Dread, terror, fright and panic: Fear in the late-medieval Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

Fear always works, and in any confrontation, fear of the enemy is the best weapon. In whatever sense we use it, it is a reaction that defines a situation of danger or risk, whether one feels it or imposes it. It is the apprehension of losing something, be it a physical possession or an affection, such as a friendship, a position or of dying “before my time.” Causing or suffering fear, a gradient that we differentiate from panic or terror, can become a more-or-less permanent state of mind and can generate a system of life, or at least of living it one way or another. If Caligula claimed that, as a system of socio-political control, he did not care about the hatred of his people but that he did want them to fear him (Oderint dum metuant), then he did not invent anything in the field of certain historical contexts. We must also think that the extraordinary is unpredictable and it is, at the same time, a factor that generates fears, both because of what is known and what is ignored. So, we must assume that these fears are specific terrors, although ones that underlie the cultural background that describes the reasons why we should fear this threat. We can also associate the ordinary with the phenomenon of everyday fear, where a wide range of warnings, notices and intimidations end up outlining and defining a culture and a civilisation very well.