Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 16 - 2025 i Medieval World Culture & Conflict Magazine

During the Middle Ages, study and learning took place in different contexts, ranging from the monastery to the schoolroom, and from training grounds to the job itself. This issue explores intellectual, practical, and martial education in its various settings, looking at learning in the monastery and the university in Western Europe, the development of colleges of law in the Islamic world, the training of apprentices, as well as learning mathematics and swordsmanship. A complete education in the Middle Ages entailed mastery of many subjects and skills, but these, of course, were not available to everyone. This issue also features key medieval battles involving Spaniards. One is set on the Iberian Peninsula and the other takes place in the Americas. We cover exciting medieval monuments, too — a Welsh fortress; a…

Although there was a common culture of knighthood and chivalry broadly recognisable across Europe and the Latin East in the Middle Ages, it varied in detail depending on place and time. Furthermore, much ink was spilled discussing how knights should behave and what the true duties of a knight were, with different emphases depending on the author. In addition, chivalry was culture, spanning everything from behaviour on the battlefield and at the court, to clothing, speech, literature, and landscape. The virtues of chivalry There were, however, some common traits that made up what David Crouch has called the chivalric habitus — or the behavioural norms of medieval aristocratic society. The three key virtues of chivalry were prouesse, largesse, and courtoisie. Of these, prowess came first, as the knight (chevalier, ritter,…

A syllabus of studies in a range of disciplines, textbooks, lectures, examinations, an annual cycle arranged into semesters, and the preferred pattern of teaching in the morning and early afternoon, all took shape between the end of the Barbarian invasions and the Black Death. Even some of the questions of pedagogic principle and practice debated today – such as the startingage for school, the separation of the sexes, and what subjects should be mandatory – were first raised by our medieval forebears. The culture of education that emerged across the Middle Ages was a conscious act of recovery. Antiquity’s school tradition was uprooted with the break-up of Rome’s western empire. Long-standing city centres of teaching and learning either fell or were transformed. With their old civic way of life were…

Apprentices usually learned what medieval people called a “mechanical art,” meaning an occupation one did with their hands. This excluded careers requiring university training, like medicine, law, or theology, and all types of ecclesiastical occupations. Apprenticeship did not concern the nobility either. However, members of the merchant elite, even if they usually had spent some time in school, still went through a period of apprenticeship to get some practical training. Whereas apprenticeship is attested since before the Middle Ages, the first contracts that have been preserved date to the late twelfth century. In April 1180, a Genoese teenager entered a five-year contract with a master from the same Italian city. Apprenticeship contracts became commonplace in the following centuries, meaning that most documentation we have today comes from the late Middle…

Although he very much operated in the tradition of fencing masters going back to the late fourteenth-century, Johannes Lichtenauer, the German fencing master Joachim Meyer, a knife-maker by trade in the city of Stuttgart, embraced these new ways of learning, producing a diagram now called a ‘Meyer Square’, which allowed fencers to practice attacking the four openings, or target areas, in a series of combinations denoted by numbers. In his 1570 manual, he chose to depict such diagrams pinned to the walls and drawn on the floors of a fencing school, with men practicing using them in order to perfect the form of their fencing technique. Meyer’s work also shows the range of different styles of combat practiced in this period. Alongside the rapier, he provided instruction in the longsword,…

Apart from law, the only profession requiring advanced training was medicine, including its branches, such as ophthalmology. The practice of medicine was open to all confessions and Christians and Jews played prominent roles. All were the heirs of the medical legacy of the ancient Greeks. Indeed, Galenic medicine, that is, Galen’s system of humoral pathology, was at the heart of their understanding of illness. One could acquire a medical education in three ways. A son or daughter might learn it from their father; one could teach oneself by reading medical texts until he was satisfied that he had mastered a given field; or one could take classes in hospitals or medical schools, some of which were attached to madrasas. Private tutors could be employed in or outside these facilities. The…

The sale in 2007 of some 20 coffers from the collection of André and Marie-Thérèse Jammes stimulated considerable interest in these intriguing and intimate late-medieval objects. The scholar and rare book dealer Sandra Hindman, fortunate enough to purchase many of the Jammes’ coffers, subsequently undertook important research that provided new insights into their characteristics and purpose. A painted coffer Central to her discoveries was the emergence, at auction, of a Dutch painting of ca. 1530. In its depiction of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Mary looks toward a leather-bound, ironwrought box of small dimensions resting upon an integral cushion, its carrying straps trailing upon the ground. Tantalisingly half open, the coffer reveals a small book with claps, a rosary, a brush, scissors, and jewellery. If the lid were…

If you are interested in reading Maqamat al-Hariri in English, there are several options available. For those seeking a more traditional approach, there are literal translations, such as The Assemblies of Al-Hariri: Fifty Encounters with the Shaykh Abu Zayd of Seruj by Amina Shah, published in 1980. This edition faithfully conveys the stories’ content while preserving their original tone. However, Michael Cooperson’s 2020 translation, Impostures, takes a creative and unconventional approach. Inspired by Al-Hariri’s linguistic flair, Cooperson showcases the versatility of the English language by rendering each of the fifty tales in a unique style. Readers will encounter the maqamat through voices as varied as Geoffrey Chaucer, Mark Twain, Cockney rhyming slang, and Nigerian English. It makes for a very fun read!…

A document held in Göttingen University’s Faculty of Humanities has been revealed to be an eighteenth-century forgery. While the document claims to date to 1266, it references a church in Pisa that was not constructed until much later. This revelation comes from research conducted by Dr. Boris Gübele, a historian at the University of Göttingen, in collaboration with Italian researchers. The investigation began as part of preparations for exhibits at Forum Wissen, the University of Göttingen’s knowledge museum. The document stood out because it was written in Italian rather than Latin, an unusual feature for medieval manuscripts in the Göttingen collection. It describes a married couple from Pisa who pledged their son to a religious order supposedly associated with a particular church in the city. However, the church in question…

A silk seal bag from the reign of King Henry III has been identified as a remarkable match to the burial shroud of Emperor Charlemagne, interred in Aachen Cathedral. Researchers have determined that the silk used for both artifacts likely originated from the same weavers, a discovery detailed in The Burlington Magazine. The seal bag, which once housed the Great Seal of Henry III, features designs of white hares and floral patterns in gold, blue, and red—identical to those on Charlemagne’s shroud. The seal bag was attached to a 1267 inventory of jewels and treasures from Edward the Confessor’s shrine at Westminster Abbey. Compiled during a period of financial strain, the inventory documented items pledged to Italian merchants to raise funds. While the seal bag’s silk likely came from the…

Early in the twentieth century, it was decided that Harlech castle was founded by Otto Grandison (ca. 1238-1328), a captain of Edward I. That he led 560 infantry to Harlech in April 1283 is certain, but the evidence for Otto’s foundation of Harlech Castle is problematic. Early history There was certainly a place called Harlech during the Welsh War of 1282–1283. It was important enough for Otto to go there with troops after the fall of Castell y Bere. But Otto did not stay long at Harlech. By 10 May 1283, he was already with Edward I at Llanrwst. Obviously, this evidence does not record the founding of any castle. All the rest of the Edwardian castles built on virgin sites have a very different documentary record. At the site…

Monastic education was not confined to communities of men. The need to equip women living under vows with the literacy and numeracy to fulfil the requirements of the rule was no different. Just as in male monasteries, there was a rising number of children. Since women would not proceed to ordination, there was not the same emphasis placed on learning the duties of the priesthood. Nonetheless, female superiors were charged with the spiritual wellbeing of their communities just like their male counterparts, and manuals of pastoral care were used in the same way. Monastic women were also given instruction in the special qualities of their profession. The monk Aldhelm of Malmesbury (d. 709) collected accounts of women who had achieved sainthood under the title In praise of virginity (De laude…

Farming and domestic service were the most frequent avenue of work for the children of peasants in the region of Montpellier, Southern France. Male teenagers were hired specifically to work as ploughmen. They were not apprentices but young employees. In 1425, Philip, age 15, came to Montpellier after the death of his father, a farmer from a distant diocese. Philip landed a job with an urban farmer, for three years. He would work under his employer’s orders, he would receive a bed, food, and clothing, as well as a salary of 15 golden moutons for the three years of work. Probably trained at their parents’ farm, these teenagers leased their services at other people’s farms and all received a wage. For a peasant girl, domestic service was the most common…

Three elements were needed for the creation of a system of education in the medieval Islamic world: a written language, literacy, and an easily produced medium on which words could be recorded. None of these were firmly in place during Muhammad’s lifetime (fl. 622–632). The bases of a system The Arabic alphabet had only gradually emerged from the Syriac script by the turn of the seventh century. And even then, written Arabic was still in a somewhat rudimentary state. Indeed, the earliest copies of the Koran were composed in a script called scriptio defective, meaning that it was little more than an elaborate mnemonic device. This eventually contributed to various readings of the Koran. Moreover, there was no prose Arabic literature at that time. There had been a long and…

What keeps this world together is the preponderant role of the Latin Church and of the Latin writing that went together with it (provided, of course, that we restrict ourselves to the region encompassing Italy, France, England, and include the rest of Europe only when it was under Christian rule – the Iberian peninsula before 700 and after 1100, the German lands after 750, and further eastern and northern areas after 1000). Few spoke and read Latin. Yet those who were educated certainly did, so we shall start with them. Educating the elite In Antiquity, the education of elite adolescents consisted of ‘seven liberal arts’, which in medieval terminology were grouped in the ‘trivium’ and the ‘quadrivium’. The trivium encompassed the arts of language: grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic/logic. The quadrivium…

Cortés found Pedro de Alvarado, his second-in-command, fighting desperately beside those who had deceived him into committing an atrocity so heinous it brought the wrath of the Aztecs down upon them. But by their mutual effusion of blood this night the Spaniards forged anew their alliance with the warriors of Tlaxcala – a relationship destined to topple the might of an empire and reshape the world as they knew it. Forging an alliance That reshaping was decades in the making, but almost never came to pass. Upon first encountering the Spaniards, the Tlaxcallans did everything in their power to destroy them. Cortés was just another intruder in those early days of September 1519. He was in company with people subject to Montezuma, ruler of the vast Aztec empire. The decades…

Henry V: The Astonishing Rise of England’s Greatest Warrior King By Dan Jones ISBN: 978-1804541937 Bloomsbury, 2024 $35.99 (hardback) www.bloomsbury.com The medieval historian and master of narrative non-fiction Dan Jones has produced a deeply engaging biography of Henry V – often thought of as one of the most important and heroic English kings. It is an enthralling and comprehensive view of Henry’s life. He died at the age of thirty-five having been king for only nine years. The book covers every aspect of his life, but does it leave the reader with a view of Henry as “the greatest man who ever ruled England”? Henry was the son of Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV, who staged a coup in 1399 against the incompetent and divisive government of Richard II who subsequently…

Medieval Education Edited by Ronald B. Begley and Joseph W. Koterski S. J. Fordham University Press, 2005 ISBN: 978-0823224258 Masters of Medieval and Renaissance Martial Arts By John Clements Paladin Press, 2008 ISBN: 978-1581606683 The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West By George Makdisi Edinburgh University Press, 1981 ISBN: 978-1482549829 The Oxford Handbook of the History of Education Edited by John L. Rury and Eileen H. Tamura Oxford University Press, 2019 ISBN: 978-0199340033 The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo By Jonathan Porter Berkey Princeton University Press, 2014 ISBN: 978-0691606835 Handbook on the History of Mathematics Education Edited by Alexander Karp and Gert Schubring Springer, 2014 ISBN: 978-1461491545 Medieval Schools: Roman Britain to Renaissance England By Nicholas Orme Yale University Press, 2006 ISBN: 978-0300111026 Teaching…

Upon the death of King Fernando of Portugal in October 1383, the already fragile state of his kingdom’s affairs received a splintering blow. Around the turn of the decade, Portugal had been menaced by aggressive inroads from Castile, spurred by the Castilian king, John of Trastámara. Those inroads had abated when King Fernando’s sole legitimate heir, princess Beatrice, was married to Trastámara in April 1383. So, with Fernando dead, Beatrice succeeded as Queen of Portugal, with her mother, Leonora, serving as regent. To Trastámara, the possibility of annexing Portugal to his Crown proved too tempting to refuse. The interregnum crisis The prospect of Castilian annexation, however, was not received well by the subjects of the new Portuguese queen. Violent politicized mobs in Lisbon rejected Leonora’s regent government, and at the…

Harlech has always been a favourite destination for tourists and enthusiasts of medieval history. It is a site I have visited many times since the 1970s, but it was only in the 2010s when a good historian friend suggested to me that the true story of Harlech Castle had been misrepresented. I was then persuaded, almost against my better judgment, to look again at the documentary history of the site. What I thought was to be a trip down well trodden paths turned out to be far more exhilarating and exciting a journey, since it turned out that this byway was not such a well trodden path after all. Again and again in castle studies the mantra must be repeated - what do the original sources say and do they…

From the point of view of medieval clerics, literacy meant the ability to read and write fluently in Latin. Some historians estimate that about 10 percent of the European population was literate at the tail end of the Middle Ages. But the definition of literacy as Latin literacy is too narrow to properly reflect the medieval realities. Looking at Vernacular languages – such as English, German, Spanish, Italian, or French – literacy rates were higher. In fact, clerics themselves started to consider Vernacular literacy as an actual form of literacy from the fourteenth century onward. It is possible that a third of the London laymen could read in the late 1300s and in the 1400s. Estimates about the Italian city of Venice are similar, with about 30 percent of literate…

We know very little about how medieval knights learnt to fight with Wswords. The Konungs skuggsjá – a mid-thirteenth century Norwegian text that laid out how to educate a noble boy to prepare them for service – suggests that the young noble should find a “well-trained foreigner or compatriot” to practice with. The fifteenth-century Portuguese king Duarte, in his book The Loyal Courtier, advises the same practice. Elsewhere, knights are directed to practice striking with the sword at the pell – a stake of manheight planted in the ground. What we do not see in the training of a young swordsman is any kind of fencing master. Such tuition must have been ad hoc, provided by knights and retainers already engaged by a lord. It really does seem as though…

The small church at Pătrăuți Monastery – measuring 17.6 m in length and 8.9 m at the widest width, by the lateral apses of the naos – was built on a triconch plan consisting of a rounded eastern apse and two shallower lateral semicircular apses extending to the north and south. A square pronaos with a small window at the center of each of the north and south walls precedes the main liturgical space of the church. The main entryway is at the center of the west facade, and another small doorway leads from the pronaos into the naos, guiding the physical progression through the spaces. This passage from one space to another focuses attention on the individual as only one person at a time can pass through each doorway.…

For centuries, Baghdad was the ultimate destination for creators. Talented men and women skilled in literature, poetry, music, art, and other creative pursuits found ample opportunities in the vibrant capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Wealthy patrons eagerly supported the arts, fostering a thriving intellectual and cultural scene that gave rise to some of history’s most remarkable works. It was no surprise, then, that Al-Hariri set his sights on Baghdad to make his name and fortune as a writer. In his mid-40s at the time of his journey, Al-Hariri was already well-regarded in Basra, where he was said to hail from a wealthy family or served as a local official. His true expertise, however, lay in a distinctive literary genre known as maqamah. MAQAMAH Maqāmah refers to any occasion where one…