Two stories, two faiths that meet, speak to one another and do not demonise each other. They part with mutual respect, and the Sultan offers gifts. Among them is the ivory horn still preserved today in the Basilica of Assisi: an instrument originally made for hunting or for calling people to prayer, which became a symbol of a real truce.

Once upon a time, there was Saint Francis

To recall this story in times such as these is an act of civic and spiritual resistance. Beneath the surface, after all, contempt for the other and for their faith is growing, fuelled by algorithms, ignorance and political cynicism. We live in an age of exacerbated polarisation, in which identity is constructed through subtraction: I exist to the extent that I destroy, belittle or demonise you. The person who is different is no longer a mystery to be discovered or someone with whom to engage, but a convenient target onto which we project our collective fears. A threat from which we must fence ourselves off with barbed wire, whether real or mental.

In a scenario unfortunately fuelled also by many who profess to be Christians, what happened at Damietta in 1219 ceases to be a faded chapter of medieval history and becomes a geopolitical manifesto of striking contemporary relevance.

Around that tent raged the noise of the Fifth Crusade, proclaimed by Innocent III to strike at Muslim power in Egypt and use it as a bargaining chip to regain Jerusalem: bloodshed, ideological fanaticism, calculations of power, the rule of force. Outside, cries of “holy war” could be heard on both shores of the Mediterranean.

But inside that tent, Francis and al-Malik al-Kamil performed the only true miracle possible in wartime: they looked into one another’s eyes without the mediation of prejudice. Neither of them yielded an inch when it came to his own faith. There was no room for a weak or merely cosmetic syncretism. Francis remained God’s fool, the radical Christian; the Sultan remained the steadfast defender of Islam. And yet they discovered that fidelity to one’s roots does not necessarily dig trenches, but can build bridges. They spoke to one another not despite their faiths, but through them, recognising in the other the same longing for the Absolute. The ivory horn preserved in Assisi is the archaeological remnant of a forgotten peace. That gift tells us that encounter always leaves a trace, shapes the future, and disarms the hands.

Once upon a time. Not any more

Today, as insidious contempt threatens to anaesthetise our consciences, we desperately need to rediscover the courage of Damietta.

The courage to cross enemy lines, not in order to conquer or convert by force, but to make room for listening.

Because the alternative to dialogue is not the victory of one civilisation over another, but the common and definitive ruin of our humanity.

See, L’altro. E il dialogo per restare umani