Beheading the Son: Muhammad and Bertran de Born in Inferno 28
In recent years, partly because of the current political resonance of the relationship between Islam and the West, significant attention has been paid to the disturbing portrait of the prophet Muhammad in Inferno 28 and, more broadly, to the issue of Dante and Islam. In this essay I analyze Dante’s depiction of Muhammad in relation to its theological framework, arguing that the Muslims’ rejection of the dogma of the Trinity, which constitutes the central source of doctrinal dissension between Islam and Christianity, allows us to establish a link between Muhammad and Bertran de Born, the other main character in the gallery of sowers of discord presented in Inferno 28. As both sinners severed the tie between father and son, the former breached the principle upon which the unity of the Church is founded, whereas the latter violated the norm that undergirds the dynastic legitimacy of a kingdom. In contrast with Bertran’s and Muhammad’s language of division, Dante conceives his work as a vessel for peace and reconciliation between secular and spiritual authorities.
Crusade and Conversion: Islam as Schism in Pius II and Nicholas of Cusa
In the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Western European authors primarily described the Turkish enemy as a barbaric force. Within this established, albeit by no means unanimous, storyline it is possible to make out a wide array of nuances that distinguish the positions adopted by prominent humanists such as Pius II and Nicholas of Cusa. As this essay will examine the theological elements of their critiques of Islam in the Epistle to Mahomet II and the Cribatio Alkorani, I will argue that the arguments put forth in these critiques were primarily anchored to the same principles and myths formulated during the Middle Ages. Pius II and Cusa weave together different threads of doctrinal disagreement to engage in a polemical dialogue between Christianity and Islam that casts Mohammed as a schismatic and his Turkish followers as the arch enemies of the Christian faith.
Hobbes and the Reception of Leviathan
Although there has been much discussion of the reception of Hobbes’s work, Hobbes’s response to his own reception has rarely received much consideration. This article looks at Hobbes’s engagements with his critics. Far from being rearguard actions by a philosopher under siege, or disingenuous attempts to curry favour with those in power, they can be read as moments when Hobbes in fact sought to convert what he saw as the “truth of speculation into the utility of practice.”