Medieval crusade advocates catalogued Muslim vices to justify permanent war over truce

Evidence

For the reader who is left unconvinced, Fidentius argues that hostility to the Christian faith is not all that makes the Saracens implacable enemies. He claims that they are lecherous “from the soles of their feet to the tops of their heads”; their sodomy alone, he says, would be justification enough for Christians to fight them. He says they are cruel, greedy, crafty, and stupid. He also argues that they are untrustworthy, citing examples where various Muslim rulers, he claims, broke truces with Christians; war, rather than negotiation, is the answer, for Fidentius. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1085

Categorization

• XREF: Direct ancestral parallel to modern tropes: sexual deviance, cruelty, greed, and untrustworthiness mapped in Aziz and Razack onto Muslim subjects — shows the vice-list template long predates modern racialization.