ISLAM AND THE WEST DURING THE RENAISSANCE

During the Renaissance other Western people were trying to acquire a more objective understanding of the Islamic world. They were carrying on the tradition and aspirition of Peter the Venerable, which had been continued in the fitteenth century by scolars like John Segovia and Nicholas of Cusa. In 1453, just after the Turks had conquered the Christian empire of Byzantium and brought Islam to the threshold of Europe, John Segovia  pointed out that a new way of coping with the Islamic menace  had to found. It would never be defeated by war or convention missionary activity. He began work on a new translation of the Qu'ran, collaborating with a Muslim jurist from Salamanca. He also proposed the idea of an international conference, at which there could be an informed exchange of views between Muslims and Christians. John died in 1458, before either of his projects had been brought to fruition, but his fiend Nicholas Cusa had been enthusiastic about this new approach. In 1460 he had written the Cribratio Alchoran (The Sieve of the Qu'ran), which was not conducted on the usual polemical lines but attempted the systematic literary, historical and philological examination of the text that John of Segovia had considered essential. During the Renaissance, Arabic studies were instituted and this cosmopolitan and encyclopaedic appoach led some scholars to a more realistic assessment of the Muslim world and to an abandonment of cruder Crusading attitudes. But, as in the Middle Ages, the growing appreciation on the facts was not enough to neutralise the old images of hatred, which had such a powerful hold on the Western imagination.
Casalino Pierluigi