Coats of arms and flags depicting scorpions, exotic turbans and caps, hooked noses, red hair, purple-red, black or even blue faces, unnaturally twisted postures, obscene gestures and viciously aggressive grimaces. In the art of the medieval West, many signs were used that marked and denounced the Gentiles (Jews, Muslims and pagans), heretics, other sinners and outcasts. All of them were correlated 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. Pagan Romans were sometimes represented wearing Jewish hats and with pseudo-Jewish inscriptions on their clothes, Jews wearing Muslim turbans, and Muslims were accused of worshiping idols and calling on the ancient Roman gods. In a new book, medievalist Mikhail Maizuls shows how from the 12th to the 16th centuries. the image of the enemy was constructed, how the mechanisms of stigmatization worked in the space of images and on the streets of cities, and how the techniques that arose in the Middle Ages turned into pamphlets, posters and caricature of the New Age.
