Medieval anti-infidel rhetoric coexisted with distinct legal treatment and coercion of each group

Evidence

This phenomenon of lumping together the enemies of the Catholic faith should not be exaggerated. It was one thing to be forced to listen to a Dominican sermon in one’s Barcelona mosque or synagogue, something else entirely to be massacred as a Cathar by the Albigensian crusaders. The same authors who associated Jews, Muslims, and heretics as the devil’s minions could distinguish their different social and legal statuses. There is a fundamental distinction between violence aimed at the eradication of a deviant group (the Cathar heretics) and coercion aimed at enforcing and maintaining the inferior social status of accepted groups (such as Jews and Muslims). — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1364

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates any vault claim that medieval polemic equals a single undifferentiated proto-genocide against all non-Christians; connects to how genocidal vs. subordinating violence should be separated analytically.
• DEEPTHINKING: Distinguishes eradication violence from status-coercion (pogrom vs. apartheid) — a framework that maps the very different modern operating modes of Islamophobia.