ABSTRACT
Her heroes were Peter the Hermit, Godfrey of Bouillon (who merits two chapters), Louis VII of France, St Bernard of Clarivaux, Saladin and, of course, Richard the Lionheart. Hutton was not, however, a competely uncritical observer. For example, she saw Peter the Hermit as an example of the dangers of fanaticism and bemoaned the plunder and carnage at Antioch. Like Scott, who portrayed Saladin in The Talisman as the noble heathen, on occasion superior to his Christian counterparts, Hutton wrote:
As a further example of Moslem chivalry, Hutton told a story of a family in Burgundy called the Saladins d'Anglure; their name a reminder of the generosity of Saladin, who released a prisoner to return to his wife and family, on condition that every eldest son be named Saladin and the family bore the crescent as well as the cross in its arms. And Hutton again praised the character and prowess of Saladin in her Tales of the Saracens (1871), in which she traced the history of key Moslem rulers from Mohammed to the fall of Granada in 1492.
