This Article Abstract Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Hoppenbrouwers, P. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Such Stuff as Peoples are Made on

Ethnogenesis and the Construction of Nationhood in Medieval Europe

Department of Medieval History, University of Amsterdam. E-mail: p.c.m.hoppenbrouwers{at}uva.nl

Peoples, or ethnic communities, ‘have been present in every period and continent’, says the cover of a recent volume on ethnicity.¹ If true, we should also be aware that ‘peoples’ in the recorded past are social entities which are always to a large extent constructed and constantly changing during continuous processes of state formation. This article aims at summarising the building blocks and leitmotifs, derived from Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian tradition, that medieval authors, in particular the clerical writers of histories, used in their construction of peoples in a time when political communities developed state-like features which required some measure of national identification. Understandably, the development of national identities in medieval Europe proved to be a complex interplay, in which the imagining of ‘Self’ was inextricably bound up with the judgement of ‘Other’ within the boundaries of that period's mental outlook.

References

• Akbari, Suzanne Conklin. 2002. ‘From Due East to True North: Orientalism and Orientation’, in Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (ed.), The Postcolonial Middle Ages, New York and Basingstoke : 19–34.
• Albu, Emily. 2001. The Normans in Their Histories: Propaganda, Myth and Subversion, Woodbridge .
• Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London .
• Anton, Hans-Hubert. 2000. ‘ Troja-Herkunft, Origo gentis und frühe Verfasstheit der Franken in der gallisch-fränkischen Tradition des 5. bis 8. Jahrhunderts ’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Oesterreichische Geschichtsforschung, vol. 108: 1–30 .
• Balard, Michel and Alain Ducellier (eds). 2002. Migrations et diasporas méditerranéennes (Xe-XVIe siècles), Paris .
• Baloup, D., S. Boisellier and C. Denjean (eds). 2003. La Péninsule Ibérique au Moyen Âge, Rennes .
• Barford, P.M. 2001. The Early Slavs. Culture and Society in Early Medieval Eastern Europe, London .
• Beaune, Colette, 1985. ‘L'utilisation politique du mythe des origines Troyennes en France à la fin du Moyen Âge’, in Lectures médiévales de Virgile (Actes du Colloque organisé par l'École FranÇaise de Rome, 25–28 October 1982), Rome : 331–55.
• Berend, Nora. 2001a. At the Gate of Christendom. Jews, Muslims and ‘Pagans’ in Medieval Hungary, c.1000–c.1300, Cambridge .
• Berend, Nora. 2001b. ‘How Many Medieval Europes? The "Pagans" of Hungary and Regional Diversity in Christendom’, in Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (eds), The Medieval World, London and New York : 77–92.
• Biddick, Kathleen. 1998. ‘The ABC of Ptolemy: Mapping the World with the Alphabet’, in Sylvia Tomasch and Sealy Gilles (eds), Text and Territory: Geographical Imagination in the European Middle Ages, Philadelphia : 268–93.
• Blaicher, Günther. 1977. ‘ Zur Entstehung und Verbreitung nationaler Stereotypen in und über England ’, Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, vol. 51: 549–74 .
• Boissellier, Stéphane. 2000. ‘L'étranger, l'intégration et le quotidien au Portugal’, in L'étranger, au Moyen Âge [XXXe Congrès de la S.H.M.E.S. (Göttingen, juin 1999)], Paris : 179–90.
• Boje Mortensen, L. 1987. ‘ Saxo Grammaticus’ View of the Origin of the Danes and his Historiographical Models ’, Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen Âge Grec et Latin, vol. 55: 169–83 .
• Bomba, Andreas. 1987. Chansons de geste und französisches Nationalbewusstsein im Mittelalter. Sprachliche Analysen der Epen des Wilhelmszyklus, Stuttgart .
• Bonfil, Robert. 1994. ‘Aliens Within: the Jews and Antijudaism’, in Thomas A. Brady Jr., Heiko A. Oberman and James D. Tracy (eds), Handbook of European History 1400–1600. Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, Leiden : 263–302.
• Borst, Arno. 1957–1963. Der Turmbau von Babel. Geschichte der Meinungen über Ursprung und Vielfalt der Sprachen und Völker. 3 vols. Stuttgart (Photographic reprint in 6 vols: Munich, 1995).
• Bührer-Thierry, Geneviève. 2000. ‘Étrangers par la foi, étrangers par la langue: les missionaires du monde germanique à la rencontre des peuples païens’, in Stéphane Boissellier, L'étranger au Moyen Âge [XXXe Congrès de la S.H.M.E.S. (Göttingen, juin 1999)], Paris : 259–70.
• Campbell, Mary B. 1988. The Witness and the Other World. Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600, Ithaca and London .
• Carozzi, Claude. 1996. ‘Des Daces aux Normands. Le mythe et l'identification d'un peuple chez Dudon de Saint-Quentin’, in C. Carozzi and H. Taviani-Carozzi (eds), Peuples du Moyen Âge. Problèmes d'identification (Séminaire Sociétés, Idéologies et Croyances au Moyen Âge), Aix-en-Provence : 7–25.
• Christie, Neil. 1995. The Lombards, Oxford .
• Classen, Albrecht. 2002. ‘Introduction. The Self, the Other, and Everything in Between: Xenological Phenomenology of the Middle Ages’, in Albrecht Classen (ed.), Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages, New York and London : xi–lxxiii.
• Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. 2000. ‘Hybrids, Monsters, Borderlands: The Bodies of Gerald of Wales’, in J.J. Cohen (ed.), The Postcolonial Middle Ages, New York/Basingstoke : 85–104.
• Cordery, Leona F. 2002. ‘Cannibal Diplomacy: Otherness in the Middle English Text Richard Coer de Lion’, in Albrecht Classen, Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages, New York and London : 153–71.
• Cowan, Edward J. 1998. ‘Identity, Freedom and the Declaration of Arbroath’, in Dauvit Broun, R.J. Finlay and Michael Lynch (eds), Image and Identity. The Making and Re-Making of Scotland through the Ages, Edinburgh : 38–68.
• Cutler, Allan Harris, and Helen Elmquist Cutler. 1986. The Jew as Ally of the Muslim: Medieval Roots of Anti-Semitism, Notre Dame, Indiana .
• Depreux, Philippe. 2000. ‘Princes, Princesses et nobles étrangers à la cour des rois Mérovingiens et Carolingiens: alliés, hôtes ou otages?’, in Stéphane Boissellier, L'Étranger au Moyen Âge [XXXe Congrès de la S.H.M.E.S. (Göttingen, juin 1999)], Paris : 133–54.
• Devisse, Jean. 1979. The Image of the Black in Western Art. 2 Vols, Cambridge, Massachusetts .
• Edington, Carol. 1998. ‘Paragons and Patriots: National Identity and the Chivalric Ideal in Late-Medieval Scotland’, in Dauvit Broun, R.J. Finlay and Michael Lynch, Image and Identity: The Making and Re-making of Scotland through the Ages, Edinburgh : 69–81.
• Esch, Arnold. 1991. ‘ Anschauung und Begriff. Die Bewältigung fremder Wirklichkeit durch den Vergleich in Reiseberichten des späten Mittelalters ’, Historische Zeitschrift, vol. 253: 281–312 .
• Ewig, Eugen. 1998. ‘Troiamythos und fränkische Frühgeschichte’, in Dieter Geuenich (ed.), Die Franken und die Alemannen bis zur ‘Schlacht bei Zülpich’ (496/97), Berlin and New York : 1–30 (Reallexicon für Germanische Altertumskunde, Ergänzungsband; 19).
• Forhan, Kate Langdon. 1996. ‘Respect, Interdependence, Virtue: A Medieval Theory of Toleration in the Works of Christine de Pizan’, in Cary J. Nederman and John Christian Laursen (eds), Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Lanham : 67–82.
• Friedman, John Block. 1981. The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, Cambridge, (Mass) and London .
• Galloway, Andrew. 2004. ‘Latin England’, in Kathy Lavezzo (ed.), Imagining a Medieval English Nation, Minneapolis and London : 41–95.
• Garber, Jörn. 1989. ‘Trojaner-Römer-Franken-Deutsche. "Nationale" Abstammungstheorien im Vorfeld der Nationalstaatsbildung’, in Klaus Garber (ed.), Nation und Literatur im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit, Tübingen : 108–63.
• Garrison, Mary. 2000. ‘The Franks as the New Israel? Education for an Identity from Pippin to Charlemagne’, in Yitzhak Hen and Matthew Innes (eds), The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, Cambridge : 114–61.
• Gaullier-Bougassas, Catherine. 2003. La tentation de l'Orient dans le roman médiéval: sur l'imaginaire de l'Autre, Paris .
• Geary, Patrick. 2002. The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe, Princeton and Oxford .
• Goffart, Walter. 1983. ‘ The Supposedly "Frankish" Table of Nations: An Edition and Study ’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, vol. 17: 98–130 .
• Goffart, Walter. 2005. ‘ Jordanes's Getica and the Disputed Authenticity of Gothic Origins from Scandinavia ’, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, vol. 80: 379–98 .
• González-Salinero, Raúl. 1999. ‘Catholic Anti-Judaism in Visigothic Spain’, in Alberto Ferreiro (ed.), The Visigoths: Studies in Culture and Society, Leiden : 123–50.
• Grafton, Anthony (with April Shelford and Nancy Siraisi). 1991. New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery, Cambridge (Mass) and London .
• Graus, Frantiek. 1966. ‘ Die Bildung eines Nationalbewusstseins im mittelalterlichen Böhmen (Die vorhussitische Zeit) ’, Historica. Historical Sciences in Czechoslovakia, vol. 13: 5–49 .
• Graus, Frantiek. 1975. Lebendige Vergangenheit. Überlieferung im Mittelalter und in den Vorstellungen vom Mittelalter, Cologne .
• Graus, Frantiek. 1989. ‘Troja und die trojanische Herkunftssage im Mittelalter’, in Willi Erzgräber (ed.), Kontinuität und Transformation der Antike im Mittelalter, Sigmaringen : 25–43.
• Hahn, Thomas. 2001. ‘ The Difference the Middle Ages Makes: Color and Race before the Modern World ’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 31: 3–37 .
• Hallam, Elizabeth M. 1982. ‘Philip the Fair and the Cult of Saint Louis’, in Stuart Mews (ed.), Religion and National Identity. Papers Read at the 19th Summer Meeting and the 20th Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, Oxford : 201–14.
• Harvey, Margaret. 1982. ‘ Ecclesia Anglicana, cui ecclesiastes noster Christus vos prefecit: the Power of the Crown in the English Church during the Great Schism ’, in Stuart Mews, Religion and National Identity. Papers read at the 19th Summer Meeting and the 20th Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, Oxford: 229–41 .
• Hastings, Adrian. 1997. The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism, Cambridge .
• Havens, Jill C. 2004. ‘"As Englishe is comoun langage to our puple": The Lollards and their Imagined "English" Community’, in Kathy Lavezzo (ed.), Imagining a Medieval Nation, Minneapolis and London : 96–128.
• Heinzelmann, Martin. 1994. Gregor von Tours (538–594): "Zehn Bücher Geschichte": Historiographie und Gesellschaftskonzept im 6. Jahrhundert, Darmstadt .
• Heng, Geraldine. 2000. ‘The Romance of England: Richard Coer de Lyon, Saracens, Jews, and the Politics of Race and Nation’, in Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (ed.), The Postcolonial Middle Ages, New York and Basingstoke : 135–71.
• Heng, Geraldine. 2003. Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy, New York .
• Hoppenbrouwers, Peter. 2002. De standaardfactor. Over het gevoel Engels te zijn in de twaalfde eeuw, Amsterdam .
• Hutchinson, John and Anthony D. Smith. 1996. Ethnicity, Oxford and New York (Oxford Readers).
• Innes, Matthew. 2000. ‘Teutons or Trojans? The Carolingians and the Germanic Past’, in Yitzhak Hen and Matthew Innes, The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, Cambridge : 227–49.
• Jackson, Peter. 2001. ‘Christians, Barbarians and Monsters: The European Discovery of the World beyond Islam’, in Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson, The Medieval World, London and New York : 93–110.
• Janes, Dominic. 2000. ‘The World and its Past as Christian Allegory in the Early Middle Ages’, in Yitzhak Hen and Matthew Innes, The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, Cambridge : 102–13.
• Jong, Mayke de. 2005. ‘Charlemagne's Church’, in Joanna Story (ed.), Charlemagne: Empire and Society, Manchester and New York : 103–35.
• Kantorowicz, Ernst H. 1957. The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology, Princeton .
• Kersken, Norbert. 1995. Geschichtsschreibung im Europa der "nationes". National-geschichtliche Gesamtdarstellungen im Mittelalter, Cologne .
• Kinoshita, Sharon. 2001. ‘ "Pagans are Wrong and Christians are Right": Alterity, Gender, and Nation in the Chanson de Roland ’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 31: 79–111 .[CrossRef][ISI]
• Kirn, Paul. 1943. Aus der Frühzeit des Nationalgefühls. Studien zur deutschen und französischen Geschichte sowie zu den Nationalitätenkämpfen auf den britischen Inseln, Leipzig .
• Kline, Naomi Reed. 2001. Maps of Medieval Thought: The Hereford Paradigm, Woodbridge .
• Knapp, Peggy A. 2004. ‘Chaucer Imagines England (in English)’, in Kathy Lavezzo (ed.), Imagining a Medieval Nation, Minneapolis and London : 131–60.
• Kubinyi, Andras. 1998. ‘Zur Frage der Toleranz in mittelalterlichen Königreich Ungarn’, in Alexander Patschovsky and Harald Zimmermann (eds), Toleranz im Mittelalter, Sigmaringen : 187–206.
• Kugler, Hartmut. 1995. ‘Das Eigene aus der Fremde. Über Herkunftssagen der Franken, Sachsen und Bayern’, in Hartmut Kugler (ed.), Interregionalität der deutschen Literatur im europäischen Mittelalter, Berlin and New York : 175–93.
• Kühnel, Harry. 1993. ‘Das Fremde und das Eigene. Mittelalter’, in Peter Dinzelbacher (ed.), Europäische Mentalitätsgeschichte. Hauptthemen in Einzeldarstellungen, Stuttgart : 415–28.
• Langmuir, Gavin I. 1990. Toward a Definition of Antisemitism, Berkeley .
• Leerssen, Joep. 1994. The ‘Contention of the Bards’ (Iomarbhágh na bhFileadh) and its place in Irish Political and Literary History, London .
• Leshock David B. 2002. ‘Religious Geography: Designating Jews and Muslims as Foreigners in Medieval England’, in Albrecht Classen, Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages, New York and London : 202–25.
• Lomperis, Linda. 2001. ‘ Medieval Travel Writing and the Question of Race ’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 31: 147–64 .[CrossRef][ISI]
• Lynch, Michael. 1998. ‘A Nation Born Again? Scottish Identity in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Dauvit Broun, R.J. Finlay and Michael Lynch, Image and Identity. The Making and Re-Making of Scotland through the Ages, Edinburgh : 82–104.
• Malamut, Élisabeth. 2000. ‘Les peuples étrangers dans l'idéologie impériale. Scythes et Occidentaux’, in Stéphane Boissellier, L'Étranger au Moyen Âge [XXXe Congrès de la S.H.M.E.S. (Göttingen; juin 1999)], Paris : 119–32.
• Molnár, Mikläs. 2001. A Concise History of Hungary, Cambridge .
• Moore, R.I. 1987. The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250, Oxford .
• Müller, Klaus E. 1972–80. Geschichte der antiken Ethnographie und ethnologischen Theoriebildung. Von den Anfängen bis auf die Byzantinischen Historiographen, 2 vols, Wiesbaden .
• Nelson, Janet. 2005. ‘Charlemagne the Man’, in Joanna Story, Charlemagne: Empire and Society, Manchester and New York : 22–37.
• Nirenberg, David. 1996. Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, Princeton .
• Picard, Jean-Charles. 1981. ‘ Conscience urbaine et culte des saints: de Milan sous Liutprand à Vérone sous Pépin Ier d'Italie ’, Études Augustiniennes: 455–69 .
• Pohl, Walter. 2000. ‘Memory, Identity and Power in Lombard Italy’, in Yitzhak Hen and Matthew Innes, The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, Cambridge : 9–28.
• Rambo, Elizabeth L. 1994. Colonial Ireland in Medieval English Literature, Selingsgrove, New Jersey and London .
• Remppis, Max. 1911. Die Vorstellungen von Deutschland im altfranzösischen Heldenepos und Roman und ihre Quellen, Halle (Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie; Beiheft 34).
• Reynolds, Susan. 1983. ‘ Medieval Origines Gentium and the Community of the Realm ’, History, vol. 68: 375–90 . (reprinted in: Susan Reynolds, Ideas and solidarities. England and Western Europe, Aldershot, 1995: nr. II).
• Reynolds, Susan. 1997. Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe 900–1300, Oxford . (First published 1984).
• Richter, Michael. 1978. ‘Mittelalterlicher Nationalismus. Wales im 13. Jahrhundert’, in Helmut Beumann and Werner Schröder, Aspekte der Nationenbildung im Mittelalter: 465–88.
• Roth, Norman. 1994. Jews, Visigoths and Muslims in Medieval Spain: Cooperation and Conflict, Leiden .
• Rowell, S.C. 1994. Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe, 1295–1345, Cambridge .
• Royan, Nicola. 2002. ‘ National Martyrdom in Northern Humanist Historiography ’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 38: 462–75 .[Abstract]
• Rubin, Miri. 1999. Gentile Tales. The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews, New Haven and London .
• Sager, Alexander. 2002. ‘Hungarians as Vremde in Medieval Germany’, in Albrecht Classen, Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages, New York and London : 27–44.
• Schmugge, Ludwig. 1982. ‘ Über "nationale" Vorurteile im Mittelalter ’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, vol. 38: 439–59 .
• Schwinges, Rainer Christoph. 1998. ‘Die Wahrnehmung des Anderen durch Geschichtsschreibung. Muslime und Christen im Spiegel der Werke Wilhelms von Tyrus (1186) und Rodrigo Ximénez’ de Rada (1247)’, in Alexander Patschovsky and Harald Zimmermann (eds), Toleranz im Mittelalter, Sigmaringen :101–27.
• Sénac, Philippe. 1983. L'image de l'autre. Histoire de l'Occident médiéval face à l'Islam, Paris .
• Stow, Kenneth R. 1996. Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London (First published 1992).
• Subrenat, Jean. 1996. ‘Les peuples en conflit dans les guerres carolingiennes. Le point de vue des chansons de geste aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles’, in C. Carozzi and H. Taviani-Carozzi, Peuples du Moyen Âge. Problèmes d’ identification (Séminaire Sociéties, Ideologies et Croyances au Moyen Âge). Aix-en-Provence : 169–80.
• Thomas, Heinz. 1989. ‘Nationale Elemente in der ritterlichen Welt des Mittelalters’, in Joachim Ehlers, Ansätze und Diskontinuität. Deutscher Nationsbildung im Mittelalter, Sigmaringen : 345–76.
• Thomas, Heinz. 1991. ‘Julius Caesar und die Deutschen. Zu Ursprung und Gehalt eines deutschen Geschichtsbewusstseins in der Zeit Gregors VII und Heinrichs IV’, in Stefan Weinfurter (ed.), Die Salier und das Reich. Band 3: Gesellschaftlicher und ideengeschichtlicher Wandel im Reich der Salier, Sigmaringen : 245–77.
• Tilmans, Karin. 1993. ‘Aeneas, Bato and Civilis, the Forefathers of the Dutch: The Origin of the Batavian Tradition in Dutch Humanistic Historiography’, in Jean R. Brink and William F. Gentrup (eds), Renaissance Culture in Context. Theory and Practice, Aldershot and Brookfield : 121–35.
• Tolan, John V. 2002. Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination, New York .
• Tomasch, Sylvia. 2000. ‘Postcolonial Chaucer and the Virtual Jew’, in Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, The Postcolonial Middle Ages, New York and Basingstoke : 243–60.
• Turville-Petre, Thorlac. 1996. England the Nation: Language, Literature, and National Identity, 1290–1340, Oxford .
• Walther, Hans. 1959. ‘ Scherz und Ernst in der Völker- und Stämme-Charakteristik mittellateinischer Verse ’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, vol. 41: 263–301 .
• Wilks, Michael. 1987. ‘Royal Patronage and Anti-Papalism from Ockham to Wyclif’, in Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks (eds), From Ockham to Wyclif, Oxford : 135–63.
• Zientara, Benedykt. 1981. ‘ Nationale Strukturen des Mittelalters. Ein Versuch zur Kritik der Terminologie des Nationalbewusstseins unter besonderer Berücksichtigung osteuropäischer Literatur ’, Saeculum. Jahrbuch für Universalgeschichte, vol. 32: 301–16 .
• Zimmermann, Karl Ludwig. 1911. ‘ Die Beurteilung der Deutschen in der französischen Literatur des Mittelalters, mit besondere Berücksichtigung der Chansons de geste , Romanische Forschungen, vol. 29: 222–316 .

CiteULike

Connotea

Del.icio.us

Digg

Reddit

Technorati

This Article Abstract Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Hoppenbrouwers, P. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?