ABSTRACT
One theme in the discussion of foreignness and the Other in this collection and elsewhere is how the construction of the Other was often an exercise of selfdefinition through juxtaposition. Although this can be a fruitful approach, we should note that on occasion the paradigm can be usefully subverted; namely, rather than seeing medieval attitudes towards the Other solely as an insight into an author’s or group’s self-understanding, they can serve to help us understand authors about whom we otherwise know little. In this sense, how one views the Other can be as useful at identifying characteristics as the particularities of an author’s Latin or use of sources. In this article, I intend to explore how the attitudes of Petrus Monachus, a mysterious translator in pre-Carolingian Francia, towards the Islamic Other can help to fill in a picture hitherto only hinted at in other research: that Petrus Monachus was, ironically, an outsider or Other himself, and perhaps linked to the enigmatic author of the Cosmographia of Aethicus Ister.1
