How Charny uses the term "honor" in his Book of Chivalry

An excerpt from something I am tinkering with:

Charny most often uses the term to mean "military achievement that leads to higher status or reputation," or occasionally "military effectiveness." Recall that Charny's three books all treat the life of arms as an ascent from the least difficult to the more difficult, and in his most developed presentation of this argument in the Book of Chivalry, he shows the life of arms as an ascent from one type of honor or honorable achievement to greater honor associated with more difficult challenges:

When God by his grace grants [aspirant men-at-arms] frequent success in jousting, they enjoy it, and their desire to bear arms increases. Then after jousting, they learn about the practice of arms in tournaments, and it becomes apparent to them and they recognize that tournaments bring greater honor than jousting for those who perform well there. Then they set out to bear arms in tournaments as often as they can. ..Their knowledge increases until they see and recognize that the men-at-arms who are good in war are more highly prized and honored than any other men-at-arms. It therefore seems to them from their own observation that they should immediately take up the practice of arms in war and in order to achieve the highest honor in prowess, for they cannot attain this by any other form of armed combat.¹

In that passage we see honor as, first, something that is given to worthy men-at-arms by those who recognize their worth, second, as something which is gained by those who strive for it, and third, as something that derives ultimately from God. Honor can also refer to military effectiveness, or the success that comes in warfare to those who "learn the true way to practice the military arms until they, on every occasion, know how to strive towards the most honorable course of action, whether in relation to deeds of arms in relation to other forms of behavior appropriate to their rank."² All of these usages of honor have a close direct connection to skill, courage and success in combat, and it is such usages that dominate the Book of Chivalry.

1 BoC, 101-3.

2 Ibid., 101.

Two historical traps to avoid

This is mainly relevant for my students in this year's Chivalry and War seminar, HIST 4505.  But you never know who might be reading.  As they prepare for a term test/essay I will warn my students about these traps to avoid:

• Thinking too much about “the code of chivalry” and what it said. Concentrate on what your [actual medieval] sources say.
• Calling something “chivalry” based just on your general feelings or modern usage.

Ah, that elusive code of chivalry.  Just can't seem to avoid its ghostly influence...

Image:  It's the Code of Chivalry, of course!  What did you think?

You can own the "Rochefoucauld Grail," a 14th-century manuscript of medieval romances...

...if you are very, very rich.  (Most mss. of this age and quality are in national or university libraries and are not for sale at any price.)

What's so special about it?   Here are some images borrowed from the Booktryst blog, who borrowed them from Sotheby's, to whom great thanks and good luck in raising the asking price at auction:

Royal quality, says the expert at Sotheby's.  You bet.

Egypt and Israel/Palestine from space

Thanks to NASA, Juan Cole and Amity Law for bringing this to my attention.  Click on the pic for a better view.

More good reading from Phil Paine: "identity," slavery, and genocide

The misuse of identity:

...I tend to get most on my high horse when I feel that some stu­pid or wicked notion is being smug­gled into our sub­con­scious by a turn of phrase or an implied definition.

This is exactly the case with the cur­rently accepted use of the word iden­tity. You see this word used all the time, and phrases like “iden­tity pol­i­tics” are assumed to have an eas­ily rec­og­niz­able mean­ing. I’ve just been read­ing a spate of archae­o­log­i­cal papers which rou­tinely refer to “iden­tity” inter­change­ably with eth­nic­ity. These papers, from a vari­ety of aca­d­e­mics, con­stantly repeat phrases like “nego­ti­at­ing their iden­tity” — inane jar­gon which the field has bor­rowed from soci­ol­ogy, and which is now firmly entrenched. Archae­ol­ogy is impov­er­ished by this kind of rub­bish, and drifts away from sci­en­tific rigour.

When some­one casu­ally refers to reli­gious affil­i­a­tion, or to eth­nic­ity, or nation­al­ity, or gen­der, as being their “iden­tity,” there is an implicit assump­tion that mem­ber­ship in large, for­mally defined or orga­nized groups of peo­ple is the essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tic of an “identity.”

Now, I find this a pro­foundly wrong, and extremely offen­sive assump­tion. Your iden­tity, as far as I’m con­cerned, and as I’ve believed through­out my life, is that which makes you uniquely your­self. My “iden­tity” is com­posed of those things which refer to me and only me, expe­ri­ences that occured to me alone, pas­sions and ambi­tions that are mine, pri­vate sym­bols that only I under­stand, inner expe­ri­ences that belong only to me. These unique, indi­vid­ual char­ac­ter­is­tics form, all together, my Iden­tity. No char­ac­ter­is­tic that I share with some arbi­trary group of other human beings, or that is demanded of me by some col­lec­tive mush, or imposed on me by some pro­claimed Author­ity, can con­sti­tute my iden­tity. Cer­tainly no group that I am merely asso­ci­ated with by acci­dent of birth can ever be my iden­tity. I find the idea that any­one would con­sider their iden­tity to be, say, Nor­we­gianess, or their skin colour, a pro­foundly dis­gust­ing notion. It is to aban­don indi­vid­u­al­ity entirely, to crush and erase iden­tity, not to describe it.

This is a par­tic­u­larly creepy kind of creep­ing col­lec­tivism. The mean­ing of the word iden­tity has been dis­torted, per­verted, inverted. I don’t believe such things are ran­dom acci­dents. There are always pow­er­ful forces that seek to oblit­er­ate respect for, and recog­ni­tion of, the indi­vid­ual human being. If you can pur­suade peo­ple that their “iden­tity” is noth­ing more than their mem­ber­ship in a col­lec­tive blob, that there is noth­ing specif­i­cally notable or sig­nif­i­cant about them­selves, then half the work of enslave­ment has been accom­plished.

Amartya Sen has made a similar point in a recent book Identity and Violence, but his point was that reducing people to a single group identity led not just to enslavement, but genocide.

Similarly, this, from Chimamanda Adichie:



Update: Guy Halsall, anxious to elbow his way into this august company of great minds, recommends that anyone interested in this topic read his book Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376 - 568, especially chapters 2 and 14; I would add that you might also want to be interested in barbarian migrations and "the fall of the Roman Empire." Seriously, though, I read Guy's book last month and it is quite fine, and the theme of multiple identities (as opposed to singular, essentialist ones) is surely there. This is not quite what Phil was talking about, but it is interesting and advances the historical debate on the "transformation" of Rome.

New book on jousting -- already out of stock!

Ever since I started actively researching chivalry and formal deeds of arms (jousts, tournaments, duels, and challenges), I have been aware of Noel Fallows' work on Iberian chivalry.  He's the go-to guy in the English language and the articles I've read are very thorough.

Now he's put together a monster book including 200 illustrations and the texts and translations of three late medieval/early modern treatises to create what will probably be, for a long time, the definitive work on the subject of jousting in a part of Europe often overlooked by people who don't live there.

If you are a jousting fan, don't tell me that this publisher's description doesn't make your mouth water:

It focuses on three jousting manuals, written by practising champions at the time: Ponç de Menaguerra's Lo Cavaller (`The Knight', 1493); Juan Quijada de Reayo's Doctrina del arte de la cavalleria (`Doctrine of the Art of Chivalry', 1548); and Luis Zapata's Del Justador (`On the Jouster', c.1589-93). As well as editions, with the first English translation, of these important texts, it includes introductions and an analytical study; there are also chapters on the arms and armour of the joust. Nearly 200 colour and black-and-white illustrations, many never previously published, illuminate the sometimes complex technical terminology of these authors, and provide further evidence of how weapons and armour were actually used.

There's just one problem, a temporary one I  hope:  the book, published this month, seems to be out of stock already!  (You can back order.)  Somebody thought the book would sell, but not this fast.

Hats off to Professor Fallows and Boydell and Brewer.

Phil Paine on Walter Scott

I've been known to talk up Walter Scott. Phil does it better.

Bush's errors, from Foreign Policy -- two worth noting

Foreign Policy  is currently featuring a response by Stephen M. Walt to George W. Bush's self-justifying book on his presidency. 

The FP piece is appropriately subtitled "Don't fall for the nostalgia -- George W. Bush's foreign policy really was that bad." (John Ibbitson, that means you!) Even if you read the news closely from 2000-8, it's worth a look at this list of appalling and criminal actions; all the more so if you avoided the news in that period.

Two items on this list really stick out -- they remind us that domestic policies and inaction by Bush and his gang have undermined American strength in the foreign policy sphere, maybe permanently. This point cannot be repeated too often, though American "leaders" show little awareness and interest. Here are those items, with my emphasis:

11. Hurricane Katrina. It takes a truly spectacular domestic-policy blunder to register as a foreign-policy screw-up, too. Yet Bush's bungled response to Hurricane Katrina was exactly that. Observers around the world saw this debacle as both a demonstration of waning U.S. competence and a revealing indicator of continued racial inequality, if not outright injustice. (You know you've screwed up when you get offers of relief aid from Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.) Because America's "soft power" depends on other states believing that we know what we are doing and that we stand for laudable ideals, the disaster in New Orleans was yet another self-inflicted blow to America's global image. If the United States cannot take good care of its own citizens, why should anyone think we can "nation-build" in some distant foreign land?


14. The Crash Heard 'Round the World. By lowering taxes while waging costly wars, Bush produced near-record fiscal deficits and a mountain of foreign debt. At the same time, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's easy money policy encouraged a vast real estate bubble that eventually collapsed in 2008. Bush's economic team also paid little attention to regulating Wall Street, thereby facilitating the reckless behavior that produced a major financial collapse in 2008. The resulting meltdown cost Americans trillions of dollars and millions of jobs, and the aftermath will affect U.S. economic prospects for many years to come.

Although Bush does not deserve all the blame for causing the greatest recession since the 1930s, he was in charge when it happened and his actions contributed significantly to the debacle. And because international influence ultimately rests upon a state's economic strength, the damage wrought by this economic crisis may be Bush's most enduring foreign-policy legacy.

The Secret History of Democracy -- coming in February 2011

A year or so ago, two Australian scholars, Benjamin Isakhan and Stephen Stockwell, approached me to contribute an article on ancient Indian democracy to a book called the Secret History of Democracy. I jumped at the chance. Now they have just written me and other contributors to tell us that the book will out from Palgrave in February of next year. The book is now listed at Amazon.uk, where is described thus:

The Secret History of Democracy explores the intriguing thesis that there is a lot more democracy in human history than historians generally admit, and presents some surprising evidence for this case. The idea that democracy could have a 'secret' history might at first seem strange. Indeed, the history of democracy has become so standardized, is so familiar and appears so complete that it is hard to believe it could hold any secrets. The central argument of this book is that there is much more to the history of democracy than this foreshortened genealogy admits. There is a whole 'secret' history, too big, complex and insufficiently 'Western' in character to be included in the standard narrative. Against the assertion that new democracies have no democratic heritage, the contributors to this volume establish that democracy was developing in the Middle East, India and China before classical Athens, clung on during the 'Dark Ages' in Islam, Iceland and Venice, was often part of tribal life in Africa, North America and Australia and is developing today in unexpected ways through grassroots activism. This book is a timely collection of essays that make a substantial contribution to the emerging debate about the history of democracy and set the tone for future discussion and research.

I have written about this subject before, so faithful readers  will find few surprises in my article. (I am, however, overjoyed to have it in print in such a collection.) But I will point out that something quite new by Phil Paine on Métis institutions will be in the book, too, and this you haven't seen.

"No ethnic cleansing without poetry."

Slavoj Zizek, philosopher, on Al-Jazeera English.  This man knows a thing or two.

Brad DeLong reprints one of his better short posts...

...and asks us to count our blessings:

November 12, 2004:

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog: Let Us Give Thanks (Wacht am Rhein Department): Daniel Drezner writes:

danieldrezner.com :: Daniel W. Drezner :: The dogs that don't bark in international relations: Newspapers, media outlets -- and, because we feed off them, blogs -- tend to focus on the violent hot spots in international affairs. This is entirely appropriate -- but occasionally, it's worth stepping back and remembering that there are parts of the globe where everyone has expected and predicted things to go "BOOM!" -- and yet, in fact, conditions have improved.

Yes. Let us give thanks that the most brutal and blood-soaked border in the world is quiet--a border inhabited on both sides by those bloodthirsty peoples who have been numbers one and two in terms of the most effective killers of foreigners for centuries.
Who am I talking about? The Germans and the French, of course
It is now 59 years and 9 months 65 years and 9 months since an army crossed the Rhine River bearing fire and sword. This is the longest period of peace on the Rhine since the second century B.C.E., before the Cimbri and the Teutones appeared to challenge the armies of the consul Gaius Marius in the Rhone Valley.

 I have to wonder, though, if that "longest period of peace" observation would really hold up.

Image:  anyone got some anti-French propaganda?

The cost of failure in Afghanistan

A series from good old McClatchy.

And while we consider Canada's "role" in Afghanistan...

...TomDispatch.com puts the war in a bigger context, that of gigantic US embassies in Baghdad, Kabul, and Islamabad.

Image:  The Baghdad embassy in late 2007.

The Sack of Rome, AD 410: what do historians and archaeologists think now?

Some of them got together in Rome earlier this month to talk about the subject.  I wasn't there, but Guy Halsall was, and he reports at length. 

Some excerpts I liked:

After these preliminaries, Arnaldo Marcone gave a lengthy run-down of the symbolic importance of Rome in imperial sources from the Battle of Adrianople onwards and then, more interestingly, Carlos Machado spoke on 'The Roman Aristocracy Before and after the Sack'.  What Machado showed quite graphically was a dramatic shrinking of horizons in the interests and indeed the geographical make-up of the Roman senatorial aristocracy after 410.  He also, very interestingly, pointed up the factional divides within the senate and highlighted their absolutely central involvement in the events of 408-410, making clear the complicity of some of the most powerful noble families in events such as the raising up of the usurper Attalus.  What I thought was interesting, from a personal point of view, was just how little connection there was between the Roman aristocracy (in its composition and in the areas it served in) and Gaul (especially) and Spain.  Links with North Africa were extensive, perhaps unsurprisingly, but so too were links with the East.

After coffee it was the turn of the revisionist 'terrible twins', which is to say Michael Kulikowski and me.  I spoke on the subject of 'Goths and Romans'.  I'll post the whole text anon.  For now, suffice it to say that most of it was a distillation of the relevant bits of Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West but with some revisions and developments.  These can be summarised thus:
1: The Gothicness of Alaric's forces may have stemmed largely from continued widespread recruitment north of the Danube, rather than from Goths settled in the Empire after 376
2: The nature of the foederati was new but not unprecedented but in the precise circumstances of the period 395-410 (the heated - and sometimes bloody - debate on the presence of barbarian troops inside the Empire) meant a closer bond between commander and soldiers
3: The title rex has a more specific resonance and particular appropriateness to a commander of foederati in rebellion
4: Kingdoms, far from being an objective, are the default option if nothing better can be obtained.  'Kingdoms are for losers'
5: Honorius' role is much more decisive than people give it credit for being

Michael's paper likewise drew on his body of work to critique the notions of barbarian migration, especially in its recent manifestations, and to show (in similar but far from identical ways to my paper) how the specific circumstances of the period led to a tense and dangerous focus on the commanders of armies of barbarian recruits and their relationships with the court.  Michael built on this a discussion of the traditional Roman means of defending Italy and how these were quite irrelevant to the situation in 408-10.  He then used post-colonial theory to reconstruct Alaric's career in terms of a subaltern mimicking of the dominant culture but one where sudden changes in the situation and the lack of precedent for his position meant that in some points of crisis, unable to obtain what he wanted from the inside, he had to fall back on 'playing the part' assigned to him within the ideological order - that of rampaging barbarian - and to attacking the system from the outside, with dramatic results.  I hope this is not too crude a synopsis.  It was very interesting and I agreed with most of it, even if I had some problems with some elements (I think that Michael would probably say the same about my paper).

 ...

The conference's last session was I think set up to be something of a play-off between Peter Heather and Walter Pohl, representing the schools of 'Fall of Rome' and of 'Transformation of the Roman World' respectively.  I didn't hear most of Peter Heather's presentation but from what I did hear and from what emerged in questions, it was exactly the same line that he has been arguing since 1991, without modification or any real reflexion.  The Roman Empire was brought down by the exogenous pressure of barbarian incursions produced by the Huns (an idea first expressed by St Ambrose of Milan in the 380s, incidentally).  From what heard it was clear that Heather hasn't had anything new to say on the subject of Goths and Romans for twenty years.  In questions he declared that the world was irreparably changed by 420; if he meant that and it wasn't a slip of the tongue, then I think that that is just empirically wrong.  In 420 I would say that the West was on the verge of complete restoration under Constantius III and that had the emperor not dropped dead of pleurisy then next year things would probably have been very different indeed (see, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, p.).  What brought down the Roman Empire?  Pleurisy.  ... As I always, not entirely jokingly, tell my first-years. 

Walter refused to play the part scripted for him and instead presented a useful summing up, and a view that pointed out how Heather and Ward-Perkins had essentially misconstrued the position of those who don't believe that barbarians conquered the Roman Empire, by claiming that they don't believe there was any violence. ('Transformation' is not the same as 'continuity', said Andrea Giardina in discussion afterwards.)  The process - and the debate - was more subtle and more complex than that.  That apart he did a very fine job of conciliation, and so the whole event drew to a close.

Plenty more, not easily re-summarized, where that came from!
 

Harassmap.org -- using web-based publicity in Cairo to fight the harassment of women

From PRI:

Cairo is a bustling city. Its streets are almost always full. But walking around for women here can be unpleasant.
EMAN MORSI: You get people just saying things like hey sweetie, hey honey… Or just insults.
Eman Morsi is an Egyptian woman in her twenties.
EMAN MORSI: Another type of street harassment is when they just brush across. And that kinds of tends to be a bit intimidating. There’s also when they grope you and stuff. I think pretty much many women went through that but we don’t really talk about that.
That’s why a crowd of young Egyptians gathered last week at a cultural center in Cairo. We all know that sexual harassment is a wide-spread phenomenon, online activist Sara El-Demerdash told the audience.
The kids – many with laptops on their knees – were being introduced to a new website that hopes to help change that.
The site allows women to send emails or SMS messages reporting harassment. The information is used to create an online map of harassment in Cairo: HarassMap. Rebecca Chiao is with the HarassMap team.
Rebecca Chiao: “The goal of our effort actually is not just to create a map. The goal is to change the social acceptability of harassment. So, the map is the first step.”
Chiao is an American who’s lived in Egypt for many years, working on women’s rights. She and three Egyptian colleagues created HarassMap. The online map will help identify harassment hotspots, says Chiao.
Rebecca Chiao: “And after identifying them, we’ll go to the communities in groups of volunteers and speak to people with roots in community, you know, shop owners, and use the map to show them: this is what’s happening in your neighborhood.”

...

Nihad Al Qumsan heads the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights. A 2008 survey the center carried out showed that about 80 percent of women in Egypt have faced some form of harassment.
NIHAD AL QUMSAN: “When they’re speaking generally, men will say that harassment is the result of women wearing provocative clothes. But when they filled out our survey they admitted they also harass women who are veiled. The men try to find an excuse for their behaviour, but most women in Egypt are veiled. And anyway a woman is free to wear what she wants.”

See Harassmap.org (English version).

My thought was ---

"How Carolingian!"

A giant Jesus in Poznan, Poland.  Thanks to MSNBC.com

One scholar's view on love, beauty and courtliness in the Middle Ages

From James A. Schultz's 2006 book, Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality, page 80-1:

In what follows, I will show that nobility is an attribute of bodies, that it is visible, and that visible nobility provokes love.…

The heroes and heroines Middle High German romance can hide their individual identity, but it is impossible for them to hide their noble identity. Their bodies give them away...

When Oringles comes across Enite,... [he] has no idea who she is. This much, however, he can tell "she is in truth a noble woman: that is proved by her most beautiful body."...

Just as the beauty of bodies incites love, so does the nobility of bodies, of which their beauty is an unmistakable index. Meinloh is devoted to a woman he has not even spoken with because "my eyes saw the absolute truth: she is noble and beautiful."

Page 91:

Courtly lovers do not respond to a sexy body or to an engaging personality or to a mere display of wealth. They fall in love with an ideal of courtly nobility. This ideal presents itself as a single image that combines a noble body, courtly virtue, splendid clothing, and the visible mastery of courtly skills. When someone susceptible to these qualities sees them realized in the highest form, that person is taken aback, is captivated, and falls in love.

 Image:   The Accolade, by EdmundBlair Leighton.

Does anyone know about the "Ehs" and the "You-Alls?"

In Afghanada, CBC Radio's excellent drama about Canadian soldiers fighting in Kandahar province, the Canadians call the Americans "You-Alls" and the Americans call the Canadians "Ehs."  Does anyone know if these slang phrases exist, or whether it is just inspired invention?

Image:  Some "Ehs" in Kandahar, some years back.

A sample of sufi poetry -- for students in HIST 3805

For non-Muslims in countries that are historically non-Muslim, understanding the sufi tradition in Islam is perhaps difficult.  It's mystical -- concerned with direct contact with God -- rather than legalistic.


Perhaps the best way to get the flavor is to read sufi poetry, which might be described as "love poetry to God." Wahiduddin's Web, an English-language site devoted to the sufi tradition, has a collection of translated poetry from some famous mystics.

"Whatever happened to the great novel of ideas?"

...asks an unnamed Time reviewer on the back of Neal Stephenson's Anathem.  The reviewer continues:

"It has morphed into science fiction, and Stephenson is its foremost practitioner."

Please.

Count on Time to miss, for decades, the fact that science fiction has been the literature of ideas for more than a century, and then suddenly discover it and proclaim it to the nations.  (And yes, there have been great novels written in the genre, and a great many with interesting ideas but less literary merit.)

But said reviewer is right about Stephenson. The man is amazing. He latches onto interesting scientific ideas and historical phenomena, absorbs vast amounts relevant information, transforms it into exciting literary conflicts and characterizations, and spits out 1000 page books of great merit. On a routine basis. Hugo Gernsback, the early 20th century pulp magazine editor who tirelessly beat the drum for science fiction as the only suitable literature for the modern age, might not have been thinking of Stephenson, but in some ways Stephenson is a perfect science fiction writer, if you are willing to take on the challenge of wrestling with real ideas and how people deal with them.  Stephenson's people are real enough to keep you engaged, and the ideas are cosmic.

A friend on Facebook was lamenting that there isn't much of a market for "stimulating religious and philosophical cliff-hangers."  I was pleased to be able to tell her that she was wrong. You could hardly come up with a better description of Anathem; and since my correspondent has picked up the book just by coincidence, she is in for a treat.   Alien  monks, cloistered so that they can safely pursue the philosophical nature of the universe without blowing up their planet; then called forth to prevent somebody else (a group that includes us!) from blowing up the planet; with all the action framed by and motivated by millennia of debates about the nature of reality.   And they are real debates that have actually taken place in our real intellectual history, which continue today as philosophers and scientists play for the highest stakes.  There is nothing fake about this story. You can see our present and our past on practically every page.

I have to admit a certain jealousy of Neal Stephenson, based on a series of novels he has written about 17th century Europe.  Having taught that era  more than a few times, I reflect on the contrast between studying up on a fascinating time in history and creating fascinating novels about it, and studying up and producing a year-long course for undergraduates. Well, we all do what we can.  And I'm glad that Neal Stephenson can do what he can do, and that he can get his stuff, eccentric as it is, published and appreciated by reviewers. That way, I get to read it.

Update:  If you know the book, go see this.   Or even if you don't.

I feel this way about the Early Modern sometimes

Dr. Beachcombing:

Beachcombing’s first thought on reading this was just how glad he is to not have lived in the seventeenth century. The Middle Ages did bigotry with style, whereas modernity manages tolerance tolerably well. The early moderns though fall between two stools – even the likeable Gage [the English Dominican, Thomas Gage (obit 1656) who traveled to the New World in the first quarter of the seventeenth century] converted to Catholicism and back again to Anglicanism and then worked with that monster Oliver Cromwell towards the end of his life.

You will want to read this post. It's got chocolate.

Image:   Guy Fawkes, a 17th century sort of guy. Er, fellow.

Horse round-up in Iceland

Plenty more at the Big Picture.

Women and Empire: Anne Clendinning speaks, November 5, 2:30 PM

Kites over Afghanistan, October 2010

From the Big Picture: