Medieval Christians typologically framed Islam as recapitulating earlier heresies

Evidence

The story of Simon Magus and his confrontation with the apostle Peter is attested in many medieval sources. All the apocryphal accounts agree that Simon produced miracles that led the faithful astray and impressed Nero: he could change sex and age, turn into a dragon, make statues move and talk. Yet these are illegitimate miracles performed through the aid of demons; Simon’s goals are self-glorification and sexual depravity. When put to the test, Peter and Paul are able to defeat Simon by praying and making him fall down in midflight. Simon is the first heresiarch and becomes a model that other heresiarchs are perceived to follow: a false message, demonically inspired miracles, sexual debauchery with his followers, and ultimately, death and defeat dealt by God through the agency of his saints. … By this “careful arrangement of [heretics’] ideas as the antithesis of Christianity,” as Brian Stock suggests, Christian authors “attempt to fit a new, troubling experience … into an acceptably conventional framework.” In other words, they tried to make sense of the doctrines or practices that they rejected by connecting them to earlier, discredited errors; Christian authors have the same reflex when confronted with Islam. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 133

Categorization

• XREF: This is a genealogical root directly relevant to my existing vault claims about how anti-Muslim discourse in modernity recycles older heresiological/anti-Semitic tropes; connects to Anidjar’s genealogy of the Jew/Arab opposition and to the heretic-typology logic my other sources trace. — connects to: Orthodox Islam and Christianity hold mutual heresy accusations rooted in Crusade history — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 784
• SEED: Angle for an essay: how the heresiological reflex — fitting novel enemies into prefabricated typological boxes (Simon Magus → Arius → Muhammad) — persists in modern ‘clash of civilizations’ framing.