Oddball medieval name of the day

Galobie de Panassac!

A warrior and captor in the Hundred Years War.

Update: another soldier with the personal name "Sauvage."

Guys and Guns: Nathan Kozuskanich speaks, March 1, 2013

"Manhood and the Militia in the Early American Republic."

Somewhere there's a village/where things turned out OK

Think of all the exotic religious beliefs you have read about.  Is it fair to say that most of them are held by people who live in exotic climes, have exotic names, speak exotic languages, perhaps even wear exotic clothes? 

But one day you have your nose rubbed in the fact  that your ordinary neighbors might be as exotic as anybody else.  Or maybe you yourself!

Above, exhibit A for a Canadian example.

I am one of those Canadians -- and there are plenty -- who is not particularly attached to hockey.  But I know enough to realize how much seriousness there is behind the humorous facade.

Racism as a political ideology and its tactics

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

One of the great contributions of Arnold Hirsch's Making The Second Ghetto is the conception of racism, not as deviancy, moral degeneracy, nor stupidity, but as a political ideology whose employers tactics differ according to class, but whose goals remain the same. 

The goal of post-war white Chicago was to keep African-Americans sealed in the ghetto. Working class and ethnic whites worked toward this goal through what Hirsch calls "communal violence" which is to say entire communities angling toward terrrorism:

Rioting was undertaken for particular reasons and not as a generalized expression of racial hostility. Those reasons, and not the external forces of social control, were primarily responsible for the development, intensity, and duration of disorder.

This politicized violence erupted with some regularity between the 1940s and 1960s in Chicago. It was it's most spectacular in Cicero. But it occured throughout the city--at the Airport Homes, in Fernwood Park, in Englewood, in Bridgeport, in Park Manor. Violence was not restricted to "working class" areas. African-American chemist Percy Julian was named Chicagoan Of The Year in 1949. In 1950 white terrorists firebombed Julian's new home in suburban Oak Park. Twice. 

This kind of terrorism was never as effective as the kind of racist power deployed by those of the upper classes-- at the University of Chicago, for instance. Indeed, Hirsch's study left thinking of terrorism as a weapon of the weak--the unsubdued weak--but the weak all the same.  Still terrorism was a kind of power in Chicago and Hirsch shows how it made it significantly harder for the advocates of integration to create housing across the city.  Think of it like this: Al Qaeda can't end air travel, but it can certainly alter it. Likewise, The White Circle League couldn't stop black succession. But they could seal blacks in and thwart integrations. 

The point here is two-fold: First, terrorism in the mid-20th century, in the cradle of the North, was common. Second, this terrorism was at least partially successful, and when considered as a compliment to the structural violence of developers and the forces of urban renewal, it was wholly successful.

The ghetto is not a mistake. The racism of white ethnics in Chicago was not due to brainwashing, false consciousness  or otherwise being too stupid to recognize their interests.  On the contrary it was the political strategy of one community, attempting to subvert the ambitions of another. The strategy

The remarkable book by Sebastien Nadot, Le spectacle des joustes

Update:  I have not finished yet, but feel I should post my conclusion about Nadot's book.

For the period covered, the 15th century, it is the most thorough book I know.  It compares to Noel Fallows' equally thorough book on Iberian jousting -- though the books are quite different, since they rely on different sources.  Likewise it is quite a bit fuller than my Jousts and Tournaments, though again availability of the sources  accounts for much of that.

What I like about Nadot's treatment is that he is interested in all aspects of the phenomenon:  the fighting, the riding, the symbolism, the facilities built, the role of judges and heralds, the role of politics, everything.

Recommended for serious students of formal deeds of arms. And it doesn't cost the  earth.

Further update:   Nadot has another book from 2010, available at Amazon Canada.  All I know is the title, "Break the Lances:"

ROMPEZ LES LANCES : CHEVALIERS ET TOURNOIS AU MOYEN-ÂGE.

Reading the Edinburgh Companion

About three years ago I was asked by Benjamin Isakhan and Stephen Stockwell to contribute an article on the democratic history of ancient India to their book, The Edinburgh Companion to the History of Democracy.   My copy and I have finally met   up, and I have been reading the rather sizable tome.

Perhaps   it is inevitable that such an ambitious and diverse multi-author work has turned out rather uneven.    At the top end there are essays that are good to  brilliant (those on the American and French Revolutions go well beyond what might be expected to say fresh and important things about their significance for the world; I thought the chapter on  Early  Modern Switzerland very informative).  There are others that tell stories whose relevance to democracy is not quite clear, or at least not compelling.  This particularly applies long past societies which never used the word democracy and whose direct influence on more recent societies is weak.  Writing on ancient India, I have tried to be very careful not to claim too much relevance for the ancient republics, yet still argue that knowledge of their existence had a certain specific value for students of democracy.  A few of the essays here could have benefitted from more attention to making the case for relevance.

I was a little disappointed in the treatment of Medieval Europe.  As a mostly medievalist, I was disappointed to see the phrase “Dark Ages” and the term “feudalism” used as they might have been fifty or a hundred years ago.  I feel too that an opportunity was missed to engage with Susan Reynolds’s brilliant 1984 book on collective judgment, Kingdoms and Communities. Her analysis provides a starting point for the history of democracy in Europe, an analysis that cuts across many outmoded ideas and generalizations.

Nonetheless, the book succeeds in providing its readers with a lot of data and food for thought.  I don’t think too many will go away still in thrall to the old paradigm that begins with the Greeks and ends up with us and our (rather stale and defective) representative institutions.

Freedom to Read Week at Nipissing University

See what's up:

http://www.nipissingu.ca/departments/external-relations-and-advancement/nunews/Feb-20-2013/Pages/Celebrate-Freedom-to-Read-with-a-banned-book.aspx

R.M. Douglas, Orderly and Humane

It was neither:  it was the  biggest population movement in human history.

New Books in History features a meaty  interview with the author.

http://newbooksinhistory.com/2013/02/14/r-m-douglas-orderly-and-humane-the-expulsion-of-the-germans-after-the-second-world-war-yale-up-2012/

The Maple Leaf Dog with snow on his nose...

...true patriot love in his sad brown eyes!

Stringband was a Canadian folk group of the 1970s.  They wrote the best patriotic song I know:



My immediate circle of friends was quite fond of this song, and became more so when we realized that some of the band memmbers lived on the same block as Darrell Markewitz and I.  As did the Maple Leaf Dog!

This time of year my wife and I have plenty of reminders -- Maple Leaf Dogs with snow on their noses are a daily occurrence.

David Tabachnick, Technology is blurring the line between work and play

A valued colleague has an op-ed in the Globe and Mail.

An excerpt:

The critical role of play has a long history in Western civilization. Way back in the 4th century BC, Aristotle wrote extensively on the importance of leisure. The ancient Greek word for leisure is schole, from which we get “school.” At least for Aristotle, leisure was supposed to be time to think about higher things, gain insight, engage in relaxed contemplation and consider the meaning of life. Work was to satisfy the lower goods of the appetites and leisure for the satisfaction of the higher goods of community, spirit and mind.
Today, of course, we are much more likely to associate leisure with the satisfaction of so-called lower goods. Perhaps that’s why we end up recreating work environments in our games. If play is being eclipsed by technology, all we may be left with is the strange drudgery of playbour. All told, we need to rethink the work-play balance as it teeters back and forth in our technological society.

Medievalist roots

A  historian of my acquaintance posted the following picture to Facebook to illustrate why he became a medievalist:

Quite a laudable reason!

Then I realized that I too could illustrate my medievalist roots.  And no, it has nothing to do with deeds of arms:

Yes, Richard III's signature! 

I attribute my medievalism not to being something of a Ricardian as a teenager -- though I was -- but  to the script which he  used to sign his name (in a better exemplar than any I found on the web).


I wanted to read and write that script.

Little did I know I would someday be sitting in the Bodleian with a manuscript from the 5th century -- but  I have.

Cuneiform fan?

For the real fans: Oxford presents the 100 most important cuneiform items. 

Luck

Know any unappreciated geniuses?  Alexis C. Madrigal in the Atlantic:

To ask these things is not to demean Noyce's talents, but rather to wonder how many other would-be Noyces were frustrated? How many other legends just missed? Jack Dorsey and Steve Jobs and Bob Noyce: all brilliant, hardworking people. But how many brilliant hardworking people were just in the wrong place at the wrong time? How many encountered a system that made it harder for them? How many people from uneducated families or inner cities, immigrants or the grandchildren of slaves never found themselves in a position to show their awesomeness? How many women were forced to act as mere appendages to their husbands -- as Berlin's research shows that Noyce's first wife was? William Shockley, the man who originally brought Noyce to Silicon Valley once "dismissed a potential recruit with a jotted notation in his notebook that he 'did not want a man whose wife was annoyed about it all.'" These were not conditions in which it was equally possible for all people to flourish. And yet we hand down these stories from generation to generation as if everyone had an equal shot at success.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/and-now-let-us-praise-and-consider-the-absurd-luck-of-famous-men/272917/

Deeds of arms and me

Since the late 1990s, I have been studdying  and  writing  about  formal combats -- challenges, tournaments, jousts, trials  by combat -- in the late Middle Ages.  What did the fighters do? Why did they do it?  What did it mean to them?

Over this decade or so, I have generated a lot of material entitled "Deeds of Arms," because, well, it's  all about deeds of arms.   Is there room for confusion?  Yes!  So here's a brief guide to the various works of that name.

I started by reading all of Froissart's Chronicles in the 1805 Thomas Johnes translation, and typing stories that caught  my eye into web pages so I could share them with friends and strangers.  I didn't call  this collection  Deeds of Arms, fortunately -- I called  it Tales from Froissart.

Somewhat later I started collecting and translating chronicle accounts of formal combats.  This was the first Deeds of Arms. Soon after I followed up some footnotes and found archival documents relevant to the history of formal deeds  of arms.  These I collected under the name Deeds of Arms -- from the Archives.

In 2003 my book Jousts and Tournaments:  Charny and the rules for chivalric sport in fourteenth-century France  came out. It included my translation of Geoffroi de Charny's questions on jousting and the  tournament.  At the moment this book -- which avoided the dread phrase in the title, you'll notice -- is out of print, but worry not, a more complete and accurate treatment and translation of Charny's Questions is coming out.

By 2005 I felt  I knew a bit about deeds of arms in general and in that year my book Deeds of  Arms: Formal combats in the late fourteenth century, emerged in print.  It treated the period when Froissart was writing so much about war and chivalry.  Can't get away from that man... The book is still in print.

After that I had another idea -- a series  about...deeds of arms.  It was a kind of an extension of the  first collection, a series of  thematic source collections in print and illustrated.  Factors not under my control  derailed this project for a number of years, but thanks to Freelance Academy Press, that series, Deeds of Arms, is now a reality.      I  am the series editor and the editor/translator of the  first two volumes.  There will be more from me, but we've already lined up other contributors.

And the book design is excellent...a Freelance Academy Press specialty.

Jousting in Frankish Greece, from the Chronicle of Morea

The Chronicle of Morea is an important source for the  history of the Frankish lordships that  grew up in Greece as a result of the Fourth Crusade,  and for  that reason Anne van Arsdall is translating the  French version  for the  Ashgate Crusader texts in translation series.  It includes this interesting story of  a  mid-fourteenth century joust, which was written up in the 1340s, just before Charny compiled his questions on the joust. Thanks to Anne for allowing me to use this.

1016. The prince sent his messengers throughout all Romania and all the islands, ordering them to announce that seven crusaders who had come from the Holy Land were challenging all the knights who wanted to come and joust with them  to win and lose horses. The jousts were to last twenty days and were to be held at the city of Corinth. Then he had armor made as required for seven knights, sewn with a crest of golden shells on precious green silk.  Then he had suitably noble lists constructed . When the jousts began, the local knights jousted, each in turn, with the visitors. 

1017. Then Prince Philip of Savoy came and jousted nobly, as did all the knights of his house. When the Duke of Athens, the most powerful man after the prince and the best rider, saw how noble the jousts were, he said he would lack nothing if he could joust with William Bouchart, because Lord Bouchart was considered one of the best jousters in the West. The duke said to prove himself, he would joust in such a way that he would charge straight on at Lord Bouchart and his horse, even if he should die. 

1018. Then the duke covered himself with good layers of cloth all over his body and underneath that he armed himself with the best furs he could have. But he could not do so secretly enough that the marshal did not know about it. And when the marshal knew about it, he told Lord William Bouchart that he ought to arm and outfit himself exactly like the duke, because the duke was going to charge him head-on.  Lord William replied that God would not be pleased if such dishonor were attributed to him, and he would not arm himself to die other than as simply as he had in jousting with the other knights. 

1019. It happened like this: the duke entered from the visitors' side, nobly accompanied,and Lord William from the locals'.  When they were in the row inside the lists, during the first joust they had, Lord William intended to spare the duke first because of the duke’s nobility and rank, and second because he was not used to jousting like the duke of Athens was doing.  He left him in the list. 

1020. But the duke, who wanted in the worst way to charge him, came galloping so audaciously that Lord William could not avoid him. The duke managed to point his horse's head  straight toward Lord William with the result that the knights fought  body and chest against one another, and their horses too—head to head, so hard that the head of Lord William's horse was  smashed into its body between the two shoulders and collapsed on the ground together with the knight.  

1021. But the lord, who knew the profession, did not want to leave the saddle bow until the judge ruled whether he was without a horse or not. The duke’s horse crashed into the wooden barriers.  As he was about to pummet down with the duke, the knights and other men who were there around the lists in a great crowd, ran there and looked under the duke’s horse, and they forcefully dragged him out by his shoulders and arms.. 

….. 

1022.  . .  . to enter the lists like someone who thinks he will die ignobly. When the marshal saw that the knight did not seem to be coming toward him, he accomplished his four laps and then went back to his tents, very angry because the count would not come joust with him and lost his resolve and the great will he had to fight with him. 

1023. Lord William Bouchart had known for certain that the horse Lord John rode to the jousts was one of the best in the country and that the Lord had acted as though the horse was injured because of how much he feared the marshal. And when it got toward evening, Lord William managed to get the horse, mounted on it completely unarmed and galloped about, going in and out of the lists yelling at the top of his voice: Look here at the horse who is not able to go to the jousts! 

1024. This act caused serious accusations to be made against Lord John of Nivelet. And after this joust, everone who came as a local jousted with all who came as visitors, until the jousts were finished, because there were more than 1000 to joust with the locals. 

Based on:  Jean Longnon, Jean, ed. 1911. Livre de la conquest de la Princée de l'Amorée, Chronique de 

Morée (1204-1305). Paris: Librarie Renouard. 

Senegal, Madagascar and Dr. Amadou Ba

Dr. Ba, who teaches history at Nipissing and Laurentian Universities, yesterday presented a paper entitled "African Soldiers in the French Colonial Army during the Conquest and  Colonization of Madagascar."n 

The several points of interested included:

•  the fact that there were a lot of colonial wars in  Madagascar, which pretty much no one  knows anything about. (Madagascar must count as  the most obscure country in the world.)  
• that the French waged these wars mainly with West African troops, who were all called Senegalese, whether they came from Senegal or not.
• that there are descendants of the Senegalese still in Madagascar, where thhey are a despised symbol of colonial oppression.
• that the  French are not blamed at all for the abuses of their regime. Indeed they are remembered as mitigating the brutalities of their Senegalese enforcers.
• that no one in Senegal  is at all aware  of this Madagascar connection.

Somehow it was that last point --- that lost history -- that  struck me the most. There is so much that falls through the cracks.

An interim review of Sebastien Nadot’s Le spectacle des joustes

I read French rather slowly, so I may move on to other books before I properly finish this one.  But Le spectacle des joustes deserves some attention and so I am writing this comment.

Few scholarly books look at all aspects of medieval deeds of arms in detail. This is one of them. 

The book’s title is deceptive in that the book, though it treats jousting very thoroughly, is not restricted to jousting.  The subject is the events called emprises and pas d’armes, which could include a variety of fighting.

Potential readers should also know that the book covers the fifteenth century.  Thus no St. Inglevert and no Charny’s Questions.

However, there is plenty more on deeds of arms as athletics, as spectacles, and as economic and political events.  Particularly interesting is the way Nadot wrestles with the idea of fighting “courteously.”

This book could serve as an index to interesting incidents on the list fields of the fifteenth century.

I think I’m going to need a copy of my own.  Only 30 euro!  But the shipping?

Combat of the Thirty -- a 19th-century depiction

Combat of the Thirty -- my new book

Out today!

I have collected and translated the most important accounts of this famous 14th century deed  of arms, and Doug   Strong has contributed an appendix  on the armor.

A pretty book and a bargain!