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Introduction: Eurocentrism and Racism

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Erasmus and the “Other”

Abstract

Both “Eurocentrism” and “racism” are used in this book. Eurocentrism, as used here, means judging the “other” according to Christian-European values. The Eurocentric observation is twisted because it expects, or desires, the “other” to adapt himself to a cultural conception foreign to him. Thus, populus Christianus was immeasurably superior to Muslims and to non-Christians in general. Erasmus’ objection to the conclusion of international agreements between Europeans and Turks, or Muslims in general, is one example of his Eurocentric worldview. As for racism, against two reductive definitions of racism phrased by different scholars and presented here, the book’s arguments are tested and approved.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Guido Kisch, ErasmusStellung zu Juden und Judentum (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr; Paul Siebeck, 1969); Shimon Markish, Erasmus and the Jews, trans. Anthony Ollcot (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986). As pointed in the preface, most monographes, if not all, dealing with Erasmus and the Jews delimit their treatment to some scattered references, or a few pages at most, see notes 9–10, Chapter 9. Certain essays are significant but limited to a specific point and unavoidably do not cover the whole issue, see, e.g., n. 38, Chapter 9.

  2. 2.

    Specific surveys relating to Erasmus’ tract De bello Turcico, the main source for Erasmus and the Turks, can be found in ASD V-3 (Introduction, in German, by A. G. Weiler) and CWE 64 (introductory note and annotations by Michael J. Heath)—see n. 1, Chapter, 2. In that context, see also A. G. Weiler, “The Turkish Argument and Christian Piety in Desiderius Erasmus’ ‘Consultatio de Bello Turcis inferendo’ (1530),” in J. Weiland Sperna and W. T. M. Frijoff (eds.), Erasmus of Rotterdam the Man and the Scholar (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 30–39; Terence J. Martin, “The Prospects for Holy War: A Reading of a “Consultation” from Erasmus,” Erasmus Studies 36 (2016): 195–217; Adam S. Francisco, Martin Luther and Islam: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Polemics and Apologetics (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), has a few scattered references to the issue of Erasmus and the Turks (e.g., pp. 43, 50).

  3. 3.

    On the usage of the term Amerindians, see my explanatory note in the preface. Erasmus’ references to Africa, India or the New World are scarce, but Luther’s are scarcer. See Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (New York: Random House, 2016), 405 (all references are to the paperback edition). In accordance with this, but due to other reasons as well (see n. 6, Chapter 1), the research regarding Erasmus and these lands has been poor.

  4. 4.

    The debate between Erasmus and Luther took place in 1524–1525 when Erasmus published “On Free Will” (De libero arbitrio, 1524) and Luther responded with “On the Bondage of the Will” (De servo arbitrio, 1525). Later, Erasmus added a work (Hyperaspistes, 1526) that drew much less attention.

  5. 5.

    Toleration (or tolerance), as used in this book, does not refer (unless otherwise stated) to medieval legal tolerantia, e.g., the certification given to Jews to live in a certain place at a certain time. It indicates religious freedom or religious pluralism, however limited, which started to evolve, not without a struggle, in sixteenth-century Europe. See Hans R. Guggisberg, Sebastian Castellio, 15151563: Humanist and Defender of Religious Toleration in a Confessional Age, trans. Bruce Gordon (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 6; idem “The Defense of Religious Toleration and Religious Liberty in Early Modern Europe: Argument, Pressures and Some Consequences,” History of European Ideas 4 (1983): 36, 38; Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 6. For tolerantia as a legal certification, see Istvan Bejczy, “Tolerantia: A Medieval Concept,” Journal of the History of Ideas 58 (1997): 365–384.

  6. 6.

    Finn Fuglestad, The Ambiguities of History: The Problem of Ethnocentrism in Historical Writing (Oslo: Oslo Academic Press, 2005). In his first chapter (pp. 9–22), Fuglestad responds to H. R. Trevor Roper’s Eurocentric (and ethnocentric) statement that black Africa has no history, expressed in a radio broadcast and later in his Rise of Christian Europe (London: Thames and Hudson, 1965), 9: “Perhaps in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, or very little: there is only the history of the Europeans in Africa.” On Eurocentrism, see also Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 110–111; idem, The Idea of Latin America (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 15–34 (Eurocentrism dominated European attitudes toward native Americans in Latin America); Samir Amin, Eurocentrism, trans. Russel Moore (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1989), 72–73: “From that time on (i.e., the Renaissance—N. R.) Europeans become conscious of the idea that the conquest of the world by their civilization is a possible objective. They therefore develop a sense of absolute superiority […] From this moment on, and not before, Eurocentrism crystallizes.” Amin relies extensively on Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978) and on M. Bernal, Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987). Bernal’s thesis regarding the Afro-Asian roots of classical culture is integrated within the Afrocentric approach, which rejects the Eurocentric conceptualization of the West as the sole standard by which to evaluate other cultures, ignoring the significant contributions made by Africans to world civilization and human progress.

  7. 7.

    Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 3, 19.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., 4, 23.

  9. 9.

    Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler “Introduction,” in Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler (eds.), The Origins of Racism in the West (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 12.

  10. 10.

    Joan-Pau Rubiés, “Were Early Modern Europeans Racist?” in Amos Morris-Reich and Dirk Rupnow (eds.), Ideas of Race in the History of the Humanities (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 34.

  11. 11.

    CWE 27, 282; ASD IV-1, 214: “Primum illud expendat Princeps vere Christianus, quantum intersit inter hominem paci ac benevolentiae natum animal, et inter feras ac belluas praeditioni, belloque natas: ad haec quantum intersit inter hominem, et hominem Christianum.”

  12. 12.

    CWE 66, 10; Ep 858: 83–84: “[…] sunt enim et illi, vt nihil aliud, certe homines […].”

  13. 13.

    CWE 27, 287; ASD IV-1, 218: “Citius fiat, ut nos degeneramus in Turcas, quam illi per nos reddantur Christiani.”

  14. 14.

    CWE 66, 11; Ep 858: 12–14: “[…] citius futurum est vt nos in Turcas degeneremus quam vt Turcas in nostras partes pertrahamus.”

  15. 15.

    CWE 27, 278: “The princes must set out to establish a perpetual peace among themselves and make common plans for it.” See Neil M. Cheshire and Michael J. Heath (trans.), ErasmusThe Education of a Christian Prince, ed. Lisa Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 97 n. 169.

  16. 16.

    De Lamar Jensen, “The Ottoman Turks in Sixteenth Century French Diplomacy,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 16 (1985): 451–470 (In particular p. 455 n. 17); Christine Isom-Verhaaren, Allies with the Infidel: The Ottoman and French Alliance in the Sixteenth Century (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 117; Gilles M. Veinstein, “Histoire turque et ottomane,” L’annuaire du Collège de France 109 (2010): 679–704 (http://annuaire-cdf.revues.org/207, 688); John Victor Tolan, Gilles Veinstein, and Henry Laurens, Europe and the Islamic World: A History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 140; André Clot, Suleiman the Magnificent, trans. M. J. Reisz (New York: Saqi Books and New Amsterdam Books, 1992), 141–144; Noel Malcolm, Useful Enemies: Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 110–111.

  17. 17.

    The alliance was directed against Charles V. Erasmus’ objection stemmed, firstly, from his being the emperor’s subject. Furthermore, special relations existed between Erasmus and the emperor. Erasmus was nominated as his (honorary) councilor, and the emperor was his patron and paid him an allowance. Erasmus was committed to him by a personal oath. See CWE 9, 385: 626–628; Ep 1342: 575–576: “Vnum obstabat, bellum inter tres Reges. Quorum uni, nempe Carolo, iureiurando etiam addictus sum.”—“There was one obstacle, war among the three kings. To one of them, Charles, I am actually bound by oath.” See also: James D. Tracy, The Politics of Erasmus: A Pacifist Intellectual and his Political Milieu (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), 54–55, 159 n. 28; Preserved Smith, Erasmus: A Study of His Life, Ideals and Place of History (New York: Harper, 1923; Reprinted in New York: Dover Publications, 1962), 67–70.

  18. 18.

    CWE 27, 276–277; ASD IV-1, 207–208: “Et facile coit et cohaeret amicitia inter eos, quos lingua communis, regionum propinquitas, ingeniorum ac morum similitudo conciliat. Est tanta inter quasdam nationes rerum omnium dissimiltudo, ut prorsus ab illorum abstiniuisse commercio longe consultius sit, quam arctissimis etiam adstringi foederibus. Sunt quaedam ita procul dissitae, ut etiam si bene velint, prodesse nihil possint. Postremo sunt quaedam adeo morosae ac foedifragae et insolentes, ut etiam si finitimae sint, tamen inutiles sint ad omnem amicitiam. Cum his consulitissimum fuerit nec bello dissidere nec arctioribus foederum aut affinitatum vinculis alligari […] Illud in genere licet pronunciare non oportere arctius astringi his, quos religio diuersa a nobis alienat, veluti cum ethnicis, aut quos naturae prouidentia alpibus aut fretis interiectis a nobis separat, aut quos immensum locorum spatium penitus a nobis semouit; hi nec ad nos accersendi, nec a nobis impetendi sunt.” See also Nathan Ron, “The Christian Peace of Erasmus,” The European Legacy19 (2014): 36–37.

  19. 19.

    Clot, Suleiman the Magnificent, 129–130; M. Giles Veinstein, Histoire Turque et Ottomane, 686–687; R. B. Merriman, Suleiman the Magnificent 15201566 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1944), 128–129; R. J. Knecht, Francis I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 187.

  20. 20.

    Forêt was a renowned humanist and was accompanied by the orientalist Guillaume Postel (1510–1581) who was sent to Istanbul by the Royal Library in Paris to explore Greek manuscripts in the East. Charles de Marillac, who was Forêt’s cousin, was sent as personal secretary. Despite the ostensibly scientific-cultural appearance of the expedition, Forêt’s role was largely political; not only to seek agreements on trade for the benefit of all Christians, as the matter was presented by the king prior to Forêt’s departure. See Clot, Suleiman the Magnificent, 139; Veinstein, Histoire Turque et Ottomane, 688–689.

  21. 21.

    Jensen, “The Ottoman Turks in Sixteenth Century French Diplomacy,” 456–457; Veinstein, Histoire Turque et Ottomane, 688–689; Tolan, Veinstein and Laurens, Europe and the Islamic World, 140; Isom-Verhaaren, Allies with the Infidel, 117.

  22. 22.

    Ep 1819: 71–72: “Nunc haec monarcharum inter ipsos conflicatio Turcae viam aperuit, ut primum Rhodum, nuper etiam Vngariam inuaderet.”

  23. 23.

    CWE 64, 249; ASD V-3, 68. See also CWE 64, 252 n. 216.

  24. 24.

    Ep 3000: 56–57: “[…] ad opprimenda audaciam piratae Barbarosae.” Erasmus calls him pirate, but Khaireddin (Khair ad-Din) Barbarossa was a senior commander in the Ottoman fleet. See Knecht, Francis I, 233; Clot, Suleiman the Magnificent, 136; Tolan, Veinstein, and Laurens, Europe and the Islamic World, 140. Barbarossa’s identity and origin are uncertain and controversial. See Isom-Verhaaren, Allies with the Infidel, 72–74.

  25. 25.

    De Europae dissidiis, et bello Turcico, dialogus VI, 467: “Atqui constans est apud superos rumor, immisum Turcam in Pannoniam ab iis quos minime decebat, et a quibus nemo unquam metuisset.” See also Marcia L. Colish, “Juan Luis Vives on the Turks,” in Paul Maurice Clogan (ed.), Mediaevalia et Humanistica: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Culture, New Series, no. 35 (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 5. During 1530–1531, news spread in Europe that the Turks were planning to attack Austria and Italy at the same time. It was supposed to be a coordinated French-Ottoman attack, and it was assumed that its aftermath would see Italy a client state of the sultan and Francis the ruler of northern Italy: Gülru Necipoğlu, “Suleyman the Magnificent and the Presentation of Power in the Conflict of Ottoman-Habsburg Papal Rivalry,” in Halil Inalcik and Cemal Kafadar (eds.), Suleyman the Second and His Time (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993), 175–176.

  26. 26.

    Robert P. Adams, The Better Part of Valor: More, Erasmus, and Vives on Humanism, War and Peace 14961535 (Washington, DC: The University of Washington Press, 1962); Philip C. Dust, Three Renaissance Pacifists: Essays in the Theories of Erasmus, More, and Vives (New York: Peter Lang, 1987). Noreña, Juan Luis Vives, 224–227, defines Vives’ view as Christian pacifism. Similar to Erasmus he did not object to war against them.

  27. 27.

    De Europae dissidiis VI, 467: “Atqui constans est apud superos rumor, immisum Turcam in Pannoniam ab iis quos minime decebat, et a quibus nemo unquam metuisset.”

  28. 28.

    De Europae dissidiis, VI, 470: “Ergo Christianus quod Christiano juravit, non servat, servabit Turca quod Christiano promisit?” Colish, “Juan Luis Vives on the Turks,” 5.

  29. 29.

    Thomas More, De Optimo Reipublicae Statu Deque nova insula utopia libellus vere aureus… in Edward Surtz S. J. and J. H. Hexter (eds.), The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, vol. 4 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965), 196, 198 (De foederibus): “Foedera quae reliquae inter se gentes toties ineunt: frangunt ac renouant, ipsi nulla cum gente feriunt. Quorsum enim foedus inquiunt: quasi non hominem homini satis natura conciliet quam qui contempserit, hunc uerba scilicet putes curaturum? … At illi contra consent, neminem pro inimico habendum, a quo nihil iniutiae profectum est. Naturae consortium, foederis uice esse, et satius, ualentiusque homines inuicem beneuolentiam, quam pactis, animo quam uerbis connecti.” The English translation: ibid., 197, 199.

  30. 30.

    CWE 27, 305; ASD IV-2, 78: “Atque his fere cum exteris res erat, Christianis cum Turcis foedus est, inter ipsos bellum.” See also Isom-Verhaaren, Allies with the Infidel, 26–34.

  31. 31.

    CWE 27, 305 n. 101. See also Isom-Verhaaren, Ibid.

  32. 32.

    See n. 18, Chapter 1.

  33. 33.

    CWE 27, 311; ASD IV-2, 86: “Solida pax haud constat affinitatibus, haud foederibus hominum, ex quibus frequenter exoriri bella videmus.”

  34. 34.

    CWE 27, 312: ASD IV-2 87: “Nunc hujusmodi matrimoniorum vicibus sit, ut apud Hibernos natus, repente imperet Indis, aut qui modo Syris imperabat, subito Rex sit Italiae.” See Roland H. Bainton, Erasmus of Christendom (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969), 118.

  35. 35.

    Bainton, ibid., 114, 118.

  36. 36.

    Nathan Ron, “Erasmus’ Ethnological Hierarchy of Peoples and Races,” History of European Ideas 44 (2018): 1063–1075. See also Chapter 13, pp. 161–164.

  37. 37.

    Thompson, “Erasmus as Internationalist and Cosmopolitan”: 168.

  38. 38.

    Oberman, The Roots of Anti-semitism, 38–39.

  39. 39.

    Jenny Teichman, Pacifism and the Just War: A Philosophical Examination (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 7.

  40. 40.

    CWE 27, 286; ASD IV-1 218: “Nunc fere Gallum odit Anglos non ob aliud, nisi quod Gallus est; Anglum Scotum, tantum quia Scotus est; Germanum Italus, Eluetium Sueuus atque item de caeteris; regio regioni inuisa, ciuitas ciuitati. Cur haec stultissima nomina magis nos distrahunt, quam conglutinat omnibus commune Christi vocabulum?”

  41. 41.

    Ep 1800: 236–247 (letter sent to King João III of Portugal): “[…] demirabor, si tam dilucidae Chrysostomi rationes, si tam urgentia Scripturarum testimonia, non saltem huc adigant, ut pudeat pigeatque tam diutinae calamitatis […] nec tot bellis nec tot opinionum dissidiis concuteretur orbis, ac longius abessemus omnes et a Judaismo simul et a Paganismo; sed regnaret in nobis Christus, et sub illius vexillis fellici tranquillitate frueremur. Denique latius sese profferent Christianae ditionis.”

  42. 42.

    CWE 64, 243; ASD V-3 62: “[…] Christi nomen […] per universum terrarum orbem agnosci, celebrari, adoriri, juxta Psalmum. Universas nationes variis linguis, sed concordibus in eodem templo, hoc est in unitate Ecclesiae Redemtori suo canere gloriam.”

  43. 43.

    William Chester Jordan, “Europe’ in the Middle Ages,” in The Idea of Europe: From Antiquity to the European Union, Anthony Pagden (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 81.

  44. 44.

    Craig R. Thompson (trans.), The Colloquies of Erasmus (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1965), 323; CWE 40, 686; ASD I-3, 504: “Nuper in linteo quodam amplissimo vidi totum orbem depictum: illic didici quantula esset mundi portio, Christi religionem pure sincereque profitens: nimium Europae particula vergens ad occidentem: rursus altera, vergens ad Septemtrionem: tertia tendens, sed procul, ad Meridiem: ad Orientem vergentis quartae postrema videbatur Polonia. Reliquus orbis aut Barbaros habet, non ita multum a brutis animantibus differentes, aut schismaticos, aut haereticos, aut utrumque.” See R. J. Schoeck, “The Geography of Erasmus,” in F. Akkerman, A. J. Vanderjagt, and A. H. van Der Laan (eds.), Northern Humanism in European Context, 14691625 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 200.

  45. 45.

    Schoeck, “The Geography of Erasmus,” 200–201.

  46. 46.

    Presumably, by “schismatics and heretics” Erasmus did not mean Lutherans. He might have meant Anabaptists, of whom he harshly disapproved, and “Bohemian schismaticis” (Ep 549). The generalization “Bohemian schismaticis” indicates that the majority of Bohemians were Hussites (Ep 950 in CWE 6, 323, n. 53). Erasmus objected to capital punishment for heretics, with a few important exceptions. Accordingly, two kinds of heresy held the doomed of capital punishment. The first was manifest blasphemy, such as the negation of Jesus’ divine nature or the ascription of lies to the scriptures. The second kind of heresy warranting capital punishment was sedition against the political or the social-economic order of the state. See ASD IX-3, 288 (Epistola in Pseudevangelicos) and Roland. H. Bainton, Concerning Heretics: Whether They Are to Be Persecuted and How They Are to Be Treated: A Collection of the Opinions of Learned Men Both Ancient and Modern. An Anonymous Work Attributed to Sebastian Castellio (New York: Octagon Books 1965), 41. Erasmus harshly condemned schismatics and heretics: John Marshal, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006), 235–236. Bainton, Concerning Heretics, 41, referring to Erasmus’ rejection of Michael Servetus’ antitrinitarianism, posed the (rhetorical?) question: “One wonders whether Erasmus might not have approved of the execution of Servetus on the score of blasphemous heresy.”

  47. 47.

    Heiko A. Oberman, The Roots of Anti-semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation, trans. James I. Porter (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984); idem, The Impact of the Reformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994).

  48. 48.

    Rubiés, “Were Early Modern Europeans Racist?” 36–37, 68.

  49. 49.

    Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 21–22.

  50. 50.

    Claude Lévi-Strauss, Race and History, translator’s name is not mentioned (Paris: UNESCO, 1952), 11.

  51. 51.

    CWE 39, 479–480; Thompson, The Colloquies of Erasmus, 213; ASD I-3, 398: “Non multi sunt dies, quod hie diuersati sunt, qui se praedicarent peragrasse varias regiones nuper inuentas, et quas in priscorum cosmographorum picturis desideramus. Hi se narrabant peruenisse ad insulam quandam coeli temperatissimi, vbi summi dedecoris loco habebatur tegere corpus.”

  52. 52.

    Thompson, The Colloquies of Erasmus, 203.

  53. 53.

    ASD I-3, 398–399; CWE 39, 479–480; Thompson, The Colloquies of Erasmus, 213–214.

  54. 54.

    Bernhard Riggenbach, Das Chronikon des Konrad Pellickan: Zur vierten Saekularfeier der Universität Tübingen (Basel: Banheimer, 1877), 79–80; Thompson, The Colloquies of Erasmus, 203.

  55. 55.

    See n. 45, Chapter 6.

  56. 56.

    See notes 45–46, Chapter 6.

  57. 57.

    See n. 38, Chapter 6.

  58. 58.

    LB IX 805E: “Non enim sapiens fuit, qui primus ausus est per Oceanum navigare.” See Ron, “Erasmus and Geography,” 6, 22.

  59. 59.

    See n. 40, Chapter 6.

  60. 60.

    David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 1. See also Stephen R. Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); William McKee Evans, “From the Land of Canaan to the Land of Guinea: The Strange Odyssey of the ‘Sons of Ham’,” American Historical Review 85 (1980): 15–43.

  61. 61.

    See n. 52, Chapter 6.

  62. 62.

    Adagia, I iv 50; CWE, 31, 356–357. Though not mentioned by Erasmus, this is an allusion to Jeremiah 13:23: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?”

  63. 63.

    William Barker (ed.), The Adages of Erasmus (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 81.

  64. 64.

    J. A. Rawley and Stephen D. Behrendt, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (revised edition, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 18–44; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia 15001700: A Political and Economic History (London and New York: Longman, 1993).

  65. 65.

    Ep 2846: 106–110: “Itaque victorias ducis illius egregii quidem ac fortunate, qui tot urbes litorales spoliavit, coniectis in mare, quibus vehendis naues non sufficibant […]”; Elizabeth Feist Hirsch, Damiao de Góis: The Life and Thought of a Portuguese Humanist, 15021574 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967), 73.

  66. 66.

    On Erasmus’ relationships with Damiao de Góis: COE, II, 114–117; Feist Hirsch, Damiao de Góis, xiii, 23, 38, 86–90; Marcel Bataillon, “Le cosmopolitisme de Damiao de Góis,” in Études sur le Portugal au temps de l’humanisme (Coimbra: Impresa da Universidade Coimbra, 1952), 149–196.

  67. 67.

    ASD V-4, 148: “Nuper Aethiopiae Rex, quem vulgus appelat “Pretre Jan,” per oratorem suum submisit se sedi Romanae, nonnihil expostulans cum pontifice, quod ea gens, quum a fide Christi non sit aliena, tam diu fuerit a totius orbis pastore neglecta.” On Prester John the man and the legend, see Meir Bar-Ilan, “Prester John: Fiction and History,” History of European Ideas 20 (1995): 291–298; Stuart Munro-Hay, Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1991); C. F. Beckingham, “The Quest for Prester John,” Bulletin of The John Rylands Library 62 (1980): 290–310; C. E. Nowell, “The Historical Prester John,” Speculum 28 (1953): 435–445. On the African and Ethiopian context: E. D. Ross, “Prester John and the Empire of Ethiopia,” in Arthur P. Newton (ed.) and E. D. Hunt (trans.), Travel and Travellers of the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1996; first published in 1926), 174–194. On the linkage between the story of Prester John and Eldad the Danite, see Micha Perry, “The Imaginary War Between Prester John and Eldad the Danite and Its Real Implications,” Viator 41 (2010): 1–23.

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Ron, N. (2019). Introduction: Eurocentrism and Racism. In: Erasmus and the “Other”. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24929-8_1

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