Court translators could be destroyed by rivals’ accusations of treason and heresy

Evidence

Samson was summoned to the emir’s court in 863, in order to translate from Arabic into Latin a letter to the Frankish king Charles the Bald. Yet he soon fell into disfavor: Samson’s enemies charged that he passed military secrets to the Franks; a Christian punished for insulting Muhammad claimed that Samson urged him to do so. Christian clerics close to the court subsequently accused him of heresy. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 545

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the translator-intermediary as endangered figure — echoes of subtle themes from Tolan’s wider argument and of intermediary figures in stories like The Namesake’s liminal immigrant positions.