art and culture in medieval europe knights

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Nubia and Christianity The Kingdoms of Nubia in relation to the cataracts of the Nile. This is a detail he was unlikely to have made up, which means that it likely was true. Robert’s description of the king having a branded cross on his forehead would have been true for a Nubian at that time (a practice that is still occasionally continued today among some communities). This king was living in a very rich abbey in the city, in which the former emperor Alexios had commanded that he should be lodged and of which he was to be lord and owner as long as he wanted to stay there.

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As Robert described:Īnd while the barons were there at the palace, a king came there whose skin was all black, and he had a cross in the middle of his forehead that had been made with a hot iron. While they were in the city, they witnessed an unnamed Nubian king. They had come there upon the request of Alexios IV Angelos, with the aim to restore his deposed father, Isaac II Angelos, to the throne, ultimately resulting in both being jointly named as co-emperors. From it, we can begin to construct a wider picture when placed in context with other sources.Īccording to Robert’s account, in 1203 the Crusaders on the Fourth Crusade were in Constantinople playing a part in a major imperial power struggle. In his account of the Crusade, Conquest of Constantinople (which he wrote around 1216), he offers a tantalizing account of the presence of Africans in medieval Europe.

Robert de Clari was a French knight who was part of the ill-fated Fourth Crusade. The Fourth Crusade Encounters a Nubian King They came as traders, as explorers, as warriors, or-for those we only know by the archaeological record-for many reasons that we will never know.

But the BBC’s portrayal raises a question: were sub-Saharan African people present in medieval Europe? Despite their glaring absence from many histories, both popular and academic, they were. The historical Robert was not of African descent. The reason for this critique is that, in this series, Robert de Beaumont, one of William the Conqueror’s main aides, was played by an actor, Jotham Annan, who is black. The object of their ire: the 2017 three-part BBC drama-documentary of the Norman conquest of England, 1066: A Year to Conquer England. So claimed a commenter at the right-wing website Biased BBC. The BBC is revising history to suit its own anti-White narrative.

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You can find the rest of our special series on Race, Racism and the Middle Ages here. This is Part XVII of The Public Medievalist’s continuing series on Race, Racism and the Middle Ages, by Adam Simmons.

Art and culture in medieval europe knights