Abstract
This chapter examines Western Christian images of Muslims in the context of three broad changes that occurred in the cultural and societal orientation of fourteenth-to sixteenth-century Europe. It begins with a discussion of the impact of the gradual replacement of “Christendom” by “Europe” as the primary geopolitical and cultural organizing concept among its inhabitants, which brings in the dimension of physical space for the first time in our analysis. The rediscovery of the classical heritage during the Renaissance as it relates to the European image of “the Turk” has been analyzed elegantly elsewhere and will, therefore, only be considered schematically in this chapter, together with the elements of continuity between the medieval images of Muslims and fifteenth-century images of Turks. The explosion of internal divisions within Latin Christendom known as the Protestant Reformation, on the other hand, poses particular challenges to the broader argument advanced in this book and will thus be addressed in the detailed study of Martin Luther’s writings on Islam and the Turks that forms the bulk of this chapter.
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Notes
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© 2011 Paul T. Levin
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Levin, P.T. (2011). Introducing Europe and “The Turk”: The Renaissance and the Reformations. In: Turkey and the European Union. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119574_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119574_4
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