Medieval Barbarism?
Among the unremarked minor casualties of the Kosovo war must be numbered the adjective 'medieval'. Too often recently we have been invited by reporters and pundits to consider the 'truly medieval' (or, more cautiously, 'almost medieval') levels of brutality, sadism and bigotry on display in the Balkans. Yet such language, hackneyed though it may be, does point us towards a legitimate and overlooked question: did medieval Europe in fact know inter-ethnic warfare, persecution and expulsions on the twentieth-century model?
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