Medieval Christians defined humanity by proximity to their own identity markers.

Evidence

Ideas about geography, race, morphology, and morality determined the monsters of the age, in part by limiting the human universe to a small territory such as the environs of Jerusalem, Rome, or another municipality, and in part by formulating a vision of identity that might be determined by anything from a hairstyle to skin color, as well as by viewing Christianity as determinative of normative humanity, while everything else existed as strange, foreign, and monstrous. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 29

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the epistemic mechanism by which Christianity became the normative measure of humanity and everything else monstrosity.