The Earliest Spanish Christian Views of Islam
Kenneth Baxter Wolf
Twenty-five years ago, in the first of three now well-known lectures, R. W. Southern noted “extremely slow penetration Islam as an intellectually identifiable fact Western minds.” attributed this delay to distance that separated Latin Christians from Muslims. In case northern Europeans, was physical. After Poitiers, military threat posed by receded and assumed its place only one among many peripheral challenges authority Carolingians their successors. For Spain, who lived within boundaries Islam, psychological. Out fear cultural absorption, they closed minds new religion reacted with hostility against it. As a result, according Southern, generations ecclesiastics were position assess either did not bother comprehend it or so using most distorted information available, depending on which side Pyrenees on.
Church History