Faerie Queen passage
Page 738, Stanza 25

At last it chaunced this proud Sarazin
To meete me wandring who perforce me led
With him away, but yet could never win
The fort, that Ladies hold in soveraigne dread.
There lies he now with foule dishonour dead,
Who whiles he livde was called proud Sans foy,
The eldest of three brethren, all three bred
Of one bad sire, whose youngest is Sans joy,
And twixt them both was borne the bloudy bold Sans loy.

Before anyone gets started on this:

1. I apologize for submitting it late

2. It turns out I wrote a history/race relations paper. My fingers moved without independent of my head and without the realization that this class is designed more for literary critique than historical analysis. I feel like I need to cite sources.

3. That being said, this is worth reading. Enjoy and please comment.

I chose this portion of the text mainly because I thought such a ruthless blasting of the Saracens was both intriguing and uncomfortable to read, bred as I an in today’s era of acceptance and (relative) cross-cultural harmony. Does this go far enough to qualify it as religious propaganda?

On the surface, it takes the dreaded Saracen, enemy to Christianity in each of the Crusades, and clearly establishes a number of stereotypes about them. It should be noted that the speaker in this passage, the Sarazin’s former companion, is a whore.

1. They are without faith:

The literal translation of ‘Sans Foy;’ this really deals with the heart of the issue. Anglo-Saxon Catholicism and Saracen Islam are personified by these two characters in an earlier stanza, in which Sans Foy, unsurprisingly is killed by Red Crosse. In the Faerie Queen Christianity triumphs over the Saracen savages and the antagonist gets his due. This would appeal to the common view among Europeans at the time that the Knights were doing God’s work, cleansing the world of heathens. The pope even declared indulgences to anyone killed in battle. There is no mention, however, about the fact that the equally pious Saracens had declared a jihad against the Christians. According to Islam, anyone killed serving Allah on a jihad receives what amounts to… an indulgence. So basically, God was letting the Christians into heaven for killing the Saracens who went to heaven for killing the Christians who… hmm… Anyway, thank goodness for the separation of church and state. The point here is that neither side was acting in God’s interests. And you didn’t see European Knights stopping to pray six times a day. The Saracens were equally pious at worst.

2. They are without law:

The literal translation of 'Sans Loy.' Baghdad might have been one of the most sophisticated cities in the world at the time of the crusades. Due to bias, misinformation, and the limited exposure Christian Europe had with the Middle East, (they only heard horror stories of raids) the common image of the Saracens was one of wild, uncivilized barbarism. No one in Europe questioned this theory or cared to verify it.

3. They are without joy:

'Sans Joy' is self-explanatory. So at this point we have an antagonist who has no god, no laws, and no emotion. For better or for worse, the author has done a damn good job of giving the reader a reason to hate the antagonist. And sadly, this image is exactly what most of Europe

pictured for years and years.

4. They are kidnappers:

The common belief is that Saracens merchants may have kidnapped thousands of 'warrior' children during the Children’s Crusade, but even at this point in European history, Vikings and other Western barbarian tribes were kidnapping people by the boatload and selling them as slaves. No, they were not under the thumb of the Pope, but civilized Europe would end up purchasing and owning many of these slaves.

5. They desire intimacy with whores:

In every culture you’ll find people who are willing to buy and sell sex. By social standards however, the average Saracen woman was not allowed to show as much of her body in public as the average European woman. Whores were considered the lowest rung on the social ladder though, so by association this is a powerful putdown.

6. They are not 'worthy' of previously mentioned whores:

So the bottom rung of European culture was still higher than the Saracen culture as a whole. Ouch. They’re being equated to animals at this point. As little as 150 years ago, White Americans by and large referred to the African-American race as animals. They were officially counted as 60% of a person for a while until the U.S. finally got their shit together. Hopefully that thought process is as hard to follow as a Doctor Seuss book. Stereotypes like these based on race and religion, have possibly been the single greatest source of strife in human history. Throughout our history, we’ve killed off people we had never met due to confused notions and a lack of understanding of other cultures. How has it taken us so long to start fixing this?

Got my info from http://www.umich.edu/~eng415/timeline/detailedtimeline.html and wikipedia (Search 'Crusades' and 'Saracens').