Michael Frassetto - Christians and Muslims in the Middle Ages : From Muhammad to Dante

The writing of this book has been accomplished with the support and advice of many new and old friends. My interest in the topic began long ago with a conference paper I delivered at the annual medieval congress at Western Michigan University, and members of the panel and the audience offered important comments that helped me shape my own understanding of Christian and Muslim relations in the Middle Ages. I explored the topic further in a volume I edited with David Blanks, and I owe my co-editor and the contributors to the volume thanks for their insights into the subject. I should also like to thank the students who took my class on Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle Ages for their attention and their often pointed questions. My thanks as well to Daniel Callahan and Lawrence Duggan, who read chapters of the book and whose advice I did not follow at my own peril, for their comments on this book and their long-standing support of my work. I should thank John Hosler for his very helpful comments on a chapter of the book that he read. The book would not have appeared without the support of my editor, Eric Kuntzman, whose faith in the project helped me greatly to complete the book. My greatest thanks to Olivia and Jill for their love and encouragement through all things medieval and otherwise.

Michael Frassetto has taught medieval and world history at the University of Delaware and at Stockton University. He is the author of numerous articles on the eleventh-century Church, the origins of medieval heresy, and relations between the Church and Muslims and Jews in the Middle Ages. He is also the author of The Great Medieval Heretics (2008) and has edited several essay collections, including Heresy and the Persecuting Society in the Middle Ages: Essays on the Work of R.I. Moore (2006) and, with David Blanks, Perceptions of the Other: Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe .

Primary Texts and Translations

Adomnan, De locis sanctis . Ed. and trans. D. Meehan. Dublin, 1958 and 1983.

Ademar of Chabannes. Chronicon . Eds. Richard Landes and G. Pons. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 1999.

. Sermons. Berlin, DS MS Lat Phillipps, 1664.

Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami, The Book of Jihad of Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106): Text, Translation and Commentary . Trans. Niall Christie. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015.

Ammianus Marcellinus. The Later Roman Empire (A.D. 354378) . Trans. Walter Hamilton. London: Penguin Books, 1986.

Annales of Mettenses Priores , MGH, SRG in usum scholarum , vol. 10. Hannover,: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1895.

Annales Regni Francorum . MGH, SRG in usum scholarum , vol. 6. Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1905.

Apocalypse of the Pseudo-Methodius. In Paul J. Alexander, trans., The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition . Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985. Pp. 3651.

Bede, A History of the English Church and People . Trans. Leo Sherley-Price, revised R. E. Latham. New York: Penguin Books, 1981.

, Expositio actuum apostolorum , CCSL, 119. Turnhout: Brepols, 1983.

Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum , ed. H. E. J. Cowdrey. The Mahdia Campaign of 1087, The English Historical Review 92 (1977): 2329. Reprinted in Popes, Monks and Crusaders (London: The Hambledon Press, 1984.

Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithards Histories . Trans. Bernhard Walter Scholz with Barbara Rogers. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1972.

Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain . Ed. and trans. Kenneth Baxter Wolf. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1990.

Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri , vol 1, Inferno . Ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Disputatio Saraceni et Christiani . Translated in Daniel J. Sahas. John of Damascus on Islam: The Heresy of the Ishmaelites. Leiden: Brill, 1972. Pp. 14355.

Einhard and Notker the Stammerer: Two Lives of Charlemagne . Trans. David Ganz. London: Penguin Books, 2008.

Fredegar. Chronicarum quae dicuntur Fredegarii Scholastici Continuationes . Ed. B. Krusch. MGH SS 2.

Gesta Francorum: The Deeds of the Franks and the other Pilgrims to Jerusalem . Ed. Rosalind Hill. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1962.

Guibert of Nogent, The Deeds of God through the Franks: A Translation of Guibert of Nogents Gesta Dei per Francos . Trans. Robert Levine. Woodbridge and Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1997.

Habig, Martin A. St. Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early Biographies . Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1991.

Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad. A Translation of Ishaqs Sirat Rasul Allah, introduction and notes by A. Guillaume. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955.

Innocent III. Quia maior . PL 216: cols. 81722.

Itinerarium Regis Ricardi , Ed. M. T. Stead. New York: MacMillan, 1920.

John of Damascus. De Haeresibus , chap. 100/101. Translated in Daniel J. Sahas. John of Damascus on Islam: The Heresy of the Ishmaelites. Leiden: Brill, 1972. Pp.13341.

La Vie de Jean, Abb de Gorze . Ed. and trans. Michel Parisse. Paris, 1999.

Life of Willibald. In Thomas F. X. Noble and Thomas Head, eds., Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages . University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Pp.14160.

Lipsky, Glenn Edward. The Chronicle of Alfonso the Emperor: A Translation of the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris . Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1972.

Muir, William. The Apology of Al-Kindy . 2nd ed. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1887.

Pact of Umar. In Jarbel Rodriguez, ed., Muslim and Christian Contact in the Middle Ages: A Reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. Pp. 24.

Passio Thiemonis archiepiscopi . MGH Scriptores 11:5162.

Paul Alvarus. Indiculus Luminousus . PL 121: 51356.

Peter the Venerable. Contra sectam sive haeresis Saracenorum. In James Kritzeck, ed., Peter the Venerable and Islam . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962. Pp. 22091.

. Summa totius haeresis Saracenorum. In James Kritzeck, ed., Peter the Venerable and Islam . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962. Pp. 20411.

Peter the Venerable Writings Against the Saracens . Trans. Irven M. Resnick. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of American Press, 2016.

Petrus Alfonsi. Dialogi . PL 157: 535672.

Petrus Alfonsi: Dialogue Against the Jews . Trans. Irven M. Resnick. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006.

Regula non bullata . http://franciscanos.org/esfa/regnb-b.html.

Robert the Monk. The Historia Iherosollimitana of Robert the Monk . Ed. D. Kempf and M. G. Bull. Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2013.

Rodulfus Glaber. Rodvlfi Glabri Historiarum Libri Quinque: Rodulfus Glaber The Five Books of the Histories . Ed. and trans. John France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

The Letter of Alexius Comnenus. Translated in Einar Joranson. The Problem of the Spurious Letter of Emperor Alexius to the Court of Flanders. The American Historical Review 55 (1950): 81315.

The Song of Roland . Trans. Glyn Burges. London: Penguin Books, 1990.

Thomas Aquinas. On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa Contra Gentiles . Trans. Anton C. Pegis. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1955.

. Reasons for the Faith Against Muslim Objections (and One Objection of the Greeks and Armenians) to the Cantor of Antioch, trans. Joseph Kenny. Islamochristiana 22 (1996): 3152.

Usamah ibn Munqidh. The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades . Trans. Paul M. Cobb. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2008.

Vita Willibaldi , MGH SS 15.

Modern Studies

Asbridge, Thomas. The First Crusade: A New History . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Bartlett, Robert. The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 9501350 . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.