Instances of Cultural Appropriation in the Works of Paulus Alvarus and Eulogius of Córdoba

Hispano-Roman Culture

From the perspective of material culture, language and literature, Christianity in al-Andalus was marked by Roman traditions. Paulus Alvarus himself is a good case in point: He cherished Latin learning and literature, and he dedicated himself to a typical pastime of Roman aristocrats, writing and exchanging letters ^[5]. Increasingly, aristocratic epistolographers in late antiquity included also clerics, mostly bishops, and in this particular case, also a Christian convert to Judaism ^[6]. Paulus Alvarus saw himself clearly in the tradition of earlier Roman elites, who had practiced epistolography for centuries. Since the Christianisation of the empire in late antiquity, men with an aristocratic background had increasingly joined the ranks of the Christian clergy, especially when it was no longer possible to pursue secular careers in imperial service, as had been customary in earlier periods.

Since at least the seventh century, from Isidore of Seville onwards, Hispano-Roman culture had merged with the political heritage of the Visigothic monarchy ^[7]. After 589, the Visigoths had embraced Catholic Christianity ^[8], which had resulted in the elimination of the most visible sign of separate Gothic identity, the profession of Homoian Christianity ( Arianism ). From then on, the phrase rex, gens et patria Gothorum increasingly referred to the aristocratic elite of the Visigothic kingdom, centred around the kingdom of Toledo ^[9]. In the seventh century, the term ‘Roman’ mostly referred to the Byzantine empire, which was on occasion also referred to as res publica. By contrast, the elite in Spain saw itself as Gothic, even though the majority of its members were of provincial Roman descent, such as the family of Leander and Isidore of Seville ^[10]. Paradoxically, provincial Romans adopted Gothic identity, which was expressed by means of Catholic Christianity and Latin learning. Interestingly, the Spanish church saw itself as the embodiment of religious orthodoxy, against both the Byzantine emperor and the pope of Rome, both of whom were reprimanded by Spanish bishops for allegedly leaning towards heterodox teachings ^[11]. The so-called Isidorian renaissance encompassed both the secular heritage of Latin learning and the religious tradition of orthodox Catholicism, both of which were thought to reside in Toledo, perceived as the centre of Latin Christianity ^[12].

This mindset is striking for several reasons. It was ahistorical insofar as it disregarded the barbarian origins of the Gothic monarchy as well as the Jewish origins of Christianity. The Jews were singled out as the most important out-group, against which Gothic identity was constructed in the seventh century ^[13]. The Gothic church saw itself as the Verus Israel, the true, spiritual Israel, which supposedly had replaced the first covenant, the Old Testament ^[14]. When the Visigoths adopted Catholic Christianity after 589, they took over the traditions of patristic anti-Judaism as well, which had been aimed at disinheriting, expropriating and replacing the supposedly old, carnal Israel, the people of the Jews ^[15]. The barbarian people of the Goths adopted both Roman and Catholic identity, shedding their Germanic heritage but for personal and a few institutional names. This change of political and religious identity was achieved by laying claim to political and religious truth: On the political level, the Byzantine emperor was reproached with fostering heterodox ( miaphysite ) Christianity, which supposedly made him unfit to represent true Roman traditions, and on the religious level, the Gothic church claimed to represent the centre of orthodoxy, both against the pope of Rome ( on the issue of monothelitism ) and against the Jews.

The Gothic king Leovigild, who also conquered the kingdom of the Suebi, adopted Byzantine court ceremonial in the 580s, and he also founded a new royal city, named Reccopolis after his son and successor ^[16]. Toledo and its surroundings were turned into the centre of a new, imperial monarchy, which was accentuated by the adoption of the imperial name Flavius by several Gothic kings ( which was later also used by provincial Roman aristocrats, as evidenced by the correspondence of Paulus Alvarus ). In the religious sphere, Gothic Arianism ( the Homoian creed ) was abandoned very quickly ^[17]; consequently, it was the Jews who were turned into the main internal enemy, who served as a backdrop for the construction of Gothic orthodoxy. Following patristic tradition, the Jews were marginalised and expropriated, even though they managed to survive in secret ^[18], probably until the end of the Gothic monarchy.

Cultural constellations in al-Andalus

After the Muslim conquest of most of the Iberian peninsula, the political conditions changed fundamentally. Christianity lost the political backing of the Gothic monarchy, it was reduced to the status of the religion of a protected people, on a par with the Jews ^[19]. Some Gothic magnates came to agreements with the Islamic authorities, preserving their social status ^[20]. In addition, Christians in al-Andalus were able to lead their lives in private mostly as they had done before. However, in public, especially in town centres, they lost their formerly predominant position, especially after the middle of the ninth century, when the splendour of Abbasid court culture from Baghdad was increasingly imitated also in Córdoba.

Most importantly, at least from the perspective of Paulus Alvarus, Latin was no longer the language of power. Members of Christian elites who had lost their former hegemonic social position felt the loss most drastically; from their perspective, it was a downfall, accompanied by social descent. This loss of power entailed a weakening of Latin culture ^[21]. Whereas the seventh century had seen the blossoming of Latin learning during the Isidorian renaissance, the ninth century seemed to show the opposite tendency, a decline. Christianity lost the position of cultural hegemony, being reduced to an inferior position. For Christians maintaining traditions of Visigothic Spain, it was an unfamiliar situation: Latin was no longer a language of power and prestige, being reduced to the position of some kind of counterculture, preserved in private, outside the public sphere. Paulus Alvarus expressed this feeling of marginalisation towards the beginning of his anti-Islamic treatise: “What greater persecution of any kind could there be and what more severe form of degradation could be imagined than not being allowed to express in public what is reasonably believed in the heart ^[22]?”

Paulus Alvarus bemoaned the cultural loss perceived by himself in a famous passage criticizing the attraction of Christian youths to Arabic culture at the very end of this treatise:

What clever person, I ask, is to be found today among our faithful laymen who, intent on the sacred scriptures, reviews the works, written in Latin, of any of the doctors? Who is possessed by a fire of love for the evangelical, prophetic, or apostolic writings? Do not all the Christian youths, handsome of face, eloquent in language, conspicuous in demeanour and bearing, outstanding in gentile erudition, and elevated by eloquence in Arabic avidly take out, intently read, and keenly examine the volumes of the Chaldeans, and, gathering together with immoderate zeal, make them known by praising them, with ample and constrained language, while, ignorant of ecclesiastical beauty, they disdain as most vile the rivers of the church flowing from paradise? Oh, the pain of it! Christians do not know their own law and Latins do not pay attention to their own language, so that in the entire brotherhood of Christ scarcely is there found one in a thousand men who is able to direct letters of greeting to a brother in a reasonable manner, and one can find abundant crowds without number that can eruditely set forth Chaldean displays of words, to the point that they adorn the final clauses, drawing them together with a single letter, with more metrically erudite song and more sublime beauty than is done by those peoples themselves; and, in accordance with what the idiom of this language demands, which closes all the vowel marks through the hemistics and lines, the letters of the entire alphabet are constrained rhythmically, or rather ( as it befits the same ) metrically, through various turns of phrase and many variants, into a single, or at least similar, letter at the end. There are many other things which would have demonstrated the validity of this exposition of ours, or better, that would have brought it forth more clearly into the light ^[23].

Alvarus feared the attraction of Arabic culture, which he equated with the attraction of the religion of Islam. From his perspective, Christian youths appropriated Arabic culture for themselves, which – from his perspective – led to an abandonment of Latin and Christian heritage. The underlying situation was marked first by asymmetrical power relations, and second by an identification of religion and culture. In this last respect Alvarus was clearly under the influence of Visigothic constellations, as explained above: In the seventh century, Catholic Christianity and Roman culture had merged to become almost indistinguishable, ironically under the label ‘Gothic’. Even after the Visigothic monarchy had vanished from the scene, the merger of Catholic religion and Latin culture remained intact. Therefore, Christians abandoning Latin culture in favour of Arabic were suspected of changing their religion as well.

The identification of religion with culture was sustained in several monastic establishments on the outskirts of Córdoba, which included both monasteries and basilicas erected over the tombs of Roman martyrs. It was in these monasteries and basilicas that schools were established where Latin learning continued. It was precisely in these schools that some of the future Cordovan ‘martyrs’ were educated. A case in point is the exceptor reipublicae Isaac, a Christian official at the Umayyad court, who suddenly left his office, withdrawing from public life into eremitic solitude in a suburban monastery ^[24]. From the perspective of Christians adhering to an identification of religion and culture, urban centres were now dominated by Arabic language, Islamic religion and sophisticated court culture modelled after the example of Abbasid Baghdad ^[25]. Since the town centre was now occupied ( or appropriated ) by Arabic-Islamic authorities, those Christians who continued to adhere to Latin Christian culture and Visigothic traditions withdrew to suburban peripheries, where they established networks able to support people resisting Islamic domination. In many cases, such people came from religiously mixed families, where they were unable to practice Christianity freely; in order to avoid their Muslim family members, they withdrew to monasteries and basilicas where they joined ‘pure’ Christian communities ^[26].

Paulus Alvarus is probably the individual who felt these developments most clearly. To be sure, many ordinary Christians may not have felt that way; such Christians adapted more or less easily to the conditions of Arabic dominance ^[27]. This Christian majority rejected the prophetic and radical gestures of the Cordovan ‘martyrs’; they did not accept the Christian victims as martyrs at all, criticizing them for jeopardizing the peaceful life of Christians under Islamic rule. It was precisely against such critics that Paulus Alvarus and Eulogius unfolded their literary activities ^[28].

Cultural appropriation mattered to Paulus Alvarus on several levels. From his perspective, Latin Christianity had been dispossessed of its rightful, inherited position as the dominant cultural force legitimating Visigothic rule in post-Roman Spain. This devaluation of cultural capital was accompanied and made manifest by a contemporary ‘defection’ of Christian youths towards Arabic culture.

Verus Israel

This was aggravated by another case of defection: The conversion of the Frankish deacon Bodo to Judaism ^[29]. Both Christian youths, who preferred Arabic culture, and Bodo, who adopted the Jewish faith, seemed to corroborate the deterioration of the position of Latin and Christian culture in al-Andalus. Traditionally, Catholic Christianity had arrogated itself a dominant status vis à vis Judaism, which was relegated to an inferior position; ‘carnal’ Israel was said to represent an earlier phase of salvation history, which had been supplanted by the ‘true’ Israel of the church ^[30]. By taking over the Hebrew Bible and laying claim to the title ‘Israel’, Christian theologians performed an act of appropriation, “the adoption of someone else’s history for one’s own” ^[31].

In Visigothic Spain, this gesture of dominance had been closely linked to the Visigothic monarchy and its legislation. The defection of Bodo turned this situation upside down, seeming to reverse salvation history. What is more, the Jewish convert could speak his mind freely under Islamic rule; there was no need for him to choose his words carefully when he addressed his Christian adversary, rejecting his opinions. Originally, Paulus Alvarus tried to win Eleazar back for Christianity, but he soon realised that this proved impossible, which led to mutual insults and vituperations.

Paulus Alvarus charged Eleazar with having embraced Judaism for carnal motives, wanting to indulge in sexual debauchery and bodily pleasures ^[32]. Alvarus appropriates the Israelitic inheritance for the church: [ … ] et ideo non nos gentes didicimus esse, set Srahel, quia ex ipsa stirpe Srahelitica orti parentes olim fuerunt nostri. [ … ] Nos uerus Srahel sumus. Probably, this identification with and appropriation of ‘Israel’ has to be taken figuratively, not as a reference to actual Jewish descent: Quisquis uero ex gentibus Ihesu nostro credidit, confestim in numero Srahelis transiuit ^[33]. Bodo, who has gone over to Judaism, is dispossessed: scias mea omnia, non tua esse ^[34]. Consequently, the name ‘Israel’ is reserved for the church, whereas ‘Iudaeus’ is applied to Jews refusing to convert: Gentes uero qui ad fidem Srahelis reuertuntur cotidie inseruntur populo Dei, sicuti tu uisus es Iudeorum adesisse herrori ^[35].

The ‘defection’ of Bodo, as Alvarus saw it, undermined the concept of the church as the Verus Israel and of the hermeneutic functions attributed to the Jews by Christian theologians: According to this theory, Jews served as witnesses of Christian truth ^[36]. A Christian cleric converting to Judaism, embracing the ‘Old’ covenant, contradicted the progress of salvation history, undermining the ideological foundations of Christian truth claims. In al-Andalus, this could also be understood as undermining the social position of a church that saw itself endangered by the advance of Arabic learning and culture. Apparently, Bodo defected to the enemy, at least he seemed to support ideological positions undercutting the standing of the Andalusian church and the triumphalist attitude which had increasingly been adopted by Christian theologians after the Christianisation of the Roman Empire.

Islam – a product of cultural appropriation?

The issues proved to be more complicated with regard to Islam. There was no place for Islam in traditional Christian salvation history. In Oriental Christian polemics, the faith preached by Muḥammad was first regarded as a Christian heresy, which made it possible to classify it according to traditional Christian heresiology ^[37]. Only later did Christian polemicists realise that Islam was a religion ( lex ) of its own ^[38]. Paulus Alvarus was among the first Latin Christian writers to adapt Oriental Christian polemics for his own purposes. In this connection, he adapted the reproach that Muḥammad, the Islamic prophet, had committed acts of ‘cultural appropriation’. This reproach was a rhetorical strategy meant to create the impression that Islam was derived from earlier sources, most importantly Christianity. Historical primacy was equated with superiority, without taking into account that a similar reproach with equal connotations might have been made against Christianity itself with regard to Judaism.

In medieval polemical writings, the Islamic prophet was blamed for taking over – albeit erroneously and accompanied by multiple misunderstandings – elements from the Christian tradition; in the legend of Sergius-Baḥīrā, the agent responsible for this was said to be a Christian heretic, who had made false promises to the would-be prophet ^[39]. Second, Muḥammad was blamed for taking over prescriptions from Judaism, which allegedly made life easier for his followers compared to a strict observance of Christian dogma ^[40]. Third, Muḥammad was blamed for arrogating the position of a prophet for himself ^[41]. This was accompanied by derogatory statements regarding the person and life of the prophet: In the ‘Indiculus luminosus’, Paulus Alvarus refers to the prophet of Islam as allegedly being driven by lust for women ^[42]. The motive of lust is also prominent in the polemical Life of the prophet ( ‘Istoria de Mahomet’ ) included by Eulogius in his ‘Liber apologeticus martyrum’ ^[43]. Interestingly, early Christian polemicists such as John of Damascus and Eulogius cannot have taken up such traditions from written sources, as the episode involving Zaynab was never included in the canonical sīra tradition of the prophet. Therefore, they must have appropriated this episode directly from interreligious discourse ^[44].

Paulus Alvarus charges Muḥammad with having invented revelations allegedly brought by the archangel Gabriel ^[45]. Furthermore, while interpreting a Biblical passage from Job Alvarus blames Muḥammad for “sucking the painted venom from these sects with his open mouth, painstakingly corrupting the concoction ( confectionem ), he constructed his alluring words from the rites of a thousand sects. Composing his words from the teachings of heretics, philosophers, and Jews [ … ]” ^[46]. Alvarus especially refers to the “re-institution” of circumcision ^[47]. Muḥammad is presented as being unoriginal, everything he taught is said to be based on traditions taken over from Christianity and Judaism: “[ … ] ( he ) wove for those who were following him a false third testament by means of deceitful theft ^[48].” “Theft” in this context refers to illegal appropriation, carried out in secret with the intention to deceive and mislead the followers, who remain unaware of the true character of the evil machinations orchestrated by the pseudo-prophet.

The layman Paulus Alvarus, who was critical of Andalusian church authorities for their collaboration with the Islamic regime, was in general critical of church hierarchies. An author more clerically minded than him might have pointed out that Muḥammad’s error hailed from his disregard of the teaching office of the church, his lack of subservience to bishops, and also from his lack of contact with orthodox monasticism and institutionalised charismatic leadership. However, the critical position of Alvarus and of Eulogius towards church hierarchy prevented them from blaming Muḥammad for appropriating the teaching office. Their claim that Islam was Muḥammad’s invention was of course a reflection of the Islamic doctrine that Jewish and Christian scriptures had been falsified by Jewish and Christian tradition ( taḥrīf ) and that only the Qur’ān restored the original purity of divine revelation. From an Islamic perspective, appropriation of Jewish and Christian tradition was rather an act of purification and restoration, a reform returning revelation to its pristine state of purity and clarity ^[49].

The aim: an intended revolution of power structures

For his anti-Islamic argument, Paulus Alvarus appropriates material from two different sources: First, his thoughts are based on Oriental Christian polemics, such as John of Damascus ^[50]. Second, he uses bits of Islamic material, turned against its original context ^[51]. For the sake of argument, both kinds of material are reframed, after having been selected for the purposes of the proposed argument, often inserted in Biblical exegesis and a re-writing of passages of church fathers. The processes of selection and reframing serve a common aim: Paulus Alvarus wants to overturn the existing power structures, at least at the textual level, putting Christianity back into the position of a dominant religion, much in the way he tries to achieve the same hegemonic status for Latin learning ^[52]. The endeavour to project Christianity into a position of superiority is meant to reestablish the hegemonic position the church had enjoyed before the Muslim conquest.

As an author familiar with the Latin tradition, Paulus Alvarus uses rhetorical means to pursue his aim: Not only does he select material carefully and purposefully, he also adopts an adequate rhetorical stand that puts himself into a position of authority. He tries to bolster his authorial position of power with recourse to exemplary positions from ancient and Biblical tradition. First, he uses parrhesia, free speech, a strategy also widely used by the ‘martyrs’, at least according to the hagiographic account of Eulogius and Paulus Alvarus ^[53]. Second, he adopts prophetic speech: Not only does he denounce Muḥammad as an impostor and pseudoprophet, he also lays claim to a prophet-like status himself, without however using the actual word ^[54]. As an author, he claims to speak the truth, acting in accordance with God’s will, thereby continuing the argument of Biblical prophets, renewing and continuing their teachings, criticizing political authorities for misusing their power against innocent people who only want to serve God according to their ancestral religion. Much of this can be seen as a parallel to the role adopted by Biblical prophets according to Old Testament accounts ^[55]. The role of a prophet provides the author with religious capital, assuring him a dominant position, if not politically, then at least culturally and religiously. In addition, a prophet is able to interpret signs, he has hermeneutic power based on divine revelations. This provides the basis for the hermeneutic manoeuvres used by Paulus Alvarus and Eulogius whereby the Christian victims are presented as martyrs according to the ancient model.

However, in the ‘Indiculus luminosus’ Paulus Alvarus does not recommend specific actions, unlike Biblical prophets. In his correspondence with Eleazar, he wants to win the convert back for Christianity, at least at the beginning of their letter exchange. One might postulate that he wants to win back ‘cultural converts’ in general by denouncing Islam ^[56]. However, in his anti-Islamic treatise he merely denigrates the religious and cultural opponent, without actually recommending an attractive cultural alternative. The Latin style of his writings is highly involved on the one hand and marked by vulgar Latin on the other. Reading his works, one cannot escape the impression that Christian youths were quite justified in feeling attracted to the splendour of Arabic culture. Also, in the generation following Alvarus, Andalusian Christians started to translate Christian scriptures, such as the psalms, into Arabic, which was later followed by gospels, calendars and canon law ^[57]. Latin continued to be used and spoken, but Latin literature dried up. From the second half of the ninth century onwards, cultural creativity of Andalusian Christians unfolded in Arabic only.

In several of his writings, Alvarus was eager to draw a clear line between the standing of Latin and Arabic. In one of his letters to John of Seville, he criticises his correspondent for applying the term grammatica to ‘Oriental’ learning referring to the teaching of “Chaldean” wisdom by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar ^[58]. From Alvarus’s perspective, only God can be the source of wisdom, which justifies the use of dignified terms from ancient tradition ^[59]. Jerome, for Alvarus probably the most cherished church father ^[60], is taken as an authority to justify his position that foreign, oriental learning should not be considered a source of wisdom, but that it should rather be turned into an object to be denounced and denigrated, at most into a source from which intellectual enemies can be refuted, for whom such learning has cultural relevance ^[61]. We can be fairly sure that for Alvarus contemporary Arabic learning had the same qualities as the Chaldean tradition of the Biblical past ^[62]. For him, true learning does not derive from such “disciplines”, but from God’s revelation, who is the source of “illustration” and wisdom. The passage quoted above shows that he warns Christians to follow the teachings derived from foreign sources; such traditions should rather be judged – according to divine revelations –, which provides the basis for intellectually overcoming the “enemy”, who is “convinced” by the truth ultimately deriving from God. Divine wisdom refutes human science, erudition and prudence, which are grounded merely on arts and arguments ^[63].

For Alvarus, this religious devaluation of ‘Oriental’ disciplines even extends to ancient Latin culture, which is also played down vis à vis Christian learning ^[64]. In line with earlier interventions by Jerome, Alvarus accords only subservient positions to ancient philosophy and philology; they serve as means used to express religious truth, which is derived from Christian faith only. Plato and Donatus remain time-honoured sources of learning, but only as functions of Christian erudition. By late antiquity, ancient tradition had been appropriated by Christians, ancient philosophers had been dispossessed, as evidenced by the closure of the Academy of Athens by Emperor Justinian in 529 ^[65]. Alvarus tries to apply the patristic method of a religious functionalisation of culture also to contemporary Arabic learning, but here an additional factor comes into play: Christian scholars are called upon to refute the intellectual adversary by means of arguments derived from his own tradition, i. e. from Islam. Unlike classical ancient learning, which was no longer backed by political powers perceived as being hostile towards Christianity ^[66], Arabic culture was sustained by the Islamic caliphate, much as Chaldean learning of Biblical times had been upheld by the Babylonian empire.

Ultimately, Paulus Alvarus failed in the cultural endeavours he wanted to achieve. As in most cases of cultural appropriation, he started with the perception of an imbalance of power ^[67], associated with an imbalance in the sphere of cultural expression and creativity. However, he was uncritical regarding the prehistory of the ‘heritage’ he considered to be his ‘own’. He disregarded the appropriation of Jewish scriptures by Christianity, as well as the appropriation of Roman traditions by the Visigoths. The political preconditions of the Isidorian renaissance were equally left out of the picture; the hegemonic, perhaps even imperial character of Isidorian ‘Spain’ and its heritage were taken for granted. Paulus Alvarus was looking back to a situation of power when ‘Visigothic’ culture, nourished by Catholic, Roman and Latin traditions, was in a ‘rightfully’ hegemonic position sustained by the Gothic monarchy.

Consequently, the situation after the Muslim conquest appeared to him as unnatural, unlawful, and out of order. Even though his family seems to have preserved its social status in the private sphere, he lost access to political power, since he was unwilling to compromise with Muslim authorities as a subordinated dhimmī. This loss of political influence entailed a feeling of resentment regarding the Islamic authorities and those Christians collaborating with the Islamic regime, including church hierarchies ^[68].

This feeling of resentment provided the basis for Paulus Alvarus’s cultural project of Latin-Christian empowerment. First, he promoted traditional learning in monastic schools, as he had himself experienced in the school of abbot Speraindeo. This was associated with a movement of withdrawal from the public sphere into suburban peripheries safe from Islamic influence, as evidenced in many stories recounting the life of would-be martyrs in the accounts written by Eulogius. A corollary of this was – second – Alvarus’s refutation of an attempt – as he perceived it – to increase the status of Judaism by conversion from Christianity. Third, and perhaps most importantly, Paulus Alvarus denigrated Islam as the principal source of the cultural and political capital of the Umayyad regime. It was in this context that he identified and employed cultural appropriation most forcefully: He charged Muḥammad with unlawfully adopting the role of a prophet and with appropriating Christian heresies and Jewish teachings that allegedly had already been overcome by Christianity. Furthermore, Muḥammad was charged with seeking political power by seducing his followers with machinations based on traditions appropriated wrongfully from earlier religions. Consequently, it was by instances of cultural appropriation – as Alvarus conceived it – that the pseudo-prophet was able to seduce his followers and secure a dominant position for himself, thereby dispossessing the legitimate heirs to political, religious and cultural dominance.

However, this multifaceted reproach of appropriation directed at Muḥammad was accompanied by acts of appropriation committed by Paulus Alvarus himself: He selected bits and pieces from the Islamic tradition to produce an anti-Islamic counterhistory that was meant to justify attempts at producing a Christian renaissance and a recovery of social positions lost under the Umayyad regime ^[69]. While Alvarus seems to have been content with the role of an ideological supporter of the ‘martyrs’, his friend Eulogius was more active in encouraging, indeed forging the ‘movement’ of martyrs ^[70]. When Eulogius finally suffered martyrdom as well, it was Alvarus who composed his vita, following ancient hagiographic models ^[71]. Hagiographic discourse had become traditional by the early Middle Ages, but its origins had equally been due to acts of cultural appropriation, using court proceedings to overturn power structures rhetorically in order to empower martyrs and their followers against pagan Roman authorities, whose power was undermined – at least in literary compositions – by acts of parrhesia ^[72].

The literary activities of Paulus Alvarus can be interpreted as conservative acts of resistance to political and cultural change. When he commits acts of appropriation, this is part of his endeavour to regain lost territory for the Catholic cause. With the exception of the ‘Indiculus luminosus’, which is nonetheless heavily indebted to Biblical exegesis, his writings follow established genres of Latin literature, be it epistles or saints’ lives. The hagiographic impulse was much stronger in Eulogius, who tried to show that the Christians executed by Umayyad authorities were actual martyrs, even though they lacked miracles for the most part ^[73]. By using hagiographic discourse, Eulogius and Paulus Alvarus followed established practices of the Christian tradition. By turning the victims of Umayyad executions into religious martyrs, both authors laid the basis for their cultic veneration. This effort proved to be successful very soon when Frankish monks arrived from Paris to recover relics from Saint Vincent of Zaragoza. When this proved to be impossible, they were redirected to al-Andalus, because rumours of recent martyrdoms had already reached northern Spain. After the Frankish monks had brought back Cordovan relics with them to the abbey of St Germain-des-Prés, they composed an account of the translatio, which provided the basis for the inclusion of Andalusian ‘martyrs’ in later martyrologies ^[74]. This act of religious appropriation was again coupled with an attempt to bolster power relations: Monks from Carolingian West-Francia used religious capital from southern Spain in much the same way that Saxon monasteries acquired relics from Roman catacombs to increase their religious standing in the emerging church of the East-Frankish realm ^[75].

The acts most clearly in line with current models of cultural appropriation are the expropriation of Judaism in favour of the church, which laid claim to the position of Verus Israel, and the adaptation of Islamic material for his ‘Indiculus luminosus’ by Paulus Alvarus. His friend Eulogius even included a polemical Life of Muḥammad in his hagiographic corpus ^[76], where he clearly uses the motif of the alleged ‘appropriation’ of Christian thought by Muḥammad: “[ … ] he began assiduously to attend assemblies of Christians, and – as he was a shrewd son of darkness – began to commit some of the sermons of the Christians to memory and became the wisest among the irrational Arabs in all things” ^[77]. The hint that the Islamic prophet allegedly memorised content he had heard while listening to Christian preaching takes up the Islamic belief that Muḥammad was incapable of reading and writing, meant to underscore the belief that he was incapable of acquiring Christian teaching by studying Christian scripture. Taking up the Islamic topos of an analphabet Muḥammad, Eulogius appropriates an important element of the prophetic biography, which he transforms according to his own concept of a deceitful pretender posing as a pseudo-prophet, exposed by the Christian hagiographer as a heresiarch.

By adapting Islamic material for their own purposes, both Eulogius and Paulus Alvarus shaped anti-Islamic Latin discourse which appropriated Islamic traditions for the purposes of some kind of anti-imperial counterhistory. This included the reproach, levelled against Islam, of being a religion of violence. The ‘Istoria de Mahomet’ included in the ‘Liber apologeticus martyrum’ of Eulogius explains the violent spreading of Islam during the alleged struggle of the prophet against the Roman Empire, while Paulus Alvarus juxtaposes his military exploits with the Christian exhortation towards peace and charity ^[78]. Both authors take up Islamic traditions, contextualizing them in a polemical way in order to enhance the standing of Christendom by blemishing Islam ^[79]. This strategy can be compared to practices studied by Jorge Klor de Alva, who referred to the transformation of religious and political discourse in a colonial Latin-American context where European traditions were “appropriated and reencoded to fit within the registers that affirm local sovereignty.” ^[80] In the context of al-Andalus, this local empowerment was intimately connected to the overarching project, pursued by Eulogius and Paulus Alvarus, aiming at political mobilisation and cultural renaissance ^[81]. This was to be achieved by reinterpreting and reframing traditions taken over from the Islamic community; such traditions were taken out of their original context, given new – subversive – meanings and rearranged in polemical contexts. Their hagiographical corpus contains a few examples where individuals striving for ‘martyrdom’ speak up against Muslim authorities in acts of parrhesia; during such speeches, the Christian rebels utilise bits of material in line with the ideology of counterhistory, nourished by previous acts of appropriation.