Christians in Al-Andalus, 711-1000 by Christys Ann

Author:Christys, Ann.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-136-12738-0
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

John replied: ‘“You, who appear to be a bishop, are the last person who should speak thus. … It is a thousand times better for the christian to suffer the cruel torment of hunger than to eat the food of the gentiles at the cost of his soul’”. John declared that he would be torn limb from limb rather than fail in his task of delivering Otto's letters. It was for God, not John, to dictate what would happen to the caliph's christian subjects. At last ‘Abd al-RahmRaḥmān, won over by John's courage, decided to send a new embassy to Otto to seek a resolution of the crisis. The man commissioned to head the delegation was Recemund.

Recemund comes out of this story little better than the other christian collaborators condemned by John. The Life described him as a palace official who diligently carried out his duties. His apprehension about being the caliph's envoy to Otto was overcome only by the prospect of material advancement. In the dramatic words of the Life, Recemund asked the caliph “‘What reward are you going to give to the man who sells you his soul?”’11 Recemund agreed to lead the embassy if the caliph recompensed him with a see which had just fallen vacant: ‘This’, the Life continued, ‘was easily granted and he was suddenly advanced to the office of bishop from the laity’. Recemund obtained the see of Elvira, near present-day Granada. In the dedication of the Antapodosis, Liudprand referred to Recemund as the ‘bishop of Elvira in Hispania’,12 and this appellation was repeated by Sigibert of Gembloux, Trithemio and the false chronicler of Pavia, although they may all have read the Antapodosis. Recemund could have served as bishop from 958, succeeding Gapio, who died in that year. Gapio's name is the last to appear in a list of the bishops of Seville, Toledo and Elvira in the Codex Emilianense,13 begun in 962, and finished in 994. The reason why the list stops with Gapio may be that, because it was a necrology, Recemund was not included because he was still alive in 994. But this was some forty years after his appointment and it seems that the see of Elvira may have lapsed either during or after Recemund's occupancy, because no more bishops were recorded. Perhaps he was not accepted as bishop because of the uncanonical nature of his elevation.

Yet we should not accept every word of John of St-Arnulf's description of Recemund and the Gordoban christians. The hagiographer's working of his material reflects the ideals of the Benedictine reform led by Gorze in which John of Gorze played a prominent role.14 The Life is given over to the great piety of its subject, and the structure of the portrait of John in chapters 72–94 echoes those of the Rule of Benedict and the Collection of capitularies of Benedict of Aniane.15 To some extent, the author pursued this scheme in describing John's journey to Cordoba, which appears – perhaps factitiously given that the Life is incomplete – as a dramatic coda to John's contemplative life as a soldier of Christ.

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