Comenius, the Conversion of the Turks, and the Muslim-Christian Debate on the Corruption of Scripture

Bibliographic Data

ID21197106
AuthorsNoel Malcolm (1All Souls College, UK-Oxford, OX1 4AL;, Email: [email protected], corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume87
Issue4
Pages477-508
Publication date2007-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueChurch History and Religious Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1871-241X • E-ISSN: 1871-2428
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/187124107x258400
OpenAlexW2066870819
LanguageEN
Citations received6

In 1666 Comenius wrote a dedicatory epistle, addressed to the Ottoman Sultan, which he intended to be printed with a translation of the Bible into Turkish: in it, he expressed an unusually conciliatory attitude towards Islam, while also defending the Christian Bible against the Muslim accusation that it was a corrupted text. This article prints the text of the epistle and discusses the background to it. Comenius's attitude towards Islam is examined, across the range of his other writings. His belief that the Turks could and would be converted to Christianity is also connected with the apocalyptic anti-Habsburg prophecies of Mikuláš Drabík, which Comenius promoted. And his defence against the charge of textual corruption is located in a tradition of argument which can be traced back, via the Calvinist Johannes Hoornbeeck, to the response made by a Roman Catholic, Filippo Guadagnoli, to an anti-Christian text written by a Persian scholar in 1622

Art · Christianity · Church History · False accusation · Islam · Language change · Literature · Medieval history · Political science · Theology · Turkish · Classics · Historical and Cultural Studies of Poland · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Religious, Philosophical, and Educational Studies

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