Al-Masāq

Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean

ISSN: 0950-3110 (Print) 1473-348X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/calm20

Medieval Latin Lives of Muhammad

Finn Schulze-Feldmann

To cite this article: Finn Schulze-Feldmann (2019): Medieval Latin Lives of Muhammad, Al-Masāq,
DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2019.1662601

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2019.1662601

Published online: 04 Sep 2019.

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AL-MASĀQ

BOOK REVIEW

Medieval Latin Lives of Muhammad, Julian Yolles and Jessica Weiss (Ed. and trans.),
2018, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, xli + 664 pp., UN$29.95/£27.95
(hardback), ISBN 9780674980730

Christianity and Islam have each always accorded great importance to one central figure on
which their theology pivots. As tensions between the two religions heightened, Christian
polemics turned to composing vitriolic accounts of Muh ammad’s life, in order to appeal to
an audience that – especially in the Middle Ages with its rich hagiographical practice – was
highly receptive to biographical storytelling. This literary tradition, which scholars have
called “counter-history”, “parasitical historiography” or “anti-hagiography”, is what the
volume Medieval Latin Lives of Muhammad from the Latin series of the Dumbarton Oaks
Medieval Library presents.1 A thematic anthology, it compiles a selection of nine prose,
verse and epistolary treatments of the Prophet’s life from nearly five centuries, giving the
Latin version circulating in medieval Europe and a modern English translation. In tracing
how the depictions of Muh ammad evolved in the medieval West, this handsome volume
brings into focus how the gradual manifestation of certain motives and falsehoods in tropes
shaped the perception of Islam as a whole.
The three earliest accounts of Muh ammad’s life originate from the two main points of
contact between Muslims and Christians in the Middle Ages. On the Iberian Peninsula,
anti-Islamic polemics had emerged as a means of resistance against the Muslims, who had
settled there since the early eighth century. In this context, Eulogius of Córdoba composed
the so-called Historia de Mahomet, the earliest surviving Latin life of Muh ammad. Placing
Islam outside the Christian fold, this ninth-century work portrayed the Prophet as an instru-
ment of the devil and a harbinger of the Antichrist. According to the more obscure Tultuscep-
tru de Libro domini Methodi, Muh ammad was originally a Christian monk named Ozim.
While he was on a missionary journey, a demonic angel entranced him, renamed him and
made him speak words loosely resembling the Islamic call to prayer. This idea that Islam
was a Christian heresy allowed Christians to explain the affinities between the Qurʾān and
the Bible, as well as to deploy the anti-heretical strategies developed by the Church Fathers.
Much more influential than these early Spanish examples was the Latin rendition of an
early-ninth-century account written by Theophanes in the Byzantine Empire. This continu-
ation of the Greek world chronicle by George Synkellos introduced crucial elements for the
later biographical tradition of Muh ammad, such as the support he received from the Jews,
the figure of a pseudo-monk and the epilepsy he suffered from.
Possibly more than merely coincidental with the early crusades was the composition of the
first extensive biography from Western Europe by Embrico of Mainz. His versified Life of
Muhammad was soon followed by the Poetic Pastimes on Muhammad by Walter of Com-
piègne and an account by an otherwise unknown author by the name of Adelphus. Crucial
to Embrico’s treatment of Muh ammad’s life is a magician who installed Mammutius, a
former slave, as king of Lybia and deceived the populace into believing that he was a
prophet. For establishing a new religion based on sexual debauchery, Mammutius is eventually
1
Amos Funkenstein, “History, Counterhistory, and Narrative”, in Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final
Solution”, ed. Saul Friedlander (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 66–81, esp. 80; Barbara Roggema, The
Legend of Sergius Bahira: Eastern Christian Apologetics and Apocalyptic in Response to Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2009), p. 30; John
Tolan, “Anti-Hagiography: Embrico of Mainz’s Vita Mahumeti”, Journal of Medieval History 22 (1996): 25–41.
2 BOOK REVIEW

punished by God with epilepsy. In addition to drawing on these earlier traditions, Embrico also
introduced new elements such as the miraculous suspension of Mammutius’s grave and the
explanation that the prohibited consumption of pork resulted from pigs having devoured
Muhammad’s body. For Walter of Compiègne, Muh ammad was a more autonomous charac-
ter. He was sufficiently learned in Christian teachings to create his own doctrine without the
help of the monk present in many Lives. So powerful was he indeed that he was able to suspend
his coffin mid-air. Adelphus again went so far as to identify the Christian monk assisting
Muh ammad as the fifth-century archbishop of Constantinople, Nestorius.
By far the longest work printed in this volume is the Apology of al-Kindī, which was intro-
duced to the European West when, in the 1140s, Peter the Venerable had a set of religious
tracts relating to Islam translated into Latin. Particularly interesting for the purpose of this col-
lection is the fact that, even though the many references to earlier invectives anchor the work in
a polemical framework, this Arab-Christian refutation of Islam draws on a wealth of knowl-
edge of Muslim practices. That the work is included in its entirety is, however, rather surpris-
ing given that, due to its argumentative nature, it primarily focuses on doctrinal issues and not
on the presentation of Muh ammad’s biography. Its inclusion must at the same time be
applauded, for the editors thus present the breadth of accounts that shaped the image of
Muh ammad in the Latin West, irrespective of the geographical or cultural origin of each bio-
graphy, that is, Latin lives of Muhammad from Europe as well as translations of accounts orig-
inating from outside Europe. All the more does it strike me, however, that despite this
commendably broad scope, similarly influential translations such as Bonaventure of Siena’s
Liber scalae Machometi were left out. Nor does the decision to exclude biographical accounts
embedded in other literary works seem convincingly and sufficiently justified, given the
authoritative account of Muh ammad’s life in the Golden Legend.
Two short anonymous accounts from the thirteenth century conclude the volume. They not
only share a common origin in the monastic context of the late medieval mendicant orders, but
they also are both connected to a figure named Nicholas. Whereas Where Wicked Muhammad
Came From recalls polemics from earlier centuries by relating Muh ammad to sexual debauch-
ery and a certain hostility against the Christian Church, the tone of the Liber Nycholay is much
more conciliatory than that of any other work included in this volume. Here, even though
Islam is reputedly founded with the intention to revenge Muh ammad’s failed attempt to
become pope, its concluding comparison highlights the similarities between Christianity
and Islam.
The volume Medieval Latin Lives of Muhammad is a welcome contribution to the study of
Christian–Islamic relations. Produced in superb quality, it showcases the real diversity of the
Latin accounts of Muh ammad’s life available in the medieval Latin West. With its fine trans-
lations, it offers those interested in Christian invectives against Islam a great study tool.
However, those seeking an accessible way into this field might find the rather brief introduc-
tion unsatisfactory in its contextualisation and scholarly discussion of each work. In sum, this
collection will be a vital resource for anyone undertaking studies of religious polemics, the
history of Muslim–Christian relations and the image of Muh ammad.

Finn Schulze-Feldmann
The Warburg Institute, University of London, London, UK
finn.schufe@gmail.com
© 2019 Finn Schulze-Feldmann
https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2019.1662601