Medieval anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim polemics became increasingly linked

Evidence

Others have suggested a link between the growing association between the various enemies of Christendom (or of those who were perceived as such) and the increasing violence and repression exercised against them. Many historians of Judaism in northern Europe have seen the anti-Jewish violence of the first Crusade as a watershed between the early Middle Ages, when Jews were accepted in Christian society, and the later Middle Ages, when they were subject to increasing persecution. For Jeremy Cohen, it is the missionary efforts of the thirteenth-century mendicant friars that marks the rise of intolerance, leading to an intensification of violence against Jews and to a sharp decline in their legal and social status; for him the “Muslim connection,” the increasing link between the anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish polemics of mendicants and others, may be in part responsible for this change. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1368

Categorization

• XREF: This ‘Muslim connection’ thesis that converging anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish polemics drove rising persecution directly undergirds the vault claims linking modern anti-Muslim tropes to Christian theological genealogy (Anidjar/Aziz).
• QUESTION: Cohen’s ‘Muslim connection’ idea — that polemic convergence escalated violence and legal decline — is flagged only as a hypothesis by Tolan; worth chasing whether the causal claim holds.