Romani people

The Romani people (/ˈroʊməni/ ROH-mə-nee or /ˈrɒməni/ ROM-ə-nee), also known as the Roma (sg.: Rom), are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group who traditionally lived a nomadic, itinerant lifestyle. Linguistic and genetic evidence suggests that the Romani people originated in the Indian subcontinent, in particular the region of Rajasthan.
Their first wave of westward migration is believed to have occurred sometime between the 5th and 11th centuries. They are thought to have first arrived in Europe sometime between the 7th and 14th centuries. Although they are widely dispersed, their most concentrated populations are believed to be in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia.
In the English language, Romani people have long been known by the exonym Gypsies or Gipsies and this remains the most common English language term for the group. Some Roma use and embrace this term while others consider it to be derogatory or an ethnic slur.
The Romani language is an Indo-Aryan language with strong Balkan influence. It is divided into several dialects, which together are estimated to have over 2 million speakers. Because the language has traditionally been oral, many Roma are native speakers of the dominant language in their country of residence, or else of mixed languages that combine the dominant language with a dialect of Romani in varieties sometimes called para-Romani.
The English word Rom derives from Romani Rom, meaning 'man, husband' (plural romá). The etymology of the word is unclear. The Oxford English Dictionary says it likely derives from Sanskrit ḍomba, meaning 'lower-caste person working as a wandering musician', itself deriving from a Dravidian word, such as domba, ḍomba ('caste of acrobats, jugglers, clowns'). The development of the word was also influenced by Byzantine Greek Ῥωμ- (for example Ῥώμη 'a name of Rome and Constantinople').
In English, the form Roma is often reinterpreted as singular and a new plural, Romas, is formed.
Romani is the feminine adjective, while Romano is the masculine adjective. Some Romanies use Rom or Roma as an ethnic name, while others (such as the Sinti, or the Romanichal) do not use this term as a self-description for the entire ethnic group.
Sometimes, rom and romani are spelled with a double r, i.e., rrom and rromani. In this case rr is used to represent the phoneme /ʀ/ (also written as ř and rh), which in some Romani dialects has remained different from the one written with a single r. The rr spelling is common in certain institutions (such as the INALCO Institute in Paris), or used in certain countries, e.g., Romania, to distinguish from the endonym/homonym for Romanians (sg. român, pl. români).
In Norway, Romani is used exclusively for an older Northern Romani-speaking population (which arrived in the 16th century) while Rom/Romanes is used to describe Vlax Romani-speaking groups that migrated since the 19th century.
In the English language (according to the Oxford English Dictionary), Rom is both a noun (with the plural Roma or Roms) and an adjective. Similarly, Romani (Romany) is both a noun (with the plural Romani, the Romani, Romanies, or Romanis) and an adjective. Both Rom and Romani have been in use in English since the 19th century as an alternative for Gypsy. Romani was sometimes spelled Rommany, but more often Romany, while today Romani is the most popular spelling. Occasionally, the double r spelling (e.g., Rroma, Rromani) mentioned above is also encountered in English texts.
The term Roma is increasingly encountered as a generic term for the Roma.
Because not all Roma use the word Romani as an adjective, the term became a noun for the entire ethnic group. Today, the term Romani is used by some organizations, including the United Nations and the US Library of Congress. However, the Council of Europe and other organizations consider that Roma is the correct term referring to all related groups, regardless of their country of origin, and recommend that Romani be restricted to the language and culture: Romani language, Romani culture. The British government uses the term "Roma" as a sub-group of "White" in its ethnic classification system.
The standard assumption is that the demonyms of the Roma, Lom and Dom, share the same origin.
In English, the exonym Gypsy (or Gipsy) is the most commonly used word for the group. It originates from the Middle English gypcian, short for Egipcien. The Spanish term Gitano and French Gitan have similar etymologies. They are ultimately derived from the Greek Aigyptioi (Αιγύπτιοι), meaning 'Egyptian', via Latin. This designation owes its existence to the belief, common in the Middle Ages, that the Roma, or some related group (such as the Indian Dom people), were itinerant Egyptians. This belief appears to be derived from verses in the Book of Ezekiel (29:6, 29:12–13) which refer to the Egyptians being scattered among the nations by an angry God. According to one narrative, they were exiled from Egypt as punishment for allegedly harbouring the infant Jesus. In his book The Zincali, George Borrow notes that when they first appeared in Germany, it was under the character of Egyptians doing penance for their having refused hospitality to Mary and her son. As described in Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, the medieval French referred to the Romanies as Égyptiens.
These exonyms are sometimes written with capital letter, to show that they designate an ethnic group. While some Roma use the term, some Roma consider it derogatory because of negative and stereotypical associations. The Council of Europe consider that "Gypsy" or equivalent terms, as well as administrative terms such as "Gens du Voyage" are not in line with European recommendations. In Britain, many Roma proudly identify as "Gypsies", and, as part of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller grouping, this is the name used to describe all para-Romani groups in official contexts. In North America, the word Gypsy is most commonly used as a reference to Romani ethnicity, though lifestyle and fashion are at times also referenced by using this word.
Another designation of the Roma is Cingane (alternatively Çingene, Tsinganoi, Zigar, Zigeuner, Tschingaren), likely deriving from the Persian word چنگانه (chingane), derived from the Turkic word çıgañ, meaning poor person. It is also possible that the origin of this word is Athinganoi, the name of a Christian sect with whom the Roma (or some related group) could have become associated in the past.
There is no official or reliable count of the Romani populations worldwide. Many Roma refuse to register their ethnic identity in official censuses for a variety of reasons, such as fear of discrimination. Others are descendants of intermarriage with local populations, some who no longer identify only as Romani and some who do not identify as Romani at all. Then, too, some countries do not collect data by ethnicity.
Despite these challenges to getting an accurate picture of the Romani dispersal, there were an estimated 10 million in Europe (as of 2019), although some Romani organizations have given earlier estimates as high as 14 million. Significant Romani populations are found in the Balkans, in some central European states, in Spain, France, Russia and Ukraine. In the European Union, there are an estimated 6 million Roma.
Outside Europe there may be several million more Roma, in particular in the Americas, following migrations from Europe beginning in the late 19th century.
Romani slaves were first shipped to the Americas with Columbus in 1498. Spain sent Romani slaves to their Louisiana colony between 1762 and 1800. An Afro-Romani community exists in St. Martin Parish due to intermarriage between freed African American and Romani slaves. The Romani population in the United States is estimated at more than one million. There are between 800,000 and 1 million Roma in Brazil, most of whose ancestors emigrated in the 19th century from Eastern Europe. Brazilian Roma are mostly descended from German/Italian Sinti (in the South/Southeast regions), and Roma and Calon people. Brazil also includes a notable Romani community descended from Sinti and Roma deportees from the Portuguese Empire during the Portuguese Inquisition.
Romani people may belong to distinct subgroups based in part on territorial, cultural and dialectal differences, and self-designation.
Romani subgroups may have more than one ethnonym. They may use more than one endonym and be commonly known by an exonym or erroneously by the endonym of another subgroup. The only name approaching an all-encompassing self-description is Rom. Even when subgroups do not use the name, they all acknowledge a common origin and a dichotomy between themselves and Gadjo (non-Roma). For instance, while the main group of Roma in German-speaking countries refer to themselves as Sinti, their name for their original language is Romanes.
Subgroups have been described as, in part, a result of the castes and subcastes in India, which the founding population of Rom almost certainly experienced in their south Asian urheimat.
Many subgroups use names derived from the Romani word kalo or calo, meaning "black" or "absorbing all light". This closely resembles words for "black" or "dark" in Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Sanskrit काल kāla: "black", "of a dark colour"). Likewise, the name of the Dom or Domba people of north India—with whom the Roma have genetic, cultural and linguistic links—has come to imply "dark-skinned" in some Indian languages. Hence, names such as kale and calé may have originated as an exonym or a euphemism for Roma.
Other endonyms for Roma include, for example:
The Romani people have a number of distinct populations, the largest being the Roma, who reached Anatolia and the Balkans about the early 12th century from a migration out of northwestern India beginning about 600 years earlier.
The Roma migrated throughout Europe and Iberian Calé or Caló. The first Roma to come to the United States arrived in Virginia, Georgia, New Jersey and Louisiana during the 1500s. Romani slaves were first shipped to the Americas with Columbus in 1498. Spain sent Romani slaves to their Louisiana colony between 1762 and 1800. An Afro-Romani community exists in St. Martin Parish due to intermarriage of freed African American and Romani slaves. The Romani population in the United States is estimated at more than one million.
In Brazil, the Roma are mainly called ciganos by non-Romani Brazilians. Most of them belong to the ethnic subgroup Calés (Kale) of the Iberian peninsula. Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazil's president from 1956 to 1961, was 50% Czech Romani by his mother's bloodline, and Washington Luís, the last president of the First Brazilian Republic (1926–1930), had Portuguese Kale ancestry.
Persecution against the Roma has led to many of the cultural practices being extinguished, hidden or modified to survive in a country that has excluded them ethnically and culturally. The very common carnivals throughout Brazil are one of the few spaces in which the Roma can still express their cultural traditions, including the so-called "carnival wedding" in which a boy is disguised as a bride and the famous "Romaní dance", picturesquely simulated with the women of the town parading in their traditional attire.
Genetic findings show an Indian origin for Roma. Because Romani groups did not keep chronicles of their history or have oral accounts of it, most hypotheses about early Romani migration are based on linguistic theory.
According to a legend reported in the Persian epic poem, the Shahnameh, the Sasanian king Bahrām V Gōr learned towards the end of his reign (421–439) that the poor could not afford to enjoy music, and so he asked the king of India to send him ten thousand luris, lute-playing experts. When the luris arrived, Bahrām gave each one an ox, a donkey, and a donkey-load of wheat so they could live on agriculture and play music for free for the poor. However, the luris ate the oxen and the wheat and came back a year later with their cheeks hollowed by hunger. The king, angered with their having wasted what he had given them, ordered them to pack up their bags and go wandering around the world on their donkeys.
Linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that the roots of the Romani language lie in India: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a large part of the basic lexicon.
Romani and Domari share some similarities: agglutination of postpositions of the second layer (or case-marking clitics) to the nominal stem, concord markers for the past tense, the neutralisation of gender marking in the plural, and the use of the oblique case as an accusative. This has prompted much discussion about the relationships between these two languages. Domari was once thought to be a "sister language" of Romani, the two languages having split after the departure from the Indian subcontinent—but later research suggests that the differences between them are significant enough to treat them as two separate branches within the central zone (Hindustani) group of languages. The Dom and the Rom, therefore, likely descend from two migration waves from India separated by several centuries.
In phonology, the Romani language shares several isoglosses with the Central branch of Indo-Aryan languages, especially in the realization of some sounds of the Old Indo-Aryan. However, it also preserves several dental clusters. In regards to verb morphology, Romani follows exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers, lending credence to the theory of their Central Indian origin and a subsequent migration to northwestern India. Though the retention of dental clusters suggests a break from central languages during the transition from Old to Middle Indo-Aryan, the overall morphology suggests that the language participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages. The following table presents the numerals in the Romani, Domari and Lomavren languages, with the corresponding terms in Sanskrit, Hindi, Odia, and Sinhala to demonstrate the similarities. Note that the Romani numerals 7 through 9 have been borrowed from Greek.
Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Roma originated in northwestern India and migrated as a group. According to the study, the ancestors of present scheduled caste and scheduled tribe populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestral populations of modern European Roma.
In December 2012, additional findings appeared to confirm that the "Roma came from a single group that left northwestern India about 1,500 years ago". According to the study, they reached the Balkans about 900 years ago and then spread throughout Europe. The team also found that the Roma displayed genetic isolation, as well as "differential gene flow in time and space with non-Romani Europeans".
Genetic research published in the European Journal of Human Genetics "has revealed that over 70% of males belong to a single lineage that appears unique to the Roma".
Genetic evidence supports the medieval migration from India. The Roma have been described as "a conglomerate of genetically isolated founder populations", while a number of common Mendelian disorders among Roma from all over Europe indicates "a common origin and founder effect". A 2020 whole-genome study confirmed the northwest Indian origins, and also confirmed substantial Balkan and Middle Eastern ancestry amongst Roma in Central and Eastern Europe. The study also included a sample of Roma from Spain and Lithuania, which revealed significantly higher levels of European ancestry.
A study from 2001 by Gresham et al. suggests "a limited number of related founders, compatible with a small group of migrants splitting from a distinct caste or tribal group". The same study found that "a single lineage... found across Romani populations, accounts for almost one-third of Romani males". A 2004 study of Roma in Central and Eastern Europe and Spain by Morar et al. concluded that the Romani population "was founded approximately 32–40 generations ago, with secondary and tertiary founder events occurring approximately 16–25 generations ago".
Haplogroup H-M82 is a major lineage cluster in the Balkan Romani group, accounting for approximately 60% of the total. Haplogroup H is uncommon in Europe but present in the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka.
A study of 444 people representing three ethnic groups in North Macedonia found mtDNA haplogroups M5a1 and H7a1a were dominant in Romanies (13.7% and 10.3%, respectively).
Y-DNA composition of Muslim Roma from Šuto Orizari Municipality in North Macedonia, based on 57 samples:
Y-DNA Haplogroup H1a occurs in Roma at frequencies 7–70%. Unlike ethnic Hungarians, among Hungarian and Slovakian Roma subpopulations Haplogroup E-M78 and I1 usually occur above 10% and sometimes over 20%, while among Slovakian and Tiszavasvari Roma, the dominant haplogroup is H1a; among Tokaj Roma it is Haplogroup J2a (23%); and among Taktaharkány Roma, it is Haplogroup I2a (21%).
Five rather consistent founder lineages throughout the subpopulations were found among Roma – J-M67 and J-M92 (J2), H-M52 (H1a1), and I-P259 (I1). Haplogroup I-P259 as H is not found at frequencies of over 3% among host populations, while haplogroups E and I are absent in south Asia. The lineages E-V13, I-P37 (I2a) and R-M17 (R1a) may represent gene flow from the host populations. Bulgarian, Romanian and Greek Roma are dominated by Haplogroup H-M82 (H1a1), while among Spanish Roma J2 is prevalent. In Serbia among Kosovo and Belgrade Roma Haplogroup H prevails, while among Vojvodina Roma, H drops to 7 percent and E-V13 rises to a prevailing level.
Among non-Roma Europeans, Haplogroup H is extremely rare, peaking at 7% among Albanians from Tirana and 11% among Bulgarian Turks. It occurs at 5% among Hungarians, although the carriers might be of Romani origin. Among non-Roma-speaking Europeans, it occurs at 2% among Slovaks, 2% among Croats, 1% among Macedonians from Skopje, 3% among Macedonian Albanians, 1% among Serbs from Belgrade, 3% among Bulgarians from Sofia, 1% among Austrians and Swiss, 3% among Romanians from Ploiești, and 1% among Turks.
The Ottoman occupation of the Balkans also left a significant genetic mark on the Y-DNA of the Roma there, creating a higher frequency of Haplogroups J and E3b in Romani populations from the region.
A full genome autosomal DNA study on 186 Roma samples from southeastern, northeastern and southwestern Europe in 2019 found that modern Romani people in these areas are characterized by a common south Asian origin and a complex admixture from Middle Eastern, Caucasus, Balkan and wider European-derived ancestries. Earlier admixture dates amongst Roma in the Balkans supports that they migrated into Europe via the Balkans. The autosomal genetic data links the proto-Roma to groups in northwest India (specifically Punjabi and Gujarati samples), as well as, Dravidian-speaking groups in southeastern India (specifically Irula). The paternal lineages of Roma are most common in southern and central India among Dravidian-speaking populations. The authors argue that this may point to a founder effect among the early Roma during their ethnogenesis or shortly after they migrated out of the Indian subcontinent. In addition, they theorized of a possible low-caste (Dalit) origin for the Proto-Roma, since they were genetically closer to the Punjabi cluster that lacks a common marker characteristic of high castes, which is West Euroasian admixing.
The Roma may have emerged from what is the modern Indian state of Rajasthan, migrating to the northwest (the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent) around 250 BCE. Their subsequent westward migration, possibly in waves, is now believed to have occurred beginning in about 500 CE. It has also been suggested that emigration from India may have taken place in the context of the raids by Mahmud of Ghazni. As these soldiers were defeated, they were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire. The author Ralph Lilley Turner theorised a central Indian origin of Romani followed by a migration to northwest India as it shares a number of ancient isoglosses with central Indo-Aryan languages in relation to realization of some sounds of Old Indo-Aryan. This is lent further credence by its sharing exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers. The overall morphology suggests that Romani participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages, thus indicating that the proto-Roma did not leave the Indian subcontinent until late in the second half of the first millennium.
The first Romani people are believed to have arrived in Europe via the Balkans in the 13th or 14th century. Romani people began migrating to other parts of the continent during the 15th and 16th centuries.
In February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, then Indian Minister of External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj stated that the people of the Romani community were children of India. The conference ended with a recommendation to the government of India to recognize the Romani community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora.
Even though genetic studies confirmed that the Romani people originated in India and their language is an Indo-Aryan language, they have a long history of taking on different identities of various ethnic groups.
With the Roma fleeing the Muslim conquest of Mahmud of Ghazni in Northern India in the early 11th century, they arrived in the Eastern Roman Empire by the 12th century. The name Roma/Romani is similar to Romaei (Ῥωμαῖοι), or Rhomaioi/Romioi (Ῥωμαῖοι/Ῥωμηοί/Ρωμιοί, "Romans") (the endonym for the Eastern Romans/Byzantines) from which the name could have originated. Roma is also similar to their original Sanskrit word डोम (ḍoma) meaning "drummer", with the Doma being dancers and musicians and a sub-group of the Dalit caste.
In the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire the Roma also took on the identity of the ethnic religious group, the Athinganoi (Greek: Αθίγγανοι). They were a Manichaean sect regarded as Judaizing heretics who lived in Phrygia and Lycaonia but were neither Hebrews nor Gentiles. They kept the Sabbath, but were not circumcised. They were Shomer nagia. The word "Athiganoi" is where the Turkish name Ciganos as well as the Romanian name țigani come from, as the Ottoman Empire had some linguistic and cultural influence on the neighbouring medieval Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. The Turkish Ottomans conquered the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century, hence they ruled over the Roma (Ciganos) as well. Today, Turkey has the highest Romani population.
Some terms for the Romani people trace their origin to conflation with Egyptians. The English term Gypsy (or Gipsy) originates from the Middle English gypcian, short for Egipcien. The Spanish term Gitano and French Gitan have similar etymologies. They are ultimately derived from the Greek Αιγύπτιοι (Aigyptioi), meaning "Egyptian", via Latin. This designation owes its existence to the belief, common in the Middle Ages, that the Roma, or some related group (such as the Indian Dom people), were itinerant Egyptians.
The Roma from Bohemia (today Czech Republic) were called Bohemian (bohémiens in French) because they were believed to have originated ethnically in Bohemia and later came to Western European countries such as France in the 16th century. The term bohemian came to mean carefree, artistic people. The Roma were musicians and dancers as well as circus performers that moved place to place, having an adventurous nomadic lifestyle, away from society's conventional norms and expectations. This lifestyle inspired the 19th-century European artistic movement, Bohemianism as well as the hippie movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States.
Because Irish Travellers, a sub-group of the Irish (having the same ancestral genetics from within the general population of Ireland) lived as nomads, the Roma and the Irish travellers came to be conflated with each other and in time some of the Roma mixed with some of the native Irish travellers (beginning in the 1650s) because of proximity and similar nomadic traditions.
Similar to the Irish Travellers, the Yenish people were confused with the Roma because they were nomadic and itinerant people. The Yenish people have origins in Western Europe, mostly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium. The Yenish descended from members of the marginalized and vagrant poor classes of society in Germanic-speaking regions in Europe in the Late Middle Ages. Most of the Yenish became sedentary in the course of the mid-19th to 20th centuries. The culture of the Irish Travellers and the Yenish people in Western Europe and the culture of the Roma are different while having the nomadic and itinerant similarity.
Forced sterilisation carried out in several European countries, such as Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic and Slovakia, in the mid to late 20th century led to a decrease in Roma populations in those countries. Countries in South Eastern Europe that had not carried out forced sterilisation, such as Romania and Bulgaria, experienced steady increases of Roma birth rates during the 20th century that continue to this day, mainly because of the Roma tradition to marry young (in their early teens). Once communism fell in Eastern Europe and travel restrictions were lifted as well as Eastern European countries joining the European Union in the 2000s, it was easier for the Eastern European Roma to mass migrate to Western Europe. Often, Romania is wrongly identified as the place of origin of the Roma because of the similar name Roma/Romani and Romanians. Romanians derive their name from the Latin romanus, meaning "Roman", referencing the Roman conquest of Dacia. (The Dacians were a sub-group of the Thracians.) Romanian genetics show ancient Balkan ancestry (Thracian ancestry) as well as Slavic ancestry and not Indian ancestry like the Roma.
According to a 2012 genomic study, the Roma reached the Balkans as early as the 12th century. A document of 1068, describing an event in Constantinople, mentions "Atsingani", probably referring to Roma.
Later historical records of the Roma reaching southeastern Europe are from the 14th century: in 1322, after leaving Ireland on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Irish Franciscan friar Symon Semeonis encountered a migrant group of Roma outside the town of Candia (modern Heraklion), in Crete, calling them "the descendants of Cain"; his account is the earliest surviving description by a western chronicler of the Roma in Europe.
In 1350, Ludolph of Saxony mentioned a similar people with a unique language whom he called Mandapolos, a word possibly derived from the Greek word mantes (meaning prophet or fortune teller).
In the 14th century, Roma are recorded in Venetian territories, including Methoni and Nafplio in the Peloponnese, and Corfu. Around 1360, a fiefdom called the Feudum Acinganorum was established in Corfu, which mainly used Romani serfs and to which the Roma on the island were subservient.
By the 1440s, they were recorded in Germany; and by the 16th century, Scotland and Sweden. Some Roma migrated from Persia through north Africa, reaching the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century. The two currents met in France.
Their early history shows a mixed reception. Although 1385 marks the first recorded transaction for a Romani slave in Wallachia, they were issued safe conduct by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund in 1417. Roma were ordered expelled from the Meissen region of Germany in 1416, Lucerne in 1471, Milan in 1493, France in 1504, Catalonia in 1512, Sweden in 1525, England in 1530 (see Egyptians Act 1530), and Denmark in 1536. From 1510 onwards, any Rom found in Switzerland was to be executed, while in England (beginning in 1554) and Denmark (beginning of 1589) any Rom who did not leave within a month was to be executed. Portugal began deportations of Roma to its colonies in 1538.
A 1596 English statute gave Roma special privileges that other wanderers lacked. France passed a similar law in 1683. Catherine the Great of Russia declared the Roma "crown slaves" (a status superior to serfs), but also kept them out of certain parts of the capital. In 1595, Ștefan Răzvan overcame his birth into slavery, and became the Voivode (Prince) of Moldavia.
Since a royal edict by Charles II in 1695, Spanish Roma had been restricted to certain towns. An official edict in 1717 restricted them to only 75 towns and districts, so that they would not be concentrated in any one region. In the Great Gypsy Round-up, Roma were arrested and imprisoned by the Spanish Monarchy in 1749.
During the latter part of the 17th century, around the Franco-Dutch War, both France and the Dutch Republic needed thousands of men to fight. Some recruitment took the form of rounding up vagrants and the poor to work the galleys and provide the armies' labour force. With this background, Roma were targets of both the French and the Dutch.
After the wars, and into the first decade of the 18th century, Roma were slaughtered with impunity throughout the Dutch Republic. Roma, called 'heiden' (‘heathens’) by the Dutch, wandered throughout the rural areas of Europe and became the societal pariahs of the age. Heidenjachten, translated as "heathen hunt" happened throughout the Dutch Republic in an attempt to eradicate them.
Although some Roma could be kept as slaves in Wallachia and Moldavia until abolition in 1856, the majority traveled as free nomads with their wagons, as alluded to in the spoked wheel symbol in the Romani flag. Elsewhere in Europe, they were subjected to ethnic cleansing, abduction of their children, and forced labour. In Britain, Roma were sometimes expelled from small communities or hanged; in France, they were branded, and their heads were shaved; in Moravia and Bohemia, the women were marked by their ears being severed. As a result, large groups of the Roma moved to the East, toward Poland, which was more tolerant, and Russia, where the Roma were treated more fairly as long as they paid the annual taxes.
Roma began emigrating to North America in colonial times, with small groups recorded in Virginia and French Louisiana. Larger-scale Roma emigration to the United States began in the 1860s, with Romanichal groups from Great Britain. The most significant number immigrated in the early 20th century, mainly from the Vlax group of Kalderash. Many Roma also settled in South America.
During World War II and the Holocaust, the Nazis committed a systematic genocide against the Roma. In the Romani language, this genocide is known as the Porajmos. Romanies were marked for extermination and sentenced to forced labor and imprisonment in concentration camps. They were often killed on sight, especially by the Einsatzgruppen (paramilitary death squads) on the Eastern Front. The total number of victims has been variously estimated at between 220,000 and 1,500,000.
The Roma were also persecuted in Nazi puppet states. In the Independent State of Croatia, the Ustaša killed almost the entire Romani population of 25,000. The concentration camp system of Jasenovac, run by the Ustaša militia and the Croat political police, was responsible for the deaths of between 15,000 and 20,000 Roma.
In Czechoslovakia, they were labeled a "socially degraded stratum", and Romani women were sterilized as part of a state policy to reduce their population. This policy was implemented with large financial incentives, with threats of denying future welfare payments, with misinformation, or after administering drugs.
An official inquiry from the Czech Republic, resulting in a report (December 2005), concluded that the Communist authorities had practised an assimilation policy towards Roma, which "included efforts by social services to control the birth rate in the Romani community. The problem of sexual sterilisation carried out in the Czech Republic, either with improper motivation or illegally, exists," said the Czech Public Defender of Rights, recommending state compensation for women affected between 1973 and 1991. New cases were revealed up until 2004, in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland "all have histories of coercive sterilization of minorities and other groups".
The traditional Romanies place a high value on the extended family. Traditionally, virginity is essential in unmarried women. However, Eastern European Roma are more likely to find it acceptable for girls to have sex before marriage compared to other Eastern Europeans. Both men and women usually marry young; there has been controversy in several countries over the Romani practice of child marriage. Romani law establishes that the man's family must pay a bride price to the bride's parents, but only traditional families still follow it.
Once married, the woman joins the husband's family, where her main job is to tend to her husband's and her children's needs and take care of her in-laws. The power structure in the traditional Romani household has at its top the oldest man or grandfather, and men, in general, have more authority than women. Women gain respect and power as they get older. Young wives begin gaining authority once they have children.
Traditionally, as can be seen on paintings and photos, some Romani men wear shoulder-length hair and a mustache, as well as an earring. Romani women generally have long hair, and Xoraxane Romani women often dye it blonde with henna.
Romani social behavior has traditionally been regulated by Indian social customs ("marime" or "marhime") which are still respected by most Roma (and by most older generations of Sinti). This regulation affects many aspects of life and is applied to actions, people and things: parts of the human body are considered impure, the genital organs (because they produce emissions) and the rest of the lower body. Clothes for the lower body, as well as the clothes of menstruating women, are washed separately. Items used for eating are also washed in a different place. Childbirth is considered impure and must occur outside the dwelling place. The mother is deemed to be impure for forty days after giving birth.
Death is considered impure, and affects the whole family of the dead, who remain impure for a period of time. In contrast to the practice of cremating the dead, Romani dead must be buried. Cremation and burial are both known from the time of the Rigveda, and both are widely practiced in Hinduism today (the general tendency is for Hindus to practice cremation, though some communities in modern-day south India tend to bury their dead). Animals that are considered to be having unclean habits are not eaten by the community.
There are records of Romani women practicing fortune-telling dating back centuries, using techniques such as palm-reading. It often served as a means of income, and was typically passed from mother to daughter. In 1747 and later again in 1824, palm-reading was made illegal in Britain, which lead to it becoming a covert practice. Romani fortune tellers were traditionally known as drabardi. While it was practiced as a trade aimed at non-Romani, it was virtually never practiced amongst Romani themselves. However, the notion that Romani people have psychic powers and that Romani women are fortune-tellers also functions as a harmful stereotype sometimes still present to this day.
In Romani philosophy, Romanipen (also romanypen, romanipe, romanype, romanimos, romaimos, romaniya) is the totality of the Romani spirit, Romani culture, Romani Law, being a Romani, a set of Romani strains.
An ethnic Rom is considered a gadjo in Romani society if they have no Romanipen. Sometimes a non-Rom may be considered a Rom if they do have Romanipen. Usually this is an adopted child. It has been hypothesized that this owes more to a framework of culture than a simple adherence to historically received rules.
Most Roma are Christian, but many are Muslims; some retained their ancient faith of Hinduism from their original homeland of India, while others have their own religion and political organization. In parts of Southeast Europe, particularly in Bulgaria, some Roma who are Muslim identify as ethnic Turks, and over generations have adopted the Turkish language. Theravada Buddhism influenced by the Dalit Buddhist movement have become popular in recent times among Hungarian Roma.
Some Roma practice witchcraft.
The modern-day Roma often adopted Christianity or Islam depending on which was the dominant religion in the regions through which they had migrated. It is likely that the adherence to differing religions prevented families from engaging in intermarriage. In Eastern Europe, most Roma are Orthodox Christians, Muslims or Catholics. In Bulgaria, Greece, Moldova, Romania and Serbia, the majority of Romani inhabitants are Orthodox Christians. In Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Kosovo, the majority are Muslims. In Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia, the majority are Catholics. In Western Europe, the majority of Romani inhabitants are Catholic or Protestant. In Crimea and Middle Eastern countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Iraq and Iran, the majority of Romani inhabitants are Muslim. In the United States, the majority of Romani inhabitants adhere to some branch of Christianity.
Blessed Ceferino Giménez Malla is recently considered a patron saint of the Roma in Roman Catholicism. Saint Sarah, or Sara e Kali, has also been venerated as a patron saint in her shrine at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France. Since the turn of the 21st century, Sara e Kali is understood to have been Kali, an Indian deity brought from India by the refugee ancestors of the Roma; as the Roma became Christianized, she was absorbed in a syncretic way and venerated as a saint.
Saint Sarah is now increasingly being considered as "a Romani Goddess, the Protectress of the Roma" and an "indisputable link with Mother India".
For the Romani communities that have resided in Southeast Europe for numerous centuries, the following apply with regard to religious beliefs:
In Ukraine and Russia, the Romani populations are Christian and Muslim. Their ancestors settled on the Crimean peninsula during the 17th and 18th centuries, but some migrated to Ukraine, southern Russia and the Povolzhie (along the Volga River). These communities are recognized for their staunch preservation of the Romani language and identity.
In the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, Romani populations are Roman Catholic, many times adopting and following local, cultural Catholicism as a syncretic system of belief that incorporates distinct Roma beliefs and cultural aspects. For example, many Polish Roma delay their Church wedding due to the belief that sacramental marriage is accompanied by divine ratification, creating a virtually indissoluble union until the couple consummate, after which the sacramental marriage is dissoluble only by the death of a spouse. Therefore, for Polish Roma, once married, one can't ever divorce. Another aspect of Polish Roma's Catholicism is a tradition of pilgrimage to the Jasna Góra Monastery.
In southern Spain, many Romanies are Pentecostal, but this is a small minority that has emerged in contemporary times. The majority of the Romani people in France are Catholic or Protestant (mostly Pentecostal).
Romani music plays an important role in central and eastern European countries such as Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, and the style and performance practices of Romani musicians have influenced European classical composers such as Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms. The lăutari who perform at traditional Romanian weddings are virtually all Romani.
Probably the most internationally prominent contemporary performers in the lăutari tradition are Taraful Haiducilor. Bulgaria's popular "wedding music", too, is almost exclusively performed by Romani musicians such as Ivo Papasov, a virtuoso clarinetist closely associated with this genre and Bulgarian pop-folk singer Azis.
Many famous classical musicians, such as the Hungarian pianist Georges Cziffra, are Romani, as are many prominent performers of manele. Zdob și Zdub, one of the most prominent rock bands in Moldova, although not Romanies themselves, draw heavily on Romani music, as do Spitalul de Urgență in Romania, Shantel in Germany, Goran Bregović in Serbia, Darko Rundek in Croatia, Beirut and Gogol Bordello in the United States.
Another tradition of Romani music is the genre of the Romani brass band, with such notable practitioners as Boban Marković of Serbia, and the brass lăutari groups Fanfare Ciocărlia and Fanfare din Cozmesti of Romania.
The distinctive sound of Romani music has also strongly influenced bolero, jazz, and flamenco (especially cante jondo) in Spain.
Dances such as the flamenco and bolero of Spain were influenced by the Roma. Antonio Cansino blended Romani and Spanish flamenco and is credited with creating modern-day Spanish dance. The Dancing Cansinos popularized flamenco and bolero dancing in the United States. Famous dancer and actress, Rita Hayworth, is the granddaughter of Antonio Cansino.
European-style gypsy jazz ("jazz Manouche" or "Sinti jazz") is still widely practiced among the original creators (the Romanie People); one who acknowledged this artistic debt was guitarist Django Reinhardt. Contemporary artists in this tradition known internationally include Stochelo Rosenberg, Biréli Lagrène, Jimmy Rosenberg, Paulus Schäfer and Tchavolo Schmitt.
The Roma in Turkey have achieved musical acclaim from national and local audiences. Local performers usually perform for special holidays. Their music is usually performed on instruments such as the darbuka, gırnata and cümbüş.
Paramichia is a term used to refer to Romani legends and folktales. A popular legend among the Vlach Roma is of the hero Mundro Salamon, also known by other Roma subgroups as Wise Solomon or O Godjiaver Yanko.
Some Roma believe in the mulo or mullo, meaning "one who is dead"; the Romani version of the vampire. The Roma from Slavic countries believe in werewolves. Roma figure prominently in the 1941 film The Wolf Man and the 2010 remake.
The Roma believe that some foods are auspicious, or lucky (baxtalo), such as foods with pungent tastes like garlic, lemon, tomato, and peppers, and fermented foods such as sauerkraut, pickles and sour cream. Hedgehogs are a delicacy among some Roma.
Romani contemporary art emerged at the climax of the process that began in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, when the interpretation of the cultural practice of minorities was enabled by a paradigm shift, commonly referred to in specialist literature as the "cultural turn". The idea of the cultural turn was introduced; and this was also the time when the notion of cultural democracy became crystallized in the debates carried on at various public forums. Civil society gained strength, and civil politics appeared, which is a prerequisite for cultural democracy. This shift of attitude in scholarly circles derived from concerns specific not only to ethnicity but also to society, gender and class.
Most Roma speak one of several dialects of the Romani language, an Indo-Aryan language, with roots in Sanskrit. They also often speak the languages of the countries they live in. Typically, they also incorporate loanwords and calques into Romani from the languages of those countries and especially words for terms that the Romani language does not have. Most of the Ciganos of Portugal, the Gitanos of Spain, the Romanichal of Great Britain, and the Romanisael of Sweden and Norway have lost their knowledge of pure Romani, and speak the mixed languages Caló, Angloromani and Scandoromani, respectively. Most of the Romani language-speaking communities in these regions consist of later immigrants from eastern or central Europe.
There are no concrete statistics for the number of Romani speakers, both in Europe and globally. However, a conservative estimate is 3.5 million speakers in Europe and a further 500,000 elsewhere, though the actual number may be considerably higher. This makes Romani the second-largest minority language in Europe, behind Catalan.
In regards to the diversity of dialects, Romani works in the same way as most other European languages. Cross-dialect communication is dominated by the following features:
One of the most enduring persecutions against the Roma was their enslavement. Slavery was widely practiced in medieval Europe, including the territory of present-day Romania from before the founding of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in the 13th–14th centuries. Legislation decreed that all the Roma living in these states, as well as any others who immigrated there, were classified as slaves. Slavery was gradually abolished during the 1840s and 1850s.
The exact origins of slavery in the Danubian Principalities are not known. There is some debate over whether the Roma came to Wallachia and Moldavia as free people or were brought there as slaves. Historian Nicolae Iorga associated the Roma's arrival with the 1241 Mongol invasion of Europe and he also considered their enslavement a vestige of that era, in which the Romanians took the Roma from the Mongols and preserved their status as slaves so they could use their labor. Other historians believe that the Roma were enslaved while they were being captured during the battles with the Tatars. The practice of enslaving prisoners of war may have also been adopted from the Mongols.
Some Roma may have been slaves of the Mongols or the Tatars, or they may have served as auxiliary troops in the Mongol or Tatar armies. However, most of them migrated from south of the Danube at the end of the 14th century, some time after the founding of Wallachia. By then, the institution of slavery was already established in Moldavia and it was possibly established in both principalities. After the Roma migrated into the area, slavery became a widespread practice among the majority of the population. The Tatar slaves, smaller in numbers, were eventually merged into the Romani population.
Some branches of the Roma reached western Europe in the 15th century, fleeing from the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans as refugees. Although the Roma were refugees from the conflicts in southeastern Europe, they were often suspected of being associated with the Ottoman invasion by certain populations in the West because their physical appearance was exotic. (The Imperial Diet at Landau and Freiburg in 1496–1498 declared that the Roma were spies for the Turks). In western Europe, such suspicions and discrimination against people who constituted a visible minority resulted in persecution, often violent, with attempts to commit ethnic cleansing until the modern era. In times of social tension, the Romani suffered as scapegoats; for instance, they were accused of bringing the plague during times of epidemics.
On 30 July 1749, Spain conducted The Great Roundup of Roma (Gitanos) in its territory. The Spanish Crown ordered a nationwide raid that led to the break-up of families because all able-bodied men were interned in forced labor camps in an attempt to commit ethnic cleansing. The measure was eventually reversed and the Roma were freed as protests began to erupt in different communities, sedentary Roma were highly esteemed and protected in rural Spain.
Later in the 19th century, Romani immigration was forbidden on a racial basis in areas outside Europe, mostly in the English-speaking world. In 1880, Argentina prohibited immigration by Roma, as did the United States in 1885.
In the Habsburg monarchy under Maria Theresa (1740–1780), a series of decrees tried to integrate the Romanies to get them to permanently settle, removed their rights to horse and wagon ownership (1754) to reduce citizen-mobility, renamed them "New Citizens" and obliged Romani boys into military service just as any other citizens were if they had no trade (1761, and Revision 1770), required them to register with the local authorities (1767), and another decree prohibited marriages between Romanies (1773) to integrate them into the local population. Her successor Josef II prohibited the wearing of traditional Romani clothing along with the use of the Romani language, both of which were punishable by flogging. During this time, the schools were obliged to register and integrate Romani children; this policy was the first of the modern policies of integration. In Spain, attempts to assimilate the Gitanos were under way as early as 1619, when the Gitanos were forcibly settled, the use of the Romani language was prohibited, Gitano men and women were sent to separate workhouses and their children were sent to orphanages. King Charles III took a more progressive approach to Gitano assimilation, proclaiming that they had the same rights as Spanish citizens and ending the official denigration of them which was based on their race. While he prohibited their nomadic lifestyle, their use of the Calo language, the manufacture and wearing of Romani clothing, their trade in horses and other itinerant trades, he also forbade any form of discrimination against them and he also forbade the guilds from barring them. The use of the word gitano was also forbidden to further their assimilation, it was replaced with "New Castilian", a designation which was also applied to former Jews and Muslims.
Most historians believe that Charles III's pragmática failed for three main reasons, reasons which were ultimately derived from its implementation outside major cities as well as in marginal areas: The difficulty which the Gitano community faced in changing its nomadic lifestyle, the marginal lifestyle to which the community had been driven by society and the serious difficulties of applying the pragmática in the fields of education and work. One author ascribes its failure to the overall rejection of the integration of the Gitanos by the wider population.
Other policies of forced assimilation were implemented in other countries, one of these countries was Norway, where a law which permitted the state to remove children from their parents and place them in state institutions was passed in 1896. This resulted in some 1,500 Romani children being taken from their parents in the 20th century.
During World War II and the Holocaust, the persecution of the Roma reached a peak during the Romani Holocaust (the Porajmos), the genocide which was perpetrated against them by Nazi Germany. In 1935, Roma living in Germany were stripped of citizenship by the Nuremberg laws and subsequently subjected to violence and imprisonment in concentration camps. During the war, the policy was extended to areas under German occupation, and it was also implemented by other axis countries, most notably, by the Independent State of Croatia, Romania, and Hungary. From 1942, Roma were subjected to genocide in extermination camps.
Because no accurate pre-war census figures exist for the Roma, the actual number of Romani victims who were killed in the Romani Holocaust cannot be assessed. Estimates range from 90,000 victims to as high as 4,000,000, with a majority falling between 200,000 and 500,000. Lower estimates do not include those Roma who were killed in all Axis-controlled countries. A detailed study by Sybil Milton, a former senior historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, contained an estimate of at least 220,000, possibly as many as 500,000. Ian Hancock, Director of the Program of Romani Studies and the Romani Archives and Documentation Center at the University of Texas at Austin, argues in favour of a higher figure of between 500,000 and 1,500,000.
In Europe, Roma are associated with poverty, high crime rates, and behavior that is considered antisocial or inappropriate by the rest of the European population. Partly for this reason, discrimination against the Roma has continued to be practiced to the present day, although efforts are being made to address it.
Amnesty International reports continued to document instances of Antizigan discrimination during the late 20th century, particularly in Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Kosovo. The European Union has recognized that discrimination against Roma must be addressed, and with the national Roma integration strategy they encourage member states to work towards greater Romani inclusion and upholding the rights of the Roma in the European Union.
In eastern Europe, Romani children often attend Roma Special Schools, separate from non-Romani children; these schools tend to offer a lower quality of education than the traditional education options accessible by non-Romani children, putting the Romani children at an educational disadvantage.
The Roma of Kosovo have been severely persecuted by ethnic Albanians since the end of the Kosovo War, and for the most part, the region's Romani community has been annihilated.
Czechoslovakia carried out a policy of sterilization of Romani women, starting in 1973. The dissidents of the Charter 77 denounced it in 1977–78 as a genocide, but the practice continued through the Velvet Revolution of 1989. A 2005 report by the Czech Republic's independent ombudsman, Otakar Motejl, identified dozens of cases of coercive sterilization between 1979 and 2001, and called for criminal investigations and possible prosecution against several health care workers and administrators.
In 2008, following the rape and subsequent murder of an Italian woman in Rome at the hands of a young man from a local Romani encampment, the Italian government declared that Italy's Romani population represented a national security risk and it also declared that it was required to take swift action to address the emergenza nomadi (nomad emergency). Specifically, officials in the Italian government accused the Romanies of being responsible for rising crime rates in urban areas.
The 2008 deaths of Cristina and Violetta Djeordsevic, two Romani children who drowned while Italian beach-goers remained unperturbed, brought international attention to the relationship between Italians and Roma. Reviewing the situation in 2012, one Belgian magazine observed:
The 2016 Pew Research poll found that Italians, in particular, hold strong anti-Roma views, with 82% of Italians expressing negative opinions about Roma. In Greece, 67%, in Hungary 64%, in France 61%, in Spain 49%, in Poland 47%, in the UK 45%, in Sweden 42%, in Germany 40%, and in the Netherlands 37% had an unfavourable view of Roma. The 2019 Pew Research poll found that 83% of Italians, 76% of Slovaks, 72% of Greeks, 68% of Bulgarians, 66% of Czechs, 61% of Lithuanians, 61% of Hungarians, 54% of Ukrainians, 52% of Russians, 51% of Poles, 44% of French, 40% of Spaniards, and 37% of Germans held unfavorable views of Roma. IRES published in 2020 a survey which revealed that 72% of Romanians have a negative opinion about them.
As of 2019, reports of anti-Roma incidents are increasing across Europe. Discrimination against Roma remains widespread in Kosovo, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic, against which the European Court of Human Rights has ruled in Romani advocates' favor on the subject of discriminatory and segregationist education and housing practices. Romani communities across Ukraine have been the target of violent attacks.
Roma refugees fleeing the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine have faced discrimination in Europe, including in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Moldova.
Concerning employment, a 2019 report by the FRA revealed that, across the European states that were surveyed, on average 34% of Romani men and 16% of Romani women were in paid work.
In the summer of 2010, French authorities demolished at least 51 Roma camps and began the process of repatriating their residents to their countries of origin. This followed tensions between the French state and Romani communities, which had been heightened after a traveller drove through a French police checkpoint, hit an officer, attempted to hit two more officers, and was then shot and killed by the police. In retaliation a group of Roma, armed with hatchets and iron bars, attacked the police station of Saint-Aignan, toppled traffic lights and road signs and burned three cars. The French government has been accused of perpetrating these actions to pursue its political agenda. EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding stated that the European Commission should take legal action against France over the issue, calling the deportations "a disgrace". A leaked file dated 5 August, sent from the Interior Ministry to regional police chiefs, included the instruction: "Three hundred camps or illegal settlements must be cleared within three months, Roma camps are a priority."
Some Romani people have been known to assimilate en masse with and even be absorbed by other ethnic groups. Assimilated Romani people often keep their identity a secret from outsiders, so it is very hard to determine the extent to which Romani peoples voluntarily assimilate into Gadjo society.
The most notable case of large-scale Romani assimilation is of the Romani Crimean Tatars. Several independent waves of Romani people undertook complete or near-complete assimilation into the Crimean Tatar people. Romani Crimean Tatars are the fourth largest subethnic group of the Crimean Tatar nation. For centuries, the Crimean Roma have been honest workers who contributed to the Crimean economy as artisans, musicians, entertainers, and in a variety of blue-collar professions such as porters and blacksmiths. Almost all Romani Crimean Tatars living in Crimea today are legally Gadjo because they are recorded as ethnic Crimean Tatars, not Gypsies, in their internal passports and national censuses and consider their Crimean Tatar identity to be their primary identity. Mixed marriages between Romani Crimean Tatars and other Crimean Tatars without Romani backgrounds are accepted by the Crimean Roma. Many prominent Crimean Tatar celebrities are of Romani descent, such as Enver Sherfedinov and Sabriye Erecepova. Historian Olga Kucherenko postulates that while Crimean Tatars were in exile, additional Romani people of non-Crimean origin were also absorbed into the Romani Crimean Tatars.
In Basque Country, the Erromintxela people are assimilated descendants of a 15th-century wave of Kalderash Roma, who entered the Basque Country via France. Both ethnically, linguistically, and culturally, they are distinct from the Caló-speaking Romani people in Spain and the Cascarot Romani people of the Northern Basque Country. Over time the Erromintxela replaced many of their Romani customs with Gadjo Basque customs. Their Erromintxela language is a mixture of Basque and the Romani languages, but there are very few speakers left due to assimilation. The younger generation of Erromintxela Roma are overwhelmingly shifting away from their Erromintxela language in favor of the Basque and Spanish languages.
In the United States, there are an estimated one million Americans who are of Romani descent, although most are not open about their background and keep a low profile. Most Americans know very little about Romani people, so they face less discrimination in the US than Europe, although they can still be victims of anti-Romani racism. Prominent Americans of Romani descent include Charlie Chaplin and President Bill Clinton.
Many depictions of the Roma in literature and art present romanticized narratives of the mystical powers of fortune telling or as people who have an irascible or passionate temper paired with an indomitable love of freedom and a habit of criminality. The Roma were a popular subject in Venetian painting from the time of Giorgione at the start of the 16th century. The inclusion of such a figure adds an exotic oriental flavor to scenes. A Venetian Renaissance painting by Paris Bordone (c. 1530, Strasbourg) of the Holy Family in Egypt makes Elizabeth a Romani fortune-teller; the scene is otherwise located in a distinctly European landscape.