Twelfth-century Christian interest in Islam was driven by its cultural prestige

Evidence

Why conclude this study with the thirteenth century? Because in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Latin Europe first came to terms with and tried to confront the world of Islam. That confrontation was in part military: crusade and Spanish reconquista. But it was also intellectual: European scholars studied philosophy and science in Arabic treatises, many of which they translated into Latin. Theologians attempted to prove, through preaching and rational argumentation, Christian truth to Muslims (as well as to Jews and heretics); this movement was a dismal failure, as writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries increasingly admitted. At the same time, Christian authors tried to define and limit the place of Muslims in Christian society (through legislation) and in Christian history (through chronicles and theological tracts). — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 61 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

For the Latin, it was an impossible imaginative effort so to suspend belief that this association of sacred names, which includes the most sacred of all, could seem anything but grotesque; yet it would be a mistake to imagine that mediaeval writers were illinformed. There is evidence that they believed as much as they were willing to believe, and all who knew the Islamic reassessment of the familiar sequence of God’s servants found it intolerable. As a result, Islam was often deformed when it was presented by Christians. In spite of this, the basic tenets of Islam were well understood by a great number of writers. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 109 (#complicates, via linked claim)

There is nothing else in all the Qur’an to parallel the warmth with which Christ and His mother are spoken of. Christ is presented as an unique being, but His mother’s personality appears more vividly. The Qur’an inspires a devotion to Mary of which Muslims might have made more, if they had not needed to differentiate their attitude sharply from that of Catholics. … The problem for Christians who meditate upon Islam without prejudice is not at all an easy one. The Christ of the Qur’an is not the Christ in whom they believe, and yet there is only one Christ, whose praise must always be grateful to Christian ears. It cannot logically be less grateful when it is uttered by those who have seriously erroneous ideas about Him; but in matters that they feel to be important, people are not logical. … The Christian attitude to Muslims, who revered the sacred persons, but did so in highly erroneous forms, was inevitably equivocal. Christians were torn in a matter that affected them deeply. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 969 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: By 1250 the unity-of-God doctrine was common Christian knowledge about Islam; Eighteenth-century Europeans ranked Islam as a civilization on par with Christendom; Europe’s lasting portrayals of Islam were fixed by the twelfth century (+20 more)

Broader Connections

• European intellectual confrontation with Islam began in the twelfth century #corroborates (0.95) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 61
• Twelfth-century polemics reduced Islam to a carnal cult of lust #complicates (0.90) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 882
• Medieval Christian deformation of Islam coexisted with accurate knowledge #complicates (0.90) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 109
• Medieval Christians understood Islam through preexisting biblical categories rather than direct encounter #complicates (0.90) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 88
• Twelfth-century Christian polemicists framed Islam as lust-ridden heresy. #complicates (0.90) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 801
• Medieval Christians held an irreducibly equivocal attitude toward Qur’anic Christology #complicates (0.90) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 969
• Twelfth-century Western images of Islam were born amidst triumphal storytelling #complicates (0.85) — R. W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle…, 165
• The Reformation polemic against Islam reproduced twelfth-century medieval texts #complicates (0.85) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1355
• Medieval Christians framed Islam as an old heresy rather than a new religion #complicates (0.85) — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 48
• Medieval Christians schematized Judaism, Islam and Christianity into Fortune, Nature and Grace #complicates (0.85) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1054
• The medieval Christian image of Islam was self-referential and internally self-correcting #complicates (0.80)
• Medieval Christians typologically framed Islam as recapitulating earlier heresies #complicates (0.80) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 133
• Medieval epics imagined Islam as a parodic mirror of Christian crusade religion #complicates (0.80) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 672
• Medieval Christian storytelling presumed Islam’s moral standards could judge Christians #complicates (0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1104
• A deformed image of Islam hardened in the medieval Christian mind as dogma #complicates (0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 78