Jews served as the accessible template for identifying enemies of Christian society.

Evidence

Even before the First Crusade and the anti-Jewish violence that accompanied it, portents of change loomed on the horizon. Apocalyptic generated by the turn of the millennium, the rhetoric of papal reform, and the Investiture Controversy generated a polarized view of society, allowing the proponents of reform more readily to identifY the allies and foes of the ideal Christian respublica. As the only religious minority officially present in Christendom, 114 the Jews provided the most accessible examples of who or what such enemies might be like; from the first decade of the eleventh century, popular violence struck at Europe’s Jews in conjunction with other dissidents. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 204

Categorization

• CANDY: The striking point that Jews, as the only officially present religious minority, were the readily available target for what enemies look like — useful in casual conversation about how scapegoating works.
• XREF: connects to: Christian anti-Semitism is rooted in hostility toward Jews as those who know better — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 136