Contributor(s): Professor David Levering Lewis | Professor Lewis will argue that the 732CE Battle of Poitiers and the 778CE debacle at Roncevaux are pivotal moments in the creation of an economically retarded, balkanised, and fratricidal Europe, which, by defining itself in opposition to Islam in al-Andalus, made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, persecutory religious intolerance, cultural particularism, and perpetual war.