In contrast to the views of Muhammad in Islam, the Christian views on him stayed highly negative during the Middle Ages for over a millennium. At this time, Christendom largely viewed Islam as a Christian heresy and Muhammad as a false prophet. Overview Various Western and Byzantine Christian thinkers considered Muhammad to be a perverted, deplorable man, a false prophet, and even the Antichrist, as he was frequently seen in Christendom as a heretic or possessed by demons. Some of them, like Thomas Aquinas, criticized Muhammad's promises of carnal pleasure in the afterlife. With the Crusades of the High Middle Ages, and the wars against the Ottoman Empire during the Late Middle Ages, the Christian reception of Muhammad became more polemical, moving from the classification as a heretic to depiction of Muhammad as a servant of Satan or as the Antichrist, who will be eternally suffering tortures in Hell amongst the damned. By the Late Middle Ages, Islam was more typically grouped with Paganism, and Muhammad was viewed as an idolater inspired by the Devil. A more relaxed or benign view of Islam only developed in the modern period, after the Islamic empires ceased to be an acute military threat to Europe (see Orientalism). Early Middle Ages The earliest written Christian knowledge of Muhammad stems from Byzantine sources, written shortly after Muhammad's death in 632 CE. In the anti-Jewish polemic the Teaching of Jacob, a dialogue between a recent Christian convert and several Jews, one participant writes that his brother "wrote to [him] saying that a deceiving prophet has appeared amidst the Saracens". Another participant in the Doctrina replies about Muhammad: "He is deceiving. For do prophets come with sword and chariot?, …[Y]ou will discover nothing true from the said prophet except human bloodshed". Though Muhammad is never called by his name, the author seems to know of his existence and represents both Jews and Christians as viewing him in a negative light. Other contemporary sources, such as the writings of Sophronius of Jerusalem, do not characterize Saracens as having their own prophet or faith, only remarking that the Saracen attacks must be a punishment for Christian sins. Sebeos, a 7th-century Armenian bishop and historian, wrote shortly after the end of the first Arab civil war concerning Muhammad and his Farewell Sermon: Knowledge of Muhammad in Medieval Christendom became available after the early expansion of the Islamic religion in the