Favorite entries, 2014

A quick selection.

Research and re-creation

Steven Muhlberger

Delivered at Nipissing University

October 30, 2014

as part of the History Department Seminar Series

I am very pleased to be here before my beloved colleagues and other friends of the History Department, and to have the opportunity to discuss my work and my interests. I hope this will not come across as merely an exercise in self-aggrandizement or nostalgia. It’s meant as a reflection on one person’s meandering path through the vast country that is history, and on the variety of ways that history can be approached. My path is probably more eccentric than most but I think that all of you working historians out there have a tale to tell of how your engagement in the past is not restricted within the boundaries of the notional career path of the so-called “average academic historian.” At least, I hope so.

Reflecting back on my career at Nipissing University and before that at University of Toronto, I consider that I have been very lucky having the freedom to pursue my extraordinarily diverse intellectual interests. I began as a graduate student with a very intense project in which I took long-known late ancient chronicles, key sources for the understanding of the fall of the Roman Empire, and reconstructed the mental universe of the men who wrote them. The standard view of these works was that they were defective fragments of lost official records. My task was to turn the chroniclers from being incompetent historians to being valuable witnesses, who were more closed mouth than we might like, but still people who had something to say for themselves, and whose silences said as much about late Roman times as their explicit statements. Thanks to my supervisor Walter Goffart it was an absolutely first class introduction to an extraordinarily difficult historiographical problem, where analyzing the scholarly tradition surrounding the questions was just as important as reconstructing contemporary accounts of the era.

I was and am very proud of my first book The Fifth-Century Chroniclers because I did not avoid the hardest questions of source interpretations. I believe it is one of those books that is good to argue with and will prove useful to researchers for decades to come. Nevertheless, when I finished the Fifth- Century Chroniclers, I had no desire to take on another highly technical puzzle of that sort. About the time I was hired at Nipissing University, I found another historiographical problem worth exploring. It was 1989; the Iron Curtain was falling, and millions were occupying Tien An Men Square and erecting a statue of the Goddess of Democracy. What did it all mean?

As usual, a pessimistic view of human society emerged very quickly. Specifically an old notion was trotted out are not, in an effort explain away the clear demands of people on every continent for democracy to replace autocracy.

My friend Phil Paine and I found such arguments sour and self-serving. Together we wrote the article “Democracy’s Place in World History” for the Journal of World History, in which we demonstrated that proto-democratic institutions, especially at the local level, are documentable in many parts of the world; the potential for democracy can be found in many parts of the world. Particularly interesting was the comparison between the experience of ancient urban democracy in India and in Greece. The Greek democratic experience is often rated as a crucial moment in world history; ancient Indian democracy is not very well known even in India. Phil and I argued that they were of similar significance – both demonstrating potential for democracy without however guaranteeing it.

This was a daring project and depended on faith that big, difficult historiographical questions could be tackled by historians of normal intelligence and training if they used a careful comparative methodology and paid critical attention to the historiographical tradition. Phil Paine and I had ambitions to do more with the history of democracy but circumstances prevented us working together closely. Our output of the last 20 years on the subject is rather restricted as a result. In the 1990s I was once again looking for direction. I found it in the best place, at home.

Some of you know and others do not that I have been a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism as long as I have been a student of the Middle Ages, that is, for over 40 years. The SCA can be seen as one of the many historical reenactment organizations that have grown up in the last half-century. Except it isn’t much like most of the rest. The normal reenactment organization seeks to re-create a specific time and place. Participants appropriately and accurately dressed and equipped re-create a battle or a scene from daily life. The participants are usually in the position of actors putting on a show for paying customers who, as in most theatre, are a passive audience.

The SCA, however, is not a show for an audience. Rather the audience is identical with the participants. It can be seen as a roving theme party that has been going on in various locales since May 1, 1966. On that day a number of Californians put on in a backyard party which they called an “international tournament.” Guests were encouraged to dress in the style of “any age when swords were used.” The party featured mock ceremony, music and combat with a variety of swords. The winner of the tournament crowned a simple peasant girl queen, and a promising young squire was knighted. And when it was all over they all said “let’s do it again!” And they did.

The SCA evolved into a society focused not on reenacting such historic events as the Battle of Bosworth Field, but the world of the 12 century romances where an ideal king and queen preside over a court of knights and ladies and those who aspire to be such. In the evolving SCA as in the early romances, the tournament remained the focus of activity. Thus the SCA can be seen as a recreation of medieval literature rather than of actual history. Yet there was an early commitment by the individual members and the organization they founded to do things “right,” meaning that an SCA event would aspire to get the visual and physical aspects right – armour, food, costuming, tents and pavilions, beer, mead and cider. The desire to get the props right and the respect given to artists and artisans -- all of whom must necessarily be seen as amateur researchers-- are among the chief things that keeps the SCA from being just a fantasy role playing activity, of the sort now called a LARP (live action role-playing game).

The SCA is a role playing game, an embodied reimagining –in Paul Monahan’s elegant phrase –of some aspects of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. But it is not an attempt to re-create a full and accurate and consistent historical environment. It is important to remember that the first SCA event gave invitees free choice of what historical or even fictional era they wished to portray –one person came as Queen Lucy of Narnia, and there were hobbits as well. That principle of the individual choice of “persona” or in-game identity has continued ever since, although purely fantasy identities have been phased out long ago. Indeed, the most serious efforts at accurate reenactment are located in the individual person. There is next to no effort to maintain a consistent time that embraces everybody at a given event or in the society as a whole. I may come to an event as a 10th century Viking, while you come to the same event in a costume modeled on one worn by Anne Boleyn. The success of the re-creation, in the judgment of those present, doesn’t have anything to do with consistent portrayals of either the 10th century or the 16th. While participants may carefully put together a consistent and accurate persona for themselves as individuals, the social environment they create is a fictional kingdom -- say Ealdormere – and a fictional time -- AS 49, the year of the Society 49. To do an excellent job of embodied reimagining, there is no particular reason that the individual participant needs to know a lot about the actual history of the Middle Ages or even the history of a given country, such as 10th-century Norway. Better one should know how to make or acquire authentically styled shoes or boots.

I realized long ago that my scholarly knowledge of the Middle Ages was going to be of only limited application to my SCA participation. The only advantage of knowing medieval history in any detail is that you can occasionally contribute a decorative element, as for instance in showing people how a medieval heraldic display would differ from a modern logo. Or you can use your knowledge to say, as so many fans of historical fiction and movies do, “that’s not right!” A strategy with a very limited lifespan. The social structures and practices of SCA members are formed by the needs of the 21st century society they are creating and re-creating. For instance, monarchs in the SCA are chosen by combat in tournament. This was never done in the actual Middle Ages, and nobody thinks it was. Why the divergence between re-creation and actual history? To have an hereditary monarch for life would be boring; competition for the crown on the other hand binds society members with an ongoing drama.

But scholarship and hobby, research and re-enactment came together for me in the late 1990s anyway.

I owned an old hardback edition of the Chronicles of Jean Froissart, a famous historian who lived during and wrote about the first half of the Hundred Years War (in the late 14th century). I had bought the book for $20 back when $20 was a lot of money. One day, years later, I picked it up and started reading it cover to cover and was fascinated by the fact that the so-called “chronicle” read more like a novel than the chronicles I was used to from late antiquity or the early Middle Ages. (All the smart people already knew this, but I didn’t.) Since Froissart’s main historical interest was in recording what he called “deeds of arms” (we might also say “chivalric combats”) there were many little anecdotes and a fair number of very substantial stories which illustrated the attitudes and actions of “men at arms” during the Hundred Years War. In other words, Froissart’s historical characters were largely the kind of people that SCA warriors were trying to imitate. This too was common knowledge. Yet very few SCA members, with the honorable exception of an amateur scholar named Will McLean had actively been working with late medieval chronicles with the intention of shedding light on the central activity of the SCA, our tournament combat. SCA members do not read primary materials, at least not very carefully. My reaction on reading Froissart again was that if the proper interpreter took this material and spread it around the SCA, there would be widespread interest among the warrior community. Will McLean already done some of this, as had others such as Brian Price and Daryl Pompeo. So I took it upon myself to excerpt Froissart as I read along and put the best pieces on the website here at Nipissing University, which I called “Tales from Froissart.” It was and is a list of very interesting stories, not all of them the best examples of what we would like chivalry to be, but at least examples of contemporary praise and criticism of noble warriors in action.

I also became aware of a text from the 14th century that had been fearfully neglected, both by amateurs and professional scholars, Geoffrey de Charny’s Questions on the Joust Tournaments and War. The Questions are a collection, compiled by a famous French knight in the 1350s, of questions about legal matters that might arise in both sport fighting (jousts and tournaments) and actual warfare. In some ways this should be a high profile source of information on 14th century chivalry, because Charny was a close associate of the reigning King of France and an active warrior. His opinions as to what chivalry and the laws of arms (as he called them) should be very important to modern scholars. But the Questions are not very helpful if one simply reads them through. Charny provided no answers to the 134 questions he raised. That fact and the fact that there are no obvious parallels to the collection of questions during his time, have seemingly discouraged work on that material. Maybe scholars hate to be wrong? Or perhaps they hate to take chances?

Charny’s questions and my close reading of Froissart’s Chronicles had a common focus. In both cases I was mostly interested in what chivalric combat was like from the contemporary’s point of view. What was a “deed of arms?” What exactly did the participants in such deeds do? And finally, why did they do it? I had a dual interest in answering these questions. Having taken part in what might be called “deeds of arms” in the SCA context for many years, I was interested in how close we had come to the spirit and the actuality of the medieval practice. It was quite clear that we had not come very close to medieval practice. People had known this for a long time. But to what degree was there similarity, both in spirit and in practice? Second, I was interested in the analysis of the historical practice. Back in the 19th century there had been some interest among scholars, mostly amateur ones, in the nuts and bolts and sweat and blood aspects of individual combats and duels. Indeed, duels were not entirely extinct in that century. But since about the First World War, there had been little serious scholarly interest. People tended to follow the lead of the eminent Dutch medievalist Johan Huizinga when he said that chivalric combats – jousts and tournaments and individual challenges – were a preoccupation of the nobility and not taken seriously by anybody else. I was pretty sure he was wrong about that, but at least his dismissal had left a gap in the literature that I felt could and should be filled by somebody like me.

Here is some of the material I have produced since I made the decision. First was a short book called Jousts and Tournaments, which is a translation and interpretation of those of Charny’s Questions which concerned chivalric sports in the 14th century, in an effort to reconstruct the rules used by contemporaries. It is not so easy to see what those rules really were, because as I said, Charny's Questions are unanswered. However, the Questions do show how extraordinarily important horses were to 14th century knights. There are 41 questions about jousts and tournaments, and all but one of them can be boiled down to "in such and such a situation, who gets the horse?" If nothing else, the book reminds us of how central to the identity of the noble warrior his horse was.

The next project was the book Deeds of Arms, in which I investigated the era in which Froissart wrote; thanks to his literary talent he has tremendously influenced our cultural memory of the Middle Ages. In this book I tried to put contemporary descriptions of chivalric sport and chivalric challenges in the context of the politics of England and France during the Hundred Years War. The book was in part an argument that there is no thing in real life that corresponds to "mere sport." One might like to think that sports or re-creations are something of a timeout from real life. But there is no such thing. 14th century jousts, 21st-century SCA tournaments, and the World Series are all parts of so-called real life. What happens in them counts for something. It may not count quite the same way that events in so-called real life count, but they do count. The book was a monograph-length demonstration of how chivalric sport counted, its psychology and symbolism and even its political importance.

Deeds of Arms the monograph inspired a series called “Deeds of Arms,” of which I am the editor and Freelance Academy Press is the publisher. The idea behind this series was that it would present translations of medieval accounts of chivalric combats in a very attractive illustrated format. There was hope that they would appeal to a wide audience, including people who just like attractive books and were not necessarily tremendously interested in the details of medieval combat. The series Deeds of Arms currently includes three books, two of which are basically my work, Royal Jousts and the Combat of the Thirty. I have another one: Will A Frenchman Fight? ready to go whenever the publisher is.

Two more books have come out in the last year or so. One of them is frankly an experiment, a collection of three conference papers on deeds of arms, repackaged as an e-book entitled Formal Combats in the Fourteenth Century. I wanted to see if there was in fact a market for cheap electronic publication of material that otherwise be too slight for publication. This was a no-risk project for me – I had a publisher anxious to do all the work.

This past summer finally saw the appearance of a book that I had essentially finished in my last sabbatical, Charny’s Men-at-Arms. It can be considered the expanded version of Jousts and Tournaments. Jousts and Tournaments used Charny’s Questions to reconstruct the rules for chivalric sport; the new book reviewed that material and added an investigation of the Questions on War, 93 cases about the laws of arms and issues of honor. The result is a group portrait of Charny’s military class and what they thought was important about “the life in arms.”

But my exploration of more authentic, more medieval styles of sport combat was not restricted to the page. At about the same time it began to write Jousts and Tournaments, I started to promote what I hoped would be more authentic styles of sport combat within the SCA. This was to some degree a joint effort with my wife Ruta, because together we hosted an SCA event on our rural property and Bonfield, Ontario, something we did for twenty Labor Day weekends in a row. Much of what we did on those weekends were standard SCA activities, but because we had so much space and the whole long weekend, we were able to experiment, to hold challenges and tournaments and for a while at least equestrian games both modern and medieval. We had some jousting on one occasion. The spirit of the event and some of the activities we put on resulted in a certain amount of influence in the SCA community. People came from as far away as St. Louis Missouri to take part. (Repeatedly!) Some of them brought their own elaborate, non-martial re-enactments. One group forged iron and set up a glass-bead furnace. Another group erected a medieval-style barn.

As these last activities indicate, it was not just a matter of me and of my wife dispensing wisdom to our friends and visitors. In our encouragement of higher quality reenactment leading (perhaps) to a better understanding of the Middle Ages, I began to discover that there were plenty of other individuals and small groups doing similar things. One example will suffice. Early on, when I was particularly interested in witnessing some actual jousting, I discovered a non-SCA group in Ontario which was putting on jousting shows. It was led by a man named Shane Adams who was a veteran of Medieval Times, the medieval dinner theater show. Shane from childhood wanted to joust and when Medieval Times came to Ontario from Florida, he signed up. He was disappointed to find that Medieval Times jousting was not the real thing and he became dissatisfied enough with just acting in their show to form his own troupe. In 2002 I witnessed them joust in Elgin, Ontario; the next year I was part of the show in the exalted role of Squire – since I actually had some experience in handling horses they were glad to have me. One thing I learned from the experience of working with Shane's troupe was how dangerous and exciting and thrilling jousting was even in a modern context. When the experienced, fully armored knights came riding out on their huge horses for the climactic contests at the end of the show, the audience went completely wild, filling the arena with sound. Clearly, even in the 21st-century, jousting was not a trivial pursuit. It is or can be a true embodiment of one aspect of medieval culture.

This was just the beginning of my contacts with jousters and other non-SCA re-enactors.

These re-enactors (and I want to be clear that I mean in general military and chivalric re-enactors) come in a variety of flavors. One way to distinguish them would be to divide those who began with a fascination with armor from those who were fascinated by the sword. The first group wants first-class, authentic armor, and when they get it (through vast trouble and expense), they want to use it as it was meant to be used. The sword-lovers learn how to use their weapons in the manner of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance; sooner or later they want to use techniques that are appropriate to armored combat, and they begin acquiring armor. You can see how the groups can come close to merging; but thing that distinguishes them is the fact that in the half-century since the founders of the SCA re-invented medieval tournament on the basis of a few mostly-inaccurate assumptions, actual treatises written in the fourteenth century have been discovered, republished, translated, and interpreted. These sword manuals are the key to the sword-lovers’ practice. There are a variety of schools of HEMA or WMA – Historic European Martial Arts or Western Martial Arts -- based on the Holy Scriptures of the Italian master Fiore or the German master Lichtenaur or some other historic master-at-arms.

The armor-lovers are not necessarily less learned than the sword lovers, but tend to be interested in a rougher, all-out form of combat; there's much less interest in theory and systematic training, and more on bringing an opponent down to the ground. This kind of conduct does not look like fencing, medieval or modern, but much more like wrestling. The most prominent example of this kind of fighting reenactment is the Battle of Nations competition invented in Ukraine and for most of its history a competition chiefly between Eastern European "national teams." When I first heard of Battle of Nations my immediate reaction was "I would hate to be the official who tries to referee Russian reenactors fighting Polish reenactors.” And sure enough the reality did not disappoint. The Russians in particular had no hesitation in using tactics designed to seriously injure their opponents. Stories circulated that the Russians were in fact sponsored by gambling interests, illegal ones that that. When Americans with an SCA background first attended Battle of Nations, there was an immediate culture conflict between the brutal young Russians and the Americans who had come up in a tradition in which fighters “didn’t break their toys” (opposing fighters) so that there would be no shortage of opponents. There was a schism in which many of the national organizations left the old umbrella organization and formed a new one which purported to be more honest and transparent in regard to business affairs and more – chivalrous?—on the tournament field. One result of this conflict is that American veterans of Battle of Nations formed a new US-based league which featured a rougher style of competition than SCA tournament combat, taking on as it did certain features of Battle of Nations.

I have mixed feelings about the Battle of Nations and other “real combat” activities. Perhaps I should heartily disapprove, but I can't escape the connection. This summer I ran into a prominent SCA fighter who was instrumental in setting up the new American organization for “real combat.” He thanked me for making available the phrase "deed of arms" which he found very useful for describing the activities that he and his friends were engaged in. He felt that the interaction between my scholarship and his style of re-creating medieval combat was teaching him and his friends a great deal about the actual past.

Who am I to say he is wrong? There should be some intellectual gain, however limited, however biased towards the modern, in all the creation of imaginary medieval kingdoms I have indulged in over the last four decades. As Dr. Janice Liedl of Laurentian University points out in a forthcoming article, both science fiction and historical fiction have their place in coming to grips with the scattered pieces of historical evidence which is all any of us have to anchor our understanding of the actual past. The facts are always too few and we always have to conjure up connective tissue make a coherent picture of what used to be. In the era of Game of Thrones and Assassin’s Creed historians and their scholarly methods are only a segment of creative historical inquiry. The conclusions we reach using them are no longer quite so privileged. We can moan about this or we can adjust. The adjustment is not so radical. It is merely a recognition that if the past is important it will not attract the attention of sober historians sober historians only. All kinds of imaginative energy will be generated by the widespread interest of all sorts of people. If our expertise is not going to become ignored and irrelevant, we will have to learn to live with popular, one might even say poetic interpretations of the facts. It won't be so hard; after all historians have been doing this for thousand years.

That’s one view of the challenges facing historians in our changing intellectual world. It probably isn’t yours. Variety is the spice of life, or rather an essential aspect of reality and of our efforts to deal with it. Wish me well on my highway – I will continue to work; I wish you well on yours.

Books available from: Freelance Academy Press Witan Publishing

A human kaleidoscope

People who wish to introduce medieval dancing into the SCA have a real problem – almost all of our documentation for dances done in the medieval period actually come from late in the Renaissance. Some people who want to dance often use other styles as inspiration, in particular in English country dancing. Once you get past the anachronism here, there's a lot of fun to be had doing known country dances or choreographing new ones.

One member of the SCA, known in it as James Blackcloak has created several new country dance inspired choreographies. Some of them are on YouTube. For your enjoyment, I direct you to this one, entitled St. Paul's Cathedral:

Another answer -- Shevek speaks

Shevek the anarchist from another planet speaks to the dissatisfied people of the homeworld:

It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when it is forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers and what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And
the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.

I am here because you see in me the promise, the promise that we made 200 years ago in this city – the promise kept. We have kept it, on Anarres. We have nothing but our freedom. We have  nothing to give you but your own freedom. We have no law but the single principle of mutual aid between individuals. We have no government but the single principle of free association. We have no states, no nations, no presidents, no premiers, no chiefs, no generals, no bosses, no bankers, no landlords, no wages, no charity, no police, no soldiers, no wars. Nor do we have much else. We are sharers, not owners. We are not prosperous. None of us is rich. None of us is powerful. If it is Anarres you want, if it is the future you seek, then I tell you that you must come to it with empty hands. You must come to it alone, and naked, as the child comes into the world, into his future, without any past, without any property, wholly dependent on other people for his life. You cannot take what you can have not given, and you must give yourself. You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed

Charny's answer

People who know my scholarly work on the writings of Geoffroi de Charny, a fourteenth century knight, may associate me with "Charny's questions," a set of hypothetical problems related to "the law of arms" meant to be analyzed by knights, squires and "men at arms" so that they would be better prepared to relate with other aristocratic warriors.

Charny's questions are unanswered.

But if you want his answer to the problems of the life of arms, consider this from Charny's Book of Chivalry:

[T]hose who have the will to achieve great worth [who] because of their great desire to reach and attain that high honor … do not care what suffering they have to endure, but turn everything into great enjoyment. Indeed, it is a fine thing to perform great deeds, for those who rise to great achievement cannot rightly grow tired or sated with it; so the more they achieve, the less they feel they have achieved; this stems from the delight they take in striving constantly to reach greater heights. And great good comes from performing these deeds, for the more one does, the less one is proud of oneself, and it always seems that there is so much left to do.

Charny's answer?

The crazy years?

The famous and influential science fiction writer, Robert A. Heinlein, was known early in his career for creating a future history in which individual short stories were framed. There was a big timechart in which the stories and other background events were located. One feature that looked big and important on the chart, which was never quite developed by Heinlein was "the crazy years." Presumably all sorts of bad things happened in that time, one of which was specified: the creation of the repressive puritanical theocracy in the United States.

Back in the 1990s I was thinking about the future history and I thought that Heinlein had really blown it. He himself, when he put together that chart, was living in the crazy years, which included a worldwide depression, the rise of genocidal and frankly insane regimes in major countries, and finally a huge world war. Surely these were crazy years?

Looking back from now until 2001, however, I have to say that I am less critical of what was after all a fictional construct for the fun of it. Put aside 9/11 and the American reaction to it – at least the direct reaction. How about today's events, as seen through various Internet sources?

• In a major jurisdiction in North America, a gay woman is elected premier and nobody notices or cares.
• After billions and billions of dollars invested, an American client regime in Iraq begins to collapse, with American trained soldiers throwing away their weapons and stripping off their uniforms.
• Next to the World Cup, the most puzzling sporting event is the Battle of Nations, "medieval historical warfare" mostly fought between teams from Eastern Europe at a venue in Croatia. Russia and Ukraine, which are almost at war with each other now, are leading in the standings.
• And of course one must mention the lunatic spouting of American politicians who seem to be dedicated to building a theocracy.

One of these things is not like the others, of course:  the election of Kathleen Wynne's party in Ontario. Everyone who cared about the sex life of Ontario's Premier, a smaller number than you might think, knew she was gay. She had been premier for a while, succeeding her predecessor when he retired. This was the first time she led the party into an election. Her orientation was not even mentioned during the campaign.

I was at an event in Ontario not long ago where same-sex couples are allowed to take part in a prestigious contest on an equal basis with heterosexual couples for the first time. There was a very positive response to this turn of events, but I was blasé and did not mention it when I wrote up a short account of it. I told a friend that I did not know whether society had moved on on this issue, but I had.

Now there is evidence that at least in this part of North America, society seems to have moved on pretty definitively.

Which does not cancel out what I said about the crazy years. I'm just glad to keep some aspects of the crazy a little bit further away from me than some people are able to do.

Unhelmed

As portrayed in Froissart's Chronicle; and thanks to Raymond Hindle.

How useful was heavy cavalry in the Late Middle Ages?

According to the Chronicle of the Good Duke, written in 1429 but talking about events about twenty years earlier, Duke of Brittany looked across a battlefield  at the troops led by  the Constable of France, the Lord of Clisson, and reacted as follows:

And the Constable Clisson, who was a valorous knight of bold enterprise, went boldly from his siege with his men arranged to give battle to the Duke if he dared to wait. And the Duke of Brittany seeing the battle order of the Lord of Clisson, told his men “My lords and companions, see Clisson there has arranged his companies and desires nothing but battle? I would not refuse that at all willingly but I see that he has arranged a great wing of his men who are mounted on great coursers of superior quality. Our horses are small; and those who are over there will come charge us and we will not be able to withstand them; and things will be the worse for us.” For this reason the Duke retreated that day with his men ...

End of winter troubadour poetry

Very happily, I begin to love a joy from which I will have more pleasure; and, since I want to be back to joy I well ought to, if I can, aim for the best; since I love the best, without doubt, that one could see or hear. I (you know as much) should not brag nor dare I praise myself much; but if ever could one joy blossom, this one should above all take roots and shine above all others just as the day turns brighter. And never could anyone portray it for in want nor wish nor in though nor in imagination such a joy can't find an equivalent; and if one wanted to praise it properly, he couldn't do it in a year. Every joy must lower itself and all royalty obey my lady, because of her kindness and of her sweet pleasant visage; and he will live a hundred times longer who can partake of her love. Because of her joy can the sick turn healthy and because of her displeasure can a healthy man die and a wise man turn mad and a handsome man lose his beauty and the most courteous turn into a lout and the most churlish turn into a courtier. Since nobody can find a worthier woman nor eyes see one, nor mouth describe one, I want to keep her all for me, to bring freshness to my heart and to renew my flesh, so that it cannot grow old. If my lady wants to grant me her love, I am ready to receive it and to reciprocate I am ready to discretion and cajoling and to say and do what she pleases, and to keep her worth into account and to further her reputation I don't dare communicate by proxy, so much I am afraid to anger her; nor I myself, so much I am afraid to fail, dare declare my love precisely; But she ought to choose what is best for me because she knows that I shall be saved through her.

Guilhen de Peiteus

Wrapping up a seminar on chivalry

This year I once again taught a fourth-year undergraduate seminar on chivalry.  Since it is quite possible that I may never teach it again, I am glad to say that it was a particularly satisfying iteration of the course.  Below you will find one student's concluding thoughts.  It may give you an idea of how happy I am, and why.
 

Chivalry Culmination
by Elisia Evans

              Throughout this course my understanding of chivalry has developed and changed regarding the new information that was introduced to our class.  As new material was introduced I asked myself new questions about the topic and eventually landed on a conclusion that encompasses a variety of sources that were studied in class. I have come to see chivalry as a combination of the ideas I developed on the subject throughout the course.

              At the beginning of the course I presented my ideas of chivalry as relating to the daring hero of Hyrule, Link, and the steadfast honour and sense of duty of Brienne of Tarth. To my understanding of the time chivalry was a term used to describe the traits of these two characters: dutiful, honourable, reliable, and brave.  To pledge fealty and keep it, or to embark on quests at great personal risk, were examples of chivalrous behaviour. As far as I was concerned at this stage of my understanding of chivalry, this was the extent of the meaning of the word.

              After reading Charny and Lull at the beginning of the course I was introduced to the true complexity of the idea of ‘chivalry’. Charny’s A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry was one of the most valuable sources we explored in this course because it provided a decent foundation for an accurate understanding of this elusive concept. Charny introduces a much more serious and professional definition of chivalry. He outlines the different types of knights and the different methods they might use to gain prestige in their knightly tasks. He often declares that “he who does best is most worthy (Charny 52)” and constantly asks these men to do more. This is extremely demanding considering how difficult being a mediocre knight would be, let alone one that meets Charny’s crazy standards. There is also an entire section devoted to the discouragement of physical pleasure entitled “A Good Man-at-Arms Should not Pamper his Body (68)”. This passage denies knightly men even soft sheets on their beds. The message I took away from Charny was that being a good knight sucked but was apparently worth it for the reputation and honour with which it is associated. Lull’s book The Book of the Order of Chivalry explained to me that these self-torturing men at arms were part of an ‘order’. This was important to my understanding of chivalry because it introduced the idea of chivalry being a type of legitimate profession or club. At this stage in my understanding of chivalry I was not sure who would ever in a million years want to attempt to meet Charny’s standards and enter into the world of ‘chivalry’.

              The identity of these men was soon illuminated by Duby’s article, “Youth in Aristocratic Society”. This was one of the most valuable sources for my academic understanding of knights, as well as a personal favourite. This article explained that knights were often the second sons of wealthier families and could not inherit land and thus had to make their own way in the world. For entertainment and a chance at a future they wandered around getting into trouble and fighting one another. These men developed into professional warriors, embarked on crusades and fought in tournaments. This article explains the origins of the men who are expected to dedicate themselves to the ideas proposed by Charny. My ponderings concerning the employment of these men was answered by our studies of jousts, challenges, and warfare. The literature concerning knights, such as the stories of Lancelot and Erec, gave me an impression of how the public viewed these men at arms because this was the media representation of chivalry to the literate populace. From these sources I was able to gather the origins of knights and that they were typically romanticized and respected because of their valiant deeds of arms and reputed honour.

              After learning about the relationship between knights and civilians I was completely surprised. During the 100 years war, on which I found Knights and Peasants to have been a valuable read, men at arms were reported to have taken part in some bad behaviour. Fields were burned, cities were sacked, and non-combatants were forced to participate as a means of survival. This blurred the idea of chivalry in my eyes.  In his book Wright points out that only a small number of the men at arms participating were actually members of the order of chivalry. This does not ease my mind because in Gillingham’s article on William the Marshal he describes the role of chivalry in warfare as being selected and somewhat diluted. There does not seem to be much room for an honour code when one is fighting for his life. However, I have deduced that Chivalry’s role in warfare was to ensure safe ransoms. Knight’s would only willingly surrender to other gentlemen and would then be ransomed back to their king.  It seems to be that at this moment men at arms remembered the rules with which they so strongly abide during peace. My overall conclusion, although incomplete at this time, was that Chivalry was a pipedream; people saw its value much more in theory than in practice.

              The final development of my idea of chivalry brought all of this together. I settled on the idea that knights had unrealistic expectations put on them by men like Charny and their adoring public. I now see chivalry as the equivalent of a gentlemen’s club; select members, large egos, a great deal of games played, and not much accomplished. I also believe that chivalry is swept under the rug during war, especially a war as frustrating and confusing as the 100 years war. However I would like to point out that in the document on jousts during a peace period there was a great deal of tournaments hosting chivalrous behaviour which shows the drive to remember chivalry as soon as the fighting subsides. In modern day warfare there is not much difference, soldiers forget their restraint and sometimes their morality while they are at war. In conclusion knights were real men who sometimes did not match up to the idea presented by Charny and the authors of the Epics read in class. I think this is why the idea of chivalry is so hard to place. 

The meaning of chivalry

If you are a serious student of history, paid or unpaid, it sometimes comes as a shock to realize how little other people know about the problems and eras that you find fascinating, or the amazing misconceptions they sometimes have.

This school year I have been teaching a fourth year seminar on chivalry, and I started out the course by asking the students to characterize or define chivalry, not so much in a formal definition sense, but by relating the concept to stories, symbols, or analogies. At the end of last month I asked them as the seminar started winding down, to tell me what they had learned about chivalry, and what sources in particular had shaped their current view.

I wasn't really surprised to see three of the students talk about chivalry as courtesy as the view that they started out with. But still, look at this:

Prior to taking this class, it would suffice to say, I knew next to nothing about the concept of chivalry, except for within the context is used today.… My understanding of chivalry was limited to the concept of acting in a polite fashion, holding doors, surrendering the shotgun seat of a vehicle etc. I wondered how an entire class could be devoted to the study of "being polite."

 There you are.

Lawrence Martin on the history of Canadian democracy

Canada’s forgotten independence day

March 11, 1848, was the day when Canada’s united colonies got responsible government. You might go so far as to call it our independence day – the day real democracy arrived.

It followed decades of struggle against British rule, the rebellions of 1837 and 1838 being foremost examples. Power passed from colonial elites to citizens when a Reform government headed by Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin was sworn in that day by governor-general Lord Elgin. The Reformers had won an election over conservative forces aligned to the monarchy.

Baldwin and LaFontaine, leaders of the territories now known as Ontario and Quebec, convinced their colonial masters that allowing power to reside with an elected assembly instead of a governor’s appointed executive council was the only way to stave off anarchy.

In the context of times, of so many countries seeking and failing to establish democratic systems, it was a remarkable achievement. We were “almost first out of the modern democracy gate,” writes John Ralston Saul in his book on LaFontaine and Baldwin. While you probably wouldn’t want to high-five our democracy today, given what it has become, we were trailblazers back then.

Europe-wide democratic revolutions marked 1848. Counterrevolutions followed shortly thereafter, and one was ignited in Canada. In 1849, reactionary mobs burned down the parliament buildings, then located in Montreal. But LaFontaine and Baldwin handled the crisis in a spirit of conciliation and compromise, as they had in bringing their culturally divergent provinces into union years earlier.

No such spirit prevailed in the United States, which was on the road to civil war, or in European jurisdictions where upheaval would mark the road to democratic legitimacy and world wars would be triggered.

The model put in place in our colonies was sound enough to endure through time with minimal politically inspired violence and bloodshed. The Baldwin and LaFontaine ministry decentralized power, establishing municipal governments. It brought in a modern legal and jury system and established secular public universities.

John A. Macdonald became our nation maker, as biographer Richard Gwyn calls him, but these men put in place the foundation. Lawyers by profession, they were not your typical win-at-all-costs politicians. Baldwin was a soft-spoken man who went about his work with a sunken heart. The pain at the loss of his adored wife at a young age never escaped him. But inescapable too was his devotion to the principles of democracy, social equity and justice. LaFontaine had that same commitment. He overcame strident opposition from francophone leaders in realizing his vision of a democratic union of the two cultures.

Not to be overlooked is Nova Scotia’s Joseph Howe, who secured responsible government for Nova Scotia two months earlier than Ontario and Quebec. His philosophy of governance paralleled that of Baldwin and LaFontaine. “The only questions I ask myself are, What is right? What is just? What is for the public good?” he said.

That’s a credo today’s political leaders would do well to heed. The responsible government fashioned in 1848 was primitive in many ways, but the form of democracy, in which the executive was controlled by the elected assembly, was a purer one than now. Now, the system is more akin to what existed prior to March 11, 1848, when the governor had all the power.

It’s all the more reason to remember that date, but we don’t. Academic David E. Smith notes in his book, Across the Aisle, that Canada’s contribution to responsible government used to be “a venerable theme in Canadian high school classes.” Sadly, he notes, that’s no longer the case.

How time flies…

Our history grad students were presenting historiographical surveys of their major research papers to the members of the history graduate faculty. One paper was about the representation of the Vietnam War in comic books of the time. It turned out that I was the only person in the room who remembered the Vietnam War. Man, that was fast!

A student working on that project made the statement that it was one of the most important events in American history. I said, "Really? I was around back then and I don't think so. Yes it was important, but it was no Compromise of 1850."

Much mirth resulted.

You will wait in vain for a historian of modern times to make such a good witticism about the Middle Ages.


Image: John Brown at Harpers Ferry.

Laura Kendrick on courtly love

From The Game of Love:

For Guillaume IX and his facetious troubadour followers, the stakes in the game of love were not the sexual favors of living ladies; Guillaume IX did not have to write poetry to get what he wanted from women, nor did other nobleman and courtiers. The object of the twelfth – century game of love was to win with words, just as the objective of medieval wargames was to win with weapons. The player's goal was not to win the lady, but to win the game, to conquer the masculine opponents. The secular domna presided as a figurehead (abstract, distant, absent) over the troubadours' vernacular language games in secular courts– much as her religious counterpart, the domina of Mary/Ecclesia, presided over the scholarly Latin language games of ecclesiastical schools and courts. To win the lady's favor, to rise in her esteem, to be desired by her: these are the nominal objects of most of the troubadours' verbal contests in the arenas of the secular courts. With nearly all games, however, the "material" prize of winning the game is, of itself, not worth the players' efforts; it is merely a symbol of the more intangible prize or pretz. Everyone knows the prize of the Olympics is not the gold– or the stamped gold medals. The real object of the troubadours' game of love was to assert personal prowess by wielding words to attack and destroy opponents' words, reversing or modifying their meaning by dismembering or "cutting them up" or by reframing and reinterpreting them in one's own new context.

...

Marcabru played the facetious troubadours' debasing game on their terms, going them one "down," which only heightened the contest. Other ascetics – some of them monks, canons, and clergy – took a different, and ultimately more promising, tactic; they cleaned up the facetious troubadours' lyrics by interpreting them in a deliberately "good" way; they found sincere adoration of a lady or the Virgin to be the "true" object of the lyrics, however ambiguously expressed, and wove the facetious troubadours' phrases into the new context of their own "sincere" love lyrics. It's not at all inconceivable that Cercamon's lady in "Assatz es or' oimai qu'eu chan" was as Jeanroy once suggested, the Virgin. In all these cases, however, a contest is implicit in the language of the lyric, a debate between points of view that we sense, if at all, as ambiguity or equivocation.

Chivalry: the Combat of the 30 and an odd story from the Arabian tradition

Today in my chivalry seminar we discussed the three most important accounts the Combat of 30 as found in my book of the same name. I started out by asking a general question about whether this was a chivalric deed of arms. One of my students launched into an enthusiastic affirmation. And you know what? He was taken by exactly the features of the deed that I think people of the mid-14th century most appreciated, in other words that it was a fair fight and no one ran away.

Just goes to show you.

A few days back another chivalric story swam into my ken, thanks to Phil Paine.

It is the Romance of Antar, derived from the poet Antar of the time of the Prophet, whose original poems were among the hanged poems in the Kaaba at Mecca. Students in my Islamic civilization course know Antar. Here's what Phil has to say about the later Romance of Antar and its significance.

Early Ara­bic lit­er­a­ture is not well-known in the English-speaking world, and some ele­ments of it might sur­prise some­one who is only famil­iar with the stuff from later peri­ods. Among the ear­li­est works in Clas­si­cal Ara­bic are a num­ber of tales that can only be called “chival­ric romances”, which strongly resem­ble the sort of thing you would expect in Mal­ory or Chré­tien de Troyes. What would most sur­prise a mod­ern reader is the treat­ment of female characters.

 And what is that treatment, Mr. Bones?

Here are some remark­able passages:

Zahir con­tin­ued his jour­ney, until he reached the Saad tribe, when he dis­mounted from his horse. He was cor­dially received and was pressed to take up his abode with them. His wife was at that time soon to become a mother, and he said to her: “If a son is given to us, he will be right wel­come ; but if it be a daugh­ter, con­ceal her sex and let peo­ple think we have a male child, so that my brother may have no rea­son to crow over us.” When her time came Zahir’s wife brought into the world a daugh­ter. They agreed that her name should be actu­ally Djaida, but that pub­licly she should be known as Djon­der, that peo­ple might take her for a boy. In order to pro­mote this belief, they kept up feast­ing and enter­tain­ment early and late for many days. 
 About the same time Moharib, the other brother, had a son born to him, whom he named Khaled (The Eter­nal). He chose this name in grat­i­tude to God, because, since his brother’s depar­ture, his affairs had pros­pered well.
 The two chil­dren even­tu­ally reached full age, and their renown was wide­spread among the Arabs. Zahir had taught his daugh­ter to ride on horse­back, and had trained her in all the accom­plish­ments fit­ting to a war­rior bold and dar­ing. He accus­tomed her to the sever­est toils, and the most per­ilous enter­prises. When he went to war, he put her among the other Arabs of the tribe, and in the midst of these horse­men she soon took her rank as one of the most valiant of them. Thus it came to pass that she eclipsed all her com­rades, and would even attack the lions in their dens. At last her name became an object of ter­ror; when she had over­come a cham­pion she never failed to cry out : “I am Djon­der, son of Zahir, horse­man of the tribes.”

 There is much more and Phil gives an extensive summary.

Does Star Trek: the Original Series belong on this blog?

Alas, that's what I'm thinking about these days.

This year I am teaching much the same courses as I've been teaching for the last four years. My teaching, thinking about basic facts and concepts that should be presented to my students, is a major source for much of my blogging. Then there are current events. Right now I find little to inspire original thought in the news. I don't have such respect for my own opinions as to think that my readers will be interested in hearing me go on about American politics, Canadian politics, or even Middle Eastern politics. I find all these developing stories to be stalled in patterns that I have either talked about before or are just as obvious to interested readers as they are to me. I am not interested in being another political ranter, not unless I have a really good rant to trot out.

Similarly, I don't have much new to say about chivalry or deeds of arms right now. I should have a book out this spring on Charny's Men at Arms, and I continue to work on the Chronicle of the Good Duke Louis of Bourbon, but I'm at the stage where I really can't offer up new material from either  source.

I am working away on various projects but I am not reading really interesting material of the right size and complexity to be described in a blog entry. My thoughts recently tend to be suitable for a Facebook post. Namely, a couple of sentences of reaction linked to an article that has something to do with current events.

Which leaves me with my TV watching habits, especially my use of Netflix to look over and reevaluate some of the more interesting popular phenomena of my lifetime. One of these, one of the most important really given its great popularity, is Star Trek. What does Star Trek tell us about the last half-century?

I have put a little bit of this material in the blog already, in part because I was pleasantly surprised by how good average and above average television series are when seen through Netflix, without commercial interruption, and at a pace set by the viewer – who if he or she is really interested will not wait a week to see the next episode of the series that really appeals.

So what about Star Trek? As I expected Star Trek: the Next Generation was really entertaining when seen through Netflix. I was rather surprised to see that Deep Space 9 was far better when viewed rapidly than it was in its original presentation, which caused me to give up on it early in its second season. I was very impressed by most of what I saw on my recent viewing.

So what about the original series? My memory of the original series is that it was not really very good. I was only about 15 when it came on, but I'd already read a lot of high-quality science fiction in print, and I thought that the TV show was not really giving the best selection of science-fiction ideas available. The series was better than most of what was on TV, but most of what was on TV was pretty lame.

Part of me wondered why the series had such a tremendous impact. I knew plenty of people who really loved it.

Well, re-watching the first season of the original series has confirmed me in these opinions:

It was pretty lame.

At least, the first half of the first season was really leaden. The characters are poorly drawn and poorly presented.

A good half of that season focused on exactly one idea, which is not really much of a science fictional idea as much as a horror genre idea. That idea is that universe is filled with things that look like human beings that are actually monsters; or alternatively things that started out as human beings have turned into monsters, sometimes only moral monsters. There's a lot of betrayal and menace in those early episodes, and they're not really very good episodes otherwise.

But about halfway through that first season, what people have loved about this series begins to emerge. By that I mean the characters and the interactions between the characters on the ship and particularly on the bridge of the ship start making you really care about what goes on with them.

What really surprised me was that I liked the first season James T Kirk. I have always been someone who put James T Kirk down as a borderline maniac whose prominence in Starfleet reveals a weakness in their whole system, especially the recruiting efforts.. My image of Kirk is a rather smug character who relies on his physical charisma (which did not really speak to me) to get his way. But the first season Kirk is not really like that. He's trimmer, fitter, handsomer and – can't believe I'm saying this – more intelligent and more philosophical than he was later on in the series or in the movies. He says a lot of things are actually smart. He looks smarter than Spock!

Is there any historical point to be made from this material? Well, I do now have a more sympathetic view of the popular influence of the series. And if any of you are watching the old Star Trek, you might keep an eye out for the awe and discomfort that the characters have for anything to do with computerization.

"Oh, Sherlock, neither of us was the first."

I am astonished by the achievement that is the recent remake of the Sherlock Holmes stories set in 21st century London.

Arthur Conan Doyle's stories always were more than a simple recounting of the accomplishments of the scientific detective who is also, because of his great gifts, a complete social misfit. I am pretty sure that Doyle did not invent that figure. The stories gave almost equal prominence to John Watson, the normal and cheerful friend – normal and cheerful, that is, if you ignore his rather odd devotion to his apparently indifferent friend (?).

The current re-envisioning gives much more prominence to the theme of intimacy and the difficulties of achieving it – not just between Holmes and Watson, but between others as well. 21st century London is ostensibly much freer or at least more freewheeling than Victorian London. But despite social and sexual liberation, the characters in the series struggle to reach out to each other without exposing themselves too much. They are terrified of rejection, and this keeps them just as much on edge as we imagine their 19th century counterparts were.

There must be Holmes fans out there who are raging at this series and its betrayal of some aspect of the canon. But though I'm not entirely satisfied with the stories as told, my basic attitude is one of astonishment at the chances taken by the creators and their rather amazing degree of success. In the last quarter hour of the Sign of Three episode, I sat with my mouth hanging open and my breath bated waiting to see what would come next. And it was the emotional and social struggles of the characters that surprised and yes, ensorcelled me.