Ostensibly, the title of the work that is translated in this post- Summa Totius Haeresis Saracenorum ("Summary of the Entire Heresy of the Saracens")- suggests something that is little more than a medieval Christian rant against Islam as a supposed Christian heresy. On the other hand, its author- Peter the Venerable- is a figure of considerable significance in the history of Western study of Islam, because it was through his commission and financing that the first translation of the Qur'an into a Western European language was produced: namely, the Latin translation produced by Robert of Ketton during Peter's visit in the period 1142-1143 to monasteries Spain that were affiliated with his abbey of Cluny in France.
That translation, to be sure, can be criticised on grounds of tendency to paraphrase (I hope to provide a more detailed assessment of that translation in a forthcoming paper for a journal). However, having the whole Qur'an translated, rather than just select excerpts, represented an important step towards better understanding of Islam, even if the motivation of the project, as made clear in this brief treatise by Peter, was anti-Islamic and polemical, in the sense of trying to provide Christians a better understanding of Islam's teachings in order to understand how evil they were and come up with ways to refute them. For Peter, the Catholic Church had unfortunately put little serious effort into refuting Islam, and fanciful misconceptions about Islam's origins and identity abounded in the absence of reading and study. This desire to correct the abundance of outlandishly false information, even if done in the context of polemic against Islam, is commendable.
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