Eschatological urgency fueled both crusade preaching and conversion hopes

Evidence

Various twelfthand thirteenth-century writers dreamed that rationalistic polemics could convert Saracens to Christianity. A sense that the days of the end were drawing near helped fuel the hopes for conversion and gave a sense of urgency for the calls to crusade: Innocent III and Saint Francis, in the early part of the century, chided Christians to take up the cross and to go on 212 • Thirteenth-Century Dreams of Conquest and Conversion missions to Muslim lands. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1090

Categorization

• QUESTION: How did the same eschatology drive pacifist conversion hopes and violent crusading simultaneously — did thirteenth-century authors feel the tension, or treat them as compatible?