orations), Euthymius Zigabenus, Gennadius, patriarch of Constantinople. Prominent in the Latin
church were Peter, Abbot of Clugny (twelfth century), Thomas Aquinas, Alanus ab Insulis,
Raimundus LulIus, Nicolaus of Cusa, Ricold or Richard (a Dominican monk who lived long in the
East), Savonarola, Joh. de Turrecremata.
The mediaeval writers, both Greek and Latin, represent Mohammed as an impostor and
arch-heretic, who wove his false religion chiefly from Jewish (Talmudic) fables and Christian
heresies. They find him foretold in the Little Horn of Daniel, and the False Prophet of the
Apocalypse. They bring him in connection with a Nestorian monk, Sergius, or according to others,
with the Jacobite Bahira, who instructed Mohammed, and might have converted him to the Christian
religion, if malignant Jews had not interposed with their slanders. Thus he became the shrewd and
selfish prophet of a pseudo-gospel, which is a mixture of apostate Judaism and apostate Christianity
with a considerable remnant of his native Arabian heathenism. Dante places him, disgustingly torn
and mutilated, among the chief heretics and schismatics in the ninth gulf of Hell,
"Where is paid the fee
By those who sowing discord win their burden."^204
This mediaeval view was based in part upon an entire ignorance or perversion of facts. It
was then believed that Mohammedans were pagans and idolaters, and cursed the name of Christ,
while it is now known, that they abhor idolatry, and esteem Christ as the highest prophet next to
Mohammed.
The Reformers and older Protestant divines took substantially the same view, and condemn
the Koran and its author without qualification. We must remember that down to the latter part of
the seventeenth century the Turks were the most dangerous enemies of the peace of Europe. Luther
published, at Wittenberg, 1540, a German translation of Richard’s Confutatio Alcorani, with racy
notes, to show "what a shameful, lying, abominable book the Alcoran is." He calls Mohammed "a
devil and the first-born child of Satan." He goes into the question, whether the Pope or Mohammed
be worse, and comes to the conclusion, that after all the pope is worse, and the real Anti-Christ
(Endechrist). "Wohlan," he winds up his epilogue, "God grant us his grace and punish both the
Pope and Mohammed, together with their devils. I have done my part as a true prophet and teacher.
Those who won’t listen may leave it alone." Even the mild and scholarly Melanchthon identifies
Mohammed with the Little Horn of Daniel, or rather with the Gog and Magog of the Apocalypse,(^204) Inferno, Canto XXVIII. 22 sqq. (Longfellow’s translation):
"A cask by losing centre-piece or cant
Was never shattered so, as I saw one
Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.
Between his legs were hanging down his entrails;
His heart was visible, and the dismal sack
That maketh excrement of what is eaten.
While I was all absorbed in seeing him,
He looked at me, and opened with his hands
His bosom, saying: ’See now how I rend me;
How mutilated, am, is Mahomet;
In front of me doth Ali weeping go,
Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;
And all the others whom thou here beholdest
Sowers of scandal and of schism have been
While living, and therefore are thus cleft asunder.’ "