Early medieval Catholic scholars traced idolatry to deified dead humans

Evidence

If Isidore seems unable to escape the Roman, imperial structuring of history, he nevertheless shows a Catholic churchman’s preoccupation with religious error: paganism and especially heresy. He places the creation of pagan idolatry near the beginning of the second age: “in these times the first temples were built, and certain princes among the nations began to be adored as gods.” He later (§45–53) discusses Prometheus, Atlas, Mercury, Jove, and other humans who were worshiped as gods. Isidore develops this idea in more detail in Etymologies 835; after the death of such men, he explains, their followers crafted images (simulacra) of them, “so that they could have some solace in the contemplation of images, but their descendants, persuaded by demons, gradually slipped into this error [idolatry].” — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 129

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to vault claims about how the Christian tradition framed non-Christian religious practice as demonically-persuaded image-worship, a template later applied genetically to Islam.