Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European ImaginationIn the first century of Islam, most of the former Christian Roman Empire, from Syria to Spain, was brought under Muslim control in a conquest of unprecedented proportions. Confronted by the world of Islam, countless medieval Christians experienced a profound ambivalence, awed by its opulence, they were also troubled by its rival claims to the spiritual inheritance of Abraham and Jesus and humiliated by its social subjugation of non-Muslim minorities. Some converted. Others took up arms. Still others, the subjects of John Tolan's study of anti-Muslim polemics in medieval Europe, undertook to attack Islam and its most vivid avatar, the saracen, with words. |
Contents
FORGING POLEMICAL IMAGES EIGHTHTWELFTH | |
THIRTEENTHCENTURY DREAMS OF CONQUEST | |
The Muslim in the Ideologies of ThirteenthCentury Christian | |
Spain | |
Apocalyptic Fears and Hopes Inspired by the Thirteenth | |
Franciscan Missionaries Seeking the Martyrs Palm | |
Realms of Mission | |
Notes | |