Mid-fifteenth-century European thought on Islam surpassed all earlier and later centuries

Evidence

I have called the period of about ten years, from about 1450 to 1460, when our four scholars and statesmen were at work on the problem of Islam, the moment of vision. The vision was contradictory and evidently in many ways deceptive, but I think it can be claimed that it was larger, clearer, and more lifelike than at any previous moment, or any later one for several centuries at least. — R. W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle…, 562

Categorization

• XREF: This challenges the Whig narrative that knowledge of Islam improved steadily over time — parallels with declensionist historiographies. — connects to: The Western view of Islam was fixed by 1350 and persists today
• QUESTION: Southern claims no later century for several centuries matched this. Worth verifying against 16th-17th century orientalist scholarship.

Related

• Islam’s intellectual peak came within four centuries, far faster than the medieval West’s (similarity 0.87)
• Christian thought on Islam stagnated for four centuries after 1300 (similarity 0.85)
• The Western canon of Islam was fixed by 1350 and endured for centuries. (similarity 0.84)
• The mid-fifteenth-century writers treated Islam as an urgent practical problem, not a cosmic role (similarity 0.84)
• All enduring European portrayals of Islam were set by 1200 (similarity 0.83)
• The Western view of Islam was fixed by 1350 and persists today (similarity 0.83)
• Islam menaced Europe more in 1600 yet mattered less intellectually than in 1000 (similarity 0.83)
• The Western canon of Islam was fixed by the mid-fourteenth century (similarity 0.83)
• European intellectual confrontation with Islam began in the twelfth century (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval Christian knowledge systems failed to explain or influence Islam (similarity 0.82)
• No era since the Middle Ages has discussed Islam outside prejudice and politics (similarity 0.82)
• Twelfth-century Western images of Islam were born amidst triumphal storytelling (similarity 0.81)
• European scholarship on Islam turned disinterested only once Islam ceased threatening Europe. (similarity 0.81)
• Spanish thought about Islam was mostly rational, not fanatical (similarity 0.80)
• The Western canon on Islam outlived religious unity and the Reformation itself. (similarity 0.80)