Medieval Western Christians framed heresy as an Oriental import justifying crusade

Evidence

Orientals are clever, flighty intellectuals whose brilliant circumlocutions carry them off into heresy, contrasted implicitly to the stodgy, earthbound, authority-respecting Latins. Is it any wonder, Guibert continues, that virtually all the heresiarchs were Orientals, from Mani and Arius forward? These Orientals continue to defend their errors through reasoning (ratiocinatio): the use of leavened bread in the Eucharist, the lack of proper deference to the Pope, clerical marriage, and Trinitarian errors regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit. It is because of these errors, Guibert affirms, that God allowed the Eastern empire to fall to the Arab invaders. It is at this point that Guibert narrates Muhammad’s biography, placing him in a dual role: both as divine scourge sent to punish the heretical Eastern Christians, and the latest and worst of a long line of oriental heresiarchs. Heresy is a noxious Eastern import. The ideological point is clear: the conquests of God’s army, of valorous and pure Christians from the West, are justified and necessary: both against the Saracen followers of Muhammad and against the weak and perfidious Greeks. Like some of the nineteenthcentury orientalists denounced by Edward Said, Guibert uses the image of the flighty and sensual Oriental to affirm the right—indeed the duty—of the vigorous stolid European to appropriate his lands and to rule over him. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 786

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces Edward Said’s orientalism thesis that Western discourse constructs the ‘flighty Oriental’ to justify Western domination; connects to paranoia about foreign ideological contagion. — connects to: Medieval theologians reframed Scripture to justify killing infidels in war
• SEED: Angle: how the ‘heresy is foreign, purity is local’ rhetorical move recurs across eras — from Guibert’s Orientals to modern anti-‘foreign ideology’ panics in politics.