European anti-Muslim polemic images persisted virtually unchanged from medieval to modern eras

Evidence

The following centuries showed little innovation in approaches to what was considered the “problem” of Islam. The solutions of the thirteenth century were recycled: Popes and publicists urged princes to crusade against the “Turk” in much the same language as their thirteenth-century counterparts (albeit at times in humanistic Latin style); polemicists compiled the anti-Muslim arguments of their thirteenth-century forbears, rather than creating their own. When Martin Luther sought to combat the religion of the “Turk,” he did so by approving the printing of Latin texts from the twelfth century (including the earliest translation of the Koran) and by translating Riccoldo da Montecroce into German. The thirteenth century saw the crystallization of European images of Islam that were to endure (with minor variations) into the seventeenth century—and in some respects into the twentieth. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 63 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

One of the arguments I make, which is supported by this claim, is that medieval notions of alterity continue to impact the ways in which the West thinks about Islam and her followers. Nickolas Haydock calls this the Saracen doxology: “The medieval portrait of the Saracen in general and of Mohammed in particular survives humanism, continues largely unabated through the Enlightenment, gains renewed and altered vigor during the nineteenth-century revival of chivalry and medievalism, and continues to surface unabashedly across Western culture today.” The Middle Ages is the era in which anti-Muslim rhetoric is founded, later to be resurrected by the Gothic movement and sustained and legitimized by Orientalism. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 76 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Informed medieval polemicists still clung to untenable anti-Muslim fables; Vituperative anti-Islamic polemic persisted into the 1780s and 1790s.; Christian anti-Islamic polemic stayed medieval in method until the 1700s. (+16 more)

Broader Connections

• Medieval anti-Muslim imagery persists unbroken into modern Western culture #corroborates (1.00)
• Thirteenth-century anti-Muslim tropes endured into the twentieth century unchanged #corroborates (1.00) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 63
• Medieval anti-Muslim rhetoric survives unchanged through the Enlightenment and into today #corroborates (0.97) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 76
• After 1300 Europe reused old anti-Islam polemics rather than forging new ones #corroborates (0.95)
• Western Christian anti-Islamic polemic stabilized after 1100 and persists unchanged #qualifies (0.94) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 37
• Europe stopped producing new anti-Islamic thought and recycled medieval polemics instead #corroborates (0.92)
• Medieval theological justification for opposing Muslims has faded in Europe. #complicates (0.82) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 88
• Scholarship on medieval anti-other imagery has neglected Muslims #complicates (0.70)
• Medieval anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim polemics became increasingly linked #complicates (0.70) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1368