An investigation into how racial stereotypes were created and used in
the European Middle Ages.
Students in twelfth-century Paris held slanging matches, branding the
English drunkards, the Germans madmen and the French as arrogant. On
crusade, army recruits from different ethnic backgrounds taunted each
other's military skills. Men producing ethnography in monasteries and at
court drafted derogatory descriptions of peoples dwelling in territories
under colonisation, questioning their work ethic, social organisation,
religious devotion and humanness. Monks listed and ruminated on the
alleged traits of Jews, Saracens, Greeks, Saxons and Britons and their
acceptance or rejection of Christianity.
In this radical new approach to representations of nationhood in
medieval western Europe, the author argues that ethnic stereotypes were
constructed and wielded rhetorically to justify property claims, flaunt
military strength and assert moral and cultural ascendance over others.
The gendered images of ethnicity in circulation reflect a negotiation
over self-representations of discipline, rationality and strength,
juxtaposed with the alleged chaos and weakness of racialised others.
Interpreting nationhood through a religious lens, monks and schoolmen
explained it as scientifically informed by environmental medicine, an
ancient theory that held that location and climate influenced the
physical and mental traits of peoples. Drawing on lists of ethnic
character traits, school textbooks, medical treatises, proverbs, poetry
and chronicles, this book shows that ethnic stereotypes served as
rhetorical tools of power, crafting relationships within communities and
towards others.
