Direct encounter with Muslims tempered Ricoldo’s literary polemics toward charity

Evidence

Ricoldo was charitable towards Islamic belief when it fell within his direct, as opposed to his literary, experience. “And when they named Christ among us, they never did so except with fitting praise, such as, “Christ, may he be praised”, or something of the sort.’ He classed this as affability to strangers, rather than as religion. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 952

Categorization

• XREF: Opposes textual/book knowledge against lived encounter — echoes the reader’s other work on how experience moderates ideology (e.g. the zero-embeddings vs. real sound themes). — connects to: Ricoldo first conflated hadith commentary with the Qur’anic text