Medieval Christian anti-Oriental prejudice is unsourced in Greek knowledge
Evidence
Some have argued that in the centuries that followed the writings of Aeschylus, Euripides and Herodotus, the Greeks and Romans continued to develop a taxonomic lore about the Orient and this was passed on to Christian Europe. At first sight, this may seem plausible, but there is a big gap in continuity and until the fifteenth century very few scholars in Western Europe were able to read Greek. As we shall see when we come to consider the writings of such medieval figures as Peter the Venerable and Ricoldo da Monte Croce, they do not seem to owe anything at all to any taxonomic lore adumbrated by Greek playwrights and historians. They had their own fresh medieval Christian prejudices. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 44
Categorization
- XREF: This is Irwin’s central rebuttal to the Said/Mas’udi continuity thesis — the contention that Orientalism was invented and transmitted by the Greeks fails because Greek sources were unavailable in medieval Europe. — connects to: Alienation is a distinctly modern idea unknown to Greek thought — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 823