"After such insults, from words they often came to blows."

May 6, 2017 10:19 AM

In the 1200s, the University of Paris was a meeting place of nations. And when nations met, they insulted each other.

The English: Drunkards with tails.
The French (from the Île-de-France, not all of modern France): Proud, effeminate, and adorned like women.
The Germans: Furious and obscene at their feasts.
The Normans: Vain and boastful.
The Poitevins: Traitors and adventurers.
The Burgundians: Vulgar and stupid.
The Bretons: Fickle and changeable, and responsible for the death of Arthur.
The Lombards: Avaricious, vicious, and cowardly.
The Romans: Seditious, turbulent, and slanderous.
The Sicilians: Tyrannical and cruel.
The Brabantines: Men of blood, incendiaries, brigands, and ravishers.
The Flemish: Fickle, prodigal, gluttonous, yielding as butter, and slothful.

posted by clawsoon (13 comments total)

A nice pungent quote, and a good reminder that "nation" is not the timeless concept we sometimes take it for—these days we wouldn't think of Poitevins, Lombards, and Brabantines as nations.
posted by languagehat at 11:29 AM on May 6, 2017 [5 favorites]

When I teach nationalism in my history classes, I talk about how one of the earliest uses of the term "nation" was to refer to the student groups, based on geographical location, at medieval universities. (Which, indeed, have little relation to modern "nations," or even to what were states / kingdoms at the time.) They still exist in Sweden!
posted by dhens at 12:52 PM on May 6, 2017 [9 favorites]

A nice pungent quote,

On the other hand - Germans? It was while before there would be a united Germany. So which Germans are being slandered here?

No Proud, Cruel, and Murderous Spaniards, I notice. Well, why bother with Paris, when you have Salamanca a whole lot closer? I assume we're talking in-state tuition and all.
posted by IndigoJones at 1:03 PM on May 6, 2017

"Lombard, I hear that your lady mother is so large with respect to body size that, when she sits around the house, she sits around the house... *gakk*" (slumps. Lombard removes sword and wipes it on the dead man's tunic.)
posted by the sobsister at 1:04 PM on May 6, 2017 [6 favorites]

Germans? It was while before there would be a united Germany. So which Germans are being slandered here?

At the risk of engaging in the game that Romantic German nationalists played in the 19th Century (or which blood and soil nationalists played in the 20th), the various German-speaking peoples of Central Europe were often understood as members of one "people" long, long before there was a united German state in 1871.
posted by dhens at 1:13 PM on May 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

Piggybacking off of my previous comment, we can compare this to the various Greek city-states which, even when they went to war with each other, considered themselves to be "Greek," or Ireland before the Anglo-Norman invasions of the 12th Century, where everyone was considered "Irish" even though there was no political unity.
posted by dhens at 1:16 PM on May 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

So this was what all those medieval students [previously] were spending their parents' money on.
posted by Pallas Athena at 1:57 PM on May 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation." - Douglas Adams.
posted by Paul Slade at 4:37 PM on May 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

In the City in the 80s, Lombard was shorthand for Lots Of Money But A Right Dickhead. A tribe from antiquity that thrives to this day.
posted by Devonian at 6:49 PM on May 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries!
posted by Fuzzypumper at 8:44 PM on May 6, 2017

languagehat: "A nice pungent quote, and a good reminder that "nation" is not the timeless concept we sometimes take it for—these days we wouldn't think of Poitevins, Lombards, and Brabantines as nations."

That's the kind of specious comment I'd expect from a Galician.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:12 PM on May 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

These are the kind of insults I'd expect from a bunch of rowdy drunken academics.

From the article: If we may judge from such minutes as have survived, much of the time of the nations was devoted to consuming the fees collected from new members and new officers, or, as it was called, drinking up the surplus — at the Two Swords near the Petit-Pont, at the sign of Our Lady in the Rue S.-Jacques, at the Swan, the Falcon, the Arms of France, and scores of similar places. A learned monograph on the taverns of mediaeval Paris has been written from the records of the English nation alone.

posted by valetta at 12:52 AM on May 7, 2017 [3 favorites]

Bah, I remember the Two Swords back when it was worth passing out in. Now they've got a fucking troubadour singing fucking aubades, and people tell you to keep it down because they can't hear the music. I just hope the Falcon stays down and dirty!
posted by languagehat at 7:44 AM on May 7, 2017 [4 favorites]