Portraying one group as Christ-killers conjured up the image of the other group
Evidence
The existence of Jewish cynocephalie in texts has been described by Kathleen Corrigan: “In the illustrations of both Psalm 21 and Psalm 68:22 the artists have taken great care to emphasize the wickedness of the Jews. The Jews are caricatured, labeled as dogs, and depicted as dog-headed men.” This image of Jewish cynocephalie as Christ-killers reinforces a common medieval trope about both Jews and Muslims as the executioners of Christ, because the existence of one, as I have argued earlier, conjured up the appearance of the other. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 220
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Directly evidences the reader’s core thesis that the Muslim monster was manufactured by association—the two scapegoats were mutually reinforcing constructions in the medieval Christian imagination.
- SEED: An essay angle: how the Crucifixion narrative forced the two ‘Christ-killer’ groups into a shared imaginary, each monster borrowing legitimacy from the other.
Related
- Depicting Jews as dog-men reinforced the parallel trope of Muslims as Christ-killers (similarity 0.93)
- Medieval Christians conflated Jews and Muslims into shared monster figures (similarity 0.88)
- Christian art fused Jews and Muslims into one eternal-enemy figure. (similarity 0.85)
- Medieval anti-Jewish monster imagery supplied the template for the Muslim monster (similarity 0.84)
- Muslims were placed in the same Christ-killer schema as Jews (similarity 0.84)
- Medieval Christians co-identified Jews and Muslims as one hybrid enemy (similarity 0.84)
- Theology branded Muslims as tainted collaborators with Jews against Christendom (similarity 0.83)
- Anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim images fused into one stock enemy (similarity 0.83)
- Classical Plinian monster categories were recycled onto medieval Saracens and Jews (similarity 0.83)
- Bestiaries cast both Jews and Muslims as dogs and dog-headed men (similarity 0.82)
- Medieval theology framed Jews and Muslims as heretical collaborators in anti-Christian violence. (similarity 0.82)
- Christians fashioned Jewish and Muslim monsters to define their own community (similarity 0.82)
- Jews and Muslims were interchangeable demonic figures in the medieval Christian imagination. (similarity 0.82)
- Medieval bestiaries transferred Jewish animal-symbols onto Muslims as dog-headed monsters (similarity 0.82)
- Jews and Muslims alike were cast as perpetual Christ-killers (similarity 0.82)