Medieval Christians debated conversion by preaching versus military conquest

Evidence

The anonymous author claims that converting Saracens to Christianity is easy and that he himself has baptized “a good thousand.” William of Tripoli concluded his Notitia de Machometo with dire semiapocalyptic predictions of the demise of Islam largely through military conquest: a third of the Saracens will perish by the sword, a third will perish in the desert, and a third will flee to Christianity. The anonymous author of De statu indeed includes this same prediction; yet he concludes his tract with the assertion that preaching the word of God will suffice to bring Saracens to the Christian truth, explicitly rejecting the twin strategies of military crusade and philosophical argument. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1070

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the modern Islamic/Christian mission-vs-sword debate and to how apocalyptic prediction frameworks get reused across religious polemics.