Latin Christians explained Friday prayer through Venus-worship and venery

Evidence

Only the superficial facts were understood, and more often they were misunderstood, and even elaborately embroidered. To the Latins the salient point about the Friday prayer was often that Friday was the day once sacred to Venus, and in this view the Muslims had once, before Muhammad, worshipped her, and still now treated her day as holy, or even still worshipped her on that day; or, more simply, it was said that it was appropriate that the religion which chiefly served venery should celebrate the day of Venus. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1184

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: A natural companion to ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — both trace how outsiders map their own pagan/Christian categories onto a foreign religion’s practice, replacing observed fact with moralizing projection.
• CANDY: A delicious trivia nugget: medieval Christians thought Muslims prayed on Friday to honor Venus, fitting a religion they believed ‘chiefly served venery.’
• XREF: connects to: Latins explained the Muslim Friday as the pagan day of Venus; Medieval polemic linked Muslim ablutions to the Venus cult