"the [twentieth-century] narrative concerning the medieval [Christian] reaction to [Hindu-Arabic numerals] and the number zero" constitutes "a bizarre funhouse mirror image of the Middle Ages"

Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 3 (1905), 155–195

"the way the introduction of the number zero as well as the whole system of Hindu-Arabic numerals into medieval Europe has been represented in modern scholarship and popular media" constitutes "a bizarre funhouse mirror image of the Middle Ages", "a rather depressing case study of the way careless scholarship and failure to check one’s sources can allow false narratives and made-up ‘facts’ to proliferate in the modern world."

     From a pre-pub version of C. Philipp Nothaft, "Medieval Europe’s satanic ciphers: on the genesis of a modern myth," British journal for the history of mathematics 35, no. 2 (2020): 107–136.