The Framework of Prejudice

Medieval Relics & the Crusader Gaze

In the medieval world, difference was first sanctified through faith. The Crusades built the earliest scaffolding of racial thought: Christendom imagined itself pure against the infidel. Africans, distant and unnamed, entered this hierarchy as spiritual others — dark skin mistaken for distance from God. Thus, the sacred relic and the Black body both became mirrors of salvation and exclusion.