Ricoldo categorized Islam as combining all three historical Church persecutions into one

Evidence

Ricoldo saw it as the sum of three former ‘persecutions’ into which all the past sufferings of the Church might conveniently be grouped. There had been the rabid persecution by pagan tyrants up to the time of Constantine; directly after had arisen the persecution by heretics which the great doctors, Hilary, Augustine, Jerome and Gregory had been raised to combat; directly after Gregory’s time had arisen the third plague, the danger of false brethren, men of corrupt mind, hypocrites, a tribulation that would last until the old age of the Church. Muhammad’s persecution was above all others. It was not confined to any one mode, but functioned in all three. Sometimes it worked by tyranny, sometimes by deception in religious doctrine (per legem), sometimes by subverting the simple people by hypocrisy. This was a subtler statement and nearer to historical fact than Humbert’s. Ricoldo saw that Islam partook of the genuine doctrinal fascination of heresy, and of that apparent moral example which enables ostensibly exemplary men, false brethren, to lead Christians into error. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1029

Categorization

• QUESTION: Ricoldo’s tripartite scheme of persecution (pagan tyrants, heretics, false brethren) is worth comparing to how other medieval apocalyptic frameworks periodized church history — does this tri-narrative recur elsewhere?
• XREF: connects to: Ricoldo assessed Islam’s threat as operating through tyranny, doctrine, and moral example simultaneously