The Saracen-pagan topos grew so entrenched that it absorbed pagan persecutors into itself

Evidence

Yet the similarities between the two texts should not blind us to an essential difference that shows how deeply the topos of Saracen paganism anchored itself in the European worldview in the three centuries between the two texts. Hrotsvitha dressed Pelagius’s persecutor, ‘Abd al-Rahmân, in the familiar and despised garb of a classical pagan idolater. The author of the Life of Saint Katherine does precisely the opposite: he paints the classical Roman emperor Maxentius as a familiar literary personage, the evil Saracen king who worships idols of Mahound and Tervagant and who persecutes Christians. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 718

Categorization

• XREF: Grounds Anidjar/Aziz claims about how pre-modern Europe generated the theological Other; this shows the topos colonizing antecedent material — a genealogy of the trope.
• DEFINE: Clarifies what ‘topos of Saracen paganism’ means as an analytical device.