Even adept Renaissance historians failed to reject legendary anti-Muslim material

Evidence

It is particularly interesting to find his adept historical combination of disparate sources associated with a lack of knowledge or judgement. He was not able to recognise and reject legendary sources. What he has to say of Muhammad and Islam is some improvement on mediaeval legend-building at its worst, but his judgements are greatly inferior to the best of an earlier age. He tried to fit in much of the Corozan story, which he did with some ingenuity, thus helping to perpetuate the myth of Muhammad’s epileptic-seeming fits. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1560

Categorization

• XREF: Corroborates the thread’s interest in machinery of falsification: historical skill and polemical credulity coexisted, suggesting the legendary apparatus served an identity function rather than an evidentiary one.