Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 20 - 2025 i Medieval World Culture & Conflict Magazine

From Europe to Byzantium and beyond, royal courts thrived during the Middle Ages as centers of power, authority, splendor, and intrigue. They hosted lavish feasts, grand tournaments, and other extravagant gatherings that displayed the wealth and power of those in charge. Although royal courts from different corners of the medieval world shared the broad rhythms of aristocratic life, each context developed its own distinctive structure, ideals, and rituals. In this issue, we take a look at medieval courtly life and in particular entertainment at the court, featuring examples from Western and Central Europe, and Byzantium. Be sure to check out the centerfold, featuring the lavish theatrics of the knight of the enchanted column, which was a popular pas d’armes that unfolded in the center of Bruges. It brought the splendour…

Also known as chivalric romances, courtly romances were the popular literature of medieval European courts. They told idealized stories of brave knights embarking on trying quests, fighting vicious, often supernatural foes, and proving their honour, worth, and valour to their beautiful ladies. Written for and featuring members of the medieval court, these tales were intended not only to amuse their audiences with the noble antics of their courtly characters, but also to inspire real nobility through demonstrations of idealized forms of courtly living. Inspirational, aspirational, and escapist, these romances offered wondrous images of courtly life and remained amongst the most popular reading material for medieval courts in Europe for the duration of the medieval period. The nature of these romances is best gleaned through an example, so here is the…

We know a great deal about the lavish theatrics that surrounded pas d’armes, as many contemporary accounts survive, often written with an incredible level of detail. For example, the 1463 Pas of the Enchanted Column was described in no less than three sources, with the authors going so far as to detail the exact materials, colours, and decorations on the clothing worn by all the important participants. Held in Bruges, the entrepreneur of this pas was Philippe de Lalaing, brother of the more famous Jacques de Lalaing, who was himself no stranger to the format. The backstory for this particular event centred around a knight who had been imprisoned in an enchanted column by a powerful sorceress. In order to gain his freedom, the knight was required to fight off…

Whereas the poor people ate onions, pork, and garlic, the wealthy people delighted in peaches, cherries, and birds. Venison was usually reserved for the wealthy who had hunting rights, while pig, an animal that digs the earth with its snout, was associated with the common folks. Noble banquets would feature a high number of birds and poultry, as well as fruits and wine, all heavily seasoned with rare and expensive spices. Fish days were quite frequent, and not just reserved for Fridays! Then, too, certain fish and fish-based dishes were more commonly found on poor people’s tables than at the elites’ banquets. In the south of France, for example, if people caught dolphins, their brains had to be given to the local bishop because it was considered a delicacy. Food…

Albala, Ken. The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe. University of Illinois Press, 2007. Anderson, Natalie. “The Tournament and its Role in the Court Culture of Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519).” PhD dissertation. University of Leeds, 2017. Barker, J.R.V. The Tournament in England, 1100–1400. Woodbridge, 1986. Bennett, Philip E., Sarah Carpenter, and Louise Gardiner. “Chivalric Games at the Court of Edward III: The Jousting Letters of EUL MS 183.” Medium Ævum 87, no. 2 (2018): 304-342. Blunk, Catherine. “Between Sport and Theatre: How Spectacular was the Pas d’armes?” In The Medieval Tournament as Spectacle: Tourneys, Jousts and Pas d’Armes, 1100–1600, edited by Alan V. Murray and Karen Watts, 120-138. Boydell Press, 2020. Featherstone, Michael J. “Emperor and Court.” In The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies. 506–517. Oxford…

Just as we can use the heroes of epic and romance as a lens through which to determine what was considered ‘right’ behaviour for a medieval knight, so too we can use the villains to determine what was thought of as ‘unchivalric’. Chivalric bad guys In the case of The Song of Roland, the key villain of the piece is not one of the Moorish emirs, but one of Charlemagne’s own lords, his brother-in-law (and Roland’s stepfather) Ganelon. His resentment of the favour shown to Roland, his distrust of his stepson, and his cowardice when Roland nominates him as the messenger to the court of Marsile, the king of the Arabs, leads him to betray Roland, his sovereign and country, to the Saracen. In the Arthurian romances, we meet a…

Like today, while women did most of the home cooking, the reputed chefs were men. We know of them because they wrote cookbooks famous enough to have survived centuries. All of them lived at the tail end of the Middle Ages and worked for notable households. Guillaume Tirel, known as Taillevent (d. 1395), was the master cook of kings Charles V and Charles VI of France. The cookbook attributed to Taillevent is Le Viandier, which was, in actuality, written well before the supposed author’s birth! The first English cookbook is contemporary to Le Viandier. Titled The Forme of Cury, this compilation of recipes is sometimes attributed to the chief master cook of Richard II. Another famous chef is Johannes Bockenheim, born and raised in Germany, who cooked for Pope Martin…

Edinburgh emerged as an urban centre around 1130, when King David I established a Royal Burgh. This was a trading arrangement and can be understood in today’s terms as a tax-break for the town. Yet, the location of the Royal Burgh of Edinburgh seems strange from a trading perspective. Trade requires transport, and in twelfth-century Scotland, this occurred largely along or beside waterways; roads were generally poor or non-existent. King David’s Burgh lay almost two miles from the Forth Estuary, and nowhere near a navigable river. Indeed, for much of its early history, Edinburgh faced problems supplying water for household and industrial use. So why did Edinburgh receive its Royal Charter? The frequently stated answer is that it developed around the so-called Castle Rock, a prominent volcanic plug fortified since…

At the root of all medieval courtly life and entertainment are Roman traditions. The basilica was adapted for courtly settings, offering large spaces for processions, ceremonies, and the display of power. Roman traditions also informed ceremonial uses of regalia and the development of ritual protocols, which offered a spectacle to all, controlled access to the elite, and expressed authority. The Byzantine cultural sphere continued Roman traditions from the time of Constantine I (r. 306-337), whereas in other parts of Europe, Roman practices were readapted in later centuries. The Carolingians, for example, revived classical artistic, cultural, and courtly practices. Charlemagne (r. 768-814) even established his itinerant court in Aachen, a Roman city, building there an impressive palace complex designed by Odo of Metz. Roman and Byzantine models informed the design, decoration,…

With the anonymous champion came a golden tree, soon planted in the centre of the marketplace and guarded by a fearsome giant. Any who wished to challenge the Knight of the Golden Tree had to firstly send a herald to hang a shield emblazoned with the challenger’s coat of arms from the tree’s branches. Afterwards, the challenger was to strike three times with a great wooden hammer, thereby calling the enigmatic knight to tilt. Only then, under the July sun and before an audience of hundreds, could these jousters thunder down the lists and shatter lances. Despite the mysterious persona, everyone knew who was hiding behind the stranger’s visor. The Knight of the Golden Tree was none other than the duke’s half-brother Antoine de Bourgogne, the Great Bastard of Burgundy.…

Edward’s reign was consumed with war in France, known eponymously as the Hundred Years War. His court had to reflect how he wanted to be seen across Europe, that is, as a king on the cutting edge of material culture and as a military hero, clad in wealth and power. For Edward, politics and power played out though pageantry, where chivalric ideals and royal authority were manifested through ceremony and hedonism. As a result, the English court was one of the most glittering and exciting places to exist at the height of late-medieval England. Background Edward inherited the throne from his father Edward II when the latter was deposed in a coup by his mother and Roger Mortimer. Soon, the teenage king was strangled of the power and agency he…

Of the necessary things for a banquet, “the eighth is a merriment of songs and of musical instruments,” wrote Bartholomew the Englishman in the Books on the Properties of Things. “Noble men used not to make suppers without harp or symphony,” said the thirteenth-century encyclopedist. According to music theorist and composer Johannes Tinctoris who lived in the fifteenth century, singers and instruments added to the magnificence of great banquets. The wealthier and higher-ranked the household, the greater the number of minstrels. Trumpeters signaled the beginning and end of the banquet. Likewise, the entry and presentation of dishes was accompanied by the sounding of trumpets. For example, at the wedding banquet of the Count of Artois, in 1238, each time a new dish was served, musicians (who were mounted on bulls!)…

The Golden Legend, a compendium combining Bible commentary with more than 150 stories of saints from the first 1200 years of Christian history, compiled by James of Varazze (Latinised, Jacobus de Voragine) between about 1260 and 1266, represented the religious beliefs and practices that animated and moulded European society throughout the later Middle Ages. The treasury of tales not only displayed the virtues of a life of faith, but also demonstrated the value to the everyday believer of private and public devotions, of acts of charity, penance and pilgrimage. So many miracles and wonders were surely the definitive proof of this religion’s supernatural power. ‘Golden’ was a measure of its significance in the late medieval psyche. ‘Legend’ was the generic term for the narrative account of a person venerated in…

Johannes Gutenberg: A Biography in Books By Eric Marshall White ISBN: 978-1836390398 Reaktion Books, 2025 $25.00 press.uchicago.edu At the end of the twentieth century, Johann Gutenberg was hailed as the Man of the Millennium. What did this man from fifteenth century Germany do to merit such an accolade? Eric Marshall White sets out to examine his achievements and consider his place in history. Gutenberg took a leading role in the 1440s and 1450s in the creation of movable type and the printing press, which led to the mass production of printed books at a speed far exceeding the hand-written volumes executed by monks and other writers before that time. In preceding centuries in China, Korea, and in the Islamic caliphates, printing using woodcuts and even metallic type had been performed,…

Food, Feasting and Table Manners in the Late Middle Ages Edited by Guillermo Alvar Nuño Routledge, 2024 ISBN: 978-1032331201 Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony By Madeleine Pelner Cosman George Braziller, Inc., 1999 ISBN: 978-0807608982 Court Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in Byzantium and the Medieval Mediterranean Edited by Alexander Beihammer et al. Brill, 2013 ISBN: 978-9004256866 Freydal. Medieval Games Edited by Stefan Krause Taschen, 2019 ISBN: 978-3836576819 Pas d’armes and Late Medieval Chivalry A Casebook Edited by Rosalind Bown-Grant et al. Liverpool University Press, 2025 ISBN: 978-1835537664 The Princely Court By Malcolm Vale Oxford University Press, 2002 ISBN: 978-0198205296 Rethinking Chivalry and Courtly Love By Jennifer G. Wollock Praeger, 2011 ISBN: 979-8216139041 The Great Household in Late Medieval England By C. M. Woolgar Yale University Press, 1999 ISBN: 978-0300076875…