Recognizing the depth of this historical lineage underscores the importance of examining how societies construct ideas about heredity and human worth.
By Matthew A. McIntosh
Public Historian
Brewminate
Introduction
The modern ideology of eugenics emerged in the nineteenth century as a self-proclaimed scientific program, yet many of its conceptual foundations were far older. Long before Francis Galton articulated his theories, ancient and medieval thinkers had already speculated about the improvement of human populations through controlled reproduction, selective elimination, and the management of lineage. These earlier societies lacked any understanding of genetics, but they cultivated ideas about purity, virtue, and hereditary character that would later be transformed into the pseudoscientific doctrines of the Victorian age.1
Some of the earliest systematic reflections on selective breeding appear in classical Greek philosophy, especially in the writings of Plato. In Republic, he outlined a political vision in which the state supervised mating among citizens to cultivate an ideal ruling class, a program that implicitly linked civic excellence with lineage.2 This philosophical speculation existed alongside historical accounts of ancient societies whose social structures enforced notions of fitness and communal purity. Plutarch described Spartan elders inspecting the newborn to decide which infants would be permitted to live within the citizen body.3 Roman ethnographers offered their own images of hereditary rigor. Tacitus portrayed the Germanic peoples as enforcing strict moral and physical standards through measures that included the communal killing of those deemed cowardly or morally polluted.4
These ancient works circulated widely in the medieval world through translations, commentaries, and educational curricula, allowing their ideas to shape later understandings of heredity and human difference. At the same time, medieval societies developed their own structures that reinforced beliefs about superior bloodlines and the regulation of marriage. Aristotelian natural philosophy shaped medieval explanations for the transmission of traits, while Christian and Islamic traditions linked lineage to purity, identity, and moral worth. Medieval aristocratic marriage strategies further created a functional system of selective reproduction among ruling elites. These varied strands of thought did not constitute eugenics, but they provided the deep intellectual terrain from which nineteenth-century theorists drew.5
The idea that human populations could be improved through deliberate control did not originate with modern science. It emerged from a long history of philosophical speculation, social practice, and inherited assumptions about the power of blood. What follows examines those earlier foundations to show how ancient and medieval ideas created the conditions that made eugenics imaginable in the nineteenth century.6
Plato and the Philosophical Origins of Selective Human Breeding
Plato’s discussion of reproduction in Republic contains one of the earliest structured arguments for regulating human mating as a means of shaping society. In Book V, he describes carefully organized festivals during which the guardians would be paired in ways that appeared random but were engineered by the rulers to achieve specific outcomes. This arrangement rested on Plato’s conviction that the health and stability of the polis depended on matching natural aptitude to civic function.7
The program extended beyond demographic calculation. It reflected a philosophical claim that virtue itself could be reproduced through the careful management of lineage. Plato argued that the best guardians should have children with partners of comparable excellence so that the future ruling class would be predisposed to the intellectual and moral capacities required for governance. This argument, deeply embedded in his larger theory of justice, positioned reproduction as a deliberate tool of political design rather than an incidental feature of private life.8
Medieval scholars never attempted to imitate Plato’s reproductive program, yet elements of his political philosophy filtered into their intellectual world through late antique summaries and Christian reinterpretations. Augustine and other Latin writers engaged with Platonic thought selectively, focusing primarily on moral and metaphysical themes, but their work helped preserve the idea that social order and human character were connected to inherited disposition. Medieval discussions about noble lineage, inherited virtue, and the ordering of estates drew upon a worldview in which ancestral qualities mattered for the functioning of society, even if filtered through theological concerns rather than classical political theory.9
Although Plato’s proposals were neither practical policies nor scientific theories, they articulated a conceptual relationship between lineage and civic excellence that later thinkers found compelling. Nineteenth century advocates of eugenics did not rely on Plato directly, yet his model supplied an early philosophical vocabulary for imagining human improvement through selective reproduction.10
Sparta and the Idealization of Physical and Civic “Fitness”
The Spartan polity has long served as a historical touchstone for discussions of communal control over reproduction and the shaping of citizenship. Our understanding of these practices comes almost entirely from later authors, especially Plutarch, whose biography of Lycurgus describes the inspection of newborns by the elders of the tribe. According to this account, the council evaluated infants for physical soundness and ordered the death of those deemed unfit to join the citizen body. Plutarch wrote centuries after classical Sparta, but his testimony reflects enduring ideas about Spartan rigor and its connection to collective strength.11
This tradition of evaluation was tied to broader cultural ideals that valued martial discipline, austerity, and bodily excellence. The citizen body functioned as a closed community defined by shared training and a lifelong commitment to military readiness. Physical condition was therefore not a private matter but a civic asset. Ancient authors often used Sparta as a foil for more indulgent or disorderly societies, presenting its methods as extreme but coherent expressions of a communal ethic in which the health of the whole outweighed individual claims.12
Sparta’s reputation for selective rigor also persisted in intellectual memory far beyond antiquity. Medieval writers did not have extensive access to classical Greek sources, but they encountered ideas about Spartan discipline through Latin moralists and educational compendia that highlighted Sparta as an exemplar of collective virtue. These portrayals reinforced the assumption that disciplined societies preserved their strength through strict boundaries and managed reproduction. The historical details were often simplified, yet the underlying concept that a polity might regulate the conditions under which its citizens reproduced continued to circulate through these inherited accounts.
Because Plutarch’s narrative offers only a retrospective and moralized vision of Spartan custom, it must be read critically. Even so, the image of the Spartan state judging newborns and subordinating individual life to collective purpose provided a powerful model for later discussions. Nineteenth-century theorists of eugenics cited Sparta not for its historical accuracy but for its perceived embodiment of a society willing to shape its population deliberately.13
Roman Ethnography and the Construction of Barbarian “Purity”
Roman authors used ethnography as a means of defining their own society by contrast with the peoples beyond the imperial frontier. Among these writers, Tacitus offered one of the most influential accounts in Germania, where he portrayed the Germanic tribes as communities that enforced severe moral and physical standards on their members. His report includes the claim that individuals judged cowardly or corrupted by grave vices were executed by drowning in swamps, a punishment that emphasized communal expulsion rather than integration.14 This depiction framed the Germans as a people who preserved their strength by eliminating those who threatened the integrity of the group.
Tacitus also emphasized what he saw as the unspoiled lineage of the tribes. He described them as a population “pure” and “unmixed” by intermarriage with outsiders, comments that reflect Roman anxieties about degeneration and the loss of ancestral virtue. Roman elites often contrasted their own cosmopolitan society with the imagined austerity and simplicity of northern peoples, attributing the latter’s perceived vigor to the maintenance of an uncorrupted ancestry.15 Roman ethnography therefore reinforced a broader ideological pattern that linked collective health to the stability of bloodlines.
The reception of Tacitus in the medieval period was uneven but significant. Germania was known in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages through limited manuscript circulation and references in other Latin authors, although it was not widely copied. Even so, its ideas contributed indirectly to medieval frameworks for thinking about ancestry, purity, and ethnic character. Latin chroniclers and scholars drew upon Roman ethnographic traditions when describing both neighboring peoples and the origins of their own communities, often echoing the association between moral traits and inherited lineage.16 These interpretations shaped medieval understandings of group identity by blending classical ethnography with Christian moral categories.
Tacitus’s work became even more consequential in later centuries, particularly when early modern and nineteenth century writers adopted his descriptions as evidence of ancient hereditary integrity. Their selective use of Roman ethnography reflects how earlier ideas about purity, exclusion, and the moral evaluation of populations could acquire new significance long after the context that produced them had vanished. In this way, Germania contributed to the long intellectual trajectory that made modern eugenic theories seem grounded in historical precedent.17
Aristotelian Natural Philosophy and Medieval Thought on Heredity
Aristotle’s biological writings offered the most influential premodern framework for understanding human generation and the transmission of traits. In Generation of Animals, he argued that the male provided the formative principle while the female supplied the material substrate, a model that explained resemblance, variation, and congenital anomalies through the relative strength or weakness of these formative powers.18 His work presented heredity as an observable process shaped by natural causes rather than divine intervention, a position that made Aristotelian biology the foundation for later discussions of lineage and inherited character.
These ideas entered the medieval world through Latin translations produced in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Scholars such as William of Moerbeke rendered Aristotle’s biological treatises into Latin with remarkable fidelity, enabling scholastic thinkers to analyze questions of reproduction, resemblance, and congenital traits through a philosophically rigorous lens. Medieval natural philosophers drew upon Aristotle to explain why children might resemble parents, grandparents, or more distant kin, attributing such patterns to the transmission of form and the interplay of physical matter with the father’s generative power.19 These interpretations offered a coherent account of heredity long before scientific genetics existed.
Aristotle’s theories also shaped medieval medical thought. Physicians trained in the Galenic-Aristotelian tradition used his explanations to account for diseases present at birth and for conditions believed to arise from imbalances in the humors of the parents. Medieval writers often interpreted congenital disorders as products of defective seed or weakened formative power, ideas directly traceable to Aristotle’s model.20 Although these explanations lacked empirical genetics, they provided a naturalistic vocabulary for discussing why certain traits, conditions, and dispositions appeared within families.
The influence of Aristotelian biology reached beyond medicine and natural philosophy into medieval social and legal discourse. Learned commentators applied his model of inherited tendencies to discussions of moral character, emphasizing that certain virtuous or vicious dispositions could appear more frequently in particular lineages. Christian theologians did not adopt these ideas wholesale, but they selectively integrated them when addressing questions about inherited sin, temperament, and the maintenance of social hierarchy.21 In these contexts, Aristotle’s framework strengthened the assumption that lineage carried both physical and moral implications.
Because Aristotelian natural philosophy supplied medieval Europe with its most authoritative account of reproduction, it also contributed to later beliefs about the improvement or degeneration of populations. Early modern and nineteenth century writers drew upon medieval interpretations of Aristotle when they described hereditary traits as stable, transmissible, and predictive of character.22 His system was not a precursor to eugenics, but it established an intellectual environment in which the regulation of lineage and the evaluation of inherited qualities seemed plausible and meaningful.
Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Traditions on Lineage, Purity, and Community Membership
Ideas about lineage, purity, and communal belonging were central to the religious cultures of late antiquity and the medieval world. In Jewish tradition, genealogies structured identity and anchored claims of continuity, especially in texts that emphasized the preservation of ancestral lines and the maintenance of boundaries between Israel and surrounding peoples. The Hebrew Bible presents lineage not simply as biological descent but as a marker of covenantal obligation, creating a framework in which community membership carried inherited significance.23 These understandings shaped medieval Jewish thought, where genealogical memory reinforced communal cohesion amid diaspora conditions.
Christian tradition inherited and transformed these ideas. Early Christian writers drew upon biblical genealogies while interpreting them through theological lenses that emphasized salvation history, original sin, and inherited human frailty. Augustine’s reflections on concupiscence and the transmission of sin framed human nature as shaped by an inherited condition, not by individual wrongdoing alone.24 Although this theological model was not biological, it contributed to the belief that moral and spiritual states could be transmitted across generations. Medieval Christians also absorbed classical ideas about lineage, merging them with scriptural narratives to produce a flexible but powerful discourse linking ancestry, virtue, and divine order.
Legal and ecclesiastical structures reinforced these assumptions. Medieval canon law imposed strict regulations on marriage, particularly concerning consanguinity. These restrictions, expanded during the early Middle Ages and later refined in the twelfth century, sought to prevent unions within prohibited degrees of kinship. Canonists justified these rules partly on theological grounds and partly on the assumption that marriage within close kin threatened both moral order and biological soundness. James Brundage notes that these regulations shaped noble marriage strategies and contributed to a broader culture of monitoring bloodlines.25 Such policies did not constitute eugenics, but they institutionalized concerns about the integrity of lineage.
Islamic intellectual traditions offered their own sophisticated treatments of heredity, character, and community membership. Physicians and philosophers writing in Arabic, such as Avicenna, discussed the transmission of traits in medical contexts, attributing physical and temperamental qualities to inherited factors that interacted with environmental influences.26 These writings, transmitted widely through Latin translations, provided medieval European scholars with additional models for understanding heredity as a natural process. Islamic legal scholars also addressed lineage in relation to marriage, inheritance, and communal status, grounding their arguments in both Qur’anic teaching and the practical needs of social organization.
Across Jewish, Christian, and Islamic societies, lineage functioned as a marker of belonging and as a vehicle for linking personal identity with inherited traits. Although these traditions differed in doctrine and practice, they shared a concern with boundaries, purity, and the intergenerational transmission of obligations and characteristics. Medieval polities drew upon these religious frameworks to regulate marriage, define legitimate offspring, and articulate the moral expectations attached to particular familial or communal lines.27 In doing so, they reinforced cultural assumptions that ancestry shaped both social position and personal character.
These ideas later entered early modern and nineteenth century discussions about heredity and population quality. Thinkers who sought historical precedents for regulating human reproduction frequently invoked religious traditions to demonstrate the antiquity of concerns about lineage. Their selective reading of medieval texts reflected contemporary agendas rather than the intentions of the original authors, yet the appeal to inherited purity and communal belonging persisted. The result was an intellectual environment in which eugenic arguments could claim deep historical and moral roots, even when the traditions they cited addressed entirely different questions.28
Medieval Noble Marriage, Dynasty, and the Politics of Bloodlines
Medieval aristocratic society relied heavily on marriage as a political instrument, and in doing so it created a de facto system of selective reproduction among Europe’s elite. Noble and royal unions were rarely matters of private choice. They served instead to forge alliances, consolidate territorial claims, and preserve the continuity of ruling houses. Chroniclers emphasized lineage as a central component of legitimacy, blending classical ideas about inherited excellence with Christian notions of divine sanction.29 These marriages therefore functioned as mechanisms for shaping the composition and continuity of the aristocratic class.
Dynastic strategy required careful regulation of who could marry whom, and it also required surveillance of heirs to ensure the stability of succession. Genealogists working for courts and monasteries compiled detailed pedigrees that traced noble families back through generations, often linking them to heroic or legendary ancestors. Such genealogical projects reinforced the idea that political authority derived in part from inherited qualities.30 They also encouraged the belief that lineage carried moral and intellectual traits that justified the leadership of established families. In this way, dynastic politics created a culture in which hereditary transmission of virtue and power seemed natural.
These practices intersected with canon-law restrictions on consanguinity. The Church’s insistence on prohibiting marriages within certain degrees of kinship forced noble families to navigate complex legal structures when arranging unions. At times, dispensations were granted to accommodate political necessity, but the existence of such rules reinforced the idea that bloodlines required careful protection.31 While these regulations were grounded in theological and legal reasoning, they contributed to the broader medieval preoccupation with purity of lineage and the long-term health of powerful families. The regulation of marriage thus became part of a larger cultural system concerned with the transmission of both property and personal qualities.
The consequences of these marriage practices extended beyond politics. Aristocratic households often emphasized the cultivation of inherited dispositions, encouraging traits believed to characterize the lineage. Medieval writers frequently associated certain families with particular virtues or vices, attributing these qualities to ancestry rather than circumstance.32 Although such claims rested on literary convention rather than empirical observation, they reflected a broader conviction that character flowed through blood. This conviction strengthened the belief that noble families possessed a distinctive nature that justified their elevated position.
When nineteenth century eugenicists sought historical precedents for their theories about inherited excellence, they turned readily to medieval dynastic practice. They interpreted the aristocracy’s careful management of marriage and lineage as evidence that past societies had recognized the importance of selective reproduction.33 Their interpretation was often reductive, but it reveals how medieval concerns about succession, purity, and the preservation of family traits became part of the longer intellectual lineage that made eugenics appear to have deep historical roots.
Medieval Discourses on “Lesser” Peoples and the Seeds of Later Hierarchies
Medieval Europe inherited a rich body of ethnographic ideas from antiquity, and these frameworks shaped how scholars and chroniclers categorized peoples as morally, culturally, or physically superior or inferior. Classical stereotypes about northern vigor or southern degeneracy persisted in adapted forms, providing medieval writers with tools for interpreting human difference. These borrowed frameworks did not constitute biological theories, but they reinforced the notion that entire groups possessed inherited traits that distinguished them from others.34 Medieval ethnography therefore helped normalize the idea that populations could be evaluated as collective units whose qualities stemmed from ancestry.
This worldview appeared in historical and geographical writing, where authors described foreign peoples in terms that blended inherited character with moral judgment. Chroniclers such as Isidore of Seville organized knowledge by grouping human communities according to languages, customs, and supposed natural dispositions.35 These categorizations reflected longstanding assumptions that certain populations embodied particular virtues or vices that endured across generations. Medieval writers often emphasized the permanence of these traits, suggesting that inherited characteristics declined only gradually or through intermixing with outsiders. While these descriptions served theological or moral ends, they also reinforced the belief that collective identity operated through lineage.
Legal and social structures contributed to the same logic. Groups such as Jews, Muslims, and certain marginalized Christian communities were often described through essentializing language that portrayed them as inherently inclined toward particular behaviors. Anti-Jewish polemic, for example, sometimes cast Jewish communities as fixed in disbelief or moral defect, attributing these qualities to their ancestral lineage rather than individual choice.36 Similar portrayals appeared in discussions of heresy, where entire sects were described as possessing persistent dispositions that passed through families. These forms of essentialism provided a cultural framework in which inherited moral character became a tool for social classification.
At the same time, medieval medical and natural-philosophical writing offered explanations for why certain populations displayed what were believed to be characteristic traits. These works attributed differences to climate, diet, and humoral constitution, but they also suggested that such conditions shaped families and communities over generations.37 The idea that environment and lineage jointly produced enduring characteristics contributed to a proto-hereditary model in which population traits were stable and predictable. Although these explanations were pre-scientific, they normalized the belief that human groups possessed enduring, quasi-inherited identities.
By the late Middle Ages, these combined traditions had created a conceptual vocabulary that linked ancestry to social value. When nineteenth century thinkers sought historical precedents for their emerging theories of racial hierarchy and biological improvement, they often misappropriated medieval ethnography.38 They interpreted medieval descriptions of “lesser” peoples as early evidence of hereditary ranking, even though medieval writers operated within entirely different intellectual frameworks. The selective use of these sources demonstrates how earlier assumptions about lineage, purity, and moral character could be reframed as evidence for modern forms of biological determinism.
Continuities and Transformations: From Classical Lineage to 19th-Century Eugenics
The transition from ancient and medieval ideas about lineage to the formalized eugenic theories of the nineteenth century was not a direct inheritance, but it unfolded through a long series of reinterpretations. Earlier societies offered models that linked ancestry with virtue, purity, or communal fitness, and these frameworks provided later thinkers with a vocabulary for describing human difference. Classical authors such as Plato and Tacitus supplied examples of organized reproduction and hereditary rigor, while medieval law and social practice emphasized the regulation of marriage and the protection of elite bloodlines. These diverse traditions established the conceptual terrain in which ideas about human improvement through lineage could be articulated.39
Early modern intellectual developments transformed this inherited landscape. The revival of classical texts during the Renaissance renewed interest in ancient discussions of heredity, while the formation of new scientific disciplines encouraged more systematic attempts to explain the transmission of traits. The rise of natural history and anthropology introduced new schemes for classifying human populations, many of which drew implicitly on medieval ethnographic frameworks that associated entire groups with enduring characteristics.40 As natural philosophers developed theories about species, variation, and degeneration, they adapted older concepts to new scientific goals, reshaping how lineage and population were understood.
By the nineteenth century, these reinterpretations had produced an environment in which Francis Galton could propose eugenics as a scientific program. Galton reframed concerns about lineage, purity, and inherited character into arguments about statistical heritability and population management. His work reflected Victorian confidence in scientific progress but also relied on intellectual habits formed over centuries, including the belief that collective traits were stable, transmissible, and morally significant.41 Galton did not borrow directly from ancient or medieval authors, yet his theories echoed their assumptions, particularly the idea that society could be improved by regulating reproduction and eliminating perceived defects.
These continuities show that eugenics emerged not as an isolated innovation but as a modern elaboration of longstanding ideas about human difference and inherited quality. Ancient philosophies of selective mating, medieval strategies of marriage regulation, and early modern theories of natural hierarchy all contributed to a conceptual legacy that nineteenth century thinkers reinterpreted in scientific terms.42 The transformation of these earlier traditions into eugenic ideology underscores the enduring influence of historical frameworks on modern scientific and political thought.
Conclusion: The Long Trajectory of Ideas About Human Improvement
The nineteenth century emergence of eugenics rested on a deep and complicated intellectual inheritance. Ancient philosophers explored the possibility that human communities could be improved through deliberate regulation of reproduction, while classical historians described societies that enforced selective standards of fitness or moral purity. Medieval scholars adapted these frameworks to new religious and social contexts, incorporating Aristotelian biology, canon-law marriage regulations, and genealogical traditions that linked ancestry to virtue and legitimacy. Together, these traditions created a long history of thinking about lineage as a determinant of social and moral order.43
What changed in the nineteenth century was not the underlying fascination with inherited traits but the confidence that these traits could be measured, predicted, and engineered through scientific methods. Galton and his contemporaries translated older assumptions about lineage into a statistical and biological framework, claiming empirical authority for ideas that had previously been philosophical or moral. Their theories drew implicitly on ancient and medieval notions of purity, hierarchy, and communal health, yet they recast these ideas within a modern scientific vocabulary.44 This transformation gave eugenics its persuasive power by presenting age-old anxieties as cutting-edge knowledge.
The persistence of these older frameworks also explains why eugenic ideas spread so rapidly. Concepts of inherited vice, moral degeneracy, noble blood, and collective purity were already embedded in Western intellectual and cultural traditions. When nineteenth century thinkers proposed programs to improve populations by regulating reproduction or excluding undesirable groups, they framed their arguments as extensions of principles that appeared to have historical grounding.45 The appeal to antiquity and the Middle Ages helped legitimize eugenic policies by asserting that they reflected longstanding truths about human nature rather than modern inventions.
Recognizing the depth of this historical lineage underscores the importance of examining how societies construct ideas about heredity and human worth. The ancient and medieval worlds did not anticipate eugenics, but they supplied the conceptual materials that made it intelligible and, for many, persuasive. Understanding these origins is essential for confronting the legacy of eugenic thinking, which continues to influence debates about health, identity, and social policy.46 The past cannot excuse the harms of modern eugenics, but it reveals how deeply rooted beliefs about lineage and difference continue to shape human societies.
Appendix
Footnotes
- Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 3–12.
- Plato, Republic, trans. C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2004), 458c–461c.
- Plutarch, Lycurgus, in Plutarch’s Lives, trans. Bernadotte Perrin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), 16.
- Tacitus, Germania, trans. J. B. Rives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 12.
- David N. Cooper, ed., Human Gene Evolution (New York: Garland Science, 1999), 19–23.
- Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 21–28.
- Plato, Republic, trans. C. D. C. Reeve, 458c–461c.
- Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato’s Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 116–123.
- Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York: Random House, 1955), 66–71.
- Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 9–12.
- Plutarch, Lycurgus, 16.
- Paul Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300–362 BC (London: Routledge, 1979), 109–115.
- Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 12–13.
- Tacitus, Germania, trans. J. B. Rives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 12.
- J. B. Rives, introduction to Germania (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1–12.
- R.W. Southern, The Making of the Early Middle Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 84–89.
- Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 15–18.
- Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. A. L. Peck (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1943), 730b10–732a5.
- William of Moerbeke, preface to his translation of Aristotle’s De Generatione Animalium, in Charles H. Lohr, “Medieval Latin Aristotle Translations,” Traditio 41 (1985): 23–26.
- Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, 21–28.
- Michael W. Tkacz, “Aristotle’s Theory of the Unity of Science,” Review of Metaphysics 55, no. 2 (2001): 426-428.
- Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 12–15.
- Gary N. Knoppers, Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Comparative Perspectives, (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2009), 15–22.
- Augustine, On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, trans. Peter Holmes (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1876), 25–39.
- James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 194–205.
- Avicenna, The Canon of Medicine, trans. Laleh Bakhtiar (Chicago: Great Books of the Islamic World, 1999), 240–243.
- Miri Rubin, The Middle Ages: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
- Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 15–20.
- Chris Wickham, Medieval Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 142–150.
- Martin Aurell, The Plantagenet Empire, 1154–1224, trans. David Crouch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 32–38.
- James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, 191–205.
- Janet Nelson, “Family, Lineage, and Kingship in Early Medieval Europe,” in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English, ed. Elaine Treharne and Greg Walker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 99–113.
- Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 18–21.
- John Tolan, Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 22–30.
- Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, trans. Stephen A. Barney et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), I.29–40.
- Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 88–104.
- Saul M. Olyan, “Race, Environment, and Human Difference in Premodern Thought,” Speculum 97, no. 4 (2022): 1030–1050.
- Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 18–23.
- Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, 21–28.
- Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 113–150.
- Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 7–15.
- Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West, 151–175.
- Rubin, The Middle Ages, 132–140.
- Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 7–15.
- Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West, 151–175.
- Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 19–25.
Bibliography
- Annas, Julia. An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.
- Aristotle. Generation of Animals. Translated by A. L. Peck. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1943.
- Aurell, Martin. The Plantagenet Empire, 1154–1224. Translated by David Crouch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
- Augustine. On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins. Translated by Peter Holmes. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1876.
- Avicenna. The Canon of Medicine. Translated by Laleh Bakhtiar. Chicago: Great Books of the Islamic World, 1999.
- Barney, Stephen A., W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof, trans. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
- Brundage, James A. Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
- Cartledge, Paul. Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300–362 BC. London: Routledge, 1979.
- Cohen, Jeremy. Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
- Cooper, David N., ed. Human Gene Evolution. New York: Garland Science, 1999.
- Gilson, Etienne. History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages. New York: Random House, 1955.
- Hannaford, Ivan. Race: The History of an Idea in the West. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
- Southern, R.W. The Making of the Early Middle Ages. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953.
- Kevles, Daniel J. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.
- Knoppers, Gary N. Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Comparative Perspectives. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2009.
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- Rubin, Miri. The Middle Ages: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
- Siraisi, Nancy G. Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
- Tacitus. Germania. Translated by J. B. Rives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
- Tkacz, Michael W. “Aristotle’s Theory of the Unity of Science.” The Review of Metaphysics 55, no. 2 (2001): 426-428.
- Tolan, John. Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.
- Wickham, Chris. Medieval Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
Originally published by Brewminate, 11.19.2025, under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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