A medieval chronicler invented a scene of Saint Isidore routing Muhammad from Spain

Evidence

Let us now recount the end of this great and marvelous law-giver. I have already said that he was subject to attacks of epilepsy: one day as he was walking alone, he fell attacked by one of his convulsions, and while he was being tormented by it, some hogs, having come upon him, so completely devoured him that only his heels were found as remains. So thus this excellent law-giver is given over to the swine and eaten by them, so his evil rule was terminated as just, by a most vile end. And certainly, while his heels were left, it was without a doubt so that he could show those fools whom he had miserably seduced a witness of his perfidiousness and deceits. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 100 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

But Lucas adds a brief but significant episode gleaned from his reading of an anonymous eleventhor twelfth-century Life of Isidore: Muhammad came to Spain, debarking near Córdoba, to preach his doctrine. Isidore, returning from Rome, ordered his men to arrest Muhammad, but alas the devil warned Muhammad, who fled to Africa. Lucas imagines his hero confronting the prophet of Islam and making him flee, a satisfying scene that Lucas had to include, though probably aware of its implausibility. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 937 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The deaths of the saints were thought specially significant by their biographers, and in mediaeval tradition the death of Muhammad, the antithesis of the saint, was considered a subject of theological importance. It was often shown as having been atrociously horrible, sometimes simply as just having been human, with no signs of God’s special mercy. The methods of antihagiography necessarily varied according to how far the author was bound by knowledge of facts which Islamic sources established. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 592 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Spanish village festivals reenacted a medieval fiction of Muhammad as idol; A medieval chronicler invented a confrontation between Isidore and Muhammad — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 937; A medieval chronicler depicted Muhammad’s death as divinely ordained swine-consumption — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 100 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• A medieval chronicler invented a confrontation between Isidore and Muhammad #corroborates (1.00) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 937
• A medieval chronicler depicted Muhammad’s death as divinely ordained swine-consumption #corroborates (1.00) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 100
• Medieval Christians built ‘antihagiography’ of Muhammad’s death to mirror saintly death narratives #complicates (0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 592