Crusade chroniclers invented pagan astrologers predicting Christian victory
Evidence
Dearest son, over a hundred years ago it was discovered in our pages, and in all books of the pagans, that the Christian nation would be over us and would everywhere defeat us, and reign over pagans, and our nation would everywhere be subject to them; but I did not know if it is to be now or rather in the future. And I, sorrowing, did not desist from following you to Aleppo, that beautiful city, where, pointing and acutely investigating, I looked at the stars in the sky, and sagaciously deliberating and with sedulous mind observing the planets, and the twelve signs of the zodiac, and innumerable lots, in all these things I saw that the Christian nation would be victorious everywhere. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 638
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: Connects to the invented-spectacle theme in Tolan’s other chapters on how Latin Christians fabricated Islam’s image; also to how chroniclers retroactively justified crusader successes/failures via prophecy.
- DEFINE: Shows the rhetorical device of putting Christian triumphalist prophecy in the mouth of a pagan soothsayer to make the outcome seem cosmic and inevitable.