Medieval ecclesiastical writers deemed a sufficiently harmful act proof of the agent’s personal evil.

Evidence

In the Middle Ages the evident harm caused by Islam ~ in mediaeval eyes — was too great and too effective to allow scope for generosity of attitude. Fine shades of character and subtleties of motive were a preoccupation of romantic verse, but did not affect ecclesiastical history writing, which tended to simplify. If an act were bad enough, it was beyond common sense to suppose that the agent could personally be good and sincere; and the act here in question was the creation of the most powerful instrument for the destruction of the Church, and for the loss of souls and provinces, then known. It would be almost as easy to believe that Judas was sincere; the suffering Church, and therefore Christ Himself, had been betrayed by Muhammad. He could not, then, have been a good man. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1375

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A compact account of how an epistemic rule (the magnitude of harm licenses inferences about the agent’s character) systematically disabled charity of judgment in medieval historiography, and only dissolved when the material threat receded.
• SEED: Article angle: how threat-perception mechanically forecloses moral generosity, and what changes when the threat recedes — with Muhammad’s rehabilitation as the case study.