Encounters and misunderstandings between Islam and Christianity: from the crusader knight to the poor Franciscan knight

Abstract

When we speak of Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages, we are reminded of the history of the clash, whose iconic moment was the period of the Crusades and their knights. The figure of the knight is essential to the medieval world, both in its reality and in its imaginary. The arrival of the Islamic world further nourishes this figure, as well as the need to make a pilgrimage to save the Holy Land. The knight is endowed with an external mission of confrontation, a quest for truth that will lead to confrontation to a disagreement with the Islamic world, which is also based on confrontation and warrior-heroes. We propose an alternative born of the encounter between Francis of Assisi and the Franciscans. New knights who present a mission of meeting, not of loss of identity, but of the mission. To this end, we will analyse the crusader knight as a natural religious reality, the knight, the poor Franciscan knight as a supernatural alternative. Finally, we will reflect on the experience of Francis of Assisi himself in the land of the Saracens.