Failed crusades shifted medieval imagination from military victory to conversion drama

Evidence

Here we leave the world of epic (where the Christian army invariably wins) and enter that of hagiography; in the wake of the loss of Jerusalem and the failed third Crusade, perhaps conversion miracles seem more plausible than crusader victories. The Saracen military victory is complete, the only Christian survivor being an (again, nameless) “Preudome” captured while praying to his icon of Saint Nicolas, which the Saracens mistake for a “mahommet.” — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 706

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to existing vault claims about Islam-West opposition construction; the genealogy here traces how defeat reconfigured the narrative.
• ADDENDUM: Could support the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ or the broader vault’s genealogy of how the medieval West processed Islamic ‘threat’ through fiction when arms failed.