Gypsies

Gypsies first appeared in western Europe in the late Middle Ages.  Although in the US they are considered a fairly intriguing group, in Europe they have been distrusted and considered dangerous ever since they first appeared.  The word "gypsy" in English is connected "to gyp," to cheat.  British gypsies therefore prefer being called Travelers, because moving from place to place has always been one of their defining characteristics.  The best term for them (their own term) is Roma or Romani.

The first records of them are from India in the tenth and eleventh centuries, when there are references to groups who were especially good at music.   In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they began migrating west, from India to Persia to Armenia to Byzantium, the Greek-speaking heir to the Roman Empire, centered in Constantinople.  The Greeks called them Atzinganoi, a word that may have meant "heretics" originally, and that has given rise to most of Europe's names for them (Zigeuner in German, Tsiganes in French, Zingari in Italian).

The Romani stayed in Byzantine territory for several centuries, picking up many Greek words to add to a language that had originated in the Indian subcontinent, and gaining the very designation of Romani, people of the "Roman Empire," especially that part now known as Romania.  It was during this period that they began to be considered a particular race, a group within Byzantium with distinctive culture, language, religion, and habits:  for example, they were described as thieves and also as endowed with strange occult powers, especially fortune-telling.

(Cue Cher's song, "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves.")

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with the attacks of the Turks on Byzantium (and its eventual fall), many of the Romani moved west again.  When they reached England, they were called "Egyptians," probably from a combination of their darker complexion (compared to the Celts and Anglo-Saxons of the British Isles) and of their reputation for sorcery, for Muslim Egypt was also considered a center of dark arts.  This is the root of the word English word "gypsy."

The Romani were distrusted, as strange "foreign" people.  Some settled down in their own communities in western Europe, but others found it hard to be accepted and found it easiest to keep moving, doing itinerant work (such as being tinkers) or doing animal trading.  Few became farmers.  In many ways, they were treated similarly to the way the Jews were treated, as a minority with useful skills on which the dominant culture wanted to keep a watchful eye, and against which there were periodic attacks.

Those Romani who stayed in Romania/Moldavia/Transylvania had it even more difficult.  The area was considered the breadbasket of the Turkish empire that had replaced the Byzantine empire, and many Romani became agricultural slaves, a condition that persisted until the nineteenth century.

The Romani are still distrusted and treated with prejudice in modern Europe.  France forbids parking a camper (the modern replacement for the old gypsy caravan) in a house's driveway, meaning that those who want to spend part of the year following the old itinerant ways have to garage one someplace.  (This rule was not written with French vacationers in mind.)

I have included gypsies in some of my fantasies.  I call them Romney, with a different spelling to indicate that I am not striving for historical exactness in my fiction.  The Romney play an important role in the novella A Long Way Til November, which (unlike some of my other novellas) still has my own original cover, a photo of the French hilltop town of Turenne.

 

 © C. Dale Brittain 2020

For more on medieval society, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.  Also available in paperback!

Jews in the Middle Ages

Christianity of course began as a sect of Judaism, with Jesus and his original apostles all Jews.  The first gentiles (non Jews) to become Christians were in the 40s and 50s AD, inspired by the apostle Paul.  When the Romans crushed the Jewish uprising of 70, destroying the Temple in Jerusalem and taking over direct rule of Palestine, rather than letting it be a Jewish client state, both Jews and Christians fled to other parts of the Empire.

Many Jews ended up in western Europe, where they functioned as a more-or-less tolerated minority for most of the early Middle Ages.  Although Judaism had originally celebrated the pastoral life (wandering with one's herds of sheep and goats), almost all of Europe's Jews were city-dwellers.

They were especially active as merchants and money-lenders.  The Old Testament forbids charging interest ("usury") to one's "brothers," but Jews and Christians decided they were not each other's brothers, so it was all right.  All commercial enterprises require access to credit, so they were needed.  Many major banking houses throughout the Middle Ages were run by Jews.

And yet Jews also faced intermittent discrimination.  Medieval theologians called Jews "Christ-killers" (a position, interestingly, which the modern Catholic church has rejected).  When faced with discrimination, Jews would move on, from the Mediterranean regions where they remained most numerous into Germany.

Real attacks on Jews began at the end of the eleventh century.  At exactly this time Europeans were also beginning to worry much more about heresy and to find it offensive that the Holy Land was ruled by non-Christians (Muslims).  When the First Crusade was launched in 1095, some knights decided to get a head-start on killing "enemies of Christ" by attacking Jews in the cities of the German Rhineland.

Some were horribly slaughtered.  In other cases, however, the merchants, even the bishops, stepped in to protect the Jewish populations of their cities, and Christians hid their Jewish neighbors.  But from then on, attacks on Jewish communities became more frequent.  Again, persecuted Jews found it easiest to just move on.  Most of the important rituals and holidays of Judaism are practiced in the home, with the family, so it was easier to keep the traditions alive than if they had required organized churches.

Stories sprang up in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that Jews killed Christian babies and used their blood for secret incantations.  If a well went bad, it was easy to accuse the Jews of poisoning it.  Jewish communities kept moving from western Germany, off into the thinly populated stretches of eastern Europe.  Many Jews from what had been a major Jewish intellectual and merchant center of Speyer (in Germany) ended up in the Russia/Poland area and were referred to as Shapiro (guy from Speyer).  Here in eastern Europe Yiddish developed, a mix of German and Hebrew and some terms from the local Slavic languages.

By the late Middle Ages Jewish communities were more and more frequently persecuted.  Several of Europe's kings took out massive loans from the Jews and then drove them out of the country, so as not to have to repay.  In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabelle of Spain drove both Jews and Muslims out of Spain. Many went to what is now Turkey, where the Muslim rulers who had recently taken over the last of the Byzantine empire were happy to welcome them.  Others "officially" converted to Christianity but continued their Jewish rituals at home, rituals continued long after their descendants forgot that they had ever been anything but Christian.  (Click here for more on Ferdinand and Isabelle.)

The Jews are designated a Chosen People in the Bible.  Between the Babylonians, the Romans, medieval discrimination, later pograms, and eventually the Nazis, they may (to repeat an old joke) have often wished God would choose somebody else for a change.

© C. Dale Brittain 2015