The rhetoric of antichrist in Western lives of Muhammad

Abstract Reformation and Early Modern texts frequently suggest that Islam is the manifestation of satanic power, and represent the Prophet of Islam as an instrument of the devil, even as Antichrist. Such depictions have their source in medieval accounts of the life of Muhammad. This article surveys Latin, French, and English lives of Muhammad from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, including those found in the Vita Mahumeti, the Otia de Machomete, the Roman de Mahomet, Lydgate's Fall of Princes, and Langland's Piers Plowman. These accounts depict Muhammad as a deceptive magician, controlling his followers by means of false miracles. Like Antichrist, Muhammad is said to be eloquent, possessing material wealth and claiming to be the Messiah. The variations in these lives of Muhammad reveal how the perception of Islam developed differently in the various communities which produced these texts. These texts also reveal much about how medieval Western Christians viewed themselves in relation to the world ar...

[1]  J. Smith.  French Christian narratives concerning Muhammad and the religion of Islam from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries , 1996 .

[2]  Julian A C Smith.  Precursors to Peregrinus: The early history of magnetism and the mariner's compass in Europe , 1992 .

[3]  C. A. Patrides,et al.  The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature , 1985 .

[4]  R. Lerner.  Antichrists and Antichrist in Joachim of Fiore , 1985, Speculum.

[5]  R. Emmerson.  Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature , 1981 .

[6]  B. McGinn.  Angel Pope and Papal Antichrist , 1978, Church History.

[7]  D. Robertson,et al.  The Matter of Araby in Medieval England , 1977 .

[8]  S. Heninger.  The Orgoglio Episode in The Faerie Queene , 1959 .

[9]  Douglas Bush,et al.  The Evolution of "The Faerie Queene" , 1943 .

[10]  B. Mcginn,et al.  ANTICHRIST: TWO THOUSAND YEARS OF THE HUMAN FASCINATION WITH EVIL , 2011 .

[11]  H. Suermann.  Muhammad in Christian and Jewish apocalyptic expectations , 1994 .

[12]  Kathryn Kerby-Fulton.  Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman , 1990 .

[13]  B. McGinn.  Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages , 1979 .

[14]  F. Yates.  Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century , 1975 .

[15]  T. Herbert.  A relation of some yeares travaile into Afrique, Asia, Indies , 1971 .

[16]  Alexander Neckam,et al.  Alexandri Neckam De naturis rerum, libri duo : with the poem of the same author, De Laudimus Divinæ Sapientiæ , 1967 .

[17]  M. Luther.  D. Martin Luthers Werke : kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe) , 1963 .

[18]  M. Bloomfield,et al.  Piers Plowman as a fourteenth-century apocalypse , 1963 .

[19]  B. P. Smith,et al.  Islam in English literature , 1939 .

[20]  John M. Lydgate,et al.  Fall of princes , 1923 .