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The Image of the Barbarian in Medieval Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

W. R. Jones
Affiliation:
University of New Hampshi

Extract

On various occasions civilized man has found himself marching side by side with men at lower (or different) levels of social and cultural development. The great civilizations were accustomed to compare themselves quite favorably with these barbarian neighbors, whom they viewed with varying degrees of condescension, suspicion, scorn, and dread. Civilized man, with his urban institutions, his agrarian way of life, his technological and economic sophistication, and his conspicuous literary and plastic artistry, conceived of himself as superior to these other folk with whom he sometimes competed for domination of the richer parts of the world. Long before the ancient Greeks invented the word ‘barbarian’ to describe the Scythians and other peoples who differed from them in not subscribing to the ideals of Greek culture, other civilized men had expressed similar sentiments toward alien peoples with whom they came into contact. This was the point that the old Akkadian author was trying to make when he spoke of neighboring tribes as people ‘who knew not grain’ and who ‘had never known a city’.* Subsequently, both in Asia and Europe the spokesmen of a civilized style of life expressed their dislike or distrust of the barbarian by means of a stereotyped image of him which was couched in terms favorable to civilization. A Chinese chronicler, for example, remarked of the fierce Hsiung-Nu, who troubled the peace of the Middle Kingdom, that ‘their only concern is self-advantage, and they know nothing of propriety and righteousness’.

Type
Perception of Ethnic and Cultural Differences
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1971

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62 MGH, Scriptores, IX, 425.

63 The Chronicle of Aethelweard, I, 3, ed. Campbell, A. (London, 1962), p. 7.Google Scholar For other examples, see I, 4; III, 4 (pp. 9, 31). For a later English example of the equation of barbarians and pagans, see William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificium Anglorum Libri Quinque, ed. N.E.S.A. Hamilton, Rolls Series [RS] (London, 1870), pp. 48, 215.Google Scholar

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73 Ibid., II, 5 (Vol. I, p. 228).

74 Ibid., III, 2; I, 12 (Vol. I, pp. 330, 60).

75 Ibid., II, 20 (Vol. I, p. 316).

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83 Helmoldi Presbyteri Bozoviensis Cronica Slavorum, I, 6, 8, 21, 22, 40, ed. Lappenberg, J. M. and Schmeidler, B., Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum (Hanover and Leipzig, 1909), pp. 1617, 19, 44, 45, 83.Google Scholar Translated by Tschan, F. J. for Columbia Records of Civilization (New York, 1935).Google Scholar Adam of Bremen is also accustomed to equate ‘barbarian’ and non-Christian and is likewise acutely aware of the frontier separating Christendom and barbarous regions. Cf. Adami Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, II, 25; IV, 8, 23, 29, ed. Pertz, G. H., Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum (Hanover, 1846), pp. 67, 185, 197–8, 203.Google Scholar Translated by Tschan, F. J. for Columbia Records of Civilization (New York, 1959).Google Scholar Both authors tend to view the ‘barbarian’ like pioneers encountering the Indians in the nineteenth century. Both were also aware of the classical contrast of Greek and barbarian, q.v. Helmold, , op. cit., I, 2 (p. 8)Google Scholar; Adam of Bremen, , op. cit., II, 19 (p. 61).Google Scholar

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97 Sixteenth-century maps reproduced in Skelton, R. A., Explorer's Maps (New York, 1958), figs. 45, 60, place Barbaria in North Africa. In the fifteenth century an English source said, ‘Wytlandia i s … inhabite with peple of barbre worschippenge ydoles’, New English Dictionary, s.v. ‘Barbary’.Google Scholar

98 There has been considerable doubt concerning the precise meaning of the word barbarus during the later Middle Ages in Europe. The contributor to Encyclopedia Italiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (36 Vols.; Rome, 19291939)Google Scholar, s.v. ‘Barbari’, gives a summary of changing uses in the later Middle Ages. Mattei, R. de, ‘Sul Concetto di Barbaro e Barbarie nel Medio Evo’, Studi di Storia e Diritto in Onore di Enrico Besta per il XL Anno de Suo Insegnamento, IV (Milan, 1939), 495–6Google Scholar, has argued that the classical antithesis of Latinitas and barbarus was kept during the whole of the Middle Ages. For a collection of citations showing the use of the word in the literature of the later Empire and the early Middle Ages, see Cange, Du, Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis (10 Vols.; Paris, 19371938), s.v. ‘Barbarus’.Google Scholar

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100 Ker, W. P., The Dark Ages (Edinburgh, 1958), p. 224.Google Scholar

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102 S. Anselmi Cantauriensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, ed. Schmitt, F. S. (5 Vols.; Edinburgh, 19461951), IV, 124Google Scholar (Ep. 222): ‘Deo autem gratias quia in te semper episcopalis auctoritas per sever at, et inter barbaros positus non tyrannorum violentia, non potentum gratia, non incensione ignis, non effusione manus a veritatis annuntiatione desistis’. Cited by Cantor, , op. tit., pp. 158–9.Google Scholar

103 See Mahdi, M., Ibn Khaldun's Philosophy of History (Chicago, 1964), pp. 193–204.Google Scholar

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106 Ibid., p. 151. For additional uncomplimentary judgments about the morals and customs of the Irish, see ibid., pp. 165, 168.

107 See Lovejoy, A. O. and Boas, G., A Documentary History of Primitivism and Related Ideas: Vol. I. Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (Baltimore, 1935), pp. 243 ff.Google Scholar

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114 Ostensibly factual reports were heavily colored by presupposition based on ancient myth and rumor. See the remarks of Olschki, L., Marco Polo's Precursors (Baltimore, 1943), p. 13.Google Scholar For a recent discussion of European knowledge of Mongol Asia, consult Olschki, L., Marco Polo's Asia (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1960).Google Scholar

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116 Ibid., p. 20.

117 This is the usage of Mandeville's Travels: Texts and Translations, trans. Letts, M., Hakluyt Society, Ser. II, Vols. 101–2 (2 Vols.; London, 1953), II, 380.Google Scholar

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121 Chronica Majora, VI, 77.Google Scholar

122 Ibid., IV, 386–9.

123 See Cary, G., The Medieval Alexander (Cambridge, 1956), p. 130Google Scholar; and Langlois, C.-V., La Connaissance de la Nature et du Monde au Moyen Age (Paris, 1911), p. 81, which quotes a French source to the effect that the peoples of Gog and Magog are such, ‘Qui char d'omme manjuent cruel Et bestes com gent mescreue’.Google Scholar

124 Gesta Friderici I Imperatoris, II, 13Google Scholar, ed. Waitz, G., Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum (Hanover, 1884), pp. 92–3.Google Scholar Translated by Mierow, C. C. for Columbia Records of Civilization (New York, 1953).Google Scholar

125 Ibid., I, 32 (p. 40).

126 Wallach, R., Das Abendlandische Gemeinschaftsbewusstsein im Mittelalter (Leipzig, 1928), pp. 36–7Google Scholar; for the concept of barbarism in the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, see Hay, D., ‘Italy and Barbarian Europe’, Italian Renaissance Studies: A Tribute to the Late Cecilia M. Ady, ed. Jacob, E. F. (London, 1960), pp. 4868.Google Scholar

127 In the fifth letter, published in Dantis Alagheri Epistolae: the Letters of Dante, ed. Toynbee, P. (Oxford, 1920), p. 52.Google Scholar

128 See the seventh letter, ibid., p. 110, wherein Dante said that God brought under Roman rule ‘barbaras nationes et cives’.

129 Quoted by Mattei, R. de, Studi… Enrico Besta, pp. 495–6Google Scholar, from Apologia contra cuiusdam Anonymi Galli Calumnias, Opera, ed. Petri, H. (Basel, 1554), p. 1180.Google Scholar See Mattei, R. de, Il Sentimento Politico del Petrarca (Florence, 1944), pp. 38 ff.Google Scholar

130 Mattei, R. de, Studi… Enrico Besta, p. 496.Google Scholar

131 Ibid.

132 Quoted in translation from MGH, Leges, IV/2,1372, by Hay, D., The Italian Renaissance in Its Historical Background (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 94–6.Google Scholar

133 Hay, , Italian Renaissance, pp. 138–9.Google Scholar

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135 Buckler, G., Anna Comnena (London, 1929), pp. 440–1Google Scholar, cited by Hay, , Italian Renaissance Studies, ed. Jacob, , p. 54, and nn. 3, 4.Google Scholar

136 Il Principe, XXVIGoogle Scholar, in Niccolò Machiavelli Opere, ed. Bonfantini, M. (Milan/Naples [1954]), pp. 83–6.Google Scholar

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141 Ibid., p. 64, citing Celtis, , Selections, trans. Forster, L. (Cambridge, 1948), p. 43.Google Scholar

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143Ibid.

144 Ibid., p. 101.

145 The best-known advocate of this view is McNeill, William, Rise of the West (Chicago, 1963)Google Scholar; but see also Hodgson, Marshall, ‘The Interrelations of Societies in History’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, V (19621963), 242 ff.Google Scholar

146 For a discussion of the differentiation of Chinese society from that of the nomadic barbarians, see Lattimore, O., Inner Asian Frontiers of China. American Geographical Society (New York, 1940), pp. 53 ff.Google Scholar

147 A Scottish source from the mid-sixteenth century observed: ‘Euere nation reputis vthers nations to be barbariens, quhen there tua natours and complexions ar contrar til vtheris’, New English Dictionary, s.v. ‘Barbarian’. In the fifteenth century the people of Hereford were said to be ‘ferocious and uncivilized’, Capes, W. W., The English Church in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (London, 1900), p. 204.Google Scholar

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149 The psychological and historical implications of the image of the ‘noble savage’ in Western civilization have been brilliantly described by Baudet, H., Paradise on Earth: Some Thoughts on European Images of Non-European Man, trans. Wentholt, E. (New Haven and London, 1965).Google Scholar

150 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. Bury, J. B. (3 Vols.; New York, 1946), II, 1224–5.Google Scholar