12 or 73), and more boldly in Boccaccio (Decamerone, i,
nov. 3). In what language and in what corner of the Mediterranean it
was first told can never be known; most likely the original was much
more plain-spoken than the two Italian adaptations. The religious
postulate on which it rests, namely Deism, will be discussed later on
in its wider significance for this period. The same idea is repeated,
though in a clumsy caricature, in the famous proverb of the 'three who
have deceived the world, that is, Moses, Christ, and Mohammed.' If the
Emperor Frederick II, in whom this saying is said to have originated,
really thought so, he probably expressed himself with more wit.
Ideas of the same kind were also current in Islam. At the height of the
Renaissance, towards the close of the fifteenth century, Luigi Pulci
offers us an example of the same mode of thought in the 'Morgante
Maggiore.' The imaginary world of which his story treats is divided, as
in all heroic poems of romance, into a Christian and a Mohammedan camp.
In accordance with the medieval temper, the victory of the Christian
and the final reconciliation among the combatants was attended by the
baptism of the defeated Islamites, and the Improvisatori, who preceded
Pulci in the treatment of these subjects, must have made free use of
this stock incident.
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