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Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75) in his collection of stories, The Decameron, told the tale of the loving father who owns one precious ring and fabricates another two to bequeath these seemingly equal rings to his three sons he holds equally dear. The sons, however, quarrel on after his death as to who has received the genuine ring. A solution to their contention does not seem possible. This famous story has been welcomed as the beginning of religious scepticism, tolerance, and even religious comparative thought. The same holds true for the enigmatic aphorism that Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad are three impostors who seduced the world. To many modern authors these two perspectives on the three Abrahamic religions even seemed to be interchangeable (Niewöhner 1988). In the modern interpretation Boccaccio’s tale represented the discovery of the similarity or, rather, equality of the three Abrahamic religions, the impossibility to decide on their truth claims, and, consequently, the imperative to respect and tolerate the religious other. The tale of the three impostors seems to push the same argument further by insisting that not only the truth claims were similar, but that they were also evenly false.
Scholars in early modern Europe were the first to identify their own claims for religious tolerance and secularism with these propositions. The tale of the three impostors first appeared in the late seventeenth century as an anonymous atheist pamphlet. The ring parable was most prominently constructed by the poet Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in his play ‘Nathan the Sage’ from 1779. Since then the two tales have become very prominent in western debates; they are codes for critical and liberal attitudes towards religion.
The narration and the proverb thus appear to represent very rare medieval voices that go against the tide in a world which, on the face of it, was self-referred and largely either ignorant or hostile towards other faiths. In the present chapter these two intertwined topics, first the tales of the rings and the three impostors and secondly the medieval conceptions of religious respect beyond or in spite of absolute truth claims, will be sketched. The aim is to categorize and contextualize first the source material and secondly some of the conceptions that can be found in the medieval discourse. Due to the current state of research, an equal treatment of all the religions or comprehensiveness cannot be attempted.
For centuries, scholars were fascinated by the tale of the three rings and the epigram of the three impostors. The exact number of versions is difficult to estimate as more texts have continually come to light, stemming from all the different cultures of the Abrahamic religions between the Iberian Peninsula and Central Asia (for collections see Niewöhner 1988; Shagrir 1997). In recent years the search for a primordial version has been given up (Poorthuis 2005). Instead, the different tendencies of the narrations were studied more closely. For the present, this set of texts may be called the ‘tales of the three and the one’. They may be grouped into two main types. The first is the type of the treasure stories. Here, rings, pearls, or one precious stone represent the religions. These treasures are much desired, a loving father may bequeath them, they are characterized either as true or false, falsified or confused, retained by only one or nobody.
The oldest version was told by Patriarch Timotheus of the Church of the East (780–832) in his famous dialogue between the patriarch himself and the Calif al-Mahdi. Here, a pearl everybody desires to own is thrown into a dark house. While most people seize a worthless stone, one person might have found the real pearl. It is only when the house is illuminated that it will be known who was lucky. It is clear that the concept of a single absolute truth is not questioned, either by the characters in this story or by Timotheus. The narrator may be said to have opened up a space for mutual respect between the religions. His main intention was, however, to circumvent a comment on the internal disunity of Christianity, when challenged on this point by the caliph.
A second type of the ‘tales of the three and the one’ is stories about humans. Here, among other characters, three comrades, pilgrims, sages, daughters, or impostors represent the religions. The stories of the treasures and of humans are often combined as in the parable by Boccaccio, where three sons are correlated with three rings. The three humans are sometimes explicitly characterized as a Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim. As representatives of their religions the three humans interact. They meet on a road or in a forest. The heroes of the story engage in a trialogue or in a dialogue with a king. They may also fight or compete for a cake or a heritage and outwit one another. The figures are sometimes constructed on the same hierarchical level or classified as one prince and two disloyal servants, for example. These domestics mislead and harm the son of the king by various means, especially by falsifying a vital message they had been entrusted with by the king.
In the most radical version, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad themselves are the protagonists. These narrations do not qualify as atheistic statements, as they do in the early modern era, but functioned as vilifications of religious enemies in the Middle Ages (Weltecke 2010). These polemical versions of the story of the three and the one are very rare. During the tenth century they first were hurled against the esoteric movements of an uprising group called the Qarmatians in Bahrain and against the Isma’ili movement in Egypt (Madelung 1959; Massignon 1920). The Qarmatians had established a Persian Mahdī against the rule of the Arabic Muslims and saw themselves as superseding the existing religions. In a very gross manner, later writers sought to expose them by demonstrating their derision of the established religion, law, and rule. The leader of the Qarmatians, for example, is said to have relieved himself on top of the Kaʿba he had stolen and broken into two pieces. Since the thirteenth century the sentence of the three impostors has also been ascribed to western figures, again for polemical purposes.
The stories of the three and the one could be adapted to any of the three religions. In all of them are elements of deceit, practical joke, and error. In many versions love and fidelity are featured as well. Most stories display a clear victory of one of the competing parties. Some seem to be undecided, especially in the confrontation with a mighty lord as in the case of Timotheus. Thus, they have no uniform tendency, apart from indeed stressing the existence of the one and only truth. The truth, however, may not be open to the protagonists of the narration. In one of the versions, thus, the Sultan Saladin is said (by a Latin Christian) to have destroyed a precious table and divided it into three. He did not know which of the three gods (!) was the most powerful and accordingly donated a part to each of them. The historical Sultan Saladin (1137/8–1193) was a figure mystifying the Latin world for his military power and his apparent magnanimity (Möhring 1993). Our narrator deflates the hero as he presents him as a simpleton who, by not deciding, rendered his treasure worthless (Jansen Enikel 1972).
The narrations obviously play with the tension between knowledge and deception, between one truth and conflicting claims, between authenticity and forgery, between force and the cleverness of the powerless. Very important are also motifs like similarity versus equality, unity versus disunity, or competition versus cooperation. Some stories are multi-layered and complicated. This is certainly true for Boccaccio’s parable (Ó’Cuilleanáin 1984). His version is framed by an encounter between a mighty Muslim lord, Saladin, who wants to exact money for his wars, and a rich Jewish subject, Melchizedek, who does not want to risk his wealth. By asking Melchizedek about the true religion and threatening him with either a punishment for blasphemy or apostasy, Saladin intends to coerce Melchizedek into paying. The ring parable is Melchizedek’s cunning answer, which Saladin accepts in good humour. After Saladin has demonstrated his power and is outwitted by Melchizedek, the Muslim lord and the Jewish moneylender become friends for life. They both change from being tyrannic and avaricious towards each other to being reliable and open-handed. Their relationship now functions to both their satisfaction. A Christian female narrator again frames the story on yet another level. Thus the set of threes is completed a second time. The Christian lady stands above the quarrels between Jew and Muslim and, as we might infer from the bias of the rest of the story, knows better. The detached Christian lady explains that she is not concerned with the truth of religion, but with acts of humans.
Obviously many problems of the complicated relations between people of different interests, levels of power, and religions are interwoven in the ‘stories of the three and the one’. Yet although they have been seen as rare examples of a debate and relativism not expected in the Middle Ages, they are on the contrary not the only texts which touch these topics. In fact, there was a constant stream of narrations, historiography, and theological writings. In comparison with these complex works the short and often amusing narrations of the three and the one reduce the complex issues to a few emblematic elements. They represent the popular strand of writings on religious diversity.
The wealth of writings which comment on religious multiplicity may be roughly grouped as follows: many histories and even some astrological works enlighten the cause and function of religious multiplicity. Bickering religious representatives and the problem of truth claims were already treated extensively in the preface to the world famous collection of parables known as the ‘Kalila wa Dimna’. The prelude was written in Sassanian Iran of the sixth century (de Blois 1990) and, together with the collection of parables, disseminated to all the four corners of the Eurasian world. The novels of thirteenth-century Europe extensively treat the relation between the world of the Christian knights and a mighty other. These historical and poetical works of many genres communicate with the theological strands of their region and period. To analyse secular literature in view of its perception of the other has been a vivid field of research for many decennia.
Polemical and apologetical literature almost always not only defined one’s own propositions but also explained origins and causes of religious multiplicity in general. As an outcome, Muslim experts drove encyclopedic descriptions of theological traditions and sects already in the ninth and tenth centuries ce to a height unreached by western Christianity until the modern era (Gilliot 2002; van Ess 2011). Even in terms of their internal denominational multiplicity they often strove to surpass Judaism and Christianity. Following a narrative tradition, the number of the internal Jewish sects was given as 71, the Christians as 72 and the Muslims as 73. Writers of heresiographical treatises like Mohammed al-Shahrastānī (1076–1153 ce) took great pains to lay out different theological teachings and name the leaders of movements. Poems and tracts on the hereafter construct hell and heaven and populate these areas also with members of religions outside one’s own religion.
Conflicting truth claims but also plurality as a problem in itself that needed explanation were most systematically treated in religious dialogues and comparative examinations. These tracts were designed as disputations in front of a king, as colloquia, or as a collection of letters and may be seen as elaborated versions of the ‘tales of the three and the one’. Authors explained different theological propositions to their own flock. They acknowledge the fact that individuals are born into one religion and accept its truth claims as matter of fact. Yet, they encourage individuals to reach a higher level of religious understanding, so that their affiliation becomes a matter of choice as well as of rational thought and enquiry.
As far as the Abrahamic religions are concerned, religious plurality was most extreme in Central and Western Asian as well as in North African cities under Muslim rule. Still, diversity was also experienced and analysed within the frame of the Latin church.
Legal texts and their comments, be it commentaries to the Talmud or responsa by Ashkenazi rabbis, tracts by Muslim jurists, or law-books by eastern Christian clerics classify religious affiliations and regulate relations. By way of commentary and debate they also constantly reflect these categories. Especially valuable are the inquisitorial records of the medieval religious inquisitions in the Latin West, produced from the mid-thirteenth century to the fifteenth century. As only few people wrote down their personal outlooks on life and religion, these protocols open up the rare opportunity to learn about the propositions of lay people (Edwards 1985).
The tales as well as the manifold other texts indicated here are sources for what may be termed the medieval discourse of multiplicity. Within this discourse the roles of the participants differed according to power relations within their communities and their surrounding society at large. The wealth and the complexity of this discourse should not come as a surprise, nor should its aspects of religious doubt, comparison, and reasoning. The Middle Ages are the decisive period for the formation of the Abrahamic religions in terms of the development of their institutions, their teachings, and their mutual polemics and relationships. The religions themselves are, in fact, also a product of the various inter- and inner-religious relations and contacts (Wasserstrom 1995). Their sacred books in parts already reflect interreligious contacts (see for example Quran 5: 48) and so do later commentaries on them.
Most societies had to find means of organizing multiplicity by way of law, privileges, or informal practices. Religious equality was not aimed at. The laws ensured discrimination between a leading religion and those religions tolerated in its realm. The historical practices beyond these laws, however, display every shade between religious violence and peaceful cohabitation. The writings sketched above faced the reality of multiplicity, shaped practices, and were in turn shaped by them. At the same time, the multi-voiced discourse upheld the ideal of religious unity. In what follows some aspects of this discourse will be presented. Following the line of the material just sketched we will concentrate on strands which go beyond sheer exclusivism and reveal respect for the other.
Binary categories are usually implied in historical and philosophical research on interreligious interaction. Religions are characterized as ‘tolerant’ versus ‘intolerant’ or ‘violent’ versus ‘peaceful’. The religious cultures in general are said to distinguish mainly between the binary opposition of ‘believer’ or ‘non-believer’. Jan Assmann (2003) introduced a binary distinction between ‘true’ and ‘false’ in religion or between the true and false God as the fundamental monotheistic category. Assmann named this category the ‘Mosaic distinction’, a term which has engendered many scholarly debates.
For the medieval situation, however, these categories are in need of revision. While binary categories clearly existed in order to simplify affiliations and social positions for certain purposes, religious categories of the Middle Ages on the whole were more complex. Legal and theological teachings classified many more groups than merely believers versus unbelievers. Medieval Islam, for example, distinguished between believers, people of the book (mainly Jews, Christians), and idolaters. The scholastic theologian Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–74) also stressed that ‘unbeliever’ was a collective noun designating in fact different phenomena. This notion had practical consequences. The Latin inquisition as a rule had no power to question Jews and Muslims well into the Late Middle Ages (Yerushalmi 1970).
Therefore, other than binary oppositions are welcome as analytical tools. Ecumenical theological studies of the last century developed a model based on three categories. These studies distinguish between (a) exclusivist religions (adherents of other religions are in error), (b) inclusivist religions (adherents of other religions may know parts of the truth), and (c) pluralistic or universalistic religions (every religion is equally close to the truth). A slightly different picture emerges when the three categories are correlated not with the question of dogmatic truth but with God’s assumed reaction to the different religions. Accordingly, exclusivists expect all others to go to hell, inclusivists expect some may be saved after all, and pluralists expect all religious paths to be equally salvific as long as the believer strives to please God (Khalil 2013). Prospects for a life after death when God rewards or punishes the deeds of humans on earth are very prominent in all the Abrahamic religions during the Middle Ages.
As a fourth category religious scepticism will be named. While present-day theological models often expressly exclude religious scepticism from the debate (Mensching 1955), secular historians and philosophers are very interested in these strands. A fifth category is not concerned with religious truth but with the value of human life as such, regardless of religious affiliation. In what follows these five categories will be applied in order to distinguish different strands of thought which open ways for mutual understanding and respect.
In Boccaccio’s ring parable the loving father, who is equally fond of his three sons, is an important motive. Whatever the differences between the sons, they are all embraced by the same affection. This idea is the basis for one important strand of thought, which may be termed anthropological universalism. Anthropological universalism may not limit dogmatic or soteriological exclusivism in any way. It turned towards the common humanity, regardless of the religious differences.
This universalism is displayed in works of secular literature mentioned above, for example in some of the German epics of the High Middle Ages (Stein 1933). Especially the epics Parzival and Willehalm by Wolfram of Eschenbach (d. c.1220) must be named in this respect. Wolfram was not interested in depicting other religions realistically; he instead constructed unspecified ‘pagans’. Wolfram, however, made sure that these foreign opponents of the Christians were just as brave, chivalric, and faithful and thus had to be treated with knightly respect. A central point in the novel Willehalm is the great address by Lady Gyburc to the council of war. Gyburc urges the Christians to spare the pagans, because every human being, the Christian before baptism included, is a pagan by birth. As she herself had been a pagan before she converted, the anthropological similarity and indeed identity of Christian and pagan is demonstrated in her person.
With their treatment of the encounter of religious enemies, Wolfram and Boccaccio were not reflecting fierce crusade propaganda, yet their propositions were well in line with official doctrine. Legal and theological teachings of Latin Christianity held that the pagan possesses his land and life by natural right. Christians may only fight in self-defence and in defence against sins violating natural law (Muldoon 1979). While these theories did not prevent religious violence, a basic legal protection of life and property of non-adherents of the dominant religion was established within all monotheistic cultures of the Middle Ages. Only heretics or apostates in Christian or in Muslim dominated societies could expressly forfeit these elementary securities (Griffel 2000; Lourdaux and Verhelst 1976). In Jewish societies and in Christian communities under Muslim rule no physical violence was legitimate or executed.
Anthropological universalism is often confused with religious relativism or pluralism because medieval thinkers are not expected to respect the well-being of representatives of—in their view—untrue religions.
The ‘tales of the three and the one’ often contain the motive of a single father or king, representing God. The idea of one common God is in fact a very important inclusivistic proposition, contradicting the idea of a stable ‘Mosaic distinction’ mentioned above.
Dogmatic inclusivism was a very widely spread attitude. Even if numerous Jewish and Muslim thinkers denounced Christians as idolaters or many Christian theologians censured Jews and Muslims as traitors and heretics, a lot of thinkers of the three religions stressed the common traditions. Other religions—like Buddhism or more local beliefs in Eurasia, for example—were expressly excluded from this understanding. Especially in the Middle East the shared theological and philosophical backgrounds served in fact as the basis for both religious demarcation and inclusivism. The other two religions could either be negatively framed as deviations or positively as steps towards the absolute truth.
In this context the many religious tracts and dialogues written by Jews, Christians, and Muslims respectively, in Asia or in Europe, should be mentioned. They are often characterized by a reverential tone towards adherents of other religions. They stress the common grounds of their teachings. Especially writings for missions and interreligious diplomacy stressed inclusive propositions and could point out emphatically how near the religious enemy in fact already approached the truth. Many religious dialogues and examinations demonstrate great anthropological and even religious esteem. Yet none of the authors of these tracts and dialogues, be it the Jew Ibn Kammūna (c.1215–1284 ce) in Baghdad or the Latin Christian Ramon Llull (1232–1316) in Mallorca, would cede the superiority of their own religion (Lewis and Niewöhner 1992).
Very far-reaching dogmatic inclusivism may be found as the medieval cultures embraced the ancient philosophical traditions and adapted them to their theology. The translation and adaptation of traditions helped to spread not only philosophical writings but also religious teachings across religious borders. Within its own chain of logic arguments the scholars could accept a philosophical and even a theological teaching as correct, even if it originated from a religious doctrine they did not share. Within certain contexts, they chose not to debate the religious bearings of a specific teaching.
This is true for the famous Letters of the Brethren of Purity from around the tenth century ce, which cite a broad variety of spiritual and philosophical sources from India to Greece. The letters originated in Muslim circles but have also been widely read by Jewish scholars. The authors often found very affirming words for non-Muslim teachings; their dogmatic inclusivism is very liberal indeed. Often no comparative evaluation is given at all. Yet the superiority of Islam remains (Alí de Unzaga 2010). During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Latin scholastic thinkers, too, made ample use of ancient philosophy as well as of Jewish and Muslim sources. It is of no consequence for the present argument whether their approach to non-Christian philosophy led to a genuine conception of a double truth (philosophical and theological) or not. One could also mention the scientific and spiritual works by the Syriac Orthodox scholar Gregorius Bar ʿEbroyo (1226–86), who appreciated the Muslim theologian al-Ghazālī, without ever wavering in his conviction of the superiority of Christianity as a doctrine (Teule 1992).
Dogmatic inclusivism has often been interpreted as religiously relativistic. Consequently inclusivist works have been misunderstood as pluralistic. This is also the case for an apologetic tract, the Bustān al-Uqūl written by a Yemenite Jewish scholar in a period of crisis and persecution. Nathanael al-Fayyūmī (c.1090–c.1165) intended to keep the wavering members of his community with his flock and to prevent conversion. He provided the Jews of Yemen with both strong and inoffensive arguments against polemical assaults and aggressive mission. Nathanael’s advice to Jews under threat was to accept Muhammad’s prophethood to the Muslims as genuine and to remain with Judaism as the true and superior religion revealed to the Jewish people.
In modern scholarship inclusivism has occasionally been connected with heterodoxy. On the contrary, however, inclusivism has always been one possible strand of orthodoxy. It is true that several unorthodox figures like the enigmatic mystic Ibn Hallāj (d. 922 ce) voiced a liberal inclusivist attitude. Yet his sympathy for non-Muslims was not the reason for his persecution (Massignon and Mason 1982: I. 191ff.).
Dogmatic inclusivism was not always welcome to the other parties concerned. Inclusivist supersessionism could be engrossing and posed a potential threat to the religious inferior. Writers like Judah Halevi (1075–1141) realized this constellation as dangerous for his communities. In the Book of Kuzar (Kuzari) he therefore argued for strict soteriological exclusivism, excluding even converts from God’s presence in the world to come. Still his rabbi hoped that at the end of all days all the people who had derided the Jews before, would then embrace their faith. The prospect of an eschatological conversion of all the peoples is often expressed throughout the spiritual literature.
Soteriological inclusivism was not necessarily combined with dogmatic inclusivism. Soteriological inclusivism also appears in the religious cultures of Latin Christians and Muslims alike. In his great poem on the hereafter, the Commedia, Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), for example, grouped virtuous Muslims and innocent un-baptized into limbo, not into hell. Here, we encounter the Sultan Saladin (1137–93), the Andalusian philosopher Averroes (1126–98), or the Persian physician Avicenna (c.980–1037). Their names were mentioned with great admiration by the Latin scholars of the time. With this grouping, Dante was not breaking ground for a liberal avant-garde but remained fully in line with scholastic theology.
For centuries, theologians had defined certain conditions under which the non-Christians could even be received in heaven. They wanted to reconcile the theology of the all-merciful God with absolute truth claims (Capéran 1934). Thomas Aquinas made it clear that, in contrast to the heretic, the unbeliever was damned for his sins, not for his false religion. Those unbelievers who had never had the chance to listen to the gospel and who had taken great care to lead a virtuous life, he said, had implicitly wished for baptism without knowing it. Those individuals could be included in salvation. Saladin could certainly have heard the gospel, thus he only qualified for the limbo. But others, living before Christ or in the remote distance, could not. Accordingly, we meet some of these unbelievers in Dante’s Paradise.
Islam, too, developed a limited inclusivism to allay the teaching that the non-Muslim invariably would go to hell. In the eyes of well-respected Muslim scholars the impossibility to have heard about God’s revelation to Muhammad could indeed, together with virtuousness, qualify a non-Muslim for reception into heaven. Controversies arose as to what exactly ‘no possibility to hear’ would imply. Thus, inclusivist propositions of different grades were formulated. The theologian al-Ghazālī (1058–1111) designed a very limited option. The Sufi mystic Ibn al-ʿArabī (1165–1240), who was also a pronounced dogmatic inclusivist, opened the window somewhat further. He accepted that mankind followed different paths to God, which were, apparently, all created by him. The political, dogmatic, and soteriological superiority of Islam, however, was not suspended by Ibn al-ʿArabī (Legenhausen 1999; Khalil 2013). This is also true for the well-known mystic called Mevlana or al-Rūmī (1207–73). Mevlana’s modest, respectful and inclusivist poems have been very popular in the western liberal thought of the last 200 years and have regularly been misunderstood as pluralistic (Lewis 2001).
For some medieval Jewish thinkers, like Moses Maimonides (1135/8–1204), it was understood that the righteous among the nations would be included in God’s salvation. While the fate of the unbeliever was fiercely disputed among Christian and Muslim theologians, this was much less a theological problem for Jewish theologians.
Another motive common to many of the ‘tales of the three and the one’ is doubt about the truth and the possible deception by fraud. When criteria are lacking, a rejection of all the religious truth claims may be a logical consequence. Orthodox religious leaders considered this thought a constant danger. Even the existence of the ever-disputing theologians themselves could become the ultimate argument in this line of thought. The outspoken medieval Muslim polemicist Ibn Ḥazm stressed this point (Turki 1979). There were indeed individuals who did not believe in the existence of God (Weltecke 2010). Yet, no satisfying proof has been found that the pluralist proposition could switch into an atheist one.
A strand that can well be accounted for as a reaction to the different truth claims may be termed individualistic faith. Where a decision was impossible, simple adherence to a personal faith and ethical rules seemed to be the solution. Such was the reaction of the above-mentioned figure of Burzōē the physician. In the introduction to the Kalila wa-Dimna he asserts that he turned his back on all the belief systems and pursued his own path of salvation instead. He stressed, however, his intention to please God and to save his soul. Clearly Burzōē’s account was widely known, for example to the physician Samauʻal al-Maghribī, who converted to Islam in the year 1163 (Samau’al al-Maghribī 1964). In the lively debates of the first centuries of Muslim rule a number of thinkers expressed strong criticism of the truth claims of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, their sacred scriptures, their cosmological myths, but would not abandon some individual religious ideas of God. These ‘freethinkers’ have been of great interest for research (Stroumsa 1999).
Combined with a hearty contempt for ecclesiastical authorities, this line of reasoning may also be found in the Latin West, voiced by uneducated laymen and women. Central Asia and northern India as a scene of a remarkable religious productivity by individual ascetics should be mentioned here, too. Ultimately the quest for a personal relation to God and a rejection of the teachings and claims by religious authorities was one of the most vigorous driving forces, which constantly caused new religious movements and teachings to emerge.
For a long time scholars have been studying internal struggles and denominational differences in the religions. Especially well known are the two main branches of Islam, Shiʻa and Sunna, the different medieval churches (Latin church, Orthodox churches, eastern churches) and the two branches of Judaism, the Rabbanites and the Karaites. Yet, there were many more smaller or larger groups. The truth claims of these denominations could be just as absolute vis-à-vis their internal enemies as they were towards other religions. A long tradition of polemics accompanies their relations. Scholars even argued that the exclusivism of the monotheistic religions was more pronounced towards internal factions than towards other religions. This thesis, however, cannot be confirmed.
In medieval Judaism, separations and ferocious polemics remained (Lasker 1981), but traditions were very rarely ousted as non-Jewish. Thus, their mutual contentions demonstrate that cohabitation, exchange, fierce polemics, and topographical separation could in fact take place at the same time (Rustow 2008). Muslim and Christian attitudes differ in theory. From their point of view internal deviance was no protected form of religious life. As is well known, episodes of violent persecution arose in some areas of medieval Islam and of Latin Christianity. At the same time cohabitation could be a normal experience of everyday life.
Certain periods witnessed the development of genuine pluralistic strands of theological thought that sought to bridge the gaps. On the whole these pluralistic movements were not ousted as heretical. The first strong pluralistic movement within Christianity occurred during the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, about 800 years after the first establishment of parallel churches. Authors like the Armenian theologian Nerses of Lampron (1153–98) and the Syriac Orthodox scholar Bar ʿEbroyo were leading the field. They declared dogmatic and ritual differences, which had been considered to be absolutely vital in the past, to be mere varieties of the same theology and practice (Pinggéra 2000; 2006). They considered the diverse branches of Christianity as equally true and salvific without arguing for dogmatic and ritual uniformity. By this method the diversities, which had long been part of the respective religious identities, remained unoffended. The same method of decreasing the importance of differences was used in inter-Muslim exchange. Thus, declaring teachings as equal but not insisting on their actual sameness was one established inter-denominational theory of pluralism in the Middle Ages.
In his Book of the Dove, Bar ʿEbroyo used a second method to open up a pluralistic perspective. He declared that while he had been very interested in scholastic disputation in the past, he now considered dogmatic discourse as futile and altogether abstained from it. Instead of quarrelling he ‘wholly eradicated the root of hatred from the depth of [his] heart’ (trans. Wensinck 1919: 60). Bar ʿEbroyo devalued cognitive and speculative theology in favour of spiritual contemplation. In fact, he also bridged a religious border in this work by quoting extensively from al-Ghazālī’s ‘Deliverance from error’ (without naming his source), who in this work also argued for the path of the mystics. Al-Ghazālī for his part likewise stressed the deficiencies of scholastic disputations in favour of the religious practice by the mystic, to whom dogmatic differences were less important. As may be expected, inter-denominational pluralism has often been confused with interreligious pluralism in modern scholarship.
In the ‘tales of the three and the one’ there is much debate on the similarity and the value of the three religions; yet a genuine pluralist version, where all the three religions are equally true in the narrator’s mind, is not known. This is in accordance with the status of pluralism in the Middle Ages. Interreligious pluralism used much the same theory as inter-denominational pluralism to overcome exclusivist positions. Different practices were declared as equally valid and various theological teachings as mere variances of the same true message. However, genuine pluralism violated the limits religious authorities were ready to tolerate and also the common opinions of the population.
Recent movements like the ‘theology of religions’ and other endeavours for peace between different belief-systems have caused a search for past vestiges of the pluralistic position. Thus, in the quest for medieval roots of contemporary intentions many inclusivists or anthropological universalists were read as pluralists. This led to misreadings of scholars like Meister Eckhart (c.1260–before 1328), Peter Abelard, Boccaccio, Marsilio Ficino (1433–99), Nicolas of Cusa (1401–64), Nathanael al-Fayyūmī, Mevlana/al-Rūmī, Ibn al-ʿArabī, and others, some of which have been mentioned above. These writers were inclusivists at most. Sources for the pluralist proposition cannot easily be found as the voices had little chance to be recorded or were not able to express themselves in writing.
Concerning the question whether other religions are salvific, the following positive responses could be given: in order to reconcile the theology of the all-compassionate God with his justice, the punishment in hell and its eternity were widely discussed mainly within Christian and Muslim societies. Both Christianity and Islam largely opted for the eternity of hell and punishment. However, already in early Christianity the idea was brought up that God could not wish for a perpetual suffering of sinners. Around the year 500, the theology of all-redemption was again expressed, this time by a Syriac writer, mystic, and ascetic, Stephen bar Sudhailē (fl. c.500 ce). In the Book of Hierotheos, Stephen envisaged how in the end all created beings, humans, angels, demons, and devils, would dissolve in God. While Syriac Orthodox authorities sympathized with Stephen’s theology, they considered the doctrine of a finite hell heretical. Apart from the very limited opportunity described above, the salvation of the unbeliever was not possible within the accepted theology of medieval Christianity in general. At the same time, there were mystical strands in Greek as well as in Syriac theology that kept the idea of all-redemption alive during the centuries. Books were copied and the teaching debated. Until at least the thirteenth century Syriac copies of the Book of Hierotheos were produced and much sought after (Pinggéra 2002).
A comparable debate took place within medieval Islam. Heresiographers like Shahrastani mentioned authors who proposed universalistic salvation at the end of all days or a finite punishment of the souls in hell (Shahrastani 1986: 75). Ibn al-ʿArabī hoped that the sinners in hell would not experience their abode as an eternal suffering (Khalil 2013: 69). Surprisingly enough, a tract by the radical polemicist for Muslim orthodoxy, Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328 ce), is known for explicitly suggesting a finite hell and an all-redemption (the tract is not translated, see Khalil 2013: 80ff.). Up to the present, the debate on the authenticity and the content of Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise have been very controversial. In this piece written at the end of his life, Ibn Taymiyya stated, against the weight of tradition, that there was in fact no consensus on the eternity of hell and gathered quotations both from the Quran as well as from comments and traditional sayings of the prophet Muhammad (ḥadīth). In fact, in order to support his argument he gathered valuable vestiges of an ongoing debate otherwise lost. Here, too, the idea remained alive even if the leading majority of theologians never accepted it.
In Jewish soteriology, again, the eternity of punishment was no line of demarcation between orthodoxy and deviancy. Eschatological all-redemption was neither considered impossible nor outright deviant. After all it was not considered a burning issue. In Kabbalist circles in Spain an ethical-juridical principle (tikkun olam, repairing the world) received strong eschatological meanings as the mystics now thought that law-abiding Jews could in fact move cosmic forces and help to bring about the salvation of the entire world (Rosenthal 2005).
Even more radical was a second strand which took immediate redemption of all people, regardless of their religion, for granted. Since the early thirteenth century several established Latin theologians realized that this pluralist proposition existed among their flock. One of them was the scholar Guillaume Peyrault (c.1190–1271). Guillaume wrote a chapter on ‘the error of the one who says that everybody can be saved in his respective faith and religion’ (Guillelmus Peraldus 1629: 106–10). Guillaume also documented the argument in favour of this proposition. God the all-merciful could not have created so many pagans (here: Muslims) and Jews with the intention to damn them all to hell. Therefore it was necessary to assume that other faiths were equally dear to him. This assertion kept emerging in Latin theological works, protocols, and also in historical works right up to the end of the Middle Ages. All recorded pluralists lacked a sophisticated education. No scholar is known to have supported the proposition that all religions are equally true, valid, or salvific.
Muslim authors such as al-Nawawi (1234–78 ce) were arguing just in the same way as Guillaume Peyrault that those who doubted that only Islam was true and considered other religions just as valid, were to be considered unbelievers (Khalil 2013: 8). In Islam and Judaism also unorthodox individuals are described as pluralists in historiographical or polemical works. These assertions are difficult to verify (van Ess 1991–7: IV; van Ess 2011; Wasserstrom 1995). Mention should also be made of the religious teachings and practices that, among other features, bridged the antagonism between Islam and Hinduism in northern India. As yet they have not been taken into account sufficiently in this debate. The propositions found in the Persian realm of writing between Central and South Asia need to be taken more into consideration in future studies on pluralism (Roychoudhury 1941; Grobbel 2007).
In conclusion, on the basis of the current state of research it is certain that pluralistic propositions had always been alive during the entire Middle Ages in the different sections of the Abrahamic religions. Yet they were marginalized. Therefore, to identify individuals proves to be much more difficult than for the other, more accepted strands sketched above.
The narrations of the rings and of the three impostors are the tip of the iceberg of the discourse of multiplicity. All levels of society were involved in this discourse, and thus its topics found their way into the popular culture to which the ‘tales of the three and the one’ belong. The discourse of multiplicity then and now was and is shaped by power interests, hierarchies, and unequal opportunities of participation. During the Middle Ages, those voices that sought to demarcate the borders between the religions and maintain the superiority of their own truth claims were dominant. The aim to keep the communities in line, however, did not impede the development of respectful theories; on the contrary. Medieval worlds went far beyond simple distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘they’ or ‘believer’ and ‘non-believer’. It is true, religious differences could be understood as exclusive alternatives and legitimate violence. But at other times many more distinctions and shades could be distinguished.
Several different strands of thought were isolated here, which show different levels of ethical and religious respect towards the other. The majority of these lines of thought were quite accepted by the religious authorities. Only pluralism, while existing, remained on the margins. Dogmatic inclusivism accepted different religions as partly true. As was seen, this inclusivism in itself was not necessarily combined with positive salvific expectations for adherents of other religions; neither did dogmatic exclusivism exclude them. One could defend the idea that God would save some of the unbelievers, in spite of their entirely false beliefs. Dogmatic exclusivity could even be combined with soteriological universalism. This teaching would sustain that all the unbelievers would eventually be saved, in spite of their false beliefs.
Some of the strands of respectful thought invented in the Middle Ages are rather prominent today: to respect the common humanity regardless of religious differences, to embrace the idea of a common God or to declare theological teachings, rituals, and practices as equally true or salvific but not insisting on their sameness.