Through Force or Faith? — Page 82
?— A Reply to Pope Benedict XVI 82 himself at a later date and is known as ‘Twenty-Six Dialogues with a Persian’. Professor Wilhelm Baum writes about it, Apart from the emperor’s writings there is no independent proof that the conversations ever took place. They must represent a mixture of fact and fiction…The emperor relied for his sources on the Apology of Christianity against Islam by his maternal grandfather, John VI Cantacuzenus. That in turn rested on the “Confutatio Alchorani” by the Dominican friar Ricoldo of Montecroce (died 1320), which Demetrius Kydones had translated into Greek. Grandfather and grandson thus remained entirely within the framework of traditional Byzantine anti-Islamic polemics. (Wilhelm Baum, An Online Encyclopedia of Roman Emperors, Manuel II Palaiologos www. roman-em- perors. org) In the backdrop of these events, it becomes easy to understand that why an emperor of a declining kingdom who is suffering defeats upon defeats at the hands of the Muslims adopts an extremely parochial and hostile attitude when he talks to a Muslim about Islam. The Pope has presented Manuel as an erudite but the truth about Manuel’s scholarship becomes evident by reading his dia- logue with the Persian scholar. In particular, his knowledge about Islam was very limited; it might be described as based on hearsay. Besides, Orientalism was not yet established as a formal discipline which, today, is the basis of knowledge about Islam in the West. One interesting aspect is that, in presenting this excerpt, the Pope