While the masses of believers influenced Christianity, in particular pilgrimage and the relics associated with it, the institutions of organized religion also shaped beliefs and attitudes in numerous ways. The ways in which Church doctrine impacted individual attitudes toward Islam is a broad subject not fully addressed here, outside the Christian polemics examined in this chapter. Notions of geography, race, and the constitution of community also influenced the ways Christians thought about foreigners and internal enemies like Jews and heretics. The Church had a paramount role in establishing and disseminating these beliefs, thus shaping the minds of believers. Dogma informed imagery, including the artistry of monsters. Talal Asad describes this process as disciplinary: "Note that here it is not mere symbols that implant true Christian dispositions, but power—ranging all the way from laws (imperial and ecclesiastical) and other sanctions (hellfire, death, salvation, good repute, peace) to the disciplinary practices of social institutions (family, school, city, church) and of human bodies (fasting, prayer, obedience, penance)."

XREF: Connects to Talal Asad's concept of disciplinary power in religion, a key theoretical frame for medieval studies.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 82