Medieval nobilities justified serfdom with the biblical curse of Ham

Evidence

In the Middle Ages and later, the nobility, as a rule, considered themselves of better blood than the common people, whom they utterly despised. The peasants were supposed to be descended from Ham, who, for lack of filial piety, was known to have been condemned by Noah to slavery. The knightly classes of many lands, on the other hand, believed themselves to be the descendants of the Trojan heroes, who after the fall of Troy were said to have settled in England, France and Germany. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 187

Categorization

• XREF: Directly foreshadows how the Ham myth later justified racial slavery in the Atlantic world; a major thread in Black radical historiography. — connects to: Colonial observers framed African peoples as biblical Ham’s cursed descendants
• ADDENDUM: Gives the medieval European precedent for the curse-of-Ham racial ideology worked out fully in Atlantic slavery.