Imaginary Enemy: Non-Believers in Medieval Iconography

Coats of arms and flags featuring scorpions, exotic turbans and caps, hooked noses, red hair, crimson, black or even blue faces, unnaturally twisted poses, indecent gestures, and maliciously aggressive grimaces. The art of medieval Western Europe employed a multitude of signs that marked and denounced non-believers (Jews, Muslims, and pagans), heretics, other sinners, and the outcasts. All of them were associated with the „father of lies“ — the devil, as well as with each other, as if they were part of a global conspiracy against the Christian society. Roman pagans were sometimes depicted in Jewish caps and with pseudo-Jewish inscriptions on their clothing, Jews — in Muslim turbans, while Muslims were accused of idol worship and invoking ancient Roman gods. In his new book, medievalist Mikhail Maizuls shows how from the 12th to the 16th century the image of the enemy was constructed, how the mechanisms of stigmatization worked in the sphere of images and on the streets of cities, and how techniques that emerged in the Middle Ages transitioned into pamphlets, posters, and caricatures of the Modern Age.