Christian-Muslim Polemic in the Latin East: Latin Intellectualism in “Adelphus” (original) (raw)

A twelfth-century Latin account claims to record a conversation with a Greek Christian in Antioch about the origins of Islam. Like many ostensibly inter-religious polemical texts, this Latin account primarily, if not exclusively, addresses concerns of the author’s own cultural environment. What is unusual about this depiction of the life of Muhammad, is that it makes an argument for the cultural, religious, and intellectual supremacy of the Latin tradition. This position of superiority comes at the cost of, not so much Islamic or Arabic intellectualism, but surprisingly, that of the Greeks. Through subtle literary hints, the author levels a veiled attack on the threat of the Eastern Church to Christian unity and orthodoxy. The "Adelphus" account represents a highly original entry in the body of polemical literature on Christianity and Islam that should be viewed within the context of Levantine Latin intellectual culture.

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ARIUS AND ISLAM: A CRITICAL LOOK AT THE CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM LITERATURE

Research and Reviews in Social, Human and Administrative Sciences – II, 2021

Arian controversy is one of the most important debates in the history of Christianity. This controversy, which was the reason for the first general council, the Council of Nicaea (325), occupied the Christian world for a long time. On the other hand, Arianism has been a theme that has survived until our time in polemics between Muslims and Christians. While some Christian writers saw Islam as a kind of Arianism, some Muslim writers evaluated Arianism as “true Christianity” or “anti-trinitarian movement”. These approaches on both sides are not out of date, and are still mentioned by some in our time. In this study, we will try to take a critical look at these approaches within the framework of some marked examples.

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The 'Life of Muhammad' in Eulogius of Córdoba: some evidence for the transmission of Greek polemic to the Latin west

Early Medieval Europe 16:3 (August 2008), pp. 333–353., 2008

Eulogius of Córdoba, the principal recorder of the ninth-century Córdoban martyrs’ movement, copied for posterity a polemic biography of the Prophet Muhammad. The lost original is the earliest such text known in Latin, despite the longstanding tradition of anti-Islamic polemic in the Greek east. However, textual analysis indicates that Eulogius revised the original biography, and that his revisions were influenced by the polemic of John of Damascus. Eulogius’s exposure to John’s writings probably came through personal contact with a monk from the monastery of Mar Saba, contact which offers rare evidence of a non-textual transmission of ideas.

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Disagreements between Orthodoxy and Islam as Reflected in the Greek Apologetical and Polemical Anti-Islamic Treatises (16th-17th Centuries) | CRS Doctoral Conference: The Sacred in Conflict: Disagreements between and within Religions, CEU, Budapest

In this paper I investigate the construction of the anti-Islamic discourse as reflected in the Greek apologetical and polemical treatises on Islam from the fifteenth up to the end of the seventeenth centuries. Written in a period when the Greek communities went through a phase of sociocultural transformation and adaptation to the new conditions imposed by the Ottoman rule, these treatises develop new perceptions about Islam as a religion and its influence on the religious life of the Greek Orthodox communities by building their argumentation on the established Byzantine anti-Islamic polemical tradition. Disagreeing with Islam and its tenets and customs, which were perceived as a threat to the religious life of the Orthodox, the authors of the treatises are constantly drawing and defining the boundaries of Orthodoxy in opposition to Islam. The social and religious contexts are shaping the construction of the anti-Islamic discourse, while the authors are making their mark on its polemical style and tone. During this period, these apologetical and polemical treatises developed their own set of features, which will deeply influence the articulation of the discourse. For this paper I will consider the treatises authored by Pachomios Rousanos, Anastasios Gordios, Gherasimos Blachos and Panagiotes Nikousios. I will stress the main characteristics of the anti-Islamic discourse during this period by emphasizing the main points of disagreement between Islam and the Eastern Orthodoxy as reflected within the treatises. Finally, I will highlight the importance of these polemical treatises for the intellectual and religious history of the Greek communities during the early modern period, and their significance for the history of the Christian-Muslim relations in the Ottoman Empire.

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The Christian creed in 13th-century Islamic anti-Christian polemics

Paper presented at the Seventh Annual Conference of the European Academy of Religion (EuARe2024), Palermo, Italy, 20-23 May 2024. Panel: “The Nicene Constantinopolitan Symbol in its Arabic Version: between Christian Apologia and Islamic Controversy” – Biblioteca Giorgio La Pira, Palermo, 22 May 2024.

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Medieval Muslim Polemics against the Christian Creed: The Critique of Ṣāliḥ b. al-Ḥusayn al-Ǧaʿfarī (d. 668/1270)

Islamochristiana , 2016

After introducing Ṣāliḥ b. al-Ḥusayn al-Ǧa‘farī (d. 668/1270), the Egyptian Muslim author of an important work of anti-Christian polemic entitled Taḫǧīl man ḥarrafa al-Tawrāh wa-l-Inǧīl (‘The Shaming of Those Who Have Corrupted the Torah and the Gospel’), this article offers an annotated translation of the book’s eighth chapter, devoted to exposing the alleged corruption and selfcontradictoriness of the Christian creed. The charges are fundamentally two: that some parts of the creed logically contradict other parts; and that the creed is based neither on the revealed law of the Gospel nor on the words of Jesus or the Apostles. [Co-authored with Marek NASIŁOWSKI] “Medieval Muslim Polemics against the Christian Creed: The Critique of Ṣāliḥ b. al-Ḥusayn al-Ǧaʿfarī (d. 668/1270)”, Islamochristiana 42 (2016) 71-102.

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