The Deadly Other: Dehumanization and Alienation in the First Crusade

Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor. Many who lived during the Medieval period, at least those with education enough to speak Latin, would be inclined to agree with this proverb. "Fear first made the gods in the world." In a world of plague, hunger, and bloodshed, it would be easy to imagine that fear held a position strikingly similar to God. It too could overpower you, take over your life, and appear completely omnipresent. Fear, of the sword, of starvation, of Hell, was the common thread that ran through the lives of prince and peasant alike.

Perhaps, then, it comes as no surprise that the call to arms, issued at Clermont in 1095 by Pope Urban II, was not launched against an enemy that could be seen walking the streets of Paris, London, or Rome. Instead, the faceless terror crouched on the doorstep was chosen as the target. It is an old tactic, but one which has worked since the dawn of time. And so, thousands of soldiers under the banner of the Cross marched on a land 3000 kilometers away. Princes left their kingdoms, peasants left their fields. Men went to bleed their pockets and bodies dry on foreign soil to combat an enemy they had, in all likelihood, never seen. By tapping into humanity's natural fear of the "Other", the Papacy was able to turn aside conflict from inter-European war and focus it on the encroaching Islamic factions. The Papacy's primary tools were the dehumanization of the enemy through tales of barbarism and religious zealotry.

To be perfectly clear, there was no real slight which caused the Crusade, no proverbial straw to break the camel's back. The Holy Land had been in Muslim hands for the better part of five centuries, so the wound of Christian holy sites in the hands of unbelievers was hardly a fresh one. So to were pilgrimages allowed with little difficulty, permitting Christian pilgrims to venture into Jerusalem for religious reasons. In truth, while there may have been little love lost between the two religious neighbors, it was hardly beyond the proportion of violence seen by neighboring Christian kingdoms (Asbridge 17).