The formation of the concept of race in the late Middle Ages: towards a racialization of religious difference in Iberian texts

Blood, food practices, religious controversy around baptism, and certain sensorial detectors played a key role in the conceptualization of identity in medieval Iberia. These notions may be seen in converging medical, literary, religious and legal discourses, resulting in an emerging racialization that codified difference as psychobiological differentials. The semantic field of the term raza evolved alongside important developments taking place during the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This coding helped cement a racialization of identity and religious difference.