It is somewhat surprising how little scholarship there is on King Solomon in the Middle Ages, particularly in western Europe. Most medievalists probably know that King Solomon was considered the one responsible for building the First Temple; was known for his wisdom; was associated in the Christian Middle Ages with occult knowledge; was an important prophet in Islam as well as the subject of Arabic wonder tales; and was considered the ancestor of the Ethiopian royal dynasty. This collection of essays does not overthrow any of these general impressions. But it examines them in more detail, with reference to particular bodies of primary sources. This is an unusually cohesive edited volume, even for one focused on such a clearly defined topic, and while it is not quite a unified monograph, it is a very useful introduction to the study of this figure. While there is little on Ethiopian or Greek texts, the book addresses Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and the western European vernaculars. It approaches Solomon from the points of view of manuscript studies, iconography, exegesis, and literary history. It is nicely produced, with black and white illustrations within the chapters and thirty-two color plates. The book is best assessed, then, chapter by chapter, keeping in mind that it adds up to a satisfying whole.
The introduction by Jean-Patrice Boudet briefly sets out the Biblical antecedents for Solomon (in addition to the books of Kings and Chronicles in which he appears, he was also considered to have written Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs), his appearance in the Targum and the Qur’an, and some of the main places where medieval writers took him as an example, good or bad, and summarises the chapters, which fall into two sections, one on Solomon’s wisdom and the other on the Temple. In the first chapter, “Salomon et le monde animal dans le Coran,” Pierre Lory shows how Solomon’s comprehension of the language of animals serves to make theological points. Solomon understands ants speaking, not because animals have reason, or because he has magical powers, but because of a miracle. Birds serve in Solomon’s army and the hoopoe as his messenger to the Queen of Sheba because it, like all the other birds, are subject to the king’s authority as part of divine law. The story of Solomon reinforces Muhammad’s message of submission to God by showing animals submitting to Solomon.
Danielle Buschinger’s “Solomon dans la literature médiévale allemande” is a grand tour through a variety of genres and authors: poetry (Lob Salomons, various mentions by Frauenlob); Grail and other Arthurian romance; proverbial dialogue; epic narrative. Through all these genres Buschinger sees him as the paradigm of wisdom. Nevertheless he retains a certain ambiguity: he is a just and peaceful king, but he still can be brought down by a woman, remaining “le personage assez equivoque qu’il était dans la tradition” (41). Roy Rosenstein moves deeper into the proverbial genre in “Le savoir proverbial de Salomon au Moyen Âge,” discussing the Marculf tradition which exists French versions as well as the German discussed by Buschinger, and in which Solomon is sometimes depicted as the butt of the joke. The great author of the Biblical Proverbs, in an anti-Judaic turn, is made ridiculous by a peasant.
A set of three lengthy (because heavily text-based) chapters focuses on Solomon and magic. Jean-Charles Coulon writes on “Salomon dans les traités de magie arabes médiévaux,” a tradition which takes its root in the Qur’anic discussion of his power over djinn. Coulon reviews the Qur’anic passages and then the exegesis on each. Notably, the Qur’an makes demons rather than Solomon himself idolaters, in a passage that dances around the explicit statement in 1 Kings 11 that he built temples to other gods. Exegetes found it important to explain away Solomon’s responsibility here. The chapter reviews Solomon’s role as exorcist in Arabic literature, and then the power of his seal and its use in practical magical treatises. Coulon concludes by noting that Arabic literature does not speak of Solomon as “wise”: wisdom (ḥikma) was something available to all, but Solomon was a prophet.
Julien Véronèse covers “Salomon exorciste et magicien dans l’Occident medieval.” The ambivalence of Solomon’s status, which Muslim authors downplayed, was increasingly present in Christian writing beginning with the late twelfth century. Despite this chronology, liturgical formulas for exorcism were heavily influenced by descriptions of Solomon as exorcist only at the end of the Middle Ages, a point Véronèse demonstrates with ample evidence. Prior to this time, theologians such as Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas tried hard to maintain a boundary between magical and ecclesiastical exorcism.
Emma Abate’s chapter probably has the least to do with Solomon himself. In “Un heritage de Salomon? Techniques de convocation des demons à toute heure de la nuit: analyse et edition du manuscript Paris, BnF héb. 765, fol. 10r-12r,” she edits and translates a Hebrew text that gives the names of demons who may be summoned at different hours. Found in a cabbalistic miscellany from Sefarad from 1475, the text does not mention nor is it attributed to Solomon, but in comparing it with other Hebrew demonological texts she notes that “les contenus rappellent de près aspects de la literature magique salomonienne” (127). The edition will be of great interest to any student of demonology.
The second section nominally deals with Solomon’s Temple, a theme to which some of the chapters adhere more closely than others. Kristina Mitalaité’s “Le traité De Templo Salomonis de Bède le Vénérable et son influence sur les auteurs carolingiens” focuses on a very influential piece of exegesis of the descriptions in 1 Kings and in 2 Chronicles. As she points out, Bede consistently takes Solomon to represent Christ, and the Temple the Church; in this interpretation he goes beyond Gregory the Great. The bulk of the chapter is devoted to demonstrating how a variety of Carolingian authors made use of Bede on this point, despite its strongly iconophile connotations which did not necessarily comport with their views on images. Guylène Hidrio discusses iconography and text connecting Solomon’s Temple with the Temple of Wisdom in Proverbs 9, supposedly written by Solomon, in “Images et symbolique du Temple dans l’Occident medieval: Du temple de Salomon au temple de la Sagesse.” Especially in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but also before, a number of works made the connection, from images in Byzantine psalters to medieval copies of Prudentius’s Psychomachia. Images of the celestial Jerusalem draw on both, but Hidrio makes the point that Solomon’s Temple also represents the Church on earth.
Philippe Faure moves beyond the temple itself in “Salomon, prototype du Christ dans l’iconographie médiévale: Un regard sur les images typologiques (XIIe-XIVe siècle).” Solomon is frequently depicted on author pages for Proverbs, Ecclesiastes or the Song of Songs, and Faure argues that many of these images are typological, Solomon representing Christ. Solomon is shown as a rex pacificus, often holding his sword by balancing the point on his finger, rather than by its hilt. The visit of the Queen of Sheba is used as a prefiguration of the Epiphany. The argument about typology is developed with careful attention to a wide variety of manuscripts. Allegra Iafrate also looks at imagery, in this case how a somewhat ambiguous word from the Mishnah was concretised visually, as well as in texts. “La longue vie des objets magiques de la tradition salomonienne: Le cas du shamir” discusses a term that formed a link between the construction of the Temple and a story of Solomon’s helping a bird free its chick from a vase. From an abrasive substance the shamir became a tool or the blood of a type of worm. The question, as she puts it, is not what in fact the shamir was, but how medieval authors thought about what kinds of substances were able to cut stone (213).
Further moving away from the Temple but keeping with the iconographical theme and referring back to topics raised in the first section are chapters by Christian Heck, “L’idolâtrie de Salomon dans l’art de la fin du Moyen Âge: Du theme biblique à la scène du genre,” and Anna Caiozzo, “Salomon, magician, roi et prophète dans la culture visuelle du monde musulman du XIIIe au XVIe siècle.” Heck traces the history of Bible illustrations showing Solomon setting up temples with idols at the request of his wives. Although some scholars have suggested that this began only in the fifteenth century, Heck provides a number of earlier examples. The real change that came at the end of the Middle Ages, he demonstrates, was that the story was taken out of its Biblical context and used as an illustration (visual or textual) of the wiles of women. Caiozzo gives an account of the symbols and iconography of Solomon in Persian manuscript art.
A final chapter, “Salomon, figure tutélaire des compagnonnages et de la franc-maçonnerie (XVIIe-XIXe siècle)” by Hugues Berton and Christelle Imbert, does not fit in either of the main sections and is chronologically distinct from the rest of the book, but is important in terms of the enduring impact of Solomon as a figure of wisdom connected with the occult. The chapter is a summary of a book-length study by the authors, and to a medievalist unfamiliar with later developments gives a very clear account of the development of Freemasonry in a quite roundabout manner from medieval craft confraternities. Solomon and the building of the Temple did not apparently appear in the rituals of the latter until the late eighteenth century, influenced by Freemasonry. As Berton and Imbert note, “Le problème des legends relatives à Salomon chez les constructeurs opératifs n’est donc pas combine ells sont anciennes, mais combine ells sont récentes” (250).
Through the prism of one figure, this volume addresses some of the central questions of medieval studies. How is knowledge transmitted? How are stories from a common cultural repository reworked in various regions and subcultures? How do traditions interact? How do ecclesiastical and secular texts interact? There is no conclusion to the volume in which these threads are pulled together, but every one of the individual chapters addresses them fruitfully.