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    Formal Combats in the Fourteenth Century
    Formal Combats in the Fourteenth Century
    Formal Combats in the Fourteenth Century
    Ebook70 pages1 hour

    Formal Combats in the Fourteenth Century

    By Steven Muhlberger

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    About this ebook

    Formal Combats in the Fourteenth Century presents the lifetime of scholarship by respected professor Steven Muhlberger in an accessible format that will engage both scholars and amateur enthusiasts alike. Adapted from various scholarly addresses over Muhlberger's career, each chapter represents a different element of formal combat. Muhlberger presents formal combats as neither senseless violence, nor stylized maneuvering, but rather as controlled violence with deep personal and political implications. He examines formal combats both among nobles and non-nobles, questioning what these deeds meant practically, culturally, and morally.

    Part 1: Non-noble Deeds of Arms in the Late Middle Ages
    Part 2: Chivalric Deeds of Arms As Politics
    Part 3: The Moral Calculations Behind Medieval Deeds of Arms

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWitan Publishing
    Release dateAug 15, 2013
    ISBN9781386892526
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      Book preview

      Formal Combats in the Fourteenth Century - Steven Muhlberger

      Acknowledgements

      I am sure that I speak for many scholars and teachers when I say that a historical subject only comes to life when living people discuss and argue and think about it together. Thus I am particularly indebted to the organizers of the events at the Royal Ontario Museum and the International Congress of Medieval Studies where I first spoke on these subjects, and to the audiences on those occasions, who made those occasions worthwhile.

      My thanks, too, to Witan Publishing for bringing this material to a whole new audience.

      Table of Contents

      Acknowledgements

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Chapter 1: Non-Noble Deeds of Arms in the Late Middle Ages

      Chapter 2: Chivalric Deeds of Arms As Politics

      Chapter 3: The Moral Calculations Behind Medieval Deeds of Arms

      Endnotes

      For Further Reading

      About the Author

      Introduction

      Richard Scott Nokes, Troy University

      The phrase senseless violence has become so cliché that a search of the phrase online yields hundreds of thousands of hits, yet violence is rarely truly senseless – it always has a context to it, one that led to acts that are paradoxically both extreme and commonplace. We speak of senseless violence to avoid thinking too deeply about it, to hide our own violent impulses behind a veil of ignorance. Perhaps we imagine if we pretend not to understand violence, others will not see the potential for violence within us.

      Formal deeds of arms contradict the conceit that violence is senseless, and in this book Steven Muhlberger, retired Professor of History at Nipissing University, examines the sense behind a type of violence short of all-out war, wherein the participants are often very aware of the ramifications of violence. Such deeds of arms have meaning in both the personal and political, often with deeper implications of which the participants themselves may have been unaware.

      Formal Combats in the Fourteenth Century contains three public lectures that reflect years of Professor Muhlberger's thought on the issue, slightly modified from their original oral format to a more readerly format, yet still maintaining a sense of his breezy style that presents complex ideas in a way that is accessible to both scholar and layman alike. With a half-dozen books on the subject, as well as dozens of articles, book reviews, and scholarly presentations, Professor Muhlberger is a major scholar whose opinion merits notice. By presenting these lectures in this way, he has preserved important thought for other thinkers.

      Aside from his traditional scholarship, Professor Muhlberger has the richness of years of blogging on the subject at his well-regarded site Muhlberger's World History (http://smuhlberger.blogspot.com/), as well as his long membership in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), a medieval re-creation society, in which he himself has participated in countless formal deeds of arms. As a public intellectual, Muhlberger brings both practical knowledge and traditional scholarship – a rare and precious combination.

      Formal Combats in the Fourteenth Century might at first glance seem to be about a very narrow topic, yet in the end it is a study of the broader human experience. Professor Steven Muhlberger's insights help us to understand both the particulars of formal deeds of arms at one historic moment, and also the broader meaning of controlled violence regardless of century. This book is a valuable contribution to scholars of history, as well as anyone interested in medieval combat.

      Non-noble deeds of arms in the Late Middle Ages[1]

      This essay discusses a phenomenon found in every good introduction to the medieval tournament. I have not a single new fact to offer. Rather it explains how my research into formal combats – what I like to call formal deeds of arms – has changed my view of the significance of deeds of arms staged and participated in by non-nobles in the High and Later Middle Ages. I hope to show how this new perspective on non-noble deeds of arms may lead, if others find it useful, to a reconsideration of all deeds of arms and their place in medieval society.

      First let me define formal deeds of arms. Deeds of arms without the prefixed word formal simply comes from the common medieval phrase faits d'armes, indicating all the combative activities of men of arms, including those we call war and those we do not.[2] Formal deeds of arms(formal deeds or deeds for short) is my own coinage and designates those activities that were not war. There were different sorts of formal deeds but they had some essential similarities. They were all distinguished from all-out battle or warfare by the setting of limits on the violence. Formal deeds of arms could be very dangerous, even deadly, and sometimes were intentionally so. But all formal deeds of arms took part under the terms of an explicit agreement which limited the number of people who took part in the fighting, the weapons to be used, the number of blows to be struck or set other conditions. Some deeds were friendly, others expressed a real hostility; all, however, had a ceremonial or ritual character, and all were regulated to some extent.

      In many books we can read about non-nobles watching, financing and even participating in formal deeds of arms of one sort or another, but the scholarly attention soon drifts away

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