Twelfth-century theologians ranked Islam last among Christian spiritual enemies

Evidence

Islam was not, for these authors, a separate religion, distinct from other spiritual rivals: it was merely one variety of heretical error. This is true for Peter of Cluny and even truer for Christian theologians who knew less about Islam than did Peter. Alan of Lille, for example, composed in about 1200 his De fide catholica, a four-part polemical tract directed against Cathars, Waldensians, Jews and “pagans” (pagani)—by which he refers to the “disciples of Mahomet.” The first part, against the Cathars, is the longest: each successive section is shorter. This is a good indication of the spiritual threat that each posed, for Alan, to the Christian commonwealth: Islam is spiritual enemy number four. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 878

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the presentist assumption in the existing vault claims that Islam was medieval Europe’s defining other — here Alan of Lille ranks it fourth, behind Cathars, Waldensians, and Jews.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: when and how did Islam climb from ‘enemy number four’ to Europe’s paradigmatic enemy? What shifted between Alan of Lille (1200) and later crusade/Reformation polemic?