This was the city's main church, after all, where all the prominent townspeople came to worship. So doctors were called in to analyze the contaminated wine and it was concluded that someone had indeed put arsenic in it. 

How did one come to such a conclusion in the days before chemical analysis? Simple, they heated it up and sniffed the vapors. Arsenic gives off a telltale garlic stench.

Freedman doesn't dwell on this fact but I think it does bear to keep in mind that this all happened in what was Ulrich Zwingli's church, the famous Zurich Grossmünster. Last year in Zurich, out on a walking tour of the city, our guide pointed to the church from across the river and said, Under Zwingli this city was a theocracy. They were religious fanatics like the Taliban. And that over there, he said still pointing at the church, was Taliban headquarters. Zwingli and his revolution was all almost two hundred years in the past by the time of the case of the poisoned chalice--but it is interesting to note (and historically ironic) that events took place in this church-- of all churches. Zwingli, considered the father of the Reformed tradition, is less well known these days than Calvin, who came in after Zwingli's death to shape the new traditions, which would eventually sweep across southern German and France, and then on to Holland, England and Scotland among the Congregationalists and Presbyterians,--before traveling further still over to the New World. We very much live in Zwingli reformed world. 

Preaching from the Grossmunster, this ancient church, believed to have been founded by Charlemagne in the 8th century, was stripped of all its stained glass and treasures and was reborn as a reformed church. A kind of ground zero, if you will. Doing away with Lenten fasting and encouraging the clergy to marry, Zwingli's most radical stand was concerning the Eucharist. Differing from Martin Luther, who believed that Christ's presence was contained "in, with, and under" the bread and wine, Zwingli begged to differ. Believing that it was rather a commemoration of the last supper, he insisted the wine and bread to be solely symbolic. 

In 2016, I was auditing a religious studies class at Caltech with a small group of undergraduates in which the professor brought in a dialogue from the Marburg Colloquy. Called in 1529 by the German ruler, Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, who had hoped to unite the various Protestant thinkers of the age so as to unite the Protestant states into a political alliance, many famous thinkers of the time were present--from Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli to Philipp Melanchthon, and Andreas Osiander. In class, I was given the part of Luther and will never forget the awkwardness of the undergraduates--all future scientists-- trying to read out the lines of this debate that was utterly incomprehensible to them.

ZWINGLI: I insist that the words of the Lord's Supper must be figurative. This is ever apparent, and even
required by the article of faith: "taken up into heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father." Otherwise, it
would be absurd to look for him in the Lord's Supper at the same time that Christ is telling us that he is in
heaven. One and the same body cannot possibly be in different places....

LUTHER: I call upon you as before: your basic contentions are shaky. Give way, and give glory to God'

ZWINGLI: And we call upon you to give glory to God and to quit begging the question! The issue at stake is
this: Where is the proof of your position? I am willing to consider your words carefully-no harm meant! You're
trying to outwit me. I stand by this passage in the sixth chapter of John, verse 63 and shall not be shaken from it.
You'll have to sing another tune.

LUTHER: You’re being obnoxious.

Indeed! 

And so here we were again.

Despite the fact that no one died, that someone would do such a thing hinted for the people of Zurich of a moral depravity that defied reason. This was only two decades after the infamous mega-quake of 1755, the Lisbon Earthquake. And as if the earthquake wasn't enough, the massively devastating earthquake was followed by fires and then a great tsunami that caused the complete destruction of one of the world's greatest cities of the time. Indeed, the human suffering was so terrible that the disaster sparked philosophical and religious debates on the nature of Evil that continued across Europe for a long time afterward; Voltaire's Candide being perhaps among the most famous. In one of the vivid scenes of the novel, as Candide is lying there trapped under the rubble, he begs for wine and light. The sailor has gone off to pillage-- but what of Candide's companion Pangloss? Well, our man Pangloss is too busy philosophizing to be of any real help. Though thousands have perished, he tells his friend lying under the rubble, still everything is just as it should have been, for: "How could Leibnitz have been wrong?"

How indeed?

At the time the Lisbon earthquake had a profound affect on the collective imagination, and theologians and philosophers across Europe struggled with the question of evil and God (if God was Omnipotent and All-Loving how could he permit suffering of this scale? Either he is not omnipotent or his is not all loving). The case of the poisoned chalice struck the people of Switzerland and then Germany in a similar manner. What was the nature of evil? Preachers gave fiery sermons on the diabolical meaning of the crime for simply no rational person would ever want to murder hundreds of fellow church-goers.There was also a social aspect to the crime since people came together in trust. The Protestant rite was conducted for both clergy and people (not only priests but all participated), with the Cup being passed from hand to hand within the congregation. So social cohesiveness was also being undermined.

Everything we know about cases like this calls out for a scapegoat. I was surprised that the Jewish community was not quickly targeted until Freedman explained that there were no longer any Jewish people living within the walls of the city, as they had all been driven out a hundred years earlier after a supposed poisoning of a well. Not surprisingly a suspect was found: the church grave digger and bell ringer. In Freedman's words, this was always considered a lowly occupation and in this case could serve as a replacement scapegoat for the crime. A well publicized trial was then conducted. Not enough evidence was found and the accused was eventually released but much like with the Lisbon earthquake the crime touched on a nerve an a great debate was sparked in conversations taking place in newspapers and journals across Germany in Switzerland about the case in terms of Enlightenment philosophy--that starting from questions concerning the nature of evil led to a questioning of truth itself. 

It's a wonderful book that I cannot recommend enough. 

 

Top photo from Wikipedia and below from Steffen Jacobs