Depicting Muslims as idolaters supplied the first textual justification for crusade

Evidence

This is a potent ideological cocktail. The Saracen pagan king, inspired by the demons whose idols he worships, lusts after pure Christian boys and decapitates them when they do not surrender their bodies to him. In fury, he directs his flaming sword against those Christian provinces such as Galicia whose people rebel against the cult of the idols. The interior Christian minority and the exterior Christian enemy are both threatened by this diabolical power. Hrotsvitha makes no call to war, does not urge Christian knights to aid their oppressed Spanish brethren. But it is easy to see how this view of the pagan other could (and would) subsequently be used to justify war against Saracen “pagans”—and against Wendish or Lithuanian pagans closer to Gandersheim. Many earlier authors assumed that the Saracens or Arabs continued to observe the same cults as had their pagan ancestors. Yet Hrotsvitha is the first Latin author to describe this paganism in lurid detail and to use it to justify resistance against Saracen rule. This strategy will become common two centuries later, as the writers on the first Crusade glorify and justify the killing of Saracens by Christian knights. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 600

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘Sacrifice’ article’s theme of how ideological framing legitimizes organized violence; also to the ad hominem pattern where rhetorical demonization of an enemy precedes military action. — connects to: Image-veneration was a genuine doctrinal wedge between the two faiths; Missionary ‘defence of the faith’ rhetoric paralleled Crusade justifications; The medieval Muslim-idol legend originated as Crusade war propaganda (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The mechanism here is subtle: a passion narrative that never calls for violence nonetheless makes violence thinkable by supplying the categories — demonic lust, idolatry, rebellion against idols — that later crusade writers would mobilize. Violence enabled by framing, not by exhortation.