Invented idol-desecration scenes crowned crusader hagiography

Evidence

This is a potent ideological cocktail. The Saracen pagan king, inspired by the demons whose idols he worships, lusts after pure Christian boys and decapitates them when they do not surrender their bodies to him. In fury, he directs his flaming sword against those Christian provinces such as Galicia whose people rebel against the cult of the idols. The interior Christian minority and the exterior Christian enemy are both threatened by this diabolical power. Hrotsvitha makes no call to war, does not urge Christian knights to aid their oppressed Spanish brethren. But it is easy to see how this view of the pagan other could (and would) subsequently be used to justify war against Saracen “pagans”—and against Wendish or Lithuanian pagans closer to Gandersheim. Many earlier authors assumed that the Saracens or Arabs continued to observe the same cults as had their pagan ancestors. Yet Hrotsvitha is the first Latin author to describe this paganism in lurid detail and to use it to justify resistance against Saracen rule. This strategy will become common two centuries later, as the writers on the first Crusade glorify and justify the killing of Saracens by Christian knights. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 600 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The Cordovan martyrs’ persecutors were stripped of their Islamic garb by the martyrs’ Frankish hagiographers. Hrotsvitha, nun at the abbey of Gandersheim at the turn of the millennium, will go a step further and clothe them in the familiar attire of classical Roman idolaters. In a long poem glorifying the martyr Pelagius, Hrotsvitha does acknowledge that the Saracens allowed Christians to practice their ancestral religion, yet asserts that they inflicted the death penalty on anyone who blasphemed the gods they made of gold. The good Christians who longed to gain the martyrs’ palm would insult the marble idols before which the Saracen prince prostrated himself and burned Sabaean frankincense (which Hrotsvitha associates with Arabs thanks to her reading of Isidore). — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 593 (#expands, via linked claim)

One day their king discovered that Thiemo had been trained as a goldsmith, so he asked him to repair a golden idol. Thiemo asked for a hammer and approached the idol. He addressed the demon inhabiting the idol, ordering it in the name of God to leave the statue. When the demon uttered blasphemies, Thiemo smashed the idol with his hammer. This led to his martyrdom: he was thrown into prison, brought out the next day, put on an ass, whipped, and brought to an arena before the throngs; there the king accused him of sacrilege. Thiemo responded that the idols were not gods but demons, and preached that the king should desist from the worship of Saturn, Jove, and the obscene Priapus. The king responded by ordering that all Thiemo’s fingers be cut off, as well of those of his followers, and that their limbs then be lopped off. As the king drank the martyrs’ blood, Thiemo commended his soul unto God, and the crowd saw a choir of angels descend to take up the souls of the martyrs. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 601 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The medieval Muslim-idol legend originated as Crusade war propaganda; Medieval chroniclers had crusaders smash golden idols inhabited by demons to court martyrdom; Christians refashioned real Muslim persecutors into classical-style idolaters for hagiography — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 593 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Christians refashioned real Muslim persecutors into classical-style idolaters for hagiography #expands (1.00) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 593
• Crusade chroniclers fabricated Muslim portraits by repurposing early Christian martyr narratives #complicates (1.00) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 604
• Depicting Muslims as idolaters supplied the first textual justification for crusade #complicates (1.00) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 600
• Crusade hagiography projected classical polytheist idol worship onto Muslims wholesale #exemplifies (1.00) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 601
• Medieval depictions of Muslim idolatry drew on the biblical golden calf episode #expands (1.00) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 234
• The idolatrous-Saracen image outlasted accurate textual knowledge about Islam #expands (1.00) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 719
• French crusade epic imagined sacrificing for conquest of Mecca and its idol’s treasure #complicates (0.90) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1711
• Muslim chroniclers mirrored crusader celestial-warrior hagiography with Muhammad #complicates (0.80) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1689
• Christian hagiography provided the visual vocabulary for demonizing Muslims #complicates (0.80) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 60
• Medieval Christian art equated Jews and Muslims under shared imagery #complicates (0.70) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 394
• Renaissance art visually conflated Jews and Muslims into one enemy category #complicates (0.70) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 255