Medieval iconoclasm disputes ran on genuine mutual incomprehension across faiths

Evidence

The Muslims put holy pictures to an insulting use, subjected images to various insults and dragged a crucifix through the streets at the tail of an ass. These episodes may be exaggerated; but Fidenzio himself followed the victorious army of the sultan as it retired to Damascus, in the hope of helping the Christian prisoners, and some of the Muslims, with the events of the capture of the Christian city fresh in their minds, asked him why Christians adored pictures and images. It was not, Fidenzio of course replied, the images, but the saints in heaven whom they represented, that Christians venerated. “They were silent, not knowing what else to say.’ — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 640

Categorization

• XREF: Real, lived dialogue where each side cannot even pose its question in the other’s terms is a concrete premodern instance of the vault’s claim that ‘Islam’ is produced as an unknowable mirror of Christian self-understanding.