Medieval missionaries often converted preaching into deliberate provocation of violence

Evidence

Where acts of war were out of the question there often developed a strange desire to provoke violence instead. Some missionaries seem to have allowed or encouraged ‘preaching’ and ‘disputation’ to degenerate into provocation. Lull exemplified this when he ‘defended’ the Trinity by publicly abusing Islam; Ricoldo, more sympathetically, showed, amid considerable evidence of courage for religion’s sake, no sign at all of zeal for the martyr’s crown. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 683

There is, however, another and a very different element in Lull’s African incursions. Where acts of war were out of the question there often developed a strange desire to provoke violence instead. Some missionaries seem to have allowed or encouraged ‘preaching’ and ‘disputation’ to degenerate into provocation. Lull exemplified this when he ‘defended’ the Trinity by publicly abusing Islam; Ricoldo, more sympathetically, showed, amid considerable evidence of courage for religion’s sake, no sign at all of zeal for the martyr’s crown. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 683

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to martyrdom-seeking psychology in ‘On Sacrifice: The Real Kind, with Corpses’ — self-immolation as love and stabilization. — connects to: Missionaries sought martyrdom through provoking Muslim violence when war was unavailable; Christian missionaries deliberately provoked Muslim rulers into martyring them; Anti-conversion violence targets even non-proselytizing Catholic churches — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 254
• SEED: Angle: when persuasion becomes performance of victimhood — the psychology of provocation-as-evangelism across missions, protests, and digital outrage.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 683