Favorite entries, 2014

A quick selection.

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?

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.

"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.