Race and Ethnicity, Part 1

What did medieval people think about different races? How did they distinguish one ethnic group from another? This question occurred to me when reading up on Regino of Prüm, who around 900CE wrote the following:

Nec non et illud sciendum, quod, sicut diversæ nationes populorum inter se discrepant genere moribus lingua legibus, ita sancta universalis æcclesia toto orbe terrarum diffusa, quamvis in unitate fidei coniungatur, tamen consuetudinibus æcclesiasticis ab invicem differt.

Nor should it be forgotten that, just as different nations of people differ from one another in race [genus], customs [mores], language [lingua], and laws [leges], so the holy universal church spread throughout the whole world, although united in the unity of faith, nevertheless differs from one another in ecclesiastical customs.

I became aware of the difference between citizen and denizen years ago while researching my first Chaucer novel (seen to your right). A citizen is, properly speaking, the inhabitant of his city; a denizen is a foreigner allowed to live in your city. There were, obviously, perceived differences in the locals versus those from elsewhere.

The Newberry Library in Chicago had a recent exhibition of historical art depicting race [link]. One of its points is that the Bible exposed the Middle Ages to ideas about race:

when many white Europeans lived alongside people of color. But even those who didn’t would have encountered many people of color in the Christian Bible, such as the Ethiopian wife of the patriarch Moses (Numbers 1: 21), the three "Wise Men” who brought gifts to the Christ Child (Matthew 2: 1-12), and the Ethiopian eunuch converted by the Apostle Philip (Acts 8: 26-40) [Figure 1]. Just like in real life, this diversity could cause tension, as acknowledged by the “black and beautiful” Bride in the Song of Songs, who recognizes that her skin sets her apart from other women in ancient Israel: “Do not think that I am dark because I have been burned by the sun, daughters of Jerusalem” (Song of Songs 1: 4-5). [link]

Thanks to the Bible, the European Middle Ages largely saw all of humanity from a common ancestor, Noah, and his three sons. The descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth accounted for (respectively) the distinct Semitic (Asiatic), Hamitic (African), and Japhetic (Indo-European) peoples. The Curse of Ham [link] was supposed to account for the black skin of Africans, and Genesis 9:20-27 was used to justify black slavery.

There were, however, thinkers who hypothesized factors other than genetics, and we'll talk about that tomorrow.