Christian writers nursed live resentment over churches converted into mosques

Evidence

With this general attitude we must associate the very lively resentment that was felt for the loss of church buildings used as mosques, during the lifetimes of the writers who speak of it. Mark of Toledo connected the original loss of provinces with this theme: at the Arab Conquest of Spain, where ‘formerly many priests offered the divine obsequy to God, now villainous men devoted supplications to the execrable Muhammad, and churches which had once been consecrated by the hands of bishops were now reduced to profane temples’. Humbert of Romans exemplifies the attitude to contemporary ‘profanation’, although his comments lead rather ludicrously up to an anticlimax. With his own eyes, he tells us, giving us to expect some horrible sacrilege committed in his presence, with his own eyes he has seen not, it turns out, the atrocity itself, but only the place where it was said to have been committed. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 628 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Having forged his new law, “in which he speaks as one who is delirious,” Muhammad “like a magician seduced barbarous peoples through fantastic delusions,” and his Saracens through war subdued the world, oppressing Christians from the north to the Mediterranean and from India to the west—to Spain, where “once many priests swore holy allegiance to God, now evil men give supplication to the execrable Muhammad, and the churches which were consecrated by the hands of bishops have now become profane temples.” Mark presents the conversion of churches into mosques as a profanation or pollution; the reconquest of these places by Christian rulers, who will have them duly purified and reconsecrated by bishops, is implicitly legitimate. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 950 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Crusade rhetoric centered on resentment over churches converted into mosques. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 628; Conversion of churches into mosques was framed as profanation justifying reconquest — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 950

Related

• Crusade rhetoric centered on resentment over churches converted into mosques. (similarity 0.95)
• Christian writers read mosque conversion of churches as deliberate profanation (similarity 0.89)
• Conversion of churches into mosques was framed as profanation justifying reconquest (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• Crusade rhetoric centered on resentment over churches converted into mosques. #corroborates (0.95) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 628
• Conversion of churches into mosques was framed as profanation justifying reconquest #expands (0.90) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 950