Medieval believers read military victory as divine judgment on the merits of faiths
Evidence
In the first century of Islam, most of the former Christian Roman Empire, from Syria to Spain, was brought under Muslim control in a conquest of unprecedented proportions. How was God’s apparent abandonment of his Christian Empire to be explained? True, over the course of the Middle Ages Christian states conquered (or “reconquered”) many of the islands of the Mediterranean, all of the Iberian peninsula, and even, for a fleeting eighty-eight years, Jerusalem, Holy City to three religions. Yet at the same time, Islam was expanding across Asia and Africa and (with the rise of the Ottomans in the late fourteenth century) into the heart of Europe. How were Christians to respond? The simplest and obvious choice, for many, was to accept the logic of Muslim expansion; God must indeed prefer Islam; historical destiny and social pressure offered strong arguments in favor of conversion to Islam. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 47 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Constantine’s victory was the first Christian symbolism endorsing military power. — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 271; Medieval Christians read Muslim military success as divine judgment favoring Islam — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 47; Monotheistic medieval peoples read military victory as proof of divine favor (+21 more)
Broader Connections
- Medieval Christians read Muslim military success as divine judgment favoring Islam
#corroborates(1.00) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 47 - Monotheistic medieval peoples read military victory as proof of divine favor
#qualifies(0.95) - Medieval Christians read Muslim victories as divine judgment against Christendom
#complicates(0.90) - Medieval Christian polemicists read military defeats as disproof of prophets
#complicates(0.90) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 389 - Muslims read military conquest as divine favor and proof of true faith
#complicates(0.85) - Crusade legitimacy rested on interpreting military victory as divine vindication
#complicates(0.85) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 609 - Muslim military success suggested to Christians that Muhammad’s theology might be divinely favored
#complicates(0.85) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1242 - Medieval Christians read Islamic revelation as a divine warrant for worldly war
#complicates(0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1909 - Medieval religious toleration in disputation texts was a strategic posture for Christian victory
#complicates(0.80) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1319 - Medieval Christian readers judged the Qur’an by its Christology
#complicates(0.80) - Both Christian and Muslim chroniclers claimed their divine leader led celestial armies to victory
#complicates(0.80) - Medieval Christians held an irreducibly equivocal attitude toward Qur’anic Christology
#complicates(0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 969 - Adversarial praise struck medieval Christians as uniquely credible testimony
#complicates(0.75) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 955 - Medieval praise of Muslims recorded genuinely observed Islamic virtues
#complicates(0.75) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1087 - Medieval crusade advocates fabricated prophecies to promise certain victory.
#complicates(0.75) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1087