Conclusion

There was no single form, single cause or single rationale for Christian violence against Jews, heretics and Muslims. Instead, there is a dizzying variety of actors, motives and methods.

Finally, we might emphasise that this violence, and its built foundations, was Christian. That is, its genuine links to the rise of the state, the rise of the church as a state, and institutional power do not exclude the many ways in which Christians excavated past and present church history and belief in order to describe and justify it. We cannot simply say that European Jews, heretics and Muslims were a convenient ‘scapegoat’ for blame because of their existence as Christianity’s ‘others’. While violence and law in many ways excluded these groups, violence was also an assertion that Jews, heretics and Muslims lived within the Christian God’s domains. Psychology has been an attractive explanation for this violence: Gavin Langmuir credited it to doubt, while Ora Limor cites ‘anxiety’.^[960] Yet this can occlude both how medieval Christian violence was coloured by scripture and theology, and how religion generally is compatible with violence. Latin Christians were hegemonic in western Europe and able to exercise violence against their most vulnerable subjects. Yet they were not historically unique in mediating (or putatively protecting) faith through violence, using it to assert their religious rightness, or wielding it as a tool of piety in honouring a God himself violent against his enemies.