Ethnicity in Medieval Europe, 950-1250: Medicine, Power and Religion (Health and Healing in the Middle Ages)

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 o