Travellers, Intellectuals, and the World Beyond Medieval Europe

Contents: Introduction; Part I The Matter of Curiosity: Libertas Inquirendi and the Vitium Curiositatis in medieval thought, Edward Peters; Ecclesiastical attitudes to novelty c.1100-c.1250, Beryl Smalley; Medieval Christendom's encounter with the alien, Peter Jackson; The nature of the infidel: the anthropology of the canon lawyers, James Muldoon; Moslem-Christian understanding in medieval times, James Kritzeck; Knowing the enemy: Western understanding of Islam at the time of the crusades, Bernard Hamilton; Muhammad and the Muslims in St Thomas Aquinas, James Waltz. Part II The Muslim World - Crusade or Conversion?: From Friar Paul to Friar Raymond: the development of innovative missionizing argumentation, Robert Chazen; Talking to spiritual others: Ramon Llull, Nicholas of Cusa, Diego Valades, Pauline Moffitt Watts; Saracen philosophers secretly deride Islam, John Tolan; Popular attitudes towards Islam in medieval Europe, Jo Ann Hoeppner Moran Cruz; William [of Malmesbury] and some other Western writers on Islam, Rodney M. Thomson. Part III The Mongol World: The conversion of a pagan society in the Middle Ages, Robert Bartlett; Missionaries and the marriages of infidels: the case of the Mongol mission, James Muldoon; Tartars, Jews, Saracens and the Jewish-Mongol 'plot' of 1241, Sophia Menache. Part IV Visualizing Knowledge of the World: Cartography in Europe and Islam in the Middle Ages, Norman J.W. Thrower; Some medieval theories about the Nile, O.G.S. Crawford; Shifting alterity: the Mongol in the visual and literary culture of the late Middle Ages, Maurizio Peleggi; Experiencing strangeness: monstrousness peoples on the edge of the Earth as depicted on medieval mappae mundi, Marina MA1/4nkler; Index.