Medieval European identity was constituted through the conscious rejection of the enemy other.

Evidence

Stating the obvious, one could say that, in the Middle Ages, between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, “the enemy” was fully constitutive of political and theological discourse. 104 The dynamics of medieval confrontations imply “the conscious rejection of values and claims of the other,” as Amos Funkenstein explains, something that “remained a constitutive element in the ongoing construction of the respective identity” of all parties involved. … Nor is it merely the case that the enemy increasingly appeared as a privileged target of what R.I. Moore has called “the persecuting society,” a society in which “persecution became habitual. That is to say not simply that individuals were subject to violence, but that deliberate and socially sanctioned violence began to be directed, through established governmental, judicial and social institutions, against groups of people defined by general characteristics such as race, religion or way of life.” — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 201

Categorization

• DEFINE: R.I. Moore’s ‘persecuting society’ concept gets a precise definition: habitual, institutionalized violence against groups defined by general characteristics rather than individuals.
• XREF: Moore’s ‘persecuting society’ connects to Milgrom’s work on institutions — both address how social institutions routinize collective behavior, one toward trade discipline, the other toward sanctioned violence.