Medieval anxiety about bodily dismemberment shaped how Muslim monsters were imagined as cannibals.

Evidence

Christian attitudes toward the body changed with the Renaissance, due in part to a renewed interest in medicine and the sciences. During earlier centuries, there was a fear of bodily mutilation and dismemberment, an anxiety that contributed to the resurrection narrative expressed in the cannibalism mythologies that dominated medieval narratives featuring Muslim monsters. … These miracles served as proof that the miracle of Christ was evident in the mutilated bodies of his most devoted followers. … Stories of mutilation and death at the hands of a religious enemy allowed the Church to suggest that the existence of miracles was inherent in the only true religion. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 256

Categorization

• QUESTION: This grounds the cannibal-Muslim myth in a deep Christian anxiety about their own bodily fate — worth chasing whether the projection is the Church displacing its own dismemberment fears onto the enemy.
• XREF: Directly the reader’s ‘what does the monster let its makers avoid seeing about themselves’ question — the cannibal myth is a projection of the Church’s own resurrection-focused bodily terror.