Tarrant, Neil; (2023) Claire Weeda: Ethnicity in Medieval Europe, 950–1250: Medicine, Power and Religion. York: York Medieval Press, 2021; pp. 346. [Review]. Journal of Religious History , 47 (1) pp. 145-147. 10.1111/1467-9809.12929.

Text Tarrant - Review of Claire Weeda Ethnicity in Medieval Europe 950 1250.pdf - Published Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 27 January 2025. Download (89kB)

Abstract

Claire Weeda's work examines how ethnotypes were imagined and rhetorically constructed in Europe in the period 950–1250. It offers a detailed and richly illustrated account of how contemporaries thought about and articulated their conceptions of ethnic communities, nationes, in a period prior to the emergence of modern nation states. It demonstrates how clerics and courtiers drew upon biblical interpretation, classical tropes, ethnic stereotypes and humoral environmental theory to define their own ethnic group and position it relative to others. This occurred in two distinct ways. The construction and dissemination of these new identities enabled medieval Europeans to identify themselves as an ethnic grouping, for example, English or French, and distinguish their community as a body politic distinct from the wider Christian imperium. It also allowed medieval Europeans to differentiate themselves from other ethnic groups, whether non-Christians such as Jews or Muslims, or Christian communities such as the Irish and Welsh that they perceived to be less developed than themselves. As Weeda shows ruling elites harnessed these stereotypes to support claims of social, political, and governmental authority within their own polities but also in some instances to justify the domination of other ethnotypes and the appropriation of their territory. In this sense, Weeda contends, the power relations embedded within the construction of ideas of ethnicity in medieval Europe involved “triangular” positioning between Christian imperium, individual bodies politic and those considered an inferior “other”.

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