Medieval Christian texts deemed Muslims convertible but Jews a fixed physical threat

Evidence

Though both Islam and Judaism are condemned for their understanding according to the letter of the law rather than the spirit, they differ crucially with regard to the potential for conversion. For the author of Mandeville’s Travels, the prospect of the conversion of the Muslims is extremely promising; the conversion of the Jews, by contrast, is not even suggested. They are presented as a threat not only to the spiritual welfare of the righteous, but to their physical health as well: in the course of his travels, the narrator claims to have encountered a highly poisonous tree, the “venym” of which the Jews had sought to use “to enpoysone alle Cristiantee” (21; 139.34–35). — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 297

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the earlier moral-panic work on how out-groups get cast as both spiritually and physically polluting. — connects to: Muslims held that Jews and Christians corrupted their scriptures