What is it about?
Many myths abound in popular media, popular history and even academic history about personal combat in the Middle Ages. The chapter reviews who fought, why they fought, how they fought, and how they understood themselves as fighters. Fighting was an integral part of ruling, but not in the sense that fighting entitled you to rule. It was the other way around - if you claimed rulership, then that obliged you to fight.
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Why is it important?
There is a movement in modern popular and political culture to see the Middle Ages, and especially the medieval knight, as a lost ideal, as the manifestation of a time of social harmony and stability. The facts are quite different. But, more importantly, the medievalist conception of the Middle Ages completely misrepresents the dynamics of the Middle Ages, and is instead based on the culture wars of the 19th century.
Perspectives
My hope is that the chapter will help to provide a middle ground between those who see the Middle Ages as a time of darkness, ignorance, and intolerance, and those who see it as a time of high ideals, harmony and stability. Our medieval forebears thought very differently from us, so applying modern concepts to the Middle Ages is silly. But at the same time, they were not from another planet.
Dr. Jürg Gassmann
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Re-imagining Historical Fighting:, June 2023, JSTOR,
DOI: 10.2307/jj.18377028.6.
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