After failed crusades, medieval playwrights switched from military victory to conversion miracles.

Evidence

In a blending of the exotic and the ridiculous, the (nameless) king of the Saracens leads an army recruited from mythic lands such as Orkenie, “from beyond Grey Wallengue, where dogs crap gold” (ll. 362–63), or Oliferne, a burning land replete with precious gems (ll. 368–72), or “beyond the Dry Tree,” where people use millstones as coins (ll. 373–76). The king is particularly devoted to his idol of Tervagan, which he covers with gold (l. 136). The king asks Tervagan to show him who will win the upcoming battle with the Christians: “If I must win, laugh; if I must lose, cry” (ll. 181– 82); enigmatic, the demon-inhabited idol cries and laughs simultaneously, signifying that the Saracen king will win the battle but lose his Saracen faith. Here we leave the world of epic (where the Christian army invariably wins) and enter that of hagiography; in the wake of the loss of Jerusalem and the failed third Crusade, perhaps conversion miracles seem more plausible than crusader victories. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 706

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader arc about how Christian Europe imagined Islam/Muhammad; the shift from epic to hagiography parallels the earlier chapters’ account of changing portrayals across crusade fortunes.