An excellent review by Ken Mondschein of Pas d’armes and Late Medieval Chivalry: A Casebook.

If you have a general interest in the Middle Ages, you might want to subscribe to the Medieval Review. It is free and includes reviews on all sorts of scholarly subjcts. There are limitations. It is likely that most of the reviews you get will be of limited interest to you (I am not very interested in monographs on theologians and philosophers). The most important reviews of high profile books seem to appear in long-established journals -- but they are not free. The Medieval Review, however, will often provide you with information you didn't know you were interested in.

I am including an excellent review by Ken Mondschein of a book that I and some of my regular readers wll be interested in. I point out that it is reasonably priced! Hooray for the Liverpool University Press

In fact if you look around you'll find an open access version of the book!

The Mondchein review:

Brown-Grant, Rosalind, and Mario Damen, eds. Pas d’armes and Late Medieval Chivalry: A Casebook

Reviewed by Ken Mondschein Massachusetts Historical Swordsmanship ken@kenmondschein.com

Recent writings by Steven Muhlberger and others, as well as public history such as the Met’s 2019 exhibit about Maximillian I, have shown the late medieval tournament is a fertile field for studying elite alliances, politicking, and self-fashioning. Within the tournament, we can find worlds, much as one day historians will no doubt pick apart our own day’s professional sports. The difference is that in the late Middle Ages and early modern period, the ruling class was also the athletic class, making their sports and games of key interest. As the title makes clear, this is a casebook, but it is also the first work, save for a chapter in Barber and Barker’s oft-cited 1989 Tournaments, Jousts, Chivalry, and Pageants in the Late Middle Ages, specifically on this form of tournament. As such, it is a valuable addition to the literature.

The present volume is a study of pas d’armes, a form of late-medieval tournament that originated in Spain in the early fifteenth century. The pas featured a “home team” defending a locale, such as a pillar or stone (a perron), against all comers. Despite its theatrical trappings and rich symbolism, this was still a dangerous affair, and fatalities were not unknown, particularly in the earlier and less-regulated pas. From its birthplace in Iberia, this tournament form spread to France and, especially, Burgundy, where it both took on elements of state theatre and was made safer by being brought firmly under the control of rulers.

The first part of the book presents primary sources detailing fifteen pas spanning approximately 80 years, from 1428 to 1507, as well as one literary antecedent, the Romance of Ponthus and Sidoine. Interestingly for one interested in the study of medievalism, the literary exemplar shows more parallels with modern medieval combat-sport aesthetics--mighty men bashing each other with weighty swords to the point of exhaustion, yet forbidding the thrust--whereas the real-world accounts are both more vaguely described and also more contained--for instance, the pollaxe fight between Jacques de Lalaing and Pierre de Chandio in 1449 is limited to seventeen blows--and do use thrusts.

The primary sources regarding the fifteen pas d’armes, ranging from poetry to financial accounts, similarly have much to offer the reenactor, as well as the historian. Clothing, armor, and horse trappings are meticulously described. The particular forms, rules, and conditions to govern the emprise--in other words, the social structures meant to regulate and contain violence--are also specified, as are the richly symbolic and meaningful theatric trappings and heraldry.

The second part of the book contains some very interesting interpretive essays. Thalia Brero, Mario Damen, and Klaus Oschema detail how the pas d’armes changed over time from its fifteenth-century origins into the nascent state system of the sixteenth century. Anne D. Hedeman and Justin Strugeon look at heraldry and symbolism in the Pas de Samur. Mario Damen and Michelle Szkilnik examine the political and Arthurian literary environment of the 1463 Pas du Perron Fée in held in Bruges. Mariana Viallon discusses the later legacy of the roleplaying from the 1493 Pas des armes de Sandricourt. Alan V. Murray considers the spread of the pas d’armes to early sixteenth century Scotland with the Wild Knight of the Black Lady (as well as the possible racial overtones of the “Black Lady’s” identity). In the sixth and last essay, Rosalind Brown-Grant continues Ruth Mazo Karras’s work in From Boys to Men to extend the notion of the performance of elite masculinity from mere domination to display and conspicuous consumption. Finally, arms and armor expert Ralph Moffat contributes an excellent glossary.

Overall, this is an excellent book, and a much-needed and much-welcomed study of a previously neglected subject.