Missionary dogma valued martyrdom at Saracen hands as much as conversion itself

Evidence

Francis and his friars came to symbolize the apostolic life (vita apostolica) for Christians of the thirteenth century. Wandering barefoot from town to town, begging for their daily sustenance, living in community, preaching to the poor and the marginal, Francis and his followers sought in everything to follow the apostles: so much so that debates over (for example) whether the apostles had carried coin purses could rage hot; whatever the apostles had done, it seemed, the Franciscans ought to do. The apostles had been first and foremost missionaries, spreaders of the Word to infidels, and most of them had suffered martyrdom as a result of their mission. This was not lost on Francis and his followers. … Thomas commends Francis for having thrice tried (though thrice failed) to obtain the crown of martyrdom: clearly, for Thomas (and, it seems, for Francis as well), the goal of mission is as much to produce martyrs as it is to produce converts. When Francis received the news that five Franciscan missionaries had been martyred in Marrakesh in 1220, he responded, “Now I can truly say that I have five brothers!” — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1099

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the vault’s genealogy of how medieval Christianity constructed Islam as the infidel foil — this shows mission/Islam existing mainly to produce Christian martyrs, feeding into the opposition schema traced by Anidjar and others.
• ADDENDUM: Pairs with ‘On Sacrifice: The Real Kind, with Corpses’ — the martyr-crown at Saracen hands is another religious economy where death is the desired yield, this time Christian.