Europe stopped producing new anti-Islamic thought and recycled medieval polemics instead

Evidence

The ideological responses to Islam that I examine in this book were redeployed countless times in medieval and modern Europe. Europeans would not again expend the same intellectual effort against Islam as did their forbears to explain, refute, convert. Rather, the intellectual weapons forged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were reused, anthologized, translated, published. Petrus Alfonsi’s attack on Islam found its way into the encyclopedic Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais; thirteenthcentury Dominican minister general Humbert of Romans recommended it as required reading for those who preached the Crusades, and numerous fourteenthand fifteenth-century authors reused it. Chroniclers repeated and reworked the standard hostile polemical bibliographies of Muhammad the heresiarch. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1356 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: European anti-Muslim polemic images persisted virtually unchanged from medieval to modern eras; After 1300 Europe reused old anti-Islam polemics rather than forging new ones; Europe’s anti-Islam polemics stagnated after the thirteenth century (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Modern European anti-Islam polemic recycled fixed medieval stock without new work #corroborates (0.97) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1356
• Europe’s anti-Islam polemics stagnated after the thirteenth century #corroborates (0.95)
• Early modern Europe reused medieval texts about Islam rather than writing new ones #expands (0.92)