The Image of the Barbarian in Medieval Europe

On various occasions civilized man has found himself marching side by side with men at lower 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. The pejorative implications of the word barbarian were almost invariably present in its use in Graeco-Latin antiquity and in medieval Europe and Byzantium, although its precise applications and connotations reflected changing historical circumstances. The classical image of the barbarian had to be accommodated, however, to the changing historical circumstances of the next thousand years. The barbarian par excellence of the fourth and fifth centuries ad was the Germanic invader and occasionally the Hunnish and Alanic nomads who accompanied him. Changing conditions within Europe during the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries blurred the distinction between Romanitas and barbarism and promoted the adoption of new categories of differentiation.

Ancient history · Barbarian · Historical and Archaeological Studies · History

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