La conversion d’Alexandre le Grand au judaïsme : transpositions et avatars d’une légende dans les Romans d’Alexandre français du XIIe siècle

Abstract

Traced back to Josephus Jewish Antiquities and to various rabbinical sources, the legendary encounter between Alexander the Great and the Jews in Jerusalem has given way to many adaptations throughout the Middle Ages and cand be found in particular in vernacular narratives of the XIIth century. Whereas Alexander’s conversion to judaism has often been taken for granted, my purpose here is to reconsider the story and to question such a view completely. Considering that portraying a conversion to judaism was hardly a genuine option for a medieval writer eager to promote the eminent qualities of his heroe, the inquiry will be twofold : first, are we truly confronted here with a conversion narrative ? And if so, is it really about judaism or are we dealing with some subtile forms of christianization ? Or could it be instead that most of the signs commonly associated with religious conversion are made part of a deceptive strategy of some sort or another ? A close literary analysis of the episode in the Alexander Romances by Alexandre de Paris and Thomas de Kent will show that the answer can not be straightforward. If the two versions are quite divergent in their treatment of the episode, both seem to be concerned with narrating an ambiguous meeting between a prince obsessed with personal ambition and a people holding a religious deposit that in the end remain hidden and undisclosed to him.

Keywords

• Alexander
• anachronism
• conversion
• french romance
• Jerusalem
• Josephus