Race, Caste, and Indigeneity in Medieval Spanish Travel Literature

M. Harney

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781137381385
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Medieval & Early Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The origins of present-day Ibero-American racialization can be traced to the period when Europe straddled the boundary between the Middle Ages and the era of New World exploration. Focusing on themes of race, caste, and indigeneity in travel narratives, Harney explores this already internationalized world of late-medieval and early-modern Europe.

CHAPTER 1

CONCEPTS OF RACE, CASTE, AND INDIGENEITY IN MEDIEVAL IBERIA

Travel writers between the early thirteenth and early seventeenth centuries racialize their perception of alien peoples. The exact terms of that perception inevitably differ from those that characterize the racializing discourses of later centuries. We must, therefore, account for the texts’ particular and idiosyncratic ways of perceiving, representing, and discussing the kinds of social phenomena that present-day political science, sociology, and anthropology discuss under the headings of race, caste, and indigeneity. At the same time, we must bear in mind that the latter concepts are largely chimerical figments of the racializing imagination. To distinguish between medieval and modern versions of these concepts, or to discern the ways in which the former perhaps mutate into the latter, is to contrast different styles of racializing fantasy. In effecting this differentiation, we must bear in mind the two dimensions of racialization. One encompasses what might be called the delusional architecture of this kind of thinking, that is, the articulation and diffusion of problematic concepts and imaginary stereotypes. The other dimension comprises real-world conditions and outcomes as they are affected by that architecture.

This study focuses on the delusional edifice as it reveals itself in texts, rather than on that fictional structure’s real-world repercussions. The aggregate of their racializing conceptions does not constitute a coherent methodology or program. The delusional architecture is a ramshackle, sustained collective psychosis, a mass-hysterical, prejudicial hallucination whose shifting elements can be circumstantially recalled or invoked, but do not necessarily cohere into purposeful action, collective or individual. Like the folk tales and proverbs peculiar to a linguistic community, it is, from the viewpoint of the members of such a community, a swarm of loosely affiliated notions, a shifting DNA of iconic images. How and why these elements can be rationalized, correlated, and turned to practical effect—collectively or individually, with sincere fanaticism or pretextual cynicism—is matter for another study. Here, the aim is to delineate the elements of the inchoate swarm and to point out the ways, if any, in which symptoms of typological rationalization manifest in the texts.

Medieval racial ideas synergetically emerge from a background—partly literary, partly folkloric—of generalizations and preconceptions. Glimpses of this conceptual milieu are afforded by the various textual traditions to which any Christian, literate or illiterate, lay or cleric, would have been exposed to some degree. In terms of the European literary heritage, these traditions acted as an array of thematic precedents variously consulted by authors. The degree or detail of the exposure would vary according to the specific circumstances of each author’s education, personal preferences, and social circumstances. In a multiracial context such as that of the medieval Peninsula, racial concepts, and related notions from the realms of kinship, religion, and political organization, must have been pervasive. Notions of caste and indigeneity—submodes of racial thinking—would also have been part of the social discourse of a given time and place. The aim of this chapter is to present the outlines of a medieval Peninsular climate of thought on relevant themes, as reflected by a selection of texts presumably familiar, directly or indirectly, to medieval Spanish authors, including travel writers.

Biblical Precedents

Given that the word “race” itself seldom appears in the texts, a discussion of late-medieval racializing mentalities entails a survey of terms and concepts that appear to be more or less synonymous with “race,” “caste,” and “native,” as they are used and understood in the modern world. “Race” as a concept is assumed to be the core of a thematic cluster that includes the two affiliated concepts. At the same time, seemingly racial terms and descriptions occurring in the texts may imply other kinds of ethnic groups than those entailed by modern discussions of race; the texts’ perception and categorization of such collectives, furthermore, may or may not refer to groups of the same order of magnitude as those referred to in present-day usage as races, castes, and indigenous populations. Our discussion, therefore, attempts to define late-medieval racialization as a loose array of ethnic commonplaces and preconceptions variously endorsed or modified by travel authors.

The elements of a medieval climate of opinion on racial matters may be discerned, first of all, in the Bible. For example, the Latin Vulgate, a text directly or indirectly known to all medieval Christians, refers to what appear to be racial divisions: “Hii filii Ham in cognationibus et linguis et generationibus terrisque et gentibus suis” (“these are the sons of Ham, according to their kindred, and languages, and generations, and lands, and their nations”; Gen. 10:20). The Bible speaks, in such passages, of a large-scale differentiation of peoples in recognizably ethnocentric terms. Kinship, linguistic differences, genealogy, territoriality, and race: all these factors underwrite the use made by the Genesis of the term gens. In this context, the term, which can mean “clan” or “tribe” in other contexts, must mean something more inclusive, of greater magnitude, than clan. I have used the word “nations” to translate gens because, as we have seen, “race,” as it has come to be used in the modern racialized world, has emerged under conditions specific to social transformations of the last half millennium. “Nation,” then, would be nearly synonymous with “race,” but its assumption of common descent as the principal component of group identity distinguishes it from “race” as modern racializing discourse, with its segregative priorities and agendas, its superficial color-coding and delineation of physical features, tends to employ that term.

The biblical account shows all men, of all nations, to be descended from a common ancestor. Taken in the strictest sense, this would mean that the concept of racial differences in the essentializing sense is alien to the primordial Judeo-Christian view of mankind expressed by the Bible. This genealogical orientation will manifest repeatedly in our consideration of how the travel works under scrutiny see the varieties of human groups of whom they become aware or with which they come into contact. At the same time, the racializing purview revealed by those works circumvents the implicitly egalitarian assumption of universally shared ancestry by imposing an invidious differentiation of human populations into separate lineages.

“Nation,” therefore (from the Latin natio, “breed, stock, race, nation”; OED), may be seen as roughly corresponding to the modern term “race,” with the chief difference being this genealogical nuance. As a term in modern English, “nation” (ultimately derived from nascor, “to be born”) is glossed in the OED as “an extensive aggregate of persons, so closely associated with each other by common descent, language, or history, as to form a distinct race or people, usually organized as a separate political state and occupying a definite territory.” The OED further qualifies: “In early examples the racial idea is usually stronger than the political; in recent use the notion of political unity and independence is more prominent.” In its reference to large-scale descent groups, “nation” thus represents a clannish metaphor of shared ancestry that readily abets genealogical fictions and foundational mythologies.

“Isti filii Sem secundum cognationes et linguas et regiones in gentibus suis. Hae familiae Noe iuxta populos et nationes suas. Ab his divisae sunt gentes in terra post diluvium” (“These are the sons of Shem, according to their kindred, and languages, and the territories of their clans. These are the families of Noah, with respect to their peoples and nations. From these are derived the peoples of the earth after the Flood”; Gen. 10:31–32). Here gens, in the phrase “in gentibus suis,” is used in conjunction with three other Latin collective terms. Since one of these is natio, and since the sons of Shem constitute a group defined by a common ancestor, but specifically a group that is a subdivision of a more inclusive formation (i.e., all the families of Noah), I have used “clan” to translate gens. I have translated familiae as “families” because the latter term’s ambiguous inclusivity accommodates itself to collectives of various magnitudes. The Latin familia, originally meaning “household,” derives from famulus, servant. By synecdochical association, the appurtenances visibly representing the household identified as the locus of a kinship group come to signify the group itself. A similar process led to the synonymy of “house” and “lineage” (e.g., “the great houses of Europe”).

I might, however, have used “tribe,” glossed by the OED as “a group of persons forming a community and claiming descent from a common ancestor.” The example cited is biblical: “Each of the twelve divisions of the people of Israel, claiming descent from the twelve sons of Jacob.” “Tribe” comes, ultimately, from the Latin plural tribus, the earliest use of which referred to “the three divisions of the early people of Rome (attributed by some to the separate Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan elements).” Based on that sense, it was used to render the Greek phylon (“race,” “stock”), the basis of the modern scientific Latinism phylum.

The concept of a people (ultimately from Latin populum, accusative of populus, “the people, the populace”) may also be conflated with, or used to stand synonymously for, race. In its general sense, “people” refers to “a body of persons composing a community, tribe, race, or nation” (OED). Likewise the English word “folk,” meaning, in an archaic sense, “people, nation, race, tribe,” but indicating, in modern contexts, “an aggregation of people in relation to a superior, e.g. God, a king or priest; the great mass as opposed to an individual; the people; the vulgar.” Elaborating, the OED notes the meaning of “Men, people indefinitely” or “people of a particular class . . . indicated by an adj. or some attributive phrase.” As an adjective in compounds, “folk-” (in the OED) signifies: “of, pertaining to, current or existing among, the people; traditional, of the common (local) people, esp. opp. sophisticated, cosmopolitan.”

The Vulgate’s use of collective kinship terms constantly obliges us to make decisions as to their appropriate contextual translation. Thus, “et benedicentur in semine tuo omnes gentes terrae quia oboedisti voci meae” (“and in your seed shall be blessed all the nations of the earth, for you have obeyed my voice”; Gen. 22:18); “duae gentes in utero tuo sunt et duo populi ex ventre tuo dividentur” (“there are two clans in your womb, and two peoples will be divided from out of your womb”; Gen. 25:23); and many more. Perhaps the most significant use of gens for a medieval Christian, and perhaps even more so for a medieval Iberian Christian in the era of the Reconquest, occurs in the last command of Jesus to his disciples: “euntes ergo docete omnes gentes baptizantes eos in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti” (“Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”; Matt. 28:19). The Latin gens renders a Hellenism that has taken on a life of its own over the centuries, as in: “παντα τα εθνη” (“all the nations”). One of early Christianity’s most iconic and exhortatory utterances thus contains the etymon (the Greek ἔθνος or “nation”) of a key set of terms in modern anthropological discourse. What once meant tribe, people, nation, now refers to variously defined segments of greater or lesser cultural units. In all cases, a sense of diverse inventory, of taxonomic heterogeneity, is implied.

A large corpus of biblical scholarship, on the one hand, and a voluminous bibliography in the social sciences, on the other, have debated the use and meaning of these collective terms. We cannot begin to rehearse the details of the controversy surrounding their varied application. We can only point out that the modern social sciences still debate the taxonomic significance and utility of this terminology. Works written during the centuries covered by the present study cannot, therefore, be expected to adhere to a systematic nomenclature. The most we can say is that when they use such collective terms, they express a sense of contrast and differentiation of human types and groups.

Racial discourse divides humanity into broad categories of equivalent demographic magnitude but unequal status. Caste, meanwhile, refers to unequal subdivisions within groups. Race divides; caste subdivides. Caste divisions, as suggested in the introduction, constitute, therefore, a kind of internal racialization. The perception of race does not, at the same time, necessarily imply a concept of strict segregation. What matters most is the perception and imposition of difference. Boundaries and discontinuities between groups may be seen as fluctuant and negotiable. What is non-negotiable is the question of invidious difference, which may or may not translate into structures and practices of outright dominance and subalternity.

One such subdivisional contrast that imposes itself on the perception of authors is that between those who work and those who do not. Leisure and labor are axiomatic distinguishing categories within populations; they beckon to authors, inviting them to seek out examples. Correlative to the contrast of leisure and labor is that between dominance and servitude. This correlation lends itself to the subjugation and exploitation of populations. Here again, the Bible provides significant precedents. The notion of hereditary groups doomed to serve as a result of subjugation is expressed in the episodes recounting the invasion of Canaan and the Israelites’ treatment of the peoples living there. Specifically, the episode of the Gibeonites in the book of Joshua serves as a precedent for both righteous conquest and the justifiable servitude of the conquered: “Itaque sub maledictione eritis et non deficiet de stirpe vestra ligna caedens aquasque conportans in domum Dei mei (“You shall therefore be under curse, and there will never be among your lineage the hewer of wood and the carrier of water”; Josh. 9:23).

Classical Tradition

Set against the singularity of the Bible, the multiplicity of classical literature provided a diffused and varied set of models for racial thinking. During the Middle Ages, one of the most revered Latin works was the Aeneid. Exalted as the tale of the foundation of Rome, the Holy City, Virgil’s work, like the Judeo-Christian Bible, dramatized the concept of a chosen people divinely destined to occupy a promised land. We note the use of genus (“race, stock, lineage, descendants”), as the opening of the poem declares, in ethnocentric terms: “multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem, / inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum, / Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae” (“Much did he suffer in war, until he had founded a city, and conveyed his gods to Latium, whence the Latin race, and the Alban fathers, and the towering walls of Rome”; Virgil I, 5–7).

The racial theme, in terms of Roman patrilineal ideology, is sustained in the prophecy of Aeneas’s father Anchises: “Nunc age, Dardaniam prolem quae deinde sequatur / gloria, qui maneant Itala de gente nepotes (“Now come, I will show you what glory shall hereafter accompany our Dardanian posterity, what grandchildren await them of the Italian nation”; VI, 756–757). Despite the glorification of conquest by an invader, we see little here of the preferential endogamy that will characterize the colonial racism of certain imperial powers in later centuries (with the significant exceptions of Spain and Portugal). In the ancient Roman context, intermarriage between conquerors and natives is not incompatible with the elitism and exploitation implied by colonization. In terms of posterity and lineal identity, patriliny, the traditional Roman model of kinship, assimilates wives to their husbands’ clan; connubium, the right of intermarriage granted to non-Romans, could therefore conceivably have diversely pragmatic ancillary functions—as we see from the Virgilian example—in such domains as diplomacy and colonial administration.

The encounter between Aeneas and Dido, the Semitic queen of Carthage, encapsulates a Roman view of race that was subsequently tweaked and variously adapted by centuries of Christian racialization. The episode plays out as an example of sexual domination leveraged by racial distinction. Dido is shown to be overwhelmed by the heroic Trojan refugee: “Multa virtus viri, multusque honos gentis, recursat animo” (“Many times the hero’s merits, and many times the nobility of his race, come back to her mind”; IV, 3–4). Her subjugation is taken as axiomatic: “Equidem credo . . . esse genus deorum” (“Indeed I do believe . . . him to be of the race of gods”; IV, 12). Her infatuation and the subsequent despair of her abandonment by him are framed by racializing deliberations as her sister Anna points out the strategic advantage of forming an alliance with Aeneas and his Trojans. The Carthaginian princess, her sister Anna reminds her, has scorned marriage with a North African, Iarbas the Gaetulian (IV, 36–37). Anna urges Dido to see how marriage with Aeneas will protect the queen and her people from other Africans, such as the Gaetulians and Numidians (IV, 40–49).

These peoples are profiled in that quick and summarizing way that will become habitual in later travel literature. The Gaetulians are a “genus insuperabile bello” (“a race invincible in war”; IV, 40); the Numidians are “infreni” (“unbridled”; IV, 41); the Barcaeans are a nation “lateque furentes” (“raging far and wide”; IV, 42–43). The thumbnailing ethnography is the same as that revealed by Caesar in the opening passage of his De Bello Gallico, where he differentiates summarily among a diversity of peoples: “Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se different” (“All these differ among themselves with regard to language, institutions, and laws”). He singles out for special attention certain peoples who distinguish themselves from other nations by virtue of some specific trait: “Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae, propterea quod a cultu atque humanitate provinciae longissime absunt, minimeque ad eos mercatores saepe commeant atque ea quae ad effeminandos animos pertinent important” (“The Belgae are the bravest of all these, because they are fartherest removed from the polished and civilized ways of the Roman province, and because merchants, least often reaching them, do not import those things, which conduce to affeminating a man’s courage”). In addition to their cultural isolation, the Belgae are strengthened by their constant warfare with the Germans, “qui trans Rhenum incolunt, quibuscum continenter bellum gerunt” (“who dwell beyond the Rhine, [and] with whom they wage constant war”). The bellicose character of another alien people is described in similarly minimal terms: “Qua de causa Helvetii quoque reliquos Gallos virtute praecedunt, quod fere cotidianis proeliis cum Germanis cont...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1.  Concepts of Race, Caste, and Indigeneity in Medieval Iberia
• 2.  Race
• 3.  Caste
• 4.  Indigeneity
• Conclusion: The Tourist in the Text
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index