Thirteenth-century anti-Islamic polemics were still recycled by Luther and later eras

Evidence

When Martin Luther sought to combat the religion of the “Turk,” he did so by approving the printing of Latin texts from the twelfth century (including the earliest translation of the Koran) and by translating Riccoldo da Montecroce into German. The thirteenth century saw the crystallization of European images of Islam that were to endure (with minor variations) into the seventeenth century—and in some respects into the twentieth. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 63

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the book’s own arc (this is the intro) — and connects to Said’s Orientalism and to how ideological arsenals get recycled in later contexts, similar to the medieval law merchant institutions being revived later. — connects to: An established anti-Islamic literature existed in the West by 1350; Informed medieval polemicists still clung to untenable anti-Muslim fables; Luther and the Reformers saw the Turk as a sharper Antichrist than the Pope (+1 more)
• CANDY: Luther fought Islam by dusting off 12th-century Latin polemics — a neat, self-contained historical irony.