Travellers, Intellectuals, and the World Beyond Medieval Europe

James Muldoon is Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University, and Invited Research Scholar at The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, USA

• 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 Valadés, 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 Münkler; Index.

'Editor James Muldoon, who is also co-editor for the series, has woven a tapestry of essays that offer substantial insight into the perception of non-Europeans not only in medieval Europe but also in the academic discourse from the past half-century... The articles are well chosen and illustrate a cross-section of scholarship on intellectual curiosity over the past sixty years.' Terrae Incognitae